The Book of Shadows

by James Reese

  JAMES REESE

  THE

  BOOK OF

  SHADOWS

  To JER, MMR, PL, MR, and AJL

  …such things,

  though rare in time,

  are frequent in eternity.

  —Byron, “Cain”

  Contents

  Prologue

  I vividly recall my mother’s blood.

  Book One: The Night of the Senses

  One

  In 1812, I went to “the Stone,” the holy house…

  Two

  Not long after my “ascension” to the Upper School—it…

  Three

  Peronette, as the niece of the Mother Superior, the daughter…

  Four

  I passed that long, punitive afternoon in the smithy, planing…

  Five

  Sister claire de sazilly. Where to begin? I never knew…

  Six

  My reasoning, as best I can recollect it, was this…

  Seven

  But first I’d bathe. Extraordinary! Here I was—me, who’d…

  Eight

  There’d been some commotion moments earlier; this accounted for the…

  Nine

  The mayor stepped forward to stand between the still-prone Sister…

  Ten

  As I took up the books in no order of…

  Eleven

  Prospering? repeated madeleine. Far from it. The village of Q…

  Twelve

  It was one month later that the Prosecutor duly served…

  Thirteen

  “Who has done this to you?”

  Fourteen

  Not long after the tale was told, Father Louis, seated…

  Book Two: Ravndal

  Fifteen

  I woke slowly, into perfect darkness.

  Sixteen

  I sat for some time in the roseraie. The roses…

  Seventeen

  The tall white tapers that had been set about the…

  Eighteen

  It was after the Blinis Demidoff, just as this Roméo…

  Nineteen

  When I came to I was lying on one of…

  Twenty

  In the paris of my day, there were suppers everywhere;…

  Twenty One

  When word of my return to Paris—and my riches—reached…

  Twenty Two

  I went straight to Rome, but as I found that…

  Twenty Three

  I traveled, alone, and all in the service of my…

  Twenty Four

  I had just come home from a stay of some…

  Twenty Five

  The sisters have formed a circle. I sit savoring the…

  Twenty Six

  It was indeed she: the soprano I’d seen—in Naples?

  Twenty Seven

  I read that first excerpt from Sebastiana’s Book of Shadows…

  Twenty Eight

  When I woke, having slept for I don’t know how…

  Twenty Nine

  Returning to the studio—and let me say deep, deep…

  Book Three: The Coast Road

  Thirty

  There were many things I might have considered as we…

  Thirty One

  As we ambled along the quay into Nantes that next…

  Thirty Two

  Upon arriving in Angers the day prior, I’d had Michel…

  Thirty Three

  We’d been traveling some days now. Lately, our course was…

  Thirty Four

  That night, with words akin to these, Madeleine introduced the…

  Thirty Five

  It was a day in late November, said Madeleine, standing…

  Thirty Six

  I woke shivering from a fitful sleep; dreams had plagued…

  Thirty Seven

  Shock? What is the word to describe what one feels…

  Thirty Eight

  Some time later, the elementals gone, I had Étienne stop…

  Thirty Nine

  We arrived in Orange. It was late in the day,…

  Forty

  The driver was a bit put off by me, by…

  Forty One

  By midnight I was where I needed to be: at…

  Forty Two

  Father louis and I walked from the grave. We did…

  Epilogue

  This sea-night is sublime—wind enough to fill the sails,…

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Praise

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  I VIVIDLY RECALL my mother’s blood.

  I am at sea now. The ship on which I sail lists badly, despite its ballast: casks once full of whale oil and corn, now empty. The candelabrum by which I write is mounted to this tiny table; its candles burn at odd angles; pools of wax spill over at the wick. There is a full and golden moon tonight, but its light does not enter my cabin, and the weather just now prohibits my going topside. So here I sit, in this dank and dreary hold, my body as troubled by the sea as my mind is by the story to come.

  The day it began, all I had was life (some five or six years’ worth), language, and a name: Herculine, inherited from a father…rather, from a man named Hercule whom my mother did not know well, and whom I knew not at all. For many years to come I would have little else. Life, language, and a name. And always the memory of the blood.

  The Day of the Blood dawns green and gold. It is late summer. Sunrays burn the morning mist from the fields that spread all around us, sizzling in the rising heat. A haze like gold dust in the air. Roadside, fields of hay have been harvested into cones twice my height. A distant barn. A brook runs along, mimicking the road. Far away there rises a black wall of forest.

  No people. No sounds but the brook.

  I am tired. The sun has risen since we left home, Maman and me. I don’t know where we are going. I struggle to keep pace.

  The road beneath our thin-soled shoes is baked golden brown, dry and dusty and cracked as bad bread. My perspiration falls to pock the earth. My mother perspires terribly; my small hand in hers is a wet rag; it would slip from her grip if it were to slacken at all, but she holds so tightly to me, so tightly.

  Nearer now, the forest is not black but green, with its underglow of gold. The sun. The golden undersides of all green things…. Deeper, I know the forest is still dark, dark as night.

  We walk on, beside the brook, which runs red, clogged with clay. Stones in the shallow water, the hunched and armored backs of ancient animals. The water whispers over the stones.

  …My mother. Her face is a vessel that has been emptied, that has been broken, has spilled. Her eyes are melting ice. Her simple dress is dark at the crook of the arms, a triangle of dark spreads from her throat over her chest. Already the kerchief at her mouth is spotted red. I fear for her. I know she is not well.

  I don’t know where we are going. We have been on the road for hours. I have never been this far from the cottage. Are we near the place we are going? Somehow I know we are. My mother’s gait quickens, then steadies and slows.

  Why am I in my one dress, with ribbons wound through my long blond plait? The church shoes hurt my feet. And why does Maman carry that satchel full of things drawn hastily from my drawer?

  The day has been a secret since its start. She laid me down last night as she woke me this morning, with whispers and a kiss. Prayers, I am sure. Now she says nothing. The last of her strength is in her step. Yet she trips over a stone half-sunk in the road and nearly falls. She stops, stands still, and then regains her sickly pace. Her hand tightens around mine, tighter, tighter.

  Maman, what is it? Please talk to me. Are you all right? Maman, why don’t we rest
?

  I see her trembling lips moving in muttered prayer. I see her cross herself.

  Suddenly she stops beside the brook and kneels. Down on her bony knees, as I have found her every morning of my life. But this is not prayer, no. She sways, her head in her hands; for the first time she lets go my hand. I am afraid she will fall forward, face first into the brook, dashing her head on a stone. Moments, long moments like this.

  Finally I kneel beside her. I cup my hands and scoop water from the brook. Maman, drink. Maman?

  Her hands fall heavily to her sides. She turns her face to mine, slowly. Her eyes roll back to show only their whites. She breaks at the waist. The water falls from my hands as I reach fast for her shoulders, to steady her. She grabs my hands, laps at them, her tongue taking the water that is no longer there. She holds to the empty cup of my hands. Then I see, I think I see, a strange shape come into her eyes, a blot of blackness, writhing, taking shape, and…And into my hands she spews and spits the upwelling blood.

  Her chest heaves. Her nails dig into the flesh on the back of my hands, slickened and red. There rises a sweet acrid stench.

  Blood from her nose. From her mouth. She cries out, tries to speak, but chokes on the blood.

  Her eyes flutter shut. Still the blood wave comes, forces her sealed lips to split. While the blood wells again, she tries to speak. I cannot understand her. Her eyes are not her eyes; something else is at their center.

  I hold to her. She is heavy. She slips from my blood-slick grip. Her dress tears and she falls on her back on the bank, near the brook. In the brook. I hold her head up. If she turns to either side she will drown.

  Standing above, knee-deep in the brook, I cast a shadow over her face. Her eyes open. She focuses with the strangeness at the center of her eyes. The pupil transshapes. Twists and turns into a recognizable shape, but still I cannot identify it. Then her eyes roll back to the whiteness and there is nothing.

  I am crying. My mother is dying, I know this. She spasms, coughs up a huge clot of blood. Flat on her back, she drowns not in the brook but in her own blood.

  I pull at her. Try to pull her from the water. She is heavy, too heavy. To move her, to take hold of her twitching legs, I let go of her head and it sinks into the red water. Still I pull at her legs. She is too heavy. I pull and pull and she does not move. I see her red and wavering profile underwater. Bubbles rise from her mouth, and underwater I see a black skein of blood unravel.

  I am in the brook now, standing knee-deep, trying to maneuver beneath my mother. Trying to shove her up onto the bank. Nothing. Then suddenly she turns.

  I shove. Harder. She is on the bank now, on her side, spilling blood into the mud we have made, the bloody mud. She revives. It seems so. But everywhere the blood smell.

  She spits, coughs. Tries to speak. And then, clearly, I hear, Go to the Stone. Take this road to the Stone and…

  And with the last of her strength she raises her arm. It hangs in the air like a crooked branch, one long twig-like finger pointing down the dirt road. Go to the Stone.

  I follow her finger. There, on the horizon, I see it. Far away.

  Go, I hear her say. A watery, eerie, deafening cry. Go to the Stone.

  She rolls from the bank to the brook, and I rise up and run. I run and run and run. To the Stone.

  Book One

  The Night of the Senses

  Thou shalt not suffer the

  sorceress to live.

  —Exodus 22:18

  1

  Early Life, Such as It Was

  IN 1812, I went to “the Stone,” the holy house at C——, a village straddling the ill-drawn borders of Brittany and Normandy, dependent upon the grace of the Church. For the next twelve long years, the nuns who had taken me in made it plain: if I lived cleanly, devoutly, as they did, I might one day see the face of God…. But no; lately I’ve seen only Satan. The sweet girlish faces of Satan…. Ah, but I don’t mean to self-dramatize; I mean only to situate you, Reader, and so…

  My world was the domain of C——, its sloping fields bounded by picket fences and, beyond, hedges and waves of mounded stones. That place was comprised of a series of outbuildings surrounding three larger, two-story buildings conjoined by galleries, some shuttered, others open. It was hewn of darkly mottled stone and gray slate. Surrounded by tall stands of deciduous evergreens, the place seemed to leech the very light from the sky.

  Set loosely at right angles, and forming an inner yard at the center of which rose a statue of the Sacred Heart, the three main buildings were these: St. Ursula’s Hall, a large and featureless space sometimes used for assembly, beneath which were the kitchen and dining hall; the dormitory, set above a bank of classrooms, nuns’ cells, and offices as well as our Pupil’s Parlor, where the girls received their visitors; and the third building, which housed the main chapel, Our Lady of Prompt Succor, as well as the sisters’ chapel, the main library, and several lesser libraries. Beyond the chapel sat the dairy and the stables. Beyond the stables was a graveyard, where we buried our dead in private. Too, there was the laundry, a dovecote, a carpenter’s shop, a smithy, and the building known as the Annex, which sat empty and unused all my years at C——. White pickets formed our inner borders; and it was within these pickets that we girls, twice daily, surrounded the Sacred Heart to take our exercise. The youngest girls formed an inner circle, so near the statue as to see our Lord’s incarnadine heart amid the marble folds of His robes. If the weather was fair, it was in the yard, thusly circling our Savior, that we would stand with arms akimbo, bending at the waist, doing this and that, careful always to keep one foot firmly planted on the ground, “as befits a lady.” In winter, we would crowd under the galleries and stretch and bend as best we could. My position in these drills was fixed: I had always to stand nearest the kitchen, lest Sister Brigid need me for some duty therein.

  Understand: I was the sole scholarship student at C——, and I was made to work for my keep. Usually in the kitchen, sometimes in the laundry or gardens. Though Sister Isadore ran the Lower School, and Sister Claire de Sazilly the Upper (both answering to Mother Superior Marie-des-Anges), it was to old, enfeebled Sister Brigid that I reported. I loved her; she was kind. Kind too was the extern I knew from an early age, Marie-Edith, who came to C——from the village thrice weekly to help with meals; she also did our shopping, as the sisters were suspect of all worldly commerce. Indeed, it was I who lately taught Marie-Edith to read in my room off the kitchen…. Yes, I lived apart, at Sister Brigid’s request, and I did not mind. The cellarer, Sister Margarethe, however, did mind: not only did I occupy her pantry but I deprived her of the root cellar dug into its floor and covered over with boards. Though it was barren and cold in winter and damp in summer, with its walls in constant sweat, the room suited me. It was private; and it was privacy I craved above all else. No novitiates came to see that my Bible lay beneath my pillow as I slept. No one woke me harshly at first light. Neither did the candles I burned through the night attract attention. And, blessedly, a pump sat just outside the kitchen door, and it was from this that I drew my bath water, bathing alone behind my closed door.

  Not only did I have to work for my keep—and countless were the potatoes peeled, the corn shucked, the fish scaled and gutted…—I had to succeed academically. If I did not—and this was intimated, if never stated—I might be sent away to an orphanage or some lesser facility of the Ursulines.

  And so I became an excellent reader at an early age. In time, no text was beyond me. And the books at C——…. So many wondrous works, though I remember too some particularly hateful theology and sheaves of impenetrable poetry…. I was perhaps ten when I began to study Greek under the tutelage of Sister Marie de Montmercy. I immersed myself in the language; but only until I discovered Latin, to which my allegiance shifted. Here was the language for me! So sensible, the construction of its sentences as satisfying as a puzzle perfectly done. I don’t mean to say that I rambled about C——with Aeschylus and Cicero tripping o
ff my tongue, but fluency did come in time. Additionally, there were the hours devoted to the perfection of our French, of course—and her sisters, Italian and Spanish. I worked diligently on English and German in private; quite similar, the two, though I loved the myriad exceptions of the former and detested the guttural rattlings of the latter. For this, I relied solely on texts and guesswork, for none of the nuns spoke English and only one spoke German (ancient Sister Gabriella, as likely to nod off as to assist me with the nuances of pronunciation).

  Mathematics, penmanship, geography…. These were easy and unexciting subjects, which I easily mastered. (Immodest, but true.) Yes, scholastically, I further set myself apart and eventually won access—for one hour each day—to the private library of Mother Marie-des-Anges.

  That library!…The rich, supple bindings of Cordovan leather. And the thin blue cloud of smoke that seemed always to hang in the air (Mother Marie-des-Anges favored an occasional Spanish cigarette, en vie privée.). Sunlight seeped into the library through two large windows of Bavarian stained glass. That pied light was enrapturing. I would position myself to let the multihued light swim over whatever text I read…. Those hours in the library of the Mother Superior are my finest memories of C——; and it pleases me to have them, for all my other memories of C——are of the Chaos that overtook order there.