Tales of Passion, Tales of Woe by Sandra Gulland

asked.
    “My husband is in Italy now.”
    “He left—?”
    “Twenty-one Ventôse.”
    Then he asked a number of questions. Are my breasts knotty? (No!) Have I experienced a feeling of fearfulness? Anxiety? (Yes, yes.) Do I suffer from toothache? (All my adult life.) Do I desire to eat loathsome and unwholesome foods such as carrots, raw turnips, roast pig? (I confessed I loved carrots.) Do I fear dying? Do I have forebodings and gloom? Am I overtaken by a fear of undefined evil? Do I suffer from heartburn?
    “Excellent, you will carry to term,” he said, apparently satisfied with my answers.
    “Do you mean, Dr. Cuce, that I am with child?” “I confirm it.” “But Dr. Cucé—”
    “No need to be fearful, Madame,” he said, polishing his spectacles with the corner of his jacket. “Although it is not advisable for a woman to procreate after the age of thirty, you need not be concerned about consequences of a fatal nature. You have, as you informed me, already produced two children by your first husband, a procedure that has effectively opened up the channels.”
    “Dr. Cuce, it’s just that I do not feel that I am …” My breasts are in no way tender and my belly is not distended. “And what of the pain I am suffering? What of the fever?”
    “The pain is …?” He poked his manicured finger in my side.
    “Sometimes quite bad,” I said, “and at other times only an ache.” At that moment, a steady, throbbing, painful ache.
    “A minor inflammation of the stomach.” He wrote out a recipe for a purging diet-drink and an herbal tea to soak my feet in.
    Twenty livres—on account.
    Thérèse kissed me on both cheeks and on my forehead, as if bestowing a blessing. “That’s wonderful news! Bonaparte is so efficient.”
    “I just wished I believed it. I’m not in the least bit tender, and this pain is so …” Worrisome.
    “Did you take the hartshorn, nutmeg and cinnamon powder I sent you? Did you boil it in springwater, as I told you?”
    I nodded. “And then I tried a remedy my Aunt Désirée sent me, along with her special prayer. And then another my scullery maid swore on the head of Brutus would curb a morbid condition.”
    “And nothing helped?”
    I shook my head. Something was wrong.
    April 21.
    An amusing caller this afternoon—he helped chase away the vapours.
    “Captain Charles.” He introduced himself with a theatrical bow. He is young, in his early twenties I would guess, with an alert pixie look. A pretty man, exceptionally well made and with good features, excellent teeth. His thick black hair was pulled back into a braid. His sky blue hussar uniform brought out the extraordinary colour of his eyes—a light aquamarine blue. (Who is it he reminds me of?) “I’ve just arrived from Marseille,” he explained, “where I was entrusted with a letter for you.” As if by magic, he pulled a document from behind the marble bust of Socrates.
    I smiled behind my fan. * A trickster!
    The letter was in a woman’s hand, the script ill-formed, like that of a child. “It’s from General Bonaparte’s mother?” My son has told me of his happy marriage, and henceforth you have my esteem and approval. “How kind of her to write,” I said, suspecting, however, that Bonaparte had dictated her letter as well.
    “Yes, the General’s mother is so very kind,” he echoed, but with a curious long-suffering look that made me wonder if he meant the opposite.
    I heard the businesslike clicking of my pug dog’s nails on the parquet floor. Fortuné entered the room with the air of a master. “What a charming little dog!” Captain Charles stooped down, holding out his hand.
    Charming? Most people consider my surly pug ugly. “I beg you to be cautious, Captain. My dog has been known to bite.”
    Fortuné approached the captain’s hand and sniffed it. The captain picked Fortuné up and, with a playful growling sound, rubbed his face in Fortuné’s fur. “He’s never allowed a stranger to touch