The Porcelain Dove (7 page)

Waiting for her at the altar was a rosary of clerics with the bridegroom in their midst like a gaunt, bright crucifix. His coat was pearl-colored silk with gold buttons, his waistcoat clear green, and his stockings bright primrose yellow. I distinctly remember thinking of birds when he bowed to his bride—a nervous, pecking dip of the head; and when he took her hand, I vow I half-expected him to fly up with her into the dim, high vault. For all the attention the wedding guests were paying, he might as well have done so.

As the priest began his invocation, the guests murmured, rustled, flirted, and moved about the nave of the church. Directly below me, someone sneezed violently: the comte de Poix, his face heavily painted and his coat of peacock satin so embroidered and beribboned, trimmed in crimson and laced in gold that I wondered how he had contrived to lift the snuff to his nose. Beside him, Mme Pauline fussed and fidgeted with her panniers. They were uncommonly wide and supported a court gown in the new shade that dyers call "merde d'oie." Mme du Fourchet, when she had first seen it, declared the color well-named. In the golden light of the tapers it took on a sheen like old bronze, very flattering to a creamy skin. I thought my mistress might look well in it.

The night was warm; what with the crowd and the tapers, the church grew stifling hot. I saw a woman gape behind her fan and another dab at her upper lip with a lace kerchief already stained with rouge and lamp-black. A choir boy nodding in his stall squeaked aloud when the sacristan poked him awake for the
Kyrie
, and the marquise de Bonsecours, who was near her confinement, fainted heavily into her twisted husband's arms. Under cover of the chanting she was conveyed to the vestry, and, her own maid not being present, I was called upon to attend her.

When I entered, Mme de Bonsecours lay groaning upon a bench. Her face was whiter than her sister's gown, the circles of rouge showed like a fever-flush upon her cheeks, and I feared her time was upon her. She assured me 'twas more likely wind, brought on by haricots and champagne at dinner, and she'd do very well if I'd loosen her stays and bathe her face with eau de cologne.

I'd tucked lavender-water in my pocket against my mistress' need, and 'twas the work of a moment to uncork it, dampen a linen kerchief, and lay it to the marquise's brow. She moved restlessly on the bench and put away my hand. "I think I must sit up, Berthe," said she. " 'Tis impossible for me to breathe when I lie flat. You're undoubtedly thinking me a great fool to show my face abroad so close to my accouchement, and you're undoubtedly right. Poor Adèle! How could I not come to see her wed?"

By this time, she'd struggled upright with my help, panting slightly, her belly like a great rock under her satins and laces. As I loosened her corset, I felt a pang of sympathy for her maid Louison, who'd thrown herself so wholeheartedly into the transformation of the lubberly Mlle Hortense into the elegant marquise de Bonsecours only to lose the greater part of her efforts to the bloating and dishevelment of pregnancy.

"That's the
Credo
, or I'm much mistaken," said the marquise presently. "The deed is done, and I not there to see it. Nor you. Poor Berthe."

As we sat listening to the choir's muted whining, tears welled in my eyes. I recall I was puzzled by them. I was no sentimentalist, me, to weep at weddings.

Mme de Bonsecours took the cologne-soaked kerchief from my lax fingers and applied it to her throat. "I know, Berthe, I know. I myself am of two minds about this marriage, as I would be of any match of monsieur my father's making. 'Tis not so bleak, even so. M. le duc de Malvoeux looks to have all the parts of a man. Why, I've even heard him discourse sensibly on art and science." She sighed and stirred uncomfortably. "All M. de Bonsecours knows is taxes. Why, to him, the divine Voltaire is no more than a godless fool who got himself banished from court."

I did not feel comforted. "I pray this duc will make my mistress happy."

"Happy? What fool has told you that happiness is the object of marriage, hein? To most husbands, a wife is a purse to spend from and a womb to spend in. Wealth, position, power, sons: those are the objects of Christian marriage, Berthe."

This, I thought, was a most unsuitable discussion for a servant to be having with a marquise. "La, madame, such things as you say! I am all out of countenance."

She laughed, not unkindly. "I cry you pardon, Berthe: you're
quite right. Will you fetch me that cushion, yes, the kneeler from the prie-dieu, and put it here, in the small of my back? Ah, just so. And a little more cologne on the kerchief, if you'd be so good? Thank you, Berthe." She smiled into my eyes. "You're as deft as Louison, and very much prettier. Cleverer, too, I've always thought."

I felt myself flushing. "La, madame," I said.

"Pray don't flutter—it don't become you. We're of an age, are we not?"

I looked at her in some surprise. A servant's precise age is not generally a matter of interest to the nobly born; she is either young and strong or old and useless. But Hortense du Fourchet de Bonsecours had always been an unaccountable creature. "I'm eighteen, madame."

"I thought so. I, too, am eighteen. Listen, ma chère." She leaned forward with difficulty and took my hand in hers. "My sister Adèle, as we both know, has more hair than wit, although 'tis such pretty hair that her lack of wit hardly matters." I began to protest; she pressed my hand and laughed. "Oh, don't deny it: you cannot. Let us be candid, you and I. Here in this vestry, with no one to hear us, we may surely speak as equals."

Well, I knew of a certainty that we could never speak as equals. Wherever we were and whoever heard us, we were forever and always a marquise and her sister's femme de chambre. And, since Mme de Bonsecours was not a fool, she knew it too. Because she was a marquise, however, I could hardly contradict her, so I shrugged—As you will, madame—and knelt at her feet.

"Candidly, then. I don't like this duc de Malvoeux. He fixes me with his sharp, black eye, and I feel like a beetle or a large grub—too large, thankfully, for him to snap up comfortably. He seems to me like . . . oh, I don't know, like a famine or a plague perhaps, that creeps up silently and consumes utterly."

I shivered. "Madame is enceinte," I said uncomfortably, "and very near her time."

"And these are the sick fancies of pregnancy? No, Berthe, I think not. Truly, I fear for Adèle." She took my chin in her hand and searched my eyes. "Madame my mother chose you for Adèle for no better reason than your youth and your pretty face. Nevertheless, she chose well. You've a fine wit, Berthe, and a good and faithful heart."

At this, I blushed and looked away, murmuring that madame was too kind. She released my chin. "Now I've embarrassed you. But 'tis true. I hardly need ask it, I know. Yet I fear he may try to drive you
away and put some creature of his own in charge of her. Whatever he does, swear to me you'll stay with her."

Her words were high tragedy; her face and figure low comedy. And yet I never doubted that the lady was in earnest. You may imagine how I stared at her, alarmed no less by her vehemence than by her dark forebodings. My oath, when at last I collected my wits to swear it, was drowned by a consort of horns blaring the news that M. le duc de Malvoeux and his new-made duchesse were leaving the church. If I didn't hurry, they'd be away. I started to my feet, then looked down into Mme de Bonsecours's sweat-streaked face. How could I leave her alone? Whether her pangs were wind or labor, she was clearly unwell. And yet, who'd see to my mistress' train if I were not by? Who'd help her into her carriage?

Mme de Bonsecours laughed. "I am well answered, Berthe. Such a look of dismay! Bien sûr, you must go to your mistress. But first desire Mme de Luce to step inside—I think I saw her standing near. She's a kindly old biddy-hen, and delights in births and deaths." Stricken, I goggled at her; she sighed impatiently. " 'Tis only wind, silly goose. Fetch Mme de Luce and then be off with you."

Gratefully, I curtsied and went in search of Mme de Luce, who was plump breasted, bright eyed, and given to coquelicot ribbons on her caps. I urged her, clucking, into the vestry, then made off down the side aisle for the church porch.

What a throng was there! 'Tis hard to believe, at this remove of miles and centuries, that there were ever so many people in the world, much less in a single Paris street. How can I hope to describe the wonder and the terror of such a scene? In a world populated by seven, four make a crowd; four hundred is inconceivable. And there were upwards of four hundred guests in the church of Sainte-Catherine, and le bon Dieu only knows how many common folk in the street outside. The noise they made was deafening, like a flock of hungry crows cawing, pecking, treading on one another's feet and backs, battering one another with their wings, all eager to be the first to the fresh carrion, to peck out the tender eyes, the soft tongue.

I stood a-tiptoe at the church door, searching for my mistress in among the chapeaux-bras, bow-knots, plumes, and powdered horsehair wigs swarming on the church porch and steps. In the street below, liveried guards linked arms against the canaille, whose gaunt and filthy faces grimaced in the lurid flare of the flambeaux like so many fiends
of hell. Some several caws could be heard above the high-bred shrieking of the wedding guests:

"Hey, sieur! Let me break her in for you!"

"Make her show you what they taught her in the convent!"

"Don't cry, missus. It'll be over soon."

"Aye. From the looks of him, he'll be finished long before you begin to enjoy it!"

"Think she'll pleasure you better than your manservant, sieur?"

Briefly the flow of guests parted around my mistress, who was cringing against M. le duc's arm in an attitude more suitable to a new-caught thief than a new-made bride. I wormed my way to her, then, suddenly shy, smoothed my apron and coughed for her attention. She clutched his arm—I remember the pearly silk wrinkling under her fingers—and turned a frightened face to me.

"My felicitations, mademoiselle," I murmured, curtsying low.

My mistress smiled—a small, tight, cold smile. "I am not mademoiselle anymore, Berthe, but the duchesse de Malvoeux. You must call me madame now."

I swallowed tears. "Yes, madame. I . . . wish you happy, madame."

"Thank you, Berthe," she said more easily, and I think would have embraced me had not M. de Malvoeux put his arm about her waist to bear her down the steps and into the carriage. Nobles and beggars raised a cheer, and then the bridal couple were off, their horses plunging madly and scattering the rabble like rats before them.

That night, while the duchesse de Malvoeux was toasting her husband before two hundred noble guests, I was rattling my bones in the baron's old traveling coach over the cobbles towards the rue des Lions.

In physical distance, at least, the distance between the hôtel Fourchet and the hôtel Malvoeux wasn't far. It seemed to me that M. du Fourchet's coachman had no sooner turned out of the rue Quincampoix than he was reining up the horses and shouting for someone to come untie the duchesse de Malvoeux's trunks while I peeked nervously from the window. Save for a single guttering flambeau, the courtyard was dark as a pit; alighting from the coach, I could see nothing of the hôtel save three stained marble steps and a scarred black door.

The running footman mounted the steps and gave the door six new dents with the knob of his staff. Time passed; he knocked again.
The door opened a little way, grudgingly, and a thin, seamed face peered around it.

"It'll be the new mistress' servingmaid no doubt," said the face sourly. "Well, come in, girl, and bring one of those bags with you. 'Tis not my place to carry bags and boxes. Madame's servants must see to madame's things; I know nothing of women's fol-de-rols."

Reluctantly, I followed the face into a high, dark hall lit only by a branch of candles on a gilded console. "I am Dentelle," said the face's owner, and when I neither exclaimed nor swooned, pursed his lips together like an alms-box. "I am the valet of M. le duc de Malvoeux. Madame's apartments are left at the top of the stairs. Cul-terroux!"—this to the footman, who was staggering under the weight of a banded trunk—"Have a care with that trunk. Those urns flanking the stairs are from Cathay, brought to France by the great-grandfather of M. le duc, and worth twice your miserable hide."

Jean, my friend and faithful adviser, Jean agrees that I've caught Dentelle to the life: the face of a river pike and the soul of a dung hill cock. Timid and strange as I felt that first night, I'm proud to say I retained sufficient spirit to hate him at once.

"Oh?" I said. "And is his great-grandsire's taste in urns the reason M. le duc is too poor to hire lackeys? Is there no one to wait upon him and his new duchesse but one miserable valet? Bah. This is not what I am accustomed to, me."

Dentelle puffed out his chest, drew himself stiffly upright, and clapped his hands sharply together, calling the pie-faced boy and three other lackeys up from the hôtel's nether regions. "Carry this paraphernalia above," he said, disdainfully flicking his fingers at my mistress' trunks. "And one of you keep a watch at the end of the street for monsieur's carriage. Fetch some tapers, and you, Gaston, sweep the floor. Who knows what harm all this to-ing and fro-ing, all these bundles and boxes, might not do the parquet? Well, louts? Do you wait for Our Lord to come again?"

With a great show of energy and speed, the lackeys hefted madame's luggage upstairs, glaring at me the while as though I were to blame for the valet's ill-temper. They dumped everything outside the door and slouched away, leaving me to muddle along alone. For an hour or more, I dragged trunks into the dressing-room and emptied them, hastily laying gowns in the tall presses and stuffing petticoats, stays, sleeve-ruffles, ribbons, chemises and caps higgledy-piggledy into drawers to get them out of the way.

I've always found it a tedious business unpacking and bestowing my mistress' clothes, but never more than on my first night in the hôtel Malvoeux. The dressing-room was cramped and musty; the bedchamber was hot and ill-aired. There was no antechamber. The furniture was as grand as you please, though outmoded and sadly sparse: a bed, a tambour table, a satin-covered bergère by the fire, and a long-case clock, all of them set far apart as feuding relatives and meagerly lit by a pair of wax candles on the mantelpiece. What with the lateness of the hour and the shadows in the corners, I was as frightened and low-spirited as a whore in a Hôtel Dieu. Mme de Bonsecours feared for her sister's happiness: at the moment, I feared chiefly for my own. Olympe, Mignon, Saint-Cloud, LeBeau—all my friends and my family were left behind in the warm, well-ordered house on the rue Quincampoix and the future stretched before me, cold and bleak and friendless. Would my mistress still love me as she had before? Must I trade Olympe for Dentelle?