Stepsister

by Jennifer Donnelly

  “It’s settled, then,” Tantine declared with a satisfied smile.

  “Get yourselves to the farm,” Madame LeBenêt said. “Find Hugo. He’s cutting cabbages. He’ll show you what to do.” She snapped her reins against Louis’s haunches. “Tantine and I must take this load to market.”

  “Thank you, madame,” Isabelle said as the wagon rolled off. “Thank you for making room in your house for us.”

  Madame LeBenêt snorted. “House?” she called over her shoulder. “Who said anything about the house? You three will sleep in the hayloft and be glad of it!”

  Fate stared at the stingy portion of weak coffee in a cracked mug on the table in front of her. And the hard heel of bread to dip into it. There was a small pitcher of cream next to the mug. No sugar. No biscuits. No warm, pillowy brioche.

  “Perhaps I was too liberal with my use of Smallsoul on Avara LeBenêt’s map,” she said to herself, drumming her fingers on the table.

  Smallsoul—a dusty, dry black ink—was versatile. It could prompt miserliness, or, if applied properly, shrink the soul. It was also useful in curbing the artistic impulse, but one had to be careful; a little went a long way.

  Fate closed her eyes and imagined a delicate porcelain cup of steaming espresso brewed from dark, oily beans. A plate of buttery anise biscuits. A velvet-covered chair for her old bones to sink into.

  Ah well, it wouldn’t be too much longer before she left Saint-Michel for good. Progress was being made. A drunken fool had burned the Maison Douleur down for her, and Isabelle and her family were now destitute. They were stuck here on the LeBenêts’ farm, which meant Fate could control the girl. Chance no longer had the upper hand.

  She rose now, moved to the old stone sink, and dumped the coffee down the drain. She rinsed the cup, dried it, then walked outside. Avara and Hugo were already in the fields; Isabelle, Tavi, and their mother, too.

  As Fate bent to admire the late-summer blooms on a straggly rosebush struggling up the wall of the house, Losca landed above her on the roof.

  The crone smiled, delighted to see the sly creature. “Where have you been? Impaling field mice with that sharp beak? Snatching hatchlings from their nests? Pecking the eyes out of dead things?”

  Losca shook out her feathers. With barely contained excitement, she started to chatter. The crone listened, rapt.

  “Two hundred miles west of here? Volkmar’s moving quickly; that’s good. The sooner this is behind us, the better.”

  Losca bobbed her head. Then chattered again.

  Fate laughed. “That’s two pieces of good news! The horse is with a widow, you say? And the stables are crumbling?” The crone nodded. “She probably doesn’t have much money. A few coins should do the trick. I can’t do the deed myself—too much blood—but I know a man who can. Well done, my girl! Chance found the first piece of Isabelle’s heart and put the boy right in her path, but the horse is one piece he won’t find. And without all three, she won’t gain Tanaquill’s help.”

  She reached into her skirt pocket. “Here we are!” she said, pulling out a gangly spider. She tossed it to Losca, who greedily snapped it out of the air.

  Fate started for the barn. She would ask Hugo to hitch up a cart so she could go to the village and set her plan for the horse in motion. She was pleased, certain that it would only be a matter of days, a fortnight at the most, before she was ready to leave.

  Volkmar was coming closer.

  And she wanted to be long gone when he arrived.

  Isabelle straightened—her face to the sun—and stretched, trying to ease her aching back.

  Her callused hands were as filthy as her boots. The sun had bronzed her arms and added freckles to her nose and cheeks, despite the old straw bonnet she wore. Her skirts were hitched up and knotted above her knees to keep them from dragging in the dirt.

  “Isabelle, Octavia, does my hair look all right? What if a countess or duchess should pay us a visit?” Maman asked anxiously.

  “Oh, I’m sure one will, Maman. After all, cabbage patches are a favorite destination of the nobility,” Tavi said.

  “Your hair looks lovely, Maman. Pick up your knife now and cut some cabbages,” Isabelle said, shooting her sister a dirty look.

  As she did, she noticed that Tavi, who was one row over but well behind her, was bent over a cabbage, peering at it intently.

  No vegetable can be that interesting, Isabelle thought. “Tavi, what are you doing over there?” she asked, jumping over her row to her sister’s.

  “Nothing!” Tavi replied quickly. “Just cutting a stem!”

  But she wasn’t. She’d pressed a large outer leaf flat and was using a sharp stone to scratch equations across it.

  “No wonder you’re behind!” Isabelle scolded.

  Tavi hung her head. “I’m sorry, Iz,” she said. “I can’t help it. I’m so bored I could cry.”

  “Bored is better than dead, which is what you’ll be if we don’t eat, again, because we haven’t filled the wagon,” Isabelle scolded.

  Madame LeBenêt had decreed that the three women must load the farm’s large wooden wagon with cabbages every day or there would be no supper for them.

  “I’m sorry,” Tavi said again.

  She looked so miserable that Isabelle softened. “You and I can go without a meal or two, but not Maman. She’s getting worse.”

  Both girls cast worried glances in their mother’s direction. Maman, sitting on the ground, was patting her hair, smoothing her tattered dress—the same silk gown she’d been wearing the night of the fire—and talking animatedly to the cabbage heads. The hollows in her cheeks had deepened. Her eyes were lackluster. There seemed to be more gray in her hair every day.

  Since their arrival at the farm, she’d only slid deeper into the past. The few moments of clarity she’d had on the stairs of the Maison Douleur as it had gone up in flames had not come again. Isabelle blamed it on the trauma of losing their home and all their possessions, and on the hard life they now lived. But she knew there was more to it, too; Maman felt she had failed at a mother’s most important task—seeing that her daughters made good marriages—and the failure had unhinged her.

  Isabelle had startled awake their first night of sleeping in the hayloft, certain that a mouse had run across her cheek, but it was Maman. She’d been sitting in the hay beside her, smoothing the hair off her face.

  “What will become of you?” she whispered. “My poor, poor daughters. Your lives are over before they’ve even begun. You are farmhands with dirty faces and ragged dresses. Who will have you now?”

  “Go to sleep, Maman,” Isabelle had said, frightened.

  Her fearsome mother was fading before her very eyes. It had often been hard living with Maman. Hard coming up against her constant disapproval. Her anger. Her rigid rules. But no matter what, Maman had seen to it that the bills were paid. Widowed twice, she’d still managed to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. Now, for the first time, Isabelle had to do it. Sometimes with Tavi’s help, often without it. That was hard, too.

  They had arrived at the LeBenêts’ a week ago, after salvaging what they could from the barn—horse blankets, two wooden chairs, two saddles and bridles. Miraculously, their wooden cart had not burned, but it had taken them hours to extricate it because part of the barn’s roof had fallen on it. After loading it with their things, they hitched up Martin and rode to the LeBenêts’. By the time they arrived, Madame and Tantine had returned from the market. Madame had put them straight to work.

  They’d learned how to cut cabbages, dig potatoes and carrots, slop pigs, and milk cows.

  Tavi had proven herself even less capable around animals than she was around cabbages, so Madame had given her the cheese making tasks. It was her responsibility to tend the milk in the wooden vats in the dairy house as it soured and curdled, stirring the curds gently with a long wooden paddle, then setting them in molds to ripen into cheese. It was the one job Tavi did with enthusiasm, as the transformation
milk underwent to become cheese fascinated her.

  Their days were long and hard. Meals were meager, comforts nonexistent. Beds were horse blankets spread over hay. Baths were taken once a week.

  With a wry smile, Isabelle remembered asking Madame if she could bathe at the end of her first day on the farm.

  “Certainly,” Madame said. “The duck pond’s all yours.”

  Isabelle had thought she was joking. “The duck pond?” she’d repeated.

  “You were expecting a copper tub and a Turkish towel?” Madame had said with a smirk.

  Isabelle had walked to the pond. Her hands were blistered. Dirt had worked itself under her nails. Her muscles were aching. She stank of smoke, sweat, and sour milk. Her dress was so filthy it was stiff.

  The banks of the pond afforded no privacy and Isabelle was too modest to strip off her clothing in plain view of others, so she’d simply removed her boots and stockings, placed the bone, nutshell, and seedpod in one of her boots, then waded in fully dressed. She would take off her dress in the hayloft and let it dry overnight. Her chemise would dry as she slept in it. The one dress was all she had. The gowns in her wardrobe, the silks and satins Maman had carefully chosen to impress suitors, were nothing but ash now.

  The pond was spring-fed, and the water was so cold it had made Isabelle catch her breath, but it also numbed her torn hands and sore body. She’d undone the dirty ribbon that cinched her braid, ducked her head under the water, and scrubbed her scalp. When she’d surfaced, Madame had been walking by.

  “The tables have turned, haven’t they?” she mocked, looking a sodden Isabelle up and down. “If only your stepsister could see you now. How she would laugh.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Isabelle had said, wringing the water out of her hair.

  “Of course she would!”

  Isabelle shook her head. “I would have. But Ella? Never. That was her strength. And my weakness.”

  She ducked under again. When she came back up, Madame was gone.

  She’d watched the swallows swoop through the air, and listened to the frogs and crickets. She thought about Tanaquill and the possibility of help she’d offered, and it seemed as far away as the stars. How could she find the pieces of her heart when all she did, day after day, was cut cabbages? She thought about the people who had burned down her house, who would never let her forget that she was nothing but an ugly stepsister.

  Maybe there is no help for me, she’d thought. Maybe I have to find a way to live with that.

  That’s certainly what Tantine counseled. Ah, child, she’d said the night after the fire. Our fates are often hard, but we must learn to accept them. We have no choice.

  Maybe the old woman was right. A feeling of hopelessness had descended on Isabelle ever since she’d arrived at the LeBenêts’ farm. Her life was cows and cabbages now and it seemed like that was all it would ever be.

  “It’s noon already and you don’t even have half the wagon filled,” said a voice a few rows over, pulling Isabelle out of her thoughts.

  Isabelle’s spirits, already heavy, sank even lower. Here was someone who made Tantine look like a devil-may-care optimist.

  It was Hugo, Madame LeBenêt’s son.

  Isabelle’s shoulders rose up around her ears. “I know we haven’t filled the wagon, Hugo. Thank you,” she said tartly.

  Hugo blinked at her through his thick eyeglasses. “I’m just saying.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  There were many unpleasant things about their new lives. Hunger. Exhaustion. Sleeping in the hot hayloft. Mucking out cow stalls. Raw, blistered hands that cracked and wept. Nothing, though, was more unpleasant than the hulking, surly Hugo. He didn’t like Isabelle or Tavi and took every chance he could to make that clear.

  “You don’t get that wagon filled, you won’t get any soup tonight,” he said.

  “You could help us. It would go faster. We’d get done that way,” Tavi said.

  Hugo shook his head. “Can’t. Have to sharpen the plow. And then—”

  “Hugo! Hey, Hugo!” a voice called, cutting him off.

  Hugo, Isabelle, and Tavi all turned to see a wagon trundling down the drive. Two young men were riding in it. Isabelle knew them. They were soldiers under Colonel Cafard’s command. They worked in the camp’s kitchen and came every day to pick up vegetables.

  “You’ve got to help Claude and Remy now,” Hugo said. “Both of you. My mother said so. That’ll take a good hour. You’re going hungry again tonight.”

  Hugo said this without malice or glee, just dull resignation. Like an old man predicting rain.

  “You could give us some of your supper. You could sneak it up to the hayloft after dark,” Tavi suggested.

  “It’s soup. How am I supposed to sneak soup?”

  “Bread, then. Sneak us some bread. Wrap it up in your napkin when no one’s looking and put it in your pocket.”

  Hugo’s face darkened. “I wish you’d never come here. You’re always thinking of … of things,” he said. “You shouldn’t do that. Girls shouldn’t. It’s up to the man to think. It’s up to me to think of sneaking you bread.”

  “Then think of it! Think of sneaking us cheese. A bit of ham. Think of something before we starve to death!” Tavi snapped.

  “Hey, Hugo! Where are the potatoes?” Claude called out. “Cook says we’re supposed to get potatoes and carrots today. Hey, Isabelle. Hey, Tavi. Hey, Madame de la Paumé.”

  Maman, still talking to the cabbages, stood. “Your Excellencies,” she said with a reverent curtsy. “You see, girls?” she added grandly. “It pays to keep up appearances. The pope has come to visit us. And the king of Spain.”

  Claude and Remy gave each other puzzled looks.

  “Never mind,” Isabelle told them.

  Hugo nodded in the direction they’d come. “That’s quite a cloud you kicked up on the road,” he said to the boys. The road was half a mile from where they stood, and a tall hedgerow blocked it from their view, but above it, they could all see a huge mass of dust rising into the air.

  “That’s not us,” Remy said. “It’s more wounded.”

  Hugo took off his glasses and cleaned them on his shirt. Then he put them back on and gazed at the dust cloud again. It rose higher and higher in the sky, swirling like a gathering storm. “Must be a lot of them,” he said.

  “Wagons for miles,” said Remy. “As far as you can see.” He looked down at the reins in his hands. “We’re losing.”

  “Come on, Rem. That’s only because we’re not there yet!” Claude boasted, elbowing him. “I’ll send Volkmar running back to the border with my sword up his ass!”

  Remy mustered a smile, but it was a wan one.

  Isabelle knew that both boys were being sent to the front soon. She wondered if she would see them again. Would they, too, be carried back over rutted roads in a rattling wagon missing pieces of themselves? Or would they end up in hastily dug graves, never to see their homes again?

  They’d talked a little over the last few days, she, Remy, and Claude, as she’d helped load their wagon. She’d learned that Claude, olive-skinned and dark-eyed, came from the south, from a family of fishermen. Remy, fair and blond, was from the west, a printer’s son who had hopes of not only printing books but writing them one day. They had no more wanted to be soldiers than Isabelle had wanted to marry the prince. But the choice to fight was not theirs to make, no more than the decision to cut off her toes had been hers.

  Leaving Maman with the cabbages, Isabelle and Tavi helped the boys. Hugo decided to pitch in, too. When the last potato sack had been hoisted in, Remy and Claude climbed back into their seats.

  “See you tomorrow,” Hugo said, squinting up at them.

  Claude shook his head. “Someone new will come tomorrow. We’re heading out, me and Rem.”

  It was quiet for a moment; then Hugo said, “Then we’ll see you when you get back.”

  Remy swallowed hard. Then he reached inside his shirt and pulled a
silver chain over his head. A cross was dangling from it. “If I don’t … if I don’t return, could you get this to my mother?” he asked Isabelle, handing it to her. He told her his surname and the town where he was from. He looked very scared and very young as he asked, and Isabelle said it wouldn’t be necessary and tried to hand the cross back, but he wouldn’t take it. Instead, he thanked her.

  “It’s nothing. I … I wish I could do more to help you, to help all the soldiers,” she said.

  Remy smiled at her. “What could you do? You’re a girl,” he teased.

  “I’m good with a sword. As good as you are. Maybe better. I’ve been practicing.”

  “Girls don’t fight. Stay here and cut cabbages for us, all right? Soldiers need to eat.”

  Isabelle forced a smile and waved them off. They trundled out of the farmyard and down the drive. She was back in the cabbage rows by the time they turned onto the road.

  For several long minutes, she watched them go, holding her harvesting knife as if she were gripping the hilt of Tanaquill’s sword. A terrible longing took hold of her as she did, a yearning buried so deep inside her, she couldn’t even name it anymore. It was a hunger deeper and more ferocious than the need for mere food, a hunger that sang in her blood and echoed in her bones.

  Isabelle turned away and, with a heavy sigh, bent her back to the cabbages. She, Tavi, and Maman had many more to cut if they were going to eat tonight.

  As she worked, she worried about empty wagons and empty bellies.

  She needn’t have, though. The stomach is easily satisfied.

  It’s the hunger in our hearts that kills us.

  It was dusk, Isabelle’s favorite time of day.

  And she was spending it in her favorite place, the Wildwood.

  Isabelle had ridden Martin across the LeBenêts’ land and dismounted as soon as they’d reached the woods in order to give the old horse a rest. As they made their way through the trees, Isabelle took a deep breath of the clear forest air. It had been years since she’d set foot in the Wildwood. She’d forgotten how intoxicating the scent of the forest was—a mixture of damp, rotting leaves; resiny pine needles; and the dark, mineralish waters of the rocky streams they crossed. She took note of all the familiar markers as she walked—the giant white boulder, the tree felled by lightning, a stand of silver birches—though she could have found her way blindfolded.