“You say that you lived with Armande in their mountain village?” Her lips were small, framed by tiny lines as though her mouth was sewn on. “I lost touch with Armande after she came here to stay back when we thought her father died in that boating accident. She was nursing children of those far inferior to her. It must have been her husband’s death that caused her to lose her way, or that of her child, poor dear. I haven’t heard from her in a long time.”
From her diary I knew Madame Rousset thought Armande’s husband had died, when of course he had left her. She drew her lace handkerchief to her face and dabbed the corner of her eyes as old people sometimes do.
“Describe for me her village then, and … rooms in her house,” she said. “My dear husband and I stayed there many years ago when Armande was still only a girl, yet I have a very good memory for such things.”
Of course it was a simple exercise for me because I knew the village well just as I did every one of her rooms, except for her father’s room, which I only saw a couple times. I knew what floorboards creaked and where cobwebs hung in corners and where there were broken windowpanes. I told her a bird flying overhead would see the shape of the village as a many pointed star with the church in the middle and the footpaths leading to each house from the square, while plots of land for growing grains would resemble squares on an embroidered blanket. I then went on to describe the position of the furniture in each room of our home, and the design on the carpets. Madame Rousset was impressed when I mentioned the plants in the garden and what trees bore fruit and how many pears we picked last summer. Her eyes grew softer and the lines of her puppet mouth widened into a smile.
“It is strange that you should come by at this time. I have only just learned that a mutual friend saw Monsieur Vivant last evening in an unsavoury part of the city. He was in a hurry and when my friend called out to him, he lowered his hat to conceal his face and then sped away into the night. I knew he came back to Paris, though as yet he hasn’t paid me a single visit. He can be frightfully unsociable even though he is generous of spirit. Like many who have their hobbyhorses, he prefers solitary time spent with his researches to the hurly-burly of society affairs. Since I no longer hold my famed salons, most of the gens de monde have forgotten I even exist.”
Her sad eyes followed the dancing flicker of candles on the table and then settled on the exotic birds flying on the carpet that covered the floor. “One shudders to imagine what he was up to on that filthy street.”
Madame Rousset seemed not to care why I was in Paris and did not look surprised when I told her Armande was kidnapped.
All she said was, “I can’t believe she never remarried after her husband died as she is a very handsome woman.”
Mantua-Maker
AFTER MY VISIT WITH MADAME ROUSSET, I arrived at the Hôtel Bourgogne to find Monsieur Phlipon at the fire. He leaned on a chair with gold-painted arms, which had beside it, a fancy brass poker.
“Céleste, where were you? I’ve been waiting here for hours.” His eyes were cracked and shiny like bits of broken glass. His green-sleeved waistcoat was wet at the front, and he turned away then brought his shirtsleeve to his face as though to dab his eyes. “I met with Comte Buffon today and he read notes for my book on alpine plants. We are to meet again next week to compare research on similar plant findings. Aren’t you happy for me?”
I nodded. Though the news of his book cheered him, I could read on his face that he was troubled. There was one bed in the room. Plum curtains covered the windows and a glass chandelier decorated with grapes and leaves hung from the ceiling.
“What have you found out?” He put his arm around me, pushed a piece of hair from my forehead and then planted a kiss on my lips. The scent of his perfume now disgusted me, though I tried not to let on.
“Nothing.” I kissed him back.
“Tomorrow I shall help you then. We can go out together.”
I forced a smile wondering what game he was playing. Then he said, “Come now, Céleste, let us go to sleep.”
Before daybreak, I went through the pockets of his buckskin breeches and waistcoat hoping to find the letter he received at the inn. There was only a pair of leather sock garters, two dried rose petals and a handful of sous. The poem I took from his pocket while we were in Grenoble was important somehow as I knew people often sent letters and poems to one another with secret messages hidden inside. Armande told me her father would embed author names or book titles into his letters when corresponding with booksellers and customers. That way if the letters were intercepted, the information would remain secret. Sometimes every first letter makes the word, sometimes every second, or diagonally like so. I crept into the corridor so Monsieur Phlipon wouldn’t see me. Then after rereading the poem over a couple times, I was finally able to see the name, the first letter of each line spelling out V-I-V-A-N-T.
In the early morning, we ventured into the Paris streets. Snot-nosed elves with rags for clothes grabbed my skirts to tell me their troubles.
Mummy died and daddy gone drinking.
Baby sister died and mommy ate poison.
Don’t know where I came from; I’m an orphan.
A bell sounded from a nearby church. Then a tinker sped by us clanking his pots. Monsieur Phlipon tried to talk to a beggar, yet he was too busy stuffing his sentences to hear him. Words left his mouth faster than worms from a burning chunk of wood.
“A woman I loved made a cuckold out of me … foolish man, stupid and shy….” Then gazing at the sky, he muttered, “What a flabby derriere the King has. Light and sweet like two cakes.” He trailed off.
“We’re looking for a woman who was captured, a wet nurse,” I announced.
The man stopped, shoved his face up to mine, and then persisted with his exchange for one. “The King does not know me, yet neither does my wife.”
We talked to more passersby until Monsieur Phlipon said, “Perhaps we should look for her father. After all, he is in Paris, and surely his daughter would go to him upon her release.”
I thought of Monsieur Vivant’s book on bees showing the name of a printing house, Un Vieux Lion, yet I would never tell Monsieur Phlipon that. I judged from what he said, and from the name hidden in the rhyme, which was about a boy and not a girl, that Monsieur Phlipon was not only after Armande. I had to somehow get rid of him so I did not put father and daughter in harm’s way. I told Monsieur Phlipon I was feeling unwell and needed to lay down. He was surprised, yet said he would carry on without me.
In case he followed me, I went to the hotel as I told him then climbed out the window, which led to a staircase at the back of the building. From there, I walked to the other side of the river where several streets housed artisan ateliers for bookbinding, pottery, glass and painting. There, I reasoned, one might know where to find the proprietor of Un Vieux Lion. I walked for two hours or more, entering shops, asking each person I met if he knew of such an enterprise. Then my heel ripped off one of my dainty shoes and I limped to a fountain to sit down.
Peeling the shoes off, I inspected the bottoms of my feet. To my surprise, my soles were the colour of blood pudding, like the kind my mother used to make. Not only that, three of my toes on the left foot, were fat as sausages. I could hardly touch them for sores. After discarding my broken shoe and the other one, I tore my fichu in half and wrapped it around each of my feet. Yesterday a boy ripped my coat when he pushed into me. My skirts were filthy from passing carriages and my hair had not had a comb through it all day. About to cry over my lot, I thought of la pucelle, the peasant girl who rallied her army to save France. If she had no shoes, surely she would have kept going.
I pushed through the crowds. Market stalls displayed rounds of bread, parsnips, carrots, beets, apples, and carp. Ahead of me, rising from the crowd, was a tall figure with a black hat. Monsieur Phlipon. I could not believe my good fortune. I opened the door he went through to see him mount
ing a winding staircase, his red heels echoing through the passage. When I could see no more of him, I crept up the steps, the cloth pads on my bruised feet making no sound. I climbed one floor and then another, all the while, looking above me through the iron balustrade to see if he was on the floor above. There was the loud creak of a door opening. Two men were talking as I crept up on hands and knees. My eye caught a lacy cuff and green silk breeches and then, for a brief instant, I saw the man’s face. The voices died away as the two stepped inside closing the door behind them.
That evening Monsieur Phlipon came back to the hotel just as I was slipping the diary into my pocket. I studied the grain of wood on the table where we sat and asked him what he found out about Armande. He told me, as he swished down a sizeable piece of mutton with a glass of ale, and ate some Brie and a slice of apple, that his search had led him nowhere. Then he changed topics. “I’ll be recording details of plants in my notebook this evening. Specimens I saw while at the Jardin des Plantes.”
He took a pinch of snuff and stretched out on the carpet by the fire. He held the delicate notebook in his hand.
“Why don’t you read me a fairy tale, Céleste?” He gazed at me from his restful place. “Something to amuse me this evening.”
Sweat gathered at the back of my neck and under my arms. There was no such book as its pages went away with the wind. Maybe he knew what was hidden inside the cover and was simply toying with me. My thoughts raced back and forth until I remembered I knew the stories from memory having read them over so many times. Even before learning to read, I could recall word-for-word stories heard at the bakery in my childhood village. So I began my story, looking at the page of the diary and pretending I was reading a fairy tale.
“This is the story of the sentimental woman and her ass,” I said clearing my throat and trying with every part of me to stay calm. “It is a short tale, but I think it will delight you.”
My heart thumped and my knees shook together.
“That’s nice, Céleste, please continue.” He clapped his hands, his clown mouth perking up like a freshly watered flower.
The morning after I spied on Monsieur Phlipon, he told me he was going to the countryside to dig up new plants for his collection, and he would be back the following day. Before quitting Paris, he said it was no use me going with him and that I must stay in the city to look for Armande. He kissed me, nibbled my ear, his arms squeezing me tight. I thought of asking him to give me some money for food to fill my belly, as there remained very few sous from what I borrowed from Armande’s leather pouch in the library. Then, I recalled how I loathed the man and so said nothing. Instead I saved my remaining coins and wandered the streets looking for bits of bread or other grub. I ran after a cart on the way to market in hopes of catching some fresh scraps that might accidentally fall off. The only thing that came my way was a fishtail a driver tossed at me.
While rummaging through a sack of rotting vegetables at the back of a market stall, I caught sight of a gentleman watching me. Once again I began to run as fast as I could through the streets, having no time to look back to see if he caught up to me. Drops of sweat trickled down my face and my legs trembled. I dipped into a cranny between two buildings. Beggars lay a few steps from me in the excrement and street swill. I turned a corner and two small children ran up to me pulling at my skirts. Their eyes appeared to roll from side to side, so worn down that the soul ceased to cry out from them. When I looked behind me I saw the man gaining on me. He was tall with a square jaw; his appearance could not be mistaken. I crossed the street, passed a cathedral and entered a steep alley where I waited for several minutes until it was clear the stranger had lost me. Slowly, I walked back to the street with market stalls, hoping to further lose myself in the crowd and perhaps steal a bit of food.
I spotted a distinguished gentleman who wore a heavy black hat, yellow embroidered waistcoat, brown silk breeches and a large bow in his hair. What struck me were the gold rings that decorated his fingers, smoky brown and red stones. He stood by a woman who was selling stoneware, her large basket overflowing with pots and jugs. A group of children scuttled by, the one in the lead holding a kitten. When I looked again, I noticed the finely dressed gentleman with someone wearing the long blue coat that was the police uniform for Paris. Yet when the man turned his head, I saw it was no stranger at all but Monsieur Phlipon. He had not gone to the country after all as he told me. Their shoulders bent inwards, heads lowered. The woman who sold stoneware was decorating one of her pots with a brush and paints. Now close to her, I got down on my belly, worming my way to a spot behind her basket. I heard the men as clear as if they whispered in mine own ear, yet I was just far enough away so they couldn’t see me.
“Tell me then, what is the news?”
“Still no sign,” said Monsieur Phlipon. “I visited his business associate a few days ago, a Monsieur Taranne. He gave me no clue … as closed as a virgin’s bedchamber.”
The two men chuckled nervously.
“This rapacious and corrupt man has made damn fools of us at the censors’ office.”
“And of his King and Country,” Monsieur Phlipon chimed in.
“How did he get past us? Printing his scatological treatises about the King right under our very noses! If only he was as we thought, dead.”
“Ah yes. When I heard the news about the fire, I practically danced in the street with the gypsies.”
“How did you discover then that he still…? ”
“Can you believe it—he was in hiding all that time and then signed his proper name to a public record, a cahier de doléances circulating in his alpine village! One of the King’s delegates spotted his account as being odd, because his words were more poet than peasant. When the delegate looked more closely, he recognized his name as being on a list circulating of wanted men. Your people are dying of hunger having abandoned cultivating the land. City and countryside are being vacated. Instead of taking more money from these poor people, alms must be given to nourish them. There is so much hopelessness. The whole of France is an enormous desolate hospital without provisions.
“What a bundle of nonsense.” The man clapped his hands startling the woman beside me who painted her pot.
“The deputy made several inquiries until he found out that Monsieur Vivant had been living in his native village, yet recently fled,” said the man. “No more than three weeks ago he was seen in Paris exiting a house of ill repute.”
“An interesting development … his daughter is newly arrived in the city from Versailles. She will seek him out,” said Monsieur Phlipon.
“How do you know of this woman?” The gentleman looked puzzled.
“It is of no consequence. Suffice it to say, she was escorted to Versailles from her mountain village to assist the Dauphin in his weakened state. The child’s life is hanging by a thread. As a wet nurse she is known throughout France for the quality of her milk. Armande Vivant is her name.”
My body was cold and numb from lying on the ground, scrunched-up hands paining under me.
“I received a letter from a contact,” Monsieur Phlipon continued. “He is a valet de chambre and had daily news of her comings and goings as he bribed the manservant who had personally attended to her every whim. I am told she demanded pure chocolate from the Aztecs to feed her craving and improve her milk supply. He told me she was let go because she refused to nurse the ailing prince.”
“I cannot conceive of such impertinence. Can you?”
“From her, yes, I can,” replied Monsieur Phlipon. “Nevertheless that’s another story altogether.” His voice turned grave. “Another source confirmed this for me when I was in Orléans….”
So it was Armande’s father he wanted. It was all coming clear to me now like a river in springtime.
“Enfin! We shall have the rogue.” The man uttered a high-pitched laugh followed by a snort.
“
How did you discover that he was still alive?” Monsieur Phlipon asked.
“Ah well.” He sighed and then emitted a long, thin laugh from his throat. “A most interesting occurrence. A courtier who fancied himself a poet had penned rhyming couplets about some royal orgies. These bits of paper made their way to the markets where a handful of artisans communicated them to some noblemen. Naturally, the royal chambers in Versailles got wind of it and I tracked down the loathsome courtier responsible. He gloated about how he was now the celebrated author of his very own chronique scandaleuses. He showed me the book of his verses that he came upon by chance the previous evening, and then purchased from a simple bookseller outside the opera. I could tell by the paper that it was printed from Monsieur Vivant’s own printing press. He even wrote a preface to the vile work. He used a nom de plume, yet I recognized the style….”
The two men parted. I clumsily curtseyed to the peddler that painted the jug, brushing dirt and straw off my skirts and hair.
My head was spinning. I was hungry, sick, and felt soon I would collapse and not be able to pick myself back up. Even so, I had to act quickly, get to her before Monsieur Phlipon did, and make sure one of his spies did not spot me in the meantime. He said he was only seeking out her father and not her, yet I did not believe that for a moment. I now knew for sure he was a policeman, not a humble tutor as he told me. He ruled the streets, beat up on the poor for their own amusement, taunting wretched orphans with no place to sleep.
A trickster grabbed me by the arm and yanked me into a doorway.
“I have three apples in my hand. Show me where the fourth is and you can have it.”
The man was wiry and dressed in a red waistcoat and black breeches. It was better to play his game than try to shoo him away, and anyway I guessed right away the apple was under his hat. When he handed me the fruit something came over me and tears started flowing.
Milk Fever Page 23
