Pam Rosenthal

by The Bookseller's Daughter

  Quite a contrast, she thought, with whatever lurid seduction scene Gilles must imagine.

  But before Gilles’s personal honesty forced him to concede that he understood the meaning of her smile, they heard the sounds of a baby’s whimpering.

  “Ah,” he said quickly. “Ah good, she’s going to wake up. Sometimes you have to shake these little early ones awake to get them to eat enough.

  “I’m going to book a place on a coach back home tonight.” He took her pulse as he spoke, nodding at the results. “You’re bouncing back remarkably well.

  “I’ve put a deposit on some space,” he added proudly, “to rent for an office.”

  Oh dear, was he really going so soon? Wasn’t he going to help her learn to take care of the mysterious creature in the next room? Just how did you hold a baby when you nursed it, anyway? How did you know when it had eaten enough? Did it hurt when they sucked, she wondered suddenly. Suppose she didn’t have enough milk in her breasts, or even worse, suppose the baby didn’t like the way it tasted? But she couldn’t ask Gilles to stay and disrupt his life more than he already had.

  He took some gold coins from his pocket and laid them on the table.

  “Buy yourself something new to wear,” he said. “You shouldn’t have to depend on the Marquise for everything.

  “I’ve been tutoring some rich, dim-witted first-year students,” he explained. “Don’t want them killing their future patients, after all.”

  Briskly, he turned to the next order of business.

  “And while I’m in Paris, I have to buy some stockings for Sylvie. Maybe some perfume as well, and something for Madame Bellocq, and for Augustin and Suzanne too. But I don’t know…”

  Marie-Laure laughed. “You don’t know which shops you can afford, which ones won’t cheat you, and which ones won’t be too snooty. Neither would I, even if I were strong enough to accompany you today. But as it happens, there is, in this household, a most expert and accomplished Parisienne shopper.”

  The shopper had just appeared in the doorway to get the breakfast tray. And yes, Claudine was quite sure that the Marquise would allow her to guide Doctor Vernet through the perils and pitfalls of the capital’s shopping districts.

  I hope, Marie-Laure thought after the two of them had left her alone, she doesn’t congratulate Doctor Vernet on his sister’s snaring a protector like the Vicomte.

  Doctor Vernet. How fine it sounded, and how wonderful that he’d soon have his own office. Her moment of satisfaction, however, gave way almost immediately to simple panic, as Sophie let out a furious and hungry yell.

  Madame Rachel quickly assumed command, showing Marie-Laure how to pump her milk into a clean bowl and feed the fussy, immature little mouth from an eyedropper. Sophie was too little to take the breast the first week; it was slow, exacting, anxious work to make sure that she was eating enough. And as Gilles had said she might, she sometimes drifted off to sleep before she’d finished, needing to be coaxed awake again.

  Marie-Laure learned to burp her, and to clean and diaper her. And when there was nothing to do, she simply gazed at her limbs and toes and fingers, talking and singing softly to her. A funny new chair was installed in the blue bedchamber: it had curved wooden parts at the bottom, so you could rock back and forth in it. The motion was comforting; the Marquise said the American ambassador, Monsieur Franklin, had recommended it. Marie-Laure spent hours rocking with Sophie in her arms, tracing Joseph’s features in the baby’s little face, wondering if he’d ever get to do so, and reading and rereading his latest letter.

  …and as for our daughter—our daughter!—I can only stare at the words in wonder and wish with all my heart that I could see her.

  I received a communication this week, by the way, from Amélie, telling me that the Prince de Condé is to be godfather to the new little Comte de Carency Auvers-Raimond when he makes his appearance.

  Of course she assumes it will be a Comte and not a Comtesse. Poor child—they’ll probably never even look at its face. Just a quick peek under its gown and then Amélie will pack it off to a wet nurse she’ll hire on the cheap.

  This is the first letter I’ve received from either her or Hubert, its sole purpose being to gloat about an impressive new social connection. No desire, it seems, to help me. Well, why should they? Evidently my imprisonment hasn’t hindered Amélie’s rise through the social ranks.

  [A word was crossed out here—probably “if,” Marie-Laure thought.] When I get out of here, you’ll have to explain why you were leaving so precipitously that day. I’m so sorry for whatever happened, mon amour.

  But enough unpleasantness. I don’t know why I’ve written at such length about them, except that I seem to think more about family now that I’m a father (I’m a father!)

  Sophie Madeleine is a lovely name, my only sadness being that you and I weren’t able to choose it together. Jeanne says she looks like me. I can’t imagine it. I never imagined a child to love and protect, to care for and even to try to set a good example for.

  But then, I never expected to find someone to love as I love you. So [a few more words were crossed out here] life has really been surprisingly kind to me.

  [A catalog of kisses followed, in a hurried, less elegant handwriting.] I bury my face in your breasts, my hands in your hair, I lower you to the bed, gaze at you against the pillows. I hold back—for a delightful instant, for an excruciating eternity, for just as long as I dare—before I enter you…like…ah, but whereas Monsieur X had metaphors for what comes next, I find that I do not. It simply is what it is, and I think I would happily die to have it, to have you, just once more. Au revoir. Keep happy and safe and tell Sophie I love her.

  Joseph

  She wept, for the first time since she’d arrived in Paris.

  “Eh bien,” Madame Rachel told her, “the tears often come when the milk does.”

  Perhaps. Her body and emotions, it seemed, were still not her own, and wouldn’t be until her nerves had learned to bond themselves to the baby’s demands. She heard Sophie’s cry in the wind, in the calls of birds and vendors outside her window, even in the plumbing of the water closet. It took a week or so until the cry became part of her, utterly unmistakable and unlike any other sound in the world.

  The Marquise suggested hiring a wet nurse but Marie-Laure wouldn’t consider it. It took another two weeks, some close supervision from Madame Rachel, still more tears, and not a little frustration, to sort out the mechanics of breast-feeding and to get Sophie settled down to a regular eating and sleeping schedule.

  “You’re doing much better than the Queen did with the Dauphin,” Madame Rachel told her—for she was well connected in her profession and had the story on good authority.

  “But,” Mademoiselle Beauvoisin asked, “isn’t it true, Mamma, that the Queen gave it up after a pretty short time anyway?”

  “Oh yes, after a while she just sent for Madame Poitrine, as the lady was called, and dumped the baby on her.”

  Marie-Laure tried to look modest. “Well, what’s important is how nicely Sophie is growing. And she’s so alert, don’t you think?”

  The Marquise sniffed. “She may be alert, but you’ll continue to doze through supper while you keep this up. In my opinion there’s absolutely nothing natural about this business—even if the great Rousseau thought so.”

  “Natural” or not, nursing had absorbed a shocking amount of Marie-Laure’s attention. Still, Sophie had stopped looking like a half-starved monkey and Marie-Laure had quickly lost some of the weight of pregnancy; no doubt, Marie-Laure thought, the Queen had liked that aspect of it. While as for the other, less felicitous aspects—scrubbing a stain that evening from the front of a pretty muslin dress that had once belonged to Mademoiselle Beauvoisin, Marie-Laure wondered if the Queen had given up breast-feeding after a royal baby had spit up over one of her gowns.

  She’d have to ask Claudine to take her shopping.

  I must be feeling more like myself, she thought. But who
was that self? she wondered. It felt like ages since she’d actually cared—or even exactly known—what she looked like.

  Sophie wouldn’t wake for a few hours. There was a huge three-sided mirror in the corner of the room. Slowly and carefully, she undid hooks and eyes, untied a satin sash, laid objects of clothing on a nearby chair, and (not without some trepidation) surveyed her reflection.

  Pas mal. No, not bad at all.

  She grinned with delight at her ankles, which were trim and neat again, shook her head at a little bit of belly that simply would not disappear, and examined her swollen—quite impressively swollen—breasts with something like awe.

  The fire had burned down. It was a bit chilly this evening. She threw the huge smocked nightgown over her head; nowadays it felt like a tent. But she didn’t button the top buttons.

  Barely breathing, she took his letter from under her pillow. I bury my face in your breasts, my hands in your hair…before I enter you.

  He’d written it as though he knew—in the mysterious way he always knew such things—what she was ready to think about again.

  She fell into a deep sleep with a smile on her flushed face and the letter clutched in her hand.

  And woke up an hour later in a panic. Someone was screaming, but it wasn’t Sophie. According to the clock on the mantel, Sophie wouldn’t wake for another hour and a half.

  The screams were those of a naked girl pursued by drooling hounds through a nightmare forest.

  You’ll have to explain why you were leaving, he’d written.

  But she’d never be able to tell anyone about that last hour in the chateau. She’d lock it away in her dreams and bear it all by herself. Pacing the pretty blue room as though it were a prison cell, she waited for Sophie to wake.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Please, Madame la Marquise, I want to see Joseph,” she announced two weeks later.

  Rehearsing the request in her blue bedchamber, she’d decided that a direct approach would be the most effective, but evidently, she thought, she’d mistaken heavy-handed for direct.

  Mademoiselle Beauvoisin winced from across the supper table.

  “What Marie-Laure means to say, Jeanne chérie, is that she and I thought it might be possible for her to accompany you to the Bastille—”

  “Impossible. She’s not on the approved list of visitors.”

  “…dressed as your footman.”

  “Well, as a page, anyway, Madame la Marquise.”

  “A very small page, Jeanne. A boy in training to be a page, perhaps.”

  “I see. You two thought it might be possible. And did you also think it might be possible to find a pair of breeches that would fit her?”

  “Georges says there’s just enough yellow velvet in the storeroom…”

  “Hmmm.”

  “And Frédéric needs a new coat anyway; have you noticed how worn his is in the back? He says Monsieur de Cordon’s footman poked fun at him the other day, and I assured him you’d save him from any further such embarrassment. So we’ll use his old coat and alter it to fit Marie-Laure.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Of course, we’ll have to bind her breasts in order to turn her into a convincing boy. It’ll probably hurt, but in Mamma’s opinion—”

  “Is there anyone whose opinion you have not consulted on this matter? Except mine, of course.”

  So on a bright, humid June afternoon, dressed in velvet coat and breeches and with her hair tied back in a queue, she jumped onto the back of the Marquise’s carriage and held on tightly as the horses clattered through the courtyard’s doors.

  Paris streamed by on either side of her.

  It was a wonderful view: close to the streets but high enough to see over the heads of tall pedestrians. She was beginning to know some quarters of the city now. Claudine had taken her on a shopping tour—from fabulous boutiques in the rue Saint-Honoré to ateliers in the faubourg Saint-Antoine where you could get something almost as good for a tenth of the price.

  And she’d made some discoveries of her own as well, like Monsieur Moreaux’s bookshop in a modest quarter on the Left Bank. She’d bought a few books, and they’d exchanged anecdotes about the book trade. He reminded her of Papa in some ways, though more practical, less visionary. His selection was excellent, if a bit too directed toward a male clientele; Marie-Laure had persuaded him to try more fiction. And she’d also made friends with the proprietors of the bookstalls along the Seine.

  She’d sipped lemonade while she nursed Sophie at an outdoor table at the Palais Royale, listening to fiery political oratory and watching shoppers, pleasure-seekers, and prostitutes stroll through the arcades that lined the huge enclosed square.

  But what she’d loved best was exploring the streets, tramping over cobblestones and leaping out of the way of carriages. She’d marveled at the endless crowds—the elaborate costumes of the finest ladies and gentlemen, the energy and variety of the tradespeople, the unbelievable decrepitude of the beggars. She’d wept to see abandoned babies transported by threes in the backpacks of porters. And laughed at dozens of small human comedies, laced with invectives as pungent as the smells rising from the gutters.

  Out in the streets, she always felt as though she were onstage in the midst of a drama—thousands of dramas, as many overlapping, intersecting tragicomical spectacles as Paris had inhabitants.

  In stuffy, provincial Montpellier, she reflected, you always knew who everybody was: merchant or magistrate, servant, shopgirl, or laborer. You knew by their dress, but also by their bearing. Somehow, you’d intuit a person’s place in the scheme of things as soon as you saw him or her on the street.

  Whereas in Paris, decoding the identities of the mass of people rushing past her was like trying to read the patchwork tapestry of posters, playbills, and announcements pasted on the walls. New ones half covered old ones, bits were torn off or worn beyond recognition; you couldn’t get a fix on any single reality. In this city of actors and strivers and seekers—of shoppers—everyone was busy patching or replacing the roles life had handed them. Or trying to piece together something new, striking, and original, at the best possible price.

  The King fears Paris, Joseph had said. And well he might, Marie-Laure concluded. For how could one dull, timid, and entirely conventional gentleman rule a city that was constantly remaking itself?

  The carriage turned a sharp corner and stopped in front of a hideous fortress of filthy yellow-gray stone. She clung to the railing for a moment, frozen in fear and anticipation, staring at barred windows and armed sentries.

  “But what are you dreaming about, Laurent?” the Marquise called. “Fetch Monsieur Joseph’s packages immediately.”

  Laurent? Oh yes, her boy’s name, adopted for the afternoon. She jumped from the back steps of the blue-and-violet carriage, hoisted up her breeches and retied the velvet ribbon around her queue of hair. She scrambled to fetch the boxes and baskets and pile them into her arms. And staggering under the unsteady load—which perhaps was fortunate, since the top basket hid her face from the guard at the gate—she followed the Marquise into the Bastille.

  He’d been nervous and testy all morning. The infuriating letter from his sister-in-law had been bad enough, but the news Monsieur du Plessix had brought him was far worse. They’d lost a legal motion to compel the Montpellier booksellers to produce their bills of sale from the day of the Baron’s murder. So all that priceless evidence—those pieces of paper with Joseph Dupin written in his unmistakable hand—would languish unseen in the booksellers’ files forever.

  There’d also been some confusing rubbish about the girl who’d committed suicide—an odd coincidence, her brother working as Amélie’s footman, but nothing, as far as du Plessix could see, that would help their case.

  Du Plessix hadn’t yet had a chance to tell any of this to Jeanne, and Joseph wasn’t looking forward to doing it himself.

  Stupidly, he supposed, he’d let himself hope a little since the baby’s birth. Perhaps the
y all had, inspired by how brilliantly Sophie had beaten the odds and survived. He’d been more or less resigned to losing this case before Marie-Laure’s arrival; perhaps he’d better try to get some of that resignation back. It would hurt less, he thought, when he was declared guilty.

  The trial was scheduled for a month from now. And given how slight a case Monsieur du Plessix had been able to build, it would be quick. In nearly no time at all, he thought, it would be official: a convicted murderer, he’d be locked in here forever, never to see Sophie, never to touch Marie-Laure again.

  He heard the sounds of keys turning in locks, of doors opening in distant corridors. He composed his face into the mask he assumed for Jeanne’s visits: bland, alert, optimistic.

  The key rattled, his door opened. He rose as Jeanne swept in, followed by the usual lackey carrying the usual superfluous baskets and boxes. Whatever had she thought to bring him this time?

  His cell was actually becoming a bit cluttered, but he didn’t have the heart to tell her that nothing could make a difference.

  They exchanged affectionate kisses. Her face was warm, her upper lip a bit moist. Normally at this time of year she’d be preparing to visit her farm in Normandy. He’d persuade her to go as soon as the trial was over. She’d done quite enough for him already; it was time she and Ariane got on with their lives.

  The footman piled all his useless stuff on the table and backed away, standing a bit farther from the warden than he usually did. And he’s a bit clumsy today as well, Joseph thought absentmindedly.

  Jeanne pulled a fan out of her reticule.

  Joseph cleared his throat, in preparation for an awkward visit.

  “I spoke to du Plessix yesterday.”

  But hold on. The clumsy footman—now that Joseph looked at him more closely—seemed to have shrunk a few feet since last week.

  Stupid. It wasn’t the same fellow at all. No, this time she’d brought a boy, more a page than a footman really, and a very pretty boy too—look at his delicate ankles in their white stockings.