“I can’t find the corn-husk doll,” Mother said, sitting back on her haunches.
“It’s in the carpetbag,” I said, prying open the shutters of the one small window to the cacophony of hawkers below. I looked down at the jostling crowd. The elevation dizzied me. Paris! I had at last fulfilled my promise to my father.
Finally I spotted Gaston carrying the leather bucket, slopping water in his cumbersome way. He was becoming a young man; he was going to need a place in the world.
CHAPTER 10
Nil desperandum. Never despair.
In Paris, flour was five times what we were used to paying; even a sack of beans was dear. What resources we had were running out. I became sleepless, my mind spinning through the dark hours.
I’d asked everywhere, searching for Monsieur Courageux. I’d looked for work as a washerwoman, milliner, or seamstress, knocking on the doors of service entrances to the private grand hotels, and even the more humble back-alley merchants—fighting off more than one advance due to the assumption that any woman who worked was a prostitute. I’d quickly discovered that it was impossible to get almost any kind of employment without a guild certificate—and guild membership was not only hard to obtain, but expensive as well. I could do many things—just not, apparently, for hire. I could read and write, I was a qualified letter-writer, but the genteel vocations were closed to women. I was going to have to be, in Father’s word, inventive.
“We’ll go to the bridge today,” I told Mother. “Gaston and I.”
She glanced up from her knitting. She’d been working on a shawl since before the New Year, using ends of darning worsted together with scraps of carpet thread, twine, twill, and leather. The shawl got longer and longer, uglier and uglier, but was never pronounced finished.
I took up my sack, heavy with stones. “You stay, Maman. There’s beer and bread.”
I led Gaston through a maze of dark alleys to the river. He sang a frenzied melody, jogging to keep up.
I paused, waiting for an opportunity to cross the roadway. Coaches, carts, and horses were coming in all directions. Mercifully, the rain had let up. Mercifully, it wasn’t snowing.
“New?” he stuttered.
The Pont Neuf, I guessed he meant, the new bridge. Over time he had learned to form a few simple words. With schooling, I was confident he could learn more. “No, we’ll try the Pont Marie,” I said, once we were over the mud-rutted intersection. There would be more people on the wide new bridge, but it would be crowded with licensed stalls—and officers of the law.
He pressed his hand to his forehead, then waggled a finger: I’m not worried.
I smiled and puckered my nose at him. Really, he was so sweet. “I’ve got an idea.” It had come to me in the night—Thank you, Father!—a plan that would not only feed us, but possibly even enable me to hire a teacher for Gaston and eventually enroll him in an apprenticeship program.
The vista at the river revealed a vast sky, blooming with dark clouds. To the right, the towers of Notre-Dame on the Île de la Cité were shrouded in mist. To the left was the Pont Marie, leading to the Île Saint-Louis.
Most of the river was still ice, but pocked now, softened by the rain. In stretches I could see black water, turgid and swollen, foaming. It roared through one of the arches of the bridge. A barrel, tossed up by the turbulent water, shattered against the piles.
“Here comes another one,” I heard someone behind me say.
People cheered as a second barrel exploded into splinters, thrown up against the bridge by the surging water.
I watched for a chance to cross over the roadway, but it was thronged with carriages and carts, men on horseback. A four-horse carriage manned by men in livery raced past, the driver cracking his whip. “Careful,” I said, holding Gaston back. I’d seen a woman run down by a team of horses the day before.
A homeless family emerged from the riverside, dragging a soggy canvas. They waded fearlessly into the traffic.
“Is the river rising?” a hawker of oysters called out.
“Not yet,” the beggar woman answered. The rain clouds parted. “Ah, sun,” she said, tipping her face to the sky.
THE PONT MARIE was more like a street than a bridge, lined on both sides with houses in ill repair. Shutters hung from hinges and some windows were boarded over. Both sides of the road were crowded with hawkers and beggars, whores and charlatans, gangs of ill-shod children. From one of the windows—Chez Gilbert—came a chorus of sawing and hammering, carpenters singing as they worked. The sudden warm weather had made everyone joyous.
I headed up the steeply sloping bridge, pushing my way through to a small spot beside a stand in front of a jeweler’s shop. Fortunes 4 sous, a sign said.
A plump woman, humming cheerfully, fussed over the rosaries, saint images, and good-luck charms spread out on a little table.
Gaston hummed along with her in harmony.
“Lovely,” she said, beaming at him. She was wearing a heavy cloak in a sickly shade of goose-turd green. But for a hairy mole on one cheek, she was pretty as a posy.
“He likes to sing,” I said, wishing I had four sous. I would have liked to know my fortune. Would I ever marry, have a family of my own? “Is it permitted to set up here?”
“I’ve the license, but I’m happy to share the space if you’re willing to watch over my table when I’m reading the cards.”
“Certainly!” I said, taking a waxed cloth out of our sack and spreading it on the cobbles, making it smooth. I set the wooden Mill board on it and gestured to Gaston to sit down in front of it. He looked puzzled but did as I asked. I set out the stones, the dark ones on his side (his favorites), the light ones on the other side of the board.
“Trust me,” I told him, propping up a sign I’d made: 1 denier to play: 3 if you win. Gaston had a curious talent for the game.
CHAPTER 11
Soon a boy stopped by. He was tall and gangly, bone thin, his hair uncut and his clothes rags. “Don’t,” I said. He was clearly impoverished. “He’ll beat you.”
“Impossible,” he insisted, but soon discovered otherwise. Even so, I refused his coin.
Next was a girl with her mother, then a miller and a maid, and then some shopkeepers and a number of others, mostly men. Gaston won every game, of course. The last was a group of four roughs. “Hey!” they exclaimed, seeing their chance. They threw down their coins, one after another, then skulked away defeated, their pockets empty.
I counted our earnings: fifteen deniers. I sent Gaston to get oysters from a vendor, cheap fare.
“Does he always win?” the fortune-teller asked, standing and stretching. Madame Catherine, she’d introduced herself. She’d had quite a few customers that morning telling fortunes.
“Oui,” I admitted proudly. I’d never won a game of Mill against him. (Ever!)
“Yet a simple,” she observed.
I noticed she offered remedies for a variety of ailments, from worms to faint sweats—a dragon’s blood cure for colds, another concoction for pain of the piles. “Have you a cure for such a … malady?” I asked on impulse.
“No, but I know of a woman who got a mute to talk,” she said, “and a girl, dumb as a donkey, she got to read and write Latin.”
My heart sang to hear of such miracles. “How much does she charge?”
“Quite a bit—nine livres?”
A lot, certainly, but not an impossible sum—especially now with coins in my poke, Gaston’s winnings.
Suddenly Madame Catherine whistled—shrilly, like a man. Gaston looked our way. “Call your brother back,” she told me with some urgency.
Puzzled, I gestured to Gaston, and he shambled toward me grinning. Approaching, he opened his fist, revealing a gold louis.
I’d never seen a coin so big. It hadn’t even been clipped. “Where did you get this?” I asked uneasily. Sometimes Gaston took things. He wasn’t a thief, he just didn’t understand.
“No doubt from that tall man,” Madame Catherine sai
d starkly, “the one with the children.”
A break in the carriage traffic parted to reveal an elaborately dressed man standing with three girls. The tallest one stood staring at us. She had a large birthmark on her cheek. “With the girls?” I asked, weighing the gold piece in my hand.
“They’re boys—but dressed as girls.”
It took me a moment to understand.
“The Bird Catcher, we call him,” Madame Catherine said, signing herself.
I recalled the country boys who had stayed with us in the cave near Poitiers, headed for the city. Winter Swallows, Mother had called them.
“Friend,” Gaston sang.
HEADING HOME, GASTON in tow, I stopped abruptly. “You are never to take anything from a stranger!” He was such a trusting soul, it frightened me. The city was rife with predators. “The coin that man gave you was like honey: he was trying to lure you into a trap.”
Gaston’s eyes rounded.
I should have flung the coin in the river, as a lesson to him, but we needed it, needed the beans and bread it could buy. “Do you understand?”
He blinked his eyes at me (meaning “oui”) and made a rabbit nose (meaning “non”).
So: oui et non. I sighed.
A coachman called out in warning as a four-horse berlin turned into the street. The horses stopped to avoid upturning a fish cart. I glimpsed the face of a young woman inside, her golden earlocks adorned with ribbons, a single strand of pearls tied at the back of her neck. Gaston sang a troubled note, taking off his woolen cap. She looked like a creature from another world—yet a creature who was somehow familiar.
The heavy horses trotted smartly on, their harnesses glittering with brass, their headlocks beribboned and tails braided. The coat of arms painted on the door was intricate, a shield of red, blue, and white designs, a coiled blue snake in one quadrant.
The carriage slowed to turn onto another street, followed by two lackeys. “Tell Maman I’ll not be long,” I said, giving my brother the satchel of stones to take back. “I’m going to buy food.”
THE CARRIAGE HAD stopped in front of a trimmings shop on the rue Vieille du Temple. It was not far from our room, yet another world entirely, a world of luxury trade. There was even something of a walkway, so that people might more easily stop to examine the fine goods offered for sale: a yellow-tinted collar edged with needle lace, a leather hat adorned with an ostrich feather, a bolt of silk satin worked with gold thread.
I watched from the corner as a footman in a buckram-stiffened cloak opened the carriage door and set down a carpeted stool. He extended his gloved hand to help the young woman step down. With a fur muff under one arm, she extended her booted foot, turning her toe out as if dancing. I caught a glimpse (just that) of her ankle. With a little hop, she alighted and handed her muff to the footman. She turned her back as an elderly servant with a crooked spine climbed down after her.
I could not take my eyes off the young woman. Could it be her? She was wearing a blue velvet traveling cloak, its satin-lined hood lightly covering her head. She fussed with the muff the footman held, and I realized that there was a little dog inside. She touched its nose with her gloved hand.
Behind me, there was the sudden thunder of rubble being tipped out of a cart. Startled, she glanced my way. I caught my breath. A froth of golden curls framed her white, oval face. Her beauty was heart-stopping, her large blue eyes intelligent and curious. She looked to be a few years younger than I was, so perhaps nineteen? That fit, too.
My princess. Could it be?
She swept into the shop, followed by her creeping waiting woman.
It began to rain again, a soft drizzle. Men in elegant dress pressed to pass. I stood close against the wall. The footman looked in my direction, regarding me with suspicion.
I turned, bumping into a woman coming out of a milliner’s shop. “Nom de Dieu,” she cursed me with scorn, as if touched by the plague.
Her maid, encumbered with parcels and her mistress’s fox-lined cloak, sneered. On impulse, I shouldered her into the muck and snatched the cloak … and then ran—ran for my life through the narrow, twisting alleyways.
Trembling, I paused for breath, clutching the heavy cloak. What had come over me! Cloak-thieves were executed, their heads boiled and displayed on pikes. Seeing the young woman again had bewitched me.
I promise, Father! I won’t do it again.
IN THE MARKET, I quickly traded the cloak for a sack of beans, three loaves of bread and a small keg of beer, watered and bitter. I could have easily bartered for three times all that, but I was in haste to have it out of my hands.
It was raining again and falling dark. With Gaston’s winnings I bought a good-sized ham, saving the Bird Catcher’s coin for the rent.
I made my way back through the labyrinthine maze of narrow alleys. In the morning, I would make amends, repent, begin anew. In the morning, I would take Gaston to the bridge, play for winnings, get the name of that miracle healer from Madame Catherine. In the morning …
Approaching our building, I stopped. A crowd had gathered. Beyond, I saw a shimmering expanse.
Water?
“The river is rising high!” a street-caller cried. From somewhere a woman was screaming for help.
CHAPTER 12
I waded into the courtyard, sloshing through water covered with floating chicken feathers. The workers were stacking cages of squawking birds onto the slaughter table. Even the path to the privies was swamped. (I didn’t like to think about that.)
A rat swam past the winding stone stairs. Monsieur Martin and his wife could be heard yelling in their room, piling up goods. Tenants were huddled on the landing, frowning down at the water, a girl holding a squirming terrier.
“What’s happened?” I called up, alarmed.
“It’s the river,” one of men said, his accent rough. “It’s rising.”
The river water—all the way here?
“But it won’t come any farther,” he added. “It never does.”
“THE RIVER IS overflowing,” I announced as I came in the door. Mother was slumped where I had left her, her knitting all around her. “I’m sorry—did I wake you?”
“Is it time to eat?” she said, rubbing her eyes. “Did you have a pleasant afternoon?”
I took in the silence. “Where’s Gaston?”
“With you?” Mother said, gathering up her needles and scraps.
“He’s not here?” How was that possible? “Maman, he must be here.”
She looked puzzled.
I leaned out the little window: the street below was a river now. It had happened so quickly! People sloshed through the yellow water with children in their arms. But no Gaston.
What had I done? “I’ll go find him.”
“I’m coming too,” Mother said. “I haven’t been out all day.”
I groaned. This was not a pleasure outing! “Maman, stay. It’s miserable out.” And dangerous. “Someone should be here when he returns.”
This, at least, she accepted.
I plunged down the stairwell, trying to contain my panic.
I waded out into the street, the muck-filled water now at my thighs. I made my way back down toward the river—back to the corner where I had last seen Gaston—crying out his name. The murky water was rushing into the narrow streets and alleys in waves. Garbage floated in a cesspool of sewage.
I dodged horses pulling carts laden with possessions. The water was inching toward my waist. The current was surprisingly strong; it took an effort to push forward.
I feared I might faint from the stench. The light was falling, the water was rising, and Gaston was not to be seen. I turned back, praying he’d somehow returned.
HE HAD NOT. I broke down, sobbing, peeling off my disgustingly wet clothes. My teeth chattering, I stood naked in front of the fire as Mother washed me clean with a cloth, tsking all the while. “He will be fine,” she said. “His father will look after him.”
This thought made me weep
all the harder.
THERE WAS NOTHING we could do but pray. Even if I had known where to look, the water was too high, too dangerous. We set up an altar for the little Virgin, surrounding her with Gaston’s things: his bent-up, worn Saint Francis card, his two marbles, the rag doll he slept with. His favorite Mill stones. I even made a line of objects. (And discovered how hard it was. Was a glove bigger or smaller than a sock?)
Restless, I ventured back down the stairs, holding a rag over my nose to keep out the pestilent vapors. The water had reached the seventh step. We were trapped.
“We’ll just have to wait it out,” I told Mother, looking out our little window at the scene below, searching, ever searching for a sign of Gaston. Where could he be? He wouldn’t have gotten lost; finding his way was one of his curious talents. Something must have happened.
A man calling out “Ferryman!” poled a makeshift raft of scraps. A neighbor propped a ladder against an upper-story window and carried a screaming girl onto a tippy boat. His wife handed him down an infant, then perilously climbed down herself.
I wondered where my princess lived. I imagined her asleep in a big feather bed, wrapped in the finest clean lawn chemise. Her belly was full and she slept without fear of rats. The sleep of the blessed.
As night fell, I couldn’t sleep for the howling of abandoned dogs, the ceaseless church bells ringing alarm. I felt weak knowing that Gaston was somewhere out there, alone: knowing what the virulent floodwaters could bring—cholera, fever, plague. Had Father guided us here, only to die of contagion?
Or worse, I thought, thinking of the Bird Catcher.
I PACED AND prayed for days; the nights, too, were restive. I had finally drifted off to sleep when I was startled awake by a thunderous sound. I sat up, staring into the dark. Had I not felt a tremor?
I slipped out from under the covers and groped my way in the dark, creeping along the wall. I felt for the window latch and, fumbling, managed to creak open the shutter.
The light of the moon illuminated the rooftops, now covered with makeshift shanties and webbed with a maze of laundry lines hung between chimneys and turrets. The flooded street below was dark, reflecting the stars above. But for the barking of a dog, all was still and silent. Had I dreamt the explosion? Tainted food could do that, cause dreams to come to life.