The Virgin Blue. Tracy Chevalier
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her mother had called it, special flowers from God, a gift she was to keep quiet about because it set her apart. She looked up at her mother, who was frowning at Monsieur Marcel and had opened her mouth as if to speak. Isabelle squeezed her arm and Maman shut her mouth into a tight line.
Afterwards she walked back between her mother and her sister Marie, their twin brothers following more slowly. The other village children lagged behind them at first, whispering. Eventually, bold with curiosity, a boy ran up and grabbed a handful of Isabelle’s hair.
—Did you hear him, La Rousse? You’re dirty! he shouted.
Isabelle shrieked. Petit Henri and Gérard jumped to defend her, pleased to be useful at last.
The next day Isabelle began wearing a headcloth, every chestnut strand wound out of sight, long before other girls her age.
By the time Isabelle was fourteen two cypress trees were growing in a sunny patch near the house. Each time, Petit Henri and Gérard made the trip all the way to Barre-les-Cévennes, a two-day walk, to find one.
The first tree was Marie’s. She grew so big all the village women said she must be carrying twins; but Maman’s probing fingers felt only one head, though a large one. Maman worried about the size of the head.
—Would that it were twins, she muttered to Isabelle. Then it would be easier.
When the time came Maman sent all the men away: husband, father, brothers. It was a bitterly cold night, a strong wind blowing snow into drifts against the house, the stone walls, the clumps of dead rye. The men were slow to leave the fire until they heard Marie’s first scream: strong men, accustomed to the sounds of slaughtered pigs, the human tone drove them away quickly.
Isabelle had helped her mother at birthings before, but always in the presence of other women visiting to sing and tell stories. Now the cold kept them away and she and Maman were alone. She stared at her sister, immobile beneath a huge belly, shivering and sweating and screaming. Her mother’s face was tight and anxious; she said little.
Throughout the night Isabelle held Marie’s hand, squeezed it during contractions, and wiped her forehead with a damp cloth. She prayed for her, silently appealing to the Virgin and to Saint Margaret to protect her sister, all the while feeling guilty: Monsieur Marcel had told them the Virgin and all the saints were powerless and should not be called upon. None of his words comforted her now. Only the old prayers made sense.
—The head is too big, Maman pronounced finally. We have to cut.
—Non, Maman, Marie and Isabelle whispered in unison. Marie’s eyes were wild and dilated. In desperation she began to push again, weeping and gasping. Isabelle heard the sound of flesh tearing; Marie shrieked before going limp and grey. The head appeared in a river of blood, black and misshapen, and when Maman pulled the baby out it was already dead, the cord tight around its neck. It was a girl.
The men returned when they saw the fire, smoke from the bloody straw billowing high into the morning air.
They buried mother and child in a sunny spot where Marie had liked to sit when it was warm. The cypress tree was planted over her heart.
The blood left a faint trace on the floor that no amount of sweeping or scrubbing could erase.
The second tree was planted the following summer.
It was twilight, the hour of wolves, not the time for women to be walking on their own. Maman and Isabelle had been at a birthing at Felgérolles. Mother and baby had both lived, breaking a long string of deaths that had begun with Marie and her baby. This evening they had lingered, making the mother and child comfortable, listening to the other women singing and chatting, so that the sun had sunk behind Mont Lozère by the time Maman waved away cautions and invitations to stay the night and they started home.
The wolf lay across the path as if waiting for them. They stopped, set down their sacks, crossed themselves. The wolf did not move. They watched it for a moment, then Maman picked up her sack and took a step toward it. The wolf stood and Isabelle could see even in the dark that it was thin, its grey pelt mangy. Its eyes glowed yellow as if a candle were lit behind them, and it moved in an awkward, off-balance lope. Only when it was so close that Maman could almost reach out and touch the greasy fur did Isabelle see the foam around its mouth and understand. Everyone had seen animals struck with the madness: dogs running aimlessly, foam flecking their mouths, a new meanness in their eyes, their barks muffled. They avoided water; the surest protection from them, besides an axe, was a brimming bucket. Maman and Isabelle had nothing with them but herbs, linen and a knife.
As it leapt Maman raised her arm instinctively, saving twenty days of her life but wishing afterwards that she had let it rip out her throat quickly and mercifully. When it fell back, when the blood was streaking down Maman’s arm, the wolf looked at Isabelle briefly and disappeared into the dark without a sound.
While Maman told her husband and sons about the wolf with candles in its eyes, Isabelle cleaned the bite with water boiled with shepherd’s purse and laid cobwebs over it before binding the arm with soft wool. Maman refused to sit still, insisted on picking her plums, working in the kitchen garden, continuing as if she had not seen the truth shining in the wolf’s eyes. After a day her forearm had swelled to the same size as her upper arm, and the area around the wound went black. Isabelle made an omelette, added rosemary and sage, and mouthed a silent prayer over it. When she brought it to her mother she began to cry. Maman took the bowl from her and ate steadily, her eyes on Isabelle, tasting death in the sage, until the omelette was gone.
Fifteen days later she was drinking water when her throat began to contract in spasms, pumping water down the front of her dress. She looked at the black patch spreading on her chest, then sat in the late summer sun on the bench next to the door.
Fever came fast, and so furious that Isabelle prayed death would come as swiftly to relieve her. But Maman fought, sweating and shouting in her delirium, for four days. On the last day, when the priest from Le Pont de Montvert arrived to perform the last rites, Isabelle held a broom across the doorway and spat at him until he left. Only when Monsieur Marcel arrived did she drop the broom and stand by to let him pass.
Four days later the twins returned with the second cypress tree.
The crowd gathered in front of the church was not used to victory, nor familiar with the conduct of celebration. The priest had finally slipped away three days before. They were sure now that he was gone – the woodcutter Pierre La Forêt had seen him miles away, all the possessions he could carry piled on his back.
The early winter snow covered the smooth parts of the ground with a thin gauze, wrecked in places by leaves and rocks. There was more to come, with the sky the colour of pewter to the north, up beyond the summit of Mont Lozère. A layer of white lay on the thick granite tiles of the church roof. The building was empty. No mass had been said there since the harvest: attendance had dropped as Monsieur Marcel and his followers grew more confident.
Isabelle stood among her neighbours listening to Monsieur Marcel, who paced in front of the door, severe in his black clothes and silver hair. Only his red-stained hands undermined his commanding presence, a reminder to them that he was after all simply a cobbler.
When he spoke he focused on a point over the crowd’s head.
—This place of worship has been the scene of corruption. It is in safe hands now. It is in your hands. He gestured before him as if he were sowing seed. A hum rose from the crowd.
—It must be cleansed, he continued. Cleansed of its sin, of these idols. He waved a hand at the building behind him. Isabelle stared up at the Virgin, the blue behind the statue faded but with a power still to move her. She had already touched her forehead and her chest before she realized what she was doing and managed to stop without completing the cross. She glanced around to see if the gesture had been noticed. But her neighbours were looking at Monsieur Marcel, calling to him as he strode through them and continued up the hill toward the bank of dark cloud, tawny hands tucked behind him. He did not look back.
When he was gone the crowd grew louder, more agitated. Someone shouted:—