Nevers

by Sara Cassidy

  Mme Source laughs again.

  Odette lightly jabs M. Mains with her elbow.

  “Right. Where were we?” M. Mains says. “We need your help,” he tells Mme Source. “But you must swear yourself to secrecy. At least until the sun rises. Then the secret will be out! This donkey is not as he appears, and these young people are looking for the oldest well in Nevers so that his true self can be revealed.”

  Odette explains the spell, and Mme Source considers Anne. “This does make sense. All your braying, your refusal to lie down in the muck. Your dance steps. Well, if it means you will stop moaning all night, then I will help.”

  She thinks for a moment. “I know of two wells you have not yet tried.”

  “Marvelous.” M. Mains swoons. He takes Mme Source’s left hand in his and boldly kisses it.

  “It will smell of your lips,” Mme Source teases.

  She excuses herself to get dressed. She then steers the group through a field filled with shadowy, sleeping hogs to a well thick with vines. They draw up the bucket, sprinkle some of the water onto Anne and wait. He remains the same.

  “One more,” Mme Source says, this time piloting the group into a small copse of elm trees, at the center of which is a little door in the ground. “It is snug,” she says, tugging on it, “as though it hasn’t been opened in a hundred years. I doubt the yellow-haired man was here earlier.” She drops a stone in. A little splash resonates in the deep dark. But after the effort of lowering and raising the bucket, Anne remains a donkey.

  Everyone except Anne falls to the ground, exhausted, dispirited. A rooster crows in the distance. The sky exchanges black for dark blue. Odette, lying on her side, feels as though she might cry. The world is waking up, and they have failed to release the duke from the spell.

  Then she hears a stream trickling not far away. She listens closely and imagines the water burbling and bubbling, its currents braiding, the small river constantly transforming. Eureka! Her nous feels as though it has been doused in freezing water. She leaps up, vivified. “The water that runs under the cathedral!”

  Mme Source sits up in a flash and nods her great head of white hair. “Yes! My dear, that is it. Of course!”

  Twenty-Six

  Halfway to the cathedral Odette stops in her tracks. On the Pont de Tour, just up ahead, Renard and her mother are locked in an argument. Renard has managed to get free of the rope somehow, and he looks pathetic. Beaten. He sits on the bridge wall, banging his heels against its side, hanging his head, his hair greasy and askew.

  “You could have told me that you’re married!” Anneline is shouting.

  “She means nothing to me,” Renard insists. “She is never happy. Believe me. You are the only one. Please hold my hand. You’re all I have.”

  But Anneline refuses. She smacks Renard’s hand out of the way just as Anne notices the yellow-haired man and charges, braying fiercely.

  Renard looks up so suddenly that he loses his balance. He tumbles backward, over the bridge rail and out of sight, shouting as he goes down, “Paris buckles!” Then there is a loud crack, and all is silent.

  “No!” Anneline peers over the side of the bridge. “I should have held his hand when he wanted me to!”

  A wiry man pushing a cart loaded with jugs appears at her side in the twilight. “Madame, I saw everything.” It is Guillaume, the painter, on his way to work. “I know you did not push him. I mean, you had him up against the wall, perhaps, but really, he had himself up against the wall. I mean, you cannot pretend you are not married when you are. Madame, yes, cry into my shoulder. There, there.”

  Odette runs to Anneline, who gives her a strange look. It is a look Odette has not seen before. Anneline looks sorry. Even ashamed. She wipes her nose on Guillaume’s shoulder. “I’ve done it again, daughter. Dove into a rabbit hole that leads nowhere. The only time I got it right was with Félix.” Anneline’s eyes water. “I dove in with Félix, but I could see. You’d think it would have been dirt and darkness with him, but it was water and light.”

  “That sounds like love,” Guillaume murmurs.

  “Is that what it was?” Anneline asks.

  Niçois pulls on Odette’s elbow. “We need to hurry,” he whispers. “M. Mains and Mme Source have gone ahead with Anne. Your mother will be fine with the painter.”

  Niçois grabs Odette’s hand and starts to run. Odette, hesitant at first, soon runs along with him. He holds her hand so tightly she feels anchored in place, even as they fly through the streets of Nevers. She thinks of the baby delivered the night before, who before long will run through these same streets—as a boy or a girl, whatever she or he chooses. Maybe both at once! She wonders at that. In Nevers, it seems, each child can be who they truly are. “This way,” Mme Source whispers once they are gathered outside the cathedral. She convoys the group to a side door that is hidden in the shadow of a flying buttress. “Try not to get noticed.”

  Odette laughs nervously. “Not get noticed? Walking into a church with a donkey?”

  “Act like Anne is supposed to be here. Hold your head high.”

  Mme Source leads everyone to a plaque on a wall extolling the brilliant career of Antoine-Philippe Sournois, Mayor of Nevers, 1723–1729. “This has been here for seventy years,” she explains. “But it is not just a plaque. It is a screen, blocking the entrance to the old baptismal pool. For our interests, it’s a portal. The water that runs under the city rises up in this spot, constantly refilling the pool.”

  “A spring,” M. Mains murmurs. “Splendid.”

  “A flowing artesian well. The cathedral was built around it, and for hundreds and hundreds of years the people of Nevers were baptized in its active waters.”

  “Why would they stop?” Odette asks. She has never been baptized herself, since Anneline holds the radical notion that no one should be baptized without choosing to be. Odette can decide for herself at any time now that she’s old enough.

  “The mayor bought into a business that made baptismal fonts—stone bowls on stands. He convinced the bishop that the water in a standing font would be easier to consecrate. With fresh water constantly bubbling up into the pool, a priest couldn’t keep up with blessing it, he argued. The bishop fell for his argument—even though it means a monk must top up the bowl every day with water drawn from a well down the road, and the water gets stagnant and thick. Now get your fingers behind this plaque. And pull.”

  Odette, Niçois, M. Mains and Mme Source haul on the plaque. But it doesn’t budge.

  “It’s impossible,” M. Mains puffs.

  A chorus of voices rises up behind them. “We can help.”

  Odette turns, surprised to see a trio of vagrants rise from a nearby pew, rubbing sleep from their eyes. “We have heard the pool burbling in our dreams. And we crave a good bath.”

  “Baths are important,” M. Mains says. “Just don’t wash your hands too well.”

  “The pool should never have been closed,” says one of the trio, a woman with a nest of gray hair. “That mayor was greedy, not religious. He sold dozens of fonts. You will see them at the church in Dijon, and Macon, even in the great abbey of Cluny. He lined his pockets, he did. While shutting off nature.” The woman digs her thick fingers behind the plaque. “Heave!”

  “Watch your toes!” M. Mains yells.

  But even with seven people pulling, using all their strength, the plaque only jiggles on its bolts and then settles right back into its spot.

  Anne pushes through the work gang. He shakes his head, which makes the reins on the halter fling left and right.

  “Yes!” Odette says.

  She loops the reins around the corners of the plaque, and Anne, with Herculean strength, pulls backward, once and for all loosening the great brass plate from the wall.

  It clangs to the floor.

  The group peers at a small pool of clear water, bordered on all sides by rock. Plants grow where sunlight has reached through chinks in the walls. The water moves and swirls. The sound is li
ke music.

  “Beautiful,” murmurs the woman with the nest of gray hair.

  “Hé, là!” A priest charges toward the crew. “What are you doing?”

  Odette pushes Anne toward the water. “Get in!”

  Anne leaps into the pool with astonishing grace.

  As soon as his front hooves touch the water, he starts to change. His hooves stretch and separate —into fingers and toes. His belly recedes into a man’s firm chest. His ears shrink.

  “Ooh!” The small crowd swoons.

  “The hair!” Odette yelps. Just as Anne dips the top of his head into the water, Odette tears out a handful of the donkey’s tail.

  A moment later an extraordinarily handsome man rises from the water. In place of a mane, he has long, flowing hair.

  Mme Source falls to her knees. “The lost duke!”

  M. Mains throws his hat to the man so he can cover his family jewels.

  “Yes. It is me,” I say.

  Epilogue

  Yes, dear Reader, I, the duke, now freed from the shape of a donkey, have been your narrator.

  Those first moments in the cathedral were truly extraordinary. It felt as though the universe had shuddered and filled me anew. And although my body felt bruised all over, it was pure joy to be embraced by my courageous second cousin, Odette, and her loving friend Niçois. The priest fainted at the sight of my transformation. The pew sleepers, after getting over their shock, bathed in the waters, wondering if they might be changed as well. M. Mains smelled my hands, pronouncing the scent “unclassifiable, indefinable, shorn of the past, dukish.”

  A moon has waxed and nearly fully waned again since that momentous dawn. I have not only returned to my house but have also found, in a nearby town, my love Miguel, who had never given up hoping I would return. An astounding gardener and cook, he has filled our pantry and larder with dry sausages, cured ham, jams, cheeses, and vegetables preserved in vinegar. We have been feasting.

  Yes. We.

  Odette and Anneline have moved in with us. Lisane and her brood of chicks too, along with the piglet. And Mme Geneviève’s oxen. I do not mind animals in my house. Before I was a donkey, I would have. But during all those years in my mucky field, how I wished someone would invite me into their home.

  Renard didn’t survive his fall off the bridge. He cracked his head open and drowned. As soon as he was dead, his wife, the skinny woman in the pinafore, grew light on her feet and a calm spread over her face. She has moved into the little stone house over the road, and the piglet and chick—now pig and hen—visit her often, walking between our houses, the hen sometimes riding on the pig’s back.

  Now, you may have wondered at Odette’s wobbly knees when the blacksmith looked into her eyes. And at her reaction to the olive-wood handle of his knife. Maybe you noticed that the blacksmith mentioned a brother.

  Well, while Odette was at the blacksmith’s buying a candlestick seven days ago, he again mentioned his brother, only this time by name: Félix. Yes. The Félix Odette knew and loved as a girl, the Félix who loved Anneline and whom Anneline loved back. The blacksmith, Clément, has since been to tea several times. When she is with him, Anneline’s voice deepens. It seems to take root.

  The marvelous thing is, Clément has cheated death impossibly often. Once, as he rode in a carriage, the horses drawing it were spooked by a wolf, and the carriage tumbled down a hill. Everyone—horses, driver—died, except for Clément. Another time, Clément found himself in a duel, but his opponent sneezed just as they were about to shoot and fell into a ditch, shooting himself instead. As Clément was fighting some Austrians one winter, a musket ball meant for him was intercepted by a robin that flew into its path. There is no doubt he will be safe with Anneline.

  It is a good thing that Odette has a good ear for language and so learned Latin. She tells me that my speaking Latin wasn’t mentioned in Mme Geneviève’s book. We believe there was a mistake made when the duchess cast the spell. Perhaps she sneezed or coughed. Who knows? But it was a lucky mistake for me.

  It is wonderful to be a man again, to be able to scratch and reach upward and to talk and talk and talk. Despair still assails me some nights, but I do not shout out in Latin, at least, and there is Miguel to curl up to. I have faith the unfathomable loneliness will pass in time.

  Finally, when the sun gives way today to a moonless night, M. Gustave will get his greatest wish.

  Tonight, in the early summer of 1799, while the people of Nevers sleep in their beds, Odette will pour M. Gustave a cup of tea, and the largest chicken that ever lived will leap into the air and flap its great wings. It will fly over the marketplace, over the cathedral, over the garden beside a little house where M. Mains and Mme Source hold hands in the starlight, over the little house on the bridge and over this great home in the forest.

  Up, up, up, the great chicken will fly, receding into the sky over the town that has become Odette’s and Anneline’s home. They have no plans to leave Nevers. They will stay. Always.

  · THE END ·

  Author’s Note

  In the late 1700s in France, the divide between rich and poor was extreme. Though they made up only 2 percent of the population, the nobility and the Catholic Church held all the power. The church ran the hospitals and schools, while the nobility controlled the government, the army and the court of the extravagant and ineffectual King Louis XVI. The remaining 98 percent was made up of the bourgeoisie, some of whom owned land and businesses; artisans and farmers, who scraped by day to day; and the very poor, who scrounged to survive. All were judged by the priests and bishops and heavily taxed by the nobles, who paid no taxes themselves.

  Inspired by modern ideas about liberty and equality, people rose up in the early summer of 1789. On July 14 they stormed the Bastille, the fortress-like armory and prison in Paris, freeing prisoners and taking weapons and gunpowder. While they made their demands peacefully at first, violence became necessary.

  Things became very violent from 1793 to 1794, a time now called the Reign of Terror, during which over 16,500 of the wealthy and resistant were sentenced to death, often by guillotine, a blade that swiftly sliced off their heads. Many argued that the guillotine was humane compared to the torture and poverty that prisoners and commoners suffered under the monarchy. The Revolution occurred mostly in the big cities of France, such as Paris and Lyon.

  The Revolution went on for about a decade. It was a period of exhilarating freedom, horrendous violence and great instability. Although Napoleon Bonaparte took power in 1799, calling himself Emperor, the egalitarian ideals of the French Revolution endured and spread throughout Europe and around the world, leading to many freedoms we enjoy today. Bastille Day, celebrated every July 14, is France’s biggest holiday.

  Nevers is a real city in Burgundy, on the Loire River, with a cathedral with fabulous flying buttresses and a sixth-century baptistery that, after having been shut up for centuries, was exposed to the light by World War II bombing.

  Pierre Gaspard Chaumette was born in Nevers in 1763, into a family of shoemakers, and rose to become a surgeon. His anti-religious ideals—he once referred to Christians as “enemies of reason”—set him at odds with the God-fearing revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre. He was accused, most likely falsely, of being part of a plot to overthrow Robespierre and was beheaded in 1794.

  While many facts in the novel are true—for example, the Loire Bridge was half stone and half wood for the better part of a decade, and Nevers is famous for its faïence dishes—I have taken many liberties. I do not know whether Robespierre ever visited Nevers, for example. Some cultural lore, such as spankings with nettles and three washdays named Purgatory, Hell and Heaven, is borrowed from The Horse of Pride, Pierre-Jakez Hélias’s 1975 memoir of growing up in Brittany, a region very far from Burgundy.

  As for the name of the city, it has nothing to do with the English meaning. It evolved from the town’s early Celtic-Latin name, Noviodunum, meaning “hill fort,” which over time becam
e Nevirnum and, finally, Nevers.

  I started to write the novel after a visit to Nevers. At the time, I was reading The Discovery of France, by Graham Robb, about how truly quirky and diverse France remained despite the unifying force of the Revolution. Robb writes of a “vast encyclopedia of micro-civilizations…a land in which mule trains coincided with railway trains, and where witches and explorers were still gainfully employed when Gustave Eiffel was changing the skyline of Paris.”

  Finally, this novel was inspired by a donkey that spent its days under a tree in the small town of La Roche Vineuse, Burgundy, where my family and I spent several months when my children were young. The donkey often brayed at night persistently. One night, woken again, I groggily asked my partner, “What does he want?”

  His response was immediate: “To not be a donkey.”

  Halfway through writing the novel, while researching faïence, I came upon the plate below for sale on eBay. It was made in Nevers around the time Odette would have run through its streets. I promptly bought it, grateful for the crack that made it affordable.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to my siblings, Meg, Catherine, Anne and John, who fill my days with love and conversation. And to Richard, Ed, Tony and dear Audrey. Many friends let me write, especially Pam, Leslie, Julie, Amanda, Kelsey, Quinn and John. Thank you to Andrew, my love, who pronounces Nevers better than anyone and figured out how Clément could survive Anneline. Thank you always to Alden, Ezra and Hazel, my everythings, and to Arlette Baker for her Latin expertise. And endless thanks to editor Barbara Pulling for her thorough attention and wise problem solving.

  SARA CASSIDY has worked as a newspaper reporter and a tree planter in five Canadian provinces. Her many books for young readers have received many honors, including being short-listed for the Chocolate Lily Award, the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Award and the Bolen Books Children’s Book Prize. Three are Junior Library Guild selections. Her poetry, fiction and nonfiction for adults have been widely published.