THE WET NURSE’S DAUGHTER
Lissa M. Cowan
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Published by:
Lissa M. Cowan at Smashwords
Copyright (c) 2012 by Lissa M. Cowan
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All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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Adult Reading Material
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Many thanks to all the incredible people who helped me with edits, suggestions and their love and encouragement throughout the lengthy writing process. Thanks to Daphne Marlatt, Shannon Cowan, Penelope Cowan, Jen Sookfong Lee, Joanna Stonechapel, Leslie Palleson and many others who I’m probably forgetting. Special thanks to Sanjay Khanna who stood by me and encouraged me when it seemed all was lost. I’d also like to thank Laetitia Rutherford who helped me to massage each version with her expert advice and edits.
Please note that I use Canadian spelling throughout.
This tale began several years ago at a writer’s retreat at the Banff Centre for the Arts.
I hope you enjoy the story as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Prologue
The events leading to Armande becoming my mother and teacher must be viewed as pure magic. Like her milk, the wet nurse had special powers that touched all who knew her, especially me. My own mother was a meek woman whose neglect made staying at home impossible. After running away from home at age sixteen, I wandered for days without seeing a soul or tasting any food. Then I saw a peddler walking on the road with a bulging sack on his shoulders: a sign that my life would soon change. I stumbled toward him down a hill strewn with craggy rocks. I thought he might take pity on me and give me something to eat.
“Bonjour, la jeune damoisselle,” he said with eyes of a saucy sparrow.
“What is your name?”
“Céleste,” I answered. I didn’t look at him straight on, as he was a man, and we were alone.
“I have something for you. I am not opposed to selling these you know, though they are forbidden in most places. How absurd say I, for they warn against the corruption of innocence, a most sad and rampant affair.” The traveller was slight like me but had dark hair. Mine was the colour of straw.
On top of his open sack I saw breads of every taste, shape and kind. Breads made with roots and exotic fruits, braided breads with wild white poppy seeds, anise and fennel. My eyes feasted on the sight before me.
“Look here,” He said picking one up, on which was etched a picture of a woman lifting her skirt. She sat in a chair, her legs open, knees bent to the side like a frog belly up. A man knelt at her feet with one hand on her bare thigh, the other on her lace stocking. I blushed at the picture, yet admired the woman’s dress. My apron was soiled from sleeping on bare ground and my plain shawl in tatters.
“This is a most tragic tale of a country girl who goes to Paris and becomes a courtesan, a favourite among all manner of clergy and marquis. A warning for young girls such as you not to fall prey to bodily impulses.”
What was this talk about stories told in these breads one eats? As a child, I heard stories at the bakery in my village. The baker’s wife would hand out a chunk of warm bread to each body in the room. I too tasted the soft dough, all the while fixed on the teller’s words. I heard stories at the market, churchyard and on the street. Tellers were famous for certain tales: well-known hands, faces and movements conjuring up a story over and over. Some became the characters they spoke of, changing into the evil one, quick-footed and sly, or playing sweet and graceful as the goodly soul. A few of them moved only the eyes. They were quiet as a hare sniffing the wind for wolf. Those listening to the story watched the eyes for a flash at the next bit: at times, they glimmered in a hopeful way or filled with fear, the skin around them tight and worried.
“A young girl like you might take comfort in devotional prayers to the Virgin Mary.” The seller dropped the dainty bread and picked up another. His hands were quick, and his little legs jumped about as though detached from his body. “If you prefer adventure, I’ve some selections over here. Of course, there’s our dear Rousseau. You know La Nouvelle Héloïse? I love you as one must love, with excess, madness, rapture and despair.” He put his hand to his head sighing like a gentlewoman.
I picked up one of the objects and ran my fingers over it. It was unlike any bread I had ever seen, yet what else, I thought, could it be? Surely, this must be the food of kings and princes.
The man pulled a walking stick from his bag, danced around and piercing the air as though he was a musketeer duelling with his enemy.
“I’ve stories of King Arthur and his knights and modern tales by Monsieur Perrault. May a hailstone crack open my skull if you’ve never heard of these?” My stomach growled. He held out one of the books, I took it, and gnawed its edges, not remembering the last time I had something in my stomach. It tasted terrible.
“What do you think you’re doing?” He smacked me on the back of the head causing me to spit out what was in my mouth.
“You don’t know what these are? It’s 1787 and you don’t even know how to read?” said the man. “Why merchants read, perfume sellers read and coachmen read. You, my dear, are no worse or no better.”
“You are delirious, my child.” He grabbed the book from me smoothing the edges with his fingers. “These are not breads or cakes. Customers like you will put me out of business.” He rooted around in a small grey pouch tied to his waist. “J’ai quelques pommes. They’re from a farmer’s orchard down the road. I must be a goodly man for never have I tasted such beauties. Just like the ones in the Garden of Eden. Here take one.” I ate it in one gulp and then he gave me back the book. “Take it. It’s no use to me now.”
What was it for? The traveller spoke of tales, yet no tales came out of the thing in my hand. If they did, it would have been better buried in the ground, as it was a strange kind of magic to have a thing speak. Opening it up, I saw pictures of animals dressed in the clothes of gentlemen and gentlewomen. A princess slept in a very high bed while another part showed a shoe made of glass. Though somewhat afraid of it, the object remained close to me as I walked.
Further along, I came to a big house and gardens where trees lined the road as soldiers in a row. On the other side of the hill away from the house was a run-down shelter. Small and quick-footed, I drifted in without being seen. I lived there for a couple days with the cows, drinking milk straight from their teats, and feasting on eggs from the chickens and sweet plants in the field. But a man with a face like a craggy rock, eyes dark and small as rabbit droppings, found me.
“No strays on my land,” he shouted, and beat me with a rod. Yet he needed a servant, and let me sleep in the stable.
I was sixteen, on my own, and grateful to Lord Jesus I had work at the estate of Master Dogface—my secret name for him. His snout had hairs coming out of it, wiry as spider’s legs. His ears looked like bits of leather.
Armande, the wet nurse was caring for the master’s son, as his mother was dead. Where most wet nurses didn’t know how to read or have a care for it, Armande read as she gave suck to infants.
Everybody knows, the cook told me, when a child sucks at a woman’s teats the thoughts of that woman are impressed upon it. If a woman has vile thoughts and cusses morning until night, then any child she nurses will have the Devil for its friend. Just as a gentlewoman gobbled sweet breads, pies and puddings, Armande devoured poetry, philosophy, history and botany. I realized then what books were for, and that they were a kind of food. Reading was what made her milk different from that of other women. It was like the bread and wine that became the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. The cook could pick up four adult hares by the ears with one hand. Whether she was angry or happy it didn’t matter, she would clang the pots together all the same. And, when she told you a thing, you believed it.
I began to follow Armande, catching sight of her skirts slinking through an open door. Dusting porcelain on tables in the drawing room, I watched, as she sat by the fire brushing her long, dark curls. She fastened them on top, three or four strands washing over her cheeks. She looked right at me as no one had before. Her eyes were as hands pulling me into gentleness, covering me with warmth. Between chores, I snuck into the nursery while she slept in the rocking chair beside the resting baby boy. Just to be there.
One afternoon I hid behind the paravent while she gave suck. Between panels, I could see her lips move as she sang. The cook told me she saw a change in the boy since he started taking her milk, curls now thick as sailor’s rope, legs strong and wiry like a boy of six. Yet that wasn’t all. The boy’s eyes were pure and wise, the opposite of his father’s. That told me something strange and magical was afoot.
When Master Dogface’s child was weaned off Armande’s milk, the cook and helpers prepared a farewell feast for her. There were roasted meats, vegetables and a pudding that smelled like sweet clover. Tears overflowed as they spoke of the quality of her milk. One of the servants said because of her mysterious liquid, the Master’s child already saw the world, knew the bad and the good lurking within men. The old man who cared for the horses said the baby could say ten words or more, which he thought was a miracle. I grew used to the wet nurse’s kindness. Her singing, smiles in my direction, laughter, and her scent. I didn’t want it to end.
“I need someone to assist me with chores and the infants I nurse,” she said to Master Dogface. “You would be doing me a great service if you let me have her.”
“You are wrong Madame, for it is you who would be doing me a great service,” he replied. “She has always been more of a curse than a blessing.”
She brought me to her house in the mountains, washed filth from my yellow hair and scraggy limbs—smells of urine, dried earth. She held a mirror to my new skin and said it was Italian marble with a hint of rose from Versailles. My hands were stiff as dead birds from lifting straw bundles and chopping wood. Armande rubbed my skin with scented lavender butter until life came into them. Her beauty struck me: dark curls piled atop her head, soft chestnut eyes both stirring and comforting.
A day after we arrived she took me to her father’s library. She told me he was away on business, and that he bought and sold banned philosophical works in cities as far as Bordeaux, Marseille and Lyon. I didn’t understand what she was talking about. Piles of books teetered on a table and replicas of Greek and Roman statues towered over us. Books lined the walls: brown spines with gold letters, green spines with red letters, dusty yellow with words surrounded by fanciful lines. A row of tall volumes rested on the first shelf behind the table. These were encyclopedias and reference books. On the very top of the shelves were masks from Africa and beside that, a globe of the world.
Armande handed me a book from the shelf. It resembled those the peddler showed me before I met her. The object was clumsy and stiff in my hands. She told me to close my eyes to feel it better. I pressed it with all the strength I could bring to bear. She said the pages of books were made from cotton and linen rags stamped into pulp, then pressed into paper and hung to dry. I laughed at her for telling such a lie. I thought maybe she was just like my father.
The next day she had me open the book. I had no idea even what letters were. She said after I learned them we would string them together and make words. I thought she was crazy. Rows and rows of lines she called words. They looked odd. Many times I searched hard within every letter, every sound to find meaning. The letters cut my tongue as thorns on a rose bush, each one sticking to me. I could not speak the next letter until the one before it came unstuck. Soon after the word was finally spoken, my lazy tongue quit my mouth. Months later, the wet nurse asked me to read a passage aloud. The first line was, Bodies gliding on morning’s cloak of dew, lit up as iridescent insect wings they flew. With each word, my skin grew warm until I was like a man with too much liquor in his blood. My voice shook and my mouth and tongue ran ahead of me. Armande said it didn’t matter if the words seemed strange to me. When I came to the word iridescent, Armande said to say it slowly, one letter at a time. She told me it was from the word iris for the flower, and escent for colours of the rainbow that change as a dragonfly in the sun. Finally, when my tongue began working with me, worrying less she asked me to say other words like deliquescent, effervescence, and florescence. These newfound words were as rare gems dug up by the wet nurse to please me. She wrote them out with big stokes that filled a whole page. I rubbed my eyes to make the words go away, yet they only stayed there waiting for me to say them.
I learned to read and write, and I learned first-hand about the miraculous effects Armande’s milk had on babies. Before, I was only a servant watching from afar as she suckled. Then I was a part of her life, holding and changing babies, burping them, and rocking them to sleep. She cared for three babies during this period yet not all at once. She would also tend to others from time to time, reassuring worried mothers who came to visit in soothing tones as gentle and sweet as the milk itself. First there was Jacques who was still with us. Caroline came after, then Heloïse. The first time I watched from up close as Jacques drank her milk we were in the drawing room.
Armande was on her favourite oak chair with the sagging blue leather seat and worn arms while I was on the sofa, watching, feeling years of hurt and regret crumbling away inside me like old tree bark. Jacques stopped sucking, then gazed at me knowingly his eyes full of light. He was looking right at me, and yet through me to somewhere else. In that instant, a slim ray of sun gleamed through a crack lighting up the darkness inside me. I could swear the space where I sat was warmer. My hands shook. Sweat ran down my cheeks and the back of my neck. I guessed that was what her father meant when he said; we are entering a new age driven by light. Not the one in the sky, but the one in our minds.
La Salle-les-Alpes, France
Winter 1789
A gentle snow was falling out my window….
…Trees with no leaves lifted branches to the sky. White buried every hill and every field—milk drunk by the wind and tossed over the land. The baby cried in a room of the house. An unfamiliar call of distress, not hunger. Floorboards creaked in the corridor followed by muffled voices. I opened the curtain around my bed, wrapping myself in a blanket. I was about to open the door when I heard her father.
“Why has this become your duty?” He raised his voice. They stood outside my bedchamber. Armande held Nathalie whose cries grew more desperate. “I did not spend all that time with you in the library reading Galileo and d’Alembert for you to become a wet nurse.”
“You have never understood father. Women seek my counsel and are lost without it. This is where we differ.”
“I received this.” He lowered his voice.
“What is it?”
“A lettre de cachet addressed to me. Observe the royal seal.”
“Why haven’t you opened it? What do you think it could be?” Armande’s voice rose.
“I am afraid it is an order for me to present myself to the authorities in Bordeaux. Auguste was captured in Bordeaux during a hunger riot last month. He was there on business and had no part in what was going on, yet they imprisoned him.”
Auguste, I knew was Monsieur Vivant’s dear friend.
“I recently heard from his poor dear wife that he has been charged with treason. Oh, my child, I have been the worst friend in the world to him.” His breathing was heavy. “I gave him a book I wrote to take with him on his travels, which might have caused his arrest—just a saucy tale of a scheming courtier and his unfaithful mistress. Yet because of that book the authorities might have suspected he conspired against the King. Any little thing will stir them these days.”
“Open it, father,” Armande told him.
There was rustling of paper, floorboards creaking. The baby, now quiet, had no doubt tired herself out.
“What does it say?”
“I don’t believe it,” he gasped. “It’s not what I expected at all.”
“Tell me father,” Armande said.
“He summons you to Versailles….” His words trailed off.
“What do you mean?”
“The Dauphin is sick with consumption. It’s right here,” he raised his voice, and then broke down.
Later that morning, seeing it on her desk in the drawing room I picked it up. At first I was afraid of it. The paper was of the finest quality. Like silk. I couldn’t help myself and so touched it to my lips. The cachet or seal was the colour of blood. In my hands was a letter signed by the King of France and one of his ministers.
Armande’s skin was pale with no rose to her cheeks, her eyes showing a great deal of worry.
“The King wants me to nurse the Dauphin back to health,” she told me.
“Will you go to Versailles?” My heart followed my words. Armande had just nursed Nathalie and so I was rocking the baby in hopes she would fall to sleep.
“How can I journey to Versailles when my heart tells me that my duty is to those in my village?”
All of France knew the Dauphin was a weak child. Of course the boy had stopped nursing years before, but his father was searching for an elixir to save his son’s life. Now at the age of seven, his back was bent like Apollo’s bow and he was in bed with fevers. Wet nurses were as common in France as mice in a root cellar. Rosy-cheeked peasants whose milk was healthy as the fresh country air they breathed. Yet somehow even the King and Queen and perhaps all of Versailles, knew Armande was different.
“Does the King in his royal palace mull over the hardships of women here? He is more concerned with an innocent man like Auguste.” She stood up and began to pace in front of the fire.
Above the hearth was a painting of a country scene, willow trees and river, two boys fishing knee high in water. A carpet covered the wide plank floors. The design was of orange and yellow autumn leaves.
“Perhaps, as my father believes, it all started from a harmless book.”
I didn’t understand Armande’s meaning until she told me about her first trip to Paris with her father, when she was six.
“We were in a church in Paris,” she said. “My father told me I was to accompany him while he picked up a special package from a gentleman.” Her lazy chestnut eyes met my gaze.
“Did you know the man?” I asked, rocking Nathalie to sleep.
“I came to know him later on.” Seeming lost in thought, she gathered her hair at her shoulder. “Monsieur Taranne. He towered over me, wore a yellow scarf and his eyebrows were long and unruly, practically covering his eyelids. He had a spindly nose and wide shoulders. Monsieur Taranne produced a small package, which my father hid beneath his cloak.”
“What was the package?”
“A banned book, a political tract or a series of stories that poked fun at the King.
On leaving the church, my father bought me a bouquet of roses from one of the women on the boulevard. I recall sticking my nose into them, my senses instantly filled with their sweet aroma, the colour and softness of them on my cheeks. Then a boy reached out from a passing coach and pulled a flower from my bouquet, which sent the rest tumbling to the ground. When the pretty things were torn from my grasp, my eyes caught sight of children scattered in the streets like ants. Non-stop shiver of skin, heads split by the pain of hunger, bodies clutching ribs, broken, cut apart by pleurisy. As it sped away, my father looked after the gilded coach drawn by elegant horses in the finest trappings. His visage suddenly turned overcast. ‘How is it that the lord and lady and their handsome son can lie voluptuously in their coach while others line the streets with no shelter or food to eat? A time will come when people will become conscious of the tyrannies of kings and nobles. Then these despots will tremble before them.’”
She stood still by the fire. A dark curl cascaded over her brow. “It was a moment I will never forget. The uprisings happening in Paris and other cities around the country fill me with hope.” Yet her face showed a mask of worry that didn’t match her words. Her brow tightened.
“But how can you disobey the King’s orders?” I asked her thinking how the King was appointed by almighty God to carry out his wishes.
“My father taught me to be brave and not recoil from speaking up against injustice and in favour of truth. My place is here, not in Versailles.”
Monsieur Vivant came into the drawing room and sat on the sofa, his hands tightly folded across his thin frame.
“Didn’t you teach me that father?” she said to him.
“Yes, my darling,” he replied. “Endeavour always to be brave.” He had a scruffy face and sad eyes; his light brown hair speckled with grey was tousled. “That’s why we have to leave the village for Paris.”
“What do you mean father?”
“The King addressed the letter to me,” he said, his tone absent.
Armande met her father’s gaze. Her cheeks burned bright red. “I’m not leaving our home,” she told him. “The King is like a spoiled child. His lettres de cachet are tantrums he takes to get his own way. These letters go against the parlement and have ruined the lives of far too many innocents.”
Nathalie was asleep and so I placed her in a basket with a fur skin on top and started on my daily lesson. It was hard to concentrate though given their fiery discussion.
“I agree wholeheartedly and commend you on your steadfastness not to play by his rules, which are capricious at best.”
“In any case, they asked for me,” she told him. “Perhaps by staying I am putting you in danger?”
“It is a trap.” Her father raised his voice, leaping up from the sofa. “He knows about my bookselling as I said. Why else would he have addressed the letter to me rather than you?” Monsieur Vivant wore no waistcoat and his white shirt hung outside his tan coloured breeches.
“My father gave Auguste a book he wrote of libertine tales,” she told me. “He thinks that might have caused his dear friend’s arrest, and put my father in their sights once more.”
Monsieur Vivant continued. “Yes, they’ve heard about your milk and, yes, the King and Queen want you to nurse the dearly loved and sickly Dauphin, the next in line to be crowned. Yet what is also clear to me on reading this letter is that the King doesn’t know where I am yet believes you will make this letter known to me. I will then accompany you to Versailles at which point I will be arrested. If you journey on your own they will demand you tell them of my whereabouts. It is possible that they will harm you if you don’t obey their wishes. If we go together, all will be over for me. Yet should you refuse to go, eventually they would come looking for both of us.”
“How can you be so sure they are after you as well?”
“My beloved daughter, remember when I went into hiding for several months and you mistook me for dead. Scoundrels sent by the King set the boat on fire that contained the books I was transporting down the Rhône River. I barely escaped with my life. As it happens, some time ago, Monsieur Taranne invited me to work with him in Paris just like old times. I told him I would give the matter serious consideration. With his connections to foreign publishers and go-betweens coupled with my good judgment about what to print, facility for printing pamphlets and finding authors, we are well-matched business partners. Just imagine that these various facets of our work are several springs, which, as La Mettrie writes, make up the man as machine, and you have the level of solidity and efficiency we embody.”
“You are a very good match,” said Armande. “That does not change the fact that you are the most obstinate man I know.”
“Not quite the most obstinate man.”
“You promised to never speak of him again.” Armande’s voice shrank to a whisper.
My ears perked up. Was her father talking about her estranged husband? I never met him, yet heard from villagers he fled the village saying she was a witch. She changed her name back after he left her. What sort of woman wouldn’t take her husband’s name to the grave? Idle gossip was better to ignore. I tried to read my passage for that day which was from Galileo’s Starry Messenger. Armande told me get into the habit of reading well and understanding all the good in the mother tongue. Yet it was no use.
“Can you ever forgive me? I am feeling the weight of what’s before us and was thoughtless.” He took her hand, brushing a strand of hair from her face.
When he did this Armande began to weep. Her shoulders shook as she cried and cried. I ran over to comfort her and she went limp in my arms.
“You mustn’t go father. Not again,” she said between sobs.
I held her for several moments, her wet cheek on my shoulder. I didn’t know what to say so just kept her close to me until she pulled away.
“Now, now my darling daughter—you mean everything to me.” He cupped his hands around her face. “You worry for my safety.”
“There are more of the King’s police roaming the streets in Paris, more chances that you’ll be captured,” she said.
Jacques came running in at that moment. I quickly set out some blocks for him to play with so he wouldn’t bother Armande. He sat on his heels, throwing a handful of colourful wooden shapes across the floor, then clapping his hands at the ear-splitting sound they made. His hair was messy and he wore one of Armande’s scarves on his head like a turban. A green shiny necklace circled his wrist. His mother died in childbirth and Armande stepped up to care for him without a thought about payment.
“Please come with me to Paris. And of course Céleste should come too. I can protect you both there.” He looked in my direction. “It is only a matter of time before they start looking for us.”
“They may come for me if they wish father. My home is here and this is where I belong.”
After supper that same day, Armande and I sat side-by-side on the dormeuse. She hugged me close, draping her shawl over my shoulders like a mother bird sheltering me with her wing. Her lavender and milk smells filled my nose. The fire was almost out, the last log quickly melting into the embers. Armande’s breath was light and steady. She pressed her body close to mine, a lock of her hair brushing against my cheek. One of my big toes peeked out of a hole in my stocking. It was colder than the rest. The drawing room suddenly became dark without the fire. A chill ran over my shoulders and the back of my neck when she got up and went to the window.
Blue curtains surrounded her thin yet solid body on either side. Her gown was deep red like cherries and her chemise billowed at the arms midway down. I thought she could almost be a portrait hanging on a wall. She stood so still, her hair fastened on top of her head with a few locks around her face, just like a proper queen.
With her back to me, she said, “They have finally caught up to us Céleste.”
Two days after Armande’s father received the lettre de cachet, horrible news came…
…that Auguste, his close friend, was hanged shortly after he was imprisoned. He was charged with conspiring against the King. Armande’s father hid away in his library.
I could hear him sobbing when I walked past. Armande set a tray of food down for him, chicken and barley soup, and some bread. I knocked until finally he opened the door.
“Your supper Monsieur Vivant,” I said pointing to the tray.
“I’m not hungry,” he replied as he held the door open for me.
I brought the tray in and set it on the table.
“Dear Céleste what am I to do? Most of the pamphlets I write or books I am having printed abroad are as harmful as a Sunday stroll in the Bois de Boulogne,” he said sitting down in an upholstered chair by the fire. “Those in Versailles find ways to feast their eyes on all manner of erotic tales without fear of being reprimanded. The Duc de Praslin was found with six bales of forbidden books while it was rumoured that the King’s youngest brother Artois was protecting hawkers. An aristocrat can hire private colporteurs to procure any erotic tidbit under the sun, while I cannot even qualify for simple tolerances from the King.”
His face was full of sadness. The heavy curtains were closed so all that lit us was the blazing fire.
“You will take care of my daughter won’t you? See she doesn’t come to any harm?”
“I will, Monsieur,” I told him, not considering for a moment he might leave.
“You’re a good girl, Céleste. There’s nobody as sturdy and constant as you.” His hair was tied back, a few strands covering his eyes. Beads of sweat collected on his brow and above his upper lip.
He had a reputation in the village for frequenting different women. Recently, it was rumoured he was seeing Agnès on Tuesday, Mariette, Wednesday, and Claire, Thursday. Armande told me, as a young man he was supposed to join the priesthood, yet could not keep his nose out from under women’s petticoats. To me he had a big heart and a sharp mind filled with scientific facts and whole passages from books.
“Armande has enemies as you well know. Ignorance is rampant here. She must stay out of harm’s way.” He made a fist and punched the palm of his other hand. “When they come looking for her, maybe she will stand a better chance if I’m gone.”
“Yes Monsieur.”
“This isn’t how I planned for things to turn out. Sometimes circumstances force us to stand up for what we know is right, no matter what the outcome. Auguste was a cherished friend. His death….”
He stood up to get the bowl of soup on the tray, which he poured into a pot over the fire to heat. He dipped a bread crust into the soup in the bottom of the bowl and then popped it into his mouth. His eyes begged me to sit by him. Perched on the edge of the chair, my body soon settled into the warmth of his arm coming through his thin chemise. Two lines etched between his brows.
“Armande is in danger Céleste and not only from the King.” His voice was low and rough. “The other day I was on a jaunt through the forest when the woman who keeps bees passed. She said something under her breath about my having a devil for a daughter. Peasants are becoming more restless as they have less and less to feed and clothe their children. They imagine things. Weave stories about people that aren’t true. They are out for blood, not milk.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. His words cut through me. The room was dim. Together we watched the last embers of the fire die away.
Could I really keep Armande safe? I could chop wood, mend, cook, and take care of babies, yet I had never protected anybody before. Though sometimes I sensed things before they happened. Like the time I dreamt about a baby telling me the story of its birth and then the very next day baby Caroline did just that. As I held her, her laughing blue eyes told of how the sun’s warmth and wind caressed her face for the first time. Birds singing outside the window of the chamber where her mother gave birth. The baby didn’t speak with words, yet I heard it loud and clear. Armande’s milk gave the babies goodness and a knowing that no other woman could match.
In the kitchen Armande was chopping turnips and carrots to add to the broth for the evening supper. Beside her, windowpanes were painted with hoarfrost in the shape of flowers. I picked up Nathalie from a blanket on the floor. She made a gurgling sound and rubbed her eyes.
“He really is leaving us,” I said trying to convince myself.
“He seems determined,” she said with a deep sigh. “He senses a new threat upon us and all others who think freely with no mind for dogma or religion.” She wore a simple ivory robe with thick pleats at the back that brought out her curves, and a top petticoat in dark pink and white.
“He is afraid that, like his friend, he too risks imprisonment, death, or being sent off in chains to row in the galleys.”
“I don’t understand. Where is the danger in books?” As far as I could tell everything Monsieur Vivant did was good.
I sat at the long table by the window holding the baby and watching Armande add the cut up vegetables to the pot. A dried bouquet of herbs hung over my head, crumbling mint and sage leaves collecting on the sill.
“Anything that encourages the fires of rebellion is viewed as a danger by those who hold power.”
Nathalie was fidgeting and so I began playing peek-a-boo using her knitted bonnet. Her face lit up, then she reached out to pull my nose. Next, she pulled my lower lip over to my ear. When she first came to us she wouldn’t swallow a drop of Armande’s milk, and instead wound her pink body into a knot. Then, suddenly, as if caressed by an angel, she began to draw the milk in, her tight fists slowly opening, wrinkled brow smoothing.
The kitchen warmed and the windows steamed up as Armande set about lighting the fire for the soup. Jacques ran into the kitchen trailing a ball of yarn. His blonde hair was curly on top and straight at the sides just like his front teeth.
“Time to eat soon,” she told him. He sat on the blanket and proceeded to unwind all the yarn into a muddled heap.
Armande sat at the table, resting her head on her hands.
Then we heard an awful clamour at the front door. I handed Nathalie to Armande and ran down the hall to see who it was. On the other side of the door was a young woman. Her eyes were pure and she held a small bundle. She had freckles on her nose, cheeks and forehead and her hair was the colour of butter.
“I wish to see the wet nurse.” She was out of breath.
“You gave me a start,” I scolded her. She entered the house and took the cloth from the baby’s face. Its head was no bigger than a potato and wrinkles covered its forehead, cheeks and chin.
“He is only two days old,” she said.
The woman’s cloak wasn’t worn and she carried herself better than most. Though she walked more slowly than one should for her age, which I supposed to be about eighteen. Her belly was still plump from being with child. She followed me into the drawing room. Armande was by then sitting in her armchair nursing Nathalie.
“Madame Vivant,” the woman drew closer. The shoulders of her cloak were covered in fresh snowflakes as was her grey-blue open gown and petticoat. “I’ve come all the way from the village of Les Combes. My husband worked as an instructor at our new school. He developed a fever and died the very next day; struck dead with a wintry chill. Villagers told me it was because he was teaching children to read and write, yet the old woman who sent me to you said that was nonsense.”
“What is your opinion on the matter Mademoiselle?” Armande looked at her intently. For her there was only one right answer. The woman’s cheeks were shiny and red and she looked tired, having walked a few hours in the snow.
“I don’t know. He was a good husband to me, though he went so quickly and right after staying up late reading an atheist’s work, a dreadful man, a physician, who came to his ideas through cutting up corpses to observe their inner workings. He writes that humans are machines and the soul is subservient to the mind and body. What was his name?” She looked at the ceiling as if the words could be found there.
“La Mettrie,” said Armande. “His book is L’Homme machine.”
“Yes, that’s it. Do you abide by this nonsense Madame?”
“That depends on what part of his ideas you are calling nonsense.” Armande wasn’t one to tell people what to think. Rather she wanted them to find answers for themselves.
Sophie swiftly changed the subject.
“I’ve only just had my baby yet the milk hasn’t come as milk should.” She squatted on the floor. Her baby rested upon her lap. “I have no womanly way to feed him.” Her desperate eyes searched Armande’s face.
Nathalie finished nursing and was now fast asleep. I placed her in the basket with a fur skin on top and set about bringing life to the almost-dead fire.
“Besides the old woman, other villagers have spoken to me about your milk Madame Vivant. They say you have pots full with mother’s milk hanging on hooks in the kitchen for babies to drink.”
Her tired eyes lit up. Freckled nose shot up in the air. She imitated with bravado the gossiping women in her village, her voice soft, then high at times.
“With all that milk, the wet nurse will need to have more children to share in the abundance. Otherwise, the infants she suckles will be spoiled. They’ll believe that life is full of bounty and goodness instead of rot.” She swished her infant to and fro, reciting a witches’ charm to bring on the milk:
Hare’s milke and mare’s milk
An’ all the beas’ that bears milk
Come to me.
“Nicely done,” Armande exclaimed. “Even so, you won’t draw out your milk by magic.” She smiled, her chestnut eyes sizing up the woman.
“No I suppose not,” Sophie replied. “Yet if it isn’t magic what could it be? You have no child, though I heard about the accident that….” She shushed herself.
My face grew hot just as the sticks in the hearth caught fire. Armande never spoke to me about her baby who died. As I added a small piece of wood with flat sides to the fire, I watched until it lit and then added another. The woman had no business coming here to discuss Armande’s past.
Sophie’s face grew overcast and she started crying. “How can I be a mother when I have no milk?” She held her child out to Armande as if showing off a basketful of fresh picked strawberries.
Armande smoothed a loose curl by her face and raised her thin brows.
“If you don’t help me, my baby will starve. I fed him bread and water, which only made him sickly.”
Nathalie awoke and started crying. I went to rock her and, to make matters worse little Jacques came in whining that he was hungry, and so I stuck a morsel of cheese in his open mouth to quiet him.
Sophie took off her bonnet and cloak, and draped it over the sofa. By this time she was sobbing, her nose dripping onto her gown and the thin ruffle of one chemise cuff that peeked out from the sleeve. Her freckled cheeks reddened. She grabbed Armande’s hand and brought it to the infant’s fevered head. The wet nurse gazed into the mother’s eyes.
“Watch.” Armande untied her bodice and brought the infant to her bosom. She propped up her right elbow with cushions.
The infant opened its eyes, squirmed, bobbing his head. Sophie crossed herself three times, raising her eyes to the sky in prayer. At first the baby pushed the nipple away. Then he made lazy tries to catch her nipple in his jowls, losing it over and over to become a mouth sucking air.
“If the baby becomes agitated, you need to comfort him and try again.” I thought how she was so good to these ungrateful women.
Finally, with several coaxes from Armande the little mouth opened, took the nipple and latched on. Its chops were like the mouth of a sea creature. In one of her father’s natural history books were pictures of creatures slimy and long, sucking the water with their lips of jelly. All at once, Sophie lost her mask of worry.
“Tickle the baby’s lower lip with your nipple,” said Armande. “Caress its cheek if it turns its head . Bring the baby close to you so his nose touches your breast.”
He drank peacefully, eyes closed. His hands were crumpled bits of leaf and veins in his head and neck pulsed. Slowly the baby came to life as he fed on her precious milk.
“Céleste, pray make Sophie some tea to warm herself as she shakes from the cold.”
I came back with a woolen blanket and saw the visitor squatting down to look at her child feeding. After Sophie had the blanket I then added water to heat the kettle. The infant’s sleepy head rested on Armande’s bosom like a king after a nightlong feast. His mouth was a dewy rosebud and his lids fluttered.
“Sit, sit,” I said bringing her to the dish of tea I prepared. Her arms and legs trembled.
Jacques kept going to the fire, and I would pick him up and move him away from it. All the while, Sophie didn’t budge from Armande’s side rather she teetered on her tiptoes as if a mischievous spirit got hold of her.
“My child needs your milk,” she said again, the blanket over her shoulders.
“Your milk will come, just wait and see,” Armande said. “Put the nipple in the centre of his mouth above his tongue otherwise the baby can’t suck.”
“I’ve tried, but he won’t even take it. An old woman in my village made me sniff, eat, and rub all kinds of runny, foul oils and leaves on my skin and I’m none the better for it.”
“When was this?”
“Two days ago.” Sophie finally plunked herself down and took a sip of tea.
“In time this will help. Remember, mothering teaches patience and listening. You must learn to listen to your infant.”
Sophie sprung to her feet, almost knocking the cup of tea off the table.
“Listen!” she exclaimed. “Je suis désolée Madame Vivant. I don’t mean to be difficult.” Her freckled nose pointed in the air again. “These are babies we’re talking about. All they do is cry and fuss and soil their cots. Please tell me if I’m mistaken in this. What is there to listen to?”
She planted herself on the dormeuse once again, folding her arms across her chest. After the baby was full of milk, the wet nurse rocked him in her arms.
“He will tell you what he wants if only you listen.” Armande caressed his cheeks and forehead. “See how he tells me he likes my gentle touches? His limbs are still, no wrinkles on his brow.”
The baby’s eyes opened as she held him up. He turned his tiny, wrinkled head to see who was there.
“You’re so good with him. You see how he takes to you.”
No truer words were ever spoken.
“Your emotions are all in a stir due to the loss of your husband and this has influenced the flow of milk coming in. Promise me you’ll keep trying until the milk comes. Unlike what most believe about it, the first milk is the best.”
The wet nurse looked squarely at the woman who nodded, forcing a smile.
“I will try, Madame Vivant,” she said. Her eyes were tired. “You are gentle and wise so naturally I shall do as you say.” Sophie then picked up her baby and quit the drawing room.
She turned to me at the front door, her eyes lighting up, “A delegate sent by the King has come to our village and engaged the services of our goodly priest to collect grievances. Can you believe the King himself requested them from cities, towns and villages? Last week we assembled at the church. There was such commotion as every body from farmers to physicks fought to have their complaints recorded in these Royal cahiers. All men who could sign their names did.”
It seemed far-fetched the King would wish to know the opinions of peasants. Would a gentleman come to our village to ask about our lot? I knew how to sign my name though they weren’t asking women anyways.
“What kinds of grievances?”
“From what I saw, many are demanding a stop to the abuses of hunting rights. Why should a noble be free to hunt fox and wolf, keep pigeons and rabbits when we are punished for pulling a measly fish out of the river that runs through the estate?”
“Quite so Mademoiselle!” Armande’s father rushed down the corridor from the library to greet us. He was freshly shaven, his hair tied at the back with a ribbon. He wore his waistcoat with the gold buttons done up just right. Taking the young woman’s hand, he kissed it and flashed a smile of the kind he saves to impress.
It worried me that royal delegates were near Armande’s home, so soon after the letter came from the King summoning her to Versailles. Sophie’s baby groped the air with his mouth. Then she curtsied awkwardly and was out the door, her darkly clothed shape bobbing amidst a sea of white. I gave chase with no coat or shoes.
“You mustn’t talk to them about Armande,” I stammered, when I caught up to her.
“Talk to who?” Sophie’s face blurred from snow falling, yet her eyes narrowed.
“The King’s delegates.” I grabbed her by the shoulders.
“Let go of me,” she cried. Without a word she ran off into the snow.
A storm hit our village and a maple tree…
…came crashing down, barely missing the house. It was God’s way of protecting Armande from malevolent forces and from stopping her father leaving us too soon. The wind knocked at the door like a desperate soul needing shelter. I rolled up an old carpet and placed it at the base to staunch the flow of cold air coming in. Her father dug snow from the front door with a big wooden bowl for making bread. Then, axe in hand, he began cutting up the fallen tree for firewood. From the drawing room window I watched him hacking into the trunk and cursing the storm for making him wait four days to leave.
I put on my cloak and dashed outside to help him. Our house had a red door with a letterbox beside it. Snowdrifts were high beside the narrow path and rooftops bent with snow. Like other houses in the village, ours was made of rough stone and sunken a little into the ground. The back looked onto a large garden with fruit trees—apple, cherry and plum. There was a pantry, root cellar, five hearths, a roof that didn’t leak, and a well just beyond the fruit trees.
“It’s as much as I can muster now,” said her father out of breath and pointing to the fresh pile of wood. “More trees fell in the woods during the storm so we’ll have more to cut.” His cheeks were red from the cold, his body wrapped in layers of clothing. His greying hair had flakes of snow sprinkled on top.
I raised my hand to grab the axe from him. “I’ll chop some.”
He smiled at me, wiping his sweaty brow. His breath came out of his mouth in large clumps, hitting my face. The axe was hot where he gripped it. A leafless tree waved in the wind, the forest behind it was smudged white.
“As soon as the storm settles, I’ll depart,” he told me. Then he grimaced and added, “Recently, inspecteurs de la librairie at Rouen confiscated copies I ordered from Brussels of Nun in a Bedgown and One Thousand and One Memories for the Comte de Pestels. In Paris my shipments will be less conspicuous. Besides, Monsieur Taranne will arrange everything for me there.”
I tried to smile yet my face was tight from cold.
He added, “Don’t forget what I told you about protecting Armande.”
In the afternoon the wind died down. Armande’s face showed grief as she watched the sun peeking through the clouds: good weather meant her father would soon go away. From where I sat, her eyes seemed hollow and her mouth was sunken a little into her face like those on a mask from a Greek tragedy. There was a picture of one such mask in a book belonging to her father about the history of drama.
I sat by the fire mending Jacques’ coat. Rather than play with his blocks he wanted to help me. He kept saying, “Let me, let me,” and putting his hand on my hand that held the needle. This bothered me no end as I was behind on my mending and didn’t want him to slow me down. The collar was coming apart where he previously gnawed and pulled at it and the whole thing was almost off. I slowly pushed the needle into the cloth and pulled it out to show him how, yet after a few moments, his attention turned elsewhere.
Monsieur Vivant crouched on the floor arranging his pens and inks. He had different size wooden boxes spread out in front of him. One had a faded label on the side that said sauterelles for grasshopper, and another, papillons for butterflies.
“Céleste, father reminded me of the passages between our neighbours’ houses,” she said perking up. She sat on the dormeuse clasping a book.
“You used to clamber around down there as a child,” he said.
“Our root cellar has a passageway from it to Bertrand and Nadine’s root cellar, and from there to the wool spinner Madame Jardin,” she told me. “The passage then leads to the Gallants’ house.”
“If you need to hide you could go down there,” Monsieur Vivant said. “It would be too cold to stay for very long. I’ve spoken to these neighbours and they told me they will keep you warm and fed.”
“What if they come looking for us next door?” I asked.
“They will certainly call on the neighbours to trace you,” he told me. “So you’ll have to go between their houses depending on where the danger lies.”
Monsieur Vivant’s plan gave me a feeling of security I hadn’t felt since he received the King’s letter.
“Thank you father,” she said clutching the gold pendant around her neck, which held a silhouette portrait of her mother and father. She curled up on the dormeuse in a half-sitting pose. Her dark hair streamed down the sides of her face and onto her delicate shoulders.
“We survived far worse,” he said sensing her melancholy. Armande met his gaze.
“Remember during the scourge when fever and chills gripped so many helpless souls?” She turned to me and continued: “Purplish spots on children’s skin overflowed with puss, their pain lasting for days. Many families had lost one, two, three and four children.”
“I comforted neighbours who lay in their beds crying out for God to have mercy on their souls,” she said, her voice rising. “I applied a cold cloth to their heads, sometimes reading poetry or the Bible, to ease their suffering…. Those who lived through the ordeal were badly disfigured.” Her voice rose again as a tuft of white dandelion riding the autumn wind. “What did we do, we climbed to the uppermost tip of our beloved Col de l’Izoard.”
I sat by the fire listening to their remembrances and watching Jacques proudly try on the coat I just finished mending for him.
“A villager circulated a story that because our village was high in the mountains God was giving us a quicker way to experience Heaven by killing us off so forcefully,” said her father. “Another story went that we were being punished because a few people in the village were secretly involved in a ceremony in which an effigy was made of the King and then burned.”
Armande laughed weakly.
“Do you remember what I said?” he asked her.
“Yes father, you called this talk absurd and told me not to heed words of superstition and fear because reason and science would save us from ignorance, eventually saving us from illness and disease altogether.”
“Sophie was telling me about the cahiers,” I said to join the conversation. She says the King wishes to receive our grievances. What is the meaning of such an action do you suppose?” I asked her father.
“This is an astonishing gesture on his part, yet far too late to be of much use,” he said dismissing it with a sweeping hand.
Armande ran upstairs to nurse the crying baby and her father tossed a log on the fire and quit the drawing room. Maybe he was right about it being too late for the King to mend his ways. I never had much faith in men, as most I met were scoundrels, except of course for Monsieur Vivant. Since living with them, I didn’t go hungry and was genuinely loved yet I had more questions. I called these questions my thoughts. When reading a passage from a great work or after watching an infant drink in Armande’s precious milk something happened to make me wander around in these thoughts as if they were rooms. I asked, What is life? Will I marry? When will I die? Will I ever be happy? Now and then, I imagined they were the rooms of Armande or those of her father. I knew when they were his rooms because I recognized his brown books with gilded spines, his Greek and Roman statues, a favourite chair, heavy and carved with jungle creatures, like the one in his library, a walking stick, an old dressing gown. He often left it hanging on a hook in his bedroom. Her rooms were filled with plants, a red quill dyed from mountain berries, books of poetry, a sleeping baby, a clever baby, and a lock of dark wavy hair—though I cannot say from whose head it was plucked. When he left us would I only be wandering in her rooms or would traces of his presence remain in my mind and body?