André’s face grew soft. “I feel like this is a conversation you should have with Oncle.” André looked away and added, “It wouldn’t make me happy, I don’t think, but it’d make the world better, and only those who haven’t lost someone violently and unfairly would oppose it.”
“You know I’m not one of those people.” Rosalie only cared about her family’s safety; the morality was indisputable.
The shallow lines of André’s mouth and forehead dimpled in something like pity. The lift in his brow and the color of his hair, that hair that never quite remained in place, it reminded Rosalie too much of—she needed to breathe—
Her sister, her little sister with blood welting her sheets, the pillow, drying on her mouth the morning she died, and Anatole holding André away as he, not even half a year old, cried for food. Even now, Rosalie sometimes woke up with a chill stiffening her body and Juliette’s name on her lips.
She stumbled, and André started, but she raised her hand for him to stop and steadied herself with a bent arm on the desk, the burnished knob of a side drawer imprinting like fire on her hip. Rosalie chewed the inside of her cheek and withheld the sigh squirming in her lungs, begging for release.
Don’t bend. Don’t bow. Don’t break.
Gesturing with his empty hands, André asked, “What can I do?” He’d dropped the letter, from surprise or disgust, Rosalie didn’t know because she only saw the aftermath, not the letter’s pitiful descent.
“You should’ve never found those postcards.”
She and Anatole never would have had to reveal to André and Marcy what Anatole did, and André, eager to follow Anatole’s steps since he could manage an unsteady waddle, wouldn’t want to be an executioner.
André showed her his profile, his shoulders hunched from the lead weight of their conversation.
“André, I—” He swiveled to leave, and Rosalie rushed to meet him. “Please don’t—”
But he did, leaving in such a flurry of movement Rosalie stood stunned until she heard a door close with more force than usual in their quiet home. The only sign André was there rested at Rosalie’s feet.
When all she had left was the clock clicking its tongue, Rosalie sat where André had been, the cushion warm.
If André kept assisting Anatole, and if Anatole wished, one day André would eagerly settle his uncle’s mantle on his own shoulders and Marcy would be Rosalie, the executioner’s daughter made another executioner’s wife. Rosalie’s heart ached with its incessant murmurs. It said what she couldn’t.
Oh, my love. If you want to live, don’t marry an executioner.
Rosalie tapped her nails on the study desk. Doom clouded Rosalie’s relationship with her nephew as it was, this note of finality hanging, visible but never playing. When André was much younger, he displayed more fondness toward Rosalie. On an acute summer morning, when he was eight and she was bedridden with a fever, he offered her a strawberry muffin. That made her heart swell with love for him, though they drifted away from one another as he grew taller. It was always Anatole who was better with André, Anatole who accepted André as a son and his protégé. If Anatole died before his retirement, God forbid, Rosalie would choose his successor, and she’d pick anyone else, and André would despise her for taking what was his.
What else was there?
Rosalie drifted into a memory after André had found the guillotine postcards, the images of Anatole at an execution, even when such images were prohibited. Her husband sat at the study, in the very chair she sat in now, with his head cupped in one palm. She stood by his side, and though she hated to do it when Anatole was in distress, she said, “I don’t think he should have that life. God, it isn’t me, you know that. Juliette wouldn’t want this for André.”
Anatole slouched, his fingers in his thinning hair, his countenance doused in orange. Outside, the austere daylight waned as clouds hid half the sun and darkened spots of uncapped grass. “But what else can I give him? No one will hire an executioner’s nephew.”
Rosalie had lied. Even if she didn’t mind if the men who killed an old woman for fifty francs or raped children died a too-merciful death from the Widow’s blade (because, after all, their odds of repeating those actions lowered significantly with that), there were those who did care. And those who claimed to care for life might not be so lenient toward the man who pulled the rope and killed their father or son. After Anatole’s family had migrated from Augsburg generations ago, committing the Frenchmen‘s bloody work for centuries did little to endear them to the townspeople, nor did their Jewish heritage. Pieces of themselves were stolen over time, if those pieces ever belonged to the family to start with. Rosalie and Anatole chose to live on the relative outskirts of town because of that, far from the flocking jackdaws with their sneers and cameras.
They kept Marcy safe from those teeth, and Rosalie told herself for two decades that their home’s blessings outweighed the costs, the seclusion. Despite executions not straining much from the government’s fickle pockets, she and Anatole were not poorly off, and therefore Marcy and André could thrive for the time being. Their family owned an auto before any of the surrounding (but reasonably distanced) families, and Anatole was one of the first Frenchmen to obtain a license. It seemed exciting, owning a rare technology, and it made his trip to the prison or the town square less strenuous, though he admitted to missing train rides. The rickety vehicle made Rosalie’s stomach lurch. You can barely feel the air, she had complained. Why would anyone want to be trapped inside a moving mechanical nightmare? It was a metal wagon only good for transporting the Widow.
Nothing was wrong with a good cycle ride, watching the wind shiver through oaks and red maples as one’s heartbeat thundered in their ears. Rosalie missed the crisp mornings where she took a cycle and rode along the hills. In many official races, Rosalie beat most men when it came to speed. If it weren’t for her love of racing, she never would’ve met Anatole.
That time was gone, though. Now, as the study gathered dust and age, Rosalie rewound her words with André until fiction sank in, and she worried her sentences like teeth on tobacco.
And then there was Marcy.
Marcy was still an adolescent girl, while André was grown. Rosalie was in the right; she meant to protect her daughter from the war, from the world. Marcy had years left before she needed to navigate what remained of her life, as it should’ve been. She was a gem, bright and confident. All the possible wrong paths for her daughter leered before Rosalie, the needles and pins. She didn’t want to hinder Marcy, but she didn’t want the world to smother her daughter either, didn’t want her daughter to fall where Rosalie couldn’t reach her. It was like Talia from the old Italian tale: the cursed, sleeping beauty had been peaceful in the woods before a king crept upon her helpless body. No briars kept Talia safe, and no matter the lengths Rosalie and Anatole taken to fortify their home, Rosalie dreamed of those kings, dreamed of their bruising hands and the thundering hooves of their dead-eyed horses.
2
Jehanne
When Jehanne opened her eyes, the light burned, and she screamed.
A child’s cry echoed in her mind till it became laughter. Thrashing, Jehanne snapped her head to the side, her cheek wet with tears and black soil. The sun blazed into her, dribbled down her ears like candle wax, and the river by her fingers was as silver as mercury. Her skin itched. A suit. Wrong suit, wrong skin.
Warmth embraced her, and she was lifted closer to Heaven, and there was blue, soft blue against her cheek, and a man’s aching voice pierced her. Before she could speak, her world darkened. A lion stalked her dreams, its claws clicking against the inky black of her brain.
Jehanne’s sickness lasted for days, and she couldn’t tell wakefulness from dreams.
She rested in a bed, and her mind was fog. A man knelt by her side. He prayed, wept, cried, but when she called to him, he melted into the shadows. Feathers scattered like snow on the ruddy sheets. Was the red her blood, her heart, or onl
y dye?
Sweat pooled down Jehanne’s forehead, down her nose, and cold wetness made her jump. She blinked, and an unsmiling woman leaned over her. She had thin lips and thick, black hair like pinned wires. The shadows under her eyes were purple and stern. The crying man was behind the woman, but no, his face was unlined and wrong, not sad enough to be the same person. Soon, he melted into a gray wash and vanished.
Jehanne asked without hearing her own words, “Where did he go?” The woman rippled away like a pebble drifting to the bottom of a pond, and Jehanne smelled smoke.
The next morning, she sat up and rubbed her eyelids till dark lashes fell on her knuckles like mice hairs. A tightness bothered her neck, and when she lifted a hand there, there was only the cotton nightgown with its collar snug against her neck. When she pushed it down, her fingers raked across a long, narrow scar horizontally lining the side of her neck.
“Drink this,” a woman’s voice said, and a cup thrusted into Jehanne’s hand. Her vision adjusted, and there stood the wire-haired woman with a simple black dress and white apron.
Jehanne’s focus drifted to the woman, to the cup of what looked like tea, and then to the woman again. “Who are you?”
“I am Mademoiselle Clair, a humble servant of this estate, and your father sent me to attend to you.” No How are you feeling? or well wishes. No smile. Besides the faint frown lines around her mouth, Mlle Clair had smooth and pale skin. Despite her youth, she had bruise-like darkness under her eyes. Jehanne’s room, even with the red and gold wallpaper and ornate canopy, was a bit dreary.
Jehanne asked about her father, “Where is he?”
“He fears his presence would excite you, and your fever broke last night, so he doesn’t want you to see him until you’re better.”
“Which will be when?”
“Soon, hopefully.”
“I saw him here, didn’t I? His hair was gold, I remember that.”
“I don’t believe so.”
Jehanne’s attention drifted to the cup of liquid in her hands. “What’s this for?”
Clair stared at the spot beside Jehanne’s elbow. “The tea’ll help you regain your mind. Drink it.”
“If you’re a servant, you shouldn’t order me around.”
Mlle Clair’s frown deepened for an instant before returning to its normal severity. Brow rising, she said blankly, “I’m sorry, you’re correct. Drink it, please.”
That wasn’t much of an improvement. “If it’ll help.” She had won, and she didn’t want to concede, but she also wanted to stop the aches that weighed her to the mattress. Jehanne lifted the cup, sniffed, and wrinkled her nose. “It smells funny.” But she drank anyway, and alongside the strange odor and dark color, the tea had a bitter taste. “Who . . . ?” No, the woman had already said her name. Clair, right. And Jehanne—yes, her name was Jehanne. How did she know?
She was nineteen, she knew that somehow, maybe from a dream, and she guessed this was her bedroom. To the servant, she said, “Why don’t I remember you? And when I saw my father, I didn’t know he was my father. That was my father crying here, right? Him and another man who looked like him.”
“Your sickness almost killed you, and my mas—your father warned me that your mind might not be in the same place it was before you were ill.”
“What was I sick with? How did he know?”
“I can’t say the exact name, only that you’d been complaining of headaches and like your mind had caught on fire. Some sort of swelling, I presume.”
Jehanne rubbed her temple. “I was in dirt, and water, I reached for water.” She dragged her fingers down her cheeks, then snapped her eyes open. “Someone carried me here.” Home, carried her home, carried her here with the golds, silvers, and browns, the deep burgundy of her sheets, and when she looked at her pillow, it was clean except for strands of hair.
“Yes, you were gone one morning, and your father and Monsieur Moreau, one of the other servants, went to find you. You were on the Vilaine’s bank. You were covered in dirt and grass and scratches; it was difficult to keep the bed clean.”
“How long have you been here?”
“As long as your father commands.”
Jehanne rubbed her thumbs together. The question-for-question part of this whole interaction made her wish she was back asleep. “And how long is that?”
“Seven days.”
“Really?” Jehanne’s forehead crinkled. “Where do you sleep?”
“At the end of the bed.”
Jehanne motioned to the sheets by the dimly shining footboard. “There?”
Clair pointed to the floor, expression unchanging.
Jehanne winced. She felt fleshy and tender, especially behind her eyes. She rubbed the line on the side of her neck. “I—do you know where I got this scar?”
“No.”
“Do you know when Father will come see me?”
“I do not.”
Jehanne huffed. “Helpful. Can you find out? What time is it?”
Clair tilted her head, her eyelids heavy, as if smacked blank by the sheer number of questions. “Do you mean the time of day or the time of year?”
“All of it, I guess.”
“It’s the morning, and we’re a bit into October. Are you hungry?”
Jehanne frowned. She probably should be, but she was a little queasy, if anything. “Not really.”
“Do you wish to take a bath?”
Jehanne’s scalp crawled. She had the distinct feeling of not belonging in her own body. She must’ve looked like death. “Yes, I think so.”
Clair nodded, her back so stiff Jehanne didn’t know if anyone else could ever be so perfect a line. “We’ll do that then, at your request. Before that, I’ll tell your father how you’re faring.”
Before Clair could escape, Jehanne’s hands rose. “Wait! Are you sure Father can’t see me today?”
“I’ll ask him.”
“And my mother? What about my mother?”
Clair’s eyes darted from Jehanne to the door, then to the carpet. Jehanne’s heart sank, and she licked her cracked lips.
“I’m sorry,” Clair said, her hands seeking direction.
“She’s dead, isn’t she?” The silence was answer enough. “How did she die?”
“I don’t know.” Clair looked to the carpet.
Jehanne launched herself up and wrapped her fingers around the bedpost. Somehow, she knew her mother was dead, but she wanted to at least know why, to materialize a stark image in the mist. “Tell me! How can you not know? What do you know? What was it? Illness? Bitten by a bug? Cracked her head on the stairs? Kicked a sleeping wolf? Ate bad cheese?”
The servant faltered, her trembling left hand tightening on her collar. “I wish I could say. When I—I started working for your father, he was alone.” Clair cleared her throat. “Besides your presence, of course.”
“Would Father tell me what happened to her?”
“I suppose he could, once you’re well enough.”
Jehanne’s limbs ached from inactivity. To her left, by a curved wardrobe, was a curtained window, the drapes stippled with fleurs-de-lis. She uncovered herself so she could cross the room.
“What are you doing?” Clair said before Jehanne’s bare feet hit the carpet. The servant followed her gaze and went to open the curtains herself.
“I know how to open curtains,” Jehanne muttered, poorly hiding her pout.
“You mustn’t exert yourself.”
“What was I like before my sickness?”
“Just as you are now, I suppose.”
Jehanne tasted those words, and they rubbed her gums wrong like cotton. She didn’t feel like her whole self, whatever that whole self was. “Confused?”
“Stubborn.”
“Oh, quite—”
“A fighter,” Clair finished. She went to leave the room again, but Jehanne said to the servant’s back, “Can I go with you?”
“Your father insisted that you stay in your room no
w.” Clair didn’t bother to pivot around. “The manor’s too large. You might get lost or hurt yourself.”
Jehanne’s teeth ground together, and she tasted blood from her cheek. “I know how to walk. I remember that much.”
“I’ll tell your father you want to see him.”
“Could I go outside?”
“I’ll tell him you want to do that as well.” Nothing in the servant’s voice changed. What a strange woman.
Jehanne opened her mouth to thank her, but Clair left too soon.
H
Jehanne’s mind still scattered and flounced about, an impasto of gold walls and ghost hands. Eyes where there should be hands and hands where there should be heads. And teeth for fingernails. The only person who drew her away from these images was Clair, who would attend to her, bathe her, dress her, feed her, fold her clothes in silence unless Jehanne spoke. Tonight, the chore was mending clothes at the end of the bed, and all Jehanne could do was watch and try not to sigh and shuffle her feet.
While working on the shoulder of a gown, Clair’s brow was knitted in frustration, and her work was slow. As Clair struggled with the needle, Jehanne scratched her neck, which hurt, as if she carried stories beneath the skin.
“You don’t know how to sew,” Jehanne said, just as an observation.
The servant paused. “It’s been years.”
“How did you learn?” An itch crawled from Jehanne’s neck to the crown of her head.
The shadows under Clair’s eyes darkened. “Father would make me mend his clothes before . . .” She swallowed, not looking up. “The way to move my hands, the patterns, it should come back to me if I think hard enough.”
The movement, the patterns, yes, and a fire sparked in Jehanne, so she flapped her hands in an odd fashion.
Dove Keeper Page 2