The Poisoning Angel

by Jean Teulé

  ‘They dare to come near our houses at night?’ Jean was astounded.

  ‘Particularly as they hardly got a friendly welcome in the daytime, especially the tall one in the goatskin waistcoat,’ Madeleine Le Braz felt obliged to point out. ‘I’d really love to know the name of whoever put his eye out.’

  ‘How I didn’t go mad, I don’t know,’ murmured Anne, still pale and trembling.

  ‘Mad enough, to be sure,’ her husband retorted in annoyance. ‘Fancy getting into such a state over a cart being righted.’

  ‘What I heard was no ordinary cart.’

  ‘Oh, poor Anne, you’re briz-zod.’

  ‘No, I’m not stupid. You can shrug your shoulders all you like but I’m telling you, the Ankou’s cart is going about in these parts. It won’t be long before we know who he’s coming for.’

  Thunderflower’s eyelids were fluttering like petals. ‘It’s time for you to say goodnight,’ her mother pointed out.

  While the child knelt up on the chest seat to open the panels of the box-bed, Jean Jégado asked offhand, just as if resuming a normal conversation, ‘Le Braz, did you know that Cambry has turned into a black dog?’

  ‘Jacques Cambry, who died last year? How do you know that?’

  ‘He told me so himself. I met a black dog that said, “I am Cambry.”’

  The religion of the Druids, mother of tales and lies, left behind a phantom in Thunderflower’s imagination as she slid on to a bale of oats big enough for three. She shooed away a hen so that she could pull up the coverlet made from scraps of material joined together, and laid her head on a sack of crushed gorse. Behind the doors she could hear other nozve-ziou, grown-ups’ tales. The brandy stirred them into strange stories and confessions.

  ‘Water sprites snatch away pregnant women!’

  ‘The bag-noz is a siren-boat made of crystal, which takes its passengers to the isle from which no one returns.’

  ‘Of course I joined the Chouans to fight for Louis XVI and the nobles! I was against the Great Revolution, that enemy of miracles.’

  ‘Do you really not hear anything?’

  Inside the box-bed, the child had caught a little golden scarab beetle crawling along against a board. Holding it close to one ear and tapping lightly with her nails again and again, Thunderflower listened to the cracking of the carapace, which sounded like the axle of the karriguel an Ankou squeaking as it started off: squeak, squeak.

  Nyaaa, nyaaa …

  In the distance, the drone of the biniou bagpipes, inflated by the player’s breath, sounded a continuous note: nyaaa. Over this bass note, a reedy bombard gave the accompanying signal for the branle. The sounds of the instruments tore through the air. Men, women and children were dressed in their fest-noz costumes and, arm in arm, formed a Breton round dance. Clogs stamped in the mud and a voice began to sing: ‘Canomp amouroustet Janet, Canomp amouroustet Jan!’ (‘Sing we of the loves of Jeanne, sing we of the loves of Jean!’) Thunderflower could see them all over there. The little bagpipe sounded an octave higher than the bombard. The notes had the tone of a man with a cold, and the dohs were lahs, but what did that matter? Hearing it brought a tear to the eye. ‘Jean loved Jeanne, Jeanne loved Jean.’

  In the middle of the circle of dancers, a large fire of branches, stuffed with firecrackers, had been lit. Explosions were shooting off in all directions, sending out stars sparkling into the darkness.

  From Thunderflower’s vantage point, the whirling pool of light looked like a small pancake on top of the moor, the more so since, when the sabots beating time came up, their soles took with them a yellow mud, which rose and stretched like a paste mixed with grit, the remains of the schist from the megaliths that used to be here but had recently been taken down and cut up to make lintels for church doors. Very soon, as if to return the compliment, the dancers would burn a crude wooden statue of the Virgin Mary on the pyre, and the crowd would fight over its charred remains.

  ‘But since Jean has been Jeanne’s husband, Jean no longer loves Jeanne nor Jeanne Jean!’

  The song was at an end. The Mayor of Plouhinec stood up to speak, something that happened too often. Most of the company straggled off to the refreshment stall. Pancakes were piled up on the tables. The supply of far cake was replenished. The evening poured fire into the glasses at the feast and lads lit lanterns. A woman struck up a merry song, and the pipes and bombard joined in. Again, the thudding of heels was like heavy rain on the stone and the mud underfoot. The men’s round hats bobbed up and down, with their two strips of black fabric fluttering at the back. The ribbons would part in the wind, one minute making the turning sails of a windmill, the next the rippling waves of the sea. Now, that was dancing!

  A shepherdess, around ten years old, all dressed up, but whose finery could not disguise her plain, flat face, snub nose and bulging eyes, left the ring of torches to say to Thunderflower, ‘Aren’t you coming to the feast, Hélène? You seem to be in a dream.’

  Hélène Jégado, the last descendant of her noble Breton family, was leaning against an enormous standing stone, which carried her thoughts up to the sky. On the moor drenched in moonlight, she felt the supernatural surrounding her. She took on the energy of the menhir and wallowed in the light and dark of the Breton legends. ‘I hear again a distant, dying song.’

  Thunderflower was wearing a white headdress, which came down over her ears. Opposite her, the little shepherdess held up her glass lantern so she could look at the Jégado girl, her sky-blue eyes so characteristic of the Celts.

  ‘Hélène, why are you so near to the Caqueux’ chapel? There’s nothing here but evil spirits going about to trap the living. People say the chapel’s where the fairies hold their deadly orgies and round this very standing stone is where the bearded dwarfs hide, the ones that appear and force you to join the dance until you die of exhaustion. You know, the …’

  ‘The Poulpiquets, Émilie.’

  ‘I prefer dancing with the handsome lads at the fest-noz. Do you really not want to come?’

  ‘No, I’ve got a date with the Ankou in the chapel.’

  ‘What? First you venture into this cursed worship place, and now you say you’re meeting Death’s worker. Poor Hélène, you must be losing your mind.’

  ‘Maybe …’

  Émilie stopped her ears so as not to hear any more. Lantern in hand, she ran back towards the feast while Thunderflower slipped into the chapel. No sooner had she dipped her fingers not into holy water but into the sacred purificatory water of a pagan fountain than the child noticed the green wall paintings bulging out like the scales of some mythical creature. Their lacklustre colours were oppressive, and made the building’s Romanesque vault seem to bear down on her. In that debased church, lit by a ray of moonlight coming through a window, it seemed that God had been defeated.

  In front of the main window, enthroned on the altar, which contained an ossuary displaying skulls, was the statue of the Ankou. It was a skeleton holding a scythe taller than himself. Had someone read it to her, Thunderflower would have understood the inscription running round the thick edge of the granite table beneath the figure.

  ‘I will spare no one. Neither pope nor cardinal will I spare. Not a king nor a queen. Nor their princes or princesses. I will spare neither priests, bourgeois, judges, doctors, shopkeepers nor, similarly, the beggars.’

  There he is then, Death’s worker, carved in black wood, the child thought, lifting her head. In place of eyes and nose, the Ankou had empty holes, and the lower jaw hung down. To the farmer’s daughter, the curve of the blade the figure held seemed oddly positioned. The child felt an iciness penetrate the tranquillity of her body and her mind spun off in wild imaginings.

  Outside, as Émilie the shepherdess ran across the moorland, her lantern cast a second, revolving beam of light through the window. It elongated the Ankou’s shadow, which moved until it exactly merged with Thunderflower. Now the shadow of Death’s worker appeared to be wearing a child’s Breton headdress. The l
ittle girl’s brain was sent mad by such a marvel. Just like the Ankou, she raised her arm as if holding a scythe.

  ‘Why are there black balls in my soupe aux herbes and not in Hélène’s?’ Émilie wondered aloud as she took her place at the table next to Thunderflower, who was already seated. Anne Jégado, who was serving herself from the pot over the crackling logs, wheeled round in the cottage where the shepherdess had been invited to lunch at her daughter’s request. The mother made her way towards the offending plate in astonishment.

  ‘What black balls? Oh, those are belladonna berries. Don’t eat them, whatever you do. Thank heavens you noticed them, little Le Mauguen! As for you, Thunderflower, what sort of joke is that you’ve played on Émilie? Haven’t I told you these berries are poisonous? Thank goodness you didn’t crush them first. You might have put far more in. We wouldn’t have noticed a thing and then …’

  Thunderflower wiped her mother’s dripping brow as she lay flat on her back on the table. Then she gripped her hands tightly for a long while. ‘You’ll be all right, Maman.’ The sick woman’s eyes were vague and her breathing quickened. Violet blotches were coming out on her skin.

  Le Braz, the neighbour, had come running. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked.

  ‘She went down like a cow with a hammer-blow to the head,’ Jean Jégado answered. ‘Hélène’s described the scene for me. At supper, Anne put out two plates of wheat gruel, for her and our daughter, then, while the youngster was eating, she went outside and blew the horn to call me in for the meal as well. When my wife returned she ate her gruel too; she criticised it for a bitter aftertaste but swallowed it all anyway, wiped her plate with some bread and that was it. Where’s the ring she wore on her middle finger? It’s a family signet ring with the Jégado crest engraved on it that I gave her on our wedding day.’

  Madeleine Le Braz, ruled by Breton superstition, carried out the test of the ten candle ends, which she had cut to equal length. Five were placed on one side of the stricken woman, for death, five elsewhere, for life. The latter went out much sooner. ‘The patient’s had it,’ the farm labourer’s chubby wife predicted matter-of-factly.

  ‘Is there someone coming?’ asked Jean.

  Anatole looked out of the cottage’s one small window to check. ‘No, why?’

  ‘I thought I heard a cart jolting along.’

  Madeleine was already strewing mint, rosemary and other aromatic leaves on the soon-to-be corpse. ‘We also have to empty the water from the vases lest, at any moment, the dead woman’s soul should drown there.’

  Madame Le Braz executed this task while Jean, helpless and at a loss, not knowing how he could make himself useful, automatically reached for a broom handle.

  ‘No, no scubican anaoun (sweeping of the dead)!’ advised Madeleine. ‘You never sweep the house of someone who’s about to die because their soul is already walking around and the strokes from the broom might injure it.’

  The farm cottage filled with sighs, though everyone was admiring of Thunderflower’s zeal and devotion as, head bowed, she took such care of her sick mother, whose tongue was now green, flecks of foam hanging from her lips. Had they been able to see the small blonde girl’s expression from underneath, however, they would have discovered something infernal about it. She was standing beside someone who was about to die … It was like the birth of a vocation. As she put her little fingers to one of her genetrix’s burning cheeks, it was like the child Mozart touching the keys of a harpsichord for the first time. She murmured something the adults took for a sob, ‘Guin an ei …’ (‘The wheat is germinating …’) and her mother died, lowering only her right eyelid, which put Madame Le Braz in an instant panic: ‘When a dead woman’s left eye doesn’t close it means someone else you know is in for it before long!’

  ‘That’s true, Hélène. You’re right. The blade of the Ankou’s scythe is fixed to the handle the opposite way round. But how do you know that at your age? In any case, the scythe belonging to Death’s worker is different from those of other harvesters because its cutting edge faces outwards. The Ankou doesn’t bring it back towards him when he cuts humans down. He thrusts the blade forward, and he sharpens it on a human bone.’

  Her father demonstrated the gesture on the moorland, silver grey with lichens.

  ‘Like that, well out in front. D’you see? But why are you concerned with that? Just as your big sister, Anna, is in service with the parish priest at Guern, you’re about to go to join your godmother in the presbytery at Bubry, to work in abbé Riallan’s household. You’ll have to call him “Monsieur le recteur”. What do you think you’ll be scything over there?’

  ‘Papa, are there people in Bubry?’

  ‘Yes, it’s quite a large village.’

  ‘And is there belladonna there?’

  ‘Of course. Why wouldn’t there be?’

  Hélène was biting greedily into a slice of bread when the dainty carriage belonging to a haughty gentleman arrived. He got out, exclaiming, ‘Well now, Jégado the royalist, I expected to see you wearing blue. Aren’t you in mourning?’

  ‘In Lower Brittany, husbands never mark their widowhood, Monsieur Michelet. Only the animals on the farm observe mourning rituals. I put a black cloth over my hive and made my cow fast on the eve of my wife’s funeral. You may as well learn that now, because you never know, you old revolutionary – who are soon to be married,’ added Jean as he noticed the embroidery on the ribbons fluttering from the back of Michelet’s hat, a sign that he was engaged.

  The well-turned-out visitor – still young, square-shouldered, with a bearded jawline, and sporting a white leather belt and laced-up shoes – appraised Jean’s two stony hectares, which stretched as far as the line of plum trees leading to the washing place.

  ‘So you’re selling your whole farm?’

  ‘Even with Anne it was difficult. I’ll never manage on my own. I’ll leave you the cottage as it is, with contents. I’ll just take my sword from above the fireplace.’

  ‘What will become of you, nobleman?’

  ‘Day labourer … beggar … I’ll do what my neighbours do. You’re well aware of the poverty and how many abandoned farms there are in the hamlet of Kerhordevin, since you’re the one buying them all up.’

  ‘How much do you want for yours?’ asked the wealthy landowner.

  ‘One hundred.’

  ‘You must be joking! It’s not the Jégado château at Kerhollain I’m getting. I’ll give you fifty but, since I’m going through Bubry anyway, I’ll drop your daughter at the priest’s house as promised. That’s a very pretty little fairy you’ve got there. How old is she?’

  ‘She was baptised on 28 Prairial in year XI.’

  ‘Year XI. Can’t you say 1803? Are you still using the revolutionary calendar, Jean? Alas, that fine secular invention of the Great Revolution is over. An erstwhile Chouan like you should be rejoicing that we’ve gone back to the Christian calendar, the Gregorian one …’

  ‘Oh? I didn’t know that. The only way those of us who can’t read the papers have of hearing about important events is from songs at fairs, you see.’

  ‘Go on, my little noblewoman, up you go into the carriage with your leather bag. It has a fleur-de-lis branded on it. Is it your father’s? What have you got in it?’

  ‘A cake I made.’

  ‘Right. So, Jégado, you’ll let me have your hovel?’

  Pulling out a hair – the symbol of property – Jean threw it into the wind. This was the equivalent of signing a contract, declaring that you would not go back on the agreement, since it would be impossible for the seller to recover the hair, which the breeze had carried away.

  The hair spiralled away in the wind, and the carriage, drawn by a mare, rolled off along a rutted road shaded by centuries-old oak trees. Putting her bag, which was divided into two sections, beside her, Thunderflower turned to watch her downcast father making his way back to the cottage. Soon the child lost sight of the Druid stones of her village as well.

&
nbsp; Late afternoon. The bell was ringing for the angelus. The light, two-wheeled carriage came at walking speed past numerous flour mills and squat windmills and stopped in front of the presbytery in Bubry. The wealthy landowner was lying motionless on his side, with one arm hanging down. His discarded whip lay on the flour-scattered cobbles. Behind the presbytery gates a woman in servant’s clothing and with bagnolet fluttering on her forehead called out, ‘Monsieur le recteur! Monsieur le recteur!’

  A priest came running to join the servant, who was wiping her hands on her apron and asking Thunderflower in Breton, ‘What’s the matter with him? He’s got foam at his mouth and cake crumbs in his beard!’

  ‘He’s dead, Tante Hélène. It came over him just as we arrived in this street.’

  ‘Oh, my poor little godchild, what a journey you must have had.’

  The priest raised Michelet’s head and gave his diagnosis in French. ‘He must have had a heart attack.’

  For the second time in her life, Hélène Jégado was hearing this strange language, of which she understood not one word.

  ‘Petra?’ (‘What?’)

  She was looking now at the façade of the priest’s residence, with carved coats of arms broken during the Revolution, while he was astonished by the sight of her blond mop of hair.

  ‘Mademoiselle Liscouet, your late sister’s daughter goes bareheaded?’

  ‘Girls don’t wear a headdress except at fest-noz until they’re thirteen, abbé Riallan,’ his servant reminded him.

  ‘What do you enjoy doing?’ the clergyman asked the girl in brezhoneg.

  ‘Cooking, Monsieur le recteur.’

  ‘Fine, then you’ll help your godmother peel the vegetables, wash up, put the stores away in the outbuilding, and learn French. Give me your bag. Goodness, the man who brought you here lost not only his life but one of his shoelaces as well.’