by Arinn Dembo
Tenderly, Madame tousled his hair. “Your life has not been wasted, cousin. You have written so many fine things…this is only one of the many.”
He sat up abruptly, looking into her face. “Surely you cannot mean it.” Incredulous, he laughed. “Cecile, this play is my life…your life…even poor Lucien’s life…”
Madame’s back stiffened. “Lucien? I’m sorry…I don’t believe I understand. Was one of the characters supposed to be Lucien?”
He gaped at her. “Of course. Lucien, you, me—you didn’t see it?”
Madame withdrew her hand from his with chilly finality. “No.”
Something seemed to pierce him at that moment, as if an unseen shaft had feathered his breast; unwittingly he put a hand to his chest. “Cecile.” Her name was a plea. “Surely you remember, years ago, when Lucien was courting. The letters he wrote to you…the many love letters…?”
“Yes?” She frowned; she did not understand, and was not certain she wanted to.
“Those letters won your heart, did they not? Lucien…the loving words he wrote…?”
“Ah!” Madame suddenly smiled again, and patted her cousin’s hand affectionately. “No, Edmund. Of course not!”
He froze, one hand still clutching his chest. “No?” Numbly, he added, “Not?”
“Not at all.” She wrinkled her nose prettily. “Lucien was never good at writing letters. He was never himself when he picked up a pen; he’d go stiff as a board, and try to be flowery—it was dreadful, really. His letters always made me laugh. He tried so hard to be poetic!”
“But…” DeRoste turned helplessly toward the painting on the wall. “You’ve kept his letters, haven’t you? For all these years…why?”
A mist of tears rose in her eyes. “I’ve kept everything, Edmund. Anything he touched is still with me. His clothes, his comb, his scissors. I would sooner throw myself into the Seine than lose any of his things. I may not love the letters, but I loved the foolish man who wrote them—a man who believed that a simple soldier was unworthy to love me. Who tried so hard, for my sake, to be something better.”
I watched, eyes burning, as the blood slowly drained from his face. At last he stood. “Cecile…forgive me.” He offered her a painful smile—God, could she not see? “I have been very foolish.”
She shook her head, smiling in return. “Not at all, cousin. We so seldom speak of Lucien.” She lowered her eyes, and her voice dropped as well. “The pain is so fresh, even after all these years.”
Moved by an impulse of kindness, he caressed her cheek with the back of one finger, brushing away a tear that shone like a dewdrop on a morning peach. “I…I would like to read those letters of Lucien’s.” He turned toward the portrait. “If you would not mind.”
She made a dismissive gesture with one hand. “Take them all, if you like. I know you loved him too. But don’t think too unkindly, please, of his mawkish pretensions, when you read them—he was a very young man, trying so hard to please.”
DeRoste paused in mid-step on his way to the mantel; I could almost see where the second shaft had driven through him. “No.” He practically staggered to the mantle. “Of course…I will not judge him too harshly.”
As he reached to take the bundle, she suddenly lifted her chin and held up a hand to forestall him. “But leave me one. The one that still holds a lock of his hair? I cannot part with that one.”
“Just the one,” he murmured. He gave her the bundle, and she quickly withdrew her prize—sparing not a glance to the other letters, much to my relief.
“Yes, you can take the rest—they are only words. The words do not matter.”
Throughout this interview, I had remained in my corner, as dumb and helpless as a rag doll. But when Madame de Maurier loosed the final, fatal shaft, I rose to my feet, a storm of protest rising in my throat—too late. Already DeRoste had turned to the man above the mantel, offering not his usual salute but a final, low bow of defeat. He left without another word.
His carriage clattered away in the street, and Madame de Maurier turned to me, still holding that single envelope in her hand. “You are dismissed, Claudette.” Tears glittered in her eyes. “I must be alone. You may have the rest of the day to yourself.”
I turned and hobbled from the room. I had just seen Madame do more harm with a wrinkle of her nose than a dozen men with swords could have done in a pitched battle, but I had no thought to reproach her. At that moment, only DeRoste mattered to me, and I knew that I must reach him.
I went to my room, searching for the money I had saved. It was not much; I had been liberal in my book-buying the week before, and now I silently cursed the fine volumes that no cab driver would take in lieu of coin.
In the street I offered money to the first carriage that would stop for a serving girl with a cane; he took it and left me less than half the distance to DeRoste’s house. It was nearly an hour before I could limp the rest of the way, running as best I could upon a twisted leg. By the time I rapped upon the kitchen door, night was falling, and it had begun to rain. My leg was on fire with the unaccustomed exercise.
“Letters for Monsieur DeRoste,” I gasped, the rain still dripping from my matted hair. Jean-Patrice held out his hand, but I shook my head. “Very private letters. Madame…Madame insisted that I give them to him personally.”
Jean-Patrice nodded, a knowing smile in his eyes. “Take the back stairs,” he said, indicating the narrow servant’s way from the kitchen. “His study is the second door to your left.”
I struggled up to his rooms, and returned only a few minutes later. If I was a bit pale, Jean-Patrice did not seem to notice. “He…he says he will be writing,” I told him. “He does not…wish to be disturbed.”
And with those words, I went out again into the dark. By then, I did not feel the rain.
* * *
Now the sad bells are tolling, and half the city is wearing a black band on one sleeve. The great man is dead, and he lies in Monmarte, his casket heaped with wilting lilies. Everyone has been to see him, as if to reassure themselves that it could be so—that a man so vibrantly alive could now lie cold in a gilded box.
I have been to see him myself. Once I stood beside Madame du Maurier, biting the inside of my cheek as the slow tears flowed beneath her veil. I dared not look down into his coffin. She reached out one hand, still encased in its silken glove, to touch him; the cure took pity on her for a moment before he said gently, “Non, Madame. You musn’t,” and put a stop to it.
She tottered away like a woman twice her years, my hand at her elbow. I guided her to the nave—she lit a candle for his soul, and I led her home. Though my eyes were dry and my teeth clenched tight, there was still a little room in my heart for pity. Cecile de Maurier could not know what she had done. She understood only that her oldest and dearest friend in the world was gone.
The second visit was made alone. The other servants thought me callous to demand my usual hours of leisure when our mistress was so stricken. But I could not bear to be in the presence of Madame de Maurier a moment longer. I put on my hat and coat and went out into the streets once again in the rain—heartily wishing that the cold water coursing down those gutters would rise and wash me into the river.
I had no plan, but nevertheless my feet were carrying me back to Monmartre. In the end, they found me standing over him, transfixed.
The mortician had made DeRoste a stranger. I memorized that face in life, learned its language, mapped its every mood and season; there was not a single line, not a twitch or a tremor that I could not read. But now his brow, once creased by frequent thought and pain, was smooth and white as a cake of soap. His eyes and lips were sealed mindlessly shut. And by some arcane mortuary art, they had eased the final anguish from his face—giving him a false, painted peace that real death had not.
As I looked at him lying so placidly upon his back, his hands folded neatly over his breast, I remembered how I had seen him last: convulsed upon the floor of his study, his eyes st
ill wide and bright with accusation. His lips drawn back in a rictus of agony, his teeth flecked with tea leaves; the cup and the killing bottle on his desk beside a single sheet of paper; and shattered in his death grip, the pen with which he had written his final, enigmatic line.
Once I have placed these letters in his casket tomorrow morning, I shall tell the inspectors that I poisoned the great Edmund DeRoste. I will show them the bottle I spirited away from his room. Confess to having washed his cup, and dashed the smell of almonds from his mouth with a dribble of anisette. I will admit that I had loved him in secret and add that he spurned my affections—I’m sure he would have, had I been fool enough to offer them.
Of course they will believe me. The club-footed servant girl, dark and ill-favored, harboring her curdled passion until it drove her to madness? Oui, c’est doux. It will please the inspector very much, I think. It is a good story. The world believes that an ugly woman is capable of anything.
Madame de Maurier will grieve. She may curse and despise me. I am content, so long as she never learns what was written on that final page, by the light of old letters burning in a grate. I do not want her to know that his last desperate act was to spit those dreadful words she spoke back out into the world’s cold, unfeeling face:
“Because the words do not matter.”
* * *
That is what he wrote.
But it is not so.
Already there is talk about his final play—that heroic tale of an ugly man with a beautiful heart. If the world remembers no other labor of his pen, I am sure that this one will linger long in memory. It will teach a thousand women to choose a man for his soul, not his face. It will give a thousand men the hope that they can be loved for what they are, and not merely what they appear to be. And thanks to Claudette Bertrand, no one will ever know that the author of this wondrous work recanted the truth he had found in the brittle glass of his most cherished illusion. No one will know that he despaired, and declared that words did not matter—after he had so gallantly proven, for once and for all, that words are the only thing that do.
Let them take my head. I have read Edmund’s final page, and it broke my heart to cast it into the fire. I can do nothing now but save Jean-Patrice, who was loyal and true, and leave the man I loved with these letters, written in a desperate hour. My only comfort is the joy they might have given him, had they arrived in time…
…signed, as they are, with the name “Cecile”.
ABOUT THIS STORY
This short story appears in the current digital format exclusively on Amazon. Readers who enjoyed this sample of the author’s fiction may enjoy her recently published collection, Monsoon and Other Stories, which is also available for your Kindle.
Purchase Monsoon and Other Stories for $2.99
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Arinn Dembo has been a professional writer since 1991. Her articles, criticism and reviews of all popular media have appeared in a variety of print and web publications. Since 1996 she has also worked as a developer in the computer gaming industry, and her background fiction has enriched a number of popular games for the PC, including Homeworld, Homeworld: Cataclysm, Ground Control, Arcanum: of Steamworks and Magick Obscura. Fort Zombie and Sword of the Stars. Her military science fiction novel The Deacon’s Tale, set in the popular Sword of the Stars universe, was published by Kthonia Press in October 2011.
She holds degrees in both Anthropology and Classical Archaeology, and lives in Vancouver with her family and a menagerie of pets.
Purchase The Deacon’s Tale for $2.99
