“I am looking for a woman called Armande Vivant,” I blubbered. “She is known for the quality of her milk, was kidnapped and brought to Versailles. Now she roams the streets of Paris.” Soon my whole face was a mess of snot and salty tears. Instead of insulting me or taking off like the rest a soft glow took over his eyes.
“Come with me and I’ll introduce you to a mantua-maker I know.”
The shop was filled with precious cloths of many different shades and textures. A streaming piece of yellow velvet with red stripes caught my eye.
“We’re closed,” said a woman who came from the back of the shop, separated by a heavy curtain.
Then seeing the trickster she motioned us to come in. Curls were piled on top of her head and her cheeks took up much of her face. She carried a large pair of scissors in one hand, while her other hand held a pole to pull bolts of cloth down from shelves. I told her my story as she took apart a blue silk gown on the wire frame. She stopped her work, opened a drawer and pulled out a cap, which she gave to the wiry man with the apples. His face lit up, he bowed to the woman and bid me adieu.
“I’ve heard of this woman who nurses children.” She set down the pair of scissors and wiped her brow. “She revives babies, frees them from mortal constraints to imagine all that is possible. She makes them alive, yet not just breathing, no—buzzing with life.” She waved her arms as an actress on a stage.
“Yes, that’s her.” My body felt as though it was lifting off the ground.
“A woman who sells brass on the corner told me that this extraordinary woman was captured by the King.”
“Yes, yes,” I cried again, this time gesturing with my hands just like her.
“Another woman who buys fabric from me for her three fine daughters said she is still not free, though she is no longer at court.”
Still not free? I squeezed the apple given to me by the trickster. My hand was so tight and strong around the fruit that it sifted between my fingers making applesauce.
She noticed the fruit gushing onto the floor and said, “I don’t know where she is now but if she is harmed in any way I will see the culprit is made to pay.”
There was anger in her voice I had not heard in such a fair woman as she. The mantua-maker went about adding a piece of shimmering rose-coloured fabric to the back of the gown for a train. While pinning it in place, the fabric made a swishing sound as it swept over the floor. I thought of Armande making that same sound as she moved gracefully through the rooms of our mountain home, singing as she went.
“Come to the Cercle des femmes tonight,” she said to me, her eyes still on the dress she was making. “One of the women there might know where to find your wet nurse.”
Prison
NIGHT FELL. I stood in the shadows between two buildings across from the mantua-maker’s shop. Two women entered, then one, and two more, so I stepped inside. At the back of the shop were five women sitting at a table stacked high with bolts of fabric, buttons and lace. The mantua-maker was also there and nodded as I approached. Two younger women spoke loudly, laughing and tipping their chairs. Another woman held out a chair for me to sit on. She did not smile at me, yet her gesture made me feel at least that I was welcome among them.
The meeting began.
“The formation of a more liberal divorce law would allow for women to have equal rights to property,” said the older woman. She wore a black lace mantelet over her shoulders, was slender and had white hair with a fringe.
“Women are left with nothing after divorce,” said another. Her hair was dark, almost black and she spit as she talked. “My cousin has two mouths to feed and her husband is now with a woman half his age. He buys his mistress shawls and hats and perfumes while my cousin stays with us as she can’t afford to keep a house.”
Sitting there amongst the learned women, I began to feel smaller and smaller. The mantua-maker said nothing about Armande as if she forgot why I was there. Pretty soon I was a useless rag doll that could not even see the top of the table. Only the women’s pointed shoes jutting out from beneath their skirts. I did not care about so-and-so’s cousin and her husband’s mistress or about France’s wretched divorce laws. As they spoke, my mind beat out the name A-R-M-A-N-D-E, one letter at a time. She was all I could think about, and it angered me that these women were not helping me find her. What if Monsieur Phlipon or that frightful man with all the rings had already found her? Then, just as the women were get ting up to leave, the mantua-maker told them my name and asked me to describe Armande for them.
After I did so, one woman said, “Of course, we know who she is. Why only the most celebrated wet nurse in the country.”
The one who spoke had an ostrich neck. Her head was covered with the hood of her black mantelet, yet her long hair hung down on either side. She laughed in a carefree way, looking at me as if I was a fool. Earlier that day I was seen as a fool for asking the very same question, yet it was because nobody had heard of Armande or cared to know my story. One of the women opened her moneybag.
“She gave me this as thanks for distributing pamphlets for her.” It was a comb carved of redwood, exactly like the one Madame Lefèvre gave to Armande as thanks for nursing her son Jacques last winter. The woman continued, “She marched in the streets alongside merchant’s wives and young orphan girls to see poor street girls receive an education. If they don’t, they’ll be forced into prostitution to feed themselves. I could have told you there was something to her, a shiny rock in a heap of shit.”
I forgot my manners and grabbed the comb from the woman bringing it to my eyes: a single dark curl was trapped between the teeth. I could have kissed the hair, as the sight of it gave me renewed hope. I passed the comb back to her as it was hers to keep. After the meeting, I quit the mantua-maker’s shop, my heart growing bigger with the thought that she was in the city and that I had only to find her.
I went to the street where the woman with the comb said she saw Armande. Every few moments a beggar tugged my arm or skirt and I was almost cut apart by a broken bottle while crossing a bridge where a fight was playing out. I walked into a lodging house. The man on duty had wide shoulders and a fat belly. He slept in a chair, his chin resting on his chest while a skin-and-bones cat napped by his feet.
“Never heard of her.” He shook his head, upset at being woken up. “Might try the café on the corner. They know everything about what goes on.”
I entered the café and sat down, sick from hunger and feeling as if all was beyond hope. Beside me was a woman my age with light hair and a dark cloak over her shoulders. It was strange, I thought, for a woman to be sitting by herself in a public place at that late hour. Her chemise was open and showed the top of one breast. I thought she must be crazy to wear a gown like that on a cold night. Her skirt was deep red like the roses in Armande’s garden.
A girl came to my table. Instead of telling her why I was there, I asked for tea and a pastry, not knowing how I was to pay for it. When it arrived, I forced the whole thing into my mouth to feed my hunger. The woman beside me turned her body in my direction. I was too tired and hungry to care that she saw me. After gobbling up the dessert, I lay my head on my hands and began sobbing.
“Whatever is the matter, Mademoiselle?”
I told her my sad story and she listened patiently.
“She suckles peasants’ babies mostly. Her milk is….” I thought of the child’s telling words … the flames of revolt are catching, little by little. Unable to hide my secret anymore, I blurted out, “Babies speak of all the troubles to come for the people of France. I must find her to protect her and her milk. She wanders the streets seeking out her father, or she might be in prison.” I thought of the contradictory accounts about Armande as told by the mantua-maker and the women from the Cercle des femmes.
The girl from the café stood over me. “Well, are you going to pay up?”
I lowered my head
in shame.
Then the woman who had been listening to my story, produced some coins in her hand and said, “I’ll take care of hers.”
I was so moved by the stranger’s kind gesture that I thanked her many times. My belly was content and the sweet pastry flavour still lingered.
Shortly after, a gentleman came to sit with the nice woman yet she shooed him away telling him to wait outside for her.
“Cry as much as you want.” Her voice was gentle. She straightened her skirt and moved her chair close to mine. “Why don’t you try the prison? Not the common gaols, the Bastille Saint-Antoine where they put those who defy the King? If she has some enemies and is well loved by people, as you say.” She put a hand on my shoulder, pressing me gently to her. “I’ve heard it has its share of booksellers, authors and nobles.”
It was almost morning. I asked a man who roasted stale bread at a makeshift fire by the road if he knew where the prison was. Others crouched by him sleeping, moaning or praying. “Take a short-cut down this alleyway until you come to rue Maritime,” he told me. “It’s quicker than the other road along the water.”
Further on, I asked another person who urged me to keep going, and then he named a couple of streets I since passed. From that I knew I was definitely on the right track. A scrawny dog barked at me showing his teeth and his bloodshot eyes crawled over my body as though I was his next meal. The dog’s frenzied look made me remember Monsieur Phlipon’s eyes that first night in Paris. Even the smell on him was of desperation, and I now knew it was because he had been tracking Armande’s father with no success: the wolf was finally narrowing in on its prey. This thought gave me a shiver and made me press on.
I reached rue Saint-Antoine. Many towers rose to the sky, each one bigger and taller than the oldest tree in our mountain forest. Three enormous archways opened as the mouths of great sea monsters and a man on horseback looked like an ant next to the buildings. To my right were trees, apple or some other fruit tree. At the entrance, a man lay on the stone steps. He wore a grey cloak with a kerchief tied around his head.
“Pray, tell me, who are you?” His nose was crooked and long like a finger pointing.
“Céleste,” I said, feeling myself shrink with his gaze. “I have come to see Armande Vivant. I am her daughter.”
He turned his head, and then gestured for me to go away. I stood there for a few moments until he let out a loud belch and then I walked over to an immense column and sat down. A cloud hugged the face of the moon. Two women stood by an archway wearing cloaks with hoods partly covering their faces. Their bodies were bent together for warmth. One of the women sang or tried to sing yet her words became tangled as they left her mouth. The other one whistled in a half-hearted manner, which made me think about how Armande’s voice would fill the house when she sang. Her tone calmed me, settled my stomach as though I was an infant and it was her motherly liquid I was taking in.
“Who are you waiting to see?” A woman—not the one who was singing—asked me.
“A wet nurse.”
“Did she kill a child? Is that why she’s in prison?” Her eyes were wide with hunger to hear my story. “So many of them do, you know.”
I shook my head and closed my eyes, pressing my hands against my ears. Yet I heard her senseless chatter all the same.
“I knew a wet nurse once that killed two babies on account of her milk drying up,” she said. “Instead of passing them on to another woman she let the poor things die of hunger.”
“To be dry with no fruit and no moisture is bad for the weaker sex,” sang the other woman, her voice whining like an out-of-tune violin.
Soon, day cast light through the streets like the colour of pee. The two women went away, and, in their place was a boy tossing stones.
“I sell boot laces,” he said with a heavy sigh. “Yet I have only one more to sell. Tonight I’ll be eating wood soup.” He raised his empty wooden poll but for one bootlace, and then he struck the ground with it.
His lonely lace reminded me of the last year in my childhood home when worms turned my only cane chair to a few strings holding it together. I hung the remains atop the window so angels might see them and bring another one for me to sit on. My mother told me to do that, saying it was our only hope. I emptied my pocket of my last small coins, yet urged him to keep the bootlace. The boy was overjoyed, thanked me and was on his way.
The man outside the prison was not the same as the one from the night before. He was taller, had a crooked back and held a rod that was gnarled. He opened the door to the prison letting in a man and an old woman. One gave him a small brass kettle and the other, a bird in a cage. If I had gold coins or objects to sell, the watchman would let me in, yet all I had with me was Armande’s diary and I would not give that up for anything. A young man approached him and the two spoke back and forth about a maiden’s flaxen hair, her juicy thighs fresh as cream. The watchman laughed with the man and then swiftly let him through the doors. I was next in line.
“Armande Vivant,” I said approaching.
“What’ve you got for me?”
I shook my head and said her name again. I had no possessions to offer him and could not think of a saucy story to tell. The man laughed, beating his rod on the ground. I thought of the woman at the café the night before who so generously paid for my tea and dessert and told me to check the Bastille Saint-Antoine. She showed some of her skin that evening to an older gentleman who watched her comfort me. As I was leaving he sat down next to her, clasping her waist with his strong arms. With that image in my head, I tapped the man on his crooked back, lifting my skirts.
The ugly creature grinned and moved his hand underneath my skirt. He stroked my ankle then put his hand between my thighs. The sensation was not pleasing in the least and it was all I could do not to raise my arm and cuff him on the head. His hand fumbled under my petticoats, fingers scratching between my legs like a dog after a bone. Before I could stop myself, the last thing I ate—a creamy pastry—came shooting out of my mouth. A thick stream of white liquid landed right between the man’s eyes. His wiry grin turned to surprise and then anger. I ran as fast as my legs would carry me, the man cursed and yelled, yet he could not catch up to me due to his limp—worse even than mine. Eventually his cursing grew fainter and I found myself in an orchard. My heart was beating so fast it hurt. I wiped my face and mouth with some leaves.
It was still early in the morning and the sun had not yet lifted coolness from the air. At the river I saw a man feeding his horse some grains, the sound of the animal banging its nose against the bucket as it ate, echoed around me. On the bridge, a monk was fixing his eyes on the water as if waiting for a boat to pass. Then a thought came to me that the bridge was known to me. When we first arrived in Paris, I had stood by that very spot where the man fed his horse as I was saying goodbye to the doctor and his wife.
The number and address the doctor gave me stuck in my mind. 37 rue Fabrice. Why hadn’t I thought of it before?
Doctor
WHEN I FIRST MET THE DOCTOR, I did not expect him to be jovial and goodly. He struck me at the time as having a stern character that could not be softened, yet then halfway through our journey by carriage together I found him very agreeable. He cared for his ailing wife, caressed her hands and looked on her lovingly as she slept. He was a man that could be trusted, unlike the scoundrel I pretended was my husband, and who was all along plotting to find and likely murder Monsieur Vivant.
“What in the Devil has happened to you, Céleste?” said the doctor when he saw me at his doorstep.
Warmth filled me as my eyes caught his wrinkled brow and plump middle. The cloth I wrapped around my feet had come off. Blisters formed on my heels and toes from walking the Paris streets. The doctor noticed my pained expression and then saw the sores.
“Where are your shoes?”
“Torn apart.”
“And pr
ay where is your devoted husband to let you roam about the city shoeless and in such a bad way?”
I lowered my head knowing that I would have to tell a lie.
He sat me down and came back with a bowl of steaming water and a cloth to wipe the blood from my heels and from between my toes. The pain I felt lessened as my heart filled with affection for the doctor and his care of me. The chair he sat me on was by the front door where the light was dim. The glass doors to different areas of the house such as the drawing room and other rooms were all closed and a wide staircase led to the bedchambers. A silver vase with dead flowers sat on a table under a small window. Brown petals that had fallen onto the table made a circle around the vase.
“Look at yourself.” He pointed to my filthy hands, chemise and skirts.
My clothes—once those of a gentlewoman—were streaked with dirt, grease from the pastry I ate the evening before, a cheese stain, along with a powdering of dust from the comings and goings of countless horse carriages. It was not until that moment I saw how untamed I had become. Just like I was before I met Armande.
“The man I called my husband….” I was about to tell him the truth when my courage failed me.
The doctor doused my feet with water from the bowl then dried them off.
“Was he called away?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
I lied just as I did when I was a child and my mother and father scolded me if I did not tell the story they wanted to hear. I was too ashamed even to tell the wretched, stinking truth to a goodly doctor who squatted down on his hands and knees to wash my feet.
He handed me a jar and said, “Rub this into your feet. It will help take away the soreness.”
The ointment stung at first and then soothed before long.
“My dear friend Doctor Poirier and his family are away in Italy and we have been living here in their absence. There is a room that belonged to his oldest daughter before he married her off. It is small, yet has a bed and a window. The maidservant will fix it up for you. Then when your husband returns, he will find you in good health, and we won’t mention all this unpleasantness.”
Milk Fever Page 24
