by Perrat, Liza
‘Blandine, Gustave!’ I jumped up. ‘Where are you?’ I squinted into the setting sun and saw them, down by the water’s edge.
I beckoned, calling them to come back, but Blandine didn’t answer, and kept throwing pebbles into the water, skipping closer to the swiftly flowing river with each new pebble. Her brother was crouched on the shore, beside her, playing with the gravel.
I called again, louder. ‘Blandine, Gustave!’ I picked up my basket and the cistern and hurried towards them.
***
My legs are so heavy I have to drag my feet for every step. Why do the children not heed my calls? Do I speak too softly? Do I speak at all?
The twins are near the water’s edge. So close. Too close now. Blandine skips in, then her brother. Deeper, deeper they go. Up to their knees, their waist, their shoulders.
But the river is too icy for swimming. Why are we all standing in the freezing water?
White smocks swirl beside me, and rush away, a giant hand tugging them downstream. Further, faster. Chestnut curls darken beneath the blur of green. The birdsong ceases. Willow leaves trap the breeze and the air is still. The river flows no more.
***
‘However did Blandine and Gustave get away from you?’ someone said, but I didn’t know this person.
‘How … it happen?’
‘Terrible … tragic …’
I gazed up at the circle of faces, not recognising any of them. Those faces without names pored over mine, so close I smelt their rancid breath and felt the spittle droplets of their chatter wet my cheeks. They were asking so many questions I couldn’t concentrate on any single one. I turned my head, the tears pooling in my cheeks and leaking onto my bed.
‘The water be-bewitched my Bland-Blandine,’ I said in a voice that was not mine. ‘Come back … come back. I called … kept calling. She walked right in.’
‘And Gustave?’ I recognised Grégoire’s voice, and his face, an odd milk-white mask. He held Madeleine, who stared, wide-eyed, as if she was terrified of something. Even as I desperately wanted to take her, I couldn’t hold my little girl.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’ I couldn’t stop shaking my head. ‘G-Gustave wouldn’t listen … I beg-begged him to come back … not to follow her. Went into the river … beloved sister. St-stumbled.’ I swallowed my sobs. ‘Everything they did, together. Always together.’
I could no longer bear their stares, and flung my forearms across my face. ‘Babies — my angels — I couldn’t reach them.’
People kept patting my arm and asking more questions, but still I could barely answer them.
I didn’t know how I left my bed, or got to Saint Antoine’s.
‘Another tragedy of la Vionne violente,’ the villagers said, as Père Joffroy buried Blandine and Gustave in the same grave, leaving the world as they had entered it — together.
The grief, the darkness that had begun when Armand left me, rushed in torrents and swamped my ragged senses. I could not even weep for what I had lost because I too felt dead.
‘You must eat, Victoire. Adélaïde and Pauline have made potage for you. A little dark bread?’ I think it was Léon speaking, and I supposed we were back at L’Auberge, but I couldn’t answer him, and turned away. I wanted to ask where my twins were but when I opened my mouth, no words came.
Adélaïde and Pauline rubbed the kettle with lard, boiled water and chopped bits of bread into it, but still I couldn’t eat. I shivered and dragged the hood of my cloak further over my head, and in the mirror above the hearth, I no longer recognised the face veiled in a gaunt white nothingness.
Adélaïde and Pauline shook their heads, muttering things of which I made out only snatches, ‘… madness got her … mélancolie … drowned …’
‘La guérisseuse has come for you, Victoire,’ Léon said.
The healing woman held a beaker to my lips. ‘Just a little tea, Victoire, to drive this terrible demon from you.’
Demon?
I pushed her hand away. I did not want her poison.
‘A little of this one then?’ She held a different beaker to my lips. ‘Your maman used to make this remedy, you remember?’
I stared at her. No, I could not remember. I could not recall a single thing.
‘She would make it from Saint John’s flowers, before the Midsummer feast.’ I shivered at the touch of la guérisseuse’s hand. ‘Drink, Victoire, it will chase away this demon madness, and give you back gladness and courage.’
‘Where are my children?’ I sprang from the chair and scurried around searching for Blandine and Gustave. ‘I must go to them … too young to be alone.’ But when I couldn’t find them, and I felt exhausted from looking, the heartache pushed me down to the cold floor.
At first I didn’t realise the surging sound — a pure sound from Hell — came from within me. I only understood they were my screams when the people clamped their hands over their ears. I covered my ears too, and I felt the noise moving away from me, seeping beneath the floorboards and echoing from the cracks in the stone walls.
Why were they all reeling from me and gazing, wide-eyed, as if I was some monstrous stranger? Even Grégoire and Françoise, clutching my Madeleine, and little Emile and Mathilde. But I did not want to look at their children, whose names only made me think of my lost parents.
Léon too, seemed wary, hesitant. ‘This cannot go on, Victoire.’
He helped me up from where I lay on the ground and pushed a folded paper into my hand. ‘A letter from your cook friend. Maybe that will cheer you.’
Through the confusion beleaguering my mind, I could barely read Claudine’s words.
My dear Victoire,
Still no news from you, my friend. It has been such a time. I am beside myself with worry and pray your lack of correspondence is simply the fault of our terrible postal service.
I hope Armand recovered from his plough injury and that you all, and L’Auberge des Anges, survived the terrible winter.
I don’t know if the news reached you in the south, but all of Paris is talking of the diamond necklace affair. An impoverished aristocrat, Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy, devised a plan to regain what she says is her family château, stolen by the Crown. Pretending to be one of the queen’s most intimate confidants, she tricked the Cardinal de Rohan into believing the Queen wanted to buy this very expensive necklace.
They have arrested the Cardinal and thrown him into the Bastille. The woman too, was arrested. People are jumping with excitement as this scandal has damaged the Queen’s reputation beyond repair!
I hope to receive your letter soon.
Yours affectionately,
Claudine
My tears plinked onto the page, spreading the ink like damp flower petals. I slid from Armand’s chair to the floor, closer to the fireplace. The page quivered in my hand as I held it over the flames. I stared, dry-eyed — because there were, suddenly, no more tears — as the flames curled and blackened the letter I knew I would never answer.
I bent my legs up, hugged my calves and rested my head sideways on my knees. I kept my eyes on the fire, watching and hoping the flames would leap out and engulf me, as they’d swallowed up Félicité and Félix.
I felt around my neck for Maman’s angel pendant, seeking its warmth, and courage. I felt nothing though, and when I couldn’t recall where the angel might be, my groping fingers scrabbled at my skin, raking until blood and gritty flakes stained my nails.
My hand dropped. I was too tired to keep scratching; I would find the angel another day. I let my heavy eyes close.
The flames curled about the table and chairs, the bed, Maman’s medicinal herbs and flowers. It flung its mighty heat against the walls, crumbling them. The smoke choking me, I ran outside and watched, helplessly, as the fire-devil consumed our home. When, finally, the flames dwindled, I reeled in horror at the two small, blackened skeletons resting in its embers.
A raven circled above me — slow, perfect arcs on extended wings. It
swung in curves, faster and faster, carving mad spirals through the air. A ridge of goosebumps prickled my arms, the coldness slithering down my back.
Maman and Papa laid Félicité and Félix onto the back of a cart piled high with other dead children. We all stood and waved as the cart rumbled off, right into the path of an elegant coach the colour of ox blood. The coach thundered into the cart, overturning it. Corpses spilled out. Pieces of Papa’s body were strewn across the road.
The raven swooped down from a branch overhanging the riverbank. It began pecking at the bits of my father and I saw it had a jagged scar over its left eye.
‘Stop, no stop!’ I struck the bird with a stick, over and over.
Morsels of flesh dangling from its beak, the raven thrust itself at my face, pecking at my eyes until it almost blinded me. It flapped its wings and flew off across the river, a basket swinging from its bloodied beak.
The basket fell from its beak into the water, spinning faster and faster on the current. From inside, the small screams, ‘Maman, Maman!’ weakened as the basket twirled away, beyond my reach.
Breathless, I stumbled, tripping over an open grave in which a skeleton lay.
Rubie stood by the grave — a pretty girl in a red dress. She smiled and walked towards me. I spread my arms, reaching for my daughter. I was about to take her hand when I woke, startled, Léon’s hand in mine.
‘There’s somebody here to see you, Victoire.’
‘Who is this?’ I did not know this man, or why he stood before me.
‘He is the bailiff.’ Léon gripped my arm as if he was afraid I would fall over, or perhaps run off.
‘Child murder is one of the most heinous crimes known to man,’ the bailiff proclaimed. ‘You, widow Bruyère, are to be incarcerated for life in la Salpêtrière asylum of Paris.’
As they dragged me off, I had not the slightest idea what the man was talking about.
La Salpêtrière Asylum
1785–1787
20
How odd it was to be still after what seemed like weeks of bumps and jolts. Or was it months, perhaps years, I’d been cramped inside that windowless carriage with so many people and their smells of sweat and sickness?
The coach door creaked open, the bright sky burning my eyes. Hot bits of fire danced in mid-air but I was cold, and shivered beneath my cloak. I reeled from the orange sparks. A man grabbed my arm, his fingers digging into my skin, pinching my flesh.
‘Must get away … get outside. Papa says get out, now! Fire’s burning. The twins … inside.’ I tried to pull away from him, from the flames.
The man sneered. ‘Scared of a few autumn leaves, my lovely?’
‘Leaves?’ Ah yes, I saw then, they were leaves — autumn leaves rocking in the breeze and fluttering to the ground, where they lay still amongst the browned, dead ones.
My hands were smarting. I looked down and saw my palms were grazed and bleeding. Perhaps it had been me, not the leaves, falling to the cobbles as I’d tried to flee the man restraining me.
He dragged me upright and pushed me ahead of him, towards a cluster of dark buildings. The closer we got, the stronger the stench of piss, shit and unwashed bodies flared my nostrils.
‘Where am I? Where are you taking me?’ My words came out in hoarse, sharp whispers. ‘Where’s Grégoire? Find Léon, he’ll know what to do.’
‘Welcome to paradise, my lovely.’ The man’s breath was foul on my cheek.
He pushed me down into a chair. Why was he binding my limbs to the chair legs? Something moved across my head. I glanced at the floor — at the spatter of cinnamon waves covering the grimy tiles. My head felt different. I shook it and found it light, unburdened.
I hadn’t the strength to struggle as the man removed my clothes and shoved me into a wooden tub, nor when he fastened something cold and heavy about my neck.
‘If you move a muscle, that iron ring will break your creamy neck,’ he said. I dared not move and I breathed so slightly I could barely inhale enough air. ‘Have a nice bath, my lovely.’
The shock of icy water hitting my face was so great I did not even cry out. It gushed into my eyes, my nose and my mouth. I tried to breathe, coughing and spluttering. The cold water came again, and again.
‘Stop, no! Please!’ Still the water hit me.
It stopped, the man unchained my neck and the next thing I knew, a woman was standing over me, holding a chemise and an ash-grey dress.
‘Put these on. Hurry, girl. Time to go and meet your fellow lunatics.’ She laughed, but I had no idea what was funny.
The man was back, and leading me across a deserted yard entombed in high walls. He hurried me down steps slick with moss, and nodded beyond the wall. ‘Shame your room got no river view. Nothing to remind you of home, n’est-ce pas, my lovely?’
I didn’t know what he meant but I flinched, as we’d reached a deep place where only the thinnest, grey rope of light penetrated. I quivered with the fear, the unknown. Where was the bright sky and those leaves the colour of fire? I was sure I would feel better; understand it all, if only I could get back to the sky and the leaves.
Cries began to beat against my eardrums — sounds so raw with despair I was certain I must be dead, and I had reached some vast hall of Hell.
I was still too terrified to struggle as the man thrust me into a damp room, and a smudgy blot of women with shaven heads. Some were clothed as I was, others stood naked, and thinner than scarecrows.
‘Where am I?’ I looked about wildly, trying to run from the swarming women towards the only light that came from a barred grid in the door.
‘No, no, I can’t stay here!’
There was nowhere to go; no way to get out. I backed into a corner, cowering behind my arms across my face.
‘Don’t take my Rubie … cold in her basket. Stealing Madeleine’s milk.’
I clutched at my breasts, but I held only withered knobs, and I felt again the fierce suckling of the rich, robust infants, sapping my energy and leaving me too exhausted to stand.
‘Plus de pain. No more bread.’
The women’s words mewed softly from some distant labyrinth of my mind I could not reach. I think I moaned.
The man was quickly upon me again, fastening chains about my wrists and ankles, and I could move from the wall only as far as the chains allowed. I caught snatches of his words that meant nothing.
‘… mad … incurable … drowned … river … Insane Quarter.’
‘What river?’ I gazed about me. There was no river running into this sea of filth.
‘No point clawing at the walls, imbecile,’ a woman said. ‘Nobody will help you in here.’
I stopped. I fought no more, so weak that I slumped to the ground and rested my head on ragged straw, which squeaked with the bustle of small creatures. I didn’t know what else to do, so I covered my ears to block out the dipping, mournful cries pulsing from the women’s lips — sounds like birds that had lost the nest.
I rubbed my blue clotted arms. My nails were ragged, my hands streaked with blood. What was this blood from? Armand’s wound? No, no, I’d stopped the bleeding — used Maman’s treatment to stop my husband’s blood flowing, and save his life. His leg could heal now and Armand would be well, and everything would be all right.
I will wake soon, I kept telling myself. I’ll wake and Armand will be lying beside me.
‘Only a bad dream,’ he’ll say, his gentle smile caressing me, and the day’s work done, we’ll sit together on the riverbank, the sun tickling our faces, the wind ruffling our hair. I rocked back and forth, waiting to wake up. I think I felt a little better, so I kept rocking back and forth, back and forth.
The man returned. He placed wooden bowls on the floor, threw chunks of black bread beside the bowls and unchained us.
‘What is that? Who is this man?’ I whispered to a pock-faced woman beside me.
‘A keeper. All cruel, evil creatures.’ She pointed to my bowl. ‘Eat, girl. It’s soup. Best keep
your strength or your death will be like theirs.’ She nodded at two bodies that lay curled and still, their eyes wide as dead fish.
‘Slow, cold, agonising deaths,’ the pock-faced woman said.
I took the bowl onto my lap, bent my head over the liquid and inhaled a vague odour of something turned bad. I drank it, and chewed the bread.
Once supper — I supposed it was supper — was over, the keeper refastened our chains and stomped off, his heavy boots thudding in my ears long after he’d gone.
There was nothing left to do. ‘Armand? Where are you, Armand?’ In the glacial damp, I yearned to cling to my husband, to feel his warmth and comfort, but once again, the chains restrained me.
‘Do not fret, my dear wife, I’m here,’ he said. ‘Over here. Yes, right beside you. I’ll take care of you, Victoire.’
My eyes darted around the room. ‘Where? I do not see you. Armand come back.’
‘Shut up, whore!’ a woman shouted.
I coiled into the smallest possible ball on the moving straw once more. I shivered in the blue darkness, making odd shapes with my mouth — a strange kind of dry weeping. I recoiled from the creatures that nibbled at my legs, their thin tails sliding around my ankles. I did not think. I did not sleep, or dream.
***
The single cry of a bird woke me. Where is the tree from where it chirps, and the fields, the hills and orchards? There was no smell of damp earth, fresh cut hay or fruit blossom. Then I saw there were no birds at all. The cry into the cold dawn was a woman, who still shrieked as the men steered us all, still half-asleep, across a courtyard.
‘Where are they taking us?’ I asked the pock-faced woman.
‘I already told you,’ she said. ‘The keepers take us to the chapel for Mass. Mass, every morning. You’ll see.’
‘Mass? Perhaps Père Joffroy will be there. He’ll know what to do. He’ll get me home.’
The cold from the chapel flagstones crept through my clogs and the soles of my feet, winding itself around my ankles, and up my legs. It clutched me so tightly I thought I would die of it. I nestled into the women closest to me — a small part of that great, grey, shivering bulk gazing ahead at the altar.
