The Porcelain Dove

by Sherman, Delia

  Things were indeed come to a sad pass if M. Malesherbes had lost his appetite. I patted his hand and gently relieved him of the plate. "A great artist," I agreed, and cut into the omelette. It had mushrooms in it, and a sprinkling of fine herbs. I'd not swallowed more than a mouthful when Menée LeRoi came surging into the room attended by Philiberte Malateste and Jacques Ministre, both of them long-faced as mourners at a funeral. Behind them was Dentelle, looking, if possible, more dismal still.

  When he spotted us, Menée bellowed triumphantly. "Malesherbes! Berthe Duvet! Well met, well met indeed. High and low we've been looking for ye, to talk things over, y'know."

  I'd thought to finish M. Malesherbes' omelette in peace and quietly seek my bed. Yet I was curious, too. So I kept my seat.

  Menée opened the proceedings by spitting into the fire and saying, "As long as we're here, we might as well stay, hein? Now, what's to do? Beauxprés crawls with wizards, madame our mistress knocks at the gates of Heaven, and monsieur our master sulks in the library. An owl flew over me this morning when I went out to piss. Soon the cows will go dry and the rats desert the granary. Beauxprés is done for. The only question that remains is: When do we follow the rats?"

  Dentelle's thin lips twitched. "You please to jest, Menée, but I assure you this is no jesting matter. A curse upon our duc and his house is also a curse upon us, who are, as 'twere, the blood and bones of Beauxprés."

  I sputtered over a mouthful of omelette. Dentelle cocked his nose and glared at me. "Trollop," he sniffed. "Parisienne."

  "Leave her be," said Jacques Ministre. "Duvet, you're a sensible girl. What do you think?"

  I swallowed hastily. "You speak of wizards, M. Menée. Are you certain 'twas a wizard we saw last night?"

  "Foutre! What else could he be?"

  "A clever mountebank," I said, "with a grudge against monsieur. Or hired by someone with a grudge—M. LeSueur, for example."

  Jacques Ministre nodded thoughtfully. "'Tis possible, I suppose. Tell us what you saw."

  Obediently, I recounted the scene in the fountain court, taking care to tell it as undramatically as possible, explaining that the flaming staff could have been a torch, the clangorous voice produced by a mechanical device, the snuffed-candle departure achieved by a theatrical trick. When I had done, there was silence.

  LeRoi stirred in his seat. "A whoreson theatrical trick, eh? I don't know."

  "That would account for the stink of old fish," said M. Malesherbes more cheerfully.

  "Sulfur and brimstone: the stink of Hell," murmured Philiberte Malateste.

  Dentelle blessed himself.

  "Such a trick must cost as much as a good bull, or more," said Ministre, ignoring them. "Where would M. LeSueur find the money?"

  I shrugged. "He's one single example. Monsieur has made other enemies, I'm sure."

  "That don't amount to the fart of a dead mule," said Menée. " 'Tis a curse, depend on it. All old families have these curses. They're like public alms-giving: part of the burden of the title. Without a curse, the ducs de Malvoeux would be no better than plain monsieurs Maindur."

  Dentelle bristled. "What do you know of curses? My family has served the house of Malvoeux for centuries. You're a foreigner, a Savoyard, hired a bare thirty years ago. You know no more of this affair than Duvet—which is to say, nothing at all!"

  In my current state of nerves, I might have flung my plate at his head had not Jacques Ministre chanced to come between us on his way to the fire. He put his back to the flames, hiked up his coat-skirts, and said, "Calmly now, Dentelle, Menée."

  "Sit down, peacock, before ye singe yer tailfeathers," snapped Menée. "I am the maître d'hôtel of Beauxprés, and I say the beggar was a wizard. I've given the matter serious thought, me, and I see no need to carry on like the hen who thought the world was ending. A sprinkle of holy water, a livre or two in the alms-box, and I wager monsieur'll be able to dismiss the whole."

  Philiberte Malateste shook his head. "No, Menée, I can't agree. Did ye not hear what the sorcerer said? 'Three times have you and yours denied me charity.' Lack of charity's a heavy sin, Menée, a heavy sin, and seldom goes unpunished. In Lanvaux, where my mother's cousins live, there are barren acres that once were green and prosperous, and all because one M. Richard turned a beggar from his door."

  "We've all heard the story, Malateste," said Menée. "That beggar was Our Savior Jesus Christ Himself, and the damned miser must've been blinder'n a mole not to have seen it."

  "Nôtre Seigneur came to him in disguise," said Malateste.

  "Bugger!" said Menée. " 'Tis the Son of God we're talking of, not some demi-sou saintling y' couldn't tell from a common sinner without a direct sign from Heaven! M. Richard was a mole, I tell ye, and ye're a mule-brained sot if y' think this beggar was Nôtre Sauveur in disguise."

  "Saint or devil, 'tis all the same," said Malateste. "Beauxprés is doomed."

  M. Malesherbes, who'd sunk into gloom once more, roused himself enough to say, "Unless monsieur finds the Porcelain Dove."

  "Unless monsieur finds the Porcelain Dove," echoed Menée. "Just so. And he knows where to find it—the sorcerer himself told him. All monsieur need do is find the Fortunate Isles. A little trouble, a little expense, and monsieur'll have learned to be more charitable in future. A whoreson neat curse, by Christ."

  "A neat curse?" screeched Dentelle. "A neat curse? Ingrate! You are unworthy to rule monsieur's dung heap, far less his house! A neat curse indeed!"

  A dry voice addressed him from the outer door. "Ah, Dentelle, but it is a neat curse—very thorough, and thoroughly unpleasant. Yet it may be averted." As one we started and turned to stare at Noël Songis, who'd entered without our noticing. "Jacques Ministre," he said when he had our attention. "I'd have a word with you."

  Menée looked prodigiously aggrieved. "I am maître d'hôtel here. Ye ought to speak with me."

  "Bon. I'll speak with you all." And without further ado, the bird-handler perched himself upon the settle. Perfectly calm, perfectly self-possessed, he sat upright with his hands upon his wide-spread knees. There was something about Noël Songis—some air of nobility despite his face like an old boot, his frieze coat streaked with droppings, and his hands laced with a thousand souvenirs of beak and talon. Looking at Noël Songis, I knew I was in the presence of a man who thoroughly understood himself and his world.

  "Jacques Ministre, you know something about fowl," he said.

  Ministre looked more than somewhat puzzled. "A little about chickens. I was born in Bourg-en-Bresse; chickens are in my blood."

  Noël Songis nodded gravely. "When do you set the clutch under a broody hen?"

  "Mondays, Thursdays, or Saturdays. Never on a Friday, or the chicks'll all be cocks."

  "If there's a storm when the hens are sitting?"

  "An iron nail in each nest, to ward off the thunder."

  "A broken horseshoe works better," said Songis. "Well, you know enough not to embarrass yourself, and my men know everything else." He rose. "Come to the aviary after dinner—we'll talk further."

  A thousand questions rushed up to my throat, crowding it so I could not speak. Noël Songis slept with birds and waked with them. Noël Songis knew everything there was to know concerning souimangas and Bengal redpolls. Why not Porcelain Doves?

  The hope was not mine alone. Regardless of bird-droppings, Dentelle reached up and clutched the bird-handler's sleeve. "M. Songis," said he. "Can you tell us anything of this Porcelain Dove?"

  For the first time in a dozen years, I found myself in harmony with the little valet. "Yes," I said. "Please tell us."

  Songis looked at me, at Dentelle (who hastily released his sleeve), at Malateste and at Menée.

  "The Porcelain Dove," he said thoughtfully. "I've heard tales of a Porcelain Dove."

  This did not sound encouraging. I asked, "At least can you tell us whether the bird is real?"

  The bird-handler almost smiled. "Real? Who can tell, these days, what is real and wha
t is not? To lay the curse, how real must the Porcelain Dove be? As real as the rainbow? As real as the beggar? If 'tis sufficiently real to be tempted by grain, I will bring it back to Beauxprés."

  Menée laughed angrily. "A philosophe, upon my orbs and scepter. The bird-man is a philosophe."

  M. Malesherbes looked up from contemplating the hearthstones. "Are you, too, a sorcerer?" he asked.

  Philiberte Malateste's long face darkened. "A sorcerer! Le bon Dieu help us." He crossed himself. "Vade retro, Satanas!"

  "Yes, Songis, get thee behind Malateste so his farts can blow thee back to Hell. So yer going after the Dove, eh? Well, I wouldn't be astonished, me, if Duvet weren't right after all, and the whole weren't a trick ye and yon beggar compounded betwixt ye just to travel in foreign parts, all expenses paid by M. le duc de Malvoeux. Ye'll be back in a year, I wager, carrying some flea-bit white pigeon ye'll swear is a genuine Porcelain Dove, and retire a rich man."

  I'd not slept all night, you understand—had not slept soundly for days. My ears sang with weariness and my patience was a dry well. "I don't doubt that's what you'd do," I heard myself say. "You should be ashamed, Menée, and you, too, Philiberte Malateste, with your talk of sorcerers, as though we were no better than superstitious peasants. M. Songis is a man of learning, and he deserves our respect."

  Noël Songis smiled outright, while Menée's face went from red to scarlet to royal purple. Malateste said that he would pray for my soul. Dentelle put on his best river-pike face; even Jacques Ministre frowned. I began to regret my outburst. What if Menée exploded from affronted pride, or Malateste from an excess of Christly restraint? Would that make me, I wondered, the first instrument of the beggar's curse?

  "Your pardon, M. le maître d'hôtel, M. l'oiseleur, gentlemen all. Mme la duchesse is asking for Berthe." Pompey's voice, flat and colorless, went through me like an electric shock.

  The cheek of a savage cannot pale, the deep hue of the skin concealing the ebb and flow of the blood beneath it; yet Pompey gave such an impression of pallor that I could have sworn that he'd blanched. I remember thinking this—about skin and blood and savages—even as I rose, curtsied blindly to the company, and followed him to the China apartment. I dared not think what might await me there.

  When we reached madame's antechamber, Pompey said, "Remember, Berthe. The sorcerer did not say that madame would die."

  I could not imagine what he was trying to tell me, unless . . . My heart stopped, then fluttered painfully. "She is dead, then?"

  "No." He touched my hand gently. "No, Berthe, not dead, but burning with fever. M. Berthelemy is bleeding her again."

  "I remember well enough what the sorcerer said. 'No peace on this earth.' That's what he said, Pompey." And I ran into madame's bedchamber.

  Though the sun was risen well above the hills, the room was dark as midnight, the shutters locked, and the curtains pulled tight against M. Février's chilly breath. The fire burned high and hot, nearly smokeless for once. Its flames glinted in M. Berthelemy's lancet as he held it up before his eyes, examined it, gave it a loving rub with a stained cloth, and tucked it back into its leather case. Peronel, looking a little green, was binding up madame's ankle with a length of white linen. A basin of blood was pushed half under the bed. The only sound to trouble the silence was a low railing that might equally have been the fire or madame's difficult breathing.

  I heard a low, hoarse murmur from the bed. "François l'oiseleur, bird-man, man-bird. Look hard, yes, hard. . . . Find her, poor child. Oh, look there—poor children. So young. So fresh. So . . ."

  A cough like the rattling of bones shook her, and M. Berthelemy turned her so she'd not choke on the effluvium. Snatching up a clean basin, I pushed him aside and held it under her mouth.

  "Well, girl. 'Tis time you got here," snapped M. Berthelemy in a furious undertone. "Where is all the world? I shouted out the door until I was hoarse, and after a goodly while, was answered by a blackamoor that fled when I addressed it. Tell me, where are the lackeys? Where is M. le duc?"

  The doctor's voice was like the ghost of Doucette's barking in my ears—a noise without a trace of substance. I'd removed the basin and tucked another pillow under madame's shoulders before I even understood he'd spoken. "Where is M. le duc?" I repeated. "Did you not hear the beggar?"

  "Beggar?" M. Berthelemy's voice rose. "I inquire of ducs and you answer with beggars! What beggar?"

  "You slept soundly last night?"

  "Bien sûr, I slept soundly—I am in perfect health, me, unlike the inhabitants of Beauxprés. What has my sleeping well or ill to do with M. le duc?"

  I opened my mouth to explain and shut it again helplessly. "M. le duc de Malvoeux is in the library," I said at last. "I beg your indulgence, M. le médecin. Ill news came in the night, and the household is disarranged."

  "Disarranged? Deranged! Where is this library, girl?"

  I looked at Peronel, who was standing at the bed-foot with her knuckles pressed against her mouth. "Peronel, M. Berthelemy wishes to speak with monsieur. Pray have the goodness to lead him to the library."

  Peronel's eyes went wide as a frightened horse's before she bobbed an obedient curtsy and trotted out of the room. At the door the physician turned and shook his finger at me.

  "My patrons will hear of this, you mark my words. My faith! Beggars!"

  "Beggars," echoed madame weakly. "Famine. Pestilence. War. Death."

  I leaned over her. Her eyes gazed over my shoulder, filled with tender welcome. I looked behind me to see who might have entered and saw only the flickering shadows cast by the fire brushing the walls with small dark wings. I heard a low twittering. Had madame's lovebirds escaped their cage? Surely lovebirds do not fly in the dark. And lovebirds have no reaching hands, no pain-filled eyes. Lovebirds do not weep.

  The room was full of children. I blinked; I shook my head. When I looked again, they were still there, thronging the shadows: nurslings and babes old enough to creep and stand; little girls and boys no bigger than Linotte. They beat the air with beseeching hands, and their cries were like the singing of a thousand nightingales.

  "Poor babies," murmured my mistress. "Poor little birds. Yes, yes, I shall stand godmother to all of you, every one. Stop crying now, mes petits, or my heart will break before 'tis done."

  She sketched a cross in the air with one shaking finger. "In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritu Sanctu." She reached into vacancy and groped frantically over the coverlet, searching for I knew not what. When I took her cold hand in mine, she looked at me at last. "What shall I do, Berthe? There's no holy water."

  "No, madame." Panic and grief were thick in my throat. "Pompey," I called over my shoulder. "Pompey, come quickly!" And when he appeared in the doorway: "Pompey, run at once for M. le curé, and tell him madame requires last rites. Hurry!"

  As though he'd not heard me, Pompey stepped over the threshold into the midst of the ghostly children. A shadow among shadows, he crossed from door to bed, the children parting like a dark mist before him. Between his hands he held a wine glass filled with black liquid.

  "Pompey! Bête! Imbécile! Can't you see madame is dying? Go for the curé!"

  Solemn and absorbed as a priest at Mass, he came towards the bed step by step until his foot hit the basin of blood, which slopped a little, releasing a salt-sharp perfume. The children stilled their weeping; their presence weighed heavy upon me and heavier still, a rock upon my breast. Madame gripped my fingers.

  "The blood will do," she whispered. "Let them approach."

  "Their time is not yet, Adèle," said Pompey gently. "Nor thine. Thou hast sworn and blessed them. For now, 'tis enough."

  "No."

  "Yes." He brushed past me, lifted my mistress upright with one arm behind her shoulders, held the wine glass to her lips. "Drink, Adèle," he said, and to my amazement, my mistress drank what he gave her, sip by sip to the very dregs. He laid her back upon the pillows, then squeezed my arm and nodded towards the antechamber.

>   I heard the outer door open. A voice—M. Berthelemy's—shouted: "Softly, M. le duc! Softly, I say!"

  Pompey scooped up the basin of blood and faded into the shadows.

  Monsieur strode into the room. "Pah! What a stink of blood." He jerked back the curtains and, with a great rattle of bolts, threw open first the shutters and then the casement to the cold, clean air.

  "Have a care, M. de Malvoeux," wailed M. Berthelemy. "A draught is of all things the most injurious to the health of an invalid."

  Monsieur spun on his heel. "An invalid? You told me my wife was dying, perhaps already dead." He was pale and red-eyed, clothed in a cream silk gown over yellow velvet breeches, with a black nightcap over his shaven poll. Confronting the doctor with his chin in the air and one hand cocked on his hip, he might have been own cousin to the African cranes stalking under the orange trees in the aviary.

  "Not dead, but certainly dying. Pray close the window, m'sieur, and call a priest, if you believe in such things. Medical science cannot save her."

  "Medical science has killed her."

  M. Berthelemy drew himself up as tall as he'd go, which brought his eyes almost level with monsieur's nose. "I'll not bandy insults with a man bereaved," he said. "Neither will I burden a house of mourning with my entertainment. Pray order a carriage for me—or a sleigh, or whatever vehicle may safely hazard these mountain roads in winter. I wish to be in Besançon before nightfall."

  "Out," said monsieur.

  M. Berthelemy bowed and left.

  Rubbing his face wearily, my master came to stand by the bed and looked down upon my mistress. Me, I studied him. He'd a rigid face, not like madame's, which reflected the complexion of her heart and mind like a glass. For all the emotion my master showed, he might have been watching a dull play; and yet I felt an energy of rage and grief in him that might, had he released it, set off a storm of fire. I'd opened my mouth to say something, le bon Dieu knows what, when he frowned and touched my mistress' wrist, then uttered a noise like a bark. Reluctantly, I lowered my eyes to the woman lying between us, and my heart emptied.