Lavender in Bloom

by Lily Velez

  “The boatmen apparently discovered a body in the river. It must’ve been there all night.”

  Noah’s stomach churned. The taste of the morning’s breakfast rose to the back of his throat.

  “My God,” Noah’s father said. “Who is it?”

  The man shook his head. He hadn’t yet snatched a proper look. He’d arrived at the spot only moments before them.

  Noah’s father caught the eyes of his sons, a silent agreement, before he needled his way through the crowd with them. “Pardon me,” he said. “Excuse us. Pardon me. I apologize.”

  The four of them pressed their way into the swarm of onlookers, Noah bringing up the rear, stepping exactly where the others had stepped, brushing against coarse fabrics, forearms overrun with thick down, and the sweaty side of a braying donkey in one instance, assailed by perfumes and body odors and repellent puffs of mead-scented breath. It was a dizzying business, and Noah wanted nothing more than to return home, his body protesting every forward step even as it braced itself for what was to come.

  He kept his eyes locked onto his father, his knees nearly giving way when the man blanched upon reaching the clearing. His father’s expression melted into shock, his eyes widening. Elliot arrived a step after him. His body went as rigid as a flagpole and he stared on as if he couldn’t believe what he saw before him. Then Colin. He gaped.

  Noah pushed past the last of the townspeople until he, too, was at the clearing with his father and brothers, where the waters of the Rhône gently lapped against the edge of the town, though the sound was barely audible over the ruthless hammering in his head.

  His eyes fell upon the sight before them.

  And then he lost complete sense of everything else.

  The world muted. Avignon evanesced. The townspeople washed away.

  He could smell nothing, feel nothing, taste nothing. Nothing was what he was. Immaterial nothingness, everywhere and nowhere at once. And through it all, his chest split open like the earth one day would at the end of all things, and his soul released a soundless, hideous, devastating outcry that tore him apart piece by piece in its unforgiving, terrible whirlwind.

  For there before him on the grassy embankment of the Rhône river lay the lifeless body of Jeremie Perreault.

  37

  The farmhouse was crushed with grief.

  Camilla’s sobbing reached every corner of living space. There was nowhere to which Noah could retreat that her cries didn’t touch. Her grief was so pervasive, it was like two hands at his throat, squeezing without mercy.

  He’d eventually escaped outdoors, wishing to go unnoticed, wanting the distance of an entire world between him and the others, and installed himself at the water pump behind the farmhouse. His ducks found him here and they circled him, petitioning for their usual portions of baguette, but their litany of quacks went unheard by him.

  There was a painful thickness in his throat. It mirrored the heaviness rapidly expanding through his chest, as if liquid stone were filling his veins, transforming him into one of the many marble statues at the Perreault estate. The pressure was such that he believed he’d crack right in half, hopelessly torn apart like the well he and his brothers had demolished some time ago. He continuously rubbed at his chest, but the pain simply wouldn’t abandon him. He could barely fill his lungs completely with each breath.

  It was then that he wondered if he wasn’t altogether dying. Perhaps he and Jeremie were like the prince and his sword-brother in more ways than Noah had initially realized, their souls inexplicably tied together. Hadn’t there been something of the nature in the Scriptures? Yes, by the Prophet Samuel’s account, the shepherd boy David’s soul had been knit with Jonathan’s shortly after he’d defeated Goliath. And now from beyond the grave, Jeremie’s soul was pulling Noah’s under, that they might not be separated by that uncrossable distance, that journey from which no man returned.

  Noah pressed a fist to his mouth at the thought, his knotted stomach shifting unpredictably. He could no longer trust it.

  They’d transported Jeremie’s body back to their home, easing the horses and wagon into the barn so that Noah’s father could impart the news to Noah’s mother and sisters before shocking them with the evidence. The goal was to transfer the body onto a small worktable, one Noah coincidentally used regularly for his farriery work. The realization shot through him ruthlessly, and with it the impossible reality that he’d just seen Jeremie yesterday in this very barn…alive.

  He’d just felt his hands, his body, the warmth of his breath…

  “Ready?” Noah’s father asked his sons. “On my count. One, two, three.”

  They all reached for the body, over which they’d draped a white cloth, but the moment Noah’s fingers touched the fabric, a force erupted from the pit of his stomach so violently that he instantly twisted from the others, barring an arm across his mouth. He only made it three steps before he vomited onto the ground.

  He hoped his father and brothers would chalk it up to nothing more than an agitated stomach. His brothers had filled the entire journey home with their speculations over the turn of events. An ambush? That was the prevailing theory. During the Saint Agricola festival, there’d been a rise in petty criminalities, and one or two offenders had clearly remained behind by many a townsperson’s account. Someone must’ve watched Jeremie for some time, his brothers reasoned, understanding his shop housed items of immense value.

  Noah, however, upon seeing the rip at the chest of Jeremie’s shirt, crimson rays flaring out from it as if to create a sun, knew the truth. He remembered the flintlock pistol he’d seen on the handler back at the chateau, the very man from whom Jeremie had been fleeing last night.

  Were I to discover that a person was posing a threat to the order of my world, Monsieur Perreault had said, I certainly wouldn’t hesitate to pull that trigger a second time. Even, apparently, if it was against his own son. Noah had thought Monsieur Perreault would seek to possess an heir at all costs. As it’d turned out, he cared more about preserving the sanctity of the Perreault name than even that.

  How had that confrontation ensued? Had the handler ordered Jeremie to make his way back to the western coast only for Jeremie to refuse? Had a struggle then resulted?

  The weakness in Noah’s knees intensified and he loosened his shirt collar as a wave of dizzying heat passed over him. He leaned against the water pump, not trusting his legs to hold him, and covered his mouth with a hand once more.

  “Noah?”

  He dropped his hand and turned to find Margaux approaching. Her eyes flooded with gentle compassion at the sight of him. He must’ve looked haunted to her, with the glassy stare of the dead. Without a word, she came to him and slipped her arms around his neck, hugging him tightly. The puffed sleeves of her muslin dress brushed against his cheeks.

  “I’m so sorry, Noah.”

  He stood there, rigid, his arms too heavy to lift.

  “Everyone’s comforting Camilla, but you lost someone, too. I know you and Jeremie hadn’t yet mended things, but I always thought you eventually would. You must feel so awful.”

  Awful didn’t begin to describe what Noah felt. His chest was caving in, he was falling to pieces, and a strange numbness was slowly but inexorably spreading through him like poison. This had to be death. Not for the first time, he wanted to confess everything to Margaux, if only to share the burden with another, this terrifying weight that steadily crushed him. Awful? No, devastated. Ruined. Shattered.

  Later in the farmhouse, he lingered outside the room where Jeremie had been transferred from the barn, a room considerably cooler than the rest of the house, given the blocks of ice a boatman had offered them. The blocks sat atop saucers on chairs and stools and surrounded Jeremie like vigilant wardens. Camilla’s cries had long since abated. She was elsewhere in the house, in the sitting room to be precise, with their mother and sisters, and they were all murmuring in between sniffs, which allowed Noah the opportunity to see Jeremie in private.
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br />   His fingers bracketed onto the decorative molding of the doorway, and for a time, all he could do was stare at the floor as he braced himself and waited for the walls to stop swaying. Then he lifted his gaze and beheld the sight before him. Jeremie’s body was still covered with the cloth, and it was like looking at a recumbent effigy carved from stone and placed atop an altar tomb, arms in an ‘X’ over the chest as the deceased awaited resurrection. Noah’s eyes slid from the slopes of his feet across the plains of his legs and then the eventual rise at his chest and face.

  His grip on the molding tightened. He didn’t understand how this could be happening. His first thought was, I’ve put you here. His second: It should be me in your place. If not for Noah, Jeremie would’ve possessed no reason to be waiting on the Pont d’Avignon for God only knew how late into the night. In the darkness, he had waited. In the silence, he had waited. Perhaps never doubting that Noah would appear, never doubting they’d run off together, create a new life together.

  Except that Noah hadn’t gone.

  God, he hadn’t gone.

  “We’ll give him a proper burial soon,” came his father’s voice from behind, and Noah nearly leapt into the air.

  “Forgive me. I didn’t mean to startle you.” He heaved a breath, his eyes going to Jeremie. “I’m hoping his mother and father arrive quickly.”

  Everything in Noah came to alert. He faced his father with an obvious question on his face.

  “I didn’t think it’d be proper to lay Jeremie to rest without their presence, but it’d take far too long to deliver his body to their estate by horse wagon. So shortly after we arrived, I sent Elliot and Colin on horseback to relay the news. In fact, if they’ve maintained a steady gallop, I imagine they should be arriving at the estate rather soon. Do you think Jeremie’s mother and father might have any explanation for his odd behavior yesterday?”

  Noah told him he didn’t know, but later in his room, a panic overcame him. He paced along the whining floorboards, an arm curled around his volatile stomach, and willed his body to regain control of itself. His body, however, rebelled, and with good reason. Any moment now, his brothers would hear a most unspeakable truth from Monsieur Perreault’s mouth. Yes, the man would only be so eager as to reveal the part Noah had played in all this.

  His son had been found dead this morning? No, but how could that be? Was Noah at all involved? And when his brothers inquired into this line of thought, Monsieur Perreault would lay accusation upon accusation against Noah as if laying bricks. Because in the end, it could be neither Monsieur Perreault nor his wife who’d caused their only son to fall. It was a stain on their name for which they wouldn’t stand at fault. So they’d absolve themselves of any guilt by casting another as the culprit, insisting he’d singlehandedly brought their son to ruin, and somehow, months from now or weeks or perhaps even days, when the matter had passed to their standards, they’d move on with their lives with little effort, only thinking upon their son with the utmost distaste. A shame, a waste.

  The discomfort in Noah’s stomach increased. What a wretch he was becoming. He continued pacing. Would his brothers believe Monsieur Perreault’s testimony? Would they relay it to their father, their mother? Though what did it matter, for even if they only approached Noah about it in secret upon their return from Aix-en-Provence, he knew the humiliation would level him even then.

  Because he couldn’t deny it, could he? It was the truth. It was the truth in all its catastrophic glory. To deny it would be like sacrilege against Jeremie, a grotesque display of irreverence toward his death. To speak the truth, though…therein lay his penance.

  Yes, he had loved Jeremie.

  He had loved Jeremie with all of himself—heart, body, mind, and soul. He had loved Jeremie before he’d ever known what such a love even meant. He had loved him purely, wholly, unalterably. He had loved him with the love of the saints, with the love that had breathed air into the first man’s lungs, with the love upon which all heaven was built.

  He loved him even now.

  He loved him still.

  He wouldn’t deny it. Like the martyr forced to renounce his faith, he couldn’t. He didn’t exist apart from it. It was all that he was, every part that came together to make up Noah Capet. To remove it would be to remove his honor, to remove his very life.

  His family wouldn’t understand this. They’d be shocked by the revelation. Then troubled, disturbed. His brothers might never again wish to be in the same room as him. Camilla would despise him. Genevieve would pray night and day for him. Margaux perhaps would wonder why he hadn’t confided in her and feel betrayed by this. Or worse, she’d draw away from him, casting aside their strong kinship.

  He’d be an outcast within his own family. The undesirable, the deviant. His mother would rush to find him a bride at once, certain he was only confused, his mind afflicted with untruths, lies that would be canceled out the moment he promised himself to a woman. His father…Noah didn’t even know. What proved more emasculating a thing than for a man to learn his son was of such nature? He couldn’t bear to see how his father would respond, how he’d conduct himself around Noah thereafter.

  So it was that he arrived at a decision, a decision he should’ve made all along.

  Moving quickly now, he gathered the most significant of his personal items into a rucksack. He took Jeremie’s note from his pocket—he hadn’t dared leave it at home when they’d left to town earlier—and dropped it into the sack for safekeeping. Spotting Aimee’s letters upon a shelf, he packed them as well. Then he hurried to the girls’ room and stole back the book of poems Camilla had taken from him. The last items he packed included a leather canteen of water along with bread, fruit, and cheese, only taking as much as he needed as to not deprive the others.

  His steps slowed as he approached Jeremie’s room once more to pay his final respects. I’m sorry, he offered to the figure before him lost to that eternal sleep. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. He was sorry he hadn’t been stronger, hadn’t been braver. He was sorry this is what had become of them, and he was sorry for all they would never be. I’m sorry.

  Outside, he peeked into a window of the sitting room. He took in each of his sisters. Genevieve with her soft features and gentle nature, free-spirited Margaux with the ever-present light in her eyes and laughter in her mouth, and headstrong Camilla with her opinions and dreams. Then he studied his mother. A woman of kindness, of strength, of compassion. He remembered the way she’d taken him into her arms when he’d first stepped foot into the farmhouse, as if God’s angels themselves had delivered him to her. If there was one thing he’d never questioned about his mother, it was her love for him.

  After some time, he turned away. From the farmhouse porch, he briefly watched the horses grazing, the ducks swimming in their sparkling lake. Animals that had brought comfort to him during his time here. His eyes snagged on the black and white pinto that had been his own. He wouldn’t rob his family of a healthy riding horse, so he recalled his fonder moments with the animal and bid farewell from a distance.

  Finally, his eyes found his father. Even now, the man was seeing about the chores on the farm, tending to one of the far-off pastures. He was truly the rock upon which Noah’s family was built. Their provider, their protector, their pillar of strength. Noah memorized everything he could about him, wanting to preserve the image of his father’s love and understanding, the way he’d looked at Noah prior to knowing the truth about him.

  And then, when Noah had finally made peace with it all, he faced north, and he began to walk away.

  He walked away, and he didn’t turn back once.

  38

  He didn’t stop walking until he happened upon a lavender field.

  Evening had since descended, cloaking the earth in black. Above, the moon was no more than a waning crescent, a giant, curved feather stuck in the sky. The land before him lay still and undisturbed, save for the occasional breeze that made the trees and bushes sway in its wake.r />
  As he paused, he took in the trail behind him, the expanse of which was surprisingly affecting. How far he’d come. He’d never once traveled on his own, had never possessed a will to. In truth, the mere notion had always daunted him. When he was a child in Paris, the world had been a cruel and frightening place, a savage thing that had snatched the lives of his birth mother and father. Afterward, the farm had become his very own haven, where he could seek asylum. Strangely, having now left it behind, it was the world at large that seemed his refuge, and more shocking: he was no longer afraid.

  Guilt did dog him, however. By now, his family would’ve noted his absence, and if Elliot and Colin had already returned from Aix-en-Provence, then they’d all know the truth about Noah and Jeremie as well. It was an effort not to brood the matter, especially when his departure so clearly confirmed the Perreaults’ accusations.

  Nonetheless, he knew his mother would still worry for him, and not for the first time, he regretted not offering her a proper goodbye. It’s only that she wouldn’t have let him leave had he raised the subject, and he additionally resented the inevitability of causing a scene. He neither desired the attention nor wished Jeremie to be deprived of it, Jeremie who deserved to be grieved, Jeremie who deserved far more than fate had granted him.

  Better things be resolved in this manner. Upon reaching his destination, he decided he’d send word to Margaux. How his family received the correspondence would determine what transpired thereafter. Should he hear but silence in return, then it’d be answer enough regarding their feelings over his betrayal.

  As for his destination, the past hours of heavy-footed walking had endowed him with astounding clarity. It seemed on some level, he’d already known where his soul sought to take him. He supposed it was why he’d packed Aimee’s letters.