She has, of late, been learning the rudiments of the alphabet, and it pleases me to know that she has made progress. Victories come slowly with Vita, but it was recently brought to my attention that she has succeeded in writing letters, and these efforts have led to simple words: “oui,” “non,” “maman.” This leads me to believe that one day she will begin to understand complex language. We are introducing words in numerous languages, to gauge if one might be better suited to her abilities. The introduction of English has yielded the most words thus far. I have written to my cousin in London, asking her to send us an English tutor.
We had a British naturalist at our gate the other day. He had heard, on his travels through our mountains, of a noble-born, malformed child and, after making inquiries, was directed to the castle. I was enraged upon learning that our secret, so carefully guarded, could be discovered so easily as this! If that is the case, anyone throwing about questions and a few gold coins is able to discover Vita. I have spoken to Ambrose about this, and he agreed with me. We must suppress all talk of Vita among the peasants. We must hide her existence. We will announce that Vita has died, hold a funeral, and be done with it. We will hide her away. She must live in secret.
There is, as Ambrose warned, something devilish in her.
Sometimes she studies the world with a cold, calculating regard, one devoid of gentleness. It is an expression that chills the senses, it is so devoid of emotion, so outside the realm of human interaction. I wonder then if the defects of her body do not reflect the defects of the soul.
When I try to give the child affection, which I admit is rare and unnatural for me—frankly, my heart closes when I see her; I reject this imperfect copy of myself—she stiffens, as if I have shown her violence. Perhaps she senses that I have no love for her, only compassion, tolerance, and duty. And, more and more of late, horror.
The other evening, for example, I went to her rooms in the northeast tower to wish her a good evening. Vita was with her nurse when I arrived, a collection of rag dolls scattered about her. I was pleased by this simple scene, as I thought she might be playing the kind of domestic games I played as a girl. Indeed, the doll had come from my own collection. But when I bent to see her, I found that every one of the dolls had been ripped and torn, violently denuded and decapitated. The child had gnawed through the dolls with her sharp, strong teeth. In the process, she had bitten her own flesh, and blood had dripped over the wreckage, drying brown and hard on their mangled bodies. When I asked the nurse about this state of affairs, she informed me that Vita had eaten every one of the dolls’ heads whole.
“Eaten?” I said, perplexed. “Surely, she could not have eaten rags. She would be ill.”
The nurse assured me that Vita had, in fact, devoured them.
Suddenly, there was a scratching in the corner of the room, a cacophony of claws, as a rat scrambled across the nursery. A look of fascination passed over Vita’s face, and she stood and darted about the room, following the noise. Her gait was uneven, her weight shifting from leg to leg as she moved, as if her hips were not joined to her body. Then, without a word of warning, she lurched at the rat, grabbed it by the tail, and bit into it. She struck so fast, and there was such elegant ferocity to her movements, that I wouldn’t have understood what had happened had it not been for the burst of blood spattered across the stone floor. As I watched, Vita devoured the rat, dropped the tail on the floor, and wiped the blood from her lips with her sleeve. She must have seen my astonishment, because she began to laugh.
“I believe,” the nurse said, her voice dropping to a whisper, “that she is catching more mice than the courtyard cats, madame.”
I stifled a sob in my throat and turned to hide my pain from the nurse. I thought of the butterfly Vita had killed some time before, the pleasure she had taken in the kill, how she had crushed its wings in her jaws.
December 1928
My child is possessed.
Satan has rooted himself into her body, and through his nefarious means—so cruel and various in their tortures—has created a vessel in the body of my girl. Priests from as far away as Turin have come to examine her and are in universal agreement: Vita houses the devil. She is a succubus. Her soul has arrived here from hell.
The incident occurred last week, in the gardens outside the northeast tower. These tranquil grounds around the lake have become the site, these past years, of Vita’s promenades outside the castle. She adores nature, and although she has been forbidden to venture out of the northeast tower without supervision, I occasionally allow her the freedom to ramble unattended. I have found that after she has been climbing in the foothills of the mountain, or when she has ventured into the great pines near the castle wall, she is almost content. I know that she is not to be punished for her monstrous form. I must help her to live inside the prison of her body. If she must run in the snow to soothe her distressed mind, so be it. If she must climb in the mountains to tire her limbs, I will allow it. I can offer these comforts, at least.
Such was my intention when I unfastened the lock on her door and let her go free. It was the feast of Saint Nicholas, and the village houses were illuminated with candles. We could see them glowing in the distance, pricks of light in the darkness below the castle. Snow fell softly, creating a powder over the evergreens. Vita wanted to ramble in the garden. It was a small indulgence, or so I thought at the time.
Later that night, a party from the village came to the castle. They demanded to speak with Ambrose, and when my husband opened the windows of the west tower, I saw twenty or so men gathered below. They held torches and screamed our name: “Montebianco! Montebianco!”
Looking down upon the crowd, my husband demanded to know why they had come at such an hour.
The crowd responded with shouts of rage and anger. “Beast,” they cried. “Beast!”
I knew at once that they were referring to Vita. Vita was being held in the home of the village magistrate. The men had come to inform us that she was being held on charges of grave wrongdoing.
“What has she done?” Ambrose demanded.
“She has committed murder,” came the response.
Murder! Vita’s fits of violence were well known among us, and I had observed that the instinct to hunt had grown more pronounced; the butterflies and rats had led to other, larger kills—marmots and rabbits and mouflon. But the murder of a human being? Vita had never shown such an inclination. I could not bring myself to believe it.
“They are wrong,” I whispered to Ambrose. “Vita isn’t capable. Demand proof.”
“What proof do you have?” Ambrose called down.
“I myself saw the act,” a man said, stepping forward.
“I, too, witnessed the violence,” said another man, as he stepped forward to join the first.
“And I, with the help of these others, endeavored to restrain the beast,” said a third.
Beast. The word echoed through our room, silencing Ambrose and myself.
Ambrose told them to go home, and he would come to Nevenero at once. He ordered the carriage be made ready and began to dress. When I saw that he would go immediately, I ran to my boudoir, dressed, and hurried to the courtyard, arriving before my husband, and I climbed into the carriage and covered myself in blankets. I knew he would order me to stay, but I would not abide being left behind. I would see for myself the crime for which my child was accused.
We found Vittoria bound with rope in a stable.
Covered in blood, her clothes ripped from her body, her feet unshod—she looked every bit the murderess the villagers had described. Ambrose, who could never stand to look at his daughter, even when I combed her hair and dressed her in fine clothes, turned away, his expression filled with disgust, and demanded to see what Vittoria had done.
They took us to a stone village house, one of the many that clustered around the center of Nevenero. As we walked through the door, we found a scene so shocking, so unlike anything I could have imagined. I surveyed the atroci
ties as if they were something apart from me, a pièce de théâtre being played out on a stage. Not even the nightmares of Dante could compare with the scene that unfolded before my eyes.
Two men, brothers, had lived. And two were now dead. That is the simple calculation of the damages wrought by my daughter. But the actual accounting of what Vita had done is harder to tally, as the amount of destruction—and the amount of blood—gave the illusion of a massacre. The bodies of those slain had been hideously disfigured. A limb torn from one body lay near another. A foot ripped from its ankle stood upright in a shoe. Hands, heads, arms, legs—incongruous pieces of the human form were strewn about the room.
A sensation of numbness fell over me as I took it all in. I believe I may have fainted, for the next thing I recall is the hand of my husband gripping my arm to help me stand. Blood stained the floorboards black. It was so thick that, as we left the room, the hem of my petticoat grew crimson.
As Ambrose led me back to the carriage, I saw that a small crowd had gathered outside the stable. Some held torches. Others carried axes and cudgels. I gripped the arm of my husband, terrified.
“They will kill her, Ambrose,” I whispered, so the peasants would not hear me. “They will burn her alive.”
“That would be the answer to my prayers,” my husband said.
“Please,” I said, knowing he was more concerned about what the incident would do to the Montebianco name than what would happen to Vittoria. “For the children we might have one day. They will kill first one, then all of the Montebiancos.”
Ambrose sighed, considering what he must do. Sacrificing Vittoria did not harm him, but the idea of losing our future children was not easy to bear.
“These are peasants,” he said, grabbing some coins. “I know how to placate them.” He put me in the carriage and secured the door. I collapsed into the cushions, covering myself with a rug. My whole body shook with fear. Although I had insisted upon coming to the village, I wished that I had spared myself. The mind is like warm wax, the world like a brass seal pressed into it. Such imprints are forever stamped into us. I am eternally marred.
Finally, Ambrose returned to the carriage, pulling Vita with him. As we climbed the road back to the castle, I took her hands in mine. Tears were streaming down my cheeks. I was ill with horror, but I found my will to speak stronger than my disgust.
“Did you kill those people, Vittoria? Tell me the truth. Was it you?”
My child answered in quiet, respectful French.
Ambrose’s face hardened. He looked at his daughter, hatred in his eyes. “Why?” he said. “Why would you do such a beastly, murderous deed? Are you a human being? Or a monster?”
They startled Vita, her father’s words. They were the first and last sentiments Ambrose addressed to his daughter. Vita’s large blue eyes were wet with tears, but she couldn’t speak to him. Instead, she came to me and whispered her response in my ear.
“What reason did she give?” he asked.
I lay back in the seat of the calèche, my heart pounding in my chest. “They attacked her,” I said. “She came upon them when she was walking. They attacked her and she defended herself. They struck first, Ambrose.”
Father Francisco, who came to Nevenero to christen Vittoria after her birth, and who has followed her strange development with such loyalty these past years, will perform the exorcism.
He took me aside late last night, after we brought Vita home from the terrible ordeal in the village, to tell me he believes the devil lives in the girl.
“You are not alone,” I told him. “The villagers believe so as well, and they would have killed her had Ambrose not intervened.”
Father Francisco promised that everything would soon change. He would make the devil confess to what happened in Nevenero. “An exorcism will liberate the child,” Father Francisco said. “It will free her from the spirits that have so twisted her soul. And it will, Countess, liberate you.”
I acquiesced, but insisted that I be present during the ritual. I wanted to hold Vittoria’s hand in mine when they tied her down. I wanted to speak to her as they subjected her to their holy oils, their golden crosses, their prayers. I would stifle her cries when they branded her with hot irons. In my desperation, I thought I might offer her some of my strength. But it is not strength she needs. She is thirteen, no longer a child. After what I saw in Nevenero, I know she is strong, so very strong.
Vittoria needs God to help her survive. I hoped that I could be part of His presence, a ministering angel to help her through the worst.
But when it came time for the ritual to begin, I couldn’t go into the northeast tower. It was too much for me to bear, knowing that I created such suffering. Or perhaps I was afraid that the priests would make me confess my sins. I would have no choice but to tell them the truth: I want to kill my daughter. I have protected her, and yet, in my weakest moments, I question the goodness of such protection. It is as Ambrose said: Vittoria should die. If God, in all His benevolence, does not take her life, it is time that I, who gave her life, take it away. God will forgive. Who is He to judge me? He in all His wisdom and glory has created a monster.
The priests want a confession from the devil, but it is we, the Montebiancos, who must confess.
September 1930
The British naturalist returned to the castle this morning. It has been years since he first came to us. Years since I made it understood that he would not be allowed access to Vita. And yet, here he was again.
Ambrose has been dead a year, and still, I felt afraid of what he might say to find me alone with such a person. We do not receive visitors, even if they are known to us, especially foreign ones. I told the groundskeeper to ask the naturalist to leave, but the man was persistent. The groundskeeper returned with a stack of letters of introduction. His name is James Pringle, and he is apparently very well connected among the men of science in Germany and was a student of Dr. Huxley in London.
I invited him to sit with me in the salon for tea, fully intending to send him on his way back to Switzerland. But he was a charming man, and it was pleasant to speak English again; it has been so long. And so I invited him to join me for lunch in the grand hall. I ordered that a chicken be roasted and sent for a bottle of wine from the cellar. When we ate, I asked why he should be interested in my child, and he confessed that it was his specialty to document and study the irregularities of the human race. He apologized profusely, but was nonetheless bold enough to ask of the particulars of her affliction—from what did she suffer? How did it come about? Can she express herself with language? What is her diet? Could he sketch her? And, if he could be so bold, could he offer his learned opinion of a method of treatment for Vita’s ailments?
By the end of our lunch, he had charmed me. I trusted him and gave him permission to visit Vita.
In the northeast tower, we entered to find Vita bound to her bed. It had been a difficult morning, apparently, and the nurse had called for help in securing Vita’s hands and feet in restraints. She was quite wild when we arrived, screaming, uncontrollable. She made no sense whatsoever, and I blushed in shame at the exposure of her inferior mind.
It had little effect upon the good naturalist. In fact, this spectacle pleased him immensely. Upon seeing her, he went to the side of the bed, where he stared at her as if she were a rare jewel. He pulled up a stool and began to draw her. One hour turned into two, then three, and at the end of the afternoon, the naturalist had a book of sketches. He seemed overwhelmed by the experience and was in a hurry to go, presumably to show his sketches to colleagues. Of course, if he had known that my groundsman waited outside the castle gates to confiscate the drawings, he would not have been in such a hurry.
“Don’t let anyone tell you she is deformed,” he said, as he packed his pencils and brushes into a leather case. “She is not deformed. She is special. She has simply arrived here from another time.”
Arrived here from another time! Those words have perplexed and sustained me
. She is not deformed; she is special, my Vita. I did not have the heart to tell him that my child has killed a human being.
Despite the seizure of his drawings, James Pringle returned the next month with books for our library. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Alfred Russel Wallace, Charles Darwin, and other, more obscure authors whose names I came to know only after I began to study them in earnest. I found books on morphology and embryology from the nineteenth century, texts by Aristotle and Empedocles and Lucretius. At the suggestion of the naturalist, I read about how the natural world came to be populated so wonderfully, with such variety. But also about how the forsaken creatures fall to those more adapted, stronger and more aggressive than they. I told him it is a Godless theory, evolution, and he only smiled and pressed me to continue with my reading.
One day, we stood in the library together—James, Vita, and me—and he showed me a large folio of watercolors that illustrated Gregor Mendel’s famous experiments with peas. I studied these watercolors, taking in the combinations. They showed an explosion of varieties—short-stemmed peas with purple flowers, long-stemmed peas with yellow flowers, purple flowers with constricted pods, and so on.
The variety of Mendel’s peas interested the naturalist. In nature, he said, inheritance was a matter of endless mixing, new traits showing up with each generation. They were distributed and various, leaving no single trait to dominate a family indefinitely.
What he meant to say, I believe, is that Vita’s affliction may resurface, should she reproduce. Thank heaven that will never come to pass.
Rumors have come to Nevenero that avalanches are to blame for the loss of a hundred or more soldiers training in our region.
It is also said that the surviving men have passed along the edge of our domain, some distance from Nevenero village, and that they stopped to seek shelter. I hope they will leave us in peace. The billeting of soldiers is not a Montebianco tradition, by any stretch of the imagination, and Ambrose would have forbidden me to harbor our enemies in any case.
The Ancestor Page 13
