Charlotte heard scuffling noises coming from the passage outside her room. It’s Nicolas, she thought. My son. So soon, at last. She leaped up from her stool and opened the door.
But, instead, it was the troubadour girl, Marguerite, who began to cry as soon as she saw Charlotte. ‘My mother is dead,’ she sobbed, and fell into her arms.
Charlotte embraced her. The girl’s entire body shook as she wept.
‘She should have known,’ the girl was saying between breaths, ‘she should have known to stay away from the river. Lesage saw it in her cards. He warned her about water, but she still went to visit a friend who worked on the quay.’
Charlotte recalled the scene by the river when she and Lesage had come across the poor drowned woman. Lesage seemed shocked – not only by the sight of the woman’s corpse, apparently, but at the fact that he had forewarned her of such a fate.
Charlotte’s shoulder grew damp with tears. How terrible it was to lose one’s mother so young. She searched for the words with which others had comforted her in her own times of mourning, but they were meagre pickings: faith and prayer, life and the afterlife, where all former things have passed away. There was nothing to be said; death, after all, was the final word.
Eventually, the girl stopped crying and Charlotte led her to the lumpy mattress on the floor. ‘Has she been buried yet?’ she asked.
Marguerite shook her head. ‘It will be later today. My father is most distraught and has hired mourners at some expense. He is already sick from grief himself. He was out all night. This morning some friends brought him back to the fair and he was dirty, and as drunk as a bellringer. The performance cannot go ahead today, of course. We’ll have no money if we cannot work, and we’ll be ruined.’
Charlotte had always thought of grief as a nasty unwanted visitor who encouraged the bereaved to act in ways contrary to their true natures. Grief took them carousing or goaded them to fight in the street. Sometimes he lured them to their own deaths, or forbade them to speak at all. And – this worst of all – he whispered the names of the dead in your ear, over and again; the things you should have done; the words you should have said; his bony finger tap-tap-tapping against your heart.
When their daughters died, she and Michel retreated into their own private silences, where they remained for so long, careful with each other, barely touching, as if fearful their hearts were made of glass and might break. They didn’t speak. When at home, Michel gnawed on his pipe while Charlotte went more often than necessary to her vegetable garden, where she made a show of tending her crop, for only there could she succumb to the urge to sag to her knees. Why did you not seek help sooner? Tap. Why did you not see they were sick? Tap. Why did you not pray harder, woman? Tap. Henceforth, the smell of fresh leeks always reminded her of that bitter summer. With Philippe it was different; he was barely formed, and Charlotte herself was only seventeen years old; it was as if she didn’t have time enough to know how best to love him before he was taken from her.
‘Sorrow makes people do strange things,’ she murmured. ‘Your father will return to you soon enough.’
Marguerite gazed around the room with her head angled to compensate for her bad eye, a mannerism that gave her the bearing of one listening to voices in other rooms. ‘Did you find your own son, madame?’ she asked.
Charlotte nodded. ‘Yes. Lesage has gone to fetch him and bring him here. They will be here any moment. When I heard you on the stairs I thought you were him.’
The girl managed a crumpled smile. ‘Ah. That is good, at least. Something good.’
‘Yes. It is. He is alive and well. He should be back here soon and we will return to our country.’
They listened to the noises from the street outside. A child singing a nonsensical rhyme, a butter vendor, pigeons on the roof. ‘Beurre frais, beurre frais . . .’
Marguerite wiped her nose. ‘Do you still remember your own children, madame? What they looked like, I mean?’
She took the girl’s hand and stroked it. ‘Yes. Of course I do. How could I forget them? Béatrice was pale, with freckles. She hated to wear a bonnet, even in winter. A serious child. Sturdy, I would have thought, not fearful of anything. But Aliénor was – what? – she seemed older than her years. Always telling Béatrice what to do, tugging her along; you know how girls are sometimes. But cheerful, always finding something to laugh about. Clumsy as a foal, my husband used to say. I was holding her hand, like this, when she died, and looking her in the eye as if I might keep her in this world with me. We sat like that for a long time, but for one moment I glanced away at something Michel said, and when I looked back she was gone – as if she had merely slipped out the window.’
‘To heaven.’
‘To heaven,’ Charlotte said at last. ‘Yes.’ She paused until her breathing regained its balance. ‘You’ll not forget your mother, Marguerite. Don’t worry. You’ll always carry her with you.’
Perhaps seeking to lighten the atmosphere, Marguerite fumbled beneath her blouse and retrieved the amulet containing the pigeon’s heart that Charlotte had assembled for her.
‘I am wearing your charm around my neck, madame. As you told me.’
Charlotte felt a fresh surge of affection for the girl and squeezed her hand, unsure whether to be envious of her as-yet-unlived future – or fearful. Life and all its endless variations. There was no order to it. ‘Good girl. Remember to bury it where your handsome man will pass by. You need a husband now more than ever, for he can help your family.’
Marguerite nodded. Then she began to weep again.
Charlotte embraced her, felt her shoulder bones moving beneath her clothes, beneath her skin. ‘Your father will come back to you. I promise. I can tell he is a decent man. Grief will have its way with him for a while, but he will take care of you. Your mother’s death is a terrible loss for him. And for you.’
But the girl shook her head. There was something else. ‘I need your help again, madame. Monsieur Lesage told my mother to take special care with baby Jean. He said he could die of plague. The card he drew for him was terrible. I saw it. It was a skeleton. Can you make a charm for him, for his protection? Please. I know you can. Please. My brother is so weak. I’ll pay you, of course.’
‘Where is your baby brother now?’
‘He is with my uncle. He does not want him to be too far from his sight. He cries all the time.’
It was unclear if she were referring to the baby or her uncle, Monsieur Boucher. Charlotte considered the poor girl before placing her left hand on her book and closing her eyes. Paper blessed by a priest on which are written prayers to Saint Roque. Lavender flowers, dragon seeds, amulets bound with twine and sprinkled with the purest vinegar. Save us from such vile pestilence and fevers. Praetectio. Place the charm around the neck and wear it at all times.
She opened her eyes. ‘I have none of the ingredients to make such a charm, Marguerite.’
The girl wiped tears from her face and scrambled to her feet. ‘There is an apothecary near the fair at Saint-Germain, on the other side of the river – Monsieur Maigret on Rue des Canettes. He has everything. He is the best in Paris, they all say. He’ll have what you need. Come, madame. We can go there now.’
Marguerite’s eagerness was heartbreaking, but Charlotte shook her head. ‘No. I cannot leave here. Not now. I have to wait for Nicolas. I can visit the apothecary later. Come back tonight. And bring your brother with you. I was intending to leave Paris as soon as Lesage returned with Nicolas, but I’ll wait for you.’