City of Crows

by Chris Womersley

  Nothing. Only the troubadours murmuring over their soup, forest sounds, the munching of the donkey nearby.

  She heard footsteps, and the girl Marguerite appeared with a bundle of blue fabric clutched to her chest. She smiled uncertainly. One of her eyes was clouded over and she was unable to see from it very well. She tended to tilt her face away, as if looking to the side of things, and because of this flaw she couldn’t take part in any of her family’s complicated acrobatic feats. Charlotte liked the girl and was pleased to see her.

  She handed Charlotte the fabric. It was a dress. ‘My mother told me to bring you this,’ she said. ‘It belonged to my uncle’s wife before she died. She says you should not travel with us in such torn rags.’

  Charlotte thanked Marguerite for the rare kindness and accepted the dress. The girl looked to be about thirteen years old, the age her own daughter Aliénor would have been had she survived her fever. This, then, was how she might have looked and acted. Her height, her abrupt manner of movement, the way she leaned over to scratch her calf. It was a strange thought, almost unbearable. It rendered Charlotte speechless. She thought of Michel so recently in his grave, of his ears and mouth filling with dirt. What would he say of this journey of hers? He was a kind man, but given to unpredictable judgements. Tears filled Charlotte’s eyes. Grief was surely the hardiest of emotions, a splinter forever lodged beneath the skin of one’s heart.

  She cleared her throat. ‘I had a daughter once. Two daughters. Aliénor and Béatrice. They died of scarlet fever in the same week. That was three summers ago.’

  The girl winced. ‘How old were they?’

  ‘Béatrice was five, Aliénor was ten. Had Aliénor survived, I think she would be about as old as you are.’

  ‘I saw some children with scarlet fever last year.’

  Their swollen tongues, their burning skin, their tears.

  ‘It is not a good death,’ Charlotte said after a pause, and it surprised her to hear herself say it so plainly.

  The girl opened her mouth as if to speak, but she hesitated and instead fiddled with a loose thread on her pale orange dress. ‘I think I saw your boy,’ she said at last.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your son. In a cart. I saw him.’

  Charlotte wiped her tears and sat up. ‘Nicolas? Where? And he was alive?’

  ‘Yes, he was alive. They had beaten him, I think. I went across to them in the evening where they were camped nearby in the forest and looked into the wagon where the children were. One of the men caught me and he threatened me. He said . . .’

  ‘What? He said what?’

  ‘He said he would take me with them if I wasn’t more careful. Said he’d cut my tongue out, that he’d steal me away from my family.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘A few days ago. The night before you came to us.’

  They sat for a moment in silence.

  Then the girl coughed. ‘I heard Monsieur Lesage telling my uncle there is, in Paris, a secret trade in children for use in black masses and such ceremonies. All sorts of people, even nobles and priests. They use them to request things of the Devil. He said your son is probably already dead.’

  Charlotte didn’t answer. Just as speaking one’s desires could make them true, a person could conjure what she feared simply by uttering the words. This, after all, was the essence of magic and prayer. But what kind of person would kill a child for their own ends? Her mouth was dry. She felt sick. Her last child. Her son. Nicolas.

  Marguerite watched her, nibbling her lip. ‘Why do you not help us in our show, Madame Picot?’

  ‘I am a village woman. My husband was a horse trader. I can make cheese, sew. I can bind a broken arm, help birth a child. But I have never learned the kind of tricks your family knows. I am no acrobat, in case you couldn’t tell by looking at me.’

  The girl nodded, but seemed unconvinced. She glanced around before speaking. ‘But are you not a sorceress, madame?’

  What had the girl seen? Charlotte flinched and considered carefully before responding. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Why would you say such a thing?’

  ‘Because you have this,’ Marguerite said, and she produced something from behind her back.

  Charlotte was appalled to see in the girl’s hand the book Madame Rolland had given her. Her black book. Foolishly, she patted the pocket of her dress where she usually kept it, but it was empty. Panicked, she reached out towards Marguerite. ‘Give that back to me.’ The sudden movement caused pain to flare anew in Charlotte’s chest and shoulder.

  The girl stepped backwards, smirking, as the horrible monkey clambered from beneath the wagon and onto her shoulder, where it bared its yellow teeth and made its chattering sounds. Marguerite fed the creature a morsel of food directly into its brown, leather-lipped mouth.

  Charlotte cowered on her stool, disgusted and afraid. The animal brought to mind a tiny man from a children’s tale, hairy and loud and unpredictable; a stealer of babies.

  ‘You are a thief,’ Charlotte hissed.

  Marguerite scratched her animal’s head. ‘I am no thief, Madame Picot. Roland stole your black book, not me.’

  ‘But is not the animal under your power?’

  The girl shrugged and turned the book’s pages with her fingertips, as if fearful they might be poisoned. ‘Yes, but sometimes he has his own mind. Where did you find a book such as this, madame?’

  ‘That’s not your affair.’

  ‘It is now.’

  ‘An old woman gave it to me,’ Charlotte said.

  Marguerite turned the book over in her hands, inspecting it from all sides. ‘You should be careful, Madame Picot. They’ll burn you alive if they find you with such a book.’

  ‘As they will burn you if they find you with it.’

  ‘Can you read all the strange words and symbols written here?’

  ‘One does not need to read it in order to understand it. The book . . . speaks to me.’

  ‘Speaks to you?’

  How strange it was to hear it said out loud. ‘Yes. It tells me what I need to know.’

  ‘Could you not do something to help find your son? Make a curse against those men who took him?’

  Charlotte swooned with a sort of fury. ‘I would if I could,’ she whispered.

  Marguerite closed the book with a snap. ‘What can you do, then? What sort of magic?’

  Charlotte paused. Sometimes, when no one was looking, she opened the book and listened to its voices, inhaled them so deeply that she felt her blood becoming steeped in its ancient perfumes – of spices, desert winds and grass; of ink, blood, vellum; of smoke and the aftertaste of sparks.

  ‘There are prayers for protection from bullets or fevers,’ she said. ‘But there are other things, too. I know the simpler things only. Spells to help people find things they have lost, the names of the herbs needed to rid a woman of her pregnancy. There are some love charms.’

  The girl nodded thoughtfully. ‘Love charms? How do they work?’

  ‘You need a lock of the man’s hair or a piece of his fingernail and some of the woman’s monthly blood. A pigeon’s heart, too. There are special orisons, some prayers to be said aloud.’

  Marguerite pondered this for a while, before asking: ‘Can you see into the future, like Monsieur Lesage?’

  ‘No, and I am not sure I would wish to.’

  ‘And what are these pages? The ones that are locked?’

  ‘Don’t open them. Please. That’s dark magic I do not wish to know. Harmful spells. Deals with the Devil, raising the dead. Curses and murder. They are spells that cannot be unknown once they are known.’

  Marguerite considered the book in her hand with trepidation, as if it might harm her.

  ‘I used to be able to juggle better than any of my brothers,’ she said. ‘Perform all sorts of acrobatic tricks.
Before my eye was damaged, I mean. I could pick the pocket of almost any man in a crowd. Now Roland does it for me. A Spaniard helped me to train him.’

  ‘What happened to your eye?’

  ‘An accident. I fell from a great height onto my head. For three days I was asleep and when I woke up my eye was broken.’

  Charlotte indicated her book. ‘You cannot steal such a book, you know. It has to be a gift. None of the conjurations will work if the book is obtained by theft. Besides, you cannot read it. Give it back to me now, mademoiselle. It’s of no use to you.’

  ‘Could you fix my eye with a spell?’

  ‘Maybe. I can see if the book contains anything for such an ailment. There might be a lotion.’

  ‘We will be staying in Paris for the summer, near the fair at Saint-Germain.’

  Finally, Marguerite handed back the book. It was still warm from her sweaty palm.

  ‘This book is many hundreds of years old. Many others have owned it before me. I have to protect it carefully or its magic will be lost.’

  A corner of the heavy canopy covering the wagon flapped in the breeze, like a slow handclap. The sound of a flute trickled in from elsewhere, accompanied by the voices of Lesage and the troubadours laughing and swapping stories. She had observed the odd fellow closely over the past two days – reading palms, chatting with strangers, flirting with women – and been amazed at how animated he’d become. How alive.

  She came back to herself. ‘How far is Paris from here?’

  The city occupied the dim space in her imagination reserved for things she had never seen but which terrified her nonetheless: oceans, ghosts, dragons.

  ‘We will be there tomorrow night, I think.’

  ‘Is it truly an island?’

  Marguerite laughed. ‘No, although there are some islands in its river. But it is very large. How will you find your son?’

  Charlotte had no idea. Instead of answering the girl, she glanced around to ensure none of the men could see her, then eased off her muddy, bloodstained dress. Although it was healing, her shoulder injury was still inflamed, encrusted with dried blood and the remnants of the poultice Madame Rolland had applied. It pained her a great deal to lift her arm. She gasped and flinched as her linen shift – also bloodied and torn – slipped from her shoulder.

  Marguerite was observing her intently. She extended a trembling finger towards her. ‘Is that where the arrow pierced you?’

  Charlotte stopped what she was doing, leaving the dress puddled about her waist and thighs. The girl made her uneasy but, equally, she longed for her touch – as if it might, in some fashion, connect her with one of her own lost daughters. She resisted the urge to shy away as Marguerite brushed a fingertip lightly along the scab beneath her collarbone. She nodded.

  The girl drew back her hand. ‘My mother told me the Maid was pierced by an arrow in her shoulder. Like you. The fellow who caught me at the wagon with the children said he had shot a woman with an arrow and that they had left her lying near the edge of a great forest. He said the wolves and foxes would eat her and that soon enough she would be nothing more than shit and bones scattered everywhere.’

  The girl appeared to take grim pleasure in this augury, and Charlotte recoiled at the disgusting thought.

  ‘Are you an angel, madame?’

  ‘The injury is not as bad as it appears,’ she said. ‘I am no angel, Marguerite. An old woman found me and nursed me back to health.’

  ‘Was that the woman who gave you the book? The witch?’

  The word chilled Charlotte, as if it were alone a curse. Witch. She considered her hand, revolved it in the dim light. Fingers, veins, bones hidden beneath the skin. I am a woman of power, she thought, and I will find my son. She finished dressing.

  ‘She was a kindly woman, that’s all. A rare thing in these times, perhaps. If it weren’t for her I would have died. Have you told anyone about this book? Your mother?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Please don’t. The book can help me save Nicolas. He is the only child I have left. The only family. I love him dearly.’

  The girl hesitated, perhaps torn between her fear of Charlotte and relishing her own rare moment of authority.

  ‘Great harm will come to you and your family if you breathe a word about it,’ Charlotte whispered.

  Her warning had the desired effect. The girl looked afraid. ‘What sort of harm?’

  ‘The worst you can imagine.’

  ‘You said you only knew simple things. Not dark magic.’

  ‘It is not me you need to fear. It is my companion, Lesage. He is wicked, and he is under my control as surely as that monkey is under yours.’ She paused. ‘But he is more dangerous than a mere thief. He seems a man, but he is really a demon and he will murder you if I command him to do so.’

  Marguerite looked around nervously. It was clear she longed to flee Charlotte’s presence, but was equally compelled not to betray her fear. She was a resolute girl.

  ‘He is certainly a strange man,’ she admitted, ‘with his face all twitching the way it does. And the symbols scratched into his arm.’

  ‘What symbols?’

  Marguerite indicated her own forearm. ‘Have you not seen them? Yesterday, when he was bathing, he rolled up his sleeve and I saw something here on his arm. Devilish symbols, like nothing I had ever seen before. Was it true what he saw in my mother’s future? That she would one day drown in a river? And he said that my brother Jean could die of the plague.’

  ‘How do you know what he told her?’

  The girl blushed. ‘I was hiding nearby.’

  ‘Well. Our fate can be what we make it. Your mother needs to be careful, that’s all. As do all of us.’ Charlotte heard a woman’s voice calling out. ‘There. Do you hear that? She is looking for you now.’

  The girl backed away, then turned and ran.

  17

  That night, when everyone was asleep, Charlotte could bear it no longer. She slipped from beneath her thin blanket and sat up for a moment to orient herself in the gloom. She patted her pocket where she kept her black book and its weight against her hip reassured her. The fire over which they had cooked soup was now merely smouldering embers. Around her the dim shapes of travellers huddled under their blankets. Marguerite and Madame Leroux were in the cart with the baby, while the men slept on the ground wrapped in blankets. The donkey stood beside the wagon with its head bowed, dozing. Overhead, through the leaves, the night sky was black, dotted here and there with pinpricks of light. Stars. The moon was low, a few days past full. No one moved. A fox cried out, an animal crept through the undergrowth. The forest went about its business.

  Charlotte picked her way over to where Lesage was asleep under his own bedding. She shook him until he woke, startled and wild-eyed, flailing clumsily at her.

  ‘What? What’s happening? What is it, woman?’

  ‘Is it true what you told Monsieur Boucher?’

  He looked around blearily. ‘What did I tell him?’

  ‘That my son is probably dead? That there are sorcerers in Paris who might use him for their own purposes? Murder him? Tell me. What do they do with them?’

  Lesage wiped a hand across his greasy face. His breath stank of wine. ‘How do you know what I told him?’

  Charlotte shook him again. ‘Tell me,’ she hissed.

  ‘I only told him that to frighten them. A story, that’s all. I told him that to give our situation more urgency, you see. So these damned troubadours would move faster. No, no, no, Madame Picot. You misunderstand. They won’t hurt him. They might . . . might make the children work as servants or maids, that’s all. They hire them out as mourners at funerals and the like. Nothing more than that. I’m sure no harm will come to your boy. We’ll find him soon enough.’

  ‘Are you telling me the truth?’

  ‘Of course.’
/>
  She hesitated. ‘I want you to read my cards for me.’

  ‘Now, madame? But it’s so late . . .’

  She pulled his blanket off him. ‘Yes. Immediately.’

  Finally, cursing to himself, Lesage got to his feet, scrabbled through his satchel and produced his deck of tarot cards. Squatting on the ground with his blanket draped like a cloak across his shoulders, he unwrapped the cards from their filthy scarf and held them out to her. They shone dully in the moonlight. Charlotte was fearful. She shivered in her shawl.

  ‘Now,’ Lesage said, ‘close your eyes and place your hand on the deck for a moment. There. Like that. Thank you.’

  When, at his instruction, she opened her eyes again, he arranged five cards in the shape of a cross, mumbling several incantations or curses under his breath as he did so. He had removed his hat to sleep and Charlotte could see where his hair had grown on his scalp, but patchily, like a blighted crop. His own hands were rough. His fingers were calloused and the backs of his hands were as scarred and leathered as those of a field worker. With each card he laid down, he muttered with surprise and rumination. Charlotte drew breath, as if scorched. Indeed, the cards were as beautiful and terrifying as fire.

  ‘Very interesting,’ he said at last, and tapped the cards one by one, as if she were unable to read their names for herself. ‘Here is the Empress, the Magician, the Queen of Coins, the Hanged Man and, there, this last one is Judgement.’

  ‘Do they say if my son is still alive?’

  ‘Not exactly. Alone, the cards have varied and inconclusive meanings, but together we might draw forth some predictions about your future.’ Here Lesage made a scooping gesture with his hands, as if gathering these disparate meanings together. ‘I think you have had a troubled life, madame, but perhaps no more so than any woman. I can tell you are a very caring woman. Most fertile, which is important, of course, and you have been a valuable wife. You are also devout, madame. That’s excellent, and so important in these godless times. You should live to a good age, I think. No madness that I can see. A content enough childhood, I think?’