Chapter 4
4
In January, Damienne fell sick and coughed so much she panted when she took the stairs. “Ah, this was how my own poor mother died,” she said. “My mother coughed until she could not breathe. She could scarcely walk, although she tried to go out to the fields. On the path she fell down dead, and with my brother, I carried her body home.”
“But we are not in fields,” I said.
“My brother was six,” Damienne said, “and I was not eight years old. I came to this house just two years after.”
“Here you shall stay,” I assured her. “And you will recover.”
But Damienne kept imagining her end. Poor woman, even as her cough began to ease, her tooth cracked so that she cried out in pain. Some days she could not rise but lay in bed declaring, “I would be ready to depart this life if only you were settled and well married.”
“Well then,” I told her. “For your sake, I will remain a maid.”
Now, seeing Damienne’s suffering, I thought less of my own. I brushed away the frost furring the inside of the window and fed my old nurse broth. Trying to divert her, I read of Artemisia from the book of ladies. “ This Queen loved her husband, King Mausolus, so well that when he died, she built a wondrous sepulcher for him, and, ever after, great tombs were called mausoleums in his name .”
My nurse asked, “Are those words written on the page?”
“Of course.”
“Your reading sounds like speaking,” she said—but cautioned quickly, “Don’t be clever. Don’t be proud.”
I asked, “Are proud and clever the same thing?”
“Ah, do not taunt me,” she said. And regretting my pert question, I read of Queen Esther, who won favor with her beauty and humility. “May you follow her example,” said Damienne. The husband chosen for me first was married now, but Damienne could not stop hoping another could be found and that my guardian would grant me my inheritance as dowry. For this reason, she prayed for Roberval’s good fortune as if it were our own—as indeed it was.
—
While Damienne lay ill with her tooth aching, I watched for my guardian. Constantly, I stood at the window. I watched for so many days that I could scarcely believe it when at last I glimpsed a dark man riding. I called to Claire, “I see a man!”
“What kind of man?” She hurried to look, and we saw him coming from far off, a cloaked figure on a black horse, with two others following.
“It is too soon,” said Damienne, lifting her head.
But I said, “It must be him.”
Madame D’Artois spoke to the maid that evening, and she learned that Roberval had indeed arrived with his servant and secretary.
Now I knew I must prepare myself. Surely Roberval had returned from sea with treasures, and he would pay off his tenants to restore me. “Help me dress,” I told Claire.
“You have not been asked down,” Madame D’Artois said gently.
And Damienne warned, “It’s bad luck to dress before an invitation.”
But I appealed to Claire. “I must be ready.”
Claire did not answer, but she arranged my hair and helped me into a gray gown embroidered all in silver, finely wrought but worn. Old as my clothes were, I should have had some better, but my guardian had not sent new funds.
“Here you are, a little tarnished,” Claire said as she fastened my silver sleeves. “I will fold and pin the fabric so no one can see.”
When she finished, I dared not lift my arms lest I loosen my pinned cuffs. Nor did I sit for fear of crumpling my skirts. Without any place to rest or move, I endured Damienne’s fretting. “Now he will not ask to see you.”
But her worries were unfounded, for a maid came up with a messenger, my guardian’s man Henri. This Henri had a fleshy face, black eyes, and heavy brows meeting in the middle. He was dressed like a coachman in good livery, but his body was thick and his hands big enough to haul rock from a quarry. “My master asks to see you,” he said.
Although he spoke plainly, Henri’s words delighted me. As soon as he was gone, I turned to Damienne. “You see! I was right to prepare.”
“But how will I come with you?” she asked.
“I will take her,” Madame D’Artois assured Damienne.
“Alas,” my poor nurse moaned, certain I would blunder when she was not watching.
“I will behave properly,” I said.
“Do not reproach him or complain,” Damienne warned. “You do not know—”
“I think I do,” I said, because I was not a little child.
“Approach him silently. Expect nothing,” she advised.
This irritated me. “I will expect something, even if I do not sayit.”
“Then he will see it in your eyes,” Damienne said superstitiously.
“Yes! He will see in my eyes that I intend to live as I deserve.”
“You do not understand.” She grasped my hand. “And now I cannot help you.”
“Rest now,” I told her. “Let me go.”
“Look at your sleeves.”
“Claire hid the tarnished bits.”
“Oh, but they are frayed. It isn’t good.”
“Then I hope Roberval pays for new clothes.”
Damienne said, “If you look like this, he will not provide you anything.”
“He will see exactly what I need.”
“No, no,” Damienne corrected me. “He won’t give you what you need; he will grant what you deserve.”
“And I will deserve new things by having them already?”
“Good Lord.” She sank back against her pillow.
“I would never give offense,” I promised her. “Not willingly.”
At this, Claire covered her mouth, and I realized she was laughing.
“Claire!” I had ruined her composure.
But Madame D’Artois was dignified as always, and I saw that she had dressed in her dark gown. Like a mourner at the door, she waited for me.
“I’ll be careful,” I tried to comfort Damienne, as I followed Madame D’Artois out.
“God be with you,” my old nurse called after me, as though I were traveling.
—
It did seem a fearsome journey to descend the stairs. I looked to Madame D’Artois, and she was silent, smooth as glass, but my pulse quickened as we traversed the gallery and entered the great hall.
Roberval sat at his grand table, and at the lesser table sat his secretary, the blond youth with dark eyes. I faced them both while Madame D’Artois stood modestly apart.
“Cousin,” said Roberval. He wore a gold signet ring and a white collar. His inlaid cabinet stood at his right hand, but I saw no books upon the table, no decanter filled with wine. I remembered, He has lost a kingdom in those ships. And I thought of Claire, who had seen her own house auctioned when her father died. Men came to tally everything inside. Linens, pins, books, jewels, chairs, stove.
“Come here,” said Roberval, “and tell me—when did we last meet?”
“Two years ago, my lord.”
“And you are now fifteen.”
“I am,” I answered, hopeful because he knew my age. He had not forgotten me.
“Well,” he said, “you are a woman now, and we must think what we will do.”
I glanced at my frayed sleeves. Don’t be clever. Don’t be proud.
“I will not leave you here.”
To hear those words. They were like a breath of spring just when I expected sharp cold air. I thought, He is not ruined after all. He will make a match for me! In that instant, I imagined horses and fields and my own lands joined to those of a good husband, noble, rich. I saw rosy children playing. Claire and her mother walking in my gardens, while Damienne sat in the sun. My life seemed a summer day—until my guardian spoke again.
“You are old enough to come with me.”
I stared at Roberval, astonished. With him? What place would I have? What duties? Had he decided I should serve him? He who had never married, and seldom stayed a year in France. Was I to live alone or accompany him to court? And if I did, what was he suggesting? Would I be ward or wife? “My lord—” I knew Claire would not, I knew Damienne could not speak like this, but how could I be politic? I had nothing to defend and no position to negotiate. “This is the only house that I have ever known.”
My guardian sat back, surprised. Not angry at such insolence, but amazed, as if I were an animal endowed with human speech. And now he smiled, as though charmed by my distress, and in a genial way he answered, “If this is the only house that you have known, high time to know another.”
Hold still, I thought. Don’t cry. Don’t beg; find out what he’s about. “Is this your decision?”
“Yes, of course. You’ll come to La Rochelle.”
Hearing impatience in his voice, I answered with humility. “I would ask when I depart.”
“When I send for you,” my guardian replied.
I calculated quickly. He was not asking me to pack and leave that night. When I send meant he was traveling again. “I beg one thing,” I ventured—and he did not cut me off but waited to hear. “I ask to bring my old nurse and my teacher.” I glanced at Madame D’Artois. “And her daughter, my companion.”
Roberval answered, “For a time.”
I curtseyed low; he glanced away. He did not bow but talked to his secretary, giving orders of the day, even as I stood before him and Madame D’Artois waited silently behind me.
Did he mean for us to walk away without a gift? And was that carelessness or his displeasure? I could not know; I should not try to guess. I should have left—and yet I stayed.
“What else?” Roberval asked abruptly. “What do you need?”
The answer should have been nothing. Nothing, but thanks, but I spoke once more. “Money.” My voice was hoarse, aggrieved.
Madame D’Artois rustled, alarmed. To say the word was a disgrace. Vulgar. Unbefitting. But how would I pay the servants for more firewood or better food? How else could we commission clothes?
“You ask for funds,” my guardian said at last.
“There is no one to ask for me.”
He might have dismissed me then—but he did not. He might have rebuked me. Instead, he looked at me and laughed. He turned to his secretary, who produced a purse. “Take this.” Roberval flung the gift high into the air.
My arm flew up. Without a thought, I opened my hand. Madame D’Artois gasped. The secretary half rose in his chair. Even Roberval was startled as I caught that purse of gold.