Spirit of Lost Angels (28 page)

As the coach neared Lucie-sur-Vionne I grew more restless, though as I glimpsed the view of Lyon, and Mont Blanc with its familiar crown of snow, I did feel the muscles in my neck and shoulders loosen.

As I stepped from the carriage, the Monts du Lyonnais, more purple than green in the autumn light, stretched along the valley like maternal arms, and la place de l’Eglise hummed with the usual noises — the anvils of the blacksmith and the clog-maker, the bark of dogs, the quack of ducks, the bustle of people around the fountain and the warm, floury scent of the bakery. Save for the absent equestrian statue of King Louis XV, it seemed unchanged. No sign, here at least, of any pillaging or burning.

In my city clothes, and swinging a parasol, I couldn’t help but notice the villagers’ garments of coarse cloth dyed from oak tree bark, their sandals, clogs, or plain rope wound around their feet. This obvious display of poverty was something I had forgotten in Paris, where the poor did not appear so destitute in their left-over garments from the rich.

I looked around at all that was familiar but seemed oddly alien, my gaze resting on the great granite facade of Saint Antoine’s Church. What had become of Père Joffroy when the clergy lost everything — our poor
curé
, who’d always been so kind to me?

I glanced across the fields, the woods and hills, inhaling the scent of rotting leaves, of damp earth, and the silvery chill that heralds snow — all that grounded me to this land. I realised how accustomed I’d become to the crowded city conditions, and how I’d missed this wide expanse of clean, fresh countryside.

I also understood I was no longer the naïve peasant girl, and wondered how I would see these simple folk now, and what they might think of me. Would they look upon me as a mad asylum woman, with suspicion, and fear?

I didn’t relish their curious gazes immediately, so I hurried from the square, almost running up the hill towards Grégoire’s cottage, and to Madeleine.

As I neared the crest, I saw a woman shuffling along, ahead of me. She carried a basket in one hand, and cradled an infant in the other. I recognised her as Noëmie, the poor woman from the woods to whom I’d lent tools.

I recalled how she’d reminded me of the witch-woman I was so afraid of, and how I learned the painful way those accused of sorcery are rarely witches.

‘Noëmie,’ I called, skipping a few steps to catch up to her.

Noëmie twisted around and I saw she was still lean, but pink-cheeked, and quite different from the desperate, bedraggled woman from before.

‘Madame Victoire? You are … you have come back to Lucie?’ Her gaze travelled from my powdered face, across my fine clothes, and down to my embroidered slippers. ‘I am pleased to see you looking so … so fine.’ Her eyes flickered across my flame-coloured hair.

‘You look in good health too,’ I said. ‘It seems
la chance
has shone upon you?’

‘My sons and my husband — no longer a journeyman I am pleased to say — found work this past season. We have built our own cottage on the riverbank, not far from your brother’s new home.’

‘And that is just where I’m going,’ I said, linking my arm through Noëmie’s. ‘Let’s walk together. I am so keen to see my brother and his family, and my little Madeleine. How grown up she must be now.’

We took the track that skirted
L’Auberge des Anges
and led through the woods, towards the river. Noëmie and I swished through the carpet of autumn leaves, under the boughs of grand oaks with their ivy-strangled trunks. I lifted my hood and drew my cloak around me, against the chilly fog; against anybody from
L’Auberge
who might see me.

We reached the top of the slope and even as I averted my eyes from the Vionne River, I saw it all again — the whorls of current, small heads bobbing up, down, up, down, in the hollows. Then there was nothing, except the lusty cries of Noëmie’s child.

‘Ah, he is a hungry boy, this one,’ Noëmie said. ‘I must stop and feed him.’

We sat together on a boulder and Noëmie latched the baby onto her breast, who soon made contented, gulping noises.

‘I am happy to see you back in Lucie,’ Noëmie said. ‘I tried to tell them you didn’t drown your little children; that you are a good, kind person, but they wouldn’t listen to me. They thought because I was a poor beggar, I must be mad too.’

‘You told them?’ The confusion swamped me again. ‘But how do you know? And why did they all believe some diabolical thing had stolen my senses, and I killed them?’

‘Because I saw what happened,’ Noëmie said, swapping the baby to the other breast. ‘I tried to tell them all, but nobody — ’

‘What did you see, Noëmie?’

‘You must have dozed off,’ she said. ‘I came upon you just as your little girl stumbled, and fell into the river. I was too far away to help, and I saw her brother run in after her. So young, but he must have sensed she was in danger. You tried to save them both, but the current stole them away before you could reach them. A terrible tragedy, Madame Victoire, but it was an accident.’

Her words shocked me into silence, and I could not reply for a minute.

‘Why can’t I remember a thing then?’

Noëmie shook her head, her nutbrown eyes wide with pity. ‘Perhaps it is too awful for your mind to hang onto such a thing?’

I suddenly felt weary, my legs so heavy I could barely move them.

‘Thank you,’ I said, smoothing clammy hands down my cloak-front. ‘Thank you for telling me the truth.’

‘I kept saying it was a mistake,’ she said, ‘that you weren’t evil or mad, but nobody would take notice of a crazed witch-woman from the woods. After you … when you left, they put up a carved cross for your little ones — your brother and Léon Bruyère — on the slope above the river.’

I had to get away; to move. Sitting still like this, it was harder and harder to breathe. I must see this cross.

‘I should hurry to Grégoire’s,’ I said, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘They will be waiting for me.’

‘Take care, Madame Victoire. You must come and drink some tea with me soon. I will show you our new cottage.’

‘Y-yes, I-I’d like that,’ I said, reeling away from Noëmie and her child.

Staggering like a drunk, I followed the cord tugging me to the Vionne — a thread from the same skein that had entangled my mind when the river stole Blandine and Gustave.

My pulse quickened as I caught sight of a stone cross a little further along.

My trembling legs folded to the damp earth beside the small memorial. With a fingertip, I traced their names, in the heart shape carved into the stone.

Blandine

Gustave

1785

Yes, an accident but they were my children, my responsibility, and I felt the stinging barbs of guilt as surely as if my own hand had held Blandine and Gustave under the water.

How could I let them drown? How could I do such an evil thing? A bolt of heat struck me, and a shudder of cold. The darkness flooded in and clutched me so tightly I couldn’t get my breath. I lay on the ground, my fingers clutching the cool stone.

I struggled upright and onto the path I knew so well. My breaths coming fast and shallow, I followed the curve of willow trees until I reached my special place on the riverbank. I slumped down on an icy rock.

‘Just a few minutes … a quick rest to gather my senses.’

The wind gusted from the Monts du Lyonnais, sighing chill and weary on my face. The valley, clothed in moss greens and browns, rose vast and harsh around me, the rotting smells of autumn scenting the air moving back and forth in quick tides.

A blackbird carved mad spirals through the air, bands of grey light silvered the puckered surface of the water, and the longer I sat there, the more the murmur of the water bubbling across stones was like a beckoning voice.

***

Blandine is thrashing about, a netted butterfly, her eyes wide with a child’s instinctive fear. She reaches out, tries to catch my skirt, and my outstretched hand. I am so close that her fingertips brush mine, then a burst of current carries her beyond my reach and her little hands flail, grasping at cold water.

Blandine’s face turns the dark hue of a winter sky, her eyes balls of glass, her white shift dancing a lazy liquid waltz. Gustave’s wails are so loud they might be heard all through the woods and up to the village. Or perhaps the screams are mine.

I wheel around to him, paddling against the drift towards me.

His face twisted in terror, my son reaches out, desperate to grab hold of me. His head sinks below the water, and I fight its tug, my heart beating in a frantic panic.

The water pulls stronger than me, and Gustave too, remains just beyond my reach. My son’s face disappears for the last time, and I am powerless, watching the river carry off my silent angels.

***

Without thought or sensible reflection, because I was far beyond that, I stood and walked into the water without a trace of fear.

I couldn’t feel its coldness; could not feel anything, as my feet slid across its slimy bed. I waded in deeper until the water swirled my cloak about me like clothes drying in the wind, and the circle of current held me there.

A hoarse, croaking noise startled me. I looked up and saw the Night Washerwoman amongst the willow branches — ghost of the mother who had killed her children. Dark and hulking, she was bent over a rock, scrubbing their little shrouds.

‘Come and help me, Victoire.’ The voice came from the depths of the black hood shadowing a face puckered with grooves. ‘You must, or you too, will be covered in the blood of your children.’ She cackled, revealing a toothless mouth, and I knew the Night Washerwoman had trapped me, and I could not escape her.

I had won some battles in my life, but I was powerless to fight this conflict rampaging within me. Death was the only reprieve for such a sin; relief from the bondage of my mind. If left to live it would ravage me to the core and consume me like a malignant disease. I could not let such a demon survive in my unwilling body.

My heartbeat steady, I propelled myself through the water, watching the bank recede, until I reached the deep centre where my feet no longer touched the bottom.

‘Please let me go.’ I sank below the surface and once in that dark, secretive underworld, as the coldness seeped into me, I groped about my neck for the bone angel. Where was it? I thought of all the women who’d worn it before me, and I fancied the water lapping over me to be their cries of pain; their tears of grief. Their spirits were calling me to join them. The current closed over me, holding me tight and carrying me towards them.

With a last glance upwards, in a shaft of wan light, I glimpsed a scarlet smudge on the riverbank. Was it a girl in a red dress, her hair streaming like the tail of a fox on the run?

My head broke the surface. Chest heaving, I gasped for air. She smiled and raised an arm in a wave.

‘Rubie!’ In sharp, panicky bursts, my arms cut through the water towards the bank.

As I got closer, the red blur became more and more hazy, vanishing, and when I neared the edge, there was only her outstretched arm.

I gripped the muddy bank, and reached out to the hand, to the clicking, urgent fingers.

‘Take it,’ a voice said, though I could not see from where the sound came. ‘Hold onto me, I’ve got you, Victoire.’

Strong hands held me under my arms, hauling me from the icy water.

I pushed the tangle of hair from my face, and the last thing I saw before the ashen light darkened to black, was the gaunt gaze of Léon Bruyère.

A gentle voice tugged me from the nightmare of glacial water, the current trapping me, my life eddying away. I sat up on the straw mattress, gazing about the same room I’d once shared with Armand Bruyère.

‘Ah, you’re awake.’

‘Léon? What … how did I get here? When?’

‘You don’t remember?’ As he sat beside me on the bed, I expected to inhale his familiar scent of earth, hay and horses but Léon smelled more like damp and mouldy linen — the musty smell of an unaired house.

‘Only yesterday,’ he said. ‘I saw two women walking along the path beside
L’Auberge
. I recognised Noëmie but the other one ... I noticed the way she walked — that so familiar walk. She seemed different, so much more … more
sophisticated
, but still I was certain.’

He took my hand, rubbed my knuckles with a calloused thumb. ‘I followed you; saw you at the memorial, then when you walked into the river … I couldn’t let you do it.’

I slumped back on the pillow. ‘I couldn’t live with myself; with what happened to them. Noëmie told me it was an accident, but still …’

I swung my legs over the side of the bed. ‘Madeleine … and Grégoire … they will be so worried. I must go to them!’

A panicky sensation set my heart racing, and it all rushed back — Léon and his treachery, but now he’d brought me here, I burned to know why he’d sent me to such a gruesome asylum. I wanted to stare into his dark eyes; to tell him he was wrong, and make him shake with remorse and shame. The anger bloomed, and I started to tremble with every terrible memory I thought I’d banished.

‘So, you see,’ I said, shrugging his hand off. ‘I was not the mad murderess you banished from Lucie five years ago — mad enough to have me locked up in God’s worst Hell!’

Léon’s face darkened, as if in shadow. ‘I did not know what to do. You were so … so bereft. For the melancholy to strike you as it did, everyone said evil had possessed you. They said there was nothing to be done when a person gets in such a way, and I had to send you away to drive the wicked madness from you.’

‘Only fools equate madness with devilry, Léon! I would have died in there, if I hadn’t escaped. La Salpêtrière does not make people better. It is simply a place to forget them.’

I jerked away from his hand hovering over my arm. ‘When I realised it was you who sent me there, I never wanted to return to Lucie, and I definitely never wanted to see you again.’

‘They all said you drowned Blandine and Gustave in a moment of insanity,’ Léon went on. ‘A madness demon that terrified us all. Nobody believed the rantings of the beggar-woman, Noëmie. We did not know what to do.’ He sighed and ran a hand through his dark hair. ‘It was not only me who decided, but I beg your forgiveness.’

‘Absolution is not that easy,’ I said. ‘It takes time, that is, if it ever comes. But all that — the madhouse — is over now. So much has changed. I’ve changed. Our
country
has changed.’

Léon waved a thin arm. ‘Yes, nothing will be the same, after the looters.’

‘Looters? You mean they came to
L’Auberge
, those brigands everyone has so feared?’

‘No, not brigands. Those stories were not much more than the mindless panic of the people. Just common thieves, but as you will see, when you’re well enough to get up, the result is the same. They took everything — the crops, the animals, the furniture, even the food from our kitchen. Late hail-storms destroyed the harvest and we are destitute. We shall all be dead before next spring.’

‘We?’

‘There is only Adélaïde and Pauline left, besides me. The others are dead from hunger, or sickness, or I don’t know what.’

Léon’s face seemed to twist in pain as he gazed out the window, across the Monts du Lyonnais. ‘The farm is mine but I am unable to provide for or protect my sisters, as I promised my father. They are frail and too afraid to leave the house.’

‘I am well enough to get up now, Léon, and I want to see what they have done to Armand’s farm; to our inn.’

***

A blanket curled about my shoulders, I stood with Léon in the u-shaped courtyard
,
staring about at the decaying buildings of
L’Auberge des Anges
.

The shutters were either closed or hanging from their hinges, the paint worn and peeling. The fields and orchard lay fallow and untended. The short, expectant barking of hounds was eerily absent; no quacking ducks or clacking hens.

I looked upon the ruins, my breaths shallow leaps catching in my throat. I shrank into the blanket but the chill crept inside the folds and beneath the layers of my clothes.

I shuffled across the cobbles to the stables. No grain, no hay and no corn. Sacks, wooden barrels and containers lay sideways, ploughs, forks, and other implements strewn about, twisted and broken. I felt as if something had struck me down — a corpse whose blood had marbled.

It was silent too, as if when the looters left, the people — Léon and his sisters — had also been swept away with the life and glory of
L’Auberge des Anges
.

The shock and sadness stilled me, and in the frigid silence descending from the hills, tears leaked down my cheeks.

The dun daylight faded to dusk, and the bell of Saint Antoine’s clanged low and strong across the valley. I nodded towards Grégoire’s cottage. ‘How is Madeleine? I am anxious to see them all.’

‘Your daughter thrives with her uncle and aunt,’ Léon said. ‘You will see she is a happy child and doesn’t seem to have suffered your absence. They have another new baby too, just a few weeks old. An especially joyous occasion after the last child was born dead.’ He shook his head. ‘Not having children is my great regret, Victoire … amongst others.’

‘Grégoire will be waiting for me,’ I said and, without a backward glance, I walked away from Léon, who seemed as forlorn and wasted as
L’Auberge des Anges
itself.

***

After several days of Françoise’s tasty cooking, I felt recovered from my icy dip in the river.

I sat at the cottage window, Madeleine perched on my lap. Shy at first, with only snaps of memories of her mother, she now sat easily with me. I couldn’t stop stroking her dark curls, and smiling at my daughter who’d inherited her father’s pleasant, easy manner.

Madeleine laughed with her cousins, Emile and Mathilde, as Grégoire narrated one of our father’s tales.

‘Look, Papa,’ Emile said. ‘A pretty bird.’ He pointed outside, to a robin redbreast, preening itself on a branch.

‘Why is his chest red?’ Madeleine said.

‘Well,’ Grégoire said, ‘at the Crucifixion, a robin was removing the bloody thorns from the head of Christ and a drop of his blood fell on the bird’s breast. Quick
,
before he goes, let’s make a wish for the first robin redbreast of the season.’ They joined hands and shut their eyes, and a second later, the pious bird spread his wings as if gathering their wishes into his scarlet breast, and vanished into the autumn gloom.

My brother nodded beyond the window, to
L’Auberge des Anges
. ‘Such a wretched sight.’ He took the new baby from her crib, and cradled his daughter. ‘After all Armand Bruyère’s kindness towards our family, to you, Victoire.’

Grégoire handed the baby to Françoise, who nestled him against her breast. ‘If it wasn’t for that man’s generosity,’ he went on. ‘I wouldn’t have this cottage. I would never have become the master carpenter I am today.’

I smiled at the baby’s lusty suckling noises and recalled those happy times with Armand. I fingered the diamonds, which still lay snug in the hem of my dress.

‘Well, Grégoire, perhaps it is time to repay his generosity.’

I closed my eyes, picturing the inn as it had been in its prime: a welcome beacon beyond thick woods, the glowing candles and burning hearth beckoned the worn traveller. As their horses approached, sweat-sleek and panting with thirst, the scent of rosemary and lamb reached the tired man’s nostrils. He sniffed and caught a whiff too, of firm, baked vegetables and the sweetly bitter vapours of coffee. Once inside, he was welcomed with a smile, a beaker of wine and a warm, clean bed.

I breathed easily, above the receding tide of melancholy that had almost drowned me. I understood it was not only Grégoire and Madeleine who’d brought me back to Lucie, but the Inn of Angels, which thread through my veins as richly as my own blood.