The Porcelain Dove

by Sherman, Delia

  The compte rendu of the seigneuries of Beauxprés and Malvoeux made nearly as bulky a document as M. Necker's, for Ministre took a bitter joy in tracing the fate of every sou for ten years past. Here were the profits from selling monsieur's cattle and corn in the markets of Besançon; there were the peasants' payments for the use of monsieur's mills, his ovens, and his wood. There were whole pages for tolls, more for magistrate's feés, more for the interest from certain loans monsieur had made to the king. Set against these sources of income were the expenses of the estate, covering page after page of closely written lines. Meat, wax candles, linen for sheets, a new bull to serve monsieur's small herd of milk cows, seed corn, glass, salt, sleigh-runners, harness, oil, rope—oh, the list of things needed to keep Beauxprés from crumbling about our ears was endless.

  As monsieur himself had predicted, his income was indeed sufficient to pay for all, including the upkeep of the hôtel Malvoeux, but only just sufficient, and only when times were good. Taking into account the recent bad harvests, M. Fleury's new taxes, the fees for Einsiedeln and L'Epieu, and the vicomte's allowance, not to mention four—no, five—birding expeditions, Jacques Ministre's figures revealed M. le duc de Malvoeux to be teetering at the edge of noble penury.

  Monsieur's response to this news could not, perhaps, be heard all the way to Besançon, but 'twas more than loud enough to penetrate the library door to the ears of Artide standing without.

  "Impossible? By hell, Ministre, I do not believe it. Beauxprés is a rich domain. Its cheeses are famous and its cows are fat. My father was too easy on his peasants, yes, and my grandfather, too."

  Artide could not make out Ministre's answer. He must have been standing across the room by the window.

  "Dismiss two bird-handlers? Shut up the glasshouses? Ten thousand thunders, Ministre! I'd sooner dismiss my wife and my daughter and shut up Beauxprés."

  Jacques Ministre's voice again, in the cadence of a man pleading the case of reason. Monsieur interrupting, further from the door now, so that only some detached words and phrases reached Artide's straining ears: " . . . Mareschal . . . a hundred livres . . . hanging offense . . . "

  "No, M. le duc." Ministre spoke so near and loud that Artide scraped his ear on the doorhandle in his fright. "No, I cannot do what M. le duc asks of me."

  "Cannot? Will not!"

  "Very well, monsieur. I will not. It does not make good sense for monsieur to hang Claude Mareschal for his father's bad debt. The land would revert to monsieur, bien sûr. But who would monsieur find willing to farm it for him, hein? And if no one farms it, where then is the profit? If monsieur insists upon every tithe, right, and levy duc him as seigneur of Beauxprés, monsieur's tenants will starve. How will a full churchyard further monsieur's quest, eh?"

  "Pah!" says monsieur. "Let them starve. I care nothing for them, lazy dirt-eaters."

  The handle dipped. Artide leapt back from the door like a flea just as Jacques Ministre threw it open. "I am no philosophe, monsieur," said Ministre. "Yet I believe 'tis the part of a legitimate government to respect the rights and the needs of the people it governs. You, monsieur, respect nothing." And then he stalked away, and Artide said that his jaw was so bunched with fury he might have been storing nuts in it.

  That same night Jacques Ministre left Beauxprés. He embraced us all in farewell, and we all wept. All except Menée, who caroused to his ancient rival's rout and pranced unbuttoned in the kitchen, waving his pizzle before the servingmaids and inviting them to pay his scepter homage—one at a time or all at once, he cared not which. To be sure, their virtue was in little danger, an excess of brandy having soaked him quite limp. Yet after several weeks of similar scenes, we were overjoyed to hear that monsieur had engaged a new steward.

  Our joy was shorter-lived than a whore's bastard. Never have I clapped eyes on a stingier, stringier man than Gilles Sangsue. His eyes were close-set, the better to peer into ledgers and rent rolls; his fingers were long, the better to pry into pockets and purses. He'd been a collector of taxes in the north.

  What a horror the man was! Bien sûr, I've seen greater evil at Beauxprés—M. Léon and mère Malateste, why, even Menée was more wicked than Sangsue, his misdeeds more open and shameless. But if the sins of lust, anger, gluttony, and pride are no less mortal than avarice and envy, they are at least sins of passion, and therefore more easily forgiven—by man, if not by le bon Dieu. Avarice and envy are cold sins, and the men who commit them, like giants, have no hearts.

  Sangsue's first act as M. le duc's steward was to sack the greater part of M. le duc's domestic staff. When I complained of this to madame, she recalled to me one of Mme Hortense's letters of the previous year, in which she had described Necker sweeping through the king's household like Samson through the Philistines, felling battalions of royal cup-bearers, companies of royal stocking-folders, divisions of tax-collectors, and legions of venal office-holders of every rank. She reminded me how I'd laughed and sworn it served them right, the overdressed do-nothings. Now, watching lackeys and servingmaids turned out—and just before the first snow, too, when field work was impossible to come by. . . . Well, I found myself close to pitying those unemployed hasteners of the royal roast.

  The economics of the case were undeniable. The duc de Malvoeux employed many more servants than were needed to run Beauxprés. The lackeys especially worked too little, ate too much, and were plaguey arrogant besides. Fewer servants cost less, eat less, work harder, and have no time for arrogance. I suspect that in the depths of that withered purse he called a heart, Gilles Sangsue cherished the image of a household trimmed to a single servant, infinitely hardworking, infinitely thin, infinitely humble.

  Bread, onions, gruel and vin du pays—that's what he fed us, who'd been accustomed to share monsieur's sauced meats and fine Burgundies. Menée took these economies as a personal affront, threatened Sangsue with mayhem and murder, and died of an apoplexy just after the turn of the year. M. Malesherbes, who'd been melancholy as an owl, grew more melancholy still, until his entire conversation came to consist of belly-deep sighs and wistful moans. As for the rest of us . . . Well, we grumbled mightily, but ate what was set before us. The villagers would have been glad to have had so much.

  I remember Mme Pyanet standing in the bakery door, glancing over her shoulder at her husband within, whispering that she didn't know how they'd pay their taxes, she didn't indeed.

  "M. Pyanet, he has a big heart. The blacker the loaves he's brought and the worse they smell baking, the more eager is he to extend credit. They're our neighbors, he says, we pray with them and we drink with them. Let them keep their copper for their tithes, he says. What about our tithes, that's what I want to know."

  I gave her the basket I'd brought, packed with pork rind and scraps and a few pieces of silver wrapped in a rag at the bottom. Well, I'd no need of silver, stuck out in the high meadows of the Jura with nothing to spend it on save some rags of coarse lace when the peddler chanced by, and no one to see me wear them save monsieur's birds. And I had always liked Mme Pyanet.

  In early spring, the vicomte de Montplaisir wrote saying he'd procured the one-eyed sailor's map, and 'twas all he'd hoped. Now he needed fifty livres to defray the immediate expenses of the journey. The letter's gone, but I remember its being more sober than the last, more neatly penned, more respectful: Reynaud's work, of a certainty. It inspired monsieur to send straightaway to a bank in Besançon for a loan of fifty livres, which he dispatched posthaste to Marseilles. While he was borrowing, he borrowed a second fifty livres to buy a pair of rare African birds-of-paradise that he'd news of from a southern bird-seller. They were very beautiful—like phoenixes, white with breasts so pink you'd think the magic flame burned them still. Madame was in ecstasies over them. The rest of us found them a poor enough substitute for our wages.

  'Twas at about that time, as I remember, that Justin returned to Beauxprés.

  After five years' absence, I'd all but forgot that madame's younger son was still aliv
e. I suppose he had been dead, in a manner of speaking—dead to the world and sepulchered, first on the heights of Einsiedeln and then in the gray valley of Baume-les-Messieurs, two days' ride west of Beauxprés. Jean, who has been there, says that Baume-les-Messieurs is a sight to behold, a rocky, chilly place down at the bottom of a gorge with the wind whistling down from the heights above like the wrath of God. Just the place for a Maindur monk whose taste ran to the ascetic.

  In any case, one day he turned up, unheralded and unaccompanied and riding on a fat white mule. Artide showed him into the Sèvres salon where the family sat at dinner. I remember how we laughed to hear Artide tell how Mme la duchesse had choked on her quenelle, how M. le duc had ordered a cover set and bade his son be seated for all the world as if his sudden appearance were in no way out of the ordinary.

  "So I sighed with relief—LePousset, here, sighed also, and went for the cover while I pulled out a chair. Did M. Justin then sit down like a human man and help himself to Malesherbes' good quenelles? He did not. M. Justin clapped shut his eyes and folded his hands and commenced to mutter Latin while monsieur looked daggers at him and Mlle Linotte was seized with a fit of giggling, which she pretended was coughing. Monsieur roared at her to hold her noise, and madame said she hoped she wasn't falling sick. And all the while, our monkling kept up his pater nostering and gaudeamusing as though he were alone in his cell. Mademoiselle laughed until she coughed in good earnest and monsieur flung the seethed mushrooms at her head. After that, M. Justin consented to seat himself at last and dinner proceeded quietly."

  "Quietly!" M. Malesherbes shook his jowls sadly. "I'd hoped to hear they'd dined on theological argument, for 'tis sure they dined on little else."

  "You may blame our precious eremite for spoiling their appetites," Artide said. "The only thing to pass His Asceticship's lips—saving Latin, of course—was bread and water. Pah! 'Tis enough to make a man weep, to watch them turning up their aristocratic noses at a meal any peasant would sell his firstborn for."

  Dentelle threw his hands to Heaven and implored the saints to grant him patience. "Ah, Artide, Artide. Peasants eat what they can. Ducs eat what they will. That is how the world wags. You who are so learned, so deeply and widely read in things that are not at all your affair, you should know that, at least."

  "Not my affair?" Artide's cheeks mottled. "Was that not what Cain said of Abel?"

  "Quote not scripture to me," snapped Dentelle. "I've heard you say often enough you believe not a word of it. Atheist!"

  "Lick-arse!"

  Dentelle sprang to his feet, ruffles quivering with rage. Artide stood more slowly, raised fists like hooves, and told the little valet to come on. M. Malesherbes, who'd been slumped over his evening brandy-and-sugar like a figure on a tomb, roused himself to shout with something of his old authority: "Regulate yourselves, the pair of you! Artide, your mouth is a midden. And as for you, Dentelle, nobles may eat while peasants starve, but as far as I know, 'tis not by divine law."

  They glowered, grumbled, and as they subsided, I remarked that M. Justin was no doubt come to announce his intention of taking final vows.

  "A blind man might see as much," said Jean loftily.

  "Leave her alone," said Artide. "She's not seen M. Justin. I'll give the boy this—he won't be one of those fat monks whose spotless habit hides a spotted soul. If dirt and bony wrists be holy, our Justin bids fair to be a saint."

  "Nothing fair about him," said the lackey LePousset. "A bird of ill-omen, if you ask me. A real magpie, in fact."

  Dentelle muttered into his cup that some people had no respect for their betters. Jean laughed and slapped LePousset on the shoulder. "Very good, mon vieux! A magpie—ha! That's Brother Justin to the life, save that magpies are cocksure birds and Brother Justin seems set upon teaching a church mouse humility. You know that white mule he rode? Well, he led it to the stable himself and wiped it down with his own hands. Did a poor enough job of it, too, and you could see the mule wasn't happy, but put up with it like a God-fearing beast."

  I sipped my brandy thoughtfully. "Magpie, mouse, or saint, monsieur won't like him going into holy orders."

  "Pooh," said Dentelle. " 'Tis as natural for second sons to enter the church as for doves to flock to a cote."

  M. Malesherbes shrugged. "The boy must go somewhere, after all. What else could he do, poor deaf stick that he is? Would you have him buy a commission and take up a musket against the English?"

  The thought of M. Justin taking up a musket at all nearly undid us, even Dentelle. When I'd wiped the tears of laughter from my eyes, I said, "Ah, me. Of course not, poor boy. But only consider. The vicomte de Montplaisir is enduring God only knows what dangers in God only knows what foreign land. And if you have forgotten the little matter of the Porcelain Dove, you may be sure monsieur has not. He'll see to it our monkling stays in the world at least until his brother comes home, with or without that accursed bird."

  Artide said, "In the world? He's never been in the world, any more than the rest of them. They're all alike, these aristocrats. They care only for their own pleasures and their own occupations, and everyone else may starve or go to Hell."

  "Come now," said Dentelle. "This has not been a perfect world since Eve ate the apple."

  "Foutre!" shouted Artide, and flung his cup clanging upon the flagstones. "I beg your pardon, M. Malesherbes, but Dentelle speaks like a fool. The world would be less imperfect if the likes of monsieur were forced to pay for what they took."

  This outburst shocked even Dentelle into silence. Somewhat shamefaced, Artide shrugged and knelt to retrieve his cup and mop up the spreading brandy. A log broke and settled in the hearth, birthing a litter of spark and flame. That I remember clearly, and the crimson streaks the fire splashed across his broad face. Did I shiver and cross myself? I think I did.

  The very next morning, madame declared that Linotte was running wild and must be taken in hand. She was right, bien sûr—the child had been running wild these three years and more. I was only surprised she'd noticed.

  Jean, who likes things to be clear, says that Colette will never tell from my account of her whether I liked Mlle Linotte de Malvoeux or loathed her. His confusion is not in the least astonishing; I myself share it. Some days I'd see her in the formal garden, skipping through the paths in some intricate, private game, and 'twas as though the years rolled back to show me Mlle Adèle playing alone in the garden of the hôtel Fourchet. Then my heart would go out to her as it had to her mother, and I would resolve to mention to madame that the time had come to find a new maid for her.

  On other occasions, I'd pass her in the cabinet des Fées or descending the Unicorn stair from the Alchemical attic, her black eyes fierce with thought, the air around her tingling like the magnetic spirit in Dr. Mesmer's tubs. Then she seemed to me her father's daughter from beaky face to long, narrow feet, indifferent to all save her own arcane pursuits. So I pendulumed between pity and dislike. And all the time I knew nothing of the Linotte de Malvoeux who was neither her father's daughter nor her mother's, but herself alone.

  I was writing about madame.

  Even though you'd think Justin's return would be uppermost in her mind, 'twas Linotte's ill manners and Linotte's ill looks came between my mistress and her chocolate, and not her son at all. Well, monks and their manners were far beyond her ken. Young girls, now, she knew exactly how young girls should dress and act.

  Twice or thrice she lifted the cup to her lips, only to put it down untasted as another of her daughter's imperfections erupted in her memory. "Oh, that hair of hers! I'd be astonished if it's so much as seen a comb since the turn of the year. There's nothing for it but cut it all off. And her clothing! Why, she's ragged as a beggar's child. You'll make over something of mine, won't you, Berthe? The blue silk, I think, and that sprigged polonaise—the one that never became me."

  When she sipped her chocolate at last, her mouth wryed. "This is cold, Berthe, and quite undrinkable," she said, thrusting the cup into
my hands and throwing back the covers. "Well, why do you stand there gawking? We've not a moment to waste—my corset, at once, if you please, and the mauve lace powdering-gown. When I'm dressed, you may send for Mlle Linotte, oh, and for Pompey as well. He can read to us as we work. 'Twill be quite like old times."

  In less time than I'd have thought possible, madame was dressed, and Linotte and Pompey were standing bewildered before her.

  Madame bent a severe eye upon her daughter. "Linotte, thou art an object of disgust," she said. "Remove that, that rag at once, and Berthe will cut thy hair. Pompey, read to us." She took up her tambour frame. "I'm in a mood for fairies, I think."

  "Yes, madame." Pompey opened a glass-fronted case and ran his finger over the books within. "What is madame's pleasure?"

  "I don't know, I'm sure. Anything, so long as 'tis romantical." She waved a vague needle. "The one with the clever princess."

  "'Finette Cindron'?"

  "Clever monkey! C'est ça!"

  While Pompey leafed through the well-worn Fées à la mode, I unlaced Linotte's gown. To call it a rag was to overstate the case, though 'twas certainly not new, and far too tight for the girl. Pompey had done his best to comb her straggling hair and dress it, after a fashion, in a plaited tail down her back. Shivering in her skimpy chemise, she looked like a charity child, shamefaced and uncertain, and my heart, like a cracked tooth, ached with her chill. 'Twould not have been proper to embrace her, so I winked and whispered that if she stood still while I cut her hair, I'd make her a petticoat, yes, and a new gown as well.

  She smiled at that. I fetched a pair of scissors from my workbasket and a sheet to spread on the rug. By now Pompey had found the place, and while I combed and snipped, he began to read aloud.

  "Once upon a time there was a king and a queen who had managed their affairs so badly that they were driven out of their kingdom. In order to live, they sold their crowns, then their wardrobes, their linen, their lace, and all their furniture, piece by piece."