The Rainbow Bridge

by Aubrey Flegg

  One evening she noticed Jacquot behaving nervously. He went several times to check that the door was closed. When he opened the book, she saw that, this time, he was reading from pages that he had concealed inside the covers. Had he found some new manuscript? Lousie watched his fingers as they followed the words, and remembered her own early efforts with a pen. The telltale marks of ink were on his first and second fingers. Surely he hadn’t written this himself? While she listened to his now familiar voice, she had an uneasy feeling, as if she had forgotten something, something that this story was to remind her of …? Her unease lasted only a few seconds, then she was caught up in his tale.

  The Wood Boy and the Monster

  There was once a just and a noble king whose castle stood in the middle of a great forest. He was loved by all and feared by none. Close to the castle walls there lived a boy, who made his living by cutting wood to burn in the castle fires. The boy had scarce seen twelve summers when his mother died, leaving him an orphan.

  The king, taking pity on the boy, put it abroad that he should be allowed to eat in the castle kitchens, and gave orders that his chaplain should teach him his letters. When however he commanded the boy to leave his cottage and to take up residence inside the castle walls, the boy fell to his knees.

  ‘Sire,’ he said. ‘As my poor mother lay dying, she bade me promise that I would not leave the cottage in which we had lived together until such time as I should find a bride who would be content to share it with me. In this way, said she, I will know that my bride’s love for me is true.’ The good king wept to hear the wisdom of the wise mother and went his way.

  So it came to be that the young woodsman lived alone in his cottage in great contentment; the forest was his friend, neither wolf, nor bear, nor lynx held any terror for him. Only when the moon was full and the forest glade was filled with silver light, did the young boy know fear. He would bar the door, pull in the cord that lifted the latch, and lie with his woodsman’s axe beside his bed. Then, while he listened to the sounds of the night about him, he would remember his mother’s words.

  ‘My son,’ she had whispered, ‘There is one secret that I must tell you now that you must pass on to no man, not even to the king himself. Come close, my love; my voice is failing.’ The boy knelt and took the dying woman’s hand. ‘All is not well within the castle walls. Our king is just and our king is noble but you must know that there lives within the castle walls a monster over which he has no power. Once a month, at midnight, when the moon is full, this monster creeps forth from his lair and roams the castle at his will.’

  ‘Mother dear,’ cried the boy, trembling like a leaf. ‘What could this monster want with me?’ His poor mother drew him close.

  ‘He seeks the flesh of one who is both young and fair,’ she said, and here the poor woman wept and trembled in a way that the boy did not understand. He pressed a cup of water to her lips. ‘Listen to me, son, for here the danger lies. The people of the castle are now too old for this foul monster’s meat, but you, my son, though manly for your age, are both young and fair.’ Terror alone held back the poor boy’s tears.

  ‘Mother, what must I do to save myself?’ and he bent to hear her whispered words.

  ‘Watch the waxing moon, my son, do not forget! On the night that it rises full, pull in the cord and bar the door. Open it to no one, fair or foul. Beware of honeyed words!’ At this the woman lay back in the boy’s arms and died.

  A twelve-month passed; at each full moon the boy pulled in the cord, and barred the door. He lay trembling, waiting for the monster’s stealthy tread, but all he heard were the sounds of the forest. In the mornings that followed the full moon he would say to himself. ‘Surely, in her last hours, my dear mother was wandering in her mind; there is no monster.’ On the thirteenth month that followed his mother’s death, the moon was late to rise and so the boy forgot to bar the door. At midnight he was woken by an unfamiliar step outside. A late traveller on the forest road, perhaps? He sat up. His room was flooded with silver light, and there was the moon standing full over the castle roofs! The door – it was unbarred! Even as he leapt from his bed he could see the cord tightening on the latch. Wielding his axe, he struck at the cord. A cry of rage and pain met his blow. He leapt to the window and there his terrified eyes beheld the monster: grotesque and hunched, half human, half animal. In a second it was gone, scrabbling and snarling towards the castle walls. In the morning the boy saw that his axe had passed clean through the door. Black blood speckled the forest leaves.

  It was a twelve-month before the monster came again but this time it found the cord pulled in and the door barred against it. Now, for the first time, it spoke and the boy sat up in bed, wondering that a fiend so foul could fashion human words. At one moment it was the voice of reason and concern. Next it commanded, as if of royal right, then it was a voice of silk. But when it took on the sweetness of honey the boy remembered his mother’s warning and pulled the blankets over his head and listened no more. From this time on, scarcely a month passed without a visit from the fiend but still the boy kept the door barred against him. Then one day everything changed.

  It had come about that, since the moon last waned, a lady of grace and nobility had come to live within the castle walls, and with her came her daughter, a maid of just thirteen years, lovely as any princess. To all within the castle, she shone like a ray of sunshine. Her laughter echoed down the corridors, and the sound of her feet running from room to room made even the old feel young again. Within days she had so filled the thoughts of the young forester that he was sure that he would burst for joy. When the full moon came, and he barred the door, he looked forward to a night of thinking of the maid. He was thus engaged when the monster spoke:

  ‘So, boy, we have a visitor within the castle walls?’ The monster’s tones were warm and honeyed, but the boy did not think before he answered.

  ‘Oh yes, her laughter is like the ringing of bells, and the patter of her feet is like the sound of running water …’

  ‘Go on, my boy…?

  The boy laughed, ‘What joy at last to have someone in the castle who is both young and fair …’ Even as he spoke, his blood ran cold. His mother’s words were sharp in his ears: He seeks the flesh of one both young and fair. What had he said? How had he not thought? In vain he tried to undo his words. ‘Her beauty is nothing to speak of, and…and she is older than she looks …’ When the monster spoke again, the honeyed tones were gone.

  ‘Do you think I do not know? Do you think I have not feasted my eyes on her, too? Why should I waste my time rattling at your barred door when I doubt not that hers hangs merely on the latch? Surely she will be sweeter meat than you!’

  ‘Stop!’ cried the boy. ‘You must not touch her!’

  ‘And how will you stop me, safe in your snug little home?’

  ‘Take me instead, but spare the girl!’ And the boy thought of his promise to his mother and wept.

  ‘Perhaps you are over-tough by now?’

  ‘Do with me what you will, but promise me to spare the maid.’

  ‘Open the door and I promise that the girl will be spared at least until the next full moon.’

  In terror and despair the boy opened the door. The monster’s teeth were like daggers, and his eyes were like burning coals, and over all his parts clung a coating of green slime. The boy fell back. ‘Give me your right arm,’ the fiend commanded. The boy held it out, whereupon the foul creature seized it and bit it off at the shoulder. Then he set about eating it, drooling most horribly the while.

  ‘How will I be able to cut wood in the forest now?’ lamented the boy.

  ‘Your arm will have grown again by the morning,’ said the monster between mouthfuls. ‘But remember, from now on, your right arm is mine, my mark will be on it and no matter how much you wash you will never be able to wash it clean.’ Having finished his meal, the creature prepared to depart. ‘Remember, boy, if I find your door closed against me again I will not knock but will go
to seek a fairer feast.’

  Jacquot stopped his reading. The pale light of the candle lit his face; a dew of sweat hazed his forehead.

  ‘Go on,’ Louise willed, ‘how does it end?’ Her eyes followed his down to the place where his finger still lingered. From that point on the page was blank. Perhaps he didn’t know how to end it? Then, like a stab between the eyes, she realised why he had stopped. Hadn’t M. Morteau warned that the local people would often hide real happenings within their folk tales? This tale of Jacquot’s was about some real experience. The boy had not ended it for the simple reason that the tale had not run its course. A chill of real horror ran down her back. He didn’t know what the ending was because the monster would come again!

  To begin with, all Louise could do was to extend to Jacquot a wordless aura of sympathy and understanding. When he was sufficiently recovered, she began to talk, as she had talked to Pierre, in a silent flow of words, until in the end he responded, and the flow became an exchange. Jacquot leant against the mantelpiece, his head on his arms, while Louise probed gently, testing doors that even his gruesome story had failed to open. When, however, she asked, ‘What does he do to you?’ and he responded, it was her own mind that closed in self protection.

  ‘Who is he, Jacquot?’

  ‘A monster!’ He said vehemently, ‘but he’s been like a father to me.’ He gathered up his implements and his book and was gone. Louise was left dumbfounded.

  All through the following days and nights Louise teased at the problem. There was no doubt in her mind that Jacquot was the boy in the story, and that Marie was certainly the ‘young and fair’ maiden. But who was this monster who had been ‘like a father’ to Jacquot? Who could command him ‘as if of royal right’ and leave him reluctant to utter his name. Then gradually she realised that she did know, and that she too had been reluctant to form his name. Dear God, how long had Jacquot been paying some dreadful price for Marie’s safety?

  ‘Jacquot,’ she said without preamble, when he came the following week. ‘The moon was new last week, so next week it will be full. You must finish your story before the next full moon. If you write what I tell you, I think we can stop this “monster” once and for all.’

  ‘But what about Marie?’ he asked.

  ‘Marie will be safe. The “monster”, as you call him, will come to me, not to her.’

  ‘But how? I can’t let you …’

  ‘Of course you can. What harm can he do to a picture?’ Louise was less confident than she sounded but pressed on relentlessly. ‘You have a good memory?’ The boy nodded. ‘Well listen to me …’ She told him what she thought he should say, drawing on the example of Gaston’s bravery as he faced down the conspirators in this very chateau. As she went on she felt him engaging with her, nodding and then even making suggestions of his own. When he left her he seemed to be a different boy. She, on the other hand, wondered what she had done!

  CHAPTER 17

  The Rainbow Bridge

  As he set out for the woodcutter’s hut, the Count reminded himself, as he always did on these occasions, how good he had been to Jacquot. He had arranged that the boy had an education far above his station as a woodcutter; he had seen him clothed and fed in the chateau kitchens. The boy owed him. Surely it was a small price to ask for a little pleasure in return? He even felt justified in what he was about to do; in fact it was an act of love, he argued.

  He stepped silently across the cobbles of the yard, feeling the familiar euphoria that elevated him to some awful height between the chateau and the moon. It was as though he were a tightrope walker. For him, love was a balance between desire and fear that his own desire might consume him.

  He was surprised, and a little pleased, to see that the boy had lit a lamp; there was a yellow glow in his window, homely in the steel bright glare of the moon.

  ‘Jacquot, it is I,’ he called, trying to keep the hunger from his voice. In one sudden movement the door was snatched open and there stood Jacquot, a gleaming axe cradled on his arm. Lord, how the boy had grown, the Count thought in surprise, but it was the axe that held his gaze, the head had been polished till it shone … if the boy had polished the head, what had he done to the blade? Jacquot raised the axe an inch. What was this? The boy wasn’t supposed to behave like this; he had always been submissive before. The Count’s mouth had gone dry. Despite himself, he took a step backwards, and in doing so betrayed his cowardice to both Jacquot and himself. Rank and position meant nothing when standing alone in the face of cold steel. His legs felt weak and his hunger of a moment before turned to the nausea of fear.

  ‘All right, Jacquot, all right. Not tonight then?’ He was horrified to hear himself gibbering. ‘What … what do you want?’

  ‘Monsieur le Comte, you are to read this.’ To his amazement, the boy thrust a sheaf of paper at him. He took it. ‘Now Monsieur, if you please, turn about. En avant, marchez!’

  ‘You can’t order …’

  ‘I can and I will. Now, walk towards the kitchen, and remember, I am one step behind you.’

  Jacquot stood over the Count while he lit a kitchen candle from the tiny wick that was left floating in oil so that the chateau would never be without a flame. The Count sat at the table and pressed down hard on the pages to prevent his hand from shaking.

  ‘Now, read!’ Jacquot commanded. He waited until the Count had scanned the first page, and then he stepped back.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I am going to stand watch outside Marie’s door. I will not leave her unprotected.’ The Count winced, but he turned the page and read on.

  It had been Louise’s idea that Jacquot should guard Marie, not so much because she thought the girl would be in danger, but to get Jacquot away from the man who had dominated him for so much of his life. But if she could have seen the young hero now, she would have had no reason to fear, indeed she might have wished for his protection herself.

  The Count’s hands closed convulsively on the final pages of Jacquot’s story, crumpling them cruelly. How dare he? Who did that little ingrate think he was? An image of Jacquot barring the door to the hut with the polished axe flashed across his mind and he groaned as he remembered his own cowardice. He knew who was responsible for all of this – that girl in the picture. She had bewitched him, as he had known she would from the moment Gaston had presented the picture to him. How many times had he stood in front of her at night, holding his candle high, fascinated and drawn by that face? He had never experienced such a feeling before, a longing to know her that rose from deep in his heart’s core. He was used to having his way, but that girl held him at a distance, challenging him, questioning him until he would have to leave the room, in case she walked out of the canvas and he would have to answer for himself. Now he would have to destroy her.

  He thought back to Celine, Jacquot’s mother. He had loved her, at first with delight, and then with a passion that had bordered on insanity. When the boy was born, he could have taken her in to be his mistress … his wife even. God knew there were enough examples of such behaviour in his family, but by that stage genuine love and compassion were no longer enough for him. The heights of passion that he craved could only be satisfied by the thrill of his night time forays and the rush of power that came with total control over his victims. To begin with, he persuaded himself that the moon genuinely did have a role in commanding his passions; that it was not really he who prowled the corridors and forest glades, but someone else over whom he had no control, and for whom he had no responsibility. But then he began to enjoy the suffering he was causing to his victims and claimed it for himself. The moon became a mechanism to foster and curb his passions in turn. The people of the chateau began to re-tell their old stories of predatory monsters who hunted by the full moon. Of course he spoke out against such tales, dismissing them as peasant superstition, but secretly he was pleased; the danger of discovery fed his appetite further.

  But where had this appetite sprung from? Where had
it all started, and why did it seem to be his destiny to destroy the things he loved?

  Up until the day of his fourth birthday, little Auguste du Bois thought he could do no wrong; whatever he wished for was his. Now he couldn’t remember the cause of his punishment on that day, but it had come in the form of a slap on the hand from his mother, who, until that moment, had been the source of all the love in his life. With the smack came the command to go out into the garden and not come back until he had found his manners. Tears had given way to resentment, and then to the absolute conviction that Mama no longer loved him. He wandered about the ragged edge of the garden, nurturing this feeling. Butterflies clustered on the purple flowers of the knapweed. Most of these were ‘forest browns’ that lived along the edge of the trees, and therefore familiar. All at once a butterfly that had had its wings folded spread them wide, and a flash of gorgeous colour caused the boy to stop in his tracks. On the lower wings were two jewelled eyes that appeared to be looking at him. The upper wings rose like two surprised eyebrows above them. Never had he seen anything so beautiful. He knelt down slowly, careful not to disturb it. The peacock eyes returned his gaze. Closer and closer the boy moved until he was within inches of the butterfly. It seemed to fill his whole view; every antenna, every scale, every hair was perfect, while in the background the meadow grasses became a green fuzz into which the knapweed bled in soft purple smudges. The symmetry, the unexpected colours, the fragility and the fact that the eyes returned his look so fearlessly, enraptured him. He was held fast by those eyes; they promised a love that would replace the vacuum left by his mother’s rejection.