Dove Keeper

by Emily Deibler

  “What does it matter? How can I love someone who abused Maman so badly she miscarried? How can I love him when he hurts you?”

  Clair slouched and sniffed. “He’s your father. I’m only your servant.”

  “You don’t deserve this. Whatever happened in the past, you didn’t deserve that either.”

  Clair shuddered, her breath a long, wet sigh, and she rubbed her face with both palms. “What would you know about my past?”

  “Father told me he bought you.”

  Clair scoffed and, through the woman’s hands, Jehanne saw her deep scowl. “Of course he did. Not even my story is safe from the likes of him.” She shook her head, exhaling sharply and straightening. “I shouldn’t speak like that. I’d rather be here than where I was.”

  “The brothel?”

  Clair peered foggily ahead. “Home.”

  “Do you—you can say no if it’s . . .”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  The woman’s lips thinned. “What hasn’t been said is unimportant.”

  Jehanne shook her head and forced strength up her throat, or perhaps it was more vomit. At this point, she could no longer tell. “It’s your choice. It’s your story, not Father’s, not your father’s.”

  For several minutes, they stayed frozen like a caterpillar interrupted and contorted in a chrysalis, forever a half-winged, soupy creature.

  “When I was a girl, my mother died. I believe it was 1896. Father would cry every night and drink himself to sleep, as one does. I raised myself in those years. I was a gawky, scared little thing, and I was never taught how I should feel about all that happened. I spent the time reading alone in my bed until, after a time, Father would tell me how much I looked like Mother, and I enjoyed the attention, enjoyed him loving me again.” Clair laughed bitterly. “I suppose you can imagine what happened.” Jehanne didn’t want to answer. Clair balled her apron in her fists. “When he’d visit me at night, he’d tell me it was supposed to hurt, I was supposed to hurt, that he was trying to teach me to be less frightened of my body. He was teaching me, and so long as I pleased him, he was well and happy, and I thought it’d hurt less. He’d joke and he was kind, like the master can be. He could be good if I didn’t provoke him.” She pinched her nose, and Jehanne swallowed the sour taste in her mouth.

  Something should be said, but she didn’t know how to comfort anyone besides giving out food or offering to hit someone. Instead, she asked, “Is that why you don’t leave, because you can’t go anywhere else?”

  Clair pursed her lips. “We sometimes have to accept our lots in life.”

  “No, you don’t. You don’t have to. You didn’t deserve any of that. We could—I don’t know what we can do, but I’ll protect you.”

  Huffing through her nose, Clair replied, “I want one of us to have a father. No matter his faults, he’s never hurt you. He’s always loved you, I think, since before you were born.”

  Jehanne’s belly turned as she thought of her poor mother stumbling around, heavy with the child from her rape. “If being with him means letting people be hurt, I can’t allow that.” And I’ve allowed so much. Stupid. “Why don’t you think you’re worth saving?”

  “Who could care for a cold, cowardly, broken woman?”

  Jehanne trembled, failing the war with her tears. “Me.”

  Clair shifted and shook her head. “The only people who cared about me were my sisters and brothers at the brothel.”

  “Moreau?”

  The woman glowered at the floor, her knuckles the whitest they’d ever been. “He trained me in . . . and if I ever were to try to go back and get help, the master would find me, and he’d have help. I’d be one sad, forgotten wretch against somebody with enough gold to turn away anyone’s eyes.”

  Jehanne lifted herself up with an elbow and buried her head against Clair’s shoulder. The woman winced. Right, that wasn’t smart, but when Jehanne thought to pull away, Clair shifted to pat her back, so Jehanne found herself wool-eyed against the woman’s collarbone.

  As she returned Clair’s gentle pats, Jehanne wept in deep, stinging bursts. She whispered, “It’s not your fault, what they did.” What I did, how I spoke to you. “You’re not alone. I won’t let you be. I’ll fight for you.” And Clair gripped her tighter, that strong hold. Jehanne was wrong. Clair wasn’t a sad wisp; she was steel, blood, fire, because she had survived horror and still allowed some obnoxious girl she worked for to cry on her. It was the least Jehanne could do, to comfort her through the spit and mucus.

  Eventually, cold sank into Jehanne’s bones and dragged her to the pillows. Ever since she had woken from her sickness, with a dull needle and frayed, tattered linen, she worked to sew the scraps of mostly forgotten dreams and half-memories together. But now all she wanted was to sleep and forget. It was safer that way, she realized too late, to let the past lie.

  Somewhere above her, Clair said, “I’ll go get the tea.”

  “I don’t think I need it anymore.” The sheets smelled like lavender. “Thank you for the clean sheets.”

  Clair replied something quiet and brushed Jehanne’s hair from her eyes. Right, Jehanne had forgotten something, but her eyes were fat sandbags. She should—Marcy, Jehanne should be with her now. She’d promised; she couldn’t give up so swiftly, and Marcy could comfort her with a story.

  But Marcy, a red and blue fog, drifted away from her thoughts, and Jehanne forgot the feeling of claws scratching under her skin.

  17

  Marcy

  Marcy didn’t swear much, but damn it all, Jehanne had chosen the worst time to sleep. She really needed to know if all was right. When she walked into Jehanne’s room after thirty-one minutes had passed without a word, she found Clair brushing her friend’s hair behind her ear. Clair didn’t notice Marcy’s presence until she stood up, retrieved something from the nightstand, and made her way to the door. She regarded Marcy with disinterest, and her cheeks were splotchy.

  “Is Jehanne okay?”

  Clair answered, the edges of both eyes still pink and swollen, “She will be.” Marcy looked down at what she held. A tart. “She told me to give this to you.” Marcy gave her an odd look. Clair’s chin tilted like she recalled something, and she pocketed the tart in her apron. “Nevermind that.”

  In that moment, Marcy, confused, neverminded it. “All right, then.”

  They left the room together, though Clair kept walking down the hall, the soft tap of her black pumps the only beat for a time. Curiosity squirmed as the quiet swelled. Marcy would find out what happened when Jehanne awoke, but for now—the study, something told her that was where she needed to go. If nothing else, to pass the time with books, new stories to digest and retell as her own. Good stories, not the ones where all the mothers and wives always died. It might take some searching. Jehanne’s father seemed like the sort of man who read old tales.

  The wallpaper followed her steps as she went to the study. Nobody was there anymore. It was dark, so Marcy flicked the light switch, and the room became suitably bright after a small sputter. She examined each shelf. A book on Roman emperors, a book on feudalism, and a two-part story by a German man.

  “Gurt,” she mumbled, tracing the author’s engraved surname. Goethe. Funny, this one, given the master of the manor’s thoughts on Germans.

  She discovered a string of English plays too, by Marlowe and Jonson and Webster, whoever the last one was. (Didn’t the monsieur hate the English too?) Marcy took the beaten The Duchess of Malfi, perused a page or ten before deciding that, though it was like many other morbid stories she read, it was maybe best to leave this one alone. Given her cycle, she wasn’t in the mood for blood today. She then opened a random page of a well-worn text called Justine, ou Les Malheurs de la Vertu by Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, but, upon reading a sentence, realized her mistake and shelved it.

  Eager to move along in her search, she found a book of Greek myths, and when she cr
acked it open, she looked at the spiked letters scribbled at the top of the first page.

  Never regret thy fall, O Icarus of the fearless flight. For the greatest tragedy of them all is never to feel the burning light.

  Marcy beamed. Wilde was a good choice. She put it back and then knelt when she noticed some books bulging out in an odd wave on the lowest shelf, like something was behind them. She pulled out three dense texts before she found purchase: A black book with the spine almost broken.

  Tenderly, she propped it in her hands and opened it like it had a snake inside. After a moment of staring at the first page, she blinked. Marcy could tell the words were French, yet she couldn’t understand many of them, as if they were a combination of French and another antiquated language.

  As she curled back pages upon pages, she snapped her head up at the slightest creak or moan. The book looked like a personal journal, but none of the entries had dates, and many pages were incomprehensible. God, was this Latin? Good for the writer; they were more of an aspiring Catholic than she’d ever be. Eventually, she found a sentence simple enough for her to decipher.

  Light has left my life. I wish this damned war never happened.

  War. So, this was the monsieur of the manor’s diary. It made sense. Papa kept his own black book, though she hadn’t the slightest if Papa’s diary possessed as many peculiar gaps and odd hiccups in language. Then again, Jehanne’s father was a strange one, for sure.

  Still, her heart twinged at this passage. The thin paper smelled like wet churchyard grass and regret. The next few pages were blank, except for a number succeeded by dried ink blots.

  140

  As she kept perusing, the handwriting grew more slanted, but the French, where there was French, grew more recognizable. Some strange symbols caught her eye, their meaning lost on her. Marcy read another entry:

  I miss François so much it hurts me to breathe. His hair, his voice, his eyelids when he slept. Yet when I remember harder, it saddens me to think of him and only conjure up this delightful, but insubstantial, mimicry of Faust. All I have left is his spell book, and all my attempted rites have granted me nothing. But there’s nothing left but this; all I have left is to try.

  It is times like these I wonder, with these sacrifices I’ve made, if I should bring him back so we can get on like we did before. Still, if he is in Hell, it’d be less of an offense to God to bring him here. There have been enough demons conjured beneath these floors, anyhow. So why not take from Heaven instead, if such a feat can be done? Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light, but all is not lost, the unconquerable Will, and study of revenge, immortal hate, and courage never to submit or yield.

  If my soul would be the only casualty, I’ve nothing to lose. Oh, Jehanne.

  Marcy couldn’t make sense of the words beyond the fact that a male lover had died. Maybe this was a story, but from what she gathered about the manor’s master, there seemed to be some truth. Spell book, rites—indeed, she knew the man had been shaken by the war, but not enough to find solace in tricks.

  And demons? His shell shock had gotten the best of him. That, or his penchant for vivid, dramatic metaphors came through here. With all the crucifixes in the manor, though, “demon” didn’t immediately cross her mind. Far stranger, she realized, were the numbers at the bottom of the entry. At first, she skimmed over them, too immersed in the words. But the diary was small, and 743, smudged in the curled corner, was too big a number to correlate with the page. Still, no matter how she tried to make sense of it, all she could think was maybe for a wary soldier, shadows had faces, and he counted each one. That, or he had a rather long rosary. Marcy turned the page to find part of a poem torn from another book.

  And there I lived amid voluptuous calms,

  In splendours of blue sky and wandering wave,

  Tended by many a naked, perfumed slave,

  Who fanned my languid brow with waving palms.

  They were my slaves—the only care they had

  To know what secret grief had made me sad.

  The monsieur, for all his oddities, had good taste in poetry, Marcy decided. At least, insomuch that it rhymed, so it looked good to her. The page had an odor to it like talc on a lily, a smell that stuck to her fingers when she pulled them to her nose, which made her bristle for a reason she couldn’t discern. Marcy’s eyes flitted down to the number.

  751

  She flipped to another page with less than three lines of writing.

  These shall be my last words: She’s awake and alive. I’ve done more than anyone ever could. I’ve fooled God. Against all, I’ve proven myself triumphant.

  And on that day, the number remained unchanged. That wasn’t the part that sent a hateful chill down Marcy’s back. It was the signature:

  Baron Gilles de Rais of the House of Montmorency-Laval, Hero, Marshal of France

  Gilles de Rais.

  Marcy flung the book off her lap. That name. That name she remembered from the morbid book she’d read about the man who—the man and the—

  The monster in Là-Bas, that morbid little book with the phallic tree trunks, the one she’d refused to relay to Jehanne. She remembered it as a paralyzing vision:

  Everywhere obscene forms rise from the ground and spring, disordered, into a firmament which satanizes. The clouds swell into breasts, divide into buttocks, bulge as if with fecundity, scattering a train of spawn through space. They accord with the sombre bulging of the foliage, in which now there are only images of giant or dwarf hips, feminine triangles, great V’s, mouths of Sodom, glowing cicatrices, humid vents. This landscape of abomination changes. Gilles now sees on the trunks frightful cancers and horrible wens. He observes exostoses and ulcers, membranous sores, tubercular chancres, atrocious caries. It is an arboreal lazaret, a venereal clinic.

  Marcy shuddered, all her resolve leaking away like a drained cyst. God, Jesus, Mary. Gilles, Gilles de Rais, the terrible Breton knight. She didn’t know at least ten of the words in that passage, but by God, it shook her, the greedy, pitiful, war-beaten criminal staring at the blue, venereal growths he created from the blood of innocents. Those bulging sores that were unearthed from the dirt and leaves as all he thought about was what he could molest and destroy next.

  God, no, she couldn’t make assumptions. Maybe it was a coincidence. People could have the same name. But not this one, especially not with the exact same house name and military title. It wasn’t possible—it was, it was now, and all the worries in the town, all the stories in the newspaper. The missing—Gilles de Rais. God. He hadn’t even tried an anagram to hide his identity.

  Was the monsieur mad? Was she mad? She remembered, God, she remembered reading how he’d allegedly saved himself with prayer and La Pucelle’s spirit came to embrace her old war companion and take him to Heaven as he wept. And he hanged and burned; he was supposed to be dead for centuries. Yet, the old French words, the spell book, the listing of titles after his name for personal affirmation—hero, marshal. The only living marshal Marcy knew of was Ferdinand Foch.

  This couldn’t be real. Marcy needed to wake Jehanne, and they needed to leave this place. God, a telephone. Where was the telephone? Did the manor even have one? Yes, it had to, of course, because she had called Jehanne. In a flurry, she ran to find it. Before she woke Jehanne, she needed to call the police.

  Police. Papa.

  Call Papa.

  18

  Rosalie

  The world is on fire.

  Eventually, Rosalie found the strength to rise off the floor without the dog’s courteous assistance. She breathed deep and slow, and the air scratched every hole in her.

  Everything’s burning.

  She checked all the doors and windows and wished Anatole would return unscathed, but she had the solace that Marcy and André, who still took absence, would be away and safe. She worked to calm herself and failed. Going upstairs, she went to the desk beside their bed, rattled that certain drawer knob once, and left it.<
br />
  Some memories were best left alone.

  Yet, God, she’d lost her wits today.

  She thought of the time after she and Anatole lost Roger. She remembered she’d been in the wet garden when, after many years, she craved Anatole again. Rain thundered down like it had during Rosalie and Anatole’s first cycle ride after they married and entangled themselves under the oaks without a care. There in the garden, her body shook like the rosebushes disturbed by the rain. Moisture trickled down her nose, chin, neck, thigh, trickled like the silver veins on the church windows when she married Anatole and morning rain had sleeted the roads.

  It had been too long since she had let Anatole inside her.

  The wind lashed against the house. She was rain-soaked when she walked into the living room to her husband reading. Anatole questioned her health, thought a cold would strike her down, but she was forged of lightning that day. She removed her coat, her dress sticking to her skin like a second flesh. She kissed him like the rain had renewed her fire. They joined in the armchair beside the kindling hearth, and it was the first time Rosalie eclipsed him since they’d lost Roger. He smelled of earth, tobacco, and wet newspaper sheets. She smelled of old books, that mingling of almonds and damp grass. She felt their souls entwined. They wiped the tears and rain from each other and, in the following days, they acted like they had the weeks following their wedding. He pressed his lips to her hair, and she moved his cheek so she could taste the ash in his mouth.

  That night, when they were naked in bed, Anatole bent between her, his lips on her knee. She tilted her head, sadness pinching her brow. She wanted to say, How can we be happy without forgetting? He clasped her chin, rubbed a thumb across her tearless cheek. I don’t want to forget, I don’t think, but I don’t know how to honor him. Would he’ve enjoyed cycling? It would’ve sounded like nonsense, but it made complete sense to her. She hid those thoughts; no need to make Anatole’s body a lithograph of her pain.