The Ravens of Falkenau & Other Stories (11 page)

"Oh!" she said, and with a rush it came back to her — the summer day after Genoa, and the young officer under a tree reading her father's book, the one she had wanted to wait for her. She felt the blood rush to her face. But how would he know? She had been not quite six. The years between six and sixteen are nearly forever. Surely he wouldn't recognize her.

People were walking around them. He put his head to the side, a curiously intent expression on his face. "May I ask your name, Mademoiselle?"

"Victory," she said.

"That's all?"

She gave him a quick glance upward. "That's all."

"No last name?"

She grinned. "Do you think you've earned my last name?"

"What do I need to do to earn your last name?"

"You'll think of it," she said, and slipped between people, making her escape. She looked back over her shoulder, but he had not moved, still staring after her.

She regained Marianne at the wall behind the punchbowl. Marianne was fanning herself feverishly. "Oh my God."

"What?"

"I just made a total fool of myself. That man there? I asked him to marry me when I was six." Victory stuck her head behind her own fan.

Marianne looked toward the dance floor. "Well, it's been a long time," she said practically. "He probably doesn't remember."

"You don't think he will?"

"Probably not."

"I think his name is Honoré-Charles," she said, wracking her brain. "I think so."

Marianne nodded emphatically. "Oh yes. My mother made me memorize them all. General Honoré-Charles Reille, Aide de Camp to the Emperor himself. He's thirty four and a bachelor. He's not a baron yet, but I imagine it's only a matter of time before he's ennobled."

"Oh dear Lord," Victory said. "Jesus Christ on toast with bacon. I can't believe I made such a fool of myself."

"It was only a dance," Marianne said. "He's probably forgotten about you already."

Victory looked out from behind her fan.

He was easy to find, even in the crowd. Now he was standing by the buffet table with the small man who had danced with Marianne. They had been joined by an enormous man with sideburns and a long moustache, who had a silver flask quite openly in his hand. He offered it to Honoré, who drank and then passed it to the fourth member of their party. She took it, laughing, and Victory's stomach clinched. Her blonde hair was piled on top of her head and fell in charming ringlets, and her red velvet and brocade dress showed every curve. She must be thirty or so, but she put her hand on the small man's arm with graceful familiarity, tilting the flask back and drinking before she gave it back to its owner. He laughed, and said something that amused everyone in the group.

"Who are the others?" she hissed at Marianne.

"Let's see." Marianne flipped her fan and gazed over the top. "The man I was dancing with is Colonel Jean-Baptiste Corbineau. He's the younger brother of General Corbineau who was killed at Eylau. He's a bachelor too. The big man is General Baron Gervais Subervie. Married. Very married."

Victory looked at them again. Subervie had said something funny, and Honoré threw his arm about his shoulders, adding another line to the joke. The woman tossed her head, laughing, and not a single curl fell down.

"Who's the woman?"

Marianne dropped her voice. "We're not supposed to notice her! She's a courtesan!"

"
Ohhhhhh
."

"Her name is Ida St. Elme, and she used to go with General Moreau, and then she went with Marechal Ney. She wouldn't be here at all if she weren't an old friend of Josephine's, from back in the Directory."

"Then why is she still here?" Victory asked. "The Empress is out."

Marianne shrugged. "It's very strange. I wonder who she sleeps with now."

"So do I," Victory said grimly. It must be nice to just stand and talk with those men, without wondering if one were a fool. He would have completely forgotten about her. Of course he would, with beautiful blonde courtesans hanging on his arm.

The blonde glanced in her direction, then put her hand on Honoré's, leaning toward him to say something in a low voice.

Victory tossed her head to make it clear she could care less. "Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion," she muttered.

The gavotte was ending. Honoré broke away from the group, the blonde looking after him encouragingly, and made his way around the room. He was not coming toward her. He wasn't. He was just coming to get punch. Or something. He probably wanted punch. He probably loved punch.

He stopped right in front of her as the first strains of the waltz began. "Mademoiselle? May I have the pleasure?"

"Yes," said Victory with a brilliant smile.

This story comes from the first days of the world, when there were no great cities and in the Black Land the building of the pyramids was more than a thousand years in the future.
 

Once, long ago in the dawn of the world, when all the cities that are were no more than collections of a few houses of mud brick, there was a bride named Meri.
 
She and her husband lived in one room on the edge of the desert, in the smallest house in the village.
 
He was an orphan, and no one lived there but them.
 

Sometimes Meri found it very lonely, used as she was to the house by the riverbank where she had grown up, with her grandmother and her father and her four tall brothers and their wives and children.
 
She missed the laughing and singing, and the babies playing underfoot on the floor while she made baskets.
 
But her husband, Neshi, had always been alone, and she loved him.
 

Besides, it was not as though she could not go home.
 
It was less than a morning's walk to her father's house, and she was always welcome.
 
Her nieces would come running when they saw her, shouting about all the things they had been doing and telling her all of their secrets — where a goose had laid her eggs in the reeds along the river, and where the herons were fishing.
 

From Meri's house they could see the river, but even at the height of the floods they barely topped the small square fields that belonged to Neshi.
 
If the flood wasn't very high their fields would not be touched at all.

That was what had happened this year.
 
The flood had been bad, so bad that even her father, who owned a piece of bottomland, had shaken his head and muttered prayers.
 
Further up, where they lived, the flood had not come at all.
 
The fields that should have been deep in life-giving water baked in the sun.

And so they had carried water in jars, backbreaking work in the summer heat, she and Neshi.
 
They had planted only one field, and watered it twice a day by hand, making the trip down to the river over and over again, pouring the water out on the soil and watching in run into cracks that should not be there.
 

There were sprouts.
 
There were some that grew, no matter how poor the soil.
 
There were some that grew even with nothing to nourish them but the water from the bucket.
 
Some sprouts survived.
 
There would be some wheat, too little, but some.

By the river, her father had melons, and if every few days someone came by on chance, bringing a few vegetables, it was not charity.
 
One of her brothers just happened to be passing by and thought he'd bring a few cucumbers.

When the wheat was reaped and stored in the shed, Meri looked at it with dismay.
 
There was so little, and much must be left for seed in a few months.
 
It would do no good if the flood rose and they had no seed.
 
There was very little left for making bread, and none to trade.
 

Neshi knew it, and she saw the defeated slump of his shoulders.
 
They had said he was not good enough for her, and he knew it was true.
 
He could not keep a bride without starving her, or relying on her family's charity.
 

It was three months yet until the river rose.

The sun baked all the land, Black Land and Red Land alike, and they were not the only ones hungry.
 
At night Meri or Neshi would get up and go in the storehouse with a club, laying about to startle the mice and small creatures that would come in to steal the grain.
 
Meri hated killing them, but Neshi would flail about with a fury, the only thing in his world he could fight.
 
For how could a man fight the river that did not rise or the grain that did not grow?
 

Every night they would trade, getting up and going in the dark.

That was how Meri first saw her.
 
Coming out into the clear, cool night air, she took a deep breath.
 
The moon was already beginning to set.
 

A shadow streaked across the yard, a lean striped wildcat, something struggling in her mouth.
 
She paused at the edge of the field, and Meri got a good look at her.
 
She was gray and tan, the better to melt into the rocks where she usually hunted, in the steep hills of the Red Land.
 
But hunger had driven her to the river too.
 
She must hunt.
 
And the granaries and storehouses of the Black Land attracted the small animals she lived on.
 
A rat was struggling in her mouth even now.
 
She turned and looked at Meri, and Meri looked back.

"Take your fill, Sister," Meri said.
 
"Any rat you take is one less to eat what we have struggled for."

The cat waited a moment, and then turned and disappeared into the darkness.

After that, Meri saw her many times.
 
She slunk around the edges of the farm, hunted the shed and the field at night.
 
Once or twice Meri saw her take down prey, and more than that she found a few shreds of bone and skin that had been one of the small animals that took the grain.
 
Meri began to watch for her.
 
She thought perhaps she was getting fatter.
 
That was satisfying.
 
It meant that there were many fewer mice.
 

It was true that there were.
 
No longer did they wake to droppings everywhere, to chewed baskets leaking seed where the rats had been.
 
At night when they went in the storehouse, no longer was it absolutely crawling with mice who scattered at the light of the torch.
 
The little animals could hear her and Neshi coming, but they feared far more the silent stalker.

One evening Meri went out to check and opened the storehouse door.
 
To her surprise, Sister was there and did not leap or hide at her approach.
 
Instead, she lay on her side panting.

Meri stopped in her tracks.
 

The wildcat regarded her, but didn't get up from where she lay on a piece of sacking.
 
Her green eyes were wide.

"Oh…" Meri breathed, for she saw why in a second.
 
Protruding from the wildcat's vagina was the back end and tail of a tiny kitten, her muscles working to push it out.
 
"Oh," she said, and slowly crouched down.
 
"I am sorry, Sister.
 
I did not mean to disturb you at your birthing."

She watched while the wildcat pushed it out, and turned about to get at it, licking its tiny face and pink nose, shoving it against her furry side.

The door opened.
 
"Meri?" Neshi said.

The wildcat sprung to her feet hissing, and Neshi raised his club.

"No, wait!"
 
Meri jumped up, grabbing the club from his hand.
 
"That's Sister.
 
She's the one who's been eating the mice and rats, like I said.
 
Leave her alone!
 
She's having her kittens in here."

"In here?" Neshi said dubiously.
 
"I never heard of a wildcat having her kittens in a storehouse."

"Why not?" Meri said.
 
"If she's in here all the time with a litter of kittens, there won't be a mouse or rat anywhere around.
 
The only thing better than having her hunt in here would be having a bunch of cats in here all the time.
 
And a mother who's feeding kittens is going to be eating a lot."

Neshi scratched his head.
 
"I suppose," he said.
 
"I mean, it's not like she eats grain."

"She doesn't touch the grain," Meri said.
 
"Just the rats."
 
She put her arms around his neck.
 
"Come now.
 
Let her stay."

She saw his eyes warm as they did when she touched him, when he forgot for a moment how bad everything was.
 
"If you want me to," he said.