Nevers

by Sara Cassidy

  The End

  Odette leaves the book open at the last page, and she and Niçois watch as the words The End retreat.

  Niçois lies back on the grass. “Interesting story,” he says.

  “It’s not just a story,” Odette reprimands.

  “A man can’t be turned into a donkey.”

  “Is that any stranger than a donkey that only brays after the sun goes down?”

  Niçois sits up quickly. “Anne!”

  “Yes. And…” Odette takes a deep breath. “There’s something I need to tell you. At night Anne cries out that he does not want to be a donkey. That being a donkey is a terrible life.”

  “You speak donkey?”

  “No. The donkey speaks Latin. That isn’t mentioned in Mme Geneviève’s book—so the spell must have gone wrong somehow.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It seemed impossible. Imagine what you would have thought! A girl saying she can understand a donkey’s brays.”

  “I would have believed you,” Niçois says. And Odette believes him in turn.

  “Mme Geneviève mentioned a cousin of my father’s, and my mother has always said my father had a drop of royal blood in his veins. The duke and my father were cousins, I think, which means I’m related to him too! From what the book says, I’m the only one who can rescue the duke.”

  “So your father isn’t still alive?”

  Odette shakes her head. “My mother—” No. She did not have to tell Niçois, not yet, at least, that her mother was an accidental serial murderer. “He died.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I never met him. So it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

  “That makes two of us without a father.”

  “Half orphans,” Odette says. “It’s funny. Even though I never met my father, I feel as though I knew him. I remember once running a fingernail under his thumbnail as he told me a story and digging out a spiral of dirt.” It is the first time she has told anyone this memory, and soon as the words are in the air she realizes with a start that she isn’t remembering her father. She’s remembering Félix. Her heart swells with thudding grief.

  SNAP.

  Something cracks outside the hut, as if someone has stepped on a stick. Odette and Niçois freeze. The rabbits go on alert, ears high.

  When a magpie hops in through the hut’s small door, mayhem erupts—rabbits leaping, the magpie flapping wildly, cawing and crashing into walls before darting up the chimney hole into the sky.

  Niçois smiles, relieved. “Well? Let’s go break a spell! Let’s meet your royal relative!”

  The two tear through town, arriving out of breath to find Anne standing sleepily under his tree.

  Odette tries to explain in Latin about the spell. Vos adjuvare possumus. “We can help you,” she pants. “Tonight, in the darkness of the new moon, we’ll lead you to a well and bathe you. We’ll take hair from your tail to grind for tea so someone else can become an animal.” Vos cognoscimus. “We know who you are! You’ll be freed from being a donkey at last.”

  Anne raises his head and looks at her. His eyes busily study her lips. He seems to understand, at least, that something exciting is happening. He takes several steps forward and then elegantly bends a leg and dips. He trots right, then right again.

  “The sarabande!” Odette laughs.

  Niçois throws his arms around the animal’s neck. “I knew you were special,” he cries.

  But as quickly as the donkey’s spirits buoyed, menace seems to take hold. His ears press low to his head, and he growls deep in his throat.

  Twenty-Four

  As Odette climbs the stairs to her small house to make her mother’s supper and prepare for the night’s exciting chore, she hears familiar screeching. “He is my husband. And you. You, with your cloak—”

  “It’s all I have, ” Anneline says meekly. “And it is full of holes.”

  “Your airs then. You have lots of those.”

  “I did not know. I never would have—”

  Odette darts up the stairs and finds her mother pressed against the wall, a skinny woman thrusting a necklace in her face. “He gave me this gift,” the woman says. “Ivory and silver. Is this not a sign of true love?”

  “It’s lovely. An object of beauty,” Anneline says as she surreptitiously works a bracelet of fake silver over her hand and drops it to the floor.

  “I could strangle you with it.”

  “Madame!” Odette shouts.

  The woman turns and gawps.

  “My mother didn’t steal your pig, and she didn’t steal your husband.”

  “She and Renard don’t even live together,” Anneline appeals to Odette. “He’s been away from Nevers for years, living on the edge of Paris.”

  The skinny woman shrugs. “Marriages go through difficult patches.”

  “Ten years is a long ‘patch,’” Anneline says.

  Odette turns to the skinny woman. “Leave.”

  “Your mother is a witch. You know that, don’t you? A jezebel.”

  “She is my mother. That is what I know.”

  The woman backs down the stairs. “I’ll be back for the chick and piglet. It is my turn to keep them.”

  Anneline falls onto the bed. Tears trickle from her eyes and pool in her ears. Odette sits down beside her.

  Then something strange happens.

  Anneline reaches for Odette’s hand and squeezes. “I’ll try to be better,” she says.

  Odette would like to believe her mother, but Anneline has caused her so much woe. She seemed to be changing, but this terrible Renard. Such an obvious scoundrel. How could her mother have fallen for him?

  She can’t help remembering, though, Anneline’s insistence on posting her notice in every new town. On never forgetting the promise of that empty box under the bridge. If Anneline hadn’t persisted…

  The old could spring anew, it was true. Félix, studying a grave he had just filled, had once said, “If you didn’t know any better, you would think it was a fresh garden bed.”

  Odette returns her mother’s squeeze. She is grateful that Anneline does not squeeze again, does not turn the moment into a silly game.

  “Did you count my toes when I was born?” Odette asks.

  “Oh yes. And your fingers. You had ten of each.”

  “I still do.”

  “That is good to know.”

  Twenty-Five

  In the early evening, as soon as the sun goes down, Anne brays. This time his brays are unusually loud and boisterous. Odette listens closely. Non dubitate, fortuna fatum vobis exonerabit. “Do not doubt that fortune will lighten your fate. Fate is vain, yes, and resolute. But Fortune—Fortune dazzles.” Fortuna cursum temporis mutat. “Fortune changes the course of time. Fortune is fate’s comeuppance.”

  After serving her mother a supper of oatmeal, with spinach gathered from the overgrown garden outside the riverside hut, Odette tucks her mother into bed under the knitted blanket, along with Aline et Valcourt. Odette herself is too nervous to eat. She feeds the chickens and the piglet, does some knitting, then leaves Anneline, saying she is going out to fetch water. She knows that her mother, who does not understand the nature of chores, will never wonder at her fetching water after nightfall.

  Odette takes the mended bucket with her.

  Once in the street she whistles toward Niçois’s open window a tune they devised as a signal. It is a magpie’s cry. Low gobbling in the throat and then a high-pitched whistle. Niçois hurries silently out of his house to the road.

  “I stuffed my bed,” he whispers excitedly. “With my shape.”

  The night resounds with Anne braying mournfully.

  “What is he saying?” Niçois ask.

  Odette translates: “I was wrong.” Fortuna caligo est. “Fortune is mist. It is helpless against the sharp-nosed fox that leads you to your final den. Fate is cruelly sure of its destination. Fortune is lost.” Odette is puzzled. “He is back to his glum habits. Earl
ier he was quite excited.”

  The two are soon in sight of the chestnut tree, but there’s no sign of the donkey.

  “He’s gone!” Niçois gasps. It’s true. Anne’s triangle of grass is empty. “All my life, Anne has stood here,” Niçois cries.

  Odette and Niçois run through the streets, asking the few people up at that hour—the lamp extinguisher, the flag mender—if they have seen Anne. They haven’t. Odette and Niçois follow a light in the distance. The blacksmith is still awake, banking his coals for the night.

  “Did you see Anne, the donkey?” they pant. “He is not in his place!”

  “I saw only a man with a pointed nose. He begged me to make him the sharpest pin in the world. That’s what he said. The sharpest pin in the world. He muttered that a halter would not do the trick, that he was dealing with a very stubborn animal. Perhaps he meant Anne. He showed me three silver coins in the palm of his hand. But when it came time to pay, he only gave me one. Still, I made a sou. I did a very good job, of course. My brother always said that any job worth doing should be done well.”

  “Did he have a beard?” Odette asked.

  “My brother?”

  “No. The man who wanted the sharp pin.”

  “Yes. A silly Paris beard.”

  “And buckles on his shoes?”

  “Silly buckles.”

  “Renard,” Odette says. “Bad to the bone. The marrow. He’s jabbing Anne along against his will with a pin!” She mouths to Niçois: He’s figured out the spell.

  “The sharpest pin in the world,” the blacksmith repeats. “I wouldn’t have done it if I had known. Believe me. There is already too much pain in the world. You know these things when you have lost a brother.”

  Odette feels as though she is going to faint. Her heart throbs like a bruise. She wants to lie down right there and sob in the firelight. She has no idea why. Niçois catches her elbow as her knees weaken. “It must be that I haven’t eaten much today,” Odette says, trembling.

  “This will help,” the blacksmith says. He opens a cloth and gives her a lump of cheese, which he cuts with a knife with a wooden handle.

  “Olive wood,” Odette says, surprised.

  “Yes,” says the blacksmith. His eyes are dark and knowing and kind. And so familiar. Odette’s knees wobble again. Her heart surges. Why?

  “Thank you,” she whispers. The blacksmith smiles, watching her eat.

  Odette’s ears perk up. “Listen!”

  Anne is braying in the distance. Dolor acer est! “Pain is sharp or dull. But it is always a cruel master.”

  Odette and Niçois run out of the blacksmith’s shop and toward the cries. On the crest of a hill outside of town, silhouetted under starlight, they spy Anne, followed by a scrawny man who can only be Renard. He has one hand on a rope around Anne’s neck, and in his other hand Odette thinks she sees the glint of his violent weapon.

  Odette and Niçois run quickly, Niçois leading the way. Finally they are so close they can hear Renard swearing. He is consumed by fury and does not notice their approach. On the count of three, the two leap on him. Niçois grabs his wrist, and Odette wrests the pin from his hand and throws it into a cornfield.

  They knock Renard down onto the road. Odette sits on his chest, and Niçois holds his legs. Renard’s yellow hair is askew, and a buckle is now missing from one of his shoes. He begins to sob. “I heard you in the hut by the river, reading the book! I know the story now.”

  Odette remembers the branch snapping. So that was him, not the magpie.

  “But this donkey is nothing but a donkey,” Renard whines. “I’ve bathed him in every old well in this town, and he remains an ass.”

  Odette strokes Anne’s belly. “Don’t worry. We’ll save you,” she says.

  Anne presses his head into her chest and huffs. Then he nudges her out of the way and sits squarely on Renard.

  “Hold him there!” Niçois yells. He undoes the rope from around Anne’s neck, and he and Odette use it to lash the yellow-haired man to a willow tree.

  “Why would you hurt an innocent animal?” Niçois demands.

  “And take something that isn’t yours,” Odette adds, tightening the knot. “And be such a neglectful nephew?”

  “Well, she was an ugly aunt,” Renard says, yawning.

  “You have no heart,” Odette says.

  But Renard has fallen asleep standing, tied in place.

  Niçois and Odette study Anne, who is nibbling the grass at his feet. Odette unwinds from her waist a rope she knitted earlier in the evening. “Now,” she whispers.

  In a flash she and Niçois wrap the rope tightly around Anne’s jaw and head, fashioning a halter and reins. The poor animal is terrified and in some pain from the snug bonds, but Odette and Niçois simply can’t afford to have him bray as they lead him through town. They can’t chance a crowd following them, or another greedy gold seeker interfering. They explain this to Anne, and while he does not understand what they say, the kindness in their voices calms him.

  Niçois and Odette lead Anne to four of the oldest wells Niçois can think of and dowse him in water, but he stubbornly remains a donkey. As they pull him through starlit fields and forest, they discuss who, if they are successful in breaking the spell, they will change into an animal in his place.

  Niçois argues for Renard. “He’s a villain. It is clear as day. Jabbing a donkey all night with a sharp pin!”

  “Perhaps.” Odette remembers Anneline’s distress the night before. “How about the skinny lady with the piglet? We could turn her into a piglet.” But her heart isn’t in it. “It’s a terrible thing to do to a person really.”

  Niçois plunks himself down on a rock. “Perhaps this isn’t going to work,” he says. He sounds to Odette as if he is on the verge of tears. “Maybe Mme Geneviève was being fanciful or got the spell wrong.”

  Odette looks at Anne, noticing again his regal, dignified bearing. “We have to keep trying,” she says. “We have to look around every corner.”

  “I suppose there could be surprises,” Niçois says slowly. “After all, you and I did not know of each other until last moon. We each had no idea the other existed, and now we are like peas in a pod. Like—”

  “Brother and sister.”

  Niçois smiles. “Yes.” He stands. “All right. Let’s keep on. Until dawn.”

  “Hope springs eternal,” Odette says. The polyglot had quoted the poem often. Odette recites from it:

  Hope springs eternal…

  The soul, uneasy, and confined from home rests and wanders in a life to come…

  Anne sighs. Poetry is something he understands. Odette strokes his neck. “Your soul certainly knows about being confined.”

  “My friend!” M. Mains barrels around the corner and throws his arms around Anne’s head. He’s jolly. “What are you doing, roaming the streets in the dark with these two? And what is this contraption around your head? Never mind. I have just had the luck to smell the young palms of the baker’s assistant. Butter and yeast. We rarely remember that our bread is made in the night, while the stars gleam.”

  M. Mains looks at Odette. “I remember you. The message from the old woman. But you haven’t allowed me to smell your hands.”

  Odette wrings her hands nervously. Niçois steps forward, offering his. “You can smell mine.”

  M. Mains gives them a sniff. “Donkey, well water. I’m not sure I can make sense of that.”

  “Maybe you can help us,” Odette says. She looks at Niçois, who nods. “But you must keep a secret.”

  “I love secrets. There are smells on hands that I have never spoken of aloud. Smells that speak of passion and failed alchemy.”

  As Odette explains their mission, M. Mains grows excited. He pats Anne on the head. “Hello in there, Duke!” he tells him. “I always thought you had a majestic scent. Imagine! One day we will sit together and cross our human legs and share a glass of Saint-Véran Chardonnay with its citrus notes and honeysuckle aroma. We will c
hat! Man to man.”

  His face crinkles in thought. It then opens. “Mme Source! She really is a marvel. Her hands smell of this place with a perfection I have known nowhere else.”

  Odette remembers M. Mains mentioning the woman when they met by the river. “She smells of boeuf bourguignon.”

  “Yes.”

  “And she can help us?”

  “She is a dowser and the child of a dowser. A diviner.”

  “I know her,” Niçois says. He sounds excited. “People pay her to find water underground, so they know where to dig for a well. She uses the forked branch of a hazelnut tree.”

  “Yes,” M. Mains says. “But she says it’s not the hazel wood that helps her so much, though everyone likes to believe that it is. It’s science—her understanding of plants and trees. Some grow where water is plentiful, others where it isn’t. Dips in the land can indicate water. Mme Source will know all the nearby water channels. And I appreciate any opportunity to visit her. Please, follow me.”

  As they set off, at a brisk pace, M. Mains tells them more about Mme Source. “She is the oldest woman in Nevers. She is layered like a pearl onion. I am very fond of being in her company.”

  “Will she mind us waking her?” Odette asks.

  “Not for something this important.”

  Mme Source opens the door of her well-kept cottage, wearing a nightgown and holding a candle. She doesn’t seem surprised by the strange group in front of her. Odette wonders if it’s because she’s so old and has seen so much.

  “Yes?” she says.

  M. Mains takes her hands and breathes in excitedly. “Marjoram, rosemary, thyme, sage. And—is that—mint?”

  Mme Source laughs. “Yes. I gardened late into the evening.”

  “Your hands,” M. Mains sighs, “are a bouquet. A banquet. A history book.”