The Porcelain Dove

by Sherman, Delia

  Well. My heart slowed at last, and I made haste to leave that Bluebeard's chamber, lock the door behind me, and drop the key in a narrow-necked urn where I prayed it would never come to light. I told Pompey about the scene, of course, in payment for the key. He nodded when I told him how his pupil had sprung her brother's trap.

  "She's a wise child," he said, "cool-headed and sensible beyond her years. I've lately learned a spell to unman him—'tis only a matter of killing a wolf and taking its foreskin. He won't be easy to live with after. I'll have to put some warding upon the maids."

  So M. Léon's lust was shackled, and you may be sure that he shortly grew as ill-tempered as a bear roused at midwinter. Reynaud's countenance became strained and nervous, and noises were heard at night from the donjon tower as of animals in mortal pain. The rumor went about the château and village that the young master worshipped the Devil, or was possessed of the Devil, or was an incarnation of the Devil, which last, you must agree, was closest to the truth. I hardly dare think what pleasures he might have turned to in his frustration —rituals and enormities to rival those of his ancestor Jorre, I've no doubt. 'Twas by the grace of le bon Dieu that he left Beauxprés again two months later.

  The 12th of September, 1782, began as usual, with my dressing my mistress in her favorite bottle-green riding costume. I remember she looked very well in it, her slender body encased in a coat of military cut, the shape of her legs visible through her skirt and single petticoat. I buckled her spurs, pinned her mannish hat securely atop her coiffure, and followed with her whip and gloves as she jangled down the great stairs. As usual, when Artide opened the door to her, madame paused upon the threshold to draw on her gloves and breathe deeply of the morning air. As usual, Fleurette and the groom pranced by the fountain, fresh and eager for a run.

  Then the vicomte de Montplaisir came galloping up the chestnut drive, and that, at ten o'clock of a fall morning, was not usual at all.

  He pulled his horse up on its haunches, flung himself off before it had stopped plunging, and pushed past us into the château, calling loudly for monsieur. Madame, as if drawn by a magnet, followed.

  From the forecourt, Roland shouted that two strange horses were coming up the drive. As they drew near, I could see they were muddy, weary, and burdened with wide, covered platforms built over their haunches. In addition to all this, they carried two villainous-looking men, scarcely less muddy than their nags, who dismounted at the fountain. The taller of them stalked up the steps and through the open door, leaving the groom, Artide, and me to stare at his companion, who was spinning around and around with his arms outspread in ecstasy and the beatific smile of a man who, beyond all hope, finds himself in Paradise.

  "You, dirty fellow," said I. "Do you know where you are? What business have you here?"

  "Don't you know me, Berthe? Have I changed so much?" He stopped his twirling and cocked his eye at me. "You have changed not at all, except for being a little fatter."

  Quite apart from being entirely untrue, this remark was sufficiently offensive to strike me speechless. We stood confronted like two dogs, he grinning broadly, I first glaring, then gaping as I realized that all the matted hair, three-days' beard, and mud-stiffened leather hid none other than Jean Coquelet, back from the dead.

  "Marie has married Philiberte Malateste," I said stupidly. "Have you found the bird?"

  Laughing, Jean ran up the steps and embraced me regardless of the groom and Artide, who goggled at him as though, like the unfortunates on the fountain, they'd been translated into frogs. He turned from me to Artide. "Well met, mon vieux! I see you haven't yet run away."

  "Salopard!" said Artide, and kissed him heartily on either stubbly cheek. "And where would I go? I am content to see you, Coquelet." The groom, who'd been a stable-boy when Jean left, came bounding up the steps to clap him on the shoulder. In short, 'twas a riotous homecoming, and we were still chattering and exclaiming when monsieur burst through us and down to the horses.

  Tearing the covers from the panniers, he emptied them, taking cage after woven cage from the harness, lifting it, examining it, and casting it upon the ground, until at last the horses were unburdened and he surrounded by cooing, twittering cages. He turned to Noël Songis, who had followed him from the château.

  "What are these birds?" Monsieur spread out his hands, pleading. "Why did you bring back all these birds? Which of them is the Porcelain Dove?"

  "Whichever you will, monsieur," answered Noël Songis dryly. "The birds are all doves, all rare, all unknown to modern naturalists. None of them is quite like the Porcelain Dove you have described to me. We collected this pair"—he knelt and picked one cage out of the mess—"upon an island the natives call Koshima, which in their tongue is Luck Island. And these"—he picked up another—"are china doves." He opened the cage, gently removed a snowy, fluttering bird. "One china dove. The other is dead."

  Monsieur stared at the bird-handler. "China doves," he whispered. "Luck Island."

  "I swore to you, monsieur, that, if it existed, I would find your Porcelain Dove. I have not found it, monsieur. I fear it does not exist."

  A profound silence descended upon the courtyard as everyone—Jean, me, the groom, even the horses and the despised birds—held their breaths to hear what monsieur would say.

  "Does not exist?" he inquired mildly.

  Noël Songis shrugged. "The Porcelain Dove is a fabulous creature, monsieur, a chimera not to be seen outside the pages of the bibliothèque bleu."

  "A chimera. I see. I own a painting of the bird—you yourself have seen it. Is that, too, a chimera?"

  Once again, Noël Songis shrugged. "I have seen a painting of a gryphon also, monsieur. I am nonetheless confident that if I sought a gryphon to capture it, I would seek in vain."

  "Ah," said monsieur. "I thank you, M. Songis, for your advice in this matter. You are a wise man, much traveled, and 'tis plain to see that you know better than I, than Horace and Brutus and the Venerable Noreas, all of whom speak of a white bird whose feathers are smooth and hard as glass. The English naturalist Fowler saw one at the court of the king of Russia, where 'twas kept in a golden cage tied up with scarlet thread, and anyone who was sick or melancholy had only to come in sight of it to regain his health and happiness. Is Fowler a liar, then? Are you wiser than the ancients? Beware, bird-man, how you tell me to my face that my Porcelain Dove is a chimera! How can the life and fortune of the duc de Malvoeux depend upon a thing that does not exist? Just tell me that, chevalier l'oiseleur! How?"

  By this time, monsieur had his hand upon his épée and Noël Songis, still cradling the china dove, had risen to his feet.

  "Answer me, man," shrilled monsieur.

  He'd asked so many questions, and they so unanswerable, that I'd be puzzled where to begin. Songis, it seems, was not. Calm as deep water, he gentled the dove with his finger. "I fear the world has changed since Brutus described the Websti, who spin thread out of their bodies like spiders and weave it into fine cloth upon their own feet. Nor could I find any trace of Pliny's baromezus, though we journeyed in Southern China where he found it and I showed the natives an engraving of it."

  I whispered to Jean, "What did they say?"

  He quirked his brow and smiled. "They laughed," he whispered back, "and said that only a fool would believe that ferns grew on the backs of lambs."

  "Shut your jaw," hissed the groom. "The seigneur's running mad."

  True enough. For as Noël Songis spoke, monsieur had drawn his épée and now began to lay about him at random. Step by slow step, the bird-handler retreated towards the fountain. Fleurette, who'd been snorting nervously, shied and bolted; the vicomte's horse and the muddy nags followed whinnying after. Some of the cages were trampled in their charge; monsieur himself trampled the rest. He slashed at the woven rushes, thrusting at the birds inside. Spittle and curses flew from his lips; white feathers and blood flew from the cages.

  I don't know when madame had come outside. "O Berthe," she breathe
d now, and hid her face in my shoulder. As I put my arms around her, I saw that the vicomte de Montplaisir had come out of the château and was standing beside me staring down at his father with narrow and glittering eyes. His hand was locked over Reynaud's shoulder. Both faces—the vicomte's and Reynaud's—were unreadable, which, if you ask me, was just as well. Neither one of them looked quite human.

  Monsieur shook the last bird from his épée and glanced about for new prey. During the slaughter, Noël Songis had remained by the fountain, stroking the china dove with the tears runnelling down the seams of his cheeks. Catching sight of him, or the dove, monsieur screamed. Noël Songis stood very still. Monsieur feinted with his épée, threw back his head, and screamed again. Noël Songis moved not an eyelash. Uncertainly, monsieur peered at him with one eye, then the other. When the prey still did not move, monsieur dropped the épée and stared fixedly at him. The bird-handler stared back.

  They might have stood there forever, eye-locked across the carnage, had not Pompey and Linotte come round the west wing from the stable-yard, leading a sweating and trembling Fleurette between them.

  "She was trying to get into her stall," Linotte said, then saw her father and stopped.

  "Isn't that M. Songis?" she asked in her piercing child's voice. "Did he find the Dove?"

  Monsieur jerked about to face her, his mouth working. My mistress raised her head. I clasped her tighter. Let Pompey look to his charge, I thought, and I will look to mine.

  For a painful moment, the tableau held, equally poised between melodrama and tragedy. Then the vicomte de Montplaisir dashed helter-skelter down the steps and, throwing himself at his father's besmottered feet, at one stroke turned the scene into romance.

  "Father!" Slowly, monsieur's eyes turned from his daughter to his eldest son, down on one knee in the mud before him. Madame sighed and sagged against me. Gently as I could, I let her down on the doorstep. 'Twas all too much for her, poor lamb. She'd be better as she was until the scene was played out.

  "Father! No longer can I endure the sight of your high spirit thus bowed to the earth by chains of want and woe."

  I looked up at Jean, who'd shoved a hand between his teeth. Romance? Farce was more like it. I bit my lips to stifle laughter and wondered who had taught the boy to talk like that. Monsieur, however, did not laugh.

  "Father! Would you send a maître d'hôtel to lead an army, a chef to plead in court, a groom to negotiate policy? Is it any less vain to send a lackey upon a hero's quest? If the honor of Malvoeux is dependent upon one white bird, is it not the duty of the heir of Malvoeux to find that bird and bring it home?"

  "My son," said the duc de Malvoeux. "I . . ."

  "Monsieur my noble father, I pray you bless me in this my endeavor; for, with your blessing or without it, I will set forth upon this quest, to journey through the vasty oceans of the deep, to sail far and wide for a year and a day, to, uh . . ." The vicomte's brow knotted and his voice trailed off. He seized monsieur's hand and kissed it.

  "I have one son worthy the name of Malvoeux," said monsieur. "You have my blessing, Montplaisir. When will you leave?"

  The vicomte glanced uncertainly up towards Reynaud. "Uh. Next week, perhaps? The preparations will take some time."

  "I have a store of nets and snares. You may take those, and my horse Branche d'Or, and"—here monsieur pressed the bloody épée into the vicomte's hands—"my best sword to protect you.

  "For I burn, Léon, you cannot conceive how I burn to hold her, that Dove with feathers as hard and smooth as glass. I shall not rest until I hold her, Léon. I shall know no rest until I hold her in my two hands and cut my fingers upon her glassy wings."

  The vicomte de Montplaisir seemed dumbfounded at this speech, and I heard Reynaud tutting disgustedly as he trotted down the steps and knelt in the mud by his master. Taking the épée into his own hands, he bowed his sandy head. "Monsieur's bag is packed, as monsieur has directed, and I stand ready to ride at the rising of tomorrow's sun. Five long years has monsieur's noble father suffered, and 'tis cruelty to let him suffer one day more."

  "To be sure, Reynaud," snapped the vicomte. "We must not dally. With the rising of tomorrow's sun, eh?" He must have caught our incredulous looks, for he flushed painfully. "All unaccoutered as I am, I burn to go this very hour. Yet, if you wish it, I will wait, and accept your sword, your horse, your nets, and your gold to speed me on my journey. And while my faithful Reynaud gathers these necessaries, I will slay you this proud peasant, this Noël Songis, and embrace my mother and my sister in farewell."

  At the sound of his bird-handler's name, monsieur's brow began to cloud again, but Noël Songis had very wisely removed himself and his one china dove from the forecourt of the château Beauxprés. While M. Léon postured and declaimed, I'd watched him slip away around the north wing past Linotte, who touched his arm and smiled. That is the last any of us saw of him.

  I've often wondered what became of Noël Songis. Nothing bad, I think. He was a man who knew what he wanted, and taking care of birds is not a hard thing to achieve. There were at least five men and one woman in France alone who would have accepted his china dove as a more than sufficient letter of character.

  Though the scene in the forecourt was clearly at an end, the principal actors seemed reluctant to quit the stage. I loosened madame's waistcoat and sent Artide for her salts-bottle, and still father and son lingered by the fountain as if waiting for a prompter to give them their lines. As I chafed my mistress' cold hand, I saw Reynaud raise the vicomte from his knees and chivvy both him and his father in the direction of the aviary. I suppose they were going to look for the nets.

  Jean took no notice of them, or of me, or of madame insensible on the ground. Slowly he descended the steps, squatted amid the pathetic remains of his Eastern quest and, taking up a broken cage, extracted from it a handful of bloody feathers. Linotte went to him and put her hand on his shoulder. "Did you love them very much?" she asked.

  "No, mademoiselle. But I worked very hard to get them, and sometimes it amounts to the same thing."

  CHAPTER THE TWELFTH

  In Which Accounts Are Cast Up

  So the vicomte de Montplaisir rode away upon monsieur's best horse with monsieur's most expensive sword at his side and a hundred golden louis in his purse. Shortly thereafter, the aviary furnaces broke down, the bird-handlers demanded their wages, and the roof over the Alchemical attic began to leak. To meet these expenses, monsieur desired Jacques Ministre to levy a tax on his tenants under the ancient feudal law of guet et garde. The peasants refused to pay, and led by Just Vissot, took monsieur to law over the matter. Monsieur raged that he'd burn the village to the ground, but settled for hiring a lawyer expert in the ways of legal rebellions. Although the peasants would of a certainty pay up in the end, monsieur expected to be considerably out-of-pocket over the affair.

  "You must write to Mme Eloffe for me, Berthe," said madame, "and tell her I'll not be requiring the brocade caraco. Monsieur has told me we must make economies. To be sure, 'tis no more than the queen herself must do, yet I protest the price of one new caraco could make little difference to the coffers of either France or Beauxprés."

  "No, madame."

  "Little frivolities like new caracos add up, he says, so that there's no money left for necessities."

  "Yes, madame."

  This sounded like excellent sense to me, and more like Jacques Ministre than monsieur, who'd squander his last sou on corn to feed his birds. As for madame, why, the idea that caracos must be paid for at all was as foreign to her as idol worship. In her world, one attended Mass and put off one's creditors, who, enjoying the patronage of the nobility, ought not to expect silver as well. And if a time came when they must be paid, one could always borrow.

  I can't swear I thought all this then, yet I do remember that something—perhaps the thought of debt—put me in mind of M. Léon, so that the next words from my mouth were: "Has madame any word of the vicomte de Montplaisir?"


  She stared at me, startled, then rummaged among the papers on her écritoire and handed me a letter bearing the stigmata of a cheap tavern. Who can tell why I saved it? Yet here 'tis, with the ink all faded into the winestains so that I can barely make out the message.

  November 1782

  Chère Mme ma mère la duchesse de Malvoeux—

  I have found a type—a villainous ugly man, but honest as a butcher, I vow. He's seen the Porcelain Dove with his own eye (he has but the one) and has promised me a map to the Fortunate Isles and a letter of introduction to the king of the place, but the Devil's in it that he wants 100 gold louis for 'em. M. my father has already been so generous that I cannot ask them of him. Do you, mère adorée, act as the agent of your loving, your most dutiful son. The "Lion d'Or" in Marseilles will find me.

  Léon Philiberte Jorre Guillaume Maindur, vicomte de Montplaisir

  "One hundred gold louis!" I said. ''The vicomte requires madame to ask M. le duc for one hundred gold louis? He's not lacking in gall, he!"

  "I've already asked him," said madame with simple pride. "Monsieur says the vicomte must have anything he wants. Jacques Ministre is to sell a meadow or some such to raise the sum, but we shall lose the income from it, so I must frump about in last year's gowns and tell Eveline Réverdil that she cannot break her journey to Paris at Beauxprés as she intended, for we can't afford to feed her. A noble of sixteen quarterings, and can't afford to feed a guest! There's no accounting for it, Berthe. Unless Ministre has been stealing monsieur's feathers to soften his own nest."

  Bah! As well suspect a turtledove of infidelity as Jacques Ministre of false accounting. And so I told madame, who laughed and said that I must then be wiser than her husband, who had demanded of that same faithful Ministre a strict accounting of all the duchy's wealth, both income and expense.