An Ignorance of Means

by Jennifer Oakley Denslow

  The thought of the beautiful dress Monsieur Dauterive designed almost made her weep, until she realized it would do her no good here. The fabrics would be ruined and reduced to rags from the close quarters and unsanitary state of the place, and would, even in their best condition, offer her no protection.

  When the two monks began the descent into the purgatorial room, Catherine allowed herself to be carried along. Brother Jean was kind, that was clear, but it was also clear he was to be ineffectual in aiding her. Brother Vincent would be of no help because he had made his decisions about her state without any evidence. How could she convince him she was sane if he didn't need evidence to make his conclusions? Throughout her trials, Catherine had learned that when one door closed, another one opened. She smiled bitterly at the thought that sometimes the door opened onto a deep chasm, such as the one she found herself in now.

  "Catherine, this is where you will find food." Brother Jean gestured to a rough table, most likely discarded from the refectory in the monks' dining room she thought. "Each morning someone will leave bread and hot coffee for you. Each evening, soup and more coffee."

  "I do not think she understands you." Vincent twisted and contorted himself in an effort to escape contact with any of the women who, curious at the intruders, began to gather around the three additions to the hive. Unable to escape the onslaught, he brought out a crisp linen handkerchief to cover his nose.

  "I am sure something of what I am saying is touching her," Jean said. "You will stay here now. We will come check on you."

  Catherine kept silent. She found herself again in a position in which talking would accomplish nothing and quiet planning could be her salvation. She had seen only two monks, she thought as she returned Jean's concerned gaze with a blank one. If nothing else, she might recruit a few of the women to lay in wait just inside the door and launch an attack on the keepers, thus allowing everyone to escape to the outside.

  How far she had come in such a short time, she thought. Marie's instructions in the tiny cell they had shared had turned her into quite the artist, and her tools were her own natural strengths of cunning and quick hands. Of course, the problems with her plan were myriad, including the fact that she knew nothing about the layout of the building. Once she escaped, she might well run into the arms of one of the asylum staff instead of out into the world to make her way back to her father's house.

  Jean and Vincent's retreat shifted the locus of interest, and Catherine found herself surrounded by a crowd of women. Now that she was among them, it was easy to discern their differences on points beyond the sartorial distinctions she had noted earlier.

  The woman closest to her was wrapped in so many layers of wool and linen that sweat rolled off her face. She had dark brown hair; the curls matted around her face, and the ends fell across her shoulders. She smelled like the wet hounds Catherine had whiffed after Robert returned from a hunt, and her expression was one of dog-like eagerness to be noticed. The woman croaked one word over and over: "Gentle? Gentle?" Catherine could not understand if it was a name or a request.

  Instinct backed Catherine against one of the upright beams supporting the stairs, and she looked around the room. A few decrepit tables matching the one Jean had pointed out cluttered the open area, and benches in the same condition littered the space between them. Piles of straw mounded against the base of the walls and were packed into rough pallets on which some of the women reclined. There was no exit other than the door at the top of the stairs.

  A woman who came up to her shoulder crept up beside her. The diminutive wretch was stooped and had a black shawl wrapped like a mantilla around her head. Its arrangement caused her great difficulty, in that she had to twist her head up and to the side to see anything. The stress must have been terrible, for every once in a while she would look down and shake her head. If something shiny came into her view, she would abandon her examination of Catherine and go after the prize. Always disappointed in the results of her foray away from the new member of the crowd, she would return to twist her eyes up to look at Catherine some more.

  As Catherine examined each of the women in turn. The only commonality she found was a vacancy in their eyes. In some, the look was a cheerful emptiness, much like that of someone who, slightly deaf, waits to be enlightened about what delightful tidbit they've missed. In others, the vacancy was an absence. No connection to reality was evident in some of the women's eyes; they stared past everyone and the room they were in, caught in a world no one else saw.

  Catherine considered that some of the women might be as sane as she herself was, but dismissed the idea. Each face she looked into read like a sad case history.

  Then she noticed a woman standing apart from the others, leaning against the wall with an insouciance Catherine recognized from her short association with Robert's aristocratic friends. The woman held herself aloof and did not seem to be paying any attention to Catherine at all. Even more startling, her eyes were warm with life and present in the terrible place. Catherine began shoving the women surrounding her aside and moved toward the woman at the wall.

  "I am Catherine," she said.

  "I am Genevieve." The woman's eyes sparkled with a wit and intelligence Catherine found lacking in all the other shells that walked as women in the dungeon they occupied. Genevieve offered a sad smile and extended her hand. "I welcome you to our pied-a-terre. What brought you here?"

  "I was wondering the same of you. You don't seem like the others," Catherine said. She stopped short of expressing herself fully. Even in this roiling pit of humanity, she wondered if uttering the word "sane" would be impolite. Genevieve confirmed it was not when she replied.

  "Sane? I am, for the most part, quite sane. I have my days, but do we not all have those? I know exactly what you mean. I believe it has been almost a year since someone with your faculties has joined us here. You might imagine how lonely I have been in waiting for someone like you." Genevieve's hand was warm, but rough. The skin felt like sandpaper, and Catherine dropped her new acquaintance's grip as soon as she could. "I hope you understand the lack of amenities here."

  "I did not mean to embarrass you. I embarrass myself with such squeamishness."

  "Is it squeamishness? You must find a way to conquer such a feeling if you are to survive here. Otherwise, how will you eat when the mad women around you are stuffing food into their mouths with hands like paws? How will you sleep when you hear the rats and roaches scuttling through the hay we retire on each night?" Genevieve's smile was darker now. "Have I embarrassed you?"

  "I understand. I meant no disrespect. How long have you been here?"

  "I lost count of the days at first. But I know for sure I have seen two full years here, and more. Before I gained my senses and was able to keep count, I did not know how long I had been imprisoned."

  "I thought I was being sent to a convent."

  "Some call this a hospital. There is no hope here." Genevieve waved a hand in the air, dismissing the idea that anyone could find healing among the savage women milling around on the stone floor.

  "You have survived. You said yourself you have been here two years."

  "And what made you think you should trust a lunatic?" Genevieve threw back her head and laughed. Catherine looked down, her face reddening. "I have scared you, haven't I? Don't be frightened. I have survived, but I have made a rule. I am not to hope."

  "Then for what," asked Catherine, "do you live?"

  "Come with me. I have a little nest over here in the corner. Quite comfortable." Genevieve led Catherine into a rounded corner where a surprisingly fresh pile of straw was covered with a rough gray woolen shawl. A pale light brightened the little corner in contrast with the rest of the room. Catherine saw several small candles, altar candles from the looks of them, wedged into a heavy iron sconce like those in the hallways.

  Once in the light, Catherine could see the features of her benefactor. Dark-brown hair—untouched by gray but dulled, she guessed, by lack of exposure to
any natural light—framed a sharp, heart-shaped face. Genevieve's skin was pale, almost gray, but unlined. Her alert hazel eyes peeked out from under neat arched brows the same shade as her hair.

  "I see someone had little thought about your comfort. You will be very cold until we can find you something else to wear," Genevieve said, appraising Catherine's ensemble.

  "How will I find anything?"

  "Every day someone dies. Or almost every day. And when someone dies, they need very little to go to their next resting place. We will secure you some appropriate clothes the next time—"

  "What a terrible thought! I could no more put on a dead woman's clothes...tell me, won't their family be disturbed if the poor deceased is buried in nothing but their intimates?"

  "Does anyone care that you are here in nothing but your intimates?" Genevieve didn't wait for the obvious answer, but continued. "I want to tell you about life here inside Charenton and how it is I am still here. You may not believe everything I tell you until you have experienced it yourself, but I promise every word I tell you is true."

  Catherine nodded.

  "This room is like a marketplace. Every few days, men come in and stand on the platform up there," she pointed up to the landing where Catherine had first entered with Brother Vincent and Brother Jean, "and survey the merchandise. That is us." She paused to make sure Catherine understood.

  Puzzled, but curious, Catherine said nothing.

  "A little while after such a gentleman comes in and peruses us, someone, one of the monks usually, will come down here and lead two or three women up the stairs."

  "What do you think happens to them?"

  "I fear even my worst imaginings fail to capture the life they must lead after they leave here. I can tell you that on many a mad face I see the first hint of expression when they begin the walk up the stairs."

  "And what is it? Fear?"

  "Relief?" Genevieve said. "Relief, I think. Because after a while, any life outside this one is better."

  "How have you escaped being led away? You've been here longer than anyone?"

  "I have been here longer than most of these wretches, but not all. There is some scale, some cosmic scale I am balanced on with the worst of the lunatics here. The truly mad, the ones who scream endlessly and arch their back in terrible seizures, they are here as long as they are alive and only when they die does someone come to cart them away. And me, the sanest," she almost grinned, "except for you, I suspect, I am still here. The great middle class of us is being siphoned away. Eventually it will be you, me, and the half dozen women who imagine themselves to be snakes and crawl on their bellies all day."

  "Do some of them do that?" Catherine's alarm was reflected in her efforts to twist back to see if any such woman was approaching her.

  Genevieve only laughed.

  "I would pity anyone who found themselves here in such a state. I wonder how you have contrived to keep your own sanity." Catherine flinched as a woman in a long-sleeved black robe, dusty with accumulated dirt, approached her and began speaking softly.

  "Go away, Sophie. She's not got a penny for you!" Genevieve swatted at the old woman, who moved away. "A beggar. Someone thought they were doing an act of charity by bringing her in here. They didn't know that, on the street, there was a butcher or baker kind enough to slip her bits of meat or bread and a public fountain to drink at, and a kind maid who slipped her one of her mistress's worn-out blankets so she had something warm to curl up with in the alley. In here, she might get a crust of bread if she's sensible when the food comes. And water can be had if you can fix a way to catch it as it drips down the walls. But her blanket was stolen long ago, and she doesn't understand how to fight to get it back. She still begs. She was begging you for a coin."

  "And what on earth would she have done with it if I had given it to her?"

  "Hidden it away if she could hold on to it for the few minutes it would take to scuttle around this hole and find a place to hide it."

  Catherine had never felt the emptiness that opened inside her. The chasm was not hunger, not homesickness, a feeling she had become well acquainted with, nor even simple sadness. She felt a terrible, bleak gulf of terror open up in her like a well with to nothing to dip from but still black water. She had to get out of the hellish room even if it meant she would perish in the effort. Swallowing hard, she stood and bolted for the stairs. Genevieve's voice called after her.

  "Do not go back up the stairs!" Genevieve struggled up from the pile of hay and tried to grab Catherine's arm to restrain her, but she just missed. "No one will come for you. You won't like what happens if you start beating on the door."

  Catherine stopped at the foot of the stairs. She fidgeted like a shy horse, flinching at the fetid air currents that carried the sour curry of human filth and sweat around her. She listened. Genevieve moved toward her, taking what seemed like an eternity for each step until she stood right next to her. When she spoke, Catherine felt the air from her words on her ear.

  "If you pound on the door, they will not answer it. They will pour boiling water through the bars." Genevieve kept her voice calm as she spoke. "Do you understand? They will pour boiling water on you."

  Catherine's knees buckled, and she fell hard. Genevieve caught her before she struck her head on the floor and lowered her until she was stretched out on the hard stones. Curled up where she landed, Catherine sobbed, and Genevieve stood guard, pushing the curious and deluded back to maintain a ring of safety.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Catherine heard a repeated chiming that brought her back into the village classroom of her youth where the nuns waited, bells in hand. Shaking her head to clear the sound away, she heard the sound again. Over it, the airy soprano of a woman singing entered her consciousness. Finally, a familiar voice spoke.

  "Wake up, Catherine. You need to move. The curious are getting curiouser, and I don't know how long you will be safe here. Wake up and let me take you back to my pallet where we can protect each other."

  When Catherine opened her eyes, she saw Genevieve's face above her, and behind the small woman's bent frame, a dozen other women crowding closely. While Genevieve's voice had been gentle, her face registered tension. Her tightly knit brows made Catherine begin to move. Genevieve pulled on her wrist, but her strength was such that it made no difference, so Catherine had to use her own power to scramble up from the floor.

  "What is that bell? Am I hearing things?" she asked.

  Genevieve led her back to the pile of straw where they had spoken before Catherine's outburst. "I think it is safe to tell you about the bell. Promise me you will not bolt again?"

  Catherine shook her head, but the tone of Genevieve's words stung.

  "The bell belongs to the Mother Superior."

  "A nun? Here, among us?" Catherine chose a pronoun that revealed much to Genevieve.

  "She believes she is a nun," Genevieve said as they settled back down. With their backs against the wall, they were safe from all but the most aggressive women milling around them.

  "Was she excommunicated?"

  "She was never a communicant," Genevieve said. "Here, pull your shawl more tightly around you. I'll tell you, but you have to promise you are done with hysterics."

  Catherine couldn't forget the terrible image of the guards responding to women's pleas for release with boiling water. "How many women have been killed? Or disfigured?"

  Genevieve held up her hand. "Enough. The monks have prayers to make. Who do you think minds the inmates when the monks are on their knees? Men who think nothing of using the most expedient means to keep us in order. The men who lead the merchants in here to inspect us. Spare me further outrage. Do you want to hear Marguerite's story?"

  "Marguerite? Is that the nun?"

  "Yes. See her over there?"

  Catherine turned to where Genevieve had pointed. A woman was kneeling with her back to them, her feet aligned perfectly, the insteps pressed against the stones, heels together. She held her
arms out at right angles to her body, head lolled back, eyes pointing to heaven.

  "Before she inflicted a vow of silence on herself, she was happy to tell me about how she had come to be a nun. I think she hoped I might be her postulant."

  "You said she was never really a nun."

  "Some religious only get their vocation after something truly terrible happens to them. Their parents die. Or they find themselves widowed and think that entering a convent will help them find peace."

  Catherine nodded. She had known women who had decided to go away. They were usually bereft of family, and entering a convent made good economic as well as spiritual sense.

  "Marguerite lost something very precious, and the violence of the loss unhinged her."

  "She is truly mad?"

  "She had been admitted to the novitiate. She was not a sister yet. Apparently she had felt an incredible pull to become one of Christ's brides. She told me of the ecstasy she had experienced in prayer, how it had transported her to somewhere she had never been before."

  "I've heard people speak of it, but I've never had the experience myself."

  "But you know what ecstasy feels like? You have experienced physical intimacy?" Genevieve asked.

  Catherine realized this woman knew nothing of her story. She nodded.

  "When Marguerite’s virginity was taken, apparently her body betrayed her. She felt something of the ecstasy she knew in prayer when the man attacked her."

  Catherine reflected on her own responses to Picard. His rough advances had aroused her, and the shame of it lingered after each of their encounters. She couldn't imagine the self-flagellation Marguerite must have experienced when such feelings came from an attack by a stranger. "I find that idea disgusting."

  "So did she. That is why she is obsessed with living her life as much like the sister she was to have become, to atone for her sin."