There was one thing, however. An old brand high up on his left arm, a fleur-de-lis faded almost to silver over the years-which, when I questioned him, he dismissed with a smile and a claim of forgetfulness. But I noticed that he took care always to cover the mark after that, and I drew my own conclusions. My Blackbird had lost feathers in that encounter and did not care to be reminded of it.
6
I have never believed in God. Not in your God anyway; the one who looks down onto his chessboard and moves the pieces according to his pleasure, occasionally glancing up at the face of his Adversary with the smile of one who already knows the outcome. It seems to me that there must be something horribly flawed in a Creator who persists in testing his creatures to destruction, in providing a world well stocked with pleasures only to announce that all pleasure is sin, in creating mankind imperfect, then expecting us to aspire to perfection. The devil at least plays fair. We know where he stands. But even he, the Lord of Deceit, works for the Almighty in secret. Like master, like man.
Giordano called me pagan. To him this was no compliment, for he was a devout Jew, believing in a heavenly reward for his earthly sufferings. To him, to be pagan was to be immoral, ungodly, to indulge freely in the pleasures of the flesh, to delight too frequently in the other hazards encountered on the road. My old teacher ate sparingly, fasted regularly, prayed often, immersing himself for the rest of the time in his studies. He was a good companion-our only grievance was that on his Sabbath he refused to help with the work around the camp, preferring to go without a fire, even on a winter’s night, than to take the trouble to light one. Apart from this peculiarity, he was just like the rest of us; and I never saw him eat the flesh of children, as the Church claims his people do. In fact he rarely ate any kind of flesh at all. Which simply goes to show how misguided the Church can be.
Perhaps Giordano was misguided too, I told myself, as I strove dutifully to be more like my mentor. His Jewish God seemed so very like the Catholic God-which One True Religion seemed to me almost indistinguishable from that of the Huguenots or the Protestant heretics in England. There must be something else, I told myself repeatedly; something beyond sin and solemnity, dust and devotions; something that loved life as indiscriminately as I did.
My thirteenth birthday brought a kind of awakening. All that summer was a languorous procession of delights: a new awareness, a boundless energy, a heightened sense of taste and smell. For the first time, or so it seemed, I really noticed the flowers along the roadside; the scent of night falling by the seashore; the taste of my mother’s new bread, baked black in the coals but tender inside the crust of ash. I noticed too the delicious friction of my clothes against my skin, the icy splash of stream water as I bathed…If this was to be pagan, then I wanted more of it. The world had become maternal almost overnight, and her mysteries were boundless. I opened myself to her initiations. Every shoot, every flower, tree, bird, creature filled me with tenderness and joy. I lost my maidenhead to a fisherman in Le Havre and the world exploded in a revelation no less momentous to me than that of Saint John.
Giordano shook his head sourly and called me shameless. For a while he taught me nothing but theology so that my head spun and I rebelled, demanding the return of my history lessons, my astronomy, my Latin, my poetry. For a while he resisted me. I was a savage, he told me with disapproval, little better than the natives of newly discovered Quebec. I stole his books and pored over Latin erotica, my fingers following the script with agonizing slowness. When winter came my senses froze and my teacher forgave me, resuming our studies with his habitual sour shake of the head. But secretly, pagan I remained. Even in the abbey I am happier in the fields than in the chapel, the burn of my working muscles a kind of remembrance of that summer when I was thirteen and ungodly.
Today I worked until my back ached. When no more could be done among the herbs and vegetables, I moved to the salt flats, regardless of the sun’s glare, my skirt kilted to my knees, ankles mired in rime and mud. At the abbey we have lay folk to do the heavy work, the fishing, slaughtering of cattle, curing of leathers, and work in the salt fields, but I’ve never been shy of hard labor, and it keeps the fear at bay.
There is no word yet from Rennes, and last night my dreams were terrible, a nightmare hand of flung cards with LeMerle’s face on every one. I wonder whether I have brought these visions upon myself by writing so much about him in my journal, but the tale, now begun, is a runaway colt beneath my hands. Hopeless to try to break it now; better to hang on and let it run itself to exhaustion.
Janette taught me to value my dreams. They are like waves, she told me, of the tides that bear us, from which strange jetsam may be gathered, strange eddies from the deeps for those to read who can. I must use my dreams, not fear them. Only a fool fears knowledge.
Our first winter was the worst. For two months the Théâtre du Grand Carnaval was forced to a standstill just outside Vitré, a small town on the Vilaine. It had snowed throughout December, our money was almost gone, our food was running low, one of our caravans had lost a wheel, and there could be no hope of moving on until spring.
I think we all took it for granted that LeMerle would not beg. He was, he told us, writing a tragedy which, when performed, would prove to be the solution to all our problems. Meanwhile we scavenged, scrounged, danced, juggled, and tumbled ankle deep in the frozen refuse of the streets. The girls earned more than the men-at times we rivaled even the dwarves, once their novelty had worn off. Le Borgne grumbled, as ever, and seemed to take this as a personal affront. LeMerle accepted what money we brought him as if he expected no less.
One day, as January thawed to rain and mud, a fine carriage swept past our camp and beyond toward the town, and later LeMerle gathered us together and told us to prepare ourselves for a special performance at the castle. We arrived freshly bathed and in the dancers’ costumes we had salvaged in our flight from Paris, to find half a dozen gentlemen assembled in the large dining hall, where a game seemed to be under way. There were cards on the table, and I caught the glint of gold in the candlelight. There was a scent of mulled wine and woodsmoke and tobacco, and LeMerle was sitting in their midst in his Court finery, a cup of punch in one hand. He seemed on excellent terms with the little company: we might almost have been in Paris again. I sensed danger, and knew that LeMerle sensed it too. But he was clearly enjoying himself.
A plump young gentleman in rose-colored silk leaned forward and peered at me through a lorgnette. “But she’s charming,” he said. “Come closer, my dear. I don’t bite.”
I moved forward, my satin shoes whispering over the polished floorboards, and made my courtesy. “My card, sweetheart. Come on, take it; don’t be shy.”
I was feeling vaguely uncomfortable. I had grown since we left Paris, and my skirt was shorter, my bodice tighter than I remembered. I regretted now not taking the time to make the necessary adjustments. The rose-pink gentleman smirked and handed me a playing card between finger and thumb. I saw that it was the queen of hearts.