“You can read?” the queen asks admiringly.
“Yes,” I say, though I’m ashamed to admit that I haven’t opened the book once since my arrival. “This is wool that came from our sheep. I carded and dyed it myself, and I can spin it, too, to make a thread.” I take out my favorite hook. “And with thread, and this hook, I can make—well, anything.”
The princess’s gray eyes grow wide, and she turns to her mother. “May I learn, Maman?”
“Of course, Madame Royale.” The queen draws her close, and I have to look away. Rarely in my life have I ever seen affection between a mother and daughter. Even when my mother was alive, she was always tired, busy, aloof. The sight opens a wound too long ignored, and my throat burns with inexpressible pain. “Take her, now.” This to the nearly forgotten ladies in the corner of the room. “Find her a spot in the clothiers’ chambers. And you—” to me—“rummage through all you can find. Fabric, garments, thread, patches. Clothe yourself as you wish. I look forward to seeing what you create.”
L’épisode 10
Laurette
* * *
MOUTON BLANC
* * *
The flock yielded only fifteen new lambs that spring, three of which were too weak even to nurse. Laurette did what she could, feeding them with cloth soaked in goat’s milk, but in the end they were butchered to be served as Easter supper.
“It is a reminder,” Gagnon said that night, “of God’s provision for us. The death of his Son, the Lamb of God, sustains us for eternity.”
“I don’t see why we couldn’t have one of the culls,” Laurette said, trying not to think about the tiny creature sacrificed for her plate.
“You’ll be thankful we didn’t, come winter.”
But with the warm days, and nights that allowed a window to be wedged open for a sleeping breeze, winter seemed a lifetime away—both the winter to come, and the one newly past. Already, Renée had become a fleeting thought, brought to Laurette’s mind less frequently during the day, sometimes not at all, until it was time to take the light into her room. Dutifully, she said a nightly prayer, wishing her cousin shelter and warmth before sinking into her own cozy, comfortable bed. She had not, in fact, returned to her straw ticking in the loft, no matter her intentions to do so after the shearing. Nights loomed lonely with no one to talk to in those moments between wakefulness and sleeping, but there was a certain comfort to hearing Gagnon’s healthy snores coming from the other side of the wall. He was always asleep long before she was, though he would not take himself to bed without knowing she was safely tucked away. Once, when she heard him speaking, she pressed her ear close to the wall, worried he might be trying to commune with the departed Denise. Instead, he was in prayer—fervent, vocal supplication for Renée’s safety, and forgiveness for his part if she suffered in any way.
It was the third week in April, all the remaining lambs appearing ready to thrive, when Gagnon finished the last of his breakfast porridge and told Laurette to leave the dishes to soak.
“You’re taking the sheep out today. Some of them, anyway. The old ones.”
“Alone?”
He chuckled. “Of course not. I want them to return. But there are things to do here, and I cannot devote my time to shepherding, much as I enjoy the tranquility. It’s time you learned.”
Laurette took his bowl. “What’s to learn? The dogs do all the work.”
“Exactement. It’s time you learned to call the dogs.”
They headed out toward the forest road, leaving Copine at home to guard the ewes and lambs. Gagnon explained that Cossette would respond to her alert if needed.
“From so far?” Still, after all these years, she was amazed at the dogs’ abilities.
“From so far, and more. I once took Copine into town with me, and her hackles raised right there, in the middle of the market, for no reason. I got home, and two wild dogs had come and killed three of my lambs. Do you remember that day?”
“Renée and I were inside, watching. We didn’t know what to do.” The memory of it still brought a rush of fear.
Gagnon stopped and took her chin in his hand. “There was nothing to have done without endangering yourselves. Always, you are more valuable to me.”
They stood still while the sea of sheep ran past them, Cossette first behind, then circling, then behind again, keeping the animals at an easy trot, rounding up any inclined to stray.
“Would be easier with her partner here,” Laurette observed as they walked again. “Not so much running.”
“Yes. That is the charm of a dog, though. The ability to adapt without complaint.”
Laurette recognized the teasing and jabbed him in the arm with her elbow. “I’ve not complained, have I?”
“Not so much. But then, you have not adapted.”
“I miss her, you know. Do you think she misses us?”
“I don’t know. We can see where she is missing. Like right now, can’t you picture her? Beside you? On this very path? And up there—isn’t that the rock where she liked to sit? But wherever she is, we’ve never been. She doesn’t carry our shadows.”
The sheep scattered themselves comfortably on a low knoll, Cossette walking a leisurely patrol among them.
“Now,” Gagnon said, “we begin. A simple whistle. Let me hear you.”
Resigned, Laurette puckered her lips and blew a single, soft note.
He laughed. “Now, you know better than that. Move your jaw, just so. Jut your bottom teeth to the front.”
Laurette obeyed for his approval.
“Yes, good. Now, your tongue up to the roof of your mouth.” He craned his neck and opened his mouth, displaying his instruction, then closed it again, offering an encouraging nod. She mimicked, and blew, producing no sound but the hiss of air.
“Hopeless,” she said, working her mouth back into a lax, comfortable place.
“Nothing is ever hopeless.” Gagnon continued as they walked, demonstrating the different calls, followed by a clacking noise in his jaw that brought the dog to a halt after each. This one would bring it herding to the left. This one to the right. This note was for Cossette, this for Copine. Stop—the clack. Go, come, hunt.
“Hunt?”
“You’ve seen it. Where they crouch and stalk, like wolves about to pounce. It startles the sheep into moving.”
Then he sent Cossette through her drills, the dog running in joyful obedience, the sheep with their heads ever up, seeming equal parts terrified and confused.
“Poor things, let them eat,” Laurette said. “How would you like to sit down to your supper only to be sent running around the table for no reason at all?”
Gagnon made a final call, and Cossette came running, her black, white, and brown coat laid flat with speed. She came to a halt at his feet, and he rewarded her with an affectionate rub between her ears.
“Try again?”
She did, with no better results. Only a weak, breathy note that exacted none of Cossette’s attention. “My lips were not designed to whistle.”
“Perhaps you should whistle for Marcel. He is a dog that would respond.”
All their teasing was gone, along with any breath Laurette might summon to reply. She covered her mouth, as if doing so would hide and trap its transgressions.
“Forgive me,” Gagnon said immediately, seeming shocked by his own words. “I don’t know what I was thinking saying such a thing. Oh, Laurette, Laurette . . .” He reached for her, but she pushed him away with a violence that earned a growl from Cossette.
“Who are you to say—?”
“I am nobody, Laurette. I don’t know why . . . I did not mean to hurt you. Only that I have seen him, you know?”
She didn’t know. She didn’t want to, but her glare compelled him.
“In town. With women, Laurette. Other women. No better than a dog. So, that night, here—I don’t want you to think that I’m keeping you from a man who loves you.”
“No better than a dog.”
&nbs
p; “It was a stupid thing for me to say. Can we—a simple command. No whistling. Just tell her to go.”
Like a storm’s wind, he’d changed direction, and he assumed the ugliness of his words had blown away. She shook her head. “What?”
“Back to where we were, eh? Point down to where the herd is, and say ‘Go!’” He mouthed the last word, though Cossette’s ears perked up in anticipation of a command. “She has to learn to obey you.”
“Why should she? If I am no better?”
His head drooped in frustration, his words measured. “I did not mean you. I said that he, Marcel—”
She couldn’t listen anymore.
“I don’t want to command the dogs, Gagnon. I don’t want to graze the herd—that was Renée. Always Renée. And Renée is gone, because of me. I told her to ‘Go!’ and poof, she was gone. I can’t fill her place, and I won’t do her work. I will take care of you, tend to the house, and if that is not enough, then send me away, as you sent Marcel. Tell me. A single word, and I’ll go.”
Cossette let out a high-pitched whine, and Gagnon followed with three shrill notes that sent her to the farthest side of the herd. Laurette watched; it was easier than looking at the man standing in front of her. There was no sound other than the occasional bleat, and when the dog reached her destination, she sat. Even from this distance, Laurette could detect the smallest movement of the dog’s head—the only movement of her stone-still body—at the merest step of a sheep.
“You see? How powerful you are, Gagnon. Send me away.”
He matched her challenge. “And where would you go?”
He was right, of course. There’d been no grand lady to take her to Paris, and it seemed no room for her with Marcel, unless she were willing to bed down with the others. No better than a dog.
“It doesn’t matter, does it? I could go, and then when you look at me, you wouldn’t see her. Renée, or her shadow. Because I am the reason we have nothing but her shadow.”
“I don’t see Renée.”
She looked up to find him watching, his eyes weighted with the effort of holding her gaze. “Tell me.”
“Very well, then,” he said. “Go, Laurette. Go home. Make my supper, and wait for me there.”
The humorous glint in his eye cooled her temper. Rather than risk igniting it again, she obeyed quietly, turning and walking away at a pace too slow to be seen as retreat, but quick enough to dissuade her from looking back. A warm breeze blew against her face and she hummed a tune, hoping it would carry back to Gagnon, taking with it a message of reconciliation.
She stopped, though, when another sound caught her ear. The farm was still a blur in the distance when the distinctive bark of Copine carried from it. It was angry, meant to sound the alarm of an intruder, and Laurette spun in place, not sure whether to run back to fetch Gagnon or forward to confront the danger. It might be something as harmless as a hungry fox seizing the opportunity to kill a chicken, or one of the nomadic poor hoping to beg a meal. If it were a fox, she couldn’t spare the time to fetch Gagnon; if a man, she couldn’t risk facing him alone. She closed her eyes against the sun and clenched her fists at her side.
“Laurette!” She looked back to see Gagnon approaching at a quick pace.
“Do you hear the dog?”
He stopped, looking surprised. “Non. I just came to—” The look changed to one of concern. He touched her arm, urging her to follow, and continued on at a run. Laurette could not keep up, but she tried, knowing he was purposely creating a distance between them. Besides, he was not encumbered by skirts. She could ignore the burning in her lungs and the protest of her legs, push past the instinct to stop, lag back, and let Gagnon face the intruder alone.
She arrived seconds behind him, breathing sharp at a dead stop. Copine stood silent beside him, guarding not a fox, not a man—but definitely a thief. Two, in fact. Two boys, aged nine or ten she’d guess, but their thin frames made them seem younger, and their haunted, shadowed eyes were those of old men. The taller of the two held a chicken under his arm, its neck broken and body in the throes of listless twitching.
“What have we here?” Laurette fought to make her voice steady.
“Hungry children,” Gagnon said, and both boys sagged in visible relief.
Laurette propped a hand on her hip and glared. “And we’re just going to let them steal one of our chickens? She’s one of our best layers.”
“No,” Gagnon said. “We are not going to let them take the chicken. Do you know what to do with a chicken, boys?”
They dropped their gazes and shook their heads, slowly, as the fowl came to a dead stillness.
“Then Mademoiselle Laurette will cook it for you. Would you like that?”
They nodded, but their grim expressions did not change. Laurette recognized their look of shame.
“Not for nothing,” she said with mock sternness. “You killed it. You clean it. Chop off the head, scoop the innards. Pluck out every single feather. You want to eat? You have to work.”
They seemed pleased, and the younger tugged at the other’s arm, as if he’d need convincing
“Chopping block is over there.” Gagnon pointed to a smooth stump with a small ax propped against it.
Later they feasted—the skin and meat flavored with herbs, the drippings mixed with cream and sopped up with hunks of dry bread. Between wolfing mouthfuls, the brothers—Philippe and Nicolas Choler—told their story. They’d traveled from a village not far away with their parents, who like so many others poured into the city of Paris in search of work.
“And could they not find it?” Gagnon asked, carefully picking at his small portion.
“Not enough,” Philippe, the older brother, replied. “Not enough to feed all of us.”
“And there was no place to live,” Nicolas interjected. “Just rooms where we had to sleep on the floor.”
“We woke up one day and they were gone.” Philippe spoke with the emotionless tone of a man while Nicolas beside him studied his emptying plate. “Easier to feed two mouths rather than four, I reckon. I suppose he’s taking care of our mother, and I’m taking care of him.”
“I’m sorry we stole,” Nicolas said, a child’s quiver to his chin. He was nine years old, Philippe eleven—much the same age as a hungry Laurette and Renée when they stormed hand in hand into Le Cochon Gros.
“You didn’t steal,” Laurette said. “You worked for your supper. And I for one am grateful. Now I have an excuse to raise up a younger bird to take her place.”
“There’s room for you here as long as you like,” Gagnon said, and Laurette exhaled for what seemed like the first time since stumbling upon the boys. She knew it was only a matter of time before he would make such an offer. Calculating as he looked at them, she figured Philippe would be close to the same age as Gagnon’s son would have been had he lived. Their presence at the table filled more than the void left by Renée. Their vitality brought back beating, lost hearts.
“Do you know anything about keeping sheep?” he pressed.
“Non, monsieur,” Philippe said.
“We don’t know anything about anything,” Nicolas added before Philippe jabbed him.
“Are you smart?” Gagnon said, fighting a smile. “Do you have a teachable spirit? You must listen to everything I say, and do everything I tell you, and you’ll have food and a bed for as long as you do.”
“And your first order is to wash the dishes and the cooking pan,” Laurette said, enjoying the spark of authority. “After that, take a wash for yourselves. There’s a little creek just beyond the grove outside the fence.”
“Oui, madame,” the brothers responded in unison.
“Mademoiselle,” she corrected. “And I am Laurette; this is Gagnon. We are too poor for such formality.”
The last rain of the spring, the rain that kept them huddled under Gagnon’s roof for three days, the rain that ruined the roads and upset the carriage and delayed the shearing, the rain that seemed to whisper a promise of
God’s provision and protection—it was the last they would see for the season. Avril, Mai, Juin, all passed with nothing but cloudless skies and relentless heat. On the occasions that Laurette journeyed to market in Mouton Blanc, she beheld the grim future. Crops, grown no higher than her knee, took on a deepening shade of brown with the passing days. What she carried spoke of no more prosperity. Wedges of cheese from their goats’ milk had diminished in size and flavor. Eggs were too precious to leave their own baskets at home.
She began to slice the bread thinner, to take only half a slice for herself, to spoon porridge from the pot and claim to have eaten as she heaped the boys’ bowls. She walked the half mile to the stream and back with water for her garden, keeping the bucket not quite full so as not to slosh a single precious drop on the way. The boys were trusted to take the sheep farther and farther afield, and she sometimes “forgot” to put two turnips in their sack lunch, or sent the crust of bread without butter to soften it.
But it was a welcome distraction, all of this planning and parceling, because it kept her mind free of its own singular pursuit. While carefully dusting the last of her flour into the mixing bowl for bread, she didn’t think about Renée and the sumptuous feasts she might be enjoying. And she didn’t think about Marcel, wondering if he had food for that day. In standing at the gate, watching for the boys’ return with the flock, she wasn’t searching for Marcel’s familiar silhouette on the horizon. And at night, when each boy offered a sweet kiss to her cheek as they wished Mademoiselle Laurette good night, she could almost forget what it felt like to be kissed by Marcel.
Almost.
On a June evening Laurette sat in front of the empty hearth with the boys’ sweat-fragrant heads in her lap as they listened to Gagnon tell stories of his favorite hero—the mighty Odysseus. A single candle burned, casting a shadow on the wall which he transformed into the one-eyed giant who could scoop up a man and devour him in a single bite. The boys thrilled to the story as she and Renée once had, and cheered when Odysseus craftily used the sheep to escape the giant’s cave. So caught up were they in the fantasy that they did not, at first, notice the two new faces at the open door. Gagnon had his back to them, but spun around at the smallest flick of Laurette’s gaze.
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