The Porcelain Dove

by Sherman, Delia

  Over my mistress' head, I could see Linotte moving through the wreck of the cabinet des Fées, stooping now and again to salvage some bit of magical flotsam. The torch bobbed a little behind and above her head.

  At first I thought the torch entirely unsupported; then I saw that there were fingers wrapped prosaically around it. Yet 'twas unsupported after all, for the owner of the fingers was invisible; or else the hand attached to the fingers was their sole owner. In any case, the torch was held by a disembodied hand. A dozen other hands, equally detached, hovered nearby.

  I felt my cap tweaked backwards. I slapped it back into place, whereupon a plump, white hand whisked into view, shook a reproving finger in my face, patted my cheek, and darted off to receive Prince Lutin's scarlet cap from Linotte. The air around me sparkled and rang with bells—silver bells, this time, very thin and pure. Linotte was a girl of seventeen, after all.

  After she'd wept herself out, madame swallowed a few drops of laudanum from the bottle in her pocket and slept. I was not so fortunate, the pain of my bruised throat and burned hand conspiring with my fear to keep me awake. Besides, how could I sleep when there was so much to be done? Linotte, intent upon her salvage, was no help at all. She paid no more heed to all my suggestions about calming the peasants, shooting Artide, flying to Besançon than if I'd been as mouthless as her dexterous attendants.

  Goaded, I cried, "Heartless chit! Madame your mother's prostrate, mad peasants are pulling your home down about your ears, and your father's head may decorate a pike even as we speak! And all you do is go about your business, cool as milk."

  At that, she finally turned to me. A comical sorceress she made, draggled and smutty as to her face and hair, surrounded by a nimbus of unbodied hands clutching apples, hats, boots, pots, gaudy wands and gilded nuts of all shapes and sizes. Yet I was not inclined to laughter, for under the smuts her face was stern, and her dark eyes glittered with rage and magic.

  "My father has brought this upon himself," she said in a voice of snow. "And not only upon himself, but upon you and madame my mother, upon the peasants, upon the soil, upon the very air of Beauxprés. He does not deserve to live. Yet I tell you that my father is not dead, nor will he die." She sighed then, and in a voice somewhat more human, said, "So content you, Berthe. And sit down somewhere. You're fidgeting me."

  In my numbed state, that speech took some puzzling out, I can tell you. And even when I'd made sense of her words, I still didn't know what she meant by them. Oh, the first part was clear enough, and true enough to swear by. The second part, however—was it reassurance or prophecy or threat? And there was the matter of the hands and the little dog Toutou and the purple rats even now mourning their crumpled comrade. Who had awakened them? Who had taught Linotte to command them?

  When I opened my mouth, I had intended to demand answers to these questions, now, before I lost my mind. Yet all that came out was, "Bah!"

  Linotte shrugged. "Then look for yourself." Upon her gesture, one of the empty hands darted into the bedchamber, fetched out a candle in a flat candlestick, kindled it at the torch, and presented it to me, ring politely foremost. I had the peculiar sensation that it—the hand, that is—found my bewilderment vastly amusing.

  I goggled, and after a moment or two, Linotte gave an impatient snort. " 'Tis only a candle, Berthe: quite unmagical, I assure you. Take it."

  Thus ordered, what could I do, save curtsy, hook my finger through the ring and take the candle and my leave with what dignity I could muster?

  Quick or dead, I thought monsieur was most likely still in the château. Yet he wasn't in the hall, where I'd last seen him. He wasn't in the library. Nor was he in the Miniature salon, nor in the Egg antechamber, nor in his apartment.

  They'd wrecked that too, the dirt-arses, ripped the bed as though it were M. le duc's belly and smashed the chairs and tables as though they were his bones. Crimson light shifted and flowed like fresh blood over the ruin, crimson light it took me far longer than it ought to recognize as fire glow. It took me even longer to persuade my overwrought heart that the fire itself was outside and to force my reluctant legs out to the balcony above the forecourt.

  A great bonfire tossed between the château and the fountain of Latona where the beggar-wizard had stood. The peasants had built it; a heap of paintings and broken furniture showed what they'd fed it on. Sated, it roared like Gargantua, belching sparks to the sky while behind it the fountain writhed with illusory life. The man-frogs mouthed and grabbed at Latona, who, aware of her danger at last, seemed to hug herself and cower. After Toutou and the hands, I half-expected to see them up and devour her. They didn't, of course. Nor did the beggar-wizard appear to gloat over his fallen enemy, nor any peasant run out with so much as a piece of lace to coax the flames higher.

  In short, the forecourt was deserted.

  Then it came to me. Monsieur was at the aviary, of course. Where else would he have gone? 'Twas inevitable as a tragedy. And the aviary would draw the peasants like a magnet, too: all that glass and all those birds, beautiful as painted miniatures, useless as mounted fox paws, harmless as lace collars except for needing to be warmed and fed. To warm them, monsieur had taken the wood from the peasants' hearths; to feed them, he'd taken the grain from their stores. They'd destroy it to the last stone in its foundation. And doubtless monsieur would die in its defense.

  A vermilion-winged parrot flew past me, screaming raucously. It circled the fire, then headed out over the fields towards the Forêt des Enfans.

  "That'll startle the owls," said I to myself.

  That is my last certain memory of that night. There are other scenes—disconnected vignettes—that return to me when I try to remember: my memories or Jean's, I can't tell which. Jean was at the aviary with monsieur and I was not, or at least I've no memory of leaving the balcony or crossing the garden or traversing the copse or hiding from the peasants. Yet I can picture the aviary's fall as clearly as if I'd witnessed it. Perhaps my soul flew there, leaving my body behind. Or perhaps 'tis only Jean's having described the scene so often.

  In any case, I've only to close my eyes to see monsieur, disheveled, bald as an egg, wild-eyed, backed up to the aviary's outer door with his épée en garde. A rock arcs through the night—even had I been there, I couldn't have seen that, could I?—and a glass pane breaks high up in the building. A honey-bird darts out, yellow and gleaming blue, hovers uncertainly, flutters down to monsieur, lands on his sword arm. Monsieur stills, purses his lips and whistles to it.

  I see mère Boudin beside monsieur, taking the bird in her hands. With a housewifely air she twists the tiny head front to back, tucks the corpse into her apron and turns away. Monsieur drops his épée and frowns at her with such intensity that I wonder she does not kindle with it and burn like paper under a lens.

  The last scene is lit by the flare of torches. Rocks fly into the aviary and birds fly out, erupting from the shattered windows, blundering up and back and around in circles, all at sea in the unwalled darkness. One by one, they fall under the peasants' stones like rainbow fruit, and like fruit are gathered up. Monsieur watches the harvest unmoving; I would say unmoved, except for the unwavering intensity of his black gaze.

  The sack of Beauxprés began an hour or so after sunset and ended about dawn. The château itself was undamaged, though the peasants had overturned almost every room within it. They'd missed some—there are, after all, upwards of three hundred rooms in Beauxprés. When Jean and I went through the place, we found the Alchemical attic untouched. The Hunt closet had also been overlooked, and the Cameo apartment spared; but the pantries had been rifled, and the apartments of M. Justin and the vicomte de Montplaisir were a wilderness of glass and wood.

  Even now, I cannot bear to recount all we did that day, Jean and I, what we saw and what we felt. Nor is there any reason for it. How we found Sangsue smothered in the midden is no fit tale for a young girl, ghost or no, nor the indignities the peasants had practiced upon him before they buried him. Only
I think they must have been mad to serve him so—mad or accursed. Yet if their violence were curse-brought, then what of those mobs Mme de Bonsecours wrote of, with their pikes and their cockades and their bloody trophies? Did the beggar-wizard's curse infect all of France? Or was the rot of Beauxprés, like clouded urine, only a symptom of some subtle disease eating away at our national vitals?

  That night, for the first time since she had left the convent, madame retired supperless. She wept a bit, like a hungry child, then kissed my hand, murmured, "You'll take care of me, Berthe," and fell asleep.

  Well, I certainly intended to take care of her, although at the moment I didn't quite know how I was going to go about it. The château was a shambles, there was hardly a bite of edible food to be found, Sangsue was horribly dead, the lackeys and kitchen-boys fled le bon Dieu knew where, and as for monsieur! Well, a walking statue would have been as much use to us, and that's the truth. Jean, who'd stuck to the duc like a louse through the alarms of the night, finally left him sitting on a rock by the ornamental pond and staring at the rubble of wood and glass and iron that once had been the finest aviary in all France. I think he was waiting for his parrots and his jacamars, his emerald cuckoos and his showy birds-of-paradise to fly home to him. He'd have a long wait, then; for their feathers were stuffing his tenants' pillows and their corpses enriching his tenants' pots-au-feu with the first meat they'd tasted in months.

  Me, I was too hungry to sleep, and like a ghost I wandered the ruins of Beauxprés in search of sustenance. Had I dared, I'd have gone down to the village and begged a ladle of aviary soup from Mme Pyanet.

  My wanderings took me at last to the cabinet des Fées, where Mlle Linotte was curled up on a sofa.

  "Ah, there you are, Berthe. I leave Beauxprés tonight, and I wish to wear these." She sat up and thrust a suit of boy's clothes into my hands. I recognized them at once—indeed, I'd made them myself. They were M. Justin's.

  "The sleeves are too short," she said, "and the culottes too narrow in the hip. You must alter them to fit me."

  This autocratic speech galled me more than a little. "What about your new servants?" I asked acidly. "Aren't they sufficiently handy to alter a suit of clothes?"

  "They're quite stupid," she said. "And very stiff in the joints as yet. Besides, I can't make them do anything I don't know how to do myself."

  "Very well, mademoiselle. There's nothing worse than starting out on a quest in tight breeches."

  My workbox, of course, was nowhere to be found, but among Linotte's gleanings were a silver needle and some lengths of gossamer; with these and a small dagger for cutting, I contrived the necessary alterations. It took some time, however, and longer for the blurriness of my eyes and the clumsiness of my fingers and the difficulty of threading a needle with gossamer, even when the needle can sew of itself.

  After a search for a candle and some unspoiled cloth to piece out the breeches, I sat down to work. In my state, it all seemed perfectly ordinary: the magic needle, Linotte's intended departure, her sudden need for haste, her desire to travel as a boy. Skirts and petticoats are awkward attire for rough walking and scrambling over ditches, and (though the stories don't mention it) I'd guess that questing has its share of both.

  I said that to her, and then I said, "I should've known all along you'd go off after the Porcelain Dove. You are, after all, the third child. I suppose your being an untried girl does not signify."

  "Of course not, Berthe—what about Finette Cindron and the rest? They were all untried girls, and heroes as well. When the quest is yours, 'tis yours, and only you can achieve it. According to the pattern, this quest is mine."

  "A good pattern, in its way, though I've always thought it hard on the older brothers." Mlle Linotte snorted laughter, and I hurried to add, "Bien sûr, the vicomte's no loss to anyone, but poor M. Justin's another story entirely."

  "That's right—another story entirely. Don't worry about brother Justin, Berthe. He's quite comfortable, and much happier than he was here."

  Another prophecy? I felt I'd had enough of the cursed things—yes, and of quests and magic, too. The needle would have done the seam in a trice if I'd let it alone, but I ignored its impatient wriggling, clung to it savagely, and set a tiny stitch in M. Justin's old coat. "We live in the Age of Reason," I said perversely, "not the Age of Heroes. What makes you think that questing's the action required? Walking off into the night alone, dressed in your brother's old suit—'tis not at all comme il faut. Perhaps the prophecy is a test of—I don't know—your steadfastness in the face of hardship. Perhaps you are the Porcelain Dove."

  Linotte shook her head. "You're as stubborn as a stone, Berthe. Perhaps I am the Porcelain Dove. Nonetheless, I must leave Beauxprés, now, tonight, before midnight sounds."

  "How do you know?"

  "Oh, I know." She looked at me, teasing. "Shall I tell you a story?"

  I shrugged. "Can you rip seams while you're telling?"

  In answer, Linotte took up the breeches and the dagger and set to work.

  "Once upon a time," she said, "there was a small girl. She had two brothers, both much older than she, and a nursemaid who was an ogress. One day when they were all out walking, they chanced to meet an old beggar-man. He was very ragged and very ugly, with eyes as yellow as the feathers of a canary bird and long gray hair growing from his chin like a billy-goat's beard. Despite his ragged cloak, the small girl could see that this beggar was in reality a mighty wizard, so that when her elder brother blustered and threatened him, it frightened her very much."

  I snorted. "Threatened to feed him to the hawks, did he? I know this story, mademoiselle."

  "Patience, Berthe, and listen."

  Well, I'd nothing better to do, so, "Very well," I said. "Not a word shall pass my lips until you've finished: by the Virgin's blue mantle, I swear it."

  She nodded and went on.

  "Now, besides two brothers, the small girl had a father, and like the old beggar, he was a mighty wizard. His magic was dominion over all the birds of the air, and he was so powerful that he had only one weakness: he had no heart. He'd given it to his birds, you see, in order to strengthen his power over them, and therefore he was no longer able to feel any tender emotion. Because he lacked a heart, he often forgot his children. When he remembered them, he took them to his court of birds. There he would call each bird by its name, and the birds would fly to him and bow to him and do his bidding in all things.

  "One day, he remembered the small girl. Now it happened that the small girl liked birds and alone of all his children understood their tuneful language; so she was glad to go with her father, and even more so because her brothers were not by. So they set out walking, and they hadn't gone far when who should appear before them but an old beggar-man? The small girl saw his eyes yellow as canary feathers and his chin bearded like a goat's, and recognized him at once as the ragged wizard her eldest brother had wanted to feed to the hawks. At first she was frightened lest he blame her for her brother's rudeness. But the beggar-wizard did not seem to notice her at all. Fixing his yellow eye on the bird-wizard, he said:

  "'L'oiseleur. I have come to beg a thing from thee, and thou darest not deny me.' "

  At this point Mlle Linotte frowned and fell silent. I realized that I was holding the struggling needle poised in the air and that my mouth was stupidly ajar. Snapping it shut, I stabbed the needle into the heavy stuff of Justin's old coat. Eagerly it wormed through the folds, pulled the stitches taut, and darted back in again. "Bah," I said, and let it get on with the seam. Smiling, Linotte took up the breeches and the tale once more.

  "At the beggar-wizard's salutation, the bird-wizard grew pale and still with rage. 'Beg, then,' he said.

  "The beggar-wizard drew himself up in his old ragged cloak, and much to the small girl's dismay, pointed his taloned finger at her. 'I beg of thee thy daughter,' he said. 'Thy daughter in the room of mine. Give her me.'

  "Well, I need hardly tell you that the small girl didn't lik
e that idea at all. For now the beggar-wizard was looking right at her with the expression of a starving man who spies a sausage or a sweet cake, so that she feared he intended her for his stewpot or worse.

  "Now, she knew that her father the bird-wizard did not believe in ogres—if he did, he'd never have hired the nursemaid. Despairing, she clung to her father's leg and begged him not to give her away. The beggar-wizard shot out his sharp, gray hand, seized the small girl by the wrist, and pulled her into his arms, along with the bird-wizard her father. For a moment the two wizards stood nose to nose and eye to eye, with the small girl caught between them like a hare in a trap. Then she felt a jerk and a heave, and she was in the bird-wizard's arms, and the beggar-wizard was grovelling in the dust with his sharp gray fingers rubbing his billy-goat's chin.

  "'I will give thee nothing,' the bird-wizard sneered at him. 'Begone, vermin, lest I have thee flayed and thy hide nailed to the stable door as a warning to any man who would dare to lay hands on what is mine.'

  "While the small girl was very glad she need not go with the ogre, she thought it might have been better if her wizard father had held his tongue, for the ogre was looking fire out of his canary-yellow eyes. Being, after all, only a small girl, she began to weep and tremble. The bird-wizard impatiently bade her be still, or he'd take her back to her nursemaid, which made her weep the more, whereupon he turned away from the court of birds and began to retrace his steps. And the small girl heard the beggar-wizard screech after them:

  " 'That's thrice, l'oiseleur. That's thrice!"

  The needle had been busy throughout this astonishing tale, and as Mlle Linotte spoke the final word, it set the final stitch in the coat, knotted the thread and went still. Absently, I bit through the gossamer—it tasted most curiously of crême caramel—and took the unseamed breeches from her hands. Her normally pale cheeks were flushed and her lips pleated with the effort of holding back tears.