“Where do you go when we finish in the fields, Michel?”
“Sometimes I go for walks. If you go past that hill and over two fields you can see the sea.” He picked up a rose that had fallen unheeded from one of the baskets, held it to his nose, and breathed in the fragrance. “And sometimes I go to see Monsieur Augustine and he lets me help while he experiments with the essences. Today I go to the shed to help with the maceration.”
“Maceration?”
“Taking the scents from the flowers.”
“May I go with you?”
“No.” Michel started up the road after the other pickers. “Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“It would make you sad. It’s better that you just pick the flowers for now.”
“I could have Monsieur Philippe show me.”
He stopped and gave her a troubled glance. “It would make you sad,” he repeated. “You don’t realize how much they’ve given to you. Perhaps next week I’ll take you. Will you not wait for me?”
Catherine started to object, thought, and finally nodded. “I’ll wait.” She added firmly, “Until next week, no longer.”
The corners of his eyes crinkled as he smiled widely at her. “You’re beginning to fight. See how much the flowers have given you?”
She smiled back at him. “And tomorrow I want you to take me to see the sea.”
He nodded as he started off at a trot after the straggling column of pickers. “Tomorrow, Catherine.” He waved at a tall, gangling boy. “Ho, Donato, wait for me.”
She gazed after him affectionately as he caught up with the older boy. At times Michel was a child brimming with mischief and at others he seemed to possess uncanny wisdom. She wasn’t sure which Michel she liked better.
“Catherine.”
She turned to see Philippe sitting his horse a few yards away. She flushed, her hand rising involuntarily to her perspiring forehead. She was suddenly conscious of the dirt and grass stains soiling her gown and the fact that her single brown braid had pulled free of its binding. “Good afternoon, Philippe. The field will be done tomorrow. Aren’t the roses—”
“Don’t you think it’s enough, Catherine?” he interrupted. “I didn’t want to interfere because you seemed so content, but you’ll be mistress here someday. You don’t want the pickers to remember you as working at their sides, do you?”
“Why not?” She nervously wiped her dirty palms on the skirt of her gown.
“They must have respect for you. Believe me, for them to regard you with such familiarity isn’t good for your future position.”
“I do believe you, but—” She gazed at him helplessly. “I want to do this, Philippe.”
He smiled ruefully. His classic features showed fresh beauty. “Then you must do it, of course. Beautiful ladies must always do what they want to do.” He bowed. “And does it please you to go back to the house for dinner, Mademoiselle?”
She nodded shyly, drinking in the sight of him, his sweet smile, the sun glinting on his hair, turning it into an aureole of gold. “I’m … not beautiful.”
“But you are. I have both excellent vision and judgment and can assure you of that truth.” He held out his arms. “Come, beautiful lady, I’ll give you a ride back to the house.”
She was dirty, sweat-stained, and weary and yet, as he looked at her, she suddenly did feel beautiful. Beautiful and clean and as young as the day they had ridden together in that coach to Versailles. She took a step toward him and then another; the next step put her beside the chestnut horse. He bent down, scooped her up in his arms, and set her carefully before him on the horse. He gathered up the reins. “Lean back. You won’t fall. I’ll hold you.”
She sat stiff and unyielding as the horse started to trot down the road. He was holding her gently but a shiver of apprehension went through her. There was nothing to fear, she assured herself. This was Philippe, who was gentle and kind and all that was knightly. Why was she so afraid? She had not been nearly so tense when she had been naked in bed with François Etchelet.
But François Etchelet was gone from her life. Vasaro was her world now. Vasaro and the flowers and the boy Michel and Philippe, who was everything a man should be.
Slowly, tentatively, she leaned back against Philippe’s broad chest and forced herself to relax as he urged the horse to a faster pace.
“Who lives in that pretty little house?” Catherine asked idly as she pointed down the steep hill to the right of the cliff.
Michel glanced with disinterest at the small thatched cottage nestled beneath the overhanging cypress trees. “No one. It’s only the Maisonette des Fleurs.”
“The cottage of flowers?”
“It belongs to Monsieur Philippe. He goes there often.” Michel drew her close to the edge of the cliff and pointed in the other direction. “There’s the sea. You can just see it today. I’ll have to bring you back someday when it’s clearer.”
Catherine turned immediately in the direction he was pointing, her hand shielding her eyes. It was true the haze misting the mountains and the town of Cannes softened and muted the view of the coastline, but the blinding sunlight on the sea was breathtaking, turning the cobalt blue of the Mediterranean to a shade closer to polished steel. “It’s still beautiful. How Juliette would love to paint it.” She realized suddenly that whenever she had thought of Juliette of late, the memories had come gently, lovingly, not with the urgency of need but with the pang for the absence of a dear companion. “I wish she’d come to Vasaro. There’s so much we could show her, Michel.”
“Juliette is your friend?” Michel picked up a branch and tossed it like a javelin over the cliff. “I have many friends.”
“I know you do. I have only one.”
He smiled. “You have me.”
She smiled back at him. “That’s true. I have two friends.”
“And the rest of the pickers would be your friends, only they know Monsieur Philippe wouldn’t like it.”
Catherine knew that was true. “It’s not that he doesn’t want me to be friends with them. He thinks it’s not proper for me to work in the fields.”
“He doesn’t understand the flowers.”
“He’s a good man,” she protested. “And he loves Vasaro.”
Michel nodded. “I didn’t say he wasn’t a good man. All the pickers think he’s a kind and just man. I only said he enjoys the flowers but he doesn’t understand them.” He grabbed Catherine’s hand. “Come on, I want to run.”
She started to laugh helplessly as she let him pull her down the other side of the hill toward the manor house at a dizzying speed. Somewhere along the way he released her hand but she kept on running, enjoying the exhilaration of the warm sun on her face, the wind tearing through her hair, the scent of bergamot in her nostrils.
She hadn’t run like this since that night at the abbey when she’d—Her pace faltered as the memories of that last night came back to her. The muscles of her stomach clenched, knotted, and then suddenly eased. That night of horror was gone. Nothing could be more different from this lovely afternoon on Vasaro. That hideousness could never touch Vasaro and its people.
And if it did, she would deal with it. She would destroy it.
The fierce emotion accompanying that last thought startled her.
“Catherine, you’re falling behind,” Michel called, glancing mischievously over his shoulder.
“No, I’m not. You’re wrong. I’m forging ahead.” She sprinted toward him feeling young and strong enough to run to Paris and back. “I’ll race you to the geranium fields!”
“I told you that you’d be sad.” Michel’s anxious gaze searched Catherine’s stricken face as she watched the man empty the basket of bois de roses into the soupy mixture in the large caldron. “There’s nothing to be sad about. You don’t understand.”
“They’re dying.”
“It’s the maceration,” Michel said gently. “They’re giving up their souls. Don’t you see that it’s better th
is way? If the flowers had died naturally in the fields, they would have returned to the earth immediately, but this way they live longer. The perfume can survive a long time. Not always, of course, but Monsieur Augustine says some Egyptian perfumes have lasted for a thousand years and I myself have seen perfumed leather treated forty years ago that still has a strong scent. The blossoms die but their souls live on.”
The delicate pink blossoms lay quivering on the gray-white surface of the mixture in the pot and then lost all color immediately as the brawny woman minding the caldron stirred them beneath the surface with her long wooden spatula. Catherine had never really thought of the picking of the flowers as killing them, but here the destruction was clear.
Michel tugged at her hand. “I’ll show you.” He led her across the long shed to a table where a row of stoneware crocks brimming with the thick mixture had been set. “This is the pomade. Smell.”
Catherine bent her head and breathed deeply. Bois de roses, alive again, fragrant with the same scent they had borne in the fields.
“You see?”
He seemed so full of anxiety that Catherine quickly nodded and smiled. “I see.”
He looked relieved. “Now, you can sit over there and watch me work. You don’t want to do this, do you?”
She shook her head as she sat down on a low stool by the window. She could accept the need for the maceration but she had no desire to change those fresh, lovely blossoms into bleached, wilted corpses.
All the windows were thrown wide, but it was still suffocatingly hot in the long work shed. Four separate caldrons steamed over wood fires in the room. Beside every caldron lay a huge pile of blossoms, and each pot was attended by a man or a woman with a wooden spatula.
“What is that soupy mixture?” she asked Michel as he shoveled more blossoms into the caldron.
“Melted beef tallow and pork lard. Monsieur Philippe buys only the finest quality fat.”
In spite of her initial repulsion, she found she soon became fascinated by the process. This work, too, had its own rhythm, and the more blossoms poured into the creamy oil, the more fragrant the oil became. When the soupy oil became too thick, it was strained swiftly through a sieve, freeing it of the blossoms that had already yielded their perfume and making room for the fresh blossoms. The refuse was then steeped in boiling water and put through a screw press to wring out the last drops and then a new flood of blossoms fluttered down into the greasy soup in the caldron.
“How long does this go on?”
“Days sometimes. Until the oil can absorb no more scent.” Michel poured more rose blossoms into the caldron. “Then it’s strained one more time and goes into the stoneware crocks. They’re sealed and put down in the cellar.”
“Is the pomade what Monsieur Augustine works with to make his perfume?”
He shook his head. “No, that’s an essence absolue.”
“What’s the difference?”
“I’ll show you later.” His brow furrowed with concentration as he looked down into the fat in the caldron. “It has to go through the sieve again.”
Michel was always showing her something, she thought with tender amusement. The way to the sea, how to pluck the blossoms, the rhythm of the pickers in the fields. He never spoke when he could demonstrate. He never told her anything she could learn by herself.
But in future this maceration was one part of the duties of governing Vasaro she would gladly leave to Philippe.
“I’m worried about Juliette, Philippe.” Catherine lifted her goblet of wine to her lips. “Haven’t you heard anything from Paris?”
“I sent word to Jean Marc when we first arrived, but I haven’t received a reply. You shouldn’t be anxious about Juliette. You know Jean Marc will keep her safe.”
But Catherine had thought the Abbaye de la Reine was impregnable from harm too. She shivered and set the crystal goblet down on the table. “We should never have left her in Paris. I should have made her come with us.”
Philippe chuckled. “Force Juliette?”
“She’s not entirely immovable.” Catherine wrinkled her nose. “One must be very stubborn and keep at her. I don’t know why I didn’t go after her when she jumped out of the carriage.”
“You weren’t well yourself.”
Catherine looked down into the depths of her wine. It was difficult to realize she was the same hurt, shattered woman who had left Paris almost a month earlier. She was not that woman now, nor was she the uncertain girl who had been ravished at the abbey. Vasaro had changed her into someone else entirely. “Yes, I remember.” She looked up with a smile. “But now I’m quite well and we must think of Juliette. Will you write to Jean Marc and tell him he must send Juliette to us at once?”
“And what if she refuses to come?”
“Then I’ll have to return to Paris to fetch her,” Catherine said quietly. “Juliette’s in danger in Paris. I won’t have that, Philippe.”
He smiled and raised his glass in a silent toast. “I’ll write to Jean Marc tomorrow. I refuse to do without your presence at Vasaro now that I’ve become accustomed to it.”
A familiar warmth fluttered within her as he smiled at her across the table. His blue eyes shimmered in the candlelight, reflecting all that sung of sweetness, gaiety, and beauty. She had become accustomed to him, too, her worship gradually deepening into something more comfortable, yet that tremulous uncertainty remained whenever he smiled at her.
She swiftly lowered her gaze to veil her eyes but her hand shook as she once more lifted the goblet to her lips. “I’ve been thinking about asking the priest to come to Vasaro one day a week and teach some of the pickers’ children their letters.”
“He won’t come. He says teaching the peasants makes them discontent with their lot,” Philippe said. “And I agree, Catherine. What use will they have for it?”
“There’s always use for knowledge.”
He shook his head. “It’s a mistake.”
“Then it’s one I intend to make.” Catherine saw him frown and went on quickly. “I do value your opinion, Philippe. I’m sorry if I distressed you.”
Philippe’s expression softened. “The priest will refuse to come. You’ll have to find someone else to teach them.”
“It doesn’t have to be right away. We’ll find someone.”
“As long as you don’t give the task to me.” Philippe grimaced. “I have no head for learning, much less for teaching.”
All was well between them again, Catherine thought, relieved. “One cannot do everything perfectly. You manage Vasaro superbly.”
“Because I love it here.” His gaze met hers. “As you do, Catherine. I never knew how much I missed sharing how I felt about Vasaro until you came.”
She nodded, glowing with warmth. Vasaro and Philippe. She was learning new and wonderful things about both of them every day.
“Essence absolue.” Michel smiled triumphantly at Catherine across Monsieur Augustine’s small laboratory.
At Monsieur Augustine’s request Michel had fetched a jar of jasmine pomade from the cellar, warmed it in a covered dish, diluted it with recycled spirits, and stirred and washed the pomade. Then he had returned it to the cellar to cool, and when the alcohol separated from the oil of the pomade, he drained it into a tiny bottle. “Smell.” He thrust the bottle under her nose. “Perfume!”
The fragrance was pungent, acrid, no longer sweet. “That’s not perfume.”
“It’s the essence. Like Vasaro is the essence.” He filtered the perfumed alcohol through a gauze, then distilled it in a copper alembic over a slow flame. What remained was an even tinier quantity of light-colored liquid whose odor was even more incredibly strong and unpleasant.
“Terrible,” Catherine said, making a face.
“Ah, but wait.” Michel carefully poured a single drop into a crock containing a quart of alcohol and gently stirred it.
“Jasmine!” Suddenly the entire room was swimming with the scent of jasmine. Not just one flower, b
ut an entire field of jasmine.
“You see, it’s a circle. The scent of the earth, the blossoms, the scent of the blossoms, the essence, the scent again.”
“With Vasaro as the essence absolue.”
Michel nodded. “And you don’t feel so sad about the maceration now that you know the scent is born again? The hurt only made it stronger than ever.” His worried gaze was on her face. “You understand, Catherine?”
She smiled. “I understand, Michel. Stronger than ever.” She affectionately watched him as he sealed the tiny vial and carried it carefully over to Monsieur Augustine’s long table to set it beside the other similar vials in readiness for the master perfumer.
The sea was deep blue today and the mountains looked so close Catherine felt she could reach out and scoop up a handful of the snow crowning them. She leaned back against a huge rock on the cliff and sighed with contentment. Beauty like this was also essence absolue, spreading in magical circles to touch everyone who gazed at it.
“Why did you stop going to the priest for lessons, Michel?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t like him.”
“Learning is good. You should have kept going to him anyway as long as Monsieur Philippe was willing to pay.”
“He kept saying I was a child of sin and my mother was a whore.”
Catherine felt a surge of anger. “You didn’t believe him?”
“No, I knew my mother was a flower picker and I have no more sin than anyone else. But it made me unhappy.”
She said impulsively, “Will you let me teach you? I’m not as wise as a priest but—”
“You’re much wiser, because you understand the flowers.” Michel thought for a moment before an eager smile lit his face. “It would help me to know how to write. Then I could put down the mixes for the perfumes and not have to rely on Monsieur Augustine. He’s a kind man but he thinks only of his own perfumes.”