“I—I—of course you do.” Maman opened her mouth like she would add something else, but closed it soon after.
“All I want is another girl like me. Some connection, something more. And you think I’d be better off dead.” If only Jehanne were here. Marcy sniffed, but more tears came. “Maman, I’m sorry, but I . . .” Her eyes stung so much she couldn’t open them, and the more she rubbed them, the more the prickling worsened.
“I can bring you water, and we can discuss this—”
“I can’t be here anymore.”
“What? Where would you go?” God, Maman was trying, she was, and it was earnest, her hands seeking direction.
This was honest, but still they couldn’t talk without a barrier.
“I met a girl, Jehanne, at the park, and she lives not that far, and I want to stay with her.”
“That doesn’t sound safe. I’m not sure. I don’t know Jehanne or her parents.”
Marcy sniffed. “She only has her papa.”
“That’s terrible.”
“Well, if one of them’s dead, it’s one less person for you to be paranoid about.”
“Paranoid?” Maman’s voice was wounded. “Is that all I am to you?”
Marcy struggled to speak over her tears, and what spilled out was an undammed flood. “I can’t be here anymore, at least not today. I can’t talk anymore. Please leave. I’m sorry. I can’t.” Maman stepped back with a hand on her mouth. Marcy’s anger wound down, replaced by tremors of guilt and regret. Her home was orderly and smelled good, and she was never without food when she needed it. Maman and Papa ensured her comfort, and she’d dismissed it, told Maman she’d fare better without it. But, for a minute, she couldn’t stop what had built up over the course of years.
Jehanne. Marcy wanted, needed Jehanne. Someone to laugh with her. If she asked Papa if she could stay with Jehanne, he’d say yes.
He always did.
Her world narrowed to the ticking of the clock, like a venomous dripping, and Maman murmuring to herself over and over, “What have I done?”
And suddenly, Papa was there. Marcy hadn’t heard the tap of his shoes, only his words: “What is it? What happened?”
Too far away, must’ve been talking to Maman, who replied, “I don’t want to speak about it.” Though she didn’t hear Papa’s entrance, she did hear Maman’s footsteps fade.
A set of determined steps, another body came next to her, and she thought Maman had returned to make the situation more uncomfortable, until she leaned her head and saw Papa over her fallen hair.
“What is it?” he asked, his hand warm but firm on her shoulder. Marcy couldn’t think of anything to say that didn’t sound petty. Seemingly able to understand her without prodding, Papa rubbed her back as she wept.
9
Jehanne
Jehanne started the day with blood smearing her pillow, a ruddy crescent from both her lips and nose. She frantically tapped Clair’s shoulder, and when the servant rolled over with squinted eyes, her first words were, “Good God.” Jehanne sat on the bed’s edge until Clair handed her a washroom towel and said, “Tilt your head down. I’ll tell your father.” When Jehanne tilted her head up because it made more sense for the blood to go back where it came from, and the taste of a rusted copper coin wasn’t really that awful, Clair arched back and rolled her eyes to the ceiling in exasperation. “Dear God, girl, don’t fight me on this.”
“Why would I have blood go all over me?” Clair spoke like she was much older, when Jehanne would bet they weren’t even a decade apart. Girl, indeed.
“So you don’t choke, and it won’t ‘go all over’ you if you put the towel under your nose, quite obviously.”
Jehanne postured the towel like a sword. “I won’t choke. I’m not dumb enough to drown in my own nose blood.”
Clair elected not to respond, and Jehanne stuck her tongue out when the servant turned her back, since it didn’t count as immature if nobody saw. Tasting blood soon after, Jehanne decided to obey, but she did so grumbling to make it harder on her uptight servant.
When Father arrived and inspected the pillow, he remarked, “Pup, it looks like a pagan sacrificed a small rodent in here.” She supposed with all his books on Rome and post-Rome Europe, that was a mix of what he knew and an attempted joke. “I’ll take you to Moreau so he can strengthen your tea.”
Jehanne panicked. “Am I becoming sick again?”
Father sat by her and patted her hand, which slowed her breathing. “It’s the cold, dry air, nothing more. It makes thin skin crack and bleed, darling. Don’t fret.”
“But what if I start bleeding from other places too, like out my ears and eyes? What then?” And Father reached around her shoulders and pulled her to him. He sniffed, but didn’t burst into tears, and Jehanne chewed the inside of her cheek. It wouldn’t do to worsen his stress, but she couldn’t help but spill out her worries to the person she trusted the most.
He exhaled. “Pup, Moreau will make you better, I swear it.”
“And what if he doesn’t?”
Father’s lips met her temple. “He doesn’t have a choice.”
H
The dining room had a gold shine to it, and the dish cabinets looked like they were made to be brazenly displayed, with their shiny, gnarled edges like polished branches.
Both the back of the chair and the cushion were stiff. Surely Father could afford comfier furniture. M. Moreau sat across from Jehanne and grounded gray-blue and purple herbs together in a porcelain bowl. He dressed far more conservatively than Father today, with fewer plume-like colors. His tunic sported a dull maroon.
She asked, “What are those, the plants?”
His response was curt. Sweat stippled his hairline. “Sage and valerian.”
Jehanne twisted a hand in her tunic. “We don’t speak much, do we?” She knew little about him besides the fact that he devotedly tended to Father and that he and Clair patrolled the grounds and ordered around the other servants Jehanne rarely saw.
“I suppose we don’t.” Something was wrong with him, not anything fatal, she didn’t think, but some kind of cold, maybe, a fever. “Is your throat hurting?”
“A little.”
“Then I’ll put honey in the tea as well.” His smile didn’t reach his clouded eyes. “That should help with the taste too, I think.”
Jehanne shuddered. Tea-drinking had to be one of her least favorite activities.
Moreau dumped the bowl of ground herbs in a cup, and he left to place hot water in the mix. When he returned, Jehanne accepted the cup and said, “Do you make this for Father?”
He seemed surprised she asked that question, or at least that she kept speaking to him at all. “Yes. It’s one of my many specialties.”
“What else can you do?” Jehanne wondered if her tone was offensive, but didn’t bother to ask.
“Like your father and Clair, I excel at giving orders.”
“I noticed. With Clair, at least.”
Moreau’s countenance darkened. “She finds control where she can. But anyhow, it’s time to drink the tea.” He noticed her amount of enthusiasm, so he added, “It should lessen the bleeding, the dried skin.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me unless it works.”
Forcing herself to go ahead and drink and swallow the tea, Jehanne’s visage crinkled, though it didn’t taste as awful as the honeyed metal taste of her premenstrual remedy.
If Moreau was offended by Jehanne’s tacit critique of his concoction’, he said nothing. He might’ve not noticed, since his gaze darted back and forth, his eyelids fluttering.
Once the aftertaste faded enough to make speech bearable, Jehanne said, “Are you all right?”
“Yes, why do you ask?” His face darkened like he was annoyed, but he nevertheless suppressed it.
“You look paler than usual.”
“Hmm, the cold does that to me.” He grinned, and it would’ve been charming if it wasn’t so fatigued. �
��And the sun.”
“Why the sun? Isn’t that warm? Wouldn’t that help with the cold?”
“If I stay out too long, it makes me weak and gives me purple blisters.”
Jehanne frowned. “Were you born with this condition?”
“It’s a fairly new occurrence, I’m afraid. It’s not deadly, I don’t think, but it hurts like the devil.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
They exchanged a curious look. Moreau’s eyes were tender, and Jehanne wondered if she imagined a glint of fright. “No, I can manage alone.”
“Did you go out more before this, to learn about plants?”
“Yes, my papa was an herbalist, someone who uses plants for medicine, and I helped him collect what he needed.” Moreau’s cloudy eyes had a storm to them, a brief strike of lightning, of enthusiasm, yet Jehanne still felt a chasm she couldn’t cross.
What a strange, strange man.
H
When she heard the ringing, and realized it wasn’t coming from her head, she rushed from the study to the telephone room before Father to try out the oddly knobbed alien thing. He stayed behind where he’d been arranging the bookshelf and trying to find something, The Duchess of Malfi in one hand and some strange German text in the other.
When Jehanne put the little corded telephone piece to her ear, she waited as silence greeted her. Did she have to say something special to make the weird thing work? Maybe Father would’ve been better at this.
Wet, ragged breathing came from the other end.
“Is someone there?” Jehanne asked. She hoped so, because she’d call for Father if the telephone did this on its own.
“‘Allô?” The voice was high and tentative.
Jehanne startled, pulling the telephone away. What an eerie little device. It was like a spirit in a shell. She set the telephone back against her ear. “Marcy?”
“‘Allô, sorry—my, my voice’s a bit off.” It was raw like she’d been crying, which made Jehanne eager to reach through the telephone and hold her.
“What happened?”
A sniff. “I—I’m having trouble with my maman. It’s nothing serious.”
“You’re crying, or you were.” Might’ve been impolite to point that out, but, well, too late. “That means it’s serious, doesn’t it?”
“We just—we talked. I don’t know where to start.”
“That’s all right. Breathe for a minute. I can wait.”
Marcy did as Jehanne said until her breaths evened out. “Before I met you, I heard her say she’d rather me be dead—”
A fiery wetness shot from Jehanne’s belly to her tongue. “What? How dare she? You should’ve cuffed her!” The line went quiet, and Jehanne remembered herself, relaxed herself when she felt her nails biting into her palm.
Soft words, softer than anything Marcy had said at the park. “I—no, we don’t do that.”
With haste and a lick of fire, Jehanne replied, “You don’t deserve what she said. You don’t deserve to die. Did you tell her that?”
Marcy coughed and cleared her throat. “She—I just need time away from home. Uh, will your papa be okay with me staying with you two for a few days?”
Jehanne hadn’t the slightest. “I’m sure it won’t be a problem.”
“That’s good. When would I be able to visit? I want to come as soon as I can, but I also know it’s hard to make arrangements—”
“You can come over today.” Father would forgive her. Jehanne reasoned it was easier to do something she liked and repent later than ask for permission first and risk rejection.
She hoped.
“Really?” Marcy’s voice brightened. “You’re really sure?” The hesitance crept back in, but Jehanne wouldn’t stand for it. She wanted the let’s-climb-a-tree Marcy safe and comfortable.
“Yes.”
“Thank you! This means so much, really. I’ve never done something like this, so I wasn’t sure exactly how to go about it, but you made it easy.”
“Of course, I’m glad to’ve helped.”
“What’s your address? I’ll write it down for Papa. He’ll know where to go. He’ll likely want to drive me there to make sure I’m safe.”
Jehanne told Marcy the address and said, “Will he want to meet Father?”
“I don’t know. He and Maman don’t meet with many people because of his job.”
“What does he do? Cut up meat?”
Marcy paused, then coughed. “He cuts people’s heads off.” Swiftly, she added, “Legally, though.”
“Oh.” Jehanne wasn’t certain what she had expected. “But he . . .”
In a rush, Marcy said, “Papa’s the greatest man alive.”
Because of her own love for Father despite his flaws, Jehanne beamed. Though, to her knowledge, Father had never been an executioner, war meant death, and he and Marcy’s papa could suffer from similar wounds. Even if Marcy’s papa didn’t meet with Father today, it could do them well to speak in the future.
“So long as it’s legal.”
Hopefully, Marcy asked, “I’ll see you soon, then?”
“Yes, yes. Goodbye, until later, then?”
“Goodbye.”
Bothering her lip, Jehanne rotated the candlestick telephone to see if anything had changed with it and, given no answers, she rested it on its cradle.
Now to go explain things to Father. Sure, he wouldn’t approve of Jehanne inviting her new friend over without his permission, but she could convince him, let him decide to give her happiness.
When she re-entered the study, Father looked up from his thick book, a book he condemned aloud because it was about Satan and the author was a papacy-hating cretin, yet he still read it.
“Who was it?” he asked. The firelight made him glow.
Jehanne swallowed. “Hold on. First, I have a question.” It was partly a diversion tactic so she could formulate her words, and part genuine. This question, among others, had lurked in her mind for a long while.
Father’s forehead wrinkled, but he waved his hand. “Go on.”
“When is my birthday?” Jehanne held her hands behind herself.
She expected Father to say he didn’t know, but he answered with enthusiasm, “The sixth of January.”
Guilt stirred in her belly. Of course he’d know when she was born, of all things. Even if he won’t tell me anything else.
Don’t provoke him. You can’t break him.
“How do we celebrate?”
He smoothed his palm over a creased page. “We can do whatever you like.”
“What do we usually do?”
Father fidgeted with his sleeve. “It’s normally a quiet affair, a small dinner. I don’t have the staff to accommodate many guests.”
“That’s good. I’m okay with it being just the two of us,” Jehanne said, more for her sake than his. “I wondered if we could travel one day. Maybe on my birthday?”
“One day. But I don’t want to chance losing you.”
“There’s nothing that could happen that’d separate us.”
“That heartens me.” Father cleared his throat. “We’ll make do, I’m sure. I’d never leave you unhappy, especially on a celebratory day.”
Going on what Father had said about his inability to accommodate many guests, Jehanne said, “It must be lonely. Not having many guests.”
He half-smiled. “I’ve adjusted. The quiet helps calm my mind, keeps me grounded.”
Something Marcy asked at the park crept into Jehanne’s head. “Do I have any brothers or sisters?”
“A strange segue.” He tilted his head. “None now.”
What a curious way to phrase it. As if she could one day. “Will I ever have any?”
Father turned a page of the book still teetering on his lap. “Why? Siblings are not always a blessing.”
“Why do you say that? Do you have any?”
With that, Father looked up from his book, his eyes shadowed. “I did, a younger brother.”
“What happened to him?”
His eyes pierced the floor. “René died, like everyone. We were raised by my mother’s father, your great-grandfather, after our father and mother died the same year, our father from a boar hunt gone awry, our mother from a broken heart. I doubt the typhus helped. Can’t quite remember my reaction, only that I was informed during a tutoring session, and I’d just listened to a choir at breakfast.” He added quickly, “On the gramophone, of course, which was new. You know, there’s nothing more peaceful than a child singing.”
“You were informed that they both died at the same time?”
Father shook his head. “Forgive me, my words are scrambled. I was informed of my father’s death as I was being tutored. My mother, well, I saw her die.”
Father frowned, and Jehanne pitied him. “I’m sorry.”
Father snapped out of whatever meandering thought occupied his glassy eyes. “Anyhow, Grandfather always preferred my brother. It’s as if there’s an animal instinct to choose one sibling over all the others. Be glad I only have you to dote on.”
“Did you love him, your brother?” She didn’t know how she’d feel about someone who was the preferred child in the family.
“I’m not sure how to answer that. I hardly remember him.” Father’s demeanor gave Jehanne reason to relish being an only child; it was a good life to be the sole proprietor of his affection. “What made you ask about this?”
“It just jumped into my head, I suppose.” Father grunted, and he didn’t look entirely satisfied. “I wanted to ask you something—something besides that.”
Father gave her a tired smile and rubbed his face. “I suspected as much. Is it about the telephone call?”
“Mlle Clair told you I met a girl in the park, yes?”
“Yes, she said you were on a tree with another girl. I meant to discuss it, but I’ve been distracted. I supposed that was who that was, since I never receive calls.”
“Her name is Marcy Deibler.”
“That’s not a very French name,” Father muttered.
“‘Marcy’? What does it matter?” Granted, if Father thought the French were the best at everything, well, he must be right, but there was no shame in acknowledging that people from other places existed. Though Jehanne could hardly read any of his books, based on her slow-going reading and writing lessons with Clair, it wasn’t as if Father’s extensive book collection consisted of only French literature.
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