I had been a fool. It was not possible she would not miss the gloves. I knew it by morning, when it was too late to slip them back into the drawer.
Yet my luck held. That day it turned truly cold. The snow began to fall at last, and we sat at home. The wet streets turned to ice, then the ice was covered in white. We found ourselves snowed in, and while constrained in the house, there was no need for gloves.
“Françoise. Go to the window and tell me what you see.”
“I see nothing, Madame. There is only white. I cannot even see the roofs of the other houses.”
“Well, well, come back and sit by me then. We must keep indoors today.”
And so we sat by the fire. As the days passed, the room grew warm and sleepy. Nodding beside her in the light of the hearth, I slowly felt myself grow warm toward her as well. Perhaps with my theft, I felt the slate wiped clean. And she, feeling the new peace in me, thought order was restored. On the fifth day, when the snow ceased and I dressed her for her walk, I brought her a pair of warm woolen mittens in place of light gloves. She drew them over her hands without thinking, and so we went out.
It was the coldest winter I had ever known, and I thanked my stars as it wore on that I was harbored safe in the Pommereau house, not still in my parents’ home. The city was white and still. Even the skyline seemed stretched and brittle in the cold. Everyone huddled by fires, or froze. I heard strange tales of farmers going out to do the milking and being discovered the next day, frozen solid three steps from their own doors; of birds falling like stones out of the sky; of icicles—as long as a tall man—breaking off from the eaves of high buildings and spearing passersby straight down the middle so that they fell dead in the snow.
Winter storms threw great towers of ice up into the harbor, along the beach and against the sides of buildings, so it seemed as though we were under attack from both the water and the air. The fierce wind blew off any snow that settled on these twists and cascades of ice, and my mistress and I went down to the harbor to wonder at these monstrous growths on the frozen sand.
She found I had never learned to skate, and resolved to teach me. Together we tramped out to a large pond used for the purpose and she showed me how to strap the metal runners to my boots, then made me fasten up her own.
“Did you truly never do this as a child, Françoise?”
“I did not have such things, Madame.”
“I learned as a child. Every child in the village knew how to skate.”
Thinking of my one pair of shoes, I wondered if this was true. Even in France, surely some children in her village must have been without skates, or shoes, or the warm coat she took as her due.
She smiled at my puzzled expression.
“You will learn. Come, pull me up.”
I heaved her onto the ice and staggered after her, slipping and wobbling. But she, though larger and heavier than I, skated right out to the middle of the pond, beckoning for me to follow. On skates, she seemed lighter and more graceful. I could imagine her as a young girl. I tried to follow her, moving inch by inch, never lifting my feet from the ice.
The pond was full of people, all intent on the same sport. Ladies and gentlemen, gliding round and round, some linked arm in arm. The men managed to look more graceful than the women, who were hampered with their wide skirts and bulging shawls and cloaks. All in all I thought it a foolish pastime, to circle endlessly round like a clock. I saw a group of ragged girls standing by the bank. They had no skates, and so they pushed each other across the ice, whirling and laughing. None of them were girls I knew, yet I still wished for a moment to be among them, as ragged and cheerful as they, though their faces were blanched with cold, and their lips and hands terribly roughened by the wind. Lumbering toward Madame, I saw how some of the younger gentlemen skated faster and faster, leaping and capering, and wished to do the same.
“Come quickly to me now. You must be bolder if you are to learn.”
I lifted my feet up then, hoping to glide toward her, imagining the wind singing in my ears as I gathered to surprising speed. I slipped and fell flat on the ice in a mess of tangled skirts, my arms waving wildly, my hands clutching air.
“My goodness, are you hurt?”
I stared up at her face, framed in the light from the sun.
“Not at all, Madame, but I think I am not meant to be a skater.”
I grinned up at her, and she laughed, and I laughed too, louder than she. Helping me up, she showed me how to lift my feet, how to turn, how to make the blades obey me. By dinnertime, I could keep upright, and even let go of her arm.
“You’ve done well, Françoise,” she said, before she went to bed.
“Have I?”
“It is a sport for ladies, needing a light touch and grace. I like to see you master it. It is a thing that reminds me of home, and I have little to remind me here. Thank you.”
It hurt me to be thanked, for it made me think guiltily of the stolen gloves. But I pushed the thought away.
At last the spring came. The birds flew among the trees, nest-building, and green things stood up sharp in the wet dark earth. The days grew slowly longer, and the air was sweet in the evening. My mistress seemed to wake more cheerful, and sang sometimes at her sewing. With the warmer weather, she still did not miss the gloves, for she wore a thin gray pair when she went out. And I thought hopefully now that perhaps she never would miss them, with so many pairs spilling out of her dressing-table drawers.
All winter I had kept the gloves against my skin. Sometimes, bending over, I felt the beadwork tickle, felt the scrape of the black silk. Sometimes even, in my guilt, I thought they rustled loud enough for others to hear. Often at night I took them out and wore them, turning my hands in the light of my candle. But with the coming of May, my revenge seemed stale to me. Each day, Madame and I went walking together in the fine weather, and it seemed to me that the world grew larger, and that my theft was not freedom but childish petulance. Whether my servitude felt less, or whether I had grown used to it, I did not know. Yet I still kept the gloves, unsure of how to give them up.
“Françoise, get my cloak and your own,” she said one morning, “and good shoes for us both. We are walking far today.”
“To visit the churchyard, Madame? We could pick some lilac to lay there.”
“No, Françoise, though you are a good girl to say it. I thought today we could walk to your old home.”
My mouth must have fallen open, for she raised her eyebrows.
“Is it so shocking? After all your stories, I would like to see where it is you lived. Could you not take me?”
“Madame, it is not a place for you. And it is too far for you to walk.”
“I am strong enough for long walks—as well as you. And do not tell me my place,” she said, smiling as she said it, “or I will remind you of yours. Come, this is a new land, and perhaps I should not be so squeamish if I am not to die of boredom.”
Then she drew something from her pocket.
“Françoise, you have served me well all winter, and I think I have been a melancholy woman to serve. So I thought, it being spring, you should have something from me.”
And she held out to me a lace ribbon, black and red with a pattern of butterflies and daisies woven through it. I kept my palms closed, not knowing what to say and full of confusion, so she took one of my hands and gently forced apart my fingers, and closed them again over the gift.
“I thought to give you this some time ago, but it seemed for a while that we were not friends. So here it is now.”
I muttered thanks, my face reddening.
And she smiled so I must smile back. Looking up, I saw she was pleased, thinking my awkwardness a touching humility, when in truth it was guilt. But seeing how she was pleased to think me humble, I felt a little less guilty.
“There, my good girl, tie it up in your hair and get our cloaks and let us go.”
In my room, I struggled into my overshoes, and my fingers seemed heavy. Catching sight of my face in the little mirror, I saw myself white and afraid. The gloves seemed a great load under my dress.
I stood up, and then tugged out the gloves. If we were to be friends, as she had said, I would not carry them with me. Later, while all the house slept, I would put them back in her drawer, and I would make a new beginning in which I might be satisfied with the life I had been given. No one would know of my secret theft, and with time even I would forget it. I smiled at myself in the mirror, touched the new ribbon, and thought I looked like a pretty, obedient, and virtuous girl, and would soon be so.
I left the gloves balled up under my pillow, waiting for night.
My parents’ house was more crooked than I remembered it. While I did not miss the place, memory had softened it and in my recollection it had not been falling to pieces. The weight of all the winter snow had made the roof cave in on one side, and a soft mossy green had begun to cover over the whole. I imagined, inside, the bed a nest of mice, and the table and chairs slowly turning to sawdust, eaten by woodworm and damp.
The door swung crazily open, hanging by one hinge. We stood in the yard, looking at it.
“Well,” she said at last, “is it much changed?”
“No, Madame. It is only older and more bent.”
She looked puzzled, and I hid a smile, wondering if she thought I had grown up in a house with only half a roof.
“You must have suffered greatly in winter.”
“Yes, Madame.”
“And only two rooms!”
“Yes, Madame.”
“Well, let us try if the steps are safe.”
“We will not go in, Madame.”
“Why? Is it dangerous?”
“Dangerous?”
“Might there be thieves living in it, or heathen?”
“There is nothing worth stealing, Madame, and the heathen have their own homes. They do not want ours.”
“Then show me.”
“Madame, you will think me a peasant, but I would rather be shamed in my superstition than bring on my bad luck.”
“Why? Is it cursed?”
She looked round, eyes widening, at the dirt of our yard, the furrows of mud made by the pressure of the now-melted snow, the piles of soaked old garbage, the house itself, and behind that the beginning of the dark trees. It frightened her a little, I could see, frightened and moved her at once.
“When I left this house, Madame, I vowed I would never come here again. I wanted to make another life, and forget my old one. So I closed the door for the last time.”
“And yet you came back when I asked you to.”
“Because you wished to see it, Madame. I could not refuse, could I? For if it was not for you, I would never have left it.”
She nodded, pleased with me, peasant that I was.
“But you will not go in. I understand, Françoise.”
She took my arm, as if I were her daughter and not her maid.
“Well then, my dear, enough of this. Lead me home.”
The market, when we passed by, was in an uproar. There was shouting and the sound of a struggle, and then we saw someone hurried away between two officers, but such a crowd was gathered that we could not see who was held between them.
“What is it, Françoise?” Madame Pommereau said, alarmed. “Run and see.”
She hung back in a doorway, and I dashed into the thinning crowd of people, all muttering with disappointment, for the officers had taken their man and gone.
I found myself face to face with Marie.
She was shabby, in a patched dress and with no cloak, though the day was cool. She stepped back from me, looked me up and down. I found myself both proud and embarrassed at the contrast between us, she in her ill-fitting rags and me so neat and clean, with my hair tied with my new ribbon and not a spot on me, from collar to pointed shoes.
“Well, you have done well, haven’t you?”
I blushed.
“Not badly. I’m a maid now, to Madame Pommereau. There she stands—there on the edge of the crowd.”
“I know it. Everyone knows how you have moved up in the world, to serve in such a house as hers. You are grown greater than us.”
I did not know what to say.
“Come, I do not mind. Look at your lovely clothes.”
Then she held out her hand. Confused, I made as if to take it, and she laughed, a little scornfully.
“Careful, I might dirty your hands! No, look at my ring.”
It was a brass ring, greenish-gold on her finger. It was too loose, and I could see that the metal had stained the skin under it. I wondered if her hands had been plumper when she had first put it on.
“My man is a trapper, we were married before the snow. I’m a married woman now, so you must respect me too, for all your new station.”
“It’s a fine ring,” I said awkwardly.
Then neither of us knew what to say.
“Well, I suppose the mirror did show me something after all!” she said at last, swinging her arms in forced bravado. “I should go now, he’ll be angry if I keep him waiting.”
“And my lady also,” I said. Then we both laughed.
“Well, Marie, we all must serve someone, I suppose.”
She stopped laughing.
“I’m married, as is proper. I would not bow to Madame Pommereau for any good clothes. It is not the same service.”
“Maybe not. But tell me what the crowd is gathered for, or Madame will scold me so I wish I had your trapper, which I do not now. My mistress thinks it is a rebellion.”
Marie wrinkled her nose.
“Ladies and gentlemen are always thinking we may rebel, Marie, and so we might, for if you saw the food I eat every night, you would rebel, and that’s just the scraps from their table. Meat and wine and chocolate every day in the Pommereau house.”
I saw her eyes kindle with hunger at this, but was not sorry, for I would not be pitied for lacking a brass ring.
“It’s nothing like that. Two soldiers fought a duel last week, and they arrested one of them, that’s all. I think it is a shame, for he was only a recruit this past fall, and he’s handsome too, if a little scrawny.”
We looked at each other again.
“Well, I must go.”
And she turned and walked into the crowd. I wanted to call something after her, but could not think what.
“Let us walk on, Madame,” I said, going back to my lady. “It is only two soldiers who dueled, and they arrested one.”
She breathed sharp.
“That will go ill with them then.”
“They are soldiers, Madame. May they not fight?”
“In battle they may fight the enemy and kill him, or be killed if that is their fate. But we have too many enemies for our men to kill each other over trifles. And too few men. Surely you would know that a soldier must refuse a duel. Did not your father ever need to defend his honor?”
“Madame, my father had no honor to defend, nor my mother, so it was not a question in our house.”
“Françoise, do not speak like that of the dead. They are your parents.”
“Well enough, Madame, but let us go, the sky is clouding in.”
A gentle rain was beginning to fall as we reached the house. Taking Madame’s cloak in the front hall, I saw Paul standing idle in the shadows. Taking off my own cloak, I went to him. He raised his eyebrows at me and smiled curiously. Impatient, I thrust the cloaks at him.
“Paul, take these and lay them before the kitchen fire. I must attend my lady upstairs.”
He kept his arms loose at his sides. Feeling foolish, I pressed the bundled cloth against his chest.
“Come, take them, for you keep her waiting.”
“Take them yourself. I have business with my lady.”
Madame had not followed this, but now, hearing the sharpness in his voice, she came up beside us.
“Paul? What is it?”
He looked at me, still holding the wet cloaks, then looked at Madame and bowed his head, a servile little jerk that showed contempt, though she did not see it. I felt my insides go queasy.
“You must come to Berthe. She’s upstairs.”
“Upstairs? She knows better than to go upstairs.”
“You must forgive us, Madame. We knew we should not have done it, but we had our suspicions, Berthe and I. We had the honor of the household to think of.”
“What are you talking about, Paul?”
“So, seeing she was out with you, we took our chance. You will excuse us, Madame, when you see what we have to show you. It is a fearful thing that she has done.”
“What do you mean? What who has done?”
“Come this way, my lady.”
He led us toward the stairs. My steps felt heavy. I hugged the cloaks to me and walked behind Madame, my eyes on Paul’s thin back ahead of us.
“Paul, has Berthe gone into my rooms?”
“Not in your rooms, my lady. Come, you must see with your own eyes.”
Up and up we climbed, up the stairs to the attic. As we set foot on those stairs, we all heard a sound from behind the door at the top, a strange, grunting, bellowing sound, a sound of urgency and triumph, but with no words. Hearing it, Madame turned to look back at me, her face troubled. I could not meet her eyes. Let it not be true, I thought, let it not be true, please let it not be true.
Paul led us down the corridor and into my room.
“Come in,” he said with a flourish, smirking at me. “Come and see what we found. We were right to be suspicious. Something’s not trustworthy about her, I said to myself. And I was right.”
Berthe stood by my bed, bellowing. She looked vengeful and dangerous, framed in the gray rain-light that came from my small window. When she saw us, she stopped. She looked at Madame Pommereau, then at Paul, and then, with a grim determination, at me. She opened her hands. They held the black gloves.
She pointed to me, grunting, and hoisted the gloves high to make sure we would all see them and know what they were.
Then, again silence. A question in Madame Pommereau’s eyes.
“She found them under the pillow, Madame,” said Paul eagerly, “and we knew them for yours, seen them on your hands a hundred times I’m sure. I told you it was a fearful thing.”
Berthe gave me a look, then, bending over quick, she spat at my feet.
There were many things I could have done. I had a gift for pathetic tears that had won hearts harder than Madame’s. I could have played the innocent, protesting that Berthe, in her coarse jealousy of my place in the household, had herself stolen the gloves and put them in my room. It would have been believable; it could almost have been true. Or, if I had been more noble and thought of Berthe turned out into the street to beg or starve, I could have fallen on my knees and begged Madame’s forgiveness, and with my strange luck might even have won it. But when I saw Berthe spit, something broke inside me and everything I was and had made of myself in spite of myself seemed to come crowding up in me and I felt only blind, terrible anger.
I threw myself at Berthe, screaming, my hands clawing at her face.
“How dare you! How dare you! You stupid slatternly cow! I’ll tear out your eyes! I’ll eat your heart!”
“Paul! Do something!”
At Madame’s command, Paul gripped me hard and pulled me off. I still kicked and flailed, pulling at his hair.
“Let me go! I’ll kill her! I’ll kill you!”
I saw Madame’s face and was still.
“Madame—”
She stepped away from me, holding up her hands.
“Don’t—don’t speak to me. Enough. That’s enough. I must speak to my husband. I must consider what to do with you. Oh, Françoise!”
She turned to go.
“Madame—”
“You can have nothing to say to me. Paul, watch her until my husband comes home.”
And she went down the stairs.
“Well, my fine miss,” said Paul, twisting my arms behind my back, “an example must be made of you.”
And Berthe spat again, making a guttural, hoarse sound in her throat.