That night, he sat quietly while his family ate dinner. He had a hunk of dry, salty bread in one hand, ripped from the single loaf that his family was sharing, but he held it absently and stared at the hearth while two of his brothers fought each other, his youngest brother screamed to be breast-fed, his sisters argued with his mother, and his father sat in the corner of the house drinking from a wineskin.
He kept thinking about Isabel, the monster in the garden. How could a laugh like hers belong to a monstrous brute? He lay awake, remembering her voice, wondering what life would be like trapped in such a small place. He thought it would drive him mad.
He brought water for the knight the next day, and the next. After three nights, he could no longer resist his desire to talk with Isabel again. While his family slept, he stood and walked towards the front door curtain.
“Pascal, where are you going?” a voice whispered. Katerine, his youngest sister, seven years old.
“Nowhere. I'll come back soon.”
“You can't go. There are evil spirits in the night.”
“They won't hurt me.”
Katerine frowned, clearly not believing him.
“The priest gave me a special blessing,” Pascal lied, “To protect me from all monsters.”
Katerine's face brightened. “Can come I with you?”
“No.”
“I want to come!”
“Quiet! If you stay here and stay quiet, I'll bring you a present.”
“What kind of present?”
“It's a secret. But you have to stay quiet.”
Katerine nodded her head and lay back in the straw. She closed her eyes, and Pascal left the house.
He walked through the silent shadows of the village, where the moonlight turned the familiar little houses into pale and alien things. The market square was an empty plaza of darkness, presided over by the bloodstained gallows at the north end.
There was plenty to fear in the night—men, beasts, and unholy spirits. He hurried up the hill to the looming manor house, keeping to the shadows as much as he could. There could be a man on night watch, for all he knew.
Pascal made his way around to the back of the house, to the small hole in the wall, and pressed his mouth to it.
“Isabel?” he whispered. He repeated her name again, and then a third time, speaking louder with each repetition. “Isabel, are you there?”
“Quiet!” her voice answered. “I was asleep. Is that you, Pascal?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you wait so long to return?”
“You made me promise never to visit you again.”
“A promise I hoped you would disobey,” she said.
“And so I did. Obedience is not one of my virtues.”
Isabel laughed, but quieted herself.
“Why do they keep you confined here?” he whispered.
“Because I am a monster.”
“The stories are true?”
“Some of them, I'm sure. And now, you will tell me a story, won't you?”
“A story about you?”
“Oh, please not,” she said. “I do not wish to think about myself.”
“Then what would you hear?”
“Anything about the world beyond this wall.”
“I know little of life beyond the village.”
“For me, the village is as distant as Paris.”
“What do you wish to hear?”
“Something secret.”
Pascal thought it over. “They say that Jean the brewer is having an affair with the carpenter's wife.”
“It must be quite the scandal!”
“He gives the carpenter beer and ale until he falls asleep, and then he lays with her in the carpenter's own house.”
“The peasant's life must be full of such sordid things. What else can you tell me?”
Pascal thought it over. “There was a sheep born last year with two heads. Everyone said it was an evil omen, but then they said it could be witchcraft by the old widow Teffaine. The priest ordered the sheep killed.”
“And what about the witch?”
“She died before the priest could decide what to do with her. He said the Devil had claimed her soul so that the priest could not return her to God.”
“Such excitement,” Isabel whispered. “Tell me more about the village.”
“The stories may grow less entertaining from here.”
“Tell me of anything that has happened. Tell me about the Festival of Fools, and how people dress on such a day, and of your sweet Marie.”
“She is not mine. She has already married someone else.”
“That is sad.”
“I suppose it is.”
Isabel laughed. “The festival. Tell me.”
Pascal explained the annual December festival, how a boy was crowned Lord of Misrule and the commoners treated nobles with open disrespect, even demanding food and drink at the doors of the nobility.
“That is how it should be,” Isabel whispered. “Madness and merriment. Why should we torment ourselves for a God who clearly cares so little for us?”
Pascal found the question large and frightening, so he wanted to speak of anything else. “Shall I tell you more about the village?”
“Yes!”
He spoke for as long as he dared, telling her stories and gossip from the village. Some of it was very old news, but it was all fresh to Isabel.
“I must go,” he said at last. “The moon has nearly crossed the sky.”
“But you will return?” Isabel said.
“I wish to see you next time,” Pascal said. “Is there no gate in the wall?”
“Father had it sealed with stone when he imprisoned me here. There is only the door to the house, and that is barricaded on the inside to keep me out here. Someone would catch you entering the house and making all that noise, unshackling the barricade.”
Pascal studied the wall. It was hardly smooth—just jumbles of raw stones held together by cement.
“What if I climb over?” Pascal whispered.
“It is too dangerous.”
“I can move quietly.”
“I do not mean the climb, I mean me.”
“What will you do?” he asked. “Kill me and eat me?”
Isabel laughed. “You should stop making me do that,” she whispered. “Someone will hear me.”
“I promise to never make you laugh again.”
Isabel laughed again. “I told you to stop that! Now go, I hear someone moving inside the house.”
“Sleep well, Isabel.”
“Wait. First you must promise me you will never return, for your own good. I am nothing but danger to you.”
“I promise it.”
Pascal returned to her again the next night, and the next, telling her stories of all that he saw and heard in the village, as if she were blind and needed him to describe the world to her. During the day, he was tired and sluggish at his work, and his father beat him for it, accusing him of drunkenness. He gave Katerine a bunch of wildflowers for her secrecy, and she seemed pleased with this bribe.
During the day, Pascal listened carefully in the village for any bit of gossip he might bring for Isabel's amusement.
Each morning, he delivered the water to the manor house, and he was not late again, and he avoided the walled garden. When he brought the water, he would hear barking and growling behind the wall, but he never heard this during his nightly visits. He began to think that perhaps she was only a monster by day, and at night took the form of a girl. He did not wish to ask her about it for fear of upsetting her. He imagined her girl-form as angelic, just as beautiful as her beast-form was ugly.
He visited her throughout the summer, week after week. She described for him the inside of the walled garden—stone benches, herbs and vegetables she grew herself and ate herself, since no one in the house would touch the food she grew.
“Why not?” Pascal had asked her.
�
�Because I am poisonous,” was her reply.
He learned that she had lived in the walled garden since she was a child, as long as she could remember. There was a thatched shelter in one corner, and a firepit. He tried to imagine life confined to so small a space, no larger than the one-room house he shared with his family.
“I must come over the wall,” he told her again, near the beginning of autumn. “I want to see you.”
“You cannot,” she said. “No one can come close to me and live.”
“Would you harm me?” he asked.
“I could not help it.”
“But you are not a beast by night,” he said. “Only by day. Isn't that right?”
“What do you mean?”
“When I bring water in the morning, I hear only growls from behind this wall. At night, I never hear them. You are no monster when the sun is down.”
“And you mean...you think I change into a beast by day, and a girl by night?”
“Do I have it wrong?”
Isabel laughed, long and hard, and he could hear her smothering it with her hands.
“No,” she whispered. “What you hear in the morning is Chasseur. The dog.”
“A dog?”
“He is chained by the door to discourage from me attempting to go inside. When they throw the scraps in here to feed him after dinner, I add some herbs that make him sleep. He would howl all night if I did not.”
She laughed again, and Pascal felt foolish. He was glad she couldn't see the look on his face.
“So you believed I was some sort of growling beast, but you wanted to come in and visit me anyway?” she asked.
“Yes,” Pascal said.
“You're foolish,” she said. After a long moment, she said, “Pascal, I think I love you.”
Pascal's heart thumped at that. He had wondered whether the girl behind the wall shared his growing affection, or if she only spoke to him because she was alone.
“Let me come over the wall,” he whispered. “I need to see you.” He searched the rough stone face for handholds.
“Not tonight,” she said. “You will wake Chasseur, and he will wake everyone. Wait until tomorrow, and I will give him a double portion of his sleep medicine.”
“I cannot wait that long,” Pascal said.
“You must. And promise me you will not touch me. I don't want to see you suffer.”
“I suffer already.”
“We will not be together long if Chasseur awakens. Come tomorrow night, when we might have hours of peace.”
Pascal forced himself to wait.
The next night, he arrived with one of his big wooden water buckets, with a length of rope coiled inside. He had already tied one end of the rope to the sturdy handle at the top.
He whispered for Isabel, and her blue eye immediately appeared at the hole, bright in the moonlight.
“Get as far as you can from this wall,” he whispered. “I'm throwing something over.”
“Be careful. And hurry.”
Pascal walked along the wall until he saw a good notch at the top, between a pair of stones. He threw the bucket over, letting the rope have plenty of slack—he needed it to land softly in the dirt, not clang back against the wall.
When the bucket landed with a thump on the other side, he pulled the rope into the notch at the top of the wall. Then he drew back on the rope, hand over hand, hearing the bucket knock against the wall as it ascended.
“Quietly!” Isabel whispered.
Pascal hauled back on the rope until the bucket was flush against the notch. It would serve as his anchor. He pulled himself up the rope with his hands and walked along the wall with his bare feet.
When he reached the top of the wall, he sat still for a moment and looked down into the garden. He saw the thatched roof of her shelter in one corner, and a huge dog on a chain sleeping next to the door. A great variety of plants and flowers grew in the soil and in clay pots along one wall.
Isabel kept to the shadows, her face and body hidden under a hooded robe, like a monk's. She wore gloves that extended to her elbows.
“Come down,” she whispered. “Someone could see you up there.”
“Give me time.” Pascal gathered up the rope and dropped it inside the wall. Then he anchored the heavy bucket against the outside of the wall and slowly descended the rope.
When he reached the bottom, he coiled the rope around a stone bench to keep the bucket from falling outside.
“So that is how you look.” Isabel approached him, most of her face hidden under her hood. He could see only her mouth and her pale chin.
“Isabel.” Pascal reached for her.
“No.” She took a step back. “You must not touch me.”
“I would not take advantage of you.”
“I only wish that you could,” Isabel said.
“Let me see you, Isabel.”
Isabel drew back her hood. She was small and pale, as if she carried some sort of illness, but he thought she was beautiful. Long black hair spilled from the hood around her shoulders. He gazed into her eyes.
“See?” she asked. “No horns. No serpent's tongue.” She stuck out her tongue at him, as if to prove it.
“You are more beautiful than I imagined.”
“You were imagining a hairy beast.”
“Isabel...” He drew closer, reaching his hand for her cheek.
“No!” She took his hand in her hers—the material of her gloves was coarse and scratchy. She pressed his hand against her left breast, against her heart. “If you must touch me, you will have to do it through my clothes. Your skin cannot touch mine.”
Pascal lay his other hand on her chest, and then felt his way down her stomach, to her hips. While his hands explored her body, she closed her eyes, leaned her head against his chest, and sighed. Her hand found the length of rope that held up his trousers, then moved to his lower back. Her other hand slid all over him, shyly at first, then with passion. They caressed each other without touching.
Pascal kissed her, and his lips burned like fire.
“No!” She turned her head aside. “You must not.”
“Isabel, please, kiss me again.”
“Already the pox has spread to your face.”
Pascal touched his own lips, which felt like they'd been pressed with hot coals. His fingers came away wet with blood. The burning sensation spread from his lips, to his nose and chin, across his cheeks.
“Now you see how I am a monster,” she said. “No one can touch me, or the pox infects them. Touch me again and you will die.”
He wrapped his arm around her, caressing her again with both hands while her gloved hands explored him. She reached under his shirt.
“You still wish to touch me?” she whispered.
“I wish for nothing more.” He took her chin in his fingers and turned her face back toward him. Blisters and sores opened on his fingers. “What do you wear under this robe?” he asked, caressing her hip.
“Nothing.”
He kissed her again, and she kissed back, her tongue burning holes in his gums and inside his cheek.
“Stop!” Isabel demanded. She turned her head aside, but this time he could not obey. He kissed her cheek, her earlobe, her slender neck. She punched him with a fist and pushed away. “See what you are doing to yourself.” She lifted his shirt, and Pascal took it off.
Lesions, tumors and pustules were knotted all over his chest and down his arms to his bleeding fingers.
“What is happening?” he whispered.
“That is my curse. That is why I must live behind these walls. Do not touch me again, Pascal. I don't wish to see you suffer.” Her eyes looked wet, and a sob escaped her throat.
“If I cannot touch you, let me see you,” he said.
“You can see me from there.”
“All of you, Isabel.”
She lifted her robe, revealing her feet and her shins. “Like this?”
&
nbsp; “Yes.”
She bit her lip. “You first.”
Pascal loosened the rope at his waist and let his trousers drop. She looked him over while she slowly drew her garment up and over her head, then cast it aside. They watched each other in the moonlight, desire thickening and charging the air between them, like the onset of a storm.
“You are so beautiful,” he whispered.
“You are beautiful to me, too,” she whispered.
Pascal took her up in his arms and kissed her, and she did not resist, but clung tightly to him and kissed him fiercely.
Spasms wracked Pascal's body. He fell to the dirt, twitching, his flesh turned to leprous decay, his insides screaming in pain.
“Pascal, I am sorry,” she cried, grabbing her own hair in both hands. “I do love you. I tried to warn you. Please don't die. I should not have touched you.”
“I love...” he said, and then his mouth and lungs filled with blood, his body shuddered, and his eyes closed for the last time.
The End
The Glassheart Chronicles Page 5
