The Queen's Dollmaker. Christine Trent
stop for respite. At the end of the alley, they turned right as instructed, and came upon a line of men passing buckets of water to quell the furious burning of a parquetrist’s warehouse, where the combination of wood flooring and stains was threatening to make the fire even more incendiary. Searching through the sweating, breathless, straining assembly of men, Claudette spied her father near the front of the line, grunting under the weight of each bucket passing through his hands.
“Mama, wait here. Papa!” She hurried over to the line.
“Ah, Claudette. What are you doing here?”
“Mama is with me. She wanted to find you.”
“I told her to go with you out of the city.” A yielding sigh. “Very well, where is she?”
“I’ll bring her to you.”
Claudette ran back to her mother to let her know that she had found Papa. Together they went to where he was accepting yet another heavy wooden pail. His face was beet red, but it was unclear if this was from the heat or the exertion. Claudette’s mother rushed forward. “Étienne, I’m so scared without you. Come with Claudette and me now.”
“Adélaide, I told you to take care of Claudette. I’ll find you later.” He hastily kissed the top of her head and continued passing buckets.
“No, Étienne, I want to be with you.”
“Come, my love.” He signaled for the other men to continue while he attended to his wife, and steered her away from the frenetic work with the water buckets. Claudette joined her parents as her father walked her mother about twenty feet away. He sat her down against an overturned barrel in the street. “Now, you must promise to stay here until I am finished; then we will all leave together. Will you promise?”
“Yes, Étienne.” She had a desperate look in her eyes, and she seemed unable to release her hold on her husband.
Claudette approached the two of them. “Papa, I’ll stay here with Mama. Mama, let go of Papa’s arm and hold on to me.”
Adélaide took this instruction literally and gripped her daughter’s arm fiercely. “I’m so afraid.”
“It will be fine, Mama.”
With a deeply concerned look, Claudette’s father turned to resume his work, while his wife and daughter watched from afar. The band of fire was approaching closer to the long line of makeshift firefighters, devouring everything in its path and threatening to encircle them. Claudette felt an unease she could not explain. “I think that perhaps—”
Her father dropped the pail he was holding and crouched down with his hands on his knees. His chest was rising and falling rapidly. He closed his eyes and began swaying. He crumpled to the ground in a curled position, his eyes staring sightlessly at his wife and daughter. The worker to his left simply continued the fight, handing buckets of water over his prone figure. No time to help a fallen worker.
Claudette’s mother made a strangled noise in her throat. “No, no, no, no, no.” The words stuck in her throat and she gave a long, low moan. She stood up from the barrel and staggered to where her husband was lying on the ground. “Oh, Étienne, my love, no.” She dropped on her knees next to him, and threw herself on his chest. “No, no, no, it cannot be.” Her sobbing caused her chest to rapidly pulse in a mock parody of the way her husband’s had only moments ago.
Claudette’s eyes opened in horror at what was happening before her. A hand over her mouth to stifle a scream, she watched her mother’s agony. Yet even through her anguish, Claudette sensed that something else was wrong. Another noise was rising above the din of men shouting, fire crackling, and women screaming for their children. Out of her peripheral vision she caught a flash of the source of the noise. Crashing through the middle of the already chaotic melee was a horse pulling a driverless carriage. The frightened animal galloped wildly through the streets. The firefighters began to disperse, some of them trying in vain to seize the horse’s reins whipping behind its head. One managed briefly to grab the side of the carriage, but slipped on the wet pavement and released his hold.
The commotion was now out of control. No one was able to pay much attention to the loose horse. In an instant, all of the fire’s madness—the noise, the heat, the smell—receded into the background, as Claudette watched the horse carelessly gallop straight toward her parents and leap over them, leaving the carriage to drag itself full force over the prone figures.
Claudette succumbed to shock and smoke, collapsing in the street.
2
Her lungs were gasping for air. She was drowning. No, water was dripping on her face. It was raining. Pain and soreness were making themselves uncomfortable companions throughout her body.
“Mademoiselle Claudette?” A face loomed over her. Papa? “You are awake, no?” It did not sound like her papa. “Mademoiselle, let me help you sit up.” Masculine arms pulled her unwillingly into a sitting position. She gradually opened her eyes. She appeared to be in a park. What was she doing here?
Focusing her eyes, she looked up into the face of Old Jacques. His kindly, wrinkled, unshaven face peered with concern into hers. It all clicked into place. Old Jacques had reunited her with her mother, then she and Mama had gone to look for Papa, then the rampaging carriage—
“Can you walk?”
She choked out an answer. “I believe so. I need to stand and walk, to clear my head.” He helped her struggle to her feet, handed her her reticule, and began guiding her through the pathways of the park. The early dawn revealed hundreds of homeless Parisians, some under makeshift tents of clothing and linens, some simply sitting in the elements. There was an eerie quiet to it all, as though her fellow city dwellers were stunned into silence that their worlds had collapsed around them so quickly.
“Jacques, how did I get here?”
“I was worried when you and your mother left the shop and I saw you turn in the direction of the fire. Étienne would have never forgiven me if I allowed his wife and daughter to wander about in that confusion, so I decided to follow you to make sure you were both safe. I did not catch up to you until you turned the corner and found your father working to put out the fire at the Bertrands’. I had just decided to turn back, when I saw Étienne fall, then your mother go to him—” He stopped this line of thought. “Well, then I saw you fall to the ground, and knew that you might end up trampled yourself. So I picked you up and carried you myself to this park. You have been unconscious for hours.”
“I must return and find my parents.”
He looked at her pityingly. “Claudette, there will be nothing to find, little one. The fire spread from there down to our block.”
“Someone may have found them and taken them to a hospital.”
“Cherie, no,” Jacques shook his head. “No one will have found them.”
Claudette blinked rapidly at him. She felt tears burning her eyes, but was unable to stop them. In a rush, she threw herself at her family friend, sobbing against his shoulder. He patted her head awkwardly while she grieved.
Raising her head eventually she declared, “But I must give them a proper burial.”
He shook his head again. “No, Claudette, it is best that you not return there, for you will find nothing but sorrow and wreckage. You will find nothing of the doll shop, either, as passersby have told me that our street is almost completely destroyed. I assume my wine shop is gone, but to fire, not vandals, as I had originally feared. I have a cousin in the town of Versailles, and I will head out there to stay. Why don’t you come with me?”
“No, no, I must return home.”
“But there is nothing left. We are all homeless.”
“I must see for myself.”
“Mademoiselle, where will you go from there?”
“I cannot think of that now. No,