Judith Merkle Riley (3 page)

It’s all because I’m riding a little brown
roussin
, I thought, instead of a lady’s hackney, and I don’t have a liveried footman. He took me for some
hoberau’s
daughter, who threshes wheat with her father’s peasants and hunts rabbits with a bow and arrow. That’s why he was rude about my little artistic creations. He doesn’t know anything about the Higher Mind. So that shows he doesn’t really know about any of those other troubling matters, either. That Nostradamus is just a rude, intrusive charlatan, that’s all.

After all, if he could see so much, he’d have seen that my father’s escutcheon has sixteen quarterings, and he would have given me the respect that is owed to a person whose bloodline stretches back to before the Crusades. Besides, I was educated for two years at the Convent of Saint-Esprit, where I studied Italian, music, embroidery, letters, and the art of elegant conversation. I am used to associating with the finer sort of cultivated people, not with dreadful, bad-tempered quacks who pretend they know everything. Conversing with more elevated souls has created in me a Higher, or Spiritual, Self that gross-minded persons such as he are incapable of perceiving. He is fortunate that my Higher Self has turned me toward all that is refined and away from the coarser instincts of my Lower, or Sensible, Self, or I might have done something—well, something even more uncivil.

Every turn in the road was an old friend, for each summer of my childhood we would move from our house within the city walls to the farm and then back again after the harvest. But that time was long gone, and so, too, was my grandfather’s rambling old house on the rue de Bourgogne, passed irrevocably out of the family’s possession, due to father’s improvidence.

The house of my childhood, I thought, I should create a poem to its beloved old vine-covered walls, but as I rode on toward the distant walls and spires of the city, another house rose in my mind’s vision, a new and elegant mansion in white stone, discreetly tucked behind garden walls. The house of Madame Tournet, my aunt Pauline, just off the cathedral square. And inside—oh, inside I saw again the tapestried room where golden light shone through the windows, catching on the bright silver of a dish sculptured like a seashell. The dish, I know—so clear is the memory—is full of little sweets flavored with fennel.

***

“Go ahead, have one,” says the aunt of my memory. She looks just like the fairy queen to me. A square linen headdress reveals the coils of her dark brown hair tucked away under a shining green silk net. A high half ruff frames her face, and a loose sleeveless brocade sacque floats over her day-gown. She is beautiful; everything about her rustles, glistens, smells of dried roses and essence of lily of the valley. The crimson satin folds of her wide-hemmed undergown fascinate me—they shine with a different light on the top than in the depths. A magic gown. I reach for the dish and mother shames me with a glance. She is pregnant again, her dress of dark gray wool faded and her oversleeves threadbare at the elbow. I am the oldest, I am six. A maid holds my little sister Laurette, a round-faced baby with pink cheeks and golden ringlets. Mother has Annibal, my four-year-old brother, by the hand. He is still in skirts, and his hair is in long, pale brown curls. His face is distended like a squirrel’s, with a candy stuffed in each cheek.

“She shouldn’t be spoiled,” says mother.

“She doesn’t look like the others,” says Aunt Pauline.

“She grows more unlike each day,” says mother, her voice weary. “Look at her there—she’s taught herself to read, she wanders by herself instead of playing like ordinary children—she says she’s looking for fairies. What shall I do, Pauline?” The grown-up talk is strange. Big people are so slow, and ponderous, and dull. I think I do not want to ever be one.

“Does he suspect?”

“Not yet…” Aunt Pauline leans forward in her chair. It has legs carved like a lion’s feet. I want to look underneath the chair to see if it is carved like a lion’s stomach, but Aunt Pauline’s gown is too large.

“Give her to me,” says Aunt Pauline, her eyes blazing. “Give her to me. What good is all this wealth? My life is barren. Trade a portion of your wealth for mine.”

“But, my husband—Hercule says—”

“I know my brother. He thinks girls are nothing but a burden. You have a son, and a more beautiful baby girl, and he doesn’t even like this one—Monsieur Tournet would make it worth his while—”

At home, a storm. One of many. I hide beneath the table.

“I tell you, I will not give Pauline the
satisfaction
!” The sound of blows and sobs comes from above my hiding place. The lid of the kettle that hangs in the kitchen fireplace bubbles and rattles unattended. The blood from a half cut up chicken drips from the tabletop in front of my nose. A pair of heavy boots are standing just beyond the hem of my skirt. “And you, come out, come out, you weasel—I tell you, you grow more abnormal each day—crazy! You’ll be a crazy woman, and they’ll lock you up forever.
I’ll
lock you up! I’ll shut you in a trunk, you’ll never get out, if you don’t quit being crazy!” A big hand is reaching under the table, and I scramble away. “What has my sister given her? I know she’s given her something behind my back—” The big hand grabs me and drags me out. My feet aren’t touching the ground. “I swear, I’ll shake it out of you—” My head wobbles; my neck feels as if it will crack. The gift handkerchief with my initials, all rolled around several sweets, falls from its hiding place in my sleeve, and onto the floor. The heavy boot stamps on it and grinds it into a gooey, filthy mess on the straw-covered tiles of the kitchen floor.

“Father!” I cry, but it seems to be coming from far away, not from me.

“I won’t see you corrupted by that woman, I tell you—I’d sooner see you dead!”

“Hercule, no, not your riding crop—she’s so little—”

“Never—see—her—again—I—forbid—it.” The blows rain down in rhythm with his terrible words. What is wrong with me? Why doesn’t father love me?

“I—I’ll be good—” I sob, over and over.

***

But I am grown up now, and I am not good, I thought, as I pondered over the memory to the slow clop-clop of my little mare’s hooves. For I was on the road to see Aunt Pauline. And I planned to tell her…everything.

There was a time at the convent, shortly after my discovery of my rarified spiritual nature, that I planned to dedicate my entire life to God. But, alas, all idylls must end. Another of my father’s financial embarrassments led to my cruel wrenching from the cloistered abode and into the final arrangements for marriage with a neighboring gentleman, Thibault Villasse, Monsieur de La Tourette. Monsieur Villasse had first spoken for me when I was sixteen, but father’s fortunes were higher then, and he spurned him for his lack of ancient lineage. Indeed, the man had no quarterings at all, but only a large and dubious fortune made through currying favor with a royal favorite, the Maréchal St.-André, and the purchase of a salt monopoly. His title, in short, was without that sacred validation conferred by tradition, crassly purchased with his estate in the time shortly after my birth.

Monsieur Villasse would never have been my first choice, mind you, being nearly fifty and full of wrinkles, with white already showing in his fading brown hair and rusty beard. There was also a look in his cold green eye, well, perhaps I shall come again to that look later, but it seemed to me the look of a man with inadequate quarterings, peering at the world of noble thoughts and noble deeds as if through a spyhole, an eye that winked and shone with malicious craft and secret desires for revenge. Indeed, the life of a Bride of Christ, limiting as it was, seemed more desirable than union with such a man. But—a woman’s opinion is of no importance. A demoiselle must marry where her father wishes. I think it had something to do with a vineyard, left to me by my maternal grandfather, which lay directly on the southern side of Villasse’s lands, which possessed no vineyard at all. There was also something about various debts being canceled, and other loans extended, once the vineyard and my personal self (the two being inalienable, much to Monsieur Villasse’s frustration) had been transferred into his possession. But I have never pretended to understand about money. It is a subject unfit for a lady, who should never concern herself with it at all.

And yet, money, ever the vulgarian, forces us to think about it, like a drunken man who breaks into an elegant ball to which he has not been invited. For example, imagine my surprise at the time of my leaving my beloved Saint Esprit, when the mounted valets who had been sent to bring me home turned away from the distant spires of Orléans in the direction of our rustic country seat at La Roque-aux-Bois! “Why are we not going to our town house in this season?” I asked, and thus discovered that our distinguished and commodious family abode within the city walls had been let, partially furnished, to an upthrusting merchant of Italian leather gloves! My grandfather’s elegant hôtel, the galleries that had resounded to my mother’s childish play, the very rooms in which my infant prattle first resounded, filled with the rattle of alien accents, and the clink of money, and the haggling of purchasers! Why not rent it out for a pawnbroker’s, or a bordello? It would be hard to stoop lower.

But the superior mind can always find new possibilities in altered circumstances, even if they involve living year-round on an estate more suited to a pleasant stay during the summer months. I might make a botanical collection and drawings of the local herbs, I said to myself. Or perhaps I should create a cycle of nature poems, matched to the seasons. Rather than regret the reduction of social duties brought on by isolation, I might pick up again the threads of my most elevated, though unfinished project: a work entitled
A
Dialogue
of
the
Virtues, in which the superiority of True Temperance, Humble Devotion, and all Excellence of the Christian Belief are Explicated, by a Lady
. In this, my altogether boldest foray into the realms of the mind, the pagan gods debate the Christian saints, to the detriment of the pagan gods. The voice of my Sensible, or Lower, Self I had put in the mouth of Vulcan, a laborious but malformed and unworthy deity. I did not plan, of course, to reveal my name on this manuscript, for a lady of good family must always remain anonymous when setting pen to paper, as Sister Celeste used to admonish us. Nor did I plan anything so vulgar as to put it in actual print. No, the success of a private reading, a rustle of approval in some select
cénacle
, would content me entirely…

But, alas, all too soon we rode through the great gates beneath the dovecote tower of our farmhouse. Dismounting in the courtyard of our now year-round residence, I gave thought to how the
cour
d’honneur
might be improved by the removal of the chickens and the extension of the paving beyond the entry to the front door of the
logis
at the far side of the dusty court. Entering the front door into the
salle
, which might have benefited greatly from the removal of several hundred pair of deer antlers and their replacement with a few tapestries in good taste, I found myself confronted with father, Monsieur Villasse, and the betrothal documents laid out on the table beneath the far window for my signature. Mother, my sisters, and the household servants were clustered at the back of our hall, silent, looking as if they were attending a funeral.

Villasse appeared somewhat larger than I remembered, his face more seamed, and his cold green eye more calculating. I must confess I had a moment of trepidation: his estate was isolated, and notoriously lacking in those little refinements required for a lady of my delicate and sensitive nature. Besides, there were the rumors about the death of his second wife that I had heard from my second cousin Matheline, who makes up for what she lacks in spiritual disposition by a decidedly worldly affection for gossip and dancing. No, Villasse, though he had acquired the title of Sieur de La Tourette, and was therefore an acceptable match, in spite of lacking in that multiplicity of distinguished antecedents that commands true respect, did not seem to be a man whom one might grow to love.

“Well, what are you waiting for? Sign: here’s the pen,” said my father, in the brusque tones of a retired
capitaine
of the light horse, accustomed to command. But we women, not having served in the military, are not required to bend our delicate souls to harsh vulgarities.

“It says nothing here about the wedding date,” I replied.

“It will be immediately; the banns have already been posted,” said my father.

“Oh, that cannot be; I will hardly have time to supervise the furnishing of my chamber at La Tourette, to say nothing of those little necessities which a lady of breeding requires.”

Villasse’s eyes narrowed a bit, but he asked, with great suavity, “And how much time would that be, Demoiselle Sibille?”

“Why, barely a nothing—I hope you will write it in there. Why, even I hate to postpone my moment of joy; but one must think of our future happiness. Preparation is all.”

“Preparation? How long a preparation?”

“Well, I must order my trousseau, my gown. And then there are the bed hangings and linens. And I must survey your library in order to send for those volumes of religious consolation required by the female sex. Six months, at least, counting the time to send for the volumes.”

“Books of religion?” said Villasse, the creases in his face registering interesting emotions. I glanced at mother, stiff, pale and silent. I thought I saw her eyes glint.

“I told you she was educated,” said my father.

“A mistake. Luckily one you have not repeated with your other daughters.”

“It was a fancy of my sister’s. She seemed better suited to the convent.” This, of course, was my father’s habitual way of remarking that he considered me too plain to marry off. And, of course, when the oldest cannot marry, the younger cannot move ahead of her. When my aunt Pauline, who is also my godmother, offered to pay for my education, father jumped at the chance to be rid of me. I felt the rosy tint warm my maidenly visage. Just because the Giver of All Good Gifts felt that an excess of boldly creative spirit might compensate in my case for a certain lack of physical charm does not mean it should be commented upon on such a significant day in my life.