“Monsieur, I am awfully tired so will say goodnight now.” I did not look at him for fear he would charm me some more. Just as I was about to accompany him to the door, he rested his legs on the dormeuse and stretched out like a cat. He then removed his periwig and placed his hands comfortably on his chest as though he was in his very own drawing room. I could feel my heart beating faster, my cheeks turning red.
“It is too far away on foot for me to leave now,” he said closing his eyes. “If you are agreeable I think I shall sleep here tonight.”
“Very well,” I said, tossing a blanket over him. Neighbours would not like it if they caught sight of a man leaving our home late at night. I could sneak him out before the sun came up. It would be safer that way, I thought, and so I let him sleep. Even so, feelings of intense disquiet crept into my thoughts as I ascended the steps to bed.
The moon was full and shone through my window. Light streamed across the floorboards. Close to sleep, I thought of what Monsieur Phlipon said about Armande going with the King’s men willingly. How her father had told them where to find her. She promised me I would be with her always, never to worry, as she would not leave me. Yet could he be telling the truth? Could she really be the same as every other person I knew in this rotten dunghill of a world? I was so tired and confused I felt I did not know whom to trust. The light in her eyes when she taught me to read and write, and the way her beauty calmed me. These things could not be lies I thought.
At first, when I woke in the night I considered the noise I heard was, Armande come back. There was a sound on the stairs and a rustle at my door.
“Madame, you left me sleeping tout seul. The fire is out in the drawing room and I am cold as a corpse. Je déteste le froid.” I was startled to hear Monsieur Phlipon in my bedchamber. He flung open my bed curtain and stood over me.
“What are you…?” I was barely able to spit the words out when he lay down next to me. Lifting my nightdress, he began to chase after the small curves of my hips and waist.
“You will soon warm me won’t you, ma petite?”
I grabbed his cold hands to push them away.
“Come now, why so shy?”
“Monsieur you must leave my bedchamber this instant.” I turned away waiting for him to go.
“If that is what you desire.”
He bent over to give me a kiss on the lips, when all at once, every limb of mine started shaking as though the Devil was in me and would not let go. His embrace was warm and sweet as honey fresh from the beehive. My head was unable to control my heart’s vicious tugging. As if in a dream, I guided his hands to my body’s warmest spot. The man growled with pleasure.
“What lovely thighs you have,” he said caressing them with the tip of his ice-cold nose. “The scent of your body is sweeter than the Queen’s perfume. Why is it that nobles should be dressed in the finest silks when country folk are just as handsome and worthy of riches.”
He held my hands in his, nudging me onto my back. I looked and was stilled by a flash of his icy blue eyes, lit by the moon. I tried to speak yet he kissed my words away, then touched his lips to my nipples.
“Your flesh is a continent, your navel, an ocean glistening in the sun. Why, you are worth ten of the Queen.” His loving words filled my head and heart to the brim.
He lit a candle by the bedside, strands of hair falling over his face, beads of sweat on his upper lip.
“My, what a divine specimen of natural beauty my eyes behold! The harmony of your curves fills the soul.”
Ah, what a man to fancy me. He’s a poet and scientist all in one who finds me beautiful, a sight to behold. I was with a couple of men in the past, though they were more boys. It was not the same as being with a gentleman who was educated and dressed nice and made fires for a girl. No man ever did that for me before. His large hands showed strength, his body pressing down told me of his longing. My tongue tasted his salty lips stained with my tears. Yet just as he was kissing me on the cheeks, eyes and forehead, a pang of shame hit me and I grabbed my nightdress, trying to hide from his gaze. Here I was giving way to my bodily impulses and forgetting all about Armande, my beloved sister and mother who had been wronged by the very scoundrel.
“We’ll find her, don’t you worry,” he whispered as if he read my thoughts. He drew the candle closer. “Ah yes, your belly, how delicious.... I’d surely give up a twenty course meal prepared by the King’s cook for such a feast as you.”
“She helped me speak words I never knew,” I babbled, giving the man a half-hearted push. “These words fell off my tongue like wine. I am now so sensitive I even weep at the sound of some words to my ears.” I could not stop myself talking.
“Hmm, yes, it is very good to cry tears of joy and sadness, the mark of a true gentlewoman to be sure.”
He held the candle over my belly letting a single bit of wax drop into my navel, which made me cried out. As he washed my face with kisses, my body felt like it was falling into a deep ravine. In the blink of an eye, the ground shifted under me.
The next morning when I awoke, the bed sheets were rumpled and I had not a stitch on. A trail of wax led from the table to the bed covers; a souvenir of him anointing me. All dressed in my bedgown, I then ran a brush though my hair, covered my shoulders with a shawl and headed downstairs. There was a note on Armande’s desk, which he wrote with one of her special quills.
Last evening’s kisses from thee were sweet as the finest honey.
Away until nightfall.
Faithfully yours, M. d’Agenais
Milk
WHAT HAD I DONE? He is not Monsieur d’Agenais, yet neither is he the man in her diary. At least not the first one she loved and who loved her. Armande would never forgive me. Even if she was able to, I would be too humbled to show my face to her. Sun pushed through thin clouds and a bird stood on the hard snow pulling at a piece of grass with its beak. I had chores to do, the chimney needed cleaning and more wood had to come in so we would have some dry to burn later in the week. After changing into my old skirt stained with the spit-up of babies, I used a rough brush with a long handle to clean the bricks on the inside. It smoked the night before and Monsieur Phlipon had produced a slight cough. Clumps of soot fixed to the stone broke off landing on my face and shoulders. I went outside to gather wood. Two women leered at me as I passed them on the path, then I heard one of them say in a very loud voice, “That orphan was drinking ale with a man last evening. I hear he’s known in these parts. I went over for a bit of cream and saw them in the candlelight. She was rosy-cheeked and smiling, bending over to give him a better view.”
The other replied, “Then did she take it up the backside.”
The women’s howls scared off birds in the trees and I too scooted away like a scared creature. A black cloud wrapped around me making it hard to breathe. When I came to the pile of wood, I sat down on a tree stump. The women’s lies filled my head joined by thoughts of his hands on my skin, his desire for me. Yet I hated him for all he did to Armande and hated myself for wanting him. I had nobody to talk to or confide in, so I took her diary from my pocket, passing over a handful of entries until my eyes caught the words milk fever.
April 12, 1785
Last week, Bertrand and Nadine came to see me and insisted I visit a man in the village whose wife just died. At first, I considered perhaps they pitied me for being husband-less and thought we might fancy each other. This notion of mine quickly vanished when he answered the door. I realized then that my goodly neighbours thought I might end my grief had I another baby to care for. And they were not far wrong.
“Are you the wet nurse?” he asked, a squirming bundle in his arms.
“My wife’s skirt caught fire while cooking. I tried to save her, but the burns….” He paused, fingering the wrinkles around his eyes. “I am at my wit’s end.” He passed the baby to me and the poor being started to wail.
In a few short days, I have developed a daily rhythm and ease of being with the infant that makes me recall instances of my past life with Rose-Marie. He loves it when I tickle his feet, and often smiles, turning his head back and forth when I kiss him on the neck and behind the ears, as though he has invented his own game. The little one lifts my spirits and I sense that my milk is giving him everything he needs to become strong once more.
Despite this, my heart still aches for mine own child. Now it is summer and I can lie in the grass day or night next to the rosemary and rosebushes and cry my heart out, the birds and crickets comforting me with their sweet songs. If I stayed here another winter, snow and ice would fix me in the ground just as they would a measly, forgotten carrot. Cold is more bothersome when one sleeps alone. In the dark at night, I live in a place of half-sleep where the pig that killed Rose-Marie crashes through my bedroom door. The creature has left a cavernous trench in my mind from running back and forth. It is not dying that I am afraid of, but rather seeing my child ripped apart by that creature each time I try to rest, and thinking of what she suffered before she was taken from me. Six months later, her cries continue to steal into my sleep at night.
Two weeks ago, I poured out my grieving heart in a lengthy correspondence to my father. Although I haven’t seen him for two years, sometimes when I read a philosophy book or wander through the fields and come upon a bee nudging its way into a flower in search of nectar, I sense his presence. At times, I even feel that he inhabits me, as though he and I share one soul, one skin. He is and always will be my father, my teacher, and the man who shaped me. Yet the absence of letters from him after my daughter’s death is akin to a second death. As a child whenever I was melancholic over not knowing my mother or sad for those in our village who became sick or hungry, my father would hold me tightly in his arms and read to me. What mattered more than the words was the gentle, yet sturdy timbre of his voice.
July 10, 1785
Finally, a letter arrived today giving me some hints about my father’s whereabouts. Monsieur Taranne wrote to tell me that my father has been travelling. Am I to take from this that he is therefore too busy to pick up the growing stack of letters that awaits him in Paris from his beloved daughter? The last letter my father wrote to me was about how beautiful he considered the women in London to be and how he enjoyed tea with Lord and Lady So-and-So, who spoke of their trip over the River Severn on the world’s first cast iron bridge. He expressed excitement at going to visit the bridge, and he was planning a return to France when he thought it was safe for him. In spite of not hearing from him since early this year, I have made up my mind to travel to Paris once the infant that I began nursing in April is weaned. If it happens that he is in Toulouse or, for that matter, back in London, I shall stay in Paris with Madame Rousset, a cherished friend whose name he gave me as a contact. I am aware that seeking him out could be dangerous for me given his illegal activities. Yet, as I have already lost a child and a husband, what more do I have to lose?
The help that I am bestowing upon some mothers in the village further tempers the motherly grief that threatens everyday to consume me. This afternoon, I was in the village square and the sun was beating down on me. Emmanuel, the boy I care for was snuggled up to my chest. I stopped by the fountain to splash water on my face, and it was refreshing to feel the coolness on my cheeks. Then a woman approached me. She wore a white bonnet, a bluish grey gown, and was visibly with child. She was the daughter of an older man, one of many labourers paying through wheat, chicken and oats to tend a seigneur’s land.
“Madame, can I have a word?” she asked me with a bashful air.
We stood under the arched entrance to the church as a light summer rain danced over the square.
“I have two children and one soon to come,” she told me. “Tell me how I can make my milk like yours? Should I eat soft foods like lettuce? What about bathing in water from the mountain, thinking pure thoughts or reading poetry?”
Her hands fussed at the skirt pleats that fanned out around her bulging stomach. Her shape was slender yet pleasing. Her eyes watched my every gesture, and then fixed on my mouth so as not to miss a word.
“The same quality?” The question stumped me.
I was well acquainted with the idea that a mother passes her thoughts on to a child through the milk. My father would call this an absurd superstition. To him, if something cannot be explained in scientific terms, then it is no better than a fairy story. Yet a woman’s ability to influence a child for the better through her own understanding and education was indisputable, as were the nourishing qualities of her milk. I decided to explain what I knew in simple terms so that the woman would see my meaning and act in the best interests of her offspring.
“I digest a tasty assortment of philosophy, poetry, history and botany by way of my mind,” I told her, spinning the best yarn imaginable. “This learning impresses itself on the milk.” I could feel myself pulled into my own fanciful stories of the milk, which lifted my spirits at the same time, and was no more able to stop my tongue than a pregnant woman can stop her baby exiting her womb.
The woman’s eyes lit up. “Eating poetry? How is this done?”
“The mind takes in sensations provoked by the words,” I continued as would a misbehaving child. “And if the poetry is worthy, one won’t develop stomach troubles.”
“How do these sensations enter the milk?”
“By way of the mind.” I felt the passion for my words rise within me. “Their union is what makes the child both robust and clever.”
Yes, I was my father’s daughter, I thought, yet on this point we differed. The age-old story about the milk revealed a greater truth that science could not easily capture like a bee or butterfly to fix with a pin for study.
“Please teach me some poetry, Madame Vivant. I wish to be a good mother to my child.” Her eyes looked on me helplessly as she rested a hand on mine own.
February 24, 1786
As the carriage moves through the streets of Paris, there is just enough light from the lantern hanging above me to write. Only moments ago came the screeching and clamouring of fireworks mixed with shouting and laughter: Mardi Gras is being celebrated in the early morning hours.
Milk wets my skin and chemise giving me a sudden chill. Only a week ago, I was nursing Emmanuel, the infant whose mother died after her skirt caught fire. These past months many mothers have come to see me, sometimes with questions about their nursing, while other times wanting me to suckle their infants. I put away my ideas of leaving and was content to assist them for as long as was needed. Yet then I received a letter from my father and my decision to leave for Paris became clear. He wrote that he would be journeying to Lyon, but foresaw a speedy return to Paris in early March. In his lengthy letter he addressed the contents of each of my previous letters to him. Naturally, the news of Rose-Marie’s death caused him profound sadness and made him even more eager he said to console me as he used to.
Just now, outside the carriage window, a blast of light took over the night sky, cascading onto the river, buildings, church towers, roads and bridges, everything soaked in a milky whiteness. At first, there was shouting and then a flood of bodies encircled our post chaise. Arms, torsos, mouths, capes, breasts, hats, and perruques danced by. A woman with a frog mask reared her head while eyes peered from an amphibious smile. A rat face stick of a man thrust his staff at the wheels jolting the vehicle to one side. Two men seized our post chaise. The coachman yelled and struck at them with his crop until they leapt off. Creatures from forests such as rabbits and foxes, and those from the jungles of Africa such as elephants and hyen
as, spilled into the street. We had to wait until the crowd passed before we could forge ahead. A handful of people held up a giant straw man that the crowd proceeded to strip of all his clothes. Minstrel singers floated past, hedge-like wigs and satin waistcoats, faces powdered up as dolls, muslin encircling wrists. One donned a pair of garters, ruby coloured lipstick, and a lily flower on one cheek. For a brief moment, I thought I saw Robert, my husband who left me after Rose-Marie died, then the body vanished into the crowd.
“Shall we drown him, hang him, toast him or roast him,” shouted a person who wore the mask of an old man with a hooknose. He held a torch to the effigy’s feet.
The masked humans clamoured, “Roast him, roast him, roast him.” Their roars grew louder as they chanted.
The man lit the straw figure, which soon blazed in human form. As it burned high on the pole over their heads, the crowd marched toward the river, songs and shouts lifting into the night. Although the event was light-hearted, there was an air of cruelty about it that brought a chill to me.
We pass an iron gate with dagger-like pinnacles rising up. The post chaise rumbles and shakes on the cobbled streets. Beyond the gate are more churches and a cathedral.
“Almost there,” the coachman shouts at me when I open the window, rap on the roof, and stick my head outside. Several moments later, he says, “rue des Capucines.”
The carriage turns onto a street draped in darkness save for a lamp hanging outside a house. The very paper on which I write is being jostled out of my hands. At the only house that is lit, there is an iron staircase framed by a pair of stone horses, just as Madame Rousset described to me in her letter. Through the window, I glimpse an older woman sleeping in a chair. I secret the diary away in my bags, and resolve to continue after my arrival.
Milk Fever Page 17
