There was no wicked fairy, no thieving father or nagging mother, nobody locked in a tower, and certainly no heroic, handsome prince. There were just people, muddling along, doing the best we could. And we all helped each other, one way or another. My mother had wonderful hair. Even more wonderful than mine, whatever you may have heard.
It was thick and long, as soft and fine as embroidery silks, and it shone like silver and gold. My father loved my mother very much β that part of the story is true, though nobody ever gives him credit for it β and so he went to the wise woman for help. They could afford to pay for the things that needed paying for, and this definitely needed paying for. My father was a stonemason, not an apothecary. How would he even have known which herbs he needed? So there was no stealing.
Madame Rohan is a kind woman, and a patient one too, but she can be stern when the situation warrants it. It takes two to get pregnant after all, and Madame Rohan saw no purpose in fixing the symptom without addressing the underlying problem. No, of course she did not ask for his firstborn child as her payment.
What would she do that for? Trust me, nobody wants Jean-Paul as payment, not even his betrothed. And Madame Rohan was an apothecary β can you imagine a man like my brother in a stillroom? Her payment? Well, I was never told just what it was, but my parents had no more children after me, though all the world spoke of the affection between them. My mother was sick for a long time after my birth, and I was a frail, under-sized child, who would not nurse. Between caring for my mother and running after seven young children, my father and eldest siblings had enough to do, and more than enough, without caring for a baby.
Nothing was ever said of fostering or adoption, but one year passed, and then another, and my mother grew strong and well again, and I stayed with Madame Rohan, in her little house and shop across the square from Strasbourg Cathedral. My parents could not provide the care I needed, and Madame Rohan could, and that was that. Besides, Madame Rohan had become attached to me, and I to her. I called her Tante Rohan, and she called me Persinette, after the parsley she had given my mother.
