I remained on my bed, sobbing, my head buried in the pillows. Later that day, my mother entered the room, followed by the maid Guillemine and Denise Delrieu, the village midwife. The Delrieu woman was also, according to common rumour, a faiseuse d’anges, an “angel maker,” who would rid distressed females of unborn offspring. She was nicknamed in the Roman language lou Cabanel, the Owl, and considered a witch, or a healer, depending on one’s opinion of her potions. Like all the children in the village, I had kept away from her cottage.
Startled, I rose. My mother, in her severest voice, ordered me to lie on my bed. I obeyed. Without a word of warning, she raised my skirts up to my waist, caught my knees and spread my legs apart. She ordered the maid to hold my arms above my head. At that time, women did not wear any undergarments under their chemise, and my intimate parts were exposed to the view of the Owl. The crone lit a candle she had taken from the sewing table and approached so close that I felt the heat of the flame between my thighs. I imagined for an instant that she was going to burn me in some witchcraft ritual as a punishment for my misconduct. I cried in horror and tried to rise from the bed, but the maid was holding my arms firmly. The Owl, bending toward me until I felt her head brushing against my skin, examined me and poked at me with the fingers of her free hand. I shuddered at her touch. After a few minutes, she turned to my mother.
“She’s intact,” said the witch, “fresh as a rose. You needn’t worry, My Lady, she’ll bleed.”
My mother gave an audible sigh. She dismissed the Owl and left without a second look at me. I rose in haste, sick to my stomach, and rearranged my skirts.
Of course I knew the purpose of the examination. I wondered what would have happened had Pierre-André’s conduct been less honourable. My engagement to the Baron would certainly have been broken. Yet even that would not have ensured the acceptance of Pierre-André’s offer. It was more likely that both of us would have been subjected to my brother’s wrath.
That night I did not go down to dinner, nor did anyone ask to see me. Joséphine brought me a tray in my bedroom. She too congratulated me on my good fortune and represented to me all of the advantages of the match. I said nothing, too nauseated to touch the food.
For the next few days Joséphine continued to bring me my meals. There seemed to be an unspoken understanding in Fontfreyde that I was not to leave my bedroom. Yet before the week was over, a maid came to fetch me. She announced that there was company waiting for me in the drawing room. I thought at first that the Baron had come for a courtship visit and fervently hoped that we would be left alone for a moment. I intended to throw myself at his feet and confess my attachment to another. Perhaps he was not cruel. He might take pity on me and release me from our engagement.
I was startled to find a little crowd in the drawing room. In addition to my fiancé, I saw my brother, our mother, my sister Madeleine, her husband the Count de Chavagnac, the Chevalier des Huttes, who was a friend of my brother, Monsieur de Laubrac, the Baron’s cousin and heir, and still another man, tall and thin, whom I did not know. All faces were solemn. An uneasy silence greeted me. It was broken when Madeleine walked to me to kiss me and offer her congratulations.
The Marquis spoke. “Gabrielle, we are gathered here to sign your marriage contract.”
It was customary in France then, and I believe it still is, for future spouses to enter into a written contract formalizing the mutual promises of marriage and settling in advance all financial matters. It was signed by the spouses-to-be and their parents, and also by other family members and friends who attended as witnesses. All persons of substance entered into such contracts before marrying. No Montserrat had ever wed without one. Yet I had not expected mine to be signed so soon.
My brother nodded in the direction of the stranger. “Maître Carrier has just read aloud the articles of the contract. Now it requires your signature.”
Carrier was holding several handwritten sheets of paper, bound with string, in his hand. My brother had obviously chosen not to avail himself of the services of Jean-Baptiste Coffinhal, his usual attorney. Carrier put the papers down on a table that stood in the middle of the room and pointed at the back of the last sheet.
“You may sign here, Mademoiselle,” he said with a strong Roman accent. He pulled a chair for me and held out a quill.
I was desperately trying to think of a way to delay the proceedings. “What does it say?” I asked Carrier.
“Enough, Gabrielle,” said my brother in a stern voice. “A bride-to-be does not ask this kind of question. I, as your guardian, am satisfied with the terms of this contract. So is your future master. It is all that matters. Now I am telling you to sign, and you are going to obey.”
I looked at Madeleine in a silent plea for help. She turned away. The Marquis pressed down on my shoulder and made me sit at the table. He took the quill from Carrier’s hand to put it in mine.
“Sign,” he said.
My brother was bending over me, one of his hands resting on the table and the other still on my shoulder. “Sign,” he repeated between his teeth.
I looked around at the rest of the company, but all eyes were now averted, except those of the Baron. He was observing me in silence, a few yards away, with a strange smile on his face. I felt a shove on my shoulder. My brother was becoming impatient. I could not muster the courage to defy him in front of my family. I took a deep breath and signed so hastily that I smudged ink on the paper. I rose very fast. Everyone else, Carrier last of all, signed in turn.
Carrier picked up the contract and put it away in a portfolio. I saw the Baron whisper into my mother’s ear. She nodded and ordered me to follow her to her little upstairs parlour. Now I did not want to be alone with him. He had watched my attempt at resistance, then my surrender, all without any dismay, any pity. On the contrary, he had been amused. He would never release me from our engagement. And why should he now? Whatever else was in the contract, I knew that it must contain a promise of marriage. And I had signed it, after pledging my faith to Pierre-André! I could not forgive myself for my cowardice.
Once in my mother’s parlour, and before we had time to sit, the Baron pulled from his pocket a red leather case emblazoned with a coat of arms. He offered it to me. I took it awkwardly and muttered words of thanks.
“What are you waiting for, girl?” asked my mother. “Do not gape like a half-wit, open it.” She simpered at the Baron. “You must forgive her, Sir. She is overcome with your kindness.”
I opened the case reluctantly. It contained a pair of earrings, two inches long, gleaming against the white satin lining. Each was made of twelve large oval rubies, the colour of red currants, surrounded by diamonds. The beauty of the stones amazed me, but it gave me no pleasure. I could not think of what to say.
“They were,” the Baron explained, “presented by my father to my late mother upon their engagement. My poor departed Dorothée also wore them, but they seem to have been especially designed to shine against the white skin of your lovely neck.”
Visions of those unknown dead ladies wearing the earrings came to my mind. “I do not know how to thank you, Sir,” I said at last. “I was never given anything so beautiful.”
“Indeed, Sir,” intervened my mother, “you are spoiling her. This is far more than she deserves. As for you, child, your manners put me to shame. Kiss your fiancé’s hand to thank him properly.”
I hesitated, repulsed by the idea of touching any part of him. My mother glowered at me. I held my breath and brought his hand as briefly as I could to my lips. He patted my cheek.
“Do not fret, Madam,” he said to the Marquise. “After what I saw of your daughter today, I am more satisfied than ever with my choice of a bride. She will learn to show her gratitude suitably once we are married.” He smiled at me. “I will see you again, dear little cousin, on our wedding day. I look forward to it more than you can imagine.”
With that he bowed and, much to my relief, took his leave. Our courtship was limited to t
his single occasion. Thus was my marriage decided, with no more regard for my wishes and feelings than if I had been a cow sold at the cattle fair in Vic.
10
After the signing of my marriage contract, I was allowed to leave my bedroom, and on the next Sunday I attended High Mass with my brother and mother in the church of Lavigerie. We took our places in the seats reserved for the lord and his family in the chancel. Over the years, I had often heard Father Delmas read from the pulpit, after the sermon, the banns of marriage for my brother’s vassals. Now the priest cleared his voice to announce, with more solemnity than usual, the forthcoming union between the Noble Lady Marie Gabrielle de Montserrat and the High and Mighty Lord Donatien Aimé François de Laubrac, Baron de Peyre, de Cénaret and de La Clavière, Colonel of the Royal Dragoons and Knight of the Order of Saint-Louis. Father Delmas, after catching his breath, invited anyone aware of any legal impediment to such marriage to step forward. I knew that all eyes were turned towards me. I stared at the stone floor, wishing for it to open and swallow me alive. Excited whispers rippled through the congregation. I would not have been more ashamed if I had stood naked in the middle of the church.
Over the following days, the news of my future marriage became, according to Joséphine, the topic of all conversations from Vic to Aurillac. I kept wondering what Pierre-André was feeling. The reading of the banns in church had made my engagement public. He must by now have understood that it was all over. Perhaps he had learned that I had signed my marriage contract already, he was now resigned to losing me, he had given up any thought of me. Or maybe he was very angry with me. He thought, with good cause, that I had betrayed him. Those ideas tormented me no less than the prospect of my own fate and were not put to rest until Joséphine told me of an incident that had taken place in Lavigerie.
Pierre-André and my brother happened to ride into town at the same time. Pierre-André, without removing his hat, addressed the Marquis most disrespectfully as “Sir” instead of “My Lord.” In a thunderous voice, he told my brother that my family must have lost all common decency to throw a girl of fifteen into the bed of an old swine three times her age. My brother responded that such insolence from a commoner was intolerable, and that he would receive no lessons on what to do with his own sister. Pierre-André replied, among other things, that the nobles’ arrogance, which seemed to increase in exact proportion to their poverty, made him sick to his stomach and that all aristocrats, beggarly and wealthy alike, would receive what they deserved sooner than they expected. Both men dismounted. Pierre-André caught my brother by his necktie and threatened to kill him with his bare hands, while the Marquis drew the sword he wore as a sign of his rank. The outcome of the fight would not have been in doubt, for, although Pierre-André was by far the taller and heavier man of the two, he was unarmed. The villagers, alerted by the sound of his voice, had rushed to the scene and managed to separate the combatants, who had gone their separate ways, glowering at each other.
“Of course,” said Joséphine, “young Dr. Coffinhal deserves the gallows for assaulting My Lord, and in Lavigerie too, in the middle of the Marquis’s jurisdiction.”
“Will my brother press charges?”
“I’m sure he’d like to see your suitor hanged, but he has to keep quiet because of the scandal it’d create, with your name mentioned between them in public like that. And he can’t fight a commoner in a duel either. So My Lord tried to recruit men among the servants and peasants to have your suitor thrashed for his insolence, but he couldn’t find any volunteers. Young Dr. Coffinhal is well known around here. He’s strong as a horse and he has quite a temper. People are afraid of him. No one, even with the help of other fellows, wants to risk a broken arm or jaw, or worse, in that kind of expedition.”
I was pained by the idea of such an encounter between the two men I loved best. I was also moved at the thought that Pierre-André had not forgotten me and that he pitied the distress of my situation, to the point of putting his life at risk to express his opinion of the match. I wondered whether any of it had reached the Baron’s ears, and allowed myself to hope that it might alter his plans.
I visited Joséphine with great punctuality, since she was my best source of information about tidings that concerned me most closely. A few days later, I entered the kitchen as she was running a plucked chicken by the fire to burn the remaining feathers. The acrid smell filled the room. Without a word, she reached into her pocket and slipped into my hand a note, sealed and without any direction, which read as follows:
As I write this, my beloved, I do not know whether you are resolved to marry the man your brother has chosen for you. If so, it is all over and you need not read further. But if you do not forsake me, I cannot, I will not, ever abandon you.
You may remember Father Marty, who used to be the vicar of
Lavigerie and is now the priest of Pailherols. I called on the old renegade yesterday and, after presenting him with a bottle of fine wine, asked about a clandestine wedding between us, without banns, witnesses or your brother’s consent. Well, Gabrielle, under canon law, the marriage would be valid. Father Marty, as the officiating priest, would likely be relieved of his duties, but he is tired of Pailherols and does not care. He is ready to celebrate the ceremony. Once married, we will have nothing to fear.
I know that it will grieve you to offend your brother. I would not propose this if it were not our only chance. In the eyes of the world, nothing I can offer compares to what your proposed match would afford you. All I have to give you is my appreciation not only of your beauty, but also of your goodness and kindness, and my promise to love you and protect you till death.
Listen, Gabrielle, my sweet one, my tender love. I will wait for you two days from now, on the 1st of September at midnight at the crossroads of Escalmels. If you do not join me there, I will know that I have lost you and you will not hear from me again.
Regardless of your decision, burn this immediately.
I felt as if sunlight had suddenly flooded the kitchen. Pierre-André, against all odds, in spite of my engagement to another man, still wanted me. Joséphine was cutting open the chicken and removing the giblets. She grumbled when I kissed her madly. I threw the note into the fire of the cantou, where it burnt with a bright flame, then shriveled to ashes in a moment.
Indeed I remembered Father Marty very well. My family no longer kept a chaplain, and he, as the parish priest of Lavigerie, had come to Fontfreyde to prepare me for my First Communion. Shortly afterwards, he had been arrested in a house of convenience in Aurillac for molesting one of the ladies. My mother had mentioned the scandal at the dinner table. My brother had glanced at me and turned the conversation to a subject more suited to the ears of a maiden. Intrigued, I had sought more information from Joséphine. Gossip had it that, although all secular charges had been dropped against Father Marty, my mother had been so outraged at his conduct that she had obtained from the Bishop of Saint-Flour his removal from his pastoral duties in Lavigerie. Thanks to the good Father’s friends at the diocese, he had avoided being stripped of his priesthood. After a few months of severe penance in a monastery, he had been sent to the mountain hamlet of Pailherols, where cattle outnumbered Christians ten to one. According to rumour, he had taken to drinking in the solitude of his new parish.
My marriage to Pierre-André would need to be celebrated and consummated before I was missed at Fontfreyde in the morning of the 2nd. I was ignorant of the niceties of canon law, but knew that the scandal would then be too great for my family to question the validity of the ceremony. What would happen next the letter did not say, but I trusted that Pierre-André would have taken steps to secure our escape from the country until things quieted.
At no time did I waiver in my determination to elope. My wedding day was now but two weeks away. If Lord Blue Beard himself, he of the six murdered wives, had sprung alive from the pages of my book of fairy tales, I would have chosen him over the Baron.
The moon was only two days s
hort of full and the weather clear and dry. Escalmels was three miles from Fontfreyde, an easy ride. As a child, nothing would have induced me to venture outside the château at night. Now I had reached an age when I feared brutes of flesh and bone, such as the Baron, far more than werewolves or ghosts.
11
On the night of the 1st of September, I went to my bedroom as usual after prayers. I kissed my rag doll for the last time. I still played with it on occasion, but now I knew that I was bidding my childhood farewell. It was eleven when I wrapped myself in my winter cloak and left the silent château on tiptoe. My heart was beating fast as I unbarred the front door and closed it quietly behind me. I ran down the great stairs and to the stables. Jewel whinnied softly when he caught my scent in the dark. I stroked his face to silence him, put his bridle on and wrapped his hooves in the rags I had prepared. The place was so familiar that I could find my way without the help of a lantern. I led him out of his stall.
As I was ready to cross the threshold of the stables, a dark figure appeared from the shadows and blocked my passage. I felt all warmth leave my body. My brother was standing in front of me. He said calmly: “I know everything. Follow me and keep silent.”
I had no intention of doing either. I pushed him away and ran for a few paces, but he caught me. I fought him as long as I could, hoping till the end to escape, but he was stronger, and desperate to stop me. Holding me by the waist with both arms, he dragged me towards the house while I struggled to escape his grip. Since there was no longer any hope in secrecy, I cried at the top of my lungs. Jewel, seeing me attacked, neighed wildly and reared on his back legs. The rags I had tied around his hooves came loose. Sparks flew in the darkness where his shoes hit the cobblestones of the courtyard. Lights appeared at several windows, and faces looked out to discover the cause of the commotion. My brother hissed: “Little bitch! You will not be happy until you have utterly disgraced us.”
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