A Lady Under Siege (5 page)

Looking at her daughter’s troubled face, Meghan felt herself dissolve into guilt and sympathy. “Give me a hug,” she demanded. She didn’t want Betsy to see it, but she was crying again.

6

S
ylvanne invited the priest into a small anteroom off her husband’s bedroom. She didn’t close the door. She could hear and see her loyal servants, maids and men, paying their tearful respects to her dead husband laying upon his bed. She stood by a narrow gothic window, little more than a slit, through which she could also hear sounds of the besiegers below. The news had reached them, it was clear. They were shouting and whooping, in high spirits, calling on those inside the castle to surrender. “On our Lord’s good word, no harm will be done you. No judgment. No reprisals. You are free to come out in peace.” She had asked her servants to wait while she composed herself. She didn’t want that rabble pouring in and seizing her like some living bauble. The gates would be opened soon enough, she’d told them, but on her own terms. First, there would need to be a simple, immediate funeral for her husband, done with regrettable haste but as much dignity as possible. Before that, she wanted answers from the priest.

“You heard my husband’s dying words,” she addressed him. “You heard me tell him that my knowledge of the Good Book is limited. He spoke of Judith. What is her story, and how might it affect me?”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t make too much of such words as issue from a dying man’s mouth, m’Lady,” the priest answered. “In that feverish moment he may not have been in his right mind. Judith’s tale barely merits inclusion in our Bible. A most inappropriate fable, really. Quite unworthy of the Prince of Peace.”

“Still, I wish to hear it,” said Sylvanne.

“So be it. It’s like this, Madame. An Assyrian army, under the great and fearsome general Holofernes, laid a strangulating siege to the Israelites at the walled city of Bethulia. Now within those walls, the widow Judith, a Jewess of great beauty, hatching a plan, shed her widow’s sackcloth, washed her body, anointed her skin with perfume, attended to her lovely hair, put on bracelets and rings, and altogether clothed herself in her finest attire. Thus adorned, she could surely captivate any man who might look upon her. She and her maid, a loyal woman named Abra, snuck out of the city, and presented themselves to Holofernes’s camp.

“Now Holofernes, charmed by her, invited her to sup with him, in the tent that served as his bedchamber. Encouraged by her, he drank a great many cups of wine. He dismissed his servants, leaving himself alone with the beautiful young widow.”

The priest hesitated, for effect, letting the implications of his words sink in.

“Continue,” Sylvanne bade him. “I’m not such a delicate flower as that.”

“Yes, m’Lady. The scripture is not exact as to what transpired between the two. It states only that after some time Holofernes, sodden with wine, lay back upon his bed. He was thus defenseless, and brave Judith took up his sword, unsheathed it from its scabbard, and raising it high, struck him on the neck. She cut off his head! Bone and flesh and gristle, all was severed by her, using his own blade against him. Then she coolly rolled that great general’s head into a sheet, and gave it to loyal Abra to carry away, tucked under her arm. Together they fled from the murderous bed, and hurried through the night, back to the city of Bethulia upon the mountain. In the morning the Assyrians looked to the city, and saw the bloody head of their own supreme leader displayed to them, high upon a long pike above the walls. They fell into panic at the sight. At that moment the gates to the city burst open, and the Jews in their armor poured forth from Bethulia, and smote their confused and trembling enemy.”

The priest fell silent. “There’s no more,” he said at last.

Sylvanne spoke in a solemn whisper. “I fear I’m not so brave, or strong. I’ve never used a sword. I’ve never tried to hurt anyone.”

“The Lord gives strength where needed, m’Lady.”

“Then let him hoard some, and give it all to me in that moment.”

7

M
eghan hurried home from her meeting to find Betsy sitting happily at the computer in the upstairs office, exactly as she had left her ninety minutes earlier.

“Did you even move a muscle?”

“No. I’ve been chatting the whole time, with Brittany.”

“Is her mother still psycho?”

“That’s exactly what we’ve been chatting about!” Betsy chirped excitedly. “Did you know her mom smokes pot?”

“No, but I’ll definitely keep that in mind next time a sleepover is discussed.”

“She goes outside to do it.”

“Oh, that makes it okay then,” said Meghan. Betsy looked at her quizzically. “I’m kidding, kiddo. It doesn’t make it okay, but I guess there are worse things in the world.”

The doorbell rang. She went back downstairs to answer it. On the front steps she found Seth, come unannounced, for a quick talk, as he put it. Seth was Meghan’s husband, “my soon-to-be ex-husband,” as she had taken to describing him to friends. Meghan let him in and led him through to the kitchen. “Come have a cup of whatever,” she said.

“You’re being very civil,” said Seth. He was carrying a shopping bag, the paper kind with handles, from a sporting goods store.

“I have to be,” she replied. “Betsy’s upstairs, and likely to come bounding down any minute. I’ve gone to great pains to paint this whole business as amicable, to convince her she’s got two parents who love and care for her, and even, on some level, still care for each other. You’d better be doing the same when she’s with you.”

“Yeah, sure. Maybe if we say it enough, it’ll even come true.”

“Maybe. That would be good. Living a fiction is exhausting. But then you’re more practiced.”

Seth made a face, exactly the kind of face she hated him making, the kind that said, that’s a low blow designed to hurt my feelings, and I think less of you for it. She wanted to shout fuck you at him, but of course, as she’d already pointed out, Betsy was likely to come bounding down the stairs any moment. Betsy, in fact, chose this moment to yell from the top of the stairs.

“Mom! Who is it?”

“Your father.”

Silence.

“Hi babe,” yelled Seth, with an enthusiasm so achingly fake any ten-year-old would see through it. They could hear Betsy come down the stairs, her footfalls heavy and slow.

When she came in the kitchen she said, “What are you doing here?”

“I just came by to talk to your mom.”

Without sitting down, she flipped through a magazine on the kitchen table. “So talk.”

“Well darling, it’s kind of like, very adult talk.”

“About the divorce and stuff?”

“Not exactly.”

“I can handle it, Dad.”

“It’s just, I’d rather—look, I brought you a new soccer ball.” He pulled it from the shopping bag. “The official Olympic ball.”

Betsy glanced at it and went back to pretending an interest in the magazine.

“You like soccer, Bets, don’t you?”

“I
play
soccer. You’re the one that likes it.”

“Listen, Betsy, why don’t you take the ball out in the back yard and—”

“Ha. Have you seen our back yard? It’s not even big enough for anything.”

“Big enough to dribble a ball. See how long you can keep it in the air.”

“I don’t want to.”

Seth’s voice turned suddenly unfriendly. “Betsy. Go outside. Five minutes, I have to talk to your mother.”

Betsy looked from him to Meghan, who hesitated before taking sides.

“It might be better, sweetie.”

“I don’t care. I’m not going.”

“Betsy, give us five goddamned minutes!” Seth blurted out.

Betsy burst into tears. She strode past her father to the back door, threw it open, stepped out onto the deck, turned back and yelled at him. “Why can’t I hear?”

“She’ll tell you about it soon enough,” said Seth. “It’ll be smoother this way.”

“I don’t care about smoother!”

He brought the ball to her, resting it like the world in his palm, but she swatted it away. It rolled back inside into the tangle of chair legs under the kitchen table.

“Did it ever dawn on you that Mommy might like it better if she and I can talk alone for a minute? Think of mommy for a change.”

“You think of mommy! You never think of mommy. You don’t even love her!”

“Five minutes,” Seth insisted. He took the door handle and started to close it against her.

“It’s my house, mine and mommy’s, and you’re pushing me out! It’s not your house, it’s mine!”

“Yes. It’s yours,” Seth said sternly. “In five minutes it’ll be yours again. Outside. Please.”

Betsy stepped out and slammed the door shut behind her as hard as she could. The whole house seemed to shake and reverberate. Meghan opened the door.

“Darling, please. Five minutes. For me. Just to get him out of here. Then we’ll do something fun together.”

“Like what?”

“Whatever you want. You think of something. Take five minutes to think of something you’d really like to do.”

“Anything?”

“Anything.”

Meghan hated resorting to bribery, but sometimes it’s whatever works. She could see the wheels begin to turn in that ten-year-old head. “Good girl,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

8

B
etsy watched through the window of the deck door as her mom and dad moved from the kitchen into the living room.

“Make her buy you a pony.”

She turned. Her neighbour, the man Derek, was in his back yard watching her.

“Don’t look at me,” Betsy said angrily.

“Suit yourself.”

He had a wrench in his hand, but the fence prevented her from seeing what he was working on. He bent down out of sight. She could hear hammering, metal on metal, then cursing. Then more banging, and a grunting noise, the sound a man makes when he can’t get a bolt to let go of its nut. “Fuck it,” she heard him mutter. Then, “Good enough.”

Then he appeared again, looking at her from over the top of the six-foot fence, as if he were standing on a chair. “Come over here, would you?”

She stood still. She had an urge to run back inside the house, but even at the tender age of ten she had her pride, and didn’t want to be dismissed as a child, they way her parents had just done. She wanted to stand her ground. He watched her, waiting for an answer. She stared back at him.

“Cat got your tongue? What’s your name, anyway?”

She almost said it, then didn’t.

“Sorry, didn’t realize you were a mute,” he said.

That got her back up. “I’m not supposed to talk to you,” she retorted, dressing the words in a child’s snobbery.

“And why’s that?”

“My mother doesn’t like you.”

“Whatever. I’m difficult. Difficult to like, impossible to love, or so I’m told.”

Betsy began to walk in tight circles on the wooden deck. Certain boards underneath her feet made different creaking sounds. She could play them like music. She stopped and looked at him.

“How come you never go to work?”

“Is that your question, or your mother’s? I don’t work. I don’t have to.”