Milk Fever

by Lissa M. Cowan

  A man darted out from one of the houses. Dressed thinly for the cold, he approached, looking me square in the eyes. “Where do you go, wench?” His eyes shone between layers of saggy skin.

  He saw my gaze fall on his hands, which were split apart like crusts of bread.“I fell trees, strip the bark and smooth them down to make boards for houses,” he said. “I carry stones from the mountain and chip away at them, carving to make blocks for walls. My hands are those of an honest builder.”

  When I tried to get past him he insisted I run my fingers over his palms. They should have been rough like a round of cheese or a mule’s backside, but my hands were too cold to feel them.

  “I know not only who lives in these houses, I know how they are made down to the smallest bit of wood, the tiniest piece of stone wedged in a crack to stop mice from entering.”

  “I’m going to see Margot, the midwife,” I told him.

  “She lives in the old monk’s house beside the dead tree.” His gaze was steady. “What will you do there?”

  Unable to hold it in and impatient to reach her, I replied with a burst, “Armande the wet nurse was there yesterday but she didn’t come back home.” My heart beat faster as I watched the man’s face change.

  He bobbed back and forth, his breath a cloud around him. His brows curled up and the skin on his forehead wrinkled.

  “I wouldn’t trust the woman with any child of mine.”

  His hair moved as if it wasn’t part of his body—alive like Medusa’s head of snakes. Before I could get a word in, he turned, entered a door and was gone.

  Gently resting a hand on my shoulder, Margot pulled me into a small sitting room with a couple of upholstered chairs and a table. A red carpet covered the floor and pictures lined the walls. She wore a bodice tied loosely in a bow, and had only one tooth at the front that hugged her bottom lip. She glanced at the bulge in my coat, now fussing and crying. I undid the buttons, lifting out Nathalie. She promptly shut up, looked at me and at Margot then wrinkled her mouth and yowled.

  “You have come about your limp.” The old woman lifted my skirts to see my leg. “It is from the falling of the womb.” She put her hand behind my knee, poking the skin of my calf. “Your womb is starved. How is your appetite for sex? Do you have a suitor? You must be close to twenty by now.”

  I tried to speak, but the cold walk over made words stick in my throat. Not able to talk, I began to sob.

  “Mon cher enfant, what is wrong?”

  “It’s not my leg that is the trouble, but Armande. She didn’t come home yesterday.”

  “She is not here, ma petite.” The skin on her face pressed together as a moneybag pulled tight. “She came by for some medicine to help her sleep, gulped down a morsel of lardy cake and was out the door. She seemed eager to return home, saying she needed to nurse Nathalie and then rest.”

  Bile from my stomach was rising in my throat.

  “The infant needs a mother’s milk,” said Margot as she took the screaming Nathalie from me, gently rocking her to and fro. “I’ll ask the neighbour two houses over to see if she will help out. She has a young one still nursing and is a goodly soul.”

  If I opened my mouth to answer I would surely be sick all over her nice carpet.

  Margot returned not long after and said her neighbour would nurse Nathalie for now. She passed her fingers through her long, white hair and looked deep in thought. She told me about the conversation she and Armande had. “I asked her, how was the baby she suckled? Was the milk flowing? Did it feed often? Armande told me that the infant was eager to nurse like all the rest, but took only what was needed then slept like she would never wake up. She said her milk flow was fine, but that she had soreness at the nipple and needed more rest. She looked sturdy enough, though her face was strained. Airs of distress circling her eyes.”

  She crossed the room, picked up two brown flasks from the table and poured liquid from one to the other. Dried lavender, heather and sedges stuck out from her bony fingers as she added some springs to her mixture.

  “I fixed her some medicine with a bit of something I gave her before for milk fever as she felt a little warm, and I prescribed chickweed tea for her cracked nipples. After that she quit me.”

  The old woman ripped up dried petals, crushed them in a bowl with the flat end of a stick, then bringing it up to her nose, she walked toward me carrying a large bowl of hot liquid. Her eyes were sad, searching.

  “Since you’re here now, I’ll treat your limp,” she said. “Pull up your skirts nice and high. The flowery vapours will help the restlessness of your womb.”

  “But what are we to do?” I asked her trying to stand up.

  “Keep sitting,” she instructed. “You’ll need strength to find her.”

  I fell back in the chair and spread my legs. She placed the bowl on the floor between my feet. The liquid smelled of rose water and oil of violet. Heat climbed up my legs and grew in warmth as it reached my thighs. Eyes closed, my stomach calmed somewhat as I took the sweet mist into my nose. My skirts dampened, water dripping off my legs and landing in the bowl at my feet.

  “Do you feel the womb fall into place?” Her eyes were intent. “When it does your limp will improve, you’ll see.”

  I only felt my womb twice before and knew little about the mysteries of the body. When Pierre kissed me by the chapel, I was sure it tingled and pulled as if waking me from a deep sleep. Another time was at Master Dogface’s estate just before the scraggy thing wrapped in a cloak of black filth came pouring out of me. A tightening was felt along with soreness lasting for hours. Armande told me the womb was like a stove where a baby grew. This stove could give or take life just as a real stove made bread rise or burned hairs off a dead bird. My mind drifted back to the sensation of heat on my legs. The scent from the bowl of water beneath me filled my nostrils. My knees started knocking together and my head grew weak. Everything in the room was clothed in thick whiteness then pictures, walls, lamps, chairs and table started spinning.

  Moments later, I opened my eyes.

  “You fell, Céleste,” said Margot standing over me. “The vapours were too much for you. Let me help you to your feet.”

  I looked around and saw the bowl upside down beside me, a puddle of water on the floor. My head hurt and was cloudy. I sat up, pulled myself onto the chair and she handed me a cup of elderberry juice.

  “This will wake you up.”

  Margot’s remedy made my head feel clearer, yet it did nothing for the fires burning inside that told me Armande was in danger. Not like having an anxious womb or stomach-ache, conditions that might be rid of through vomiting or having oneself bled at the arm. After wiping my legs, I pulled my skirts down to where gentlewomen wore them, nice and low. I took a couple of steps and noticed my leg had indeed improved.

  “Armande is not an open book, ma petite,” Margot said. “You might think so, yet there are things she doesn’t speak of.”

  Things she did not speak of? Of course, I knew what those things were. At least I thought I did. Anyway, what did this have to do with her disappearing?

  “Her heart was forever broken after her child’s death,” she told me. “Nursing brought her back to the rest of the world—back to us.” She was teary-eyed.

  I pulled my coat over my shoulders and sat beside the wood stove, the heat soothing my tired bones.

  “It is near dark. Tomorrow I’ll round up some people to look for her.”

  Then I remembered the lettre de cachet that I tucked inside my embroidered pocket to show her. I thought maybe Armande had mentioned it to Margot, but no, she was clearly learning about it for the first time.

  She fanned the letter over her face, lightly brushing her cheeks with it. “If she has been taken against her will to Versailles then she is in great danger of losing the magic and wisdom of her milk.” Her eyes grew wide and she drew a hand to
her temple. It was the first time she ever voiced such thoughts to me about Armande’s milk.

  “I have been worried something like this would happen.” Her shoulders caved in as though her body was collapsing under the weight of what the letter told her. “Over the past couple of years, rumours about her milk have spread to towns and villages. Now that the Dauphin is ailing and the King is in desperate circumstances, he hopes against all hope that his son will be saved by the wet nurse.”

  She searched my face, her restless eyes causing me to feel more alone than ever before, then she said, “Wisdom in the wrong hands can drain magic from those who possess it.”

  Hunt

  THERE WAS INSISTENT KNOCKING and shouting outside. Margot waited at the front of the house with a dozen or so villagers. Though their heads were covered, the way they stood, their size, I knew them all. Who among them had not called Armande witch or harlot? Big snowflakes fell to the ground, slowly like feathers. Nadine smiled at me, though her eyes were sad. Tufts of hair stuck out from her bonnet. Her husband Bertrand was close by, shorter than she was and had wide shoulders and a bent back. Others lingered at the door, heads down. Children swayed to and fro with the wind and a woman sang to herself. A man coughed and spit looking like he would murder for a handful of coins.

  “My child, we must move quickly,” said Margot. “Very soon it will become impossible to see with the snow.”

  I rushed back in the house to slip on my coat and woollen bonnet. I then placed her diary in the embroidered pocket at my waist and was pleased to see it fit perfectly. If I kept it with me while we searched for her today, it would surely give me luck. Margot fixed her eyes on us, one at a time. Her voice was loud and carried far.

  “Armande went missing a day-and-a-half ago. Let’s follow the route she took to visit me. If you see any articles of clothing or notice something out of the ordinary, please alert us to stop.”

  Margot did not say anything to the villagers about the lettre de cachet, which was wise of her, as that would start all kinds of rumours.

  The group started down the path to the square. Horses scratched the frozen ground and whinnied beside a house. Tied to a fence, an overstuffed swine with black speckles on its back started squealing. Villagers poured out of their houses to watch us go by. Most wore no coats as they stood at their doors, arms hugging themselves for warmth or hugging their sleepy-eyed children. Some cheered while some muttered nasty curses. A woman poked her head from a high window. She was stout and wore a man’s bed shirt.

  “I hope you find her,” she paused and then said, “drowned in the river.”

  At that, she wailed and tossed a bucket of dirty water at me, yet missed and hit a small child who fell to the ground from the force. His mother picked him up, took the mantelet off her shoulders and dried him as best she could. She then pulled him by the arm to start walking, the child in tears.

  A woman stood in the square chanting, “The kind and learned wet nurse is gone. Damn us all.”

  She did embroideries, made jams with currants and wild cherries and was mother to eleven children. Three of them, all close in age, stood by her watching. A small child, barely two years old, singled me out. Armande nursed her one summer while her mother picked cherries in the valley. The child’s blue eyes sparkled. She smiled strangely at me and then took my hand while the others trudged ahead. Then in a small child’s voice, I heard words so perfect as to be coming from the mouth of a scholar or poet. “The flames of revolt are catching, little by little.” I let go of her hand, backing away and tripping over a mound of snow behind me.

  “What is it?” The mother saw the look on my face. “You’re all pale.”

  The child looked at me once more as though to make sure our secret was safe, and then ran to join her mother.

  “Nothing,” I shouted. “I lost my footing is all.”

  I caught up to the others. The child’s words echoing in my head. My body was tingling from head to toe. There was no mistaking what I heard, yet my head kept trying to convince my heart I made it up.

  We entered the field on the other side of the village then crept into the forest. Every so often I heard a grunt or caught the sound of the man who coughed and spit. Now at the back of the group, I watched as they hunted for tracks, a piece of clothing such as a scarf or glove, the body of a woman. They were like crows scavenging for food. When one stopped to dig, the others stopped and did the same, even if they saw nothing.

  “She skipped off with her lover,” said a man to a woman beside him who sold yarn coloured from onionskins. “A woman whose husband left her cannot be trusted.”

  “She did no such thing.” Margot stopped in her tracks. She pressed a finger to the man’s shoulder to push him back. “You should feel shame for what you said.”

  The man lowered his head and walked on. He was lost in a coat too big for his small frame and he carried a stick with a shredded rag tied to the top. Armande helped him write a letter one time to an uncle in Paris, and yet he had no care for her well-being.

  “Maybe she took her own life,” another woman said to the man. “No better way for a godless woman to end her days.”

  “Egypt of old had fewer locusts,” I whispered to myself.

  “Don’t mind them,” said Nadine, a blue scarf wrapped around her head showing only her eyes. She drew me close. In spite of our layers of clothing, her body warmed me.

  Walking faster to pass the group, I heard more angry words.

  “We’ll find her tied to a tree, wilted and hanging like last year’s fruit.” The man said this as though telling a joke. He drove the stick he held into the ground at each step.

  “We’ll find her, we will,” murmured a petite woman who lived on a hill just outside the village. She sewed petticoats and bonnets and always had a bit of ribbon or scrap of cloth to offer me. Her red hair was very short. Every three years or so she sold her lovely locks to a wigmaker in Grenoble to pay for the fabric she bought.

  The river was in the distance. A man shouted at me to slow my pace yet I kept on. I wanted to find some evidence she passed by there before anybody else did. Lit by the sun, tiny flakes of white filled the air like fairies. The cold muffled a trickle of stream, silenced the wind. In springtime, these waters were part of the village apothecary’s treatments for cleaning the insides. The diary was in my embroidered pocket. I sensed it was there to protect me. Its shape and thickness pressed down on my thigh. I imagined the diary’s deep, red colour, its softness, and the way it felt in my hands. Behind me were breathing sounds and feet scratching and crunching on snow.

  The flames of revolt are catching, little by little. What could it possibly mean? And why tell only me? The words gave me strength and a sense of purpose as I walked. Their wisdom came from Armande’s milk and therefore must not be ignored. A man was at my side, tugging my arm and reminding me once again that malice was rampant in the world.

  “A Devil with breasts is who took her away.” He let go of me and pulled open his shirt for all to see. Making believe he was a Devil, he said in a shrill voice, “I seduced her with blood for her milk. She had a philosopher’s tongue, sharp and godless. No-one but a she-devil would take blood for milk.”

  Others laughed at the man who bared his chest and paraded like a peacock in the snow. Another man raised his hands to his head for horns. He put his lips together, pretending to suck at the other man’s teats like a baby. The group howled and begged for more. Some tossed snow at the would-be beast in protest. My belly churned at the cruel spectacle, a bitter taste rising in my throat.

  Hours passed and the group was tiring. Men shouted at their wives to hurry. Mothers dragged tired, hungry children along behind them like rag dolls. We stopped in our tracks when a block of icy snow broke off and crashed into the water, clapping sounds echoed through the valley. All heads turned toward the river where a boy came too close to the edge. He ran trying to
catch up to the others, and then stopped midway, pointing and shouting.

  “Look, look up there.” His eyebrows and lashes were frosted, spittle collecting at the sides of his mouth. Heads bending up to see a strange object caught in the branches. “It’s a crow frozen to a tree.”

  Skinny feet were twisted round the bough. A gasp rose from the group as they looked up at the bird that hung upside down and swung in the wind like a timepiece.

  “The bird’s beak points down,” said a woman. A cloak covered her face so just her eyes peeked out. “The wench must be buried here in the snow.”

  “I once found a snake in the well and the next day we had no water,” said a young woman.

  “Stand not directly under it,” yelled a man, snow on his beard, and a nose with purple spots. He was a farmer who had his own land and animals.

  His pronouncement caused villagers to scatter in fear like little birds, a deathly cry running through the group.

  “If it points to you there is no telling what evil may come to pass.”

  Everyone stared at the man and then moved their gaze to the crow that dangled high up. Wind sent a chill down my back. The crow’s head seemed to wave at me as if it were alive, yet no bird could swing like that if it wasn’t already dead. The beak was long and sharp as a witch’s fingernail. Feathers came away from its body. Wind that moved through the valley sounded like laughter. Was it Death laughing at me, Death that took Armande, fingernails just like that ripping into her flesh? He kissed her mouth with marionette-like jaws, dancing with her across the fields, taking her far from home, from me. But no, her diary was safe in my hidden pocket. It cradled me, kept me unbroken.

  Four men were digging. Snow floated in the air landing on their dark wool coats and scarves wrapped around their heads. Breath made a cloud overtop of them as they worked to get rid of the snow and layers of ice, and soon met the frozen earth.

  “Nothing here but a couple of stones,” said one of them pointing. The rest of the group approached to look in the hole made of snow.