The Mammoth Book of Terror (45 page)

“I have made it into a noose, threaded, sewn with faded mauve. A noose is all now it is worthy to be, this, that was your wedding train. Life, that will be death.

“They call the asylum also the Valley of Wolves – St Stones, St Cailloux. A sort of pun. And this is, too, for I shall put it under the stone of the hearth, and who knows who will
ever find it, my Book. But I hope they will, for I want them to know, yes, even if they rage and curse, I want them to know of you. And that my last thought will be of you, dying on a kiss. Good
night, H
ā
na.”

The village people spied on the newcomers, and presently told each other that here was Madame Ysabelle’s chance. For the foreign householder, Monsieur Ernst, was unwed, not poor, nor very
young, and of the same social class as Madame Ysabelle, who after all, was not bad-looking, and had her land, if only she would bother to see it worked. The single potential stumbling block might
be Monsieur Ernst’s sister, also unmarried, who lived with and looked after her scholarly brother, in just the same way as Ysabelle had looked after her scholarly father until his death,
three years before. The sister was old, so the spies decided, who had only seen her from a distance. She had white hair. These females were often the very worst, and the evidence suggested she must
have kept him from union before.

The two houses, though, were only half an hour’s walk from each other. One day or another, the man and the woman must meet.

It was a fact, there were dual elements in the village, indeed in all the villages and farms of the region. A sort of peasant bourgeoisie existed, gossipy, religious, caste-conscious, exacting.
But, too, there was the more feral peasant blood, which had other values, and was considered little better than a pack of wild beasts. These latter had actually troubled properly to see
Mademoiselle
H
ā
na – she was yet young enough for that, twenty-four years, which to them looked nineteen. Two men had carried boxes to the house of Monsieur Ernst. A woman had
brought eggs, and later come to see to the washing. These people knew quite soon that it was the brother who was the stiff one. If he had not married, it was because he had never seen a woman he
liked sufficiently. And his sister gave him the best of care – she was what the middle shelf of the region would have termed
devoted.
To the “wild beasts”, perhaps, she was
dutiful, and this while she was not the sort of girl who would be naturally constrained. She too had vestiges of the wild woods, where once witches had danced with flowers in their hair, just as
they had ridden from the mountains on their broomsticks not thirteen years before.

Of Ysabelle also this wild quality might have been noted, in her girlhood. They had seen her, wandering the fields with blood-red poppies in her basket. Or watching the moon from her window
while her clever father pored over his books.

To the Wild Beasts, H
ā
na did not represent an obstacle nor Ernst a rescue. Although they were not insensible to ideas of rescue and obstacle in the arrival of the foreign couple.

Ysabelle met Ernst one morning. He was riding along the lane, or road, that ran by the wall of the garden at the front of her house, and she was standing there with Mireio, over the scattered
feathers of a chicken some fox had taken in the night.

Mireio was cursing the fox, and promising that Jean would set a trap, and Ysabelle impatiently was desiring that rather than do this, the house of the chickens should be repaired.

They argued in the way old servant women did with mistresses they had known as children, and youngish mistresses with old servant women who had almost been their mothers but were not.

Ernst stopped the trap, and frankly watched, in cool amusement.

When Ysabelle looked, he raised his hat and introduced himself.

Doubtless he could see the old servant eyeing him, evaluating him, but with Ysabelle there was none of that. As he had heard, she was educated and well-bred, and he liked the look of her, her
coal-black hair softly but neatly dressed, her dark dress, still in part-mourning apparently, for an adored, respected father. Her lush figure, too, her graceful features, her sensitive, noble
hands.

She answered him politely.

Ernst said, with his perfect command of language and dialect, “I hope my sister may come over and visit you? Of course, there’s no one else suitable for her to see, for miles.
She’s an absolute angel to me. I want her to be happy, but how can a woman be happy with no other women sometimes to chatter to?”

Ysabelle dipped her raven-coloured eyes. She did not smile. As she was doing this, Mireio said, aggressively, “There is the duck, Madame. I said it was too much for us. But for a proper
supper for three, it would be perfect.”

Ernst let out a roar of laughter. This was as good as a comedy at the theatre, and really he had no objection to sitting over a good country meal, and looking at Ysabelle, and watching her come
around to him.

“Well, I should be honoured,” he said, “but Madame hasn’t yet asked me.”

Ysabelle glanced at him. No smile. Quiet as silence. She said, however, “Mireio has decided you must taste her cooking. Please come and taste it.”

They agreed an evening, and Ernst rattled away to the town, whistling, and that night told his sister they were to meet a true witch of a woman, who, he was sure, had already laid a spell on
him, because he was going to take with them a bottle of his best wine.

“When I first saw you tonight, with the sun just down and the moon just risen, I was so angry and nervous. The stupid supper. Not since my father had I had to suffer in that way. When he
died, the freedom gave me wings. And now, I should be trapped, as Jean wished to trap the poor fox, gnawing through my paws to get away. Seeing you, I hated you. You. One entire second, that I will
never forget or forgive. I hated your freshness, your glow, your light-coloured hair, your face, eager to be liked, and nervous too, I am sure. Hated you. I punished myself later, when you were
gone. I went upstairs and said to myself in the mirror, you hated her. And I slapped my own face, hard, and left a red mark that lasted two hours. I know, I was awake so long.”

Ernst made the meal “go”, talking all the while, a sort of lecture. He was studying many things, philosophical, medical, and had also an interest in fossils, many examples of which
he would find, he said, in the local countryside, for it was rich in them. H
ā
na, of course, did not understand these interests. “She calls me to task, and says I march about all day,
obsessed by stones.
Stones
, Madame Ysabelle. I ask you.”

Ysabelle looked at H
ā
na, and H
ā
na said, softly, with her slight accent, her slight always half-stumbling in the new language, “Oh, but I know they’re – wonderful,
Ernst. I do. I only wish I could have seen them – when they were alive. The big animals like dragons, and the little insects.”

“She is a tyrant. She also insists archeology is tomb robbery,” said Ernst.

Ysabelle said, “Mademoiselle H
ā
na would prefer to travel in time.”

“Yes,” said H
ā
na, “to go back and see it as it was.”

“She reads that sort of nonsense,” he said.

Ysabelle said, “But monsieur, you know what we women are. Creatures of feeling, not intellect.”

“That takes a clever woman to say,” gallantly declared Ernst. He added, “Of course, I’ve heard of your father. I read a book of his. An excellent mind.”

“Thank you. He was much admired.”

“You must miss him.”

“Yes,” she said, “every day.”

And turning, as Ernst applied himself again to the duck, Ysabelle saw H
ā
na stare at her almost with a look of fear.

Later Ysabelle took H
ā
na to inspect the garden, to show her womanly things, domestic herbs, the husbandry of the grapevine, the moon above a certain tree.

H
ā
na said abruptly, “You take a risk, Madame.”

“Oh? In what way?”

“Making fun of him. He has a horrible temper.”

“Yes, I’m sure that he does.”

“He doesn’t see it now, what you’re doing—”

“I’ll be more careful.”

“Please. Because I’d hate there to be a rift.”

“Since you have no other female companions.”

“Of course I do,” said H
ā
na. “There are lots of woman here I like very well. He’s often away on his business, things to do with his money, and clever papers
he’s written. Then I sit on the wall of the court with the servant girl, shelling peas, giggling. We takeoff our shoes.”

“I’m sure that is a risk, too.”

H
ā
na said nothing.

Then she said, “We’ve been to many places. I like this valley.” Though her delivery was still hesitant, it was now a fluent, unafraid hesitancy.

The moon stood in the top of the birch, which held it like a white mask upon feathers.

H
ā
na lifted her face. She was so pale, her white skin and lightly-tinted mouth. Her eyes were dark, although not so dark as Ysabelle’s. As H
ā
na tipped back her head, Ysabelle,
who had drunk Ernst’s very strong wine, had a momentary irrational fear that the incredible weight of H
ā
na’s chignon would pull back and dislocate her slender neck. And throwing
out one hand, she caught the back of H
ā
na’s head in her palm, as a woman does with a young child or baby.

H
ā
na said nothing, resting her head, so heavy, the massy cushion of silken hair, on Ysabelle’s hand.

They gazed up at the moon, at the mask which hid the moon, which might itself in reality be a thing of darkness, concealing itself for ever from the earth.

“I’ve never seen so much hair,” said Ysabelle presently.

“Yes, it makes my head ache sometimes. I wanted to cut some of it once. But Ernst told me that was unfeminine.”

“What nonsense. Your brother’s a fool. I’m sorry. Even so, you shouldn’t – no, you should never cut your hair. Your hair isn’t like any other hair. Your hair
is –
you.
”

H
ā
na laughed.

Ysabelle in turn felt frightened. She said, “What nonsense
I’m
talking.” And took the girl back into the house, which Ernst was filling, as the father had done, with the
headachy lustre of cigars.

They left at midnight, a city hour, not valued in the country.

Exhausted, Ysabelle went upstairs, and Mireio, hearing her pace about, nodded sagely, rightly believing her mistress was disturbed by new and awful terrors, tinglings, awakenings,
amazements.

All
this
H
ā
na had relayed to Ysabelle, it was true. And so, in a way, they
had
spoken of Ernst.

“My mother died when I was four,” said H
ā
na, “but I had a kind nurse. I miss my mother still, do you know, I dream of her even now. She’d come in from some ball or
dinner and her skirts would rustle, and she smelled of perfume and there was powder on her cheek, as on the wings of the butterflies that Ernst kills.”

“I killed my mother,” said Ysabelle. H
ā
na gazed, and Ysabelle added, “I mean, when I was born. Of course, as I grew, I had to take her place in many ways, for my father.
For other consolations, he went to the town.”

H
ā
na lowered her eyes. They were a deep shadowy brown, like pools in the wood where animals stole to slake their thirst.

They walked about the countryside, the two women. They picked flowers and wild herbs, and later, mushrooms. They talked the sort of talk that Ernst would have predicted. Of memory and thought
and feeling and incoherent longings. They sometimes laughed until their waists, held firm in the bones of dead whales, ached. They read books together aloud. Even, they shelled peas and chopped
onions on the broad table, Mireio scolding them as if they were children. She would spoil it soon enough, saying, “Monsieur must come tomorrow or next day. This pork will just suit
him.” She was ready always with her invitations to Ernst, was Mireio, and he eager to accept them.
Ysabelk,
he remarked to himself,
has that woman very well primed.
He did not
mind a little connivance, though, aimed at himself. YsabeUe herself would not be too forward, and she would not anticipate, daughter of a free-thinking intellectual as she was, anything he did not
want to give.