Milk Fever

by Lissa M. Cowan

  Rumours

  THE BABY WAS FLUSHED, face wet with tears, her mouth gaping wide as she howled. On my way back to the Maison de la Couche, I saw traces in the streets that confirmed what the babies were saying. The anger and misery of so many was building up and would soon explode. At the dock, a woman sat slumped over crying. Her heavy grey skirt was soiled, mossy hair hung over her face.

  “My husband has gone to dig at the buttes of Montmartre,” she said to me as I walked by. “He is a mason, but has had no work for months. I fear he will catch cold and die. Just like so many others.”

  A sharp wind nipped my cheeks as I ran along the wooden footpath by the river. Surely they would already count the baby missing, yet the sooner I arrived the less chance I had to be caught. The room where I took the baby was empty and I could hear someone playing a piano nearby. I crept in and searched for a spot to lay the child. Thankfully I was able to bring the orphan back and place it in its basket without anybody seeing me.

  The next morning, the streets were clear once more and buildings glistened in the sunshine. I was on my way to visit Monsieur Taranne when I entered a café for a glass of water. The place was bright with white countertops and a polished marble floor. A woodstove emanated warmth to those seated at small tables on chairs barely big enough to hold them. A jug of spring flowers sat on the countertop underneath an enormous gilded chandelier with many unlit candles perched on top. The air was sweet smelling, an intoxicating mix of pastries and lilacs. Two gentlemen sat by the window, one on a bench and the other on a chair. I was just close enough to hear their conversation as I sipped my water.

  “No more Director of the Book Trade, no more royal censors.” The man who spoke wore a cravat, a pink silk waistcoat, periwig and cocked hat.

  The other man clutched his cup. “They say the King is doing away with his dreadful lettres de cachet. No more ludicrous, epistolary demands.” He wore a grey jacket with a green collar and his cocked hat sat crooked on his head.

  “Thank God for that!”

  “I expect that the thousands of cahiers de doleances he’ll be receiving comprised of grievances from citizens of the realm, the farmer who can only afford to feed his family meat three times a year and the coffee-lemonade-and-vinegar sellers who complain about competitors ruining their business, will only instigate further reform.”

  “We shall see,” said the man in the pink waistcoat. “The cahiers will be discussed at the time of the Estates-General, which convenes this May with double representation going to the Third Estate.”

  “The King shall finally be forced to consider the rot oozing from every corner of his beloved country.”

  “The times are auspicious mon ami.”

  “Indeed.”

  I bolted into the street. A boy was selling pamphlets one block down. I picked up one, and then another, looking as I did at the titles, What Wasn’t Said, Confessions of the Comte de ***, and Anecdotes About Madame Du Barry.

  “Formidable,” I said to the boy, imitating the fine gentlemen at the café.

  “I don’t know Ma’am. I cannot read, but something tells me it’s better not to understand these stories. Take this one.” He held up a pamphlet. “On the first page is an engraving of a woman undressing a man in his very own bed. What kind of morals does a man have who would fashion such a book?”

  The news of the King stopping the ban on libertine works caused me to give the peddler a fat kiss on the mouth. Of course I surprised him, yet I did not care if he thought me a harlot because I was happier than I could remember. As I was still close by, I decided to return home and tell the doctor the good news. Monsieur Phlipon would have no reason to want Monsieur Vivant dead now, as he was free to publish whatever he wanted without fear of prison or death.

  When I arrived, I found the doctor praying at the bedside of his dying wife. The somber mood made it hard for me to disturb him. After holding his hand and his wife’s limp one for several minutes in silence I set out again, this time wearing my spring gloves, a birthday present from Armande. With a muslin handkerchief at my neck, I almost looked a gentle lady. Armande would be beside herself with joy when I told her about her father no longer having censors and police chasing after him.

  As I made my way, the doctor shouted at me from the front door, “You better not be off to the Bastille Saint-Antoine. Guards have just been summoned to contain rioters in that area. A wallpaper factory owner’s house is being sacked along with the house of a saltpeter manufacturer. Rumour has it that the factory owner was going to reduce the workers’ salary to fifteen sous a day from fifty.”

  It was beginning. The flames of revolt were catching just as the babies had foretold. I thanked the doctor with a wave and continued down the street. I had seen danger many times in my life and was not about to let a group of angry workers stop me from reaching Armande.

  Even so, when I finally made it to the district of the Bastille Saint-Antoine I was shaken by what I saw: the spectacle of thousands of out-of-work river men, brewers, tanners and others storming the factory worker’s house armed with sticks. Men were tossing furniture, paintings, paint, and paper out of windows and onto immense fires that blazed in the streets below them. The gardes françaises were there with guns, cannons and drums beating. The crazed demonstrators kept their looting and then began to attack the soldiers with roof tiles and stones.

  I slipped through the crowds in the direction of the prison.

  “You won’t find your woman here,” the man with the rod said when he saw me. “She was freed earlier today.”

  “She wasn’t supposed to be out until tomorrow? Where did she go?” The smell of paint streaming through the air burned my eyes and nose.

  “No idea.” He stared at the ground.

  In the direction of the fires, I heard the crowd roar, “Death to the rich, death to the aristocrats.”

  A group of about five hundred carried a mock gallows to which was attached an effigy of the wallpaper manufacturer. “Edict of the Third Estate Which Judges and Condemns the Above Réveillon and Henriot to be Hanged and Burned in a Public Square,” read the placard.

  I scurried down an alley to escape the din and stench, my plan to reach Armande burning away as the chairs and paintings that lit up the Paris streets.

  The doctor’s wife died the evening the factory owners’ houses were sacked. For two days, he prayed by her body. I joined him and kept vigil at night should Armande come as, when I saw her, she said she would be released the next day. The streets were abuzz with talk about the hundreds who were injured and all those who were killed during the riots. Angry voices talked about a massacre referring to how the gardes françaises fired a shot in the air and when that didn’t stop the looters, they began to shoot into the crowd.

  Three days after the riots, there was still no sign of Armande. I reckoned she would soon turn up at the door, given she knew where to find me. That day the doctor and I went to the cemetery, strolling past upturned graves where part of an arm stuck out of the ground, only two fingers remaining on its shrunken hand. A man with a red cap and a face like a rabbit was fitting the doctor’s wife with sackcloth. We arrived just as he was to shovel her body into a grave and douse her with quicklime. Being in that place made me remember the cemetery where my father dug graves. I went there when he was not working and slept behind a grassy mound of earth where bones jutted out among tombstones of angels, lambs and saints.

  That same afternoon the streets were quiet for the first time since the riots. Clouds were thick in the sky and the sun seemed lost amongst them. I went out to buy a loaf of bread with the coins the doctor gave me.

  A woman was shouting insults at the man who sold the bread. “Thief, dog, dullard, swine…. This is what I’m paying for the bread because that’s what it is worth.”

  “But, Madame, you see how much I’m selling it for. You’ll have no bread unless you pay full pri
ce.”

  The woman threw some coins at him, grabbed the loaf and hurried down the street. The man went after her, but then saw me and stopped.

  “I suppose you also want some bread for nothing?”

  I counted out the right amount and he handed me the bread.

  “Thank the Lord. There’s one honest woman in the bunch.”

  I sat by a fountain, broke off an end and before I knew it, the bread was gone. Two boys played with boats in the water fountain beside me. They had dark blonde hair, chubby cheeks and wore matching blue coats.

  “She drank from a jug of wine to make her numb to the fire’s heat,” one boy said watching his boat sink. He looked like an older brother.

  “A midwife?” The younger one had a stick that he was using to bring his boat in.

  “No, she suckled babies,. She was a learned woman, studied languages of the Ancients.”

  “What was this woman like?” I interrupted.

  “She had dark hair, curly … light brown eyes.”

  “I was with my mother and the woman looked into the eyes of all who watched as flames burned the flesh from her bones.”

  I pressed the boy to tell me more, yet the two began chasing each other around the fountain and then skipped away.

  I rushed back to the man who sold the bread. My voice was pulsing, caught in my chest. “Can you tell me what you know of a woman, a wet nurse who was killed?”

  “I know about a woman who died by fire. The King’s wife would invite her to Versailles where she loved to dine on pheasant and grapes. She was her treasured companion they say. She was there at the time of the factory lootings. A soldier tried to stop them from dragging her away, but it was too late.”

  “What was her name?”

  “All I can tell you is she was celebrated for the wondrous influence her mother’s milk had on little ones.”

  “I heard about this wet nurse and the magical properties of her milk,” said a woman who was listening to our exchange. “The Good Lord bestowed on her a special gift … damn to eternal Hell those that killed her.”

  Their voices grew distant as my legs carried me from the words they spoke. I entered a small street empty of people and noise. Near a chapel, a patch of grass inside the gate beckoned me. Far-off voices shouted prices for lard pies, parsnips, onions and bread at market, and, two men passed talking about a horse one of them was about to shoot. A little girl screamed as she ran down the street and a boy yelled after her. I dropped to my knees, my face pressed against the ground.

  Locket

  THE NEXT MORNING, the doctor hired a horseman to take us to the district of Saint-Antoine where the riots took place. The streets were wet with rain, a low fog creeping around the buildings like a pickpocket after his next victim. The coach ceiling was very low and the burgundy-covered seats smelled of stale perfume.

  “What do you see, Céleste?” The doctor squinted.

  “Towers for prisoners.”

  Clothed in a thick, white mist only the tops of the towers were visible. It was the same stinking prison where I climbed up all those stairs and the countless dark passages I hurried through to find her. The driver sped up. At my back, the towers were fast dissolving behind a cloud.

  “It is here,” shouted the driver.

  The doctor clung to my arm as we stepped from the carriage. The force of wind tossed rain in our faces. Drops seeped into my coat, wetting my skirts, and landing in my shoes. Over the sensations of dampness and cold, came a burning stink. We stopped behind what we guessed was the factory, which had been reduced to walls sticking up. In the middle of the building were several rolls of wallpaper piled against a long metal table. Under it was a white section of paper with a scene in purple of sailing ships, all kinds of masts, big and small. A man with a spear in one hand held up his hat with the other as if to greet us. Several empty wine bottles were scattered on the floor along with chair legs and drapery. Beyond the burnt building and its contents was the factory owner’s house: an empty blackened shell with a few possessions remaining. Paintings and glassware scattered in pieces over the floor.

  Behind the house was the garden where rioters drank wine and brandy until they were so drunk they could not see straight. Their discarded bottles lay amidst piles of ashes where the fires had blazed. As I sifted through the remains, I found leather book covers with no pages inside, a woman’s looking glass and a globe of the world just like the one in Monsieur Vivant’s library. When I walked back to the factory, I noticed a willow tree that was miraculously unharmed by the looters. Past the tree I came to a spot where clay covered the ground, rain creating milky puddles of grey-white around me. I squatted down to look into a puddle and saw my own sad and thin reflection. Only that. There was nothing to confirm what the baker said about Armande being murdered. No bone, teeth, or the kinds of stuff that remain after a body was burned. That gave me hope the dreadful story I heard was made-up.

  Then, heading back to join the doctor by the coach, my eye caught sight of a shiny object in one of the puddles. Curlicues ending in flowers were etched into its body. The chain was missing, yet the gold oval piece looked good as new. As though trying to find its little heartbeat, I gently touched her locket to my cheek. Rain poured down mixing with my tears and my heart caught wind of a tune that I had thought I only imagined the child Jacques sang one day while playing on the stairs. Marching now, one, two, three, let’s all fight together for our liberty. Was all the destruction I saw around me what it meant to be liberated? Slipping the oval piece into my glove, I straightened my cloak and skirt.

  The doctor was standing with a woman dressed in black from head to toe. “We met at the mantua-maker’s shop remember.” She took off her hood, showing me her long tresses. “I was the one with the redwood comb given to me by the wet nurse.”

  When she said this, I instantly thought of what she told me about Armande. A shiny rock in a heap of shit. The gold locket was safely nestled in the palm of my hand.

  “I came here to place some flowers at the spot where they murdered her.” She held out a bouquet of daffodils. “I’m meeting some women here from the Cercle des femmes.”

  The woman shed a tear and then dabbed it with a handkerchief.

  “This should stay here with her, don’t you think?” she said, gazing on the comb.

  I turned away from her and caught another whiff of burning remains. Was it cloth, wood, bones … hair? The very thought made me be sick right in front of the woman and the doctor. Wind splashed the soupy, bitter liquid all over my cloak. The woman retrieved her handkerchief.

  “We’ll go on without her, won’t we, Céleste.” She began to wipe up the mess I made. “Though she’ll be with us all the same. The alarm bell of reason is making itself heard throughout the land. Women are waking up.”

  There was no use telling her the redwood comb she held in her hand was not really Armande’s as she thought. What did it matter as the wet nurse was gone? The woman placed the comb among the blossoms of the bouquet in her hand and walked towards what used to be a beautiful, stately garden.

  That evening, I lay on my bed turning Armande’s gold locket over in my hands. Inside, the silhouettes were of her mother and father. The woman’s nose was small, delicate and she had a slender face. The picture showed Monsieur Vivant with his hook nose, high cheekbones and manly chin. The artist painted in tiny lines for eyebrows. I held the open locket up close, my eyes playing tricks on me. Both faces mixing, then separating and mixing again. Eventually, the two faces became one: small, delicate nose, oval face with high cheekbones, finely drawn eyebrows. A portrait of Armande was playing out before my eyes. If I had found her in time I might have saved her. I began to sob. My heart was a deep chasm and everything I knew or cared about was slipping into it.

  The doctor called to me from the drawing room. I closed the locket, wiped tears from my face and went downstairs wh
ere a boy with fat cheeks stood in the doorway. His jacket sleeves hung past his knuckles.

  “Monsieur Vivant from rue Martine sent me to fetch you.” He was out of breath. “Go to the black door at the end of that street. There you’ll see a gold lion. He said to give this to you.”

  The pamphlet was by Armande’s father. My heart pounded, thoughts rushing away from me. How did he know where to find me? For all I knew Monsieur Phlipon bought it from a bookseller or street hawker just to trick me. Then I flipped through the pamphlet coming to a page marked up with words, Triompher notre liberté … selon nos propre passions … déterminée par nos prejugés, and I recognized Monsieur Vivant’s handwriting. This proved that he was the one reaching out to me and not the scoundrel. Before slipping on my cloak, I took one quick look at his silhouette inside the gold piece then tucked the locket into my stocking for safekeeping. I had no time to lose.

  The sky was bright with stars and a scraggy crescent moon. I turned the corner and was about to quicken my pace when I noticed a tall figure slumped against a building on the other side of the street.

  “How are the doctor and his wife then?” A low, mournful voice echoed through the streets and sent a chill through me. “Keeping well I trust.”

  As I looked back I could just make out the shape of Monsieur Phlipon’s face, shiny mane of hair resting on his shoulders. He had gashes on both his cheeks, and his raised hand glistened with blood in the dim streetlamp.

  “What?” I stopped unable to force more words from my trembling lips.

  “I almost had him,” he said, biting his lower lip. “In time she would be relieved of her wet-nursing duties in Versailles and would journey to Paris to seek him out. There would be no more need to plot his capture as she would make the thing painless for me for once.”

  His breath was quick, his voice shaky. I handed him the kerchief around my neck, watching as he wiped blood from his wounds. His white cravat and green velvet waistcoat were blood-soaked. One arm wrapped around his chest like a piece of string holding a package together. His police cloak was stained with blood at the collar.