Delphine

by Sylvia Halliday

  “Of course,” she stammered. “But—this is the cap—you bought for me at the fair—I thought—” She smiled hesitantly at him, and put her hand on his arm. “Gilles—Advent is over—”

  “If you have a finer cap, wear it,” he said coldly. “Save your foolish sentiment for a time when guests are not expected. And wear these.” He held out a gold chain with a large pearl teardrop on the end of it, and pearl earrings. “I would my friends see you at your best. Kindly remember your manners at table—you have become careless of late.”

  “I wonder you do not stuff me and put me into your shop like one of your chairs,” she growled.

  His lip curled in disgust. “You were little more than a rough peasant when I married you, ma chère. You might show a little gratitude for the changes I wrought, changes that you yourself longed for!” He turned on his heel and left her room.

  Delphine sighed and sat at her vanity, pulling the cap from her head. She stared at her reflection in the mirror, her amber eyes filled with pain. It cannot be so, she thought, that I am so little to him! She had worn the cap thinking he would be pleased, that she might stir at least a spark of warmth when he remembered the agreeableness of their first meeting. Perhaps if they could behave as friends, if he could treat her as more than his possession, his chattel, she might find it easier to respond to him in bed.

  It suddenly seemed important to discover whether his feelings were moved by Delphine the woman, or merely by Delphine as show. Deliberately she placed the cap back on her head, put on the earrings, and slipped the pearl drop around her neck, then went downstairs to greet her guests. She ushered them into the warm kitchen, now festively garlanded with evergreens, and savory with the scents of roasting meat and pastries. She murmured her thanks at the gifts they had brought, cloves and cinnamon and ground almonds, and indicated where each guest was to sit, carefully ignoring the way Gilles’s eyes had narrowed in anger at the sight of her cap.

  As she made her way to her own chair at the foot of the table, she allowed herself to lapse—ever so slightly—into the rolling gait that had been her habit before she met Gilles. Madame Ardoise stared in surprise at her gracelessness, then dismissed it as a consequence of her condition. Madame Vivoin, the draper’s wife, swathed in yards of brocade that only accented her bulk, jumped up from her chair to offer Delphine her arm.

  “May I help you, Madame Despreaux?”

  Delphine laughed. “God’s blood, why? Do I look like a pisspoor cripple?”

  Madame Vivoin blanched and sat down heavily. Across the table from Delphine, Gilles smiled weakly and motioned for the servants to begin serving the meal. While the wine was poured and the soup ladled out, the conversation turned to the peasant uprisings that had taken place in Lower Normandy and Rouen for months now. The homes of the tax collectors had been attacked in protest at the new taxes on salt and wine and dyed cloth (and here Monsieur Vivoin the draper crossed himself), and gangs of peasants, calling themselves the Va-nu-Pieds—Go-barefoots—had roamed the countryside looting and sacking. The king had been forced to send in troops to quell the disturbances, and while the insurrection had not reached to Dieppe and the northern coast, there had been a steady stream of news for weeks that told of the severity and cruelty with which the soldiery had put down the rioting, devastating French towns as though they were enemy lands. And now all of Normandy was waiting for the king’s justice that would fall on all the province, even those towns and villages that were blameless.

  Vivoin wrung his hands in dismay. “If the taxes on cloth are reintroduced, they will be made retroactive, God preserve us! I scarce know how I shall survive!” The assembled guests were silent, sympathetic to his distress. In the sudden stillness Delphine slurped her soup noisily. A small muscle worked in Gilles’s jaw.

  Charretier cleared his throat. “Will your trade not suffer as well, Despreaux? If Vivoin must raise his prices on fabric, will you not be forced to do the same?”

  Gilles opened his mouth to reply, but Delphine’s throaty laugh cut him off. “You must have no fear, Monsieur Charretier. If monsieur my husband will but tell me how I am to dress, and what to do and say, I shall play the perfect puppet for him and beg from door to door.” Madame Ardoise’s nervous giggle was cut short as Gilles jumped to his feet, raising his wine goblet and proposing—through clenched teeth—a toast to the season and the Christ Child.

  Before the evening mercifully ended, Delphine had spilled her wine, pinched Monsieur Ardoise on the cheek so he blushed and looked shamefaced toward his wife, and suggested that Madame Vivoin’s brocaded dress reminded her of a tapestry tablecloth she had seen once in the house of one of Gilles’s customers. But as their guests bid them good-night, venturing forth into the frosty evening with torches to light their way, it was clear that they had forgiven Delphine her behavior, content to view her lapses as attributable to her condition, the inherent weakness of the female, or a trifle too much wine, perhaps. Only Gilles’s face, hard as granite, was unforgiving, confirming Delphine’s worst fears. He took no pleasure in her; she was of no value to him save when he could control her perfectly. Humiliated, she fled to her room.

  She was surprised when he came to her room some time later. He dismissed Anne-Marie with an impatient jerk of his head and stared at Delphine with a look of such intensity that she felt stripped of her nightdress and caught her breath, wondering if he would strike her or rape her. Wordlessly he crossed to where she stood in the middle of her bedchamber and tugged at the drawstring of her nightgown, pulling it down over her shoulders, past her waist and hips, until it lay in a jumble at her feet. He took her roughly in his arms and pressed his mouth to hers, while his hands traveled over her body and touched her in places he had never explored before until she gasped in surprise and moved impatiently in his arms, hungry for him as she had never been, her senses roused to a fever pitch.

  “Nom de Dieu,” he growled suddenly, pushing her away. “I cannot—while my brain reels with thoughts of your behavior tonight—”

  She stared in dismay, her body still trembling in anticipation. “But—Gilles—no one noticed, no one cared—”

  “I did!” He swung about and made for the door.

  She clutched frantically at his arm. “Gilles—please—you cannot leave me like this—”

  He shook her off, and now she saw the cruelty in his eyes. Ah Dieu! Had it always been there, and she too blind to see it? He had planned this scene, to punish her for disobeying him, and now he was reveling in her weakness, glorying in her agony, her soul stripped as bare as her body. “Mayhap, my sweet,” he said, his eyes like knives, “you will remember your lessons the next time!” Then he was gone.

  “Damn you!” she shrieked. She snatched up her comb and hurled it at the closed door, then sank to the floor in a quivering heap, shaking in fury and anguish and frustrated passion. She pulled her nightdress about her shoulders, rocking back and forth while she stared at her large bed, so cold, so lonely now. What an accursed thing it was to be a woman, to be a slave to one’s body.

  André.

  He had awakened her senses, had opened a door that led only to pain and grief. She would never forget him. She would curse him every day of her life.

  Chapter Ten

  The new year dawned cold, as cold as Gilles’s frosty glances. He went about the house in an icy silence, waiting for the apology that usually followed Delphine’s errant behavior, her careless lapses. But for the first time she felt no remorse, no wish to humble herself before him. True, she had humiliated him in front of their guests, but she had not wished to hurt him, only to reassure herself that he cared for her whatever her behavior. He had humiliated her in her bedchamber—and there had been nothing but malice in it. She could not forgive him for that.

  She began to retreat more and more to her books, finding solace in words, in ideas, feeling her mind blossoming with the tender tutelage of great poets and philosophers. Sometimes she stared for hours at the face in her mirror, seeing the
haunted eyes, flickers of pain in their depths, desperation dancing in the amber lights. She began to be filled with a strange conceit, a fanciful vision that would not vanish.

  Once, years before, while Olympie lay dry-docked in Quebec for extensive repairs, Michel had captured a wolf cub that he kept in a little cage on deck. Every day Gosse had knelt beside the poor creature, crooning softly to it, feeling the tears well up to see it race frantically about its prison—trapped, innocent, helpless. Snarling in desperation at the hopelessness of its plight, its eyes had been filled with the pain she saw now in her own eyes. She had meant to release it in the dead of night before Olympie sailed, but the poor animal had died of despair before she could let it go.

  Ah Dieu! she thought. Shall I die in my cage ere someone comes to release me?

  In January, Séguier, the king’s chancellor, had entered Rouen under a special commission from Louis to exercise extraordinary civil and military powers. The leaders of the Va-nu-Pieds were hunted down and executed, and all taxes under dispute were reintroduced. As Monsieur Vivoin had feared, the tax on dyed cloth was backdated to June of the year before, when the protests had first arisen. The citizens—which meant largely the bourgeoisie, since the peasants were penniless and the nobles, being of the aristocracy, were exempt from taxes—were expected to pay an indemnity to the crown, as well as damages to the tax collectors and others who had lost their worldly goods and property during the uprisings.

  Gilles had had to raise his prices, and still he complained of the cost of doing business. He insisted that Delphine spend long and wearisome hours in the shop, in the hope that—should a customer enter—her charm, the sweet helplessness of her condition, would make it easier to sell more furniture. And in spite of her protests, he took her with him when he visited the châteaux and fine town houses of the nobility. She had done it in the past, when they were first married, until one disastrous afternoon when she had had to fight off a lecherous duc in his garden while Gilles measured the duc’s salon for new chairs. But now, urged on by Gilles’s dire predictions of economic ruin, she agreed to go.

  It snowed late in February, and then the icy rains came to wash away the snow and leave the cobbles slick and treacherous. Heavy with her belly’s burden, Delphine made her way carefully through the frozen garden to sit huddled before the open fire-pit of the workshop, watching the young apprentices—fingers stiff with cold—strip away old fabric from chairs and settees, cut the new fabric, tack and stretch and glue it, while their thin bodies shivered from the cold. When she knew that Gilles would be away, she had Anne-Marie send down a servant with an extra kettle of hot soup for the poor lads, cautioning them to keep it a secret. Though the larder was still well-stocked with winter stores, Gilles had begun to begrudge every mouthful that the boys ate.

  When I was shapely and pretty and obedient, she thought sadly late one afternoon, watching Gilles berate an apprentice for wasting a length of fringe, he valued me; now he values money alone. She cast her eyes about the workshop. Despite Gilles’s complaints about the trade, the place seemed as busy and prosperous as ever. She frowned. What was the boy Pierre doing? She had watched idly as he stripped a large and worn piece of brocade from the settee that Madame de la Blache had sent in to be stuffed and recovered. Stepping outside into the raw afternoon, Pierre had shaken the dust from the brocade and returned to the shop to place the fabric, worn side down, on his worktable, smoothing it with his hands and plucking small tufts of stuffing from its surface. Because it was a damask, the pattern was reversible; Delphine was struck by the vividness of the colors on the inside compared to the soiled and faded surface that Madame de la Blache had had to look at for years. Taking up a template, a kind of thin metal pattern that hung on the wall next to his table, Pierre traced around the edges, following the outline of the template with a sharp-edged knife until he had cut the brocade into patterned pieces for four small chairs. Putting aside the pieces, and sweeping his worktable free of the scraps, he put up a chair, already padded and awaiting its fabric, and began carefully to tack the damask at the four corners of the seat, stretching and smoothing as he worked.

  Delphine frowned and stood up. “A moment, Gilles, if you please.”

  “What is it?” The hard voice was filled with annoyance.

  “The chair—Pierre—is that not Monsieur le Comte de Mercier’s chair?”

  “Of course. Are you blind? You saw it yourself when we were at his château. You remarked on the daintiness of the piece. Has your memory vanished along with your lissome figure?”

  Her eyes flashed, but she bit back the angry retort. “My memory has not suffered a whit,” she said, drawing herself up coldly. “I distinctly remember that Monsieur de Mercier asked for new fabric!”

  Gilles shrugged. “If the damask is serviceable, why not use it? In these hard times—”

  “And Monsieur de Mercier paid for new fabric!”

  A deadly silence, while the apprentices dropped their work and waited, eyes and mouths like round O’s, to see what the master would do next. “Go to your room,” he said at last, his quiet voice like cold steel. “We shall discuss it later.”

  She stamped her foot. “You cannot steal from the man!”

  “You shall not presume to tell me how to run my affairs,” he growled. “Go to your room!”

  “Damn you for a grave-robbing whoreson,” she hissed through clenched teeth. “I shall go to Monsieur de Mercier!” She held her ground as Gilles, his eyes blazing in fury, snatched up a stick from the basket of kindling. “Will you beat me, you coward?” she challenged. “I can scarcely run from you in this condition. Here!” She thrust out her belly in his direction. “My womb! My child! I piss on your rage! Here! Strike me here!”

  A timid hand tugged at her sleeve. She looked down to see the smallest apprentice, whose adoring eyes followed her about the shop each day, gazing at her in dread and terror. “Please, madame,” he whispered. “Please go. Do not fret yourself. Pierre will do a fine job—and Monsieur de Mercier will be happy.”

  Ah Dieu, she thought suddenly, feeling the anger drain from her. She looked about the room at the frightened faces. Gilles would spend his rage on these poor lads. She sighed in resignation. “I beg your forgiveness, Gilles,” she said. “It was none of my concern. You must do as you see fit. I am feeling poorly of late—mayhap it is the cause of my intemperate tongue. I shall take supper in my room alone, and pray for guidance from le bon Dieu, that he may curb my unseemly temper.” She fled to her room, praying that she had placated Gilles enough so that he would not make the boys suffer.

  She tossed and turned in her bed that night, unable to sleep, feeling the discomfort of her body as she had not before. And perhaps she had been unfair to Gilles. He was concerned about the cost of new fabric, the additional taxes. Perhaps he felt the need to save a few crowns and livres now and again. And then, Monsieur de Mercier had been in a hurry to have the chairs recovered; perhaps there had been no time to order new goods. Yes. She had been unfair to Gilles.

  She slept fitfully, trying not to remember other times, other instances, that drifted in and out of her consciousness, blended into her dreams. Watching the boys gluing (instead of replacing) a chair frame that had been cracked during the upholstering, or seeing a strip of odd fabric used on the inner edge of bed curtains when Gilles had not bought quite enough yardage to do the job properly. Sitting up suddenly in bed, she came to a decision. She would speak to him in the morning. She would tell him that it distressed her to think he felt it necessary to cut corners, that she knew he did not wish to be less than scrupulous with his customers. But times were hard—she understood that. And so she would do without a new pair of shoes, or scrimp a little more with her household budget, that he might be fair to his customers and still turn an honest profit.

  Pleased with herself—surely she could do this small service for Gilles as a dutiful wife, if not a loving one—she lay down again and slept the tranquil sleep of the innocent.

&
nbsp; She slept late and awoke still feeling exhausted. Anne-Marie said that Monsieur Despreaux had breakfasted long since, and was in his bedchamber writing his accounts. He eyed her coldly, but listened in patient silence while she explained earnestly how she intended to help him so he should not be forced to—cheat sounded too critical; she smiled in understanding and used the word deceive instead.

  He stood up at his desk and roared with laughter. “What a simple child you are! A pox on them all! What care I if they are deceived?”

  She took a step back, shocked at his callous words. “Do you cheat them all the time? Without remorse?”

  He sneered. “Why not? The swine—thinking themselves better than I because they have titles! And I must bow and ‘Yes, monsieur’ and ‘No, monsieur’! I shall be rich enough to buy a title some day, and I shall have them licking my boots.” He crossed to the mantel and picked up his pipe, taking from a shelf a small silver box filled with tobacco. It was a handsome box, elaborately embossed and ornamented, and strangely familiar.

  “Mon Dieu!” gasped Delphine. “I saw that box in the château of Monsieur le Vicomte! Last month, when you hung the draperies in his bedchamber.” She looked at him in horror. “Gilles,” she whispered, “you did not steal it?”

  His eyes narrowed, wondering if he should lie, then he shrugged. “Of course I did. He will not miss it. And do not look so distressed, my innocent sweet. I took it while you were dimpling prettily at the old fool.”

  She crossed herself hurriedly. “God forgive me.”

  “Spare me your sanctimony. If I am branded for a thief, you will be too.”

  She backed away, shaking her head in disbelief. “No—no—no—”

  “Yes!” he spat. “Look!” He opened a cabinet and pulled out handfuls of small items—boxes, rings, bibelots—and tossed them on the desk before her. “This and this and this—each time you smiled at a fat monsieur or let him hold your hand! And many more valuables besides! Charretier the jeweler is very good at selling to people who ask no questions.”