The Book of Shadows

by James Reese

  The day had dawned brightly, the summer sun falling down like bolts of golden cloth, the sky cloudless and perfectly blue. But as I fled the high-pitched din issuing from the double-parlor, as I stole away from the house proper that early afternoon, a bank of low clouds slid in, occluding the sun. The clouds were grayish-green, laden with rain. I heard the rolling groan of still-distant thunder. A warm wind rose up; a lone shutter slapped against the casement, crisply.

  The skies were darkening. The air, redolent of rain, of turned earth and decay, was cooling quickly as I hurried on to the grotto.

  In time the cloud cover settled squarely overhead, infusing the sky with light the color of a new bruise. The wind grew stronger, till the trees spoke for it with rattling green tongues. Though the thunder rolled ever nearer, there was no sign of lightning.

  Already I heard the first of the coaches rumbling away from the convent, bearing down the packed-dirt road that passed not far from the grotto and led from C——; the celebrants would hurry away before the coming rain rendered the road impassable.

  I remained.

  Then the rain came. First a few drops, falling on the thin canopy like nails on tin. When the rain fell faster, harder, the green covering caved. The grotto sat in a recess of lawn, saucer-like; soon, the rain pooled at my feet.

  Not long after, the lightning came. Only then did I rise to leave, and I did so unhurriedly.

  I was still some distance from the front door when Sister Isadore swooped down upon me, unseen, like a dark and winged thing. How unlike me to leave her wondering and waiting, worrying. Had I lost my mind, dallying beneath a summer storm? Had I forgot that I was to serve our guests? Ahead of us, beside Sister Claire de Sazilly, Head of the Upper School, stood the cellarer Sister Margarethe (who seemed to exist in the Head’s shadow) and Mother Marie-des-Anges, beautiful Mother Marie, who’d always been kind to me and with whom I would converse on those occasions when she’d discover me in her library, lost in thought. It was she who welcomed me to the Upper School; and it was she who pointed out a faraway rainbow, its arc complete.

  “Rainbow, indeed,” dismissed the Head, adding, to me, “You’ll find that your trunk and whatever else was yours has been delivered to the dormitory. As for your room,” said she, turning to her great and good friend the cellarer, “its restoration to a pantry has already begun.”

  “Shelves,” breathed the cellarer, leaning nearer the Head, “remember, Sister, you promised me shelves.”

  “And you’ll have your shelves,” said Sister Claire. Which assurance caused a smile to spread over the pinched face of the cellarer, whose pink cheeks oozed from the tight white wimple she favored.

  In the company of Mother Marie, I made my way to the dormitory. She suggested I change from my wet dress, but I declined. She insisted, kindly, and as I was shivering I did draw from my trunk my second shift. Refusing the Mother Superior’s help, I slipped behind a screen of white tulle and shed my soaked clothes like a skin; they lay lifeless on the parquet floor. I did not strip off my stockings, and I donned again my sodden shoes.

  The dormitory, which I had visited but once or twice when charged with bringing a sandwich or such to a bedridden girl, was barn-like, huge, with no interior walls; its pitched eaves rose up into raw rafters in which small black birds nested. Later, I would see bats hanging head-down in those rafters. I learned quickly to sleep on my stomach—a safeguard against the falling excrement. Set into the angle of the roof were two huge skylights. It was through these panes of thick, yellowed glass that light (and rain) fell into the dormitory. This glass jaundiced the brightest dawn; through it the most perfectly pale and opalescent moon appeared waxen and flat.

  At either end of the dormitory, capping the rows of closely spaced and scantily screened cots, were two beds overhung with white linen, each belonging to a novitiate whose job it was to guard the girls in slumber. Beside each of our cots was a small table with one candle (which we burned with care, for one had to petition the Head for another). Above each bed was set a small crucifix of birch. At the foot of our beds sat our trunks, which were left open as (quoting the Head), “Christ’s child has nothing to hide.” Our sheets were of coarse linen, our blankets of coarser wool, and our pillows were filled (or so it was said) with the down from a single goose.

  Mother Marie-des-Anges directed me to my place, and took her leave. I dragged my battered trunk to my cot, near the end of one row, beside two cots whose mattresses were rolled, their tenants already departed.

  It was, of course, the lack of privacy in the dormitory that unnerved me. And it was the hour of rising, when that lack of privacy was most pronounced, that I would come to dread. I would hide myself within the sorority as best I could. I knew to. I was aware of…of something, something that shamed me.

  Understand: I had been motherless nearly all my life. I was in many ways younger than my years, less mature. (I believe I am seventeen or eighteen now.) I had not known any woman well; no one had become that special someone—for most girls it is their mother, an older sister, an aunt or cousin perhaps. Nuns and girls had been my constant companions, yet among them something had set me apart. The nuns’ interest in me was academic, sometimes spiritual; they sought to instruct or save me; none of them taught me what I needed to know. No, there was no one to whom I might address certain questions, questions of a delicate nature…. Must I be more specific? No; I will trust to your good sense. Think of those things a young girl, a young woman should know; and believe me when I tell you I knew none of those things. None! I was ignorant, pathetically so. What knowledge I had I’d gleaned from the girls. And often the information proffered by them was deliberately misleading; it was a game played against me, against all the younger girls at times.

  That summer we remaining girls rose en masse in predawn darkness to dress and see to our toilettes. I can still hear that horrible bell shattering the silence of sleep. I can see the novitiates marching down the rows of cots, ringing that bell, banging it on the beds of the girls who lay in the deepest sleep. Its brass cup would send a shiver through the bed frame, through my very bones…. I lay feigning sleep, a sleep so deep I simply could not rouse myself from it. I lay listening to the sibilance of slippers shuffling across the floor, waiting for the novitiate or nun who would come and chide me with bitter breath. How skilled I became at deception! And for this I incurred their wrath, and chores beyond number.

  On appointed days, a rotating shift of girls rose early to fill the tubs with tepid water for bathing (heating the water had been my job previously, when I’d been resident in the pantry). These days we were expected to don our thin bathing dresses and dip, two at a time, into the tubs. I could not do this. I simply could not. I would sneak into icy baths in the predawn hours, when all the others slept, or I would rise late and slip into a tub of dirt-darkened water.

  Invariably, I would arrive late to Lauds. I would slide into a back pew beneath the heated, scornful gaze of the nuns, frequently disrupting the service. But I hadn’t a choice: I would suffer what I must in order to keep my secret, a secret unknown even to me.

  That first afternoon in the dormitory, Mother Marie had introduced me to several girls gathered around a certain cot. They knew me, and I knew them, but it was as if I’d come from another world. “This is Herculine,” said the Mother Superior. “We welcome her to the Upper School, where she will train for the teaching certificate.” There was snickering and bitter words; one girl estimated my height in hands, as one does for a horse.

  I kept far from that gaggle of girls, walked toward the dormitory’s far end. There was a broad window, giving out to the sea. Through it, I saw that same rainbow. A great arc of pure color, its bands distinct. Earlier, outside, before Sister Claire had dismissed it, Mother Marie had averred that the rainbow was a gift from God and, in a whisper, she’d added to me how lucky I was to be in receipt of such, on “this of all days.”

  That afternoon, with the girls milling about behind me, I stood starin
g at the rainbow a long while. It was beautiful, yes, arching over the summer fields of hay cones and crops, the sky a deepening blue behind it, its colors as elemental and pure as the storm it trailed. But I closed my eyes, clenched them tight as fists so as not to see, so as not to cry. For this is what I knew to be true: the rainbow was no gift from God. It was a promise He could never keep.

  2

  Peronette Gaudillon

  NOT LONG AFTER my “ascension” to the Upper School—it was 21 July, to be exact—as I sat on a stony bench in the shade of a tall chestnut, reading some ill-gotten novel, a girl came up behind me, unheard, and startled me terribly by asking: “What book is that?” (It was, I recall, Mathew Lewis’s The Monk—its utter and wonderful depravity cheered me.)

  The book slipped from my hands. It seemed my heart might pop. I stood and turned to the girl. Finally, when I was able, I said, “You gave me quite a fright.” I retrieved the book from where it had fallen. I showed the girl its imprinted spine; she shook her head, shrugged her shoulders. She did not know the book, and neither did she ask about it.

  The girl was Peronette. Peronette Gaudillon. With whom I fell instantly in love. My association with Peronette, lasting but a few short weeks, would very nearly cost me my life.

  She was beautiful. Tiny. Fine as a doll. Dark-complected. With long hair, black as jet, which she wound into a braid as smooth and sleek as a whip. But what distinguished Peronette was something ineffable at her core that roused or riled one; no one was indifferent to Peronette Gaudillon.

  I would learn that Peronette had come to C——just two days prior. I remember thinking, how strange that one should arrive during recess. “Family circumstance,” it seemed, had dictated that Peronette be consigned to the care of her aunt.

  “Who is your aunt?” I asked.

  “My aunt,” said she, “is Mother Marie-des-Anges…. Of course, I have never known her by that name; it will take some getting used to.”

  I had naively taken the Mother Superior to be alone in the world. I believed this of every nun, that her marriage to Christ was her sole attachment. Yet the fact that Peronette and Mother Marie-des-Anges shared blood seemed to me somehow…right, for weren’t they both extraordinary?

  That first afternoon we slipped away from C——during the hours of private study. (This was at Peronette’s suggestion. I simply did not do such things, did not disobey.) We toured the farthest reaches of the grounds. When I turned to hurry back to the chapel at the sounding of the Angelus bell, Peronette grabbed my arm, looked deep into my eyes, and said, “We did not hear that.”

  “But we’ll be in trouble,” I countered. “We’ll be scraping plates for a week.”

  “No, we won’t. Who am I?” asked Peronette. “Answer aloud.”

  “You are Peronette,” said I.

  “More,” said she. “Go on.”

  “You are the niece of Mother Marie-des-Anges.”

  And so we continued our tour, Peronette taking my hand in hers.

  I was nervous: I overspoke. I believe I proffered the Latin name for every animate and inanimate thing we saw. Finally, after I’d mumbled the name of a certain thin, barkless tree, as well as that of the mushrooms clustered at its base, Peronette let go my hand, turned toward me, and said, “Really, dear. Do tell me you’re this boring because you’re nervous.”

  I affirmed that that was indeed the case.

  “Arrête! Your nervousness is unnecessary. And boring me further will cause me to cuff you.” She raised her hand. I thought I might cry. She started laughing and did, indeed, slap me—a quick slip of her hand across my cheek, which left a light, thrilling sting. I felt the heat in my cheek, the blood rise up. I held my hand over it for moments, until the skin cooled. I blinked back tears, cleared my vision. It seemed I had never been so exhilarated, so excited…so alive.

  Peronette soon had my hand again and we were off, weaving through a copse of tall trees toward the shore. I could smell the shore; then I heard the sea, the grate of the stones in the surf. Suddenly we stood atop a dune; from it, sculpted sand sloped down to the shore.

  Feeling wonderfully naughty, I followed Peronette down the dune; our descent was made on our buttocks, crab-style. She ran out upon the strand. I followed her over slippery, moss-covered stones, huge stones strewn about by the surf. Peronette perched on the largest. She took off her shoes and bade me do the same. She didn’t give a thought to this act but, of course, I did. I was as ashamed of my feet as I was of the rest of my body. I did not think I could do it. I knew I couldn’t. But I did. Again, Peronette had about her a…a power. That Peronette made me comfortable enough to do this is something for which I will remain forever grateful, despite all that came to pass. She thought nothing of baring her ankles before me, before “God and man.” How scandalized the sisters would have been!

  We sat on that rock a long while, squinting into the high sun, letting the sea air settle its briny, sweet perfume over us. Gulls rode the wind; their chatter ricocheted rock to rock. The water itself was still quite distant: low tide. I’d often heard Marie-Edith refer to the powerful tides along our coastline; it was said they returned at a gallop. Each summer a traveler or two would drown: caught too far from the true shore, sunbathing or gathering shells, they’d be outrun, overtaken by the inrushing tide.

  That afternoon, as we lounged on the rock, Peronette spoke of her family. Her father was Breton; Madame Gaudillon, sister to Mother Marie-des-Anges—whose real name I would never learn—was of wealthy Norman stock. “We are rich,” said Peronette. “Fabulously so…. But it has not helped at all.” I did not ask what she meant; indeed, I said nothing. I listened. I did, however, see things differently all of a sudden: the gold-leafed prie-dieu, carved with scenes from the lives of the saints, which sat in the Mother Superior’s rooms; her night robe of silk, embroidered with crosses, sacred hearts, and nails-of-the-cross; and, of course, there were those books that arrived from London and Paris, and the cigarettes sent up from Madrid.

  “We are religious refugees, my aunt and I,” said Peronette at one point. When I questioned her, she asked, “Do you think your Mother Superior was born to that role? No, indeed.” And she proceeded to explain to me things of which I’d no idea, though they’d happened while I was at C——. Yes, I vaguely recollected some hullabaloo surrounding the arrival of the new Mother Superior, several years back, but…“My aunt,” said Peronette, “was set to be allied to the finest family of Ireland. Specifically, its eldest son, a Kerry man whose name I cannot recall. There was a vast estate in the mountains near Cahirciveen, which is beautiful land. Have you been?”

  I said I had not.

  Peronette shrugged. “There was the estate, and there were plans made and invitations passed about and…and suddenly there were developments that all strove to keep from my young ears. With success, unfortunately. But I do know this: the engagement was canceled, the Kerry man sailed for London, and my aunt was sent here. The same relation who’s arranged my captivity bought this House for her.”

  “Bought?” I asked.

  “Essentially, yes,” said Peronette. “That is, with the bishop’s intervention, my aunt—or the Second Coming of that person, this new Mother Marie-des-Anges—was given the rule of this House…. You didn’t know as much?” asked Peronette, incredulously. “You don’t see the story carved like scrimshaw into the hard eyes of that dreadful Sister Claire? It was she who was cast aside, for coin and favors.” Indeed, though I knew nothing of its genesis, there was something between Mother Marie and the Head, something cold and sharp, blade-like; rarely had I seen them together; neither could I recall overhearing any conversations of theirs.

  Peronette spoke too of her brother, who had died two summers prior. Deaf, he’d been gored from behind by a bull as he’d gathered flowers in a field. His neck had been broken; he lay suffocating beneath a blazing sun for hours. Jean-Pierre, the brother, nearly dead from the loss of blood, was found by Peronette. He held still to the flowers he’d ga
thered, a withering red gift in his fist, expiring in time with his heart. He’d somehow managed to give the bouquet to Peronette. A dying gesture. Or so she said.

  As for Papa, he kept a mistress in Rouen and was hardly ever at home. He made a fortune as a merchant—textiles, if I recall—but spent twice what he earned; he’d been saved from his creditors more than once by his unloved wife’s considerable inheritance. That he worked at all was to his credit, said Peronette. And who could blame him for taking a mistress? “Ma mère,…elle est folle.” Peronette, with a forefinger, made a winding gesture beside her head; she whistled too, whistled in imitation of those mechanical birds that pop from Germanic clocks. Apparently, Madame Gaudillon needed constant care. If left alone she would turn to self-abuse; as a child, Peronette had come upon her mother often in the throes of such, once with chimney tools, once with the long wooden spoon that the cook had reported missing. It had gotten so that the servants had to hide the tapers when the family chapel was not in use. Not to mention the scenario she’d forced the dim-witted stable boy into; the only remedy for which was the boy’s quick removal to an asylum just outside Lucerne.

  I sat stupefied. I had never heard anyone talk so freely, so frankly. (So…crazily—I think perhaps Peronette took after her mad mother in many ways.)