The Book of Shadows
Read The Book of Shadows Online
Authors: James Reese
THE
BOOK
OF
SHADOWS
To JER, MMR, PL, MR, and AJL
â¦such things,
though rare in time,
are frequent in eternity.
âByron, “Cain”
I vividly recall my mother's blood.
In 1812, I went to “the Stone,” the holy houseâ¦
Not long after my “ascension” to the Upper Schoolâitâ¦
Peronette, as the niece of the Mother Superior, the daughterâ¦
I passed that long, punitive afternoon in the smithy, planingâ¦
Sister claire de sazilly. Where to begin? I never knewâ¦
My reasoning, as best I can recollect it, was thisâ¦
But first I'd bathe. Extraordinary! Here I wasâme, who'dâ¦
There'd been some commotion moments earlier; this accounted for theâ¦
The mayor stepped forward to stand between the still-prone Sisterâ¦
As I took up the books in no order ofâ¦
Prospering? repeated madeleine. Far from it. The village of Qâ¦
It was one month later that the Prosecutor duly servedâ¦
“Who has done this to you?”
Not long after the tale was told, Father Louis, seatedâ¦
I woke slowly, into perfect darkness.
I sat for some time in the roseraie. The rosesâ¦
The tall white tapers that had been set about theâ¦
It was after the Blinis Demidoff, just as this Roméoâ¦
When I came to I was lying on one ofâ¦
In the paris of my day, there were suppers everywhere;â¦
When word of my return to Parisâand my richesâreachedâ¦
I went straight to Rome, but as I found thatâ¦
I traveled, alone, and all in the service of myâ¦
I had just come home from a stay of someâ¦
The sisters have formed a circle. I sit savoring theâ¦
It was indeed she: the soprano I'd seenâin Naples?
I read that first excerpt from Sebastiana's Book of Shadowsâ¦
When I woke, having slept for I don't know howâ¦
Returning to the studioâand let me say deep, deepâ¦
There were many things I might have considered as weâ¦
As we ambled along the quay into Nantes that nextâ¦
Upon arriving in Angers the day prior, I'd had Michelâ¦
We'd been traveling some days now. Lately, our course wasâ¦
That night, with words akin to these, Madeleine introduced theâ¦
It was a day in late November, said Madeleine, standingâ¦
I woke shivering from a fitful sleep; dreams had plaguedâ¦
Shock? What is the word to describe what one feelsâ¦
Some time later, the elementals gone, I had Ãtienne stopâ¦
We arrived in Orange. It was late in the day,â¦
The driver was a bit put off by me, byâ¦
By midnight I was where I needed to be: atâ¦
Father louis and I walked from the grave. We didâ¦
This sea-night is sublimeâwind enough to fill the sails,â¦
I
VIVIDLY RECALL
my mother's blood.
I am at sea now. The ship on which I sail lists badly, despite its ballast: casks once full of whale oil and corn, now empty. The candelabrum by which I write is mounted to this tiny table; its candles burn at odd angles; pools of wax spill over at the wick. There is a full and golden moon tonight, but its light does not enter my cabin, and the weather just now prohibits my going topside. So here I sit, in this dank and dreary hold, my body as troubled by the sea as my mind is by the story to come.
The day it began, all I had was life (some five or six years' worth), language, and a name: Herculine, inherited from a fatherâ¦rather, from a man named Hercule whom my mother did not know well, and whom I knew not at all. For many years to come I would have little else. Life, language, and a name. And always the memory of the blood.
Â
The Day of the Blood dawns green and gold. It is late summer. Sunrays burn the morning mist from the fields that spread all around us, sizzling in the rising heat. A haze like gold dust in the air. Roadside, fields of hay have been harvested into cones twice my height. A distant barn. A brook runs along, mimicking the road. Far away there rises a black wall of forest.
No people. No sounds but the brook.
I am tired. The sun has risen since we left home,
Maman
and me. I don't know where we are going. I struggle to keep pace.
The road beneath our thin-soled shoes is baked golden brown, dry and dusty and cracked as bad bread. My perspiration falls to pock the earth. My mother perspires terribly; my small hand in hers is a wet rag; it would slip from her grip if it were to slacken at all, but she holds so tightly to me, so tightly.
Nearer now, the forest is not black but green, with its underglow of gold. The sun. The golden undersides of all green thingsâ¦. Deeper, I know the forest is still dark, dark as night.
We walk on, beside the brook, which runs red, clogged with clay. Stones in the shallow water, the hunched and armored backs of ancient animals. The water whispers over the stones.
â¦My mother. Her face is a vessel that has been emptied, that has been broken, has spilled. Her eyes are melting ice. Her simple dress is dark at the crook of the arms, a triangle of dark spreads from her throat over her chest. Already the kerchief at her mouth is spotted red. I fear for her. I know she is not well.
I don't know where we are going. We have been on the road for hours. I have never been this far from the cottage. Are we near the place we are going? Somehow I know we are. My mother's gait quickens, then steadies and slows.
Why am I in my one dress, with ribbons wound through my long blond plait? The church shoes hurt my feet. And why does
Maman
carry that satchel full of things drawn hastily from my drawer?
The day has been a secret since its start. She laid me down last night as she woke me this morning, with whispers and a kiss. Prayers, I am sure. Now she says nothing. The last of her strength is in her step. Yet she trips over a stone half-sunk in the road and nearly falls. She stops, stands still, and then regains her sickly pace. Her hand tightens around mine, tighter, tighter.
Maman,
what is it? Please talk to me. Are you all right?
Maman,
why don't we rest?
I see her trembling lips moving in muttered prayer. I see her cross herself.
Suddenly she stops beside the brook and kneels. Down on her bony knees, as I have found her every morning of my life. But this is not prayer, no. She sways, her head in her hands; for the first time she lets go my hand. I am afraid she will fall forward, face first into the brook, dashing her head on a stone. Moments, long moments like this.
Finally I kneel beside her. I cup my hands and scoop water from the brook.
Maman,
drink.
Maman?
Her hands fall heavily to her sides. She turns her face to mine, slowly. Her eyes roll back to show only their whites. She breaks at the waist. The water falls from my hands as I reach fast for her shoulders, to steady her. She grabs my hands, laps at them, her tongue taking the water that is no longer there. She holds to the empty cup of my hands. Then I see, I think I see, a strange shape come into her eyes, a blot of blackness, writhing, taking shape, andâ¦And into my hands she spews and spits the upwelling blood.
Her chest heaves. Her nails dig into the flesh on the back of my hands, slickened and red. There rises a sweet acrid stench.
Blood from her nose. From her mouth. She cries out, tries to speak, but chokes on the blood.
Her eyes flutter shut. Still the blood wave comes, forces her sealed lips to split. While the blood wells again, she tries to speak. I cannot understand her. Her eyes are not her eyes; something else is at their center.
I hold to her. She is heavy. She slips from my blood-slick grip. Her dress tears and she falls on her back on the bank, near the brook. In the brook. I hold her head up. If she turns to either side she will drown.
Standing above, knee-deep in the brook, I cast a shadow over her face. Her eyes open. She focuses with the strangeness at the center of her eyes. The pupil transshapes. Twists and turns into a recognizable shape, but still I cannot identify it. Then her eyes roll back to the whiteness and there is nothing.
I am crying. My mother is dying, I know this. She spasms, coughs up a huge clot of blood. Flat on her back, she drowns not in the brook but in her own blood.
I pull at her. Try to pull her from the water. She is heavy, too heavy. To move her, to take hold of her twitching legs, I let go of her head and it sinks into the red water. Still I pull at her legs. She is too heavy. I pull and pull and she does not move. I see her red and wavering profile underwater. Bubbles rise from her mouth, and underwater I see a black skein of blood unravel.
I am in the brook now, standing knee-deep, trying to maneuver beneath my mother. Trying to shove her up onto the bank. Nothing. Then suddenly she turns.
I shove. Harder. She is on the bank now, on her side, spilling blood into the mud we have made, the bloody mud. She revives. It seems so. But everywhere the blood smell.
She spits, coughs. Tries to speak. And then, clearly, I hear,
Go to the Stone. Take this road to the Stone and
â¦
And with the last of her strength she raises her arm. It hangs in the air like a crooked branch, one long twig-like finger pointing down the dirt road.
Go to the Stone.
I follow her finger. There, on the horizon, I see it. Far away.
Go,
I hear her say. A watery, eerie, deafening cry.
Go to the Stone.
She rolls from the bank to the brook, and I rise up and run. I run and run and run. To the Stone.