The Poisoning Angel

by Jean Teulé

  Bubry

  In the presbytery kitchen, Thunderflower was having her hair done by her godmother. Standing opposite a piece of broken mirror fixed to the door, the Jégado girl glanced at her reflection from time to time. Behind her back she could see her mother’s sister smoothing her long blond hair out towards the top of her head and rolling it into a chignon, and then she felt hairpins sliding in against her scalp.

  The niece gave a hasty glance to the right. She asked for a pause before her aunt should go on to the next phase of the hairdressing, just long enough for her to go and dip a ladle into the saucepan and blow on the surface of the broth to drive the gathering froth to the edges.

  ‘You must always remove it as it forms. You were the one who taught me that, Godmother, as well as the correct way to brown butter. Will you teach me lots of other things?’

  ‘A good cook never gives away all her little secrets,’ smiled her maternal aunt, who was dressed in a Lorient apron with a large bib that covered her shoulders. ‘Come on, back here.’

  Once back in position in front of the door with the piece of broken mirror, Thunderflower passed a significant milestone: a Breton headdress was positioned on top of her chignon. It was just a simple square of white tulle, as befitted a domestic, but it was edged with lace. Her godmother explained how it was arranged, folding it here, turning it up there, in the local manner.

  ‘Each district has its own kinds of embroidery and folds. There we are, now everyone can see you’re a grown-up girl. Just look at you with your mane neatly tamed at last. Wouldn’t anyone think you were an angel fit to receive Holy Communion without the need for confession first?’

  Thunderflower burst out laughing, caught in a ray of sunlight that lit up a sideboard, and she saw her reflection swing round as the abbé Riallan opened the door and came into the kitchen, asking, ‘Who would you give Holy Communion to, Mademoiselle Liscouet?’

  ‘Why, my goddaughter, of course. We can only congratulate ourselves on her.’

  The priest of Bubry noticed the headdress. ‘Are you thirteen already then?’

  ‘This very day, 16 June!’ exclaimed her godmother.

  ‘That calls for a celebration,’ said the gentle, elderly priest. ‘I was about to leave for Pontivy to meet the abbé Lorho, who will be replacing me soon. Would you like to come with me, Hélène? While I’m at the church you could buy some goodies, as it’s your birthday, and also whatever we need to sort out the rat problem in the outbuilding before my successor gets here.’

  ‘Of course, with pleasure, aotrou beleg.’

  ‘Monsieur le curé,’ the clergyman corrected the girl.

  ‘Oh, yes, sorry … Of course, Monsieur le curé.’

  With that she undid the ties on her apron while the man of the Church heaped praise on her.

  ‘That’s all right. The French language will come. Still a few Bretonisms sometimes, but you’re making excellent progress.’

  Once outside the presbytery gates, while a stable boy was harnessing a clapped-out pony to the cart into which the priest clambered with some difficulty, Thunderflower had a good look at the village of Bubry, a higgledy-piggledy collection of houses with water troughs, a firewood seller and, above all, mills. Near the market where meat was sold, a butcher reminded Riallan he should send someone for what was due to him: ‘… because when an ox or pig is slaughtered the head is kept for Monsieur le curé.’ Hélène was just lifting her buckled shoe on to the running board when she stood back down, most astonished to see, across from her on the other side of the road, the two Norman wigmakers who had overturned their cart in a rut one day at Plouhinec.

  In front of the torn yellow cover, and beneath the lettering ‘À la bouclette normande’, the short wigmaker was setting out chairs and getting scissors ready while the taller one – almost bald, with a black band over his left eye – was clapping his hands, calling to people, ‘Five sous per head of hair! Who wants to earn five sous in exchange for their hair?’

  Beside the wall where the Normans were making their preparations, there stood three posts with rusty iron chains hanging from them. Workmen covered in flour were coming out of a mill for their lunchtime break. They had long hair touching their shoulders and covering their eyes. They kept pushing their long locks behind their ears, creating a cloud of dust, while the wigmaker tried to sound conciliatory.

  ‘Even though we’d prefer it neat and washed, there’s no problem, good sirs. We’ll still buy your hair as it is. Take a seat.’

  But it was the three posts the workers were making for, each mortifying himself as he went: ‘How I regret my wicked deed! I should never have done that! Oh, I’ve done such a bad thing, I’m so angry with myself!’ They leant their foreheads against the posts and wound locks of their hair through the rings, all the while reproaching themselves: ‘I said nasty things to my mother! I robbed my brother! I betrayed my neighbour!’ Then they yanked their heads violently backwards, tearing out their hair, which came away together with the scalp. On the ground traces of blood and skin could be seen, to the stupefaction of the two Norman wigmakers, who were hopping up and down now.

  ‘What are you doing? You’re mad! What savagery! That’s unbelievable! Where on earth are we? If you think we’re going to pay five sous for raggy bits of scalp …’

  The Normans were shouting so loudly that their surprised horse instinctively kicked out its back hoofs, catching the weedy wigmaker – who had just gone between the shafts to fetch a basin hanging on the front of the cart – full in the jaw and breaking one of his shoulders as well. The tall, one-eyed man snatched up his colleague and bundled him under the yellow canvas, then, abandoning the chairs, leapt on to the vehicle seat and whipped the horse, which galloped off northwards. Reins in hand, he turned and yelled at the self-torturing Bas-Bretons, ‘Sickos! Nutters!’

  The inside of the pharmacy at Pontivy resembled a sacristy in hell – smocked employees speaking in hushed voices, jars labelled in Latin, mysterious little packets. The man in charge of the establishment, who wore a monocle, asked, ‘Who’s next? You, pretty maid? What would you like?’

  ‘Reusenic’h.’

  ‘What?

  ‘Reusenic’h!’

  ‘Oh, arsenic.’

  ‘Yes, for killing rats. The priest at the presbytery in Bubry where I work in the kitchen told me to buy some while he went to his meeting.’

  The pharmacist turned round, then proffered a minuscule bottle.

  ‘That’s light,’ Thunderflower said, weighing it in her hand.

  ‘Ten grammes, but it’s to be used with the greatest of care,’ admonished the man of science as he took the servant’s money. ‘This substance is very dangerous.’

  ‘But not as dangerous as belladonna.’

  ‘Oh, much more so, my dear,’ he said, handing her the change. ‘The doses must be infinitesimal. Be very careful, won’t you? Don’t go using it for pastries just because you’re from Bubry. It may look like flour, but it’s not the same at all.’

  ‘Kenavo.’

  *

  Just as Thunderflower was pulling open an oven door, the abbé Riallan pushed open the kitchen one, and came in, scratching his tonsure.

  ‘Hélène, I’m telling you this as truthfully as I would say the angelus: I do not understand. Since you put that white powder in the outhouse, the rats there have been getting fatter and fatter and their numbers are increasing.’

  ‘Oh?’ answered the adolescent, carefully placing a burning hot tray on the clay tiles.

  ‘I saw one the size of a cat against the grain chest. They’re swallowing the product from the chemist’s, which is supposed to exterminate them, yet it’s as if they were stuffing themselves without suffering any harm. Is there any of it left? I’d like to try again.’

  ‘No, I’ve emptied the bottle,’ said Thunderflower, sliding a spatula under one of the little cakes on the tray and putting it onto a dish.

  ‘When your aunt comes back from the market, please ask her
to come and see me at the church. Oh dear, dear, whatever will the abbé Lorho think of me?’ worried the rector, pushing open the glass door to the courtyard, just before Hélène’s godmother came in by the other door, carrying baskets and sniffing.

  ‘Mmm, there’s a lovely smell of caramelised crust in here.’

  Her goddaughter, carefully washing a bowl and a spoon, told her, ‘While you were out, I tried to invent a cake. Monsieur le recteur would like to speak to you.’

  ‘Let’s taste your speciality first.’

  The niece advised her aunt to blow on it because it was hot. ‘Since I was able to buy some, thanks to the priest giving me money for my birthday, I’ve put crystallised angelica in it.’

  ‘That’s very kind.’

  Putting the small round caramelised cake between her lips, Hélène Liscouet bit into it and began to chew. Her face flushed, there was instant dryness of the mouth and mucus membranes, and she was gripped by a raging thirst.

  ‘Something to drink!’

  Weakness of the muscles and dizziness followed, and then she could no longer stand, and her legs gave way beneath her.

  Séglien

  ‘So the priest at Bubry didn’t call the doctor immediately, then?’ a servant, hands on her hips, asked Thunderflower, who was leaning on her elbows at the table in a different kitchen.

  ‘Yes, he did, Tante Marie-Jeanne. But when he reached the bed where Godmother was thrashing about like a mad thing, he just put some dust into a box. He drew a cross in it and said, “In the name of the Father,” adding, “The patient will be cured if she gives a few sous to Saint Widebote.” I’ve kept the last towel she wiped her lips on as a memento.’

  In pride of place on the table stood a loaf of rye bread beside a sickle-shaped knife. Thunderflower ran her finger lovingly along the blade as her second maternal aunt lamented, ‘You poor girl. Both my sisters: your mother, then your godmother.’

  ‘What’s more,’ complained Thunderflower, ‘I’d just baked a little cake I’d invented for her. I couldn’t even find out whether she liked it. I’d intended one for the abbé Riallan too, but with all the fuss I forgot to serve it to him. I’ve brought it in my bag – would you like to try it?’

  ‘Have you put ground almonds in it?’

  ‘They’re in there too.’

  ‘Oh, yes, you’re right, Mother. At eighteen, Hélène is quite magnificent! She’ll turn a few heads, that one, and in my opinion it won’t be long before she finds a young man.’

  The priest of Séglien, a real gentleman who was surely very popular with his parishioners, was seated in the depths of an armchair across from his mother, who was sipping her lime tisane. On the low table between them stood little cups of plums in syrup, newly brought by Thunderflower. As his very pretty servant left the drawing room for the kitchen, the clergyman turned to watch.

  ‘Did I tell you, Mother, that her aunt Marie-Jeanne, who was in my employ for many years, dropped dead the very day her niece arrived to see her, following a death in their family?’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Is it really that long since you’ve ventured outside the walls of Saint-Malo to visit your son, lost among the savages of Basse-Bretagne, you heartless mother?’ the priest joked.

  ‘Since I was widowed I don’t travel much, and it’s a long journey here on such rough roads that you fear death with every turn of the wheel. What did Marie-Jeanne die of? Your father always said that fatal dysentery was rife in the area where you serve.’

  ‘That’s right. Lots of people also suffer attacks of virulent skin diseases. In any case, since Hélène had already worked in a kitchen and was talented, I entrusted her with her aunt’s job and I’m very satisfied with her. A kind heart, dedicated to her work, clean, and she gets on like a house on fire with my maid.’

  The priest’s mother said approvingly, ‘Your father always said that, these days, finding a cook of the right calibre …’

  Thunderflower returned with a plate of biscuits, which she put down, then, turning round, exclaimed in tones of mock-disgust, ‘Oh, look, there on the carpet behind you, mouse droppings. Monsieur l’abbé, we’ll have to buy something to kill rats. I was just thinking that, since your mother’s here, I could take this opportunity to go to the pharmacy at Pontivy.’

  The abbé Conan leant down to pick up what his cook had pointed out. ‘Those aren’t rodent droppings, they’re coffee beans. Just now, when you were using a hammer to grind beans wrapped in a cloth, some must have escaped and rolled on to the carpet. I’d have been very surprised in any case, since I’ve had the place cleared of rats.’

  Hélène gave a forced smile at being thwarted.

  ‘Have a rest now, Hélène,’ the good priest suggested. ‘You could even stay here with us and draw – you like that – instead of mouldering alone in your room.’

  Madame Conan considered her son’s attentions to be a little too progressive. With a Breton sablé crumbling in her teeth, she murmured, ‘Your father always used to remind us “To each his own place …” Having said that, it is sad to lose an aunt so suddenly.’

  Thunderflower – strong and wholesome as bread and water, and statuesque, by God; to see her was to love her – was now seated elegantly at a card table, drawing swirls on a sheet of paper. ‘Perhaps Tante Marie was goestled,’ she surmised.

  ‘Hélène means “dedicated”,’ the rector of Séglien translated for his mother. ‘In this region, when someone dies of an unexplained illness, people declare, “He or she’s been dedicated to Notre-Dame-de-la-Haine.”’

  ‘Notre what?’ choked the widow, her mouth full of another biscuit.

  ‘Have a little more tea to help it down. You see, Mother, before they were forced to convert to Catholicism, the Bretons here had altars dedicated to the death of others, and they’ve been determined to keep this cult going, as at Trédarzec, for example. Over there, Saint-Yves chapel was rebaptised Our-Lady-of-Hatred. People pray to Santez Anna, ostensibly the grandmother of Christ, but in actual fact Deva Ana, the grandmother of some Celtic gods – I think that’s it. People go by night to the oratory to pray for someone’s death.’

  Madame Conan was stupefied. ‘And the Roman Catholic Church puts up with these outlandish practices within those walls?’

  Thunderflower, all this while, was drawing drowning angels.

  ‘Of course not,’ her son replied. ‘The rector of Trédarzec is determined to have the chapel torn down and the statue of Santez Anna turned into firewood.’

  ‘Your father was so right when he used to say, “The language that the Bas-Bretons have preserved, and their scorn for that of the French, is not conducive to the spread of new ideas in this region.”’

  Scoring out the smudged wings of an angel lost amid the swirls, Thunderflower asked, ‘Where’s Trédarzec?’

  ‘Not very far from here, across from Tréguier,’ answered the priest.

  ‘In Morbihan?’

  ‘No, in Côtes-du-Nord, near the reefs in the Channel where the wreckers wait.’

  ‘The wreckers?’

  Trédarzec

  The sun was folding away its fan and a few birds hovered high in the skies. The evening lengthened Thunderflower’s shadow as she stood by the edge of a coastal river in Tréguier, watching the village of Trédarzec on the opposite bank. Her father’s double-bag on her left shoulder, one part hanging in front, the other down her back, she spotted the oratory of Notre-Dame-de-la-Haine at the top of the hill. Several winding paths led to it across the gorse and heather. Soon, near a stone bridge spanning seaweed left stranded by the low tide, Hélène Jégado was overtaken by other human shadows. Ashamed, they slipped, heads bent, along the paths leading to the mysterious chapel. As darkness fell, more people approached the building. Bigoudènes, with their slanted eyes and prominent cheekbones like Mongolian women, came forward like black birds, followed by workers and shopkeepers from Tréguier, who were whispering to one another, ‘Look, over there, that woman who appears
to have gone into a decline, Rondel has dedicated her. It’s only a matter of time now.’

  They walked on, their bare feet burning on nettle leaves. Thunderflower followed them to where an instinct was guiding her. At the top of the hill, bare of greenery, she bent her head to slip under a doorway, and stood up inside the chapel whose beams were festooned with spider webs.

  On the altar cloth stood the statue of Our-Lady-of-Hatred. It was actually a classic Virgin Mary, with wavy hair falling along her arms and hands folded, but her face had been given lots of wrinkles and her body was painted black with a white skeleton over it. At the time she was moulded, this plaster Mary had doubtless been very far from imagining that she would one day be travestied to this extent and venerated to the accompaniment of prayers as un-Catholic as the ones being addressed to her here.

  ‘Notre-Dame-de-la-Haine, grant that my brother may soon be lying in his coffin.’

  ‘I ask you for the death of my faithless debtors.’

  All round Thunderflower, souls full of rancour were very softly invoking the so-called grandmother of Christ, asking her to grant them the death of an enemy or a jealous husband within a year.

  ‘I want him to croak within this strict time limit.’

  Some were in a hurry to inherit: ‘My parents have lived long enough.’

  Three Hail Marys piously repeated and the people were ready to believe in the power of prayers offered in this church dedicated to the cult of death. The girl from Plouhinec was just thinking to herself that some fine dramas were underway around her when on her right she heard a man’s gravelly voice: ‘Our-Lady-of-Hatred, send me a shipwreck.’

  Thunderflower swivelled her head towards a fellow of about twenty-five, his complexion suggesting he was used to the rocking of the wind and the waves, who finished his prayer and left.