by Iris Anthony
His hand slipped from my chin to my throat. As his fingers closed tight about my neck, he kissed me.
Hate gave way to fear, and fear to dread. I despaired that nothing was left for me, that there was no soul but this depraved and depleted man, who could possibly understand me. And so I found myself seeking refuge, begging comfort from him. But there was no warmth to be found in his kisses, no shelter in his embrace. I wanted empathy, I craved absolution, but even those eluded me.
He slammed me into the wall, and I pushed back as his hand contracted about my throat. But his kisses were bleak and desolate. The more I begged for empathy, the more I sought myself in him, the more he retreated, until I found myself as I had always been. Completely and utterly alone. My mortification was complete.
I pushed him away with a cry.
He laughed at me. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, looking at me with such contempt I felt the last of my dignity fall away. The corner of his lip lifted in a sneer.
I could not keep myself from trembling. Self-loathing seized me. If I’d had a knife, I would have cut off my lips and thrown them into the nearest fire.
“You’re just like my mother. I was never good enough for her, either.” He turned and walked away.
•••
I pushed past him and continued on my way to the marquise’s chambers, taking up a chair beside hers. Though I was quaking, I tried my best to hide it. The man was evil. I closed my eyes, trying to rid my mind of the memory of his touch, of the hiss of his words. But I could not. They rang through my head.
A girl may live; a boy must die.
He wanted me to kill the child!
I didn’t know how I could do it. But then I did not know how I could not. In giving myself to the count that day at Souboscq, I had aligned myself with a devil.
The impressions of his fingers about my neck, the feel of his lips against my own threatened to leach through my skin. Even in his absence, he seemed to reach inside me for my soul. I had made mistakes, I had caused those I loved much grief, but he had asked me to do something more terrible, still.
Was he right? That no one loved me?
If no one loved me, then what did it matter? And why should I care?
I closed my eyes against a world gone mad. There, in that deep and awful darkness, Alexandre’s eyes stared back at me. His hand reached out across that chasm of time and space to touch me.
Me.
Could it truly be as he had said? Could he want me?
A thousand times I had teased him as a child. A thousand times I had seen his shoulders relax and his lips lift in a smile from my presence. If I closed my eyes tighter, I could hear him shout as the count’s carriage trundled me away from Souboscq.
“No!”
He had not wanted me to go.
He had tried to stop me, hadn’t he?
He had tried to save me.
What I would give to feel the brush of his fingers against my cheek once more! I would give almost anything, but I would not destroy a child. I would not do it. I could not do it. I had thought I would have to, to save my father. I had thought there remained no other choice but obeying the count’s commands. But I did have a choice.
I could refuse.
Though he may betray my father to the King, and though he threatened to turn me over to Remy, still, I would not do it. I would rather have my own head cleaved from my body than harm a child.
Chapter 27
The Count of Montreau
Château of Eronville
The province of Orléanais, France
I slammed into my chambers, startling Remy. He turned from the window and, spying me, dismissed my manservant. Then he went to the table and poured a glass of cognac brandy. I slumped into a chair, staring into the depths of the fire. Fire and damnation. That’s what hell was supposed to be. To my mind, even those would be better than the pain of living.
Remy handed me the glass. Such kind solicitation, such a pleasing and genial companion. He deserved more attention than I could give him, and I increasingly suspected he was finding it somewhere else. He walked around behind me, placing a hand on the back of my neck. It paused for a moment before sliding around front, and down the neck of my shirt.
I stopped him with a hand on his. “I think…I’d prefer…not.”
“You’d prefer not…”
In the past year, I’d preferred not more times than I cared to remember.
He took his hand away from my chest, but he ran it through my curls, humming a child’s tune as he did it.
•••
Tell me yes, tell me no,
Tell me if you love me so,
Tell me yes, tell me no,
Tell me yes or no.
If you love me, there’s hope,
If it’s a no, there’s suffering.
Tell me yes, tell me no,
Tell me if you love me so,
Tell me yes, tell me no,
Tell me yes or no.
•••
He raked my scalp with his fingers as he finished.
I drew his hand away and held it over my shoulder as I sang a tune of my own.
•••
Ah! Will I tell you, Mommy
What is tormenting me?
Daddy wants me to reason
Like a grown-up person…
•••
When my tune petered out, he finished with the remaining words.
•••
Me, I say that sweets
Are worth more than reason.
•••
Sweets worth more than reason. I wished they were. His hand released mine. “So you would rather not.”
What did it matter what I would rather? I couldn’t have done anything had I wanted to. I’d only ever been taught to be ashamed of myself. Whatever life I’d once had down there had long been snuffed out. Nothing could provoke it into being. Even that, the essence of myself, disdained to obey me.
“Then you won’t mind if I go out for a while?”
Why shouldn’t he? I couldn’t keep him closeted in my chambers when I had nothing left to offer him. I waved him toward the door.
He bowed and then left, whistling his tune as he went. Tell me yes, tell me no, tell me if you love me so. He didn’t seem as upset as I would have been.
I threw my glass into the fire after he’d gone. Felt a grim satisfaction as it shattered, and the flames danced blue for a moment.
I stood from the chair and took up my looking glass, regarding the image that stared back at me. Eyes firmly set, just the right distance apart, peering out from a finely molded brow. A nose protruding just so much as to be noble. Lips so ripe and delectable they had once been called red plums. And a chin ever so minutely tipped at its end. A head full of dark, thick, shining curls that fell past my shoulders like a curtain of the finest brocade. A face so finely featured and well-proportioned, there had only ever been one word to describe me: beautiful.
Then why did no one want me?
I cursed as I turned and threw the mirror into the fire.
My reflection laughed at me as flames licked at it. Then it shuddered and melted away to be consumed by the fire.
•••
Remy had left me. Or he was trying to, in any case. I found him in the stables with one of the groomsmen.
“Julien!” He snatched his hand away from the boy’s arm.
“It looks as if I’ve taken you by surprise. My apologies.” Was it my fault I could no longer please him? Was it my fault I couldn’t do what he wanted? Syphilis had stolen my manhood just as surely as my mother had tried to all those years ago. “I hope you have not betrayed my trust.”
“What? No. No! I would n
ever do that. I was just…I mean…it’s quite plain that… I would never even think—!”
I turned on my heel and stalked toward the door as he hurried to keep pace beside me.
“What did you expect me to do? We’ve been months in this godforsaken place with nothing to relieve the tedium. It was an innocent flirtation. I was lacking in amusement. You know I would never betray you. Had there been any girl worth the—”
I stopped and pulled out the pistol I kept in my coat. I wondered what it would be like to shoot him. I’d attended a duel once, but the shots had gone wild. Neither had hit the other. I knew what blood looked like, though. My mother’s blood, in any case. And that memory made my stomach churn. “Leave. Now.”
He put out a hand as if to touch me, but I swung the pistol up and pointed it at him.
“I’ve been faithful to you. I swear it!”
I toyed with the hammer, wondering if that had ever been true.
“I’ve put up with you and your schemes and…and your father. Mon dieu! And this business about the inheritance. You’ve become embittered. When we first met, you were…different.” His mouth softened as he seemed to plead with me to remember. “For God’s sake—you could have settled this long ago. You could have just taken a wife to keep him from harping! And then it would never have come to this.”
“You never really understood, did you? I’m not like you. I can’t just take a woman now and then to feel better. I can’t feel anything. And I can’t stand women. I can’t even be a woman.”
“Listen! Marry that girl, the one from Gascogne. It would be so simple. Just think. It would solve all of our problems!”
“Women can never be pleased.” Had I loaded this pistol? I couldn’t remember. “No matter how hard you try, they whip you and beat you and dress you up in skirts, and bind your manhood, and still they can never be pleased. You can never please them!” My hand was shaking. “You can do everything they demand, and still you can never be anything other than what you are.” I’d tried so hard to please my mother. Why hadn’t she liked me?
“I don’t—”
“I always wanted to be a girl, didn’t you know that? God cursed me with a beauty my sex never deserved.” That was the tragedy of it. I had been born beautiful. Why couldn’t I have been what my mother wanted? “I was born while my father was at war. Fighting all those damned Spaniards. When he came home…it was seven years before he discovered I was not Julienne. That’s what my mother called me, Julienne. And do you know what he said when he found out?”
Remy was backing away from me toward the door.
“He said…he said I was a disgrace. A disgrace! I didn’t…I hadn’t known. I was just doing what my mother had told me to. After…after all the…” My words dissolved in my throat as memories overcame them, as I tried to fight back the nausea at all of those things she had made me do. “She tried to take me away with her. She said my father didn’t understand, he didn’t realize I was meant to be her girl. But I was afraid, so I told my father.” I didn’t know why my hand was trembling so. I wouldn’t be able to shoot anything if I couldn’t steady my hand. “He shot her through the heart in the hall as she was trying to pull me toward the door.”
There’d been so much blood.
“It was an accident.” That’s what Father said when the priest came to record her death. An accident: as if what she’d done—what she’d made me—hadn’t ever truly mattered.
Revulsion crept over Remy’s face. It was a revulsion I always knew I would find there. How could he not revile me? I had disappointed my father, and then I had betrayed my mother into his hands.
I realized quite suddenly I was sighting the pistol at Remy. I couldn’t remember how it had gotten into my hand. “It was all for the best. She was mad—she always had been. Father sent me away to court to become part of the King’s circle…” It was worse than a disaster. I hadn’t understood any of them, living to hunt, lying in wait for servant girls, talking about their things as if they were something to boast about. As if that which made me most ashamed made them the most proud. I had not understood at all.
What had I been talking about? Ah. Yes. My mother. “She called out to me as she was dying. Called me Julien. It was as if she finally realized…” Why did I always have to disappoint everyone? “You can never be anything other than what you are.” Even the girl had pushed me away.
Remy had slowly removed himself from me and the barn. Now, he was eyeing the château over his shoulder.
All I’d ever wanted was for someone to love me. Why couldn’t I make people love me?
“What’s happened to you?”
Me? Hadn’t we been talking about him? “I trusted you. I thought you were different from the others. I thought you understood.”
“I am. I do. I just—”
“Would you leave now, please? I would hate to have to shoot you.” Truly, I would. He’d always been so pleasant and so genial. It would be a pity if things got bloody.
He paled at the advice as his eyes rolled wildly.
“I suggest you make haste.”
He left, heading toward the château, and not once did he look back.
•••
He did not stay for dinner. And he did not even take his clothes. I clapped the lid of the trunk down on them. All those fine, lovely clothes I had bought for him. Even after all the work I had done to raise him to the level of chevalier, he despised me. I ordered a servant to take the garments into the village and distribute them. If Remy dared to send for them, he would find himself disappointed by the result.
Just the same way I had been.
Had I not been the soul of patience while he was riding about the countryside? Had I not looked the other way when he had to satisfy his needs elsewhere? With women? And had I not always settled his debts…or had them added to my own accounts?
I poured myself a cognac brandy, and I would have drunk it had my hand just once ceased its interminable shaking. I raised it to my mouth anyway, but only succeeded in soiling the front of my shirt. I threw it to the floor to hear it shatter.
The sound of shattering glass. It brought to mind so many memories.
“Non, Julienne! Mon dieu, who do you think you are? Slowly, gently, lightly. You must walk like a lady, not some wicked, evil, sniveling boy.”
Emotions of pride and shame often competed within me. If my mother were yelling at me, then at least she actually saw me for who I was. But if she were berating me, that meant she wasn’t pleased with that person. Was it my fault the stirrings in my nether regions that marked my sex brought only shame and the impulse to hide myself? Was it my fault I hated the very essence of who I was? I’d trusted Remy, but in the end he only echoed what Mother had always said.
You are not enough.
God damn her if He had not already!
I strode to the bed and ripped away the hangings that had sheltered us from servants’ watchful eyes.
What a mess my life had become. Threatening to shoot my lover. Fighting for what was owed me by virtue of my birth.
I should kill the marquis.
It wasn’t the first time I’d considered it. His death would solve all my problems in a most satisfactory way. But it was the principle of the thing that always stopped me. Why should I have to plead for what was, by rights, already mine? He had been married to my mother. Didn’t my very existence prove that? How could he simply erase all those years of shame and torment? How could he just pretend none of it had happened? How could he say neither of us mattered?
I had happened. I ought to matter.
By God, I would make him pay for me! Somebody should pay for all the pain. Somebody…he…should have to say they were sorry. Mon dieu, Julienne! Who do you think you are?
It didn’t matter who I was.
The Fates made you
beautiful, but God made you a boy. So now, we must try to fix God’s mistake. It will be our secret, and we must never tell anybody. If you’re careful and very good, then no one will ever know, and you will always be my little girl. Maman needs you to be her little girl. Such exquisite beauty should not be wasted on a wicked and evil man.
Wicked and evil: a man. That is who I was.
By some curse and accident of birth, I was born a man. But all was well. I needed only to be what everyone expected me to be. If I could just be named the heir of the Marquis of Eronville, then all would finally come right.
Chapter 28
Alexandre Lefort
Along the road to Signy-sur-vaux, France
I had not killed De Grote, but I would have. If the dog had not done it for me, I would have killed him as if I were ten years old again. What was it that made people torment me?
De Grote had not been the first. That honor belonged to the priest of St. Segon.
I tried not to think of him, but my sin always haunted the darkest recesses of my soul. My earliest memory included him. It was the memory of a mass.
Shortly after rising one morning, my father had made me walk into town along with him. Me in my best clothes; he in his worst, helped along by a crutch. He warned me not to walk close to him, using the end of the crutch to prod me away when I veered too near. I remember, as we left, the village grave digger had crept into the house behind us.
“Papa, what is he—?”
My father had stopped and turned. Put a hand up to his eyes. Saw, as I did, when the grave digger carried out one of our stools. “It’s fine. He’s fine.”
“But—”
“We’re expected, fiston. At the church.”
Indeed, he was right. But though we were expected, we were not allowed to enter. Others had been, though, and they had congregated in front of the massive doors, atop the steps.
The priest raised his hand at our approach. “That’s far enough.”
My father fixed the end of his crutch in the dust at his feet. Leaned upon it. “But the boy.”