Englishwoman in France

by Wendy Robertson

  Goldwand directs a soldier to tie my arms behind my back and to hobble my legs with a length of rope. That done, the soldier throws me over his shoulder like a sack of coal and my calls for Modeste are muffled by the soldier’s metallic tunic. He throws me into a wooden wheeled barrow and then covers me with some kind of canvas. I can smell the sea. This canvas has been a sail at one time. Are they going to throw me into the sea?

  The barrow jerks and then moves forward. The man could be pushing or pulling it. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I’ve lost my Modeste and my young Tib. I don’t know what will happen to them. Or me. Tib. Modeste. My brain freezes with fear as I am bumped along.

  With all my heart and all my soul I wish that this dream would end. It’s all too hard. I wish I could see my stars on their eternal path through the heavens. I wish I was back on the roof of the Maison d’Estella, staring up at Virgo and Ursa Major. My heart was broken then, but things were so much simpler. I find myself wishing . . .

  Star light, star bright,

  The first star I see tonight.

  I wish I may, I wish I might,

  Have the wish I wish tonight.

  TWENTY-NINE

  The Fox

  I crouch here in the smallest of spaces. I think I’ve been in this poky, stinking space for two days and two nights. There’s this window slit high in the wall and in daytime it fills the room with grim grey light; at night the room is pitch black. I’ve made marks in the hard earth floor with my heel: one for each night. I realized straight away that keeping track of time would be a useful thing to do. I read this once in an autobiography of a man who had been taken hostage and survived. Find a means of keeping track of time.

  I have to use the corner of the room as a latrine and I survive on water thrust through a hole in the door every few hours. For two nights I’ve not even seen the night sky. Not one star. At first the darkness by night and the dimness by day engulf me. And this forces me inwards, makes me contemplate this dream I’m inhabiting or which is inhabiting me – I don’t know which.

  Every hour or so, as my mind drifts, I deliberately bring Modeste’s face before me. And then I call up Tib’s honest, wise stare. I’ve been bringing them into my mind the day I saw them both in Agde, the town that in these times they call Good Fortune. I think of them on the canal boat – Modeste with his book and the boy swimming in the water, racing the boat. I remind myself of Modeste in the guise of Louis, the twenty-first-century scholar with a mission leaning out of his window, his shirt cuffs flying like white flags.

  I remember lying on the roof of my house with Olga by my side, looking up at the night sky for Virgo and invoking that wish. I remember Madame Patrice in the café with Misou, her little dog. How glad I was that she, unlike Philip (was that his name?) had seen the redheaded boy. And I conjure up the vision of Tib’s mother Serina who – in her deep soul – is also Madame Patrice and also loves Misou. And in these two dark days in this stinking cell how many times have I conjured up that backward glance of the Empress, which contains so much of my Siri in its bright gaze?

  This is all very hard but I feel I’m making this painful effort so I can remember a safer future, to give myself some distance from this stinking room where I am forced to use the corner as a latrine.

  In the middle of the third night the door creaks open and standing there is the Goldwand, Fox Man in his grand cloak. A soldier moves in front of him, sticks his flaring torch into a metal holder, hauls me to my feet and stands behind me, his hands on my upper arms.

  The Fox looks around the space, his small nose wrinkling. I’d estimate that he shares Hitler’s star sign. Aries tipping over into Taurus. A dangerous combination.

  ‘Ah! Madam Florence,’ he says, smiling. ‘I thought you’d be entranced to know that we have broken the boy. I have to say that he was a hard nut to crack. Did not waver, even when he witnessed the terrible sufferings of his teacher. As I say, he was a hard nut to crack, with that blank gaze of his.’ The man’s eyes glitter in the flickering light of the torch. ‘But in the end . . .’

  I turn my face from him. I want to put my hands over my ears to shut out this evil talk but that is impossible. The soldier is holding tightly to my upper arms. Tears run down my face. I am sobbing.

  The Fox sniffs and goes on. ‘The key to my success is this nail board I had especially made for vermin. It has a very good mechanism that stretches the soul out of a person. In the end the boy was begging – begging – me to allow him to rise from the bed of nails and pay sacrifice to our proper gods rather than that degenerate Nazarene.’

  ‘No! No!’ I shake my head and my tears fly around the room, glittering in the torchlight. ‘I don’t believe you. Tib is a brave soul, a true believer. He would not betray his faith. Never!’

  The Fox giggles out loud at this. ‘You will see, madam. It will be proved for your own eyes.’ His eyes narrow slightly. ‘Your lover the doctor has a much more intractable soul. He resisted our finest persuasions. Our best! Our finest!’ He pauses. ‘Even her gracious majesty the Empress could not prevail upon him. She asked him to join her in her holy sacrifices to our gods but he refused her.’

  His mention of the Empress sets warning bells away in me. She must be in danger too. Someone must have betrayed her as well as us. ‘I don’t believe you!’ The words burst from me. Then I stop. Part of me wishes I could tell him I am really from another place and although I don’t believe in his pagan Roman gods, neither do I quite believe in the divinity of the Nazarene for whom Modeste and Tib – and now the Empress – risk their lives. I am neutral! I want to shout at him. I am neutral about these things.

  My back is aching and my arms are sore in the clasp of the soldier. It would be so easy to placate the Fox with a half-confession that although I don’t believe in the Roman gods that I’ve read about in primary school text books, I also don’t believe in what Tib and the people in the lower room believed. I believe in the stars and the universe of the sky and the universe of inner personality. And now I half-believe in Modeste’s notion of reinvestment of the spirit because I’ve seen evidence of it with my own eyes. So I have my own crazy church in my head and don’t want any of yours, thank you very much.

  He pokes me in the ribs with his fox stick, a flare of anger in his eyes. ‘Pay attention, woman. I want you to tell me of these two reprobates and their deviant ways.’ He lifts his stick and brings it down on my shoulder. The pain is overwhelming. I squeeze my eyes to stop shameful tears falling.

  My eyes move to the wall, then raise to a narrow interior grille, like the one where I stood by the Empress and her woman, and watched Tib work on his cure of the little boy. I know she’s there now. And there’s someone at her side. A man: a bulky shape.

  ‘I will tell you about them, sir.’ The words force themselves through my lips.

  ‘A-aoh!’ There is pleasure in that exhalation, satisfaction at a task nearing its end.

  I take a deep breath. ‘I have never seen either of those two – neither man nor boy – do a bad thing.’ I raise my voice, so that my words may be heard through the grille. ‘The last thing I saw them do, here in the Imperial Palace, was to take the poor crippled soul of a boy and straighten it out. They stopped him destroying himself. They saved his life.’

  The stick comes down hard, sideways this time, on my legs. I stagger. The soldier behind me keeps me upright.

  I go on. ‘And before that I saw them cure many people of their physical ailments. But mostly I saw them dissolve the madness in many poor souls and restore them to laughter.’

  Thwack! On my face. I don’t know if I can stand this. I look up at the grille and force my bruised mouth to form my words. ‘I wish to see the Empress. She saw Modeste and Tib help the grandson of the Emperor. I want to look her in the eyes.’

  Thwack! I hear a cry of protest somewhere outside my swimming head. The soldier behind me moves uneasily. I can smell his sweat, even in this stinking space.

  The Fox man growls, �
��Slaves like you may never look on the great and holy.’ There is spit in one corner of his mouth.

  Thwack! This time the fox stick hits me across the face. Blood in my eyes; swimming darkness. In the mist I hear a bell ringing. A neat, clear sound, like the one you ring in hotels when you want service. Then total blank darkness. I have a vision of the night sky but there are no stars. It is all a deep blue-black. It’s a terrible thing, a night sky with no stars.

  My fingers creep to my shoulder to press it hard: to make it ache more. My head is splitting. I breathe in very slowly to thin out the pain. Slowly, slowly a reaction ripples through me from my head to my heels. Then I realize that I’m breathing in clear sweet air that’s not rank and foetid as it has been for days. I open my eyes to see the white sunlight of early morning flooding past wide open shutters through long window spaces.

  I close my eyes. When I open them again it’s pitch black beyond the windows and the space in here is lit by lamps. Now I can feel gentle hands stroking ointment on my bruised shoulder. I twist sideways and I see the broad face of the Empress’s serving woman, I turn the other way and see the Empress herself sitting on a high-backed chair beside the couch on which I lie. Her troubled eyes meet mine; underneath and above them her skin is dark, shadowy. She looks older. ‘Lie still, Florence,’ she says quietly.

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘I came to get you. Lie still. Sarah will help you with your pain.’

  I close my eyes and just lie there under those soothing hands, taking in the scent of lavender and some kind of resin. The hands stroke away not just the pain but the humiliation of being at the mercy of the Fox. Someone – it must be the woman called Sarah – has washed me top to toe. I can smell lavender and bergamot; I can feel clean linen against my skin. I am changed. Mine is not the stinking body left on its own in a filthy cell for days on end; not the body punished by the Fox Man for his own delight.

  At last Sarah lifts me to a sitting position and drops a silk tunic over my head. She makes me stand and smooths the silk down my waist and on to my thighs. She sits me down again and lifts my legs back on to the couch, then she leaves.

  The Empress sighs. ‘Now, Florence,’ she says hesitantly.

  ‘Why has this happened, lady?’ I burst in. ‘Why have you let this happen? We tended your grandson. He is well now!’

  She looks at me steadily and I try to stop Siri being there in her eyes. I try to make this woman into the stranger she really is to me. I’m angry with her. But not in this or any world do I want to be angry with my Siri.

  I storm on. ‘And what about Modeste and Tib? The Fox Man did those terrible things to them. Did he really do that? Allow Tib to see the torture of Modeste? Did Tib fall to his persuasion? I can’t . . .’ A sob catches my throat. ‘And Modeste . . .’

  She leans across and puts a hand on my lips, to stop the words tumbling from my mouth. ‘Enough! I’ve been tried enough with all this suffering.’

  All right for her, I think sourly. ‘You!’ I say. ‘That horrible man, the man with the fox rod . . .’

  ‘He’s but an instrument, Florence, recruited for his base character. He’s but a willing instrument for his allotted task. A cunning, resourceful man who knows how to twist minds his way. But he does it at the command of others.’

  My head is aching. ‘Others? Who? The Emperor?’

  She shakes her head. ‘The Emperor’s a soldier. He works only for the good of the Empire. But he’s loyal to the old gods and his advisers fear this new sect whose beliefs, they believe, will flush away the world as we know it. And replace it with . . . who knows what?’

  ‘But you joined Modeste and his friends in the lower room for the blessings! And Tib and Modeste rescued the Emperor’s grandson from that terrible sickness. They’re good, mild people, as are their friends, whatever sect they belong to.’

  ‘Things are not so clear-cut, Florence,’ she sighs. ‘Look at this! One part of His Imperial Majesty is pleased at their success with the boy. Even grateful. He’s not a terrible man. His grandson climbs to his knee and plays with his beard. But the Emperor is a soldier. He’s responsible for the greatest empire the world has ever seen. Now he sees it as his mission to stop it collapsing from within, or being invaded from without. He relies on his soothsayers, who see this new sect as fouling the Empire with a new religion that only sees one God and despises the old gods of Rome. Now these Emperor’s soothsayers have seen the future and he’s approved a new edict to destroy them, to wipe out all people like Modeste and his friends.’

  I sit up straighter so I can scowl at her. ‘But us? Tib and Modeste? How were we betrayed?’

  Her shoulders move in a shrug under her velvet cloak. ‘It was the child. He dipped his finger in the Emperor’s wine and made the sign of the fish on his grandfather’s forehead. The sign that Tibery made on the boy’s forehead in the sea.’

  My heart sinks as I imagine the drama of this moment. ‘Cat out of the bag,’ I say.

  She frowns, then smiles. ‘Ah yes, such a quaint saying.’

  ‘So they came to find us?’

  ‘Yes. And I was called before the Emperor and his Oracles. I had to assure them I had nothing to do with the sect and they told me to persuade Tibery and Modeste to recant. I tried to do so but they would not. Modeste smiled his forgiving smile at me. Then, in my presence they were badly abused but still would not recant. I stood there and watched them, but I stayed silent, fearing that my turn would be next.’

  My distaste, my revulsion, must show on my face.

  ‘You look askance?’ she says. ‘Martyrdom is sought after these days by believers, determined to live in eternity on the right hand of God. It’s almost fashionable.’ She shakes her head. ‘But I have to be practical. I have more work to do here. I’m sure of it. One more martyr will make no difference.’

  ‘But we’re no threat to the Empire, lady! We’re just people who live in a place by the sea called Good Fortune. Tib and Modeste help people, the most ordinary of people.’

  She draws her breath in another deep sigh. ‘Don’t you understand that the oracles and their advisers see this as a problem? The fact that you influence ordinary people to believe in the Nazarene through your good works? To them, that threatens the Empire from within.’ She falls silent and seems to sink within herself. Even from my poor bruised body my heart goes out to her.

  ‘And Modeste and Tib?’ I whisper. ‘Are they dead?’

  She shakes her head. ‘Young Tibery did not give into them. They became afraid of him because his body healed itself before their eyes when they rested from their savage labours. And the stalwart Modeste resisted the most awful assaults although he does not have Tibery’s gift of healing and remains injured. And you yourself didn’t concede.’

  I shake my head. ‘You saw me?’

  ‘Yes. Through the grille. The Emperor saw too. He heard your cry and commanded it to stop.’

  ‘Why? Why has he decided to give up on us? Wouldn’t our deaths still have been a victory for him, and those people who whisper in his ears?’

  She stands up, moves her stool forward and sits again, very close to the bed. I can smell musk and cinnamon. Her mouth is close to my ear. ‘The tragedy, and my guilt, Florence, is that it’s not you, or Modeste, or even Master Tibery over whom they wished to be victorious; it was me.’ She pauses. ‘They are all as subtle as foxes. In the end, I could stand it no longer. My friend Modeste, the boy, and then you. I could bear it no longer so I gave in.’

  ‘So . . .?’ I am still puzzled.

  ‘So, this morning, in the great temple here I made sacrifices to the old gods. I made pleas and poured libations. It is nearly two years since I have done that and this has been troubling to the Emperor and his Oracles. Such a bad example, you see? A crack at the centre. Now he and his oracle are satisfied.’

  ‘How terrible . . .’

  She smiles faintly. ‘It took some consideration, I may say. But I meditated on it and knew I must do this so that T
ibery and Modeste can go on with their work with you by their side. In this way your courage would be balanced with my cowardice. I feel sullied, spoiled by my action. But there are other times, other days, to live true.’

  Again I shake my head, which is tumbling now with all sorts of emotion. I feel proud of her. It’s taken courage to do what she has done, in this nest of foxes. I want to cry, not for my Siri, but for this noble woman of her time who is above all a midwife for change.

  She puts her hand over mine; I can feel her heavy gold rings. ‘I will survive this time,’ she says. ‘And I can pray in private to the one true God. I need no oracles or priests.’ She pauses. ‘My daughter, the boy’s mother, is a true follower of the Way. I sent her away for her own safety. It’s for her also that I do this. And now the boy is healed and on his way to be with his mother, lest, in his innocence he . . . lets the cat out of the bag again. Is that how you said it?’

  Now she leans across and kisses me on the cheek. Her kiss burns my flesh. It’s as though she is the mother, not I. She picks up a bell sitting on a table and rings it. I hear the echo of the bell I heard through the blood in that stinking cell. Then she turns to me and frowns. ‘Are you sure we haven’t met before, Florence? I have this feeling . . .’

  But then her serving woman comes bustling through the door, followed by the big soldier who was the boy’s nursemaid. She greets him. ‘Ah, Lupinus! Your new mission. The boy you cared for is lost to you but now you must play carer for these three friends.’

  She turns to me and smiles. My heart turns over. ‘Lupinus is named after the wolf. He keeps the jackals and foxes at bay. He’ll take you and your friends to safety. All the way back to Good Fortune. The oracle doesn’t know it but this is agreed with the Emperor.’

  ‘All of us?’ I say quickly.

  ‘All of you. As I told you, the boy Tibery is on good form, untouched by the worst of the tortures. In the end his torturers feared him. I have to say, though, that my good friend Modeste is sore afflicted. But with Lupinus to guard him and you to love him and take care of him and Tibery to bless him he’s in good hands.’