The Swan Thieves

Chapter 56 1879

She wakes with a scream. Yves, in his nightcap, is shaking her shoulder, bringing her a little cognac from his dressing room. It is only a dream, she tells him, gasping. He says that of course it is only a dream. What did she dream about? Nothing, she says-- just a strange working of her imagination. Once he has comforted her, he is sleepy again; he has worked like a dray horse these last weeks, she knows; she lets him think she is calm so that he can burrow back into his own dreams. He breathes gently, in and out, while she lights a candle and sits in her rose-trimmed dressing gown on the edge of the bed until light begins to seep through the curtains.
Eventually she needs the chamber pot; she takes it carefully out from under the bed and uses it, her gown tucked up out of the way. When she wipes herself there is a streak like red cadmium, and she has to fumble in the bureau of her dressing room for the cloth pads Esme has left folded in the top drawer. Another month without hope. The blood itself is horrifying after her dream; she sees it bubbling over a white face, seeping onto the paving stones, a woman's blood mingling in the dirt with the blood of men who have died for their convictions.
She blows out the candle, afraid Yves will wake again; tears sting her eyes. She thinks of Olivier. She cannot tell him her dream--she would not give him such pain. But now she wishes he were here, sitting in the damask chair by the window, holding her. She finds a warmer robe and sits there alone, her hair loose and tears trickling down her neck. If he were here, he would sit down in her chair first, his long, rather spare body filling the space; then she would curl up in his lap like a child. He would hold her, dry her face, draw the robe across her shoulders and knees. He is the most loving person she has ever known, this man who once dodged bullets with a sketchbook in his hand. But then, she wonders, why should he comfort her? Surely his own need is greater. This brings the dream back again, and she makes herself smaller in the chair, crushing her breasts in her arms, waiting for his past to subside in her.