Dove Keeper

by Emily Deibler

  Marcy whispered, “The trellis, let’s go.”

  To Gilles, Jehanne said, “Why do you hurt others if it makes you drink and cry? Why would you hurt so many? Why would you when you didn’t know if I’d ever come back?” The taste on her tongue soured.

  “Habit, I suppose. What else could I do? What else was this life of mine worth? So long as I repent, fleshly acts can be forgiven, even when they’re done for the Devil. And I’ll stop, I swear, now that you’re here. I’ll stop if it means never seeing the faces in the walls again.”

  “A habit is biting your nails or sucking your thumb. How could you? How could you?”

  Gilles clenched both hands and raised them, and Jehanne couldn’t help but flinch. “How could the king leave you to die? How could God and His angels sentence you to burn when you were a flicker of light in a dark age? How could God and the Devil keep you from me for centuries? I spent money on cathedrals, sacrificed many to gain silver and accrue a blood favor. Does ‘why’ matter at this point? Is this what you want, truly, for us to die? I could be your papa, if that’s what you want. A home, a family. I can love you and tell you everything now.” Jehanne stiffened. “No more secrets. You could even find your own way, have a husband and children.”

  She erupted not in a shout, but a whisper. “Is that what you think I want? And you’d let me stray from your side? What makes you think I don’t understand you’d keep me caged so you could gawk at me?” Rage consumed everything. I’ll chase you into the fires of Hell myself if it means I can ensure you won’t hurt someone again. Fire would cleanse. Jehanne knew better than anyone, didn’t she? All she needed was a match because she hadn’t thought that far. Fire, the ecstasy of release in the throes of agony when she, a small tear, traveled upward upon the path of Creation and melted back into God’s eye. And then, after everything was ash, she’d . . .

  She’d what? What could a martyr do after she’d already suffered and died? What could a runaway do when she was displaced and everyone who loved her had died centuries ago?

  Jehanne glowered. “When did you start hurting children? When did you first start killing?”

  Gilles’ jaw set, but his shoulders eased. “I suppose I’ve nothing to lose. All will be forgiven by the Lord. After I lost the last of my silver on a theater piece, ah, his name was Jeudon. The last name, can’t remember the first, not that it matters, anyhow. He was a poor furrier’s son, and I offered him a job as a young page after I saw a wolf pelt on his charming little shoulders; I said he could be trained to read and write, and his parents were ecstatic. I still remember that frightened peace on his face when he bled nude on the hook. He had stopped struggling and accepted his flight to God.”

  “How old was he?”

  “I don’t know. Twelve, ten, I suppose?” He shrugged. “Forgive me, love. They all blend together, after a point.” His eyes glistened, but not from tears. He looked behind Jehanne, as if thrilled by Marcy trembling against Jehanne’s back. “I loved that expression, the one when he realized his predicament, that shock, the sorrowful gleam in his eyes. If I could freeze that moment forever, I would. Forgive me, darling. I know how it sounds, but I couldn’t help myself after your death. The blood, like when we were at war, their fear was—” His expression grew solemn, voice quieter. “No, I suppose it was only my second greatest joy, second to you.”

  “Children, Gilles. You’ve hurt children!”

  “I know, but the woman and Moreau were complacent and willing.”

  “Her name is Milla, and when would you ever realize when someone isn’t, as you say, willing?”

  He leaned forward like a child with a well-loved secret. “You should’ve seen what I made Moreau do in the depths, how I made him coax the children so he and the others could beat them unconscious with whatever tools at hand. Then you wouldn’t pity him. And the woman, well, she could’ve tried to stop me, or she could’ve denied the money I gave her and left, but no, she stayed and kept quiet.”

  “What did you threaten them with if they didn’t comply? Do I even need to ask, when you’ve already carried it out?”

  “Does it matter? If someone gave you the choice to torment a child or die, wouldn’t you choose the latter?”

  Heat rose in her throat like a song. “I’d say so, it matters. And for your last question, I want to say ‘no,’ but I don’t know what you put your servants through before you made them hurt others. I can’t blame them. Now that their souls are gone, they’ve faced their judgment, for better or worse—”

  “Jehanne, you truly were too pure for the world if you think that.”

  “—but you haven’t faced yours.”

  “I understand your anger.”

  “You do, do you? How noble.” Anger. Suddenly, the hotness in her throat died. Was this anger, or acceptance? She would’ve preferred anger to this.

  What am I accepting?

  “You were always a righteous one, but you were also close to God, and He loves even men like me. Can’t you find it in yourself, that grace? That saintly forgiveness for a poor, repentant wretch?”

  Jehanne snarled. She hadn’t asked to be a saint, and she wasn’t about to retreat and pray to the blackbirds for his sake. “Go to hell.”

  Gilles bowed his head. “I was an obedient soldier, wasn’t I?” When he looked at her, she didn’t see regret or a plea, but this closed scrutiny. “Is this what you really want, for us to fly to Heaven together? All my powers—they were all meant to amount to this, you know. To us being together for eternity, and think, in the times ahead, though you’re furious now, I can prove how gentle I will be to you.” He grinned, arms outstretched like the Madonna.

  You sale con, so that’s where you think you’ll go.

  “Yes,” Jehanne said, voice low. “That’s what I want. We can be together in Heaven without this pain. And then I can try to understand.”

  He leaned as if he meant to fall over the banister, which would’ve—she wasn’t sure if it’d harm him.

  Marcy shouted, “Let’s leave!” But, after the jolt of remembering other people existed in the world besides Gilles, Jehanne ignored her, hoping a day would come in some other life when all would be right between them again.

  Gilles said, “On the matter of the servants, while you may doubt my moral judgment, which is fair enough, I’d say most would rather die before abetting what happened here.”

  Marcy pressed, “Jehanne.”

  She said to Marcy, allowing Gilles to gutter from her mind like a candle. “I need to do this. Go down the trellis.”

  “Do what? You can’t stay here. He’s not your responsibility.”

  Jehanne twisted around and kissed Marcy’s forehead, clumsily holding her sword hand away. Her dearest friend, with what strength she could give, reciprocated with a gentle christening on the mouth. When Jehanne pulled away, she said, “I was born to do this.” She rested a hand on the back of her friend’s head.

  Blinking, gaze swampy, Marcy whispered, “Please.”

  Jehanne’s soul split. As she turned away and stepped closer to the banister, Gilles granted her a longing look. His eyes, flickering and as gold as the Devil, were tear-filled. He shrugged, shoulders lower than they’d been before. He fumbled in his breast pocket with his uninjured hand and produced a cigar pack and match. It was a mundane feat, his ability to hold them both without dropping them. He stuck the cigar in his mouth with some effort, took his ruined arm with splendid effort and worked to light the match on the banister. If Jehanne hadn’t endured the past few hours, his efforts may’ve been comical.

  Marcy tugged on Jehanne’s elbow, another hard grip on her opposite shoulder. “We need to leave. Now. Please.”

  Gilles took a step closer to the banister.

  Jehanne said, “I’ll watch over him. Like I said, climb down the trellis.”

  “No, no splitting up again,” Marcy replied, “no leaving without each other. Come with us.”

  “This is my duty.”

  “You don
’t need to help him.”

  “I’m not. The police will come to check on their missing men and find this. I won’t let him disappear.”

  “Please stop being so stubborn,” Marcy pleaded, voice breaking. “We all love you. I love you. We want you to come with us and be safe.”

  Oh, Marcy, but I will be safe.

  Before anyone could stop him, Gilles dropped his lit cigar over the banister. The oil ignited. The space under Jehanne’s ribs churned as the scent of burning wood and meat overwhelmed her world. Marcy, Rosalie, André, Gilles, their mingled words were soup. Jehanne was Venus in the sea, ready to be born from the roaring foam, the slick and seedy mass threatening to drown her; she was Saint Margaret in the great dragon’s belly.

  But now Jehanne’s story, like the tales of Venus and Margaret, would end.

  Jehanne raised the braquemard, and though Gilles tensed, he didn’t do anything to thwart her, as if preparing to be run through. The calm settling in her was both bliss and agony. As the stench of sulfur grew, her bones settled and reformed anew, and she swore they poked out her back to grant her flight.

  She dropped the sword. Marcy and her family would be okay, and that lifted Jehanne up. They would escape, and reinforcements would come soon after an extended absence of the dead officers, all of whom would be avenged. Gilles twisted around, body like a serpent’s, and Jehanne steeled herself. For the sake of who he’d been by the campfire, she didn’t meet his smoldering eyes. This was for Catherine and Clair and Moreau and all the children she couldn’t protect in her old life and now.

  With a burst of force, she left Marcy despite a desperate protest, crossing the distance between her and Gilles. Before Gilles could sting her with any blackberried promises, Jehanne clutched his shirt and shoved him with all her strength and, feet ungrounded, they both tumbled over the banister, plummeting headfirst into seething light. She knew pain, purpose.

  And, as she fell, she flew.

  26

  Marcy

  Marcy wailed. Before she could stop herself, she stared over the banister, but she didn’t find Jehanne.

  Hands reaching in the flames—God, there were hands and nails and eyes and teeth in the fire.

  Hands reaching, reaching for Marcy in the scorching, reeking pit that swallowed Jehanne like an angry, swollen bat devoured a wasp. The lights below, pointing at her like an imperious king in yellow with a molten crown dripping down his hair, made her vision blue, and she could fall so easily and forget, fall back into the dirt she’d scrambled through with blood and filth and urine coating her like it did now.

  She could be clean, clean in Jehanne’s light like she hadn’t been when the lanterns sneered at her. The manor’s filth had burrowed its way inside, staining her in such a way that she could never be clean. She could scrub her flesh, but not her soul. But with fire, she could cleanse herself and make everyone hear and see her love, the love Jehanne hadn’t comprehended before she chose to die instead of staying with her.

  All Marcy had to do was fall into the bed of fingers like it was Papa’s rosebushes. The thorny sting would last far shorter than her memories. Too many lights, like what Papa would say about Versailles. Her foot rose to meet the banister, but hands stopped her. She wanted it to be Jehanne, hoped she saw wrong.

  “Marcy!” Maman shouted, and Marcy understood what it meant to be petrified as Maman looked to her with pure terror; Maman lay open before Marcy like a book, like a wound exposed to cruel wind.

  “Marcy, darling, please. Come with me.”

  Though Marcy realized she wasn’t the only person who’d lost something here or could lose life if she stayed here, she insisted, “You go. I need Jehanne.”

  Maman’s visage crumpled. “Jehanne wanted you to go down the trellis with us. Please.”

  Trembling, André teetered over the stone railing outside, and Maman gently guided her to the balcony.

  Maman squeezed her shoulder, and Marcy drew a breath deep into her lungs.

  “Go on, André,” Maman said.

  “I can’t do it,” he replied, voice high. “I’ll break my neck.”

  Maman said evenly, “I know it’ll be hard.” She looked back at Marcy as she spoke, as if Marcy would disappear into smoke if she turned away her attention. “I’ll go first and catch you if you fall, all right?”

  It took a long while before Marcy felt the hand leave her shoulder. Maman tentatively made her way to the trellis, which shook but proved sturdy. Before Maman descended, however, she looked to the both of them and said, “Promise me you’ll both climb down. I promise to catch you.”

  Neither Marcy nor Andre replied with anything beyond nods; with the fire growing, it would have to do.

  Once Maman had reached the ground, André said to Marcy, “You go first.”

  “I don’t. I can’t . . .”

  Hurriedly, he clasped her hand in his, which made Marcy feel nothing as sweat poured down her temple and arms. “You can. I couldn’t have done this without you. Believe me.”

  Marcy said, her voice somewhere high above her body, “Please go first. It’ll put me at ease to have you both there. Do it now!” The last statement came out harsher than she’d intended, but it was all she could do not to cry.

  Despite his concerned look, he obeyed her wishes, and as he descended, Marcy froze, stuck between the scowling, pinkening world and the fire’s gnashing grin.

  Please don’t die, André. Please don’t, not like—like, don’t die, please.

  André couldn’t die, not after all that had happened. In her head, the trellis cracked and he fell, his head splitting on the dirt and feeding the worms. He couldn’t die; she’d already lost so much, and perhaps the only person she could think would understand was Maman. Not even Papa could because though he saw death in his job, he hadn’t seen Marcy like this.

  When there was no war, Marcy smacked her heels against the couch and said, “I wish I had a brother.”

  Maman looked up from her bloodless newspaper. “You have André.”

  “He doesn’t count. He’s . . .” He was outgrowing her. The more he trained with Papa, the greater the chasm between them. If only she knew a way to keep him, to keep the boy who’d played with her by the sea when she tasted salt and sweat.

  Maman stared into the distance for what seemed like thirty minutes. “You had a brother. His name was Roger.” Her face moved oddly, and she choked on the last word like she’d bit her tongue or swallowed something sour.

  “What happened to him?” Marcy asked, perking up.

  As usual, Maman avoided looking at her. “He went away.”

  Marcy pouted. Roger was lucky to leave and have his own adventures. “Can’t he come back?”

  Maman pressed her lips into a thin line, and she averted her eyes. “He died.”

  Marcy wanted to ask how, but she thought it’d be too much, so she said, “What did he look like?”

  She should’ve asked how Roger died because it would’ve had the same result.

  Maman’s face shattered. So many lines she hadn’t thought her mother was capable of with her smooth stoicism. “Please.” With that, they never spoke of Roger again (she almost forgot his name), and Marcy returned to the comfort of Papa with his scratchy beard and poppy ankles.

  She didn’t understand Maman’s distance and secrecy. Honestly, it was infuriating that she wouldn’t trust her own daughter with that truth. Then again, Papa hadn’t spoken of her big brother either, so it was unfair to only blame Maman for everything.

  She felt something leaking down her neck, shoulders, and back as the manor fell like a stubborn, ancient forest beast finally submitting to age and winter.

  Water. Even in fire, she was drowning.

  Marcy blinked. It was her turn to escape, but she couldn’t climb down. The smoke billowed, black and omnipresent.

  Instead, another memory assaulted her, and a crack in glass formed until she realized it wasn’t glass, but a gray April day when she’d tried to climb a piti
ful birch in the corner of Papa’s garden. The bark gave way under her nails, and she fell with a loud grunt without reaching a branch; her frustration overwhelmed the oofgh of the fall, which failed to knock the breath out of her.

  Maman was wearing a white dress, which was crinkly and ugly, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that the dress made her ghostly, like the limbs below her neck were fog tapering down to the dewy grass.

  “Marcelle!”

  Marcy froze as Maman was upon her.

  Maman shook her shoulders once, and it jolted Marcy’s heart like she was a rabbit watching a wolf emerge from the dark brush. “Mon Dieu, what were you thinking? You could’ve broken your neck! Is that what you want?” Marcy’s eyes hurt with tears, and Maman deflated. “Oh, poupée. I didn’t mean—”

  Marcy ran off, and in the evening during supper, neither of them acknowledged Maman’s outburst. Maman’s folded her fingers together in her lap and focused dully on her nearly full plate ten minutes into the meal.

  “Marcy!”

  “Stop, Marcy, Marcelle!”

  Maman—André?

  Marcy snapped her head up, but Maman was gone, leaving only smoke and gray light in her wake. She lurched, and something cold and hard grazed her hands and pressed against her stomach, and she had the sense of falling until she frantically shuffled back.

  As she returned to herself, the calls bordered on screams and the air grew acrider.

  Eyes stinging, Marcy could barely see Maman when she looked down, could only see her palms extended like a porcelain Virgin statue, but when the world focused, Maman’s hair was a mess and her face shone where blood hadn’t marked her.

  Despite what she and André had witnessed, they’d climbed out of the underground tunnels. She could do this. Marcy’s eyes watered, and she gagged as smoke billowed out into the open air. The manor groaned when she made her way down. The uneven edges of the wood bit into her skin. She ignored the splinters, not through will, but because of her fading awareness of her own body. She could only hope someone would catch her if she fell, if the wood cracked, if she tangled her feet in the vines.