Bitter Greens (14 page)

There was no use trying to escape through the window. No one could
survive such a fall. Far, far below, the lake glimmered silver at the base of immense stony mountains, which seemed to rise straight into the air. Margherita could see a few dark columns of cypress trees and, further away, down the valley, the dark mass of a forest. Most frightening of all, there was no door and no stair. The only way in or out was the narrow window, and only an eagle could fly so high.

There must be a way out!
Margherita told herself, trying not to panic.
Just wait and watch
.

When the bath was filled with gently steaming water, La Strega poured her potion into a graceful silver goblet and set it on a little table next to the bath. She then unfastened her robe, letting it fall to the ground at her feet. She was naked underneath. Margherita averted her eyes, her heart pitter-pattering. The sorceress showed no self-consciousness, gathering up her own red-gold hair and pinning it loosely at the back of her head. She put her silver goblet on the little table where the candles stood and stepped gracefully into the bath, the moonlit water rippling about her as she sat.

‘Light the candles,’ she ordered.

Margherita carefully lit the three fat red candles with a wooden splinter. As her taper flared high, it illuminated the oil painting on the wall. Margherita caught her breath, for the beautiful woman painted gazing at herself in her mirror was none other than La Strega herself.

‘There is a vial of rose oil there on the shelf. Pass it to me.’

Margherita obeyed, her fingers trembling.

The sorceress let fall three fragrant drops, then passed the vial back to Margherita, who put it away.

‘Bring me the jar of dried maidenhair fern next to it.’

When Margherita had brought her the small jar, the sorceress dropped three tiny pinches of dried fern into the bath, turning the water pale green.

‘Bring me the roses.’

Margherita brought the flowers, and she watched as the sorceress carefully stripped away the crimson petals and let them drop into her bathwater. A most delicious heady smell filled the small tower room. The candlelight glimmered on the sorceress’s red-gold hair and danced on the
water’s surface, mingling with the silver radiance of the full moon, now high in the sky.

‘Here, take the stalks.’

Margherita leant forward to take the bundle of plundered stalks, then suddenly flinched and cried out. The sorceress had purposely slashed one of the cruel rose thorns across the tender skin of her wrist. Blood ran down Margherita’s hand and trickled into the water, each drop unfurling like a tiny bud and then spreading tiny stamens, which slowly dissolved, turning the bathwater red. Margherita would have stumbled back, but the sorceress gripped her wrist, forcing her to stand and watch her blood dripping into the water, counting. When nine drops had fallen, she drew Margherita’s wrist to her mouth and gently sucked on the wound, stemming the flow. Margherita flinched, snatching her hand away, and the sorceress let her go. Margherita fell to her knees, gripping her bloody wrist, so shocked she could not even cry out.

La Strega lifted the silver goblet to her mouth, her eyes fixed on the portrait of herself hanging at the foot of the bath, and drank a mouthful. ‘I shall not pay the apple’s price, relinquishing beauty to be wise,’ she chanted. Another gulp, and she went on, ‘I shall not fade like the petals of the rose, surrendering to the winter’s frost.’

With one last mouthful, she drained the goblet dry. ‘Bring to me the face I see, so I shall stay as fair as ever.’

For a moment, the sorceress sat still, staring at her painted reflection, a triumphant smile on her lips. Then she turned to Margherita. ‘Will you wash my hair for me now,
cara mia
? I do so love to have my hair washed.’

Shaking, tears clogging her throat, Margherita did as she was told. She wiped her bleeding palm on her nightgown, then knelt behind the bath, unpinning the sorceress’s mass of fiery curls. Using the empty jug, she carefully poured water over La Strega’s head. She massaged the soap in her hands and rubbed the froth through the long red curls. The sorceress sighed with pleasure. ‘Can you rub a little harder?’ she whispered.

Margherita obeyed, though her heart was beating a wild tattoo in her
throat. She dipped the jug in the water, ready to rinse out the soap, but the sorceress shook her head. ‘Please, not yet.’

Margherita knelt by the bath, gently massaging La Strega’s hair, till her knees throbbed and her back groaned and the water in the bath had cooled. At last, the sorceress sighed and said, ‘Very well, enough.’ As Margherita was towelling the sorceress’s hair dry, a strange ominous shadow darkened the edge of her vision. She looked up and could not help a shriek of pure terror.

The silver disc of the moon was turning blood-red, a dark shadow creeping across its pockmarked face. It looked as if some immense giant had chomped a huge bite out of it. As Margherita watched, incredulous, the stain spread and the moon’s face darkened, as if suffused with rage. La Strega was staring up at it with troubled, fascinated eyes. ‘What a powerful omen,’ she whispered. ‘Surely this bodes well for me?’

And ill for me
, Margherita thought and covered her eyes with both hands. She did not want to see the moon being eaten alive.

Sitting there on my heels, listening to Sœur Seraphina’s tale, I felt such a sharp pang in my heart it was as if someone had reached across the years and driven a rose thorn into my breast.

I too had had my mother stolen from me. I too had been locked away against my will. That girl, Petrosinella, she had been twelve when she was locked away. I had been twelve when my mother was taken.

This garden hidden at the heart of the convent reminded me so much of my mother’s garden, hidden at the heart of the chateau where I had been born, the Château de Cazeneuve in Gascony. It was there that I first met the King, which began the chain of events that led me here to the Abbey of Gercy-en-Brie, and Sœur Seraphina’s garden.

The King came to stay at the Château de Cazeneuve in the spring before my tenth birthday. He and the court were proceeding in a leisurely fashion to Spain, where Louis was to marry the Spanish Infanta, his double first cousin. The Infanta, Marie-Thérèse, was his cousin on both his father’s
and mother’s sides, with Louis’ father, Louis XIII, being Marie-Thérèse’s uncle, and Marie-Thérèse’s father being Louis’ uncle.

The court came to Cazeneuve because my mother’s grandfather, Raymond de Viçose, was cousin to the King’s grandfather, Henri IV, which means my mother is the King’s third cousin. The Château de Cazeneuve had been Henri IV’s hunting lodge and his favourite residence, and he had given it to his cousin Raymond once he became King of France and moved to Paris.

As boys, Raymond and Henri had hunted boar and courted girls together. As men, they had fought side by side in many a battle, saving each other’s lives. Each had survived the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, which had been sparked by Henri’s marriage to Princesse Margot.

Henri’s affection for his cousin was so deep that, after a particularly brutal battle, he had swept off his golden helmet with its long white plume and handed it to Raymond. The white feather then became part of Raymond’s coat of arms, and, after Henri gave him the Château de Cazeneuve, he had the royal plume carved over the entrance gate.

The Château de Cazeneuve lies about twenty-five miles south of Bordeaux, on the pilgrim’s road that ran from Santiago de Compostela to Vézelay. It was the natural way for the court to travel to Spain and the King’s first meeting with the Infanta.

I wonder what the King thought when he first saw the chateau. Cazeneuve was not at all like the graceful symmetrical palaces of Paris, being built for defence, not for beauty. It had thirteen outer walls, all different lengths and angles, and two cone-topped towers overlooking the ravine through which the River Ciron raced. Within the chateau’s walls was a sunken courtyard, where my mother had planted her garden, protected from the winds by the high walls. My mother’s favourite place at the chateau, it was sweetly scented with the smells of rosemary and lemon balm and thyme. Fruit trees were espaliered all around the walls, and bees hummed in the sweet cicely foaming in the borders.

It was a child’s paradise. I had my own fleet chestnut mare, called Garnet, and a long-legged black-and-white-mottled hound called César, who slept on the end of my bed. And, of course, Nanette, who cuddled me and scolded me and brought me a bowl of bread torn up and tossed in warm milk and
sprinkled with sugar when I was banished to my room without supper.

Every day, there was a new adventure. I used to love galloping through the park, my eyes closed, my arms held wide, the thunder of my mare’s hooves loud and dangerous in my ears. I had a small boat, for rowing on the millpond. (I was not allowed to take my boat onto the river. It was too dangerous, my mother said.) Sometimes, I was allowed to shoot the rapids with the men on the
gabares
, as they took barrels of wine down to the port of Cérons. At harvest time, my sister, Marie, and I would ride home on the top of the hay cart, poppies wound in our hair, singing at the tops of our voices. In winter, we’d go hunting for game for our table and stop somewhere deep in the forest to cook chestnuts on a fire. I remember how they warmed our frozen hands.

Another favourite activity of mine was going down the secret passage to the River Ciron and exploring the caves in the limestone cliffs. Queen Margot was meant to have sneaked down the secret passage to meet her lovers in one of the caves, when she was kept prisoner here by her husband. One day, when Henri accused her, she replied, ‘Is it a crime to be fond of love? Is it right to punish me? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and a prison will never be a place of beauty.’ To underscore her point, she had had this last line engraved on the mantelpiece in the drawing room. I did like Queen Margot.

Every night, my mother would read to us from one of her many books, my sister and I drawn close to her in an enchanted circle of golden lamplight, the shadows that wavered upon the wall taking the shapes of brave knights and maidens in peril and enchanted beasts. If I could not sleep, my head filled with extraordinary adventures, I would creep down to the library in my nightgown, clutching a candle, which I would light in the embers of the fire. I would curl up in the window seat, the shabby curtains drawn close to hide me, and read further on in the book my mother had laid aside, bending my face to the page to see in the dim uncertain light of my candle.

She read us old poems about nymphs and showers of gold, or tattered accounts of long-ago battles, stories of gods that transformed into swans, heroes that fought one-eyed monsters, and giants that sailed the seas in search of passion and wisdom. I loved them all. But my favourite book, the one that I took down most often and that never failed to divert and delight me, was
the heavy illustrated edition of
Amadis of Gaul
. And my favourite scene in my favourite book, the one I read over and over to myself in the little circle of candlelight, was the one in the forest when Amadis finally lay down with his one true love, the Princesse Oriana, and there, ‘in that green grass, on that cloak, more by the quiet grace of Oriana rather than the bold courage of Amadis, did the most beautiful maiden in the world become a woman’.

I would read until my candle spluttered out in a hot pool of wax, and I would have to creep back to bed through the cold shadowy chateau,
heavy-eyed
and yawning, my head stuffed full of dreams and visions. If I was caught out of my bed, I’d be shaken and scolded and threatened with a whipping by Nanette, who would then tuck me up with a hot brick wrapped in flannel. ‘Wicked girl. If your mother only knew. To bed, to bed!’

I don’t remember my father. He died when I was a little girl, and to tell you the truth I never felt his lack. There was Monsieur Alain in the kitchen, always happy to let me help roll dough, and old Victoir in the stables, who taught me to keep my back straight and my head high, and Montgomery, my mother’s steward, who could do sums in his head faster than any other man I’ve met, plus a hundred other grooms and gardeners and footmen to keep an indulgent eye on me.

When the King came, the fields were bright with cornflowers and poppies and the chestnut trees were in blossom. I had woken early, a fizz of excitement in my stomach, and lay in my canopied bed, thinking of the spectacle ahead. It would be hours before the King and his court arrived, though, and my mother would have us working all morning to prepare.

We had all been kept busy for weeks in preparation for the royal visit. The floors had been scrubbed, the rugs shaken out, and the linen darned and hung over the rosemary bushes to whiten in the sun. Geese had been fattened, hundreds of barrels of wine had been brought up from the cellars, and the huntsmen had ridden in search of wild boar and fat pheasants. It had cost a great fortune, which we could ill afford. Although my mother was the Baronne de Cazeneuve, and my father had been the Marquis de Castelmoron, we were poor. Very poor. All our family’s wealth had been lost in the religious wars, before I was born. Normally, we ate cassoulet
with white beans and sausage like the peasants, made with a pig’s knuckle and some bacon rind for flavour. Our clothes were plain and serviceable, and our only toys were those made for us by the servants: a rag doll, a hoop made from withies, knucklebones saved from the butcher’s stall.

My mother had even had new clothes made for us in honour of the King, though as always they were of sober hue and sturdy cloth. Mine was nut-brown, with a plain white collar to match my white linen hood. I’d have liked some lace and ribbons to add some flounce, but my mother did not approve of such things, and besides, as she added truly, I’d only tear it or spill my soup on it.

I gazed at my new dress, with matching slippers of soft lambskin, and then jumped up to run and look out the window. It was only just light. The sky was pale above the mist wreathing from the ground like the steam rising from a weary beast. Birds sang. César put his speckled paws up on the sill beside me and looked at me pleadingly from liquid brown eyes. I grinned.

‘Very well, my César. Let’s go. We’ve hours before the King comes.’

I scrambled into an old grey dress, knotting the laces at the back as well as I could. I’m sure girls’ dresses were designed to stop us having fun. They were so hard to put on and take off and keep clean.

Along the long gallery I crept, my footsteps muffled by the fine Aubusson carpet. Then I headed down the stairs and along the hallway. César pattered along beside me, his toenails clicking on the old terracotta tiles. I could hear clanging and banging from the kitchen. Monsieur Alain would be busy preparing a fine feast for the court. I went out the side door, into the soft mist of the early morning.

My mare, Garnet, was half-asleep in her stall, her head hanging over the doorway. She whickered at the sight of me and I hushed her, sliding her bridle over her long nose, then taking off her halter. I could not lift the heavy side-saddle onto Garnet’s back by myself, so I decided, with a little thrill of rebelliousness, to ride bareback. It felt strange at first, without the pommel to hook my leg over and the planchette in which to rest my foot, but soon Garnet and I were trotting through the mist, César loping behind.

Not wanting to go too far, I went to the pond where the wheel of the mill churned the dark green water into palest emerald. The miller’s children
were already up, two boys called Jean and Jacques, and a little girl called Mimi. I tied Garnet’s reins up and set her free to graze, and then Jean, Jacques, Mimi and I rowed out to the island, where we had built a fort that summer from driftwood and old canvas. We played at Frondeurs for a while, armed with sticks and old rusty pots for helmets, and then busied ourselves making a dam on the shore.

When the King’s first outriders came cantering along the road, raising a long plume of dust, I was up to my ankles in mud and water, my dress kilted up above my knees, my arms filled with sticks.

I dropped the sticks. ‘
Sacré bleu
, the King. He’s early. Come on.’

We raced towards the boat. Mimi slipped in the mud and fell. ‘Wait for me!’ she wailed. I ran back, scooped her up onto my hip and floundered to the boat, which Jean and Jacques held waiting. I dropped Mimi in, then clambered in myself. ‘César,’ I called and whistled shrilly. My hound bolted from the forest and bounded into the boat, almost capsizing it. Flung to the bottom of the boat, I sat up, only to be knocked down again by my enthusiastic dog trying to wash my face with his tongue.

‘Row,’ I cried. ‘Get me to shore,
tout de suite!
’

In a flurry of splashes, the boat spun in circles as the boys fought over the oars.

‘Hurry,’ I cried.

Jean dropped one oar. In reaching for it, I almost lurched into the water. Only Jacques’ firm grip on my skirts saved me. I seized the oar, jammed it back into its brackets and rowed as fast as I could, feeling blisters springing up on my palm. We reached the shore and I scrambled out, whistling for Garnet. She ambled towards me. I hurried to meet her, my wet muddy skirts flapping against my bare legs.

Garnet sensed my desperation and would not let me catch her reins. At last, I seized hold and cast one agonised glance towards the road. I saw an immense gilded carriage, with outriders streaming before and behind, then a train of smaller carriages, each pulled by a team of fine horses. A woman in a huge hat with a veil wrapped about her face was leaning from the window of the first carriage, one gloved hand gesturing towards me.
A young man was cantering alongside on a fine bay gelding. He too was staring at me, and I could clearly see the mocking laughter on his face.