Milk Fever

by Lissa M. Cowan

  “This voyage will surely kill me.” She gasped for a breath, teeth chattering.

  I felt the water creep up my legs and said a prayer for Armande’s book to stay dry. Madame Jolycoeur was weak and so I pulled her along with all the force I had in me. The river going fast made me think of the doctor’s account of when he cut apart a human. He told it to us very early that morning. The inner person is the same within each of us. Veins like rivers run through the body. They enable the blood to flow freely from the heart and render the bodily juices to the various regions so they work. It was hard for me to picture that I too had rivers flowing through my head, arms, fingers, belly, legs and feet. That within us all was water just like in nature, which kept us alive.

  We climbed into the carriage on the other side of the water, our skirts soaked to the waist. The doctor’s wife sat beside me to share a fur cover. Her eyes were bits of glass and she stroked her icy blue fingers. The doctor and Monsieur Phlipon arrived. Soon the carriage was back on dry road, and, within three or four hours of our torment, we stopped to rest for the night. Monsieur Phlipon reached over to touch my knee through the fur. I went against my instincts and smiled.

  “The cold water did you good,” said the doctor to his sleeping wife.

  I heard when crones suckled the blood of infants they were restored because their blood was young, innocent. Yet men and women of quality had less barbaric ways of crushing fires of the blood, as the doctor was teaching me.

  “My wife must drink light wines and eat goat meat, pheasant, borage and lettuce if she is to restore her blood to its original airiness,” he said. “Reading light verse and watching flowers dance in the breeze is another way to achieve this end.”

  His wife’s skin, since walking in the water, was greyish in colour. Her eyes opened a little and closed as her husband spoke, yet showed little sign of life, no fire or spark.

  The carriage stopped in front of a white inn with green shutters. On one side was a vineyard, on the other a cornfield with dead stalks poking from the scant snow. A tall man who had cheeks like ox bones greeted us. My leg was poorer from sitting. I leaned on Monsieur Phlipon while stepping from the carriage. The ceiling was low in the entranceway and the tall man bent his head down as he led us through the door. The front room of the inn had wood floors and no carpets or pictures on the walls, just a couple of plates and ceramic jugs on high shelves. We sat at a long table and he served us each a bowl of lentil soup then placed a large wheaten loaf and a flagon of wine on the table. Madame Jolycoeur did not wish to eat and so she and the doctor followed the man upstairs to their bedchamber.

  As I ate my soup, a black and white spotted dog sat in the corner eyeing me and licking its jowls. Monsieur Phlipon took off his boots and began, under the table, to rub his foot up and down my leg. The man who owned the inn came back downstairs.

  “You are Monsieur d’Agenais?” The man eyed him suspiciously.

  “Yes, why?”

  “A letter has come for you from Versailles.”

  Monsieur Phlipon looked at the writing on the envelope, thanked the innkeeper, and then tucked it inside his waistcoat.

  Who could be corresponding with him from Versailles, I wondered? Was it the man he plotted with to kidnap Armande at the King’s instruction? Thinking about it gave me a stomach ache and I could not finish my soup. I tossed and turned all night while Monsieur Phlipon snored. Just when I got up the nerve to sneak away from bed and fumble in the dark to find the letter, he flung a heavy arm over my body. I was trapped there until morning when sun streamed in, almost blinding me.

  We would travel all that day and some part of the night if the full moon was in the sky and the road was clear. For the most part, the day passed quickly. I slept on Monsieur Phlipon’s shoulder while his head rested on mine. The carriage got so cold driving through the woods I would have snuggled next to the Devil if he promised to warm me. Both of us wore our coats and a fur cover atop our legs. Nobody would ever think we were not married. Still I waited for the right moment to steal the letter he received, at least long enough to read its contents. Soon after dark, we stopped for supper at a tavern where a handful of scrubby men drank ale by the fire. Our chicken and leeks were cold, though the large hearth in the centre of the room made up for it. I had not felt heat like that since Pierre kissed me by the chapel. He was not very smart to have tangled himself in his mother’s apron strings the way he did, though he did seem more like a man last time I saw him. Even if he had no learning, I would have taught him what I knew of the world. We might have married, had a child or two.

  After travelling close to one week, we reached the city of Orléans at nightfall. Morning crept into our hotel room from a small window, dirty with street swill. The curtains were torn and, in the half-light, the upholstered chair, beds and carpets looked old and tattered. The wall closest to the bed had spots of yellow on it that looked like pea soup. The night before, fire and candlelight made the room and everything in it appear dream-like as a pinkish hue had covered the objects giving them a pleasing look. Monsieur Phlipon’s silk breeches were strewn over the foot of the bed and my stockings lay crumpled on the floor. When he was still asleep, I went through his pockets and found, in the smallest inside pocket used for coins, a piece of paper folded in two. By the dim light of day, I was able to make out the words.

  Very little boy, very little boy what are we to do?

  It was only yesterday you cracked your head falling from the roof.

  Valiantly you stood up and were soon as good as new.

  After that, you read some books until the day was through.

  Never did I see a boy as good and strong as you.

  The next time you will not wake up and your mama will be blue.

  It was not the letter from Versailles as I hoped. The clumsy rhyme was in Monsieur Phlipon’s own handwriting. I could track a person in the woods and could even tell his height from the broken branches above, yet I was no good at riddles. So when Monsieur Phlipon left, saying he was to visit a local garden, I followed him through narrow, winding streets until we reached a church with spires and two rising towers. Three round windows in the centre were like finely stitched lace. He sat on a bench with an older gentleman who wore a shabby coat and hat and carried a cane. Crouched behind a tree I watched but could not hear. Horses nodded and snorted a few steps in front of me. I scrambled behind one of them, its tail swishing my face.

  “Still no word about where she went?” Monsieur Phlipon asked the man.

  “None.” The older man’s face screwed up. “When you arrive in Paris see to it you meet him….” He muttered something after that, which I was unable to hear, and the two parted.

  The stranger headed for the horses while I dashed into an alley and then into the street before stopping to catch my breath. A shop window displayed perfumes in colourful bottles and all different shapes and sizes such as a light-blue horse and an emerald seashell. Ducks hung in a neighbouring window over baskets of pigs’ ears. Then, further on, my attention was taken by a large painting on the side of a building of a man wearing a suit of armour. At first glance, I saw a man wearing a suit, yet when I drew closer, I realized it was in actual fact a woman with long, wavy brown hair, narrow face and small eyes. She held a sword in one hand and a flag in the other, looking full of courage and ready to take on an army. The woman reminded me of Armande at first. Then when I looked more closely at her eyes and mouth, the slightness of her frame, I thought no, it was me up there on the wall. Above her head were a banner with two angels on it, and a man holding something in his outstretched hand. Those at the top of the picture were very small and hazy.

  When I looked down the street I noticed the very man Monsieur Phlipon met only moments ago heading straight for me.

  “What is this picture?” Fear coursed through my veins.

  He stopped and looked at me suspiciously, then said, “Why, tha
t’s la pucelle.”

  His complexion was rough and he had no front teeth. Another thing, he did not look me in the eye, as though I was a gentlewoman, and he merely a peasant. “English troops attacked Orléans and its inhabitants were dropping like flies as no food could enter the city,” he explained. “With her army, she marched on Orléans and freed us. She heard voices that told her to rise up. Only a peasant girl, yet she led the march to save France.”

  The words only a peasant girl echoed in my ears. We stood there for a few moments gazing at the portrait. I wanted la pucelle to reach her hand down and cradle me in it.

  “Where you off to my lady?” He smiled, finally looked up and winked at me.

  “Nowhere in particular.” I was stalling. “I am going to Paris.”

  “To Paris?” He came closer, his breath smelling of cabbage.

  “Travelling on your own are you?”

  “With my mother,” I chirped.

  “Well, well.” He patted the bulge at his middle. “Chaste women go there and disappear. Best to have your wits about you.”

  Was he referring to Armande? In the park, he spoke of a missing woman. About a man Monsieur Phlipon should see when he got there. When he was almost all the way down the street, he turned back and shouted, “The girl was captured and burned for being a witch.”

  I gazed once more at the huge canvas before me and my heart sank. The girl was so wise and yet she was punished. I heard voices, though mostly in the form of babies or children who also spoke of rising up. Did that make me mad or possessed? I walked on, sensing the eyes of la pucelle following me down the street. To imagine her with her sword and armour caused me to take a bolder stride. I would seek out Armande and kill her captors, freeing her just as that brave woman did for the people of Orléans. That would be the only way for miserable folk to take what was rightfully theirs.

  Hours later, I came to the hospital and decided to wait there for the doctor who was inside. After a few moments he came out of the building with a strange object, curved like tree branches or the jaws of an African beast.

  “Do you know what these are?” He approached me with it as if to challenge me to a duel. “Forceps for delivering infants. Have you ever seen such stunning architecture of form?”

  I slowly reached out and touched the smooth, hard surface when he suddenly clacked them open and shut, almost snapping my thumb off. I wrenched my fingers away looking to see if there was any blood.

  “I am sorry, Céleste. I was toying with you, but these are not to play with. With this tool, I hope to save many infants’ lives. The little ones become stuck in the birth canal.” With his fist, he demonstrated the head of a baby, his other hand imitating a woman’s vessel. “Their craniums are often too big for the mother. I’ve waited a whole year to have a pair of these.”

  I wondered why there was a need for these things when midwives could put their hands in and direct the baby out. The doctor and I walked down the street to join his wife and as we went, he clacked the forceps. The sound was like a rusty old cowbell. Before long, we saw her sitting on a bench feeding pigeons. A wind crept up which knocked her hat to the ground. The object then rolled a short distance away, and me after it.

  Human Heart

  EARLY THAT EVENING, we were moving at a quick pace until there came an enormous thump. The carriage stopped abruptly and tipped to one side. The doctor’s wife stayed asleep and I followed the two men outside. The moon was big and orange above the trees. A wheel had come off at the back and I could see the silhouette of the rider holding the busted wheel.

  The rags I used that day for my monthlies were bloodied. After entering the woods, I squatted down and pulled the damp cloths out from between my legs. I watched in the low moon’s light blood stream out of me like molasses, pushing and forcing like a pregnant woman until the tap finally closed off. The men were making grunting sounds behind the trees and the words hold it … steady … turn the wheel … drifted into the night air. Before heading back, I watched the moon and wondered if she was thinking of me at that instant. Armande wrote in her diary that the moon was the mother of all things. Maybe she too looked up at the moon from wherever she was.

  “Where have you been Mrs. d’Agenais?” said Monsieur Phlipon as I climbed into the carriage. He gazed on me as though I were his possession.

  I swallowed my loathing for him and settled in under the fur cover. The doctor sat by his wife, the two of them arm-in-arm. The rider shouted at the horses and we were away once again, though this time at a much slower pace. The new wheel the rider put on was not the proper size for the carriage, which meant we wouldn’t reach Paris until the morning. The cloth between the scoundrel’s buttons opened and closed like mouths laughing as he breathed. I imagined opening his waistcoat ever so slowly and slipping the letter from his inside pocket. If I was very careful I might just be able to do it. I reached my hand out, all the while watching his face for signs he stirred. I managed to open one of the buttons on his waistcoat when he turned away from me, still sleeping. My heart pounded in my chest.

  I could do nothing for the moment, so I turned to one of my fairy stories. It was old and tattered, the cover bent from water spilling on it. What I really wanted to read was Armande’s diary. Last time I read it she was sobbing because she thought her father had died. She was on her way to Master Dogface’s estate where she and I first met. I was desperate to find out whether she wrote about me, and what she might have said. I removed the diary from my embroidered pocket, concealing it in my skirt pleats. Then I had an idea. The pages of my fairy book came out with no trouble. I opened the coach window and began casting out the loose pages. One by one, they flew into the night air. Armande’s diary fit nicely into the empty book cover like a new skin. The moon was on my side of the coach, which meant I could read her words with little trouble. Yet Robert sat next to me and had only to turn his head to see what I was reading. For the moment, his eyes were shut, his mouth slightly open. If the old couple were to wake up and see me, why, they would think I read fairy stories. How wrong they would be. Somewhere on these pages, inside letters or words, Armande held me close, not letting me go.

  June 15, 1786

  As I write this, fields of wheat bow and curtsey in the wind. Monsieur Bluche who employs me to nurse his infant also has a daughter and several servants. The house has eighteen rooms and is surrounded by carpets of soft green grass. Cypress trees shelter a road leading to the house, and flowers and shrubbery line the many footpaths. The owner is amicable enough to me though not an amicable man generally speaking. I am sure he feels that he does everything he can to satisfy me, though his efforts lack sincerity. He has a large nose and small, impenetrable eyes.

  Monsieur Paradis from the Bureau des Nourrices told me that Monsieur Bluche’s wife fell into a vat of wine yet the circumstances surrounding her death remain mysterious. Was it really her husband who drove her to drink or rather landed her in the drink? She must have been a strong woman to suffer the torments of life with him. Was she handsome? How did they meet? Did they become betrothed because their families came together over land and she had no choice in the matter? There are no paintings of her anywhere in the house. Nevertheless, several family portraits line the walls going upstairs. There is even a portrait of somebody’s dog: two teeth protrude from his chops as he grins. His paws rest one atop the other as a count or king might rest his hands on a baton.

  My milk continues to make an impression. Only this morning, I heard the master of the house in the stables boasting to the groom as he brushed the stallion in preparation for his master to ride.

  “Since she has lived under my roof the infant is no longer sickly and the other day he uttered his first word,” he said proudly.

  For saving his only son, he is obliged to tolerate me, as I am he. Monsieur Bluche pays me handsomely, which is enabling me to accumulate a tidy sum that will be worth the effort of staying
here in the end. Of course, he would never commend me to my face for all I have done to bring his child back from death’s clutches. The infant has become healthy as any mother could wish her boy to be. His dark eyes are full of life, moving about as flies attacking honey. He wobbles around, pulling himself up onto chairs, hugging the legs of tables. A few words exit his mouth, yet only when he has exhausted every other possible form of expression. Just as some women complain that nursing takes them away from what is most important to them, such as the hurly-burly of societal affairs, I sense that wet-nursing brings me closer to my thoughts or at least makes them clearer to me. This causes my heart and head to align instead of each one flying off in different directions. This gift is preventing me from succumbing to dark thoughts, which cloud my perception. Three months have passed since I heard the awful news of my father’s disappearance, and I am still no closer to knowing whether he died on that boat. Yet if he’s still alive, why hasn’t he tried to reach me? Surely he would be in touch with Monsieur Taranne who would tell him of my whereabouts, unless of course he is in hiding and finds it imprudent to contact us.

  A few days ago, I had a brush with Monsieur Bluche’s temper when he took it upon himself to ride on horseback with his son. The infant is still too small for such escapades yet he sat him down between his thighs to gallop to where men and women were working that day in the fields. I told him that his son nurses regularly and that, if he is to grow up to be strong then he requires a consistent feeding schedule. I also explained that the jostling of the stallion could hurt his development.