That first Christmas, dressed in black clothes lent to them by Pascale and Gaspard, the Tourniers pushed into the tiny chapel. It was so crowded that Isabelle stood on her toes to try to see the minister. She soon gave up and looked above him at the murals in green and red and yellow and brown covering the choir walls, of Christ holding the Book of Life on the curved ceiling, the twelve Apostles in panels below him. She had not seen decoration in a church since the coloured glass and the statue of the Virgin and Child of her childhood.
On her toes again to look at the figures painted at eye level, she stifled a gasp. To the minister's right was a faint image of the Virgin, staring sadly into the distance. Though Isabelle's eyes filled with tears, she kept her expression dull. She watched the minister, now and then her glance darting to the mural.
The Virgin looked at her and smiled for a moment before resuming her mournful expression. No one saw but Isabelle.
That was the second secret.
After that she always hurried to Chalières on festival days to stand as near to the Virgin as possible.
Spring sun brought the third secret. Overnight the snow melted, forming waterfalls that plummeted from the surrounding mountains and flooded the river. The sun reappeared, the sky turned blue, grass sprang up. They could leave the door and windows open, the children and the smoke escaping outside, Etienne stretching in the sun like a cat and smiling briefly at Isabelle. His grey hair made him look old.
Isabelle welcomed the sun, but it also made her vigilant. Every day she took Marie to the woods and inspected her hair, pulling out any red strands. Marie stood patiently and never cried out at each spark of pain. She asked her mother to let her keep the hair, hiding the growing ball in a hole in a nearby tree.
One day Marie ran to Isabelle and buried her head in her lap.
— My hair is gone, she whispered through tears, even then understanding that she should say nothing to the others. Isabelle glanced at Etienne, Hannah and the boys. Except for Hannah's sour expression, nothing in their faces suggested suspicion.
She was helping Marie search the tree again when she looked up and saw a bird's nest glinting in the sun.
— There! she pointed. Marie laughed and began to clap her hands.
— Take it! she cried to the birds, holding her hair up by the ends and letting it drop in a slow cascade. Take it, it's yours! Now I will always know where it is.
She spun in a circle and fell to the ground laughing.
The high-pitched whistle rose and fell before ending in a bird-like trill. It was heard all the way along the valley. After a time the rattles and jingles and creaks of a cart could be heard, bouncing off the rocks high above to reach them in the fields they were planting with flax. Etienne sent Jacob to find out what was coming. When he returned he took Isabelle's hand and led her, the rest of the family following, along the path to the edge of the village. There the cart had stopped, surrounded by a crowd.
The pedlar was short and dark, with a beard and a long moustache curled into elabourate whorls, and a red and yellow striped cap shaped like an upside-down bucket pulled over his ears. He perched high above them on a cart heaped with goods, swinging and climbing over it with the assuredness of a man who knows every toehold and hand-grip. As he climbed he talked non-stop over his shoulder in a strange singing accent that made Isabelle smile and Etienne stare.
— Oranges! Oranges! I show you oranges, olives, lemons from Sevilla! Here is your beautiful copper pot. And here your leather bag. And here your buckles. You want buckles on those shoes, fair lady? Yes, you do! And I give you buttons to match! And your thread, and your lace here, yes, your finest lace. Come, come! Come look, come touch, don't be afraid. Ah, Jacques La Barbe, bonjour encore! Your brother says he comes from Geneva soon, but your sister he says stays near Lyons. Why she does not join you here in this lovely place? Never mind. And Abraham Rougemont, there is a horse for you ready in Bienne. A good buy, I saw it with these my eyes. You give that pretty daughter of yours a ride around the village. And Monsieur le régent, I meet your son —
On and on he talked, passing on messages while selling his goods. People laughed and teased him; he was a familiar and welcome sight, arriving every year after the worst of the winter and again during the harvest festival.
In the middle of the excitement he leaned over to Isabelle.
— Che bella, I have not seen you before! he cried. You come and look at my things? He patted the rolls of cloth next to him. Come look!
Isabelle smiled shyly and bowed her head; Etienne frowned. They had nothing to trade with, less than nothing, for they owed favours to everyone in Moutier. On their arrival they had been given two goats, a small sack each of flax and hemp seeds, blankets, clothes. There was no need to pay anyone back, but they were expected to be as generous when the next refugees arrived with nothing. They stood for a long time watching the purchases, admiring the lace, the new harness, the white linen smocks.
Isabelle heard the pedlar mention Alès.
— He might know, she whispered to Etienne.
— Don't ask, he hissed.
He doesn't want to know, she thought. But I do.
She waited until Etienne and Hannah had left, and Petit Jean and Marie had tired of running round and round the cart and had gone off to the river, before she approached him.
— Please, Monsieur, she whispered.
— Ah, Bella, you want to look! Come, come! She shook her head.
— No, I want to ask – you have been to Alès?
— At Christmas, yes. Why, you have a message for me?
— My sister-in-law and her husband are there – might be there. Susanne Tournier and Bertrand Bouleaux. They have a daughter, Deborah, and maybe a baby, if God wills.
For the first time the pedlar was quiet, thinking. He seemed to be searching through all the faces and names he had seen and heard in his travels and stored in his memory.
— No, he said at last, I have not seen them. But I look for them for you. In Alès. And your name?
— Isabelle. Isabelle du Moulin. And my husband, Etienne Tournier.
— Isabella, che bella. A perfect name I will not forget! He smiled at her. And for you I show you the perfect thing I have, the special thing. He lowered his voice. Très cher –I do not show this to most people.
He led Isabelle round his cart and began to dig among bundles of cloth until he pulled out a bale of white linen. Jacob appeared at Isabelle's side and the pedlar motioned to him.
— Come, come, you like to look at things! I see your eyes looking. Now look at this.
He stood over them and shook out the white cloth. Out fell the fourth secret, the colour Isabelle had thought she would never see again. She cried out, then reached over and rubbed the cloth between her fingers. It was a soft wool, dyed very deep. She bowed her head and touched the cloth to her cheek.
The pedlar nodded.
— You know this blue, he said with satisfaction. I knew you know this blue. The blue of the Virgin of Saint Zaccaria.
— Where is that? Isabelle smoothed the cloth.
— Ah, a beautiful church in Venezia. There is a story to this blue, you know. The weaver who made this cloth modelled it after the robe of the Virgin who is in a painting in Saint Zaccaria. This was so to thank her for the miracle.
— What miracle? Jacob stared at the pedlar with wide brown eyes.
— The weaver had a little daughter he loved, and one day she disappeared, as children often do in Venezia. They fall into the canals, you see, and they drown. The pedlar crossed himself.
— So the little daughter did not come home and the weaver, he went to Saint Zaccaria to pray for her soul. He prayed to the Virgin for hours. And when he goes home he finds his daughter there, all alive! And in thanks he makes this cloth, this special blue, you see, for his daughter to wear and live safely forever in the Virgin's care. Others have tried to copy it but no one can. There is a secret in the dye, you see, and only his son knows now. A fa
mily secret.
Isabelle stared at the cloth, then looked up at the pedlar, tears in her eyes.
— I have nothing, she said.
— For you, then, Bella, I give you a little something. A gift of blue.
He bent over the cloth and from a frayed end pulled off a piece of thread the length of her finger. With a deep bow he presented it to her.
Isabelle often thought about the blue cloth. She had no way of buying it; even if she did Etienne and Hannah would not allow it in the house.
— Catholic cloth! Hannah would mutter if she could speak.
She hid the thread in the hem of her dress and brought it out only when she was alone or with Jacob, who used words sparingly and would say nothing about the bit of colour they shared.
Then one of their goats had a hidden kid and Isabelle had one last secret to keep.
The goat had given birth to two kids, licked them clean, nursed them, slept with them pushed against her swollen udder. When Isabelle left the fields to check on her she noticed the red membrane of another head pushing out. She pulled out the tiny body, saw that it was alive and set it in front of the goat to clean. As the new kid fed Isabelle sat and watched it and thought. Her secrets were making her bold.
The woods around Moutier were so big that she knew of places where no one went. She took the kid to one of these spots, built a shelter of wood and hay, fed it and looked after it for a whole summer without anyone knowing.
Except for one. She was letting the kid suck at a sack filled with its mother's milk one day when Jacob stepped out from behind a beech tree. Squatting beside her, he put his hand on the kid's back.
— Papa wants to know where you are, he said as he stroked the kid.
— How long have you known I come here?
He shrugged and played with the kid's hair, flattening it one way and then the other.
— Will you help me look after it?
He looked up at her.
— Of course, Maman.
His smile was so rare that to see it was like receiving a gift.
This time she was ready when she heard the pedlar's whistle. The pedlar smiled broadly when he saw Isabelle. She smiled back. While she and Hannah looked at his linen Jacob climbed up and began to show him his pebbles, passing on her message in a low voice. The pedlar nodded, all the while admiring the strange shapes and colours of the stones.
— You have a good eye, mio bambino, he said. Good colours, good shapes. You look and you say not much, not like me! I love my words, me, but you, you like to look and see things, yes? Yes.
When he began to recite messages his eyes lit on Isabelle and he snapped his fingers.
— Ah, yes, I remember now! Yes, I find your family in Alès!
Despite themselves, even Etienne and Hannah looked up at him expectantly. He warmed to his audience.
— Yes, yes, he said, waving his hands elabourately. There I see them in the market of Alès, ah, bella famiglia! And I tell them of you and they are happy you are well.
— And they are well? Isabelle asked. And there is a baby?
— Yes, yes, a baby. Bertrand and Deborah and Isabella, now I remember.
— No, I'm Isabelle. You mean to say Susanne. Isabelle had not thought the pedlar could make a mistake.
— No, no, it is Bertrand and the two girls, Deborah and Isabella, just a baby, Isabella.
— But what about Susanne? The mother?
— Ah. The pedlar paused, looking down at them and stroking his moustache nervously. Ah, well. She died giving birth to the baby, you see. To Isabella.
He turned away then, uncomfortable at passing on bad news, and busied himself in sorting through leather harness straps for a customer. Isabelle hung her head, eyes blurred with tears. Etienne and Hannah left the crowd and stood silently at a distance, heads bowed.
Marie took Isabelle's hand.
— Maman, she whispered. Some day I will see Deborah. Won't I?
The pedlar met Jacob later, further down the road. In the dark the exchange was made, goat for blue. The boy hid the cloth in the woods. The next day he and Isabelle shook it out and stared for a long time at the block of rippling colour. Then they wrapped the cloth inside a piece of linen and hid it in the straw mattress Jacob shared with Marie and Petit Jean.
— We will do something with it, Isabelle promised him. God must tell me what.
In the autumn they harvested their own hemp crop. One day Etienne sent Petit Jean to the woods to cut thick sticks of oak which they would use to beat the hemp. The others set up trestles and began bringing out armfuls of hemp from the barn to lay across them.
Petit Jean returned with five sticks over his shoulder and the nest of Marie's hair.
— Look what I've found, Mémé, he said, holding out the nest to Hannah, the red catching in the light as he turned it.
— Oh! Marie cried out before she could stop herself. Isabelle flinched.
Etienne glanced from Marie to Isabelle. Hannah studied the nest, then Marie's hair. She glared at Isabelle and handed the nest to Etienne.
— Go to the river, Etienne ordered the children.
Petit Jean set down the sticks, then reached over and pulled Marie's hair as hard as he could. She began to sob and Petit Jean smiled, with a look that reminded Isabelle of Etienne when she first knew him. As he walked away he held his knife by its point and flicked it away. It lodged neatly in a tree trunk.
He is ten years old, she thought, but already he acts and thinks like a man.
Jacob took Marie's hand and led her away, looking back at Isabelle with wide eyes.
Etienne said nothing until the children were gone. Then he gestured at the nest.
— What is this?
Isabelle glanced at it, then looked at the ground. She did not know enough about keeping secrets to know what to do when they were revealed.
So she told the truth.
— It is Marie's hair, she whispered. She has been growing red hair and I pull it out in the woods. The birds took it to make a nest. She swallowed. I didn't want her to be teased. To be – judged.
When she saw the look that passed between Etienne and Hannah her stomach felt as if she had swallowed stones. She wished she had lied to them.
— I was helping her! she cried. It was to help us! I didn't mean any harm!
Etienne fixed his eyes on the horizon.
— There have been rumours, he said slowly. I have heard things.
— What things?
— The woodcutter Jacques La Barbe said he thought he saw you with a kid in the woods. And another found a patch of blood on the ground. They are talking about you, La Rousse. Is that what you want?
They are talking about me, she thought. Even here. My secrets are not to be secrets after all. And they lead to other secrets. Will they find out about them too?
— There is one more thing. You were with a man when we left Mont Lozère. A shepherd.
— Who says that? This was a secret she had kept even from herself, not allowing herself to think about him. Her secret secret.
She looked at Hannah and suddenly knew. She can talk, Isabelle thought. She can talk and she is talking to Etienne. She saw us on Mont Lozère. The thought made her shiver violently.
— What do you have to say, La Rousse?
She kept silent, knowing words could not help her, fearing more secrets would fly out if she opened her mouth.
— What are you hiding? What did you do with that goat? Kill it? Sacrifice it to the devil? Or did you trade it with that Catholic pedlar looking at you like that?
He picked up one of the sticks, grabbed her wrist and dragged her into the house. He made her stand in a corner while he searched everywhere, throwing down pots, stirring the fire, pulling apart their straw mattress, then Hannah's. When he reached the children's mattress Isabelle held her breath.
Now the end has come, she thought. Holy Mother, help me.
He turned the mattress over and pulled out all the straw.
The blow was a surprise; he had never hit her before. His fist knocked her halfway across the room.
— You won't drag us down with your witchery, La Rousse, he said softly. Then he picked up the stick Petit Jean had cut and beat her till the room went black.
The Virgin Blue Page 14