As time passed, though she stayed inside, she beamed more and listened to the songbirds. She would tease Anatole, and they’d dance to the gramophone’s tune; they even took in a stray puppy. When Rosalie suspected she was pregnant and called a doctor to confirm from her symptoms, she told Anatole the same way she’d told him about Roger: no telling at all, only taking one of his hands and letting it linger on her belly. He embraced her, rubbed her back. They stayed like that for a minute. The obstinate sun shone, and she laughed, a talent she’d regained.
It had been a frosty November morning, and Anatole wore far more black than usual in private because his father, who had gone from jackal-like to sad, drunken, and quiet, had succumbed to cancer after his body and spirit tired. Anatole only openly cried once and wore mourning colors out of decorum. Perhaps Anatole mourned the father Louis could’ve been, the one he was in brief snippets. Louis’ only posthumous gift to his son was the dead, once-scarlet orchid he’d kept in his coat buttonhole.
A Parisian newspaper claimed he owned five hundred and two rings made of iron from blood he’d extracted from his clients, which was an impressive feat for a man who’d killed only one hundred and sixty clients and had hid his blood-crafting ability exceptionally well. Rosalie knew little about Louis beyond Anatole’s stories. Of Anatole’s mother, Zoé, even less so. The madame, whose father preceded Rosalie’s as the Algerian executioner, would dress as a man and attend executions, and Rosalie pondered if she watched and assisted for her husband’s sake or her own.
Given these details, Anatole was a blessing, though Rosalie wouldn’t be surprised if the newspapers reports stated that, in his spare time, he drank the blood of children. For Anatole, executions were not entertainment as they’d been for Louis before he deteriorated. Before Anatole took over, his father had killed a woman, saw heads in the corner of his bedroom, witnessed gaunt faces in a solitary orchard, and wept. A year before his death, he had called Anatole and spent an hour gulping down sobs and whispering, “I’ve seen so many.” Many what, he never answered. Shortly before his death, Louis, with his watery dream-eyes and violinist hands, visited and mumbled about an incident when blood spurted onto his pants, and he suffered a severe paroxysm. Naturally, blood was nothing new to Louis; before his son turned thirteen, he forced Anatole to dismember small animals as preparation for seeing a dead man’s insides.
Yet, that single incident at the guillotine had shattered Louis’ resolve. For her husband’s sake, Rosalie kept her peace because couldn’t say she liked Louis. She pitied him, but she pitied Anatole more. Little Roger had died nineteen days before Anatole’s birthday, and now his father was dead, but Rosalie discovered her pregnancy with Marcy a few days before his forty-first one, so for the first time in years, they celebrated.
And the dread returned.
It seemed no matter what, whether on the path of pins or the path of needles, her feet ended up bleeding. One night a little over five months into her pregnancy with Marcy, Rosalie dreamed she lost the baby inside her, that the bed blossomed red like an autumn tree under her, the black spots like clumps of robin eyes.
She couldn’t lose this baby, couldn’t let them bleed out of her. Rosalie dreamed of what her mother described to her when she’d lost a baby—tissue chunks, endless blood. Rosalie tried to push the pieces back inside her until she stained her hands and arms, and nobody answered when she called—not Anatole, not Maman, not Juliette. No blood in the bed. She told Anatole they couldn’t bring others’ blood to bed. The room was black, and all she saw were the ruined sheets, her fingers, and her thighs.
A searing ache woke her, a shivering sweat, Anatole present and snoring next to her, an urge to relieve herself, a stillborn scream on her lips. How many times do I need to watch you die when you’re not even born yet? When she went to the commode, her undergarments were clean. Rosalie reached between her legs and her fingers remained unbloodied. She returned to bed, and the sheets were wet only where she’d perspired and cried.
I do love you. I’m sorry, so sorry if you hear me crying and think otherwise. She rubbed her belly, felt Marcy respond with forceful kicks. No blood in the bed. Leave it at the threshold. Rosalie was careful. No blood, no death. What if Anatole died, then the baby died, and there was no trace of him left?
She asked him that evening on the couch, “Do you hope for a girl or a boy?”
He rubbed her hands, his eyes drifting away from her face. “I’ll be happy regardless.” Rosalie wanted a girl, but if she said as much and the opposite occurred, Anatole would suspect her disappointment, and he wouldn’t be wrong. Raising a son, well, they tried, were trying, with André being the closest to a growing child with family blood, Juliette’s blood.
A long pause punctuated the room. Rosalie touched her belly and could almost feel the skin giving way to reveal her child, a child she could have inside her longer than they’d have a name. The flesh around her eyes grew taut as wet fabric, but she didn’t want to break, didn’t want her child to feel the stress pulsing inside like an engorged worm.
Rosalie didn’t need to voice her fear, for Anatole released the first sob. With his trembling hands around hers, she dissolved into tears and rested her head on his shoulder.
“I don’t think I can do this,” she said. Her burgeoning child, too large to contain. The women in her family fared so poorly when carrying children that it was a wonder they had children at all. Anatole offered no solace like “We can have another one” or “At least we know you can conceive.”
Which was good because she wanted the baby in her to come to life now.
Through his sobs, Anatole told her, “I’m here. I’ll still be here. You know that, don’t you?” Through his labored breaths, he added, “I am utterly useless.” He took her hand and settled it against his chest, putting his other hand on her back.
Rosalie did her best to live, did her best counting the money and managing what affairs she could. She learned how to distill perfume, so she could sell it, and she could embroider purchasable items, yet she thought—no, she knew—she couldn’t keep a baby inside long enough. A baby, the one under her hand, still alive. She was small and unworthy, less of an ideal young wife and more of a combustible pile of half-standing walls and well-beaten chair legs.
“You aren’t useless. I need you because I—I can’t do this by myself.” The hand on her back traveled to her nape, and Anatole leaned his head against hers. With each minute, they slumped deeper into the cushions.
Now, her thoughts settled like dust. She took interest in the damned holy painting on the wall—the Virgin with an open mouth, hands splotched with her son’s blood, her horror a sacred fetish for poets and novelists to fawn over. Not even the bastard who seeded her womb saved their Son, saved what was also Himself.
But I did survive, and Marcy survived too, so why am I still worrying over the past?
Ah, Marcy. Rosalie lost herself again. Late in the pregnancy, Rosalie saw Marcy’s outline in a way she hadn’t with Roger, and it struck her with rapid gulps and shivers.
My baby’s dying, and she called for Anatole. She went to a lying-in hospital and birthed Marcy four days later after much distress. André would visit her and choke up in tears because he couldn’t stay with her, begged her to come back home, and she would cry whenever Anatole and her nephew needed to leave.
Anatole was there with her when she birthed Marcy, who looked alien with blood and amniotic fluid and a dark-green substance the doctor identified as feces. Amusement struck Rosalie, then. That impatient, are you? She was too tired for embarrassment when she considered she, perhaps, had messed herself during the final push, staining her daughter with more than blood.
When cleaned, Marcy looked pink, scrunched, and angry. Oh, her girl.
Rosalie rubbed Marcy’s head. “I don’t want to ruin you,” she whispered so only Marcy heard. When she had her son, she hadn’t been as tired as she thought she’d be, but when looking at Marcy, weariness turned her feathery thought
s to lead. For the first time in years, she prayed, prayed to Mary that her spring baby would last longer than her autumn baby.
I don’t want to kill you.
On that day, Marcy’s little head had errant tufts of near-white hair that would fall out and give way to a strawberry-wheat color that came alive in the sun. Red hair, Anatole’s hair. Little Roger took after Rosalie. As young as he was, Roger had a mop of black hair wild like crow feathers. If he’d grown up, the black couldn’t have become any bolder. Roger had been hers, and Marcy was Anatole’s.
It was good, Rosalie thought, for Marcy to be as different from Roger in every way. When Anatole would rest on his back with Marcy swaddled and sleeping under his chin, Rosalie was an intruder. Even on Rosalie’s birthday, when Marcy was five and smeared her face in whipped cream, it was Anatole she dozed with on the sofa, as Rosalie pushed her away.
Anatole was the one who—
Rosalie jumped when the telephone rang. She stood and let it ring again, but with the possibilities flurrying in her mind of who it could be, she sighed and picked it up.
“‘Allô?” she said.
“Maman?” It was Marcy, panting like she’d sped across town and back. “There’s something wrong.”
“What is it?” Her heart hammered in her ribs, throat, head.
Marcy wheezed for breath. “I—the missing kids, I think—demons—”
Rosalie’s face contorted. “Demons?”
“Can’t explain. Called the police already, but can Papa come and pick me up?”
“Your papa isn’t here. The police took him because of the missing children. What was it you were going to say about them, and is there anywhere safe you can go?”
“W-what, not there? I—” A loud thud and choking gasp.
Her heart seized, blood freezing. “Marcy? Marcy? Marcy, can you hear me?”
The telephone clicked.
Rosalie stiffened, despair besting her body again.
She knew where to go; Anatole had told her the address, and when she had cycled long ago, she often traveled down that street.
But she couldn’t do it.
Her cycle had long gathered rust, so her only options were walking (too long) and the auto. Even if she found the key, she couldn’t drive that mechanical abomination. It wasn’t a matter of will; she had never learned how to navigate such as bulky thing.
She couldn’t. She couldn’t. She couldn’t. She was old, useless. She was an accomplished cyclist, but anything with more than two wheels would kill her. If she drove, she’d crash, and if she crashed, she’d die. And, as expected of anyone, she’d be no help to Marcy dead.
But Rosalie was also no help staying in this lonely home. Marcy could die if she stayed idle, and though the police could help, the station wasn’t populated, and their numbers were already diminished by those dispatched to take Anatole from her.
Yet she couldn’t leave, couldn’t drive, couldn’t save her daughter. If only André had never left. If only the police would return Anatole. She couldn’t do anything, and she breathed deep.
She must do something.
Marcy couldn’t be like the lost children, missing or otherwise. Today, there’d be no more blood or death, God help them. God help us.
She wished Anatole was here to touch her elbow and whisper, Rosie, you can do it. I know you can. Her fingers lingered on his coat, forgotten in the haste of his arrest.
Don’t bend. Don’t bow. Don’t break.
Rosalie ran upstairs and retrieved her pistol from the chest, since a shotgun would be difficult to aim and burdensome when she needed to run, and she already had her body against her. By Christ and Mary and every godforsaken saint, I won’t bury Marcy. I won’t.
God, You can’t have this one, not today. When she returned downstairs, the stairway longer than usual, Jolie stared up with an inquisitive tilt of her head.
Hand brushing the auto key in Anatole’s coat pocket, Rosalie ordered, “Stay here, sweet one.” The dog grumbled, but obeyed. “Good girl.”
As she flung herself elbows-first out the door, Rosalie shivered from the wind. She heard the taunting of crows fat from chewing on the soured orange of the day. She staggered, the sun hitting her wrong.
God help us.
19
Jehanne
Jehanne brushed away her tangled hair and rubbed her eyelids. God, she wanted to keep sleeping, but the people outside the door talked too loud.
“That damned girl called the police on us!” Moreau. Girl? Police? Jehanne sat up, leaned forward, and looked over herself. She was still in her day clothes, the tunic and trousers Father said made her look like Mary Frith, whoever that was.
Next came Clair’s voice. “Are the officers here? Shouldn’t we hide? They’ll find the pit with—”
“They’ll be here soon! Come, the master wants us to help face them. He’ll join us shortly.”
“We shouldn’t go! The police will hurt us if we fight.”
“The master will hurt us all if we don’t! God, I’m so hungry. I’ve been waiting for a moment like this.”
Clair’s voice rose. “Are you mad?”
Jehanne strode toward her door. Moreau said, “Milla, I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
Bitingly, Clair asked, “Except the master.”
Jehanne swung the door open and startled them both. “What’s happening? Where’s Marcy? Why are the police coming?”
Moreau said dryly to Clair, “I see your tea isn’t as effective as mine.”
Clair scowled, then said to Jehanne, softer, “Stay here.”
Jehanne placed her hands on her hips. “You know I won’t.”
The woman said, “But you must, you foolish girl, if you don’t want to—”
Moreau scoffed. “Oh, she’s survived centuries as ash, she can survive being an idiot now. Being an idiot has done her well so far.”
Jehanne’s eyes widened. “What did you say?”
Clair smacked Moreau’s arm. “Don’t listen to him. He’s inebriated.” Even if Jehanne knew what that meant, she wouldn’t have been satisfied, and as Clair and Moreau hurried away, she followed them to the main stairs, where the few other servants Father lined the banisters and bothered their fingers.
Storming down the stairs, Jehanne cut through the damp anxiety like a sword through swamp water.
When Clair, standing beside Moreau, saw her, she hissed, “You need to go, damn it!”
For once, Jehanne took pause, never having seen Clair this hostile.
As if ruminating over an insignificant matter, Moreau stated, “Your friend called the police. They should be here shortly. For once, you should take Clair’s advice before the master returns.” Why would Marcy call the police? Even with Jehanne’s doubts about Father, nobody had died in the estate. Father—
Was a rapist. Don’t be dense. Even when she shook herself, tried to make herself remember their argument, a fog still blanketed her mind, as if forcing her to remain idle.
No. He hurt Clair. You can’t forgive that.
I’m not, but he isn’t a murderer. He wouldn’t—he wouldn’t let us die. Father had been ecstatic when he first embraced her after her sickness. The very same man who had hurt—was it possible to salvage the scared, gentle man and extinguish the monster? How could Father reconcile those two parts of himself? He thought her better than other women, but maybe all he needed was reason—
Don’t be dense. Don’t be dense. Don’t be an idiot. Remember.
The fog was less pressing, as if her mind had changed, as if—
I refused the sleeping tea. The supposedly innocent tea suppressing her nightmares and—
Memories, is that it? But I still don’t remember. Her past rolled about her tongue like a word she could feel the frame of without knowing the picture.
Remember.
Centuries as ash?
It didn’t take long for Jehanne to regain herself. “Let me talk to Father,” she insisted.
Moreau said, “O
h, I’m sure it’ll do you good.”
Jehanne glowered. While she understood more than many how sickness could barb one’s tongue, she couldn’t pity his situation now. “I’m staying, whether you like it or not. Why don’t you leave?”
Moreau smirked, a shaky line that didn’t reach his eyes, and waved a hand. He was like pretty wallpaper on crumbling wall. His cheeks were rosier, at least. His sickness seemed to have disappeared within the day. “As far as I’ve been told, this hall is open to all of us.”
Clair stood stiff like her feet were nailed to the floor. Jehanne wanted to punch a wall, but she needed her knuckles. “Where is Marcy?”
Clair pursed her lips and begged, “Please stop asking questions.”
Moreau narrowed his eyes. “Oh, you know she won’t.”
“Why did Marcy call the police?” Jehanne asked.
Moreau scowled and, for once, became ugly. “This is all your friend’s fault, you know.”
Clair said foggily, “Please go to your room and lock the door.”
Jehanne blinked. Something glinted in Clair’s right hand, but she hid it behind her. “What—what do you have there?”
“It’s not your concern,” Clair replied.
Father appeared just then, coming down the stairs and joining them on the landing. His hair was in disarray, his shirt haphazardly buttoned. His expression fell when he saw Jehanne, and she bristled.
“Pup, it wasn’t . . .” His voice was gruff and tearful. “I tried to keep you safe, darling. You can’t fight. You need to go.” He reeked of his spiced wine, the deep scarlet kind.
“Why?”
“The wine,” Father said, twirling a finger, “it’s a bit of madness. You get these ideas.”
Despite not having’ the slightest idea what he meant, Jehanne raised her chin. “That’s not what I want to know. Where is Marcy? The police, they can try to help us.”
Dove Keeper Page 17