The Virgin Blue (40 page)

‘Where do you feel most comfortable?’

I looked around.

‘Here,’ I said, ‘Right here.’

Jean-Paul opened his arms very wide.

‘
Alors, tu es chez toi. Bienvenue
.’

EPILOGUE

I
stared up at the sky, a pale blue washed out by late September sun. The Tarn was still warm; I lay on my back, arms stroking out from my sides, breasts flattened, hair floating in the river like leaves around my face. I looked down: my belly was just beginning to push above the water. I cupped the mound with my hands.

There was a rustling of paper from the bank.

‘What happened to Isabelle?’

‘I don't know. Sometimes I think she left Moutier and returned here to the Cévennes. She found her shepherd and had her baby, and lived happily ever after. She even went back to being Catholic so she could worship the Virgin.’

‘Happy ending.’

‘Yes. But you know, I don't think that's what really happened. More often I think she died starving in a ditch somewhere, fleeing from the Tourniers, a baby dead in her womb, forgotten, her grave unmarked.’

There was silence.

‘But you know the worst fate, even worse than that, and yet the most likely?’

‘What can be worse than that?’

‘She lived with it. She stayed in Moutier and lived with her daughter's body under the hearth for the rest of her life.’

Isabelle kneels at the crossroads. She has three choices: she can go forward, she can go back, or she can remain where she is.

—Help me, Holy Mother, she prays. Help me to choose.

A blue light surrounds her, giving her solace for the briefest moment
.

I sat up abruptly, crouching on the long smooth rock of the river bed, my breasts regaining their roundness. The baby had woken and begun to wail like a kitten. Elisabeth lifted him from his blanket on the river bank and guided his mouth to her breast.

‘Has Jean-Paul read this?’ She patted the manuscript next to her.

‘Not yet. He will this weekend. It's his opinion I'm the most nervous about.’

‘Why?’

‘It's the most important to me. He has definite opinions about history. He'll be very critical of my approach.’

Elisabeth shrugged. ‘So? It's
your
history, after all.
Our
history.’

‘Yes.’

‘Now, what about the painter you were telling me about? Nicolas Tournier.’

‘The red fish, you mean.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing. He has a place, no matter what Jean-Paul thinks.’

Jacob reaches the crossroads and finds his mother on her knees, bathed in blue. She does not see him and he watches her for a moment, the blue reflected in his eyes. Then he looks around and takes the road leading west
.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I
would like to thank the following people (in alphabetical order, that great leveller) for their help: Juliette Dickstein; Jonathan Drori; Susan Elderkin; Jonny Geller; James Greene; Kate Jones; my cousin Jean Kleiber, who first told me about chimneyless farms and other things Swiss; Lesley Levene; Madame Christine Martinez of Florac, who without knowing it gave me a crash course in French village life; and Vicky Singer.

Most useful were
Montaillou
and
The Peasants of Languedoc
by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie,
The Return of Martin Guerre
and
Society and Culture in Early Modern France
by Natalie Zemon Davis,
Protestants du Midi, 1559–1598
, by Janine Garrisson, and
Moutier à travers les âges
by Ph. Pierrehumbert.

Most of the places in the book may exist, but none of the people does.

HISTORICAL NOTE

T
he 16th-century Protestant Reformation originated with Martin Luther in Germany. One of his associates, John Calvin, moved to Geneva, where he trained preachers in his beliefs, based on a pious, disciplined life as well as the direct worship of God without the need for a priest as intermediary. These preachers fanned out across France, spreading the ‘Truth’, as Calvinist teachings were known. They quickly converted many in the cities and among the French nobility.

It took longer to penetrate remote rural regions such as the Cevennes, a mountainous area in southern France. Once preachers arrived there, however, many peasants converted to the Truth and began worshipping secretly, in barns and in the forest, until they were able to kick out the local Catholic priests and occupy the churches. Catholic churches were taken over in several Cevenol villages in 1560 and 1561, and Huguenots (as French Protestants came to be known) became dominant in the Cevennes.

In 1572, thousands of Huguenots who had gathered for a royal wedding were slaughtered. This Massacre of St Bartholomew launched waves of persecution that spread all over France, forcing many Huguenots to emigrate. Some peace was restored by the Edict of Nantes which protected Protestant rights, but troubles developed again after Louis XIV revoked the edict in 1685, dispersing Huguenots across Europe. In the early 18th century groups of Huguenots in the Cevennes rose against the French government in what is known as the Camisard rebellion, but were unsuccessful and had to worship clandestinely once again.

About the Author

T
RACY
C
HEVALIER
grew up in Washington, DC. She moved to England in 1984, and worked for several years as a reference book editor. In 1994 she graduated from the MA course in creative writing at the University of East Anglia. Her first novel,
The Virgin Blue
, was chosen by WH Smith for its Fresh Talent promotion in 1997.
Girl with a Pearl Earring
was longlisted for the Orange Prize in 2000. Tracy Chevalier lives in London with her husband and son.

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Praise for
Girl with a Pearl Earring
:

‘Beautifully written, mysterious and almost unbearably poignant – a magical experience.’

D
EBORAH
M
OGGACH

‘It has a slow, magical current of its own that picks you up and carries you stealthily along … a beautiful story, lovingly told by a very talented writer.’

Daily Mail

‘A wonderful novel, mysterious, steeped in atmosphere, deeply revealing about the process of painting … truly magical.’

Guardian

‘Ultimately absorbing … suspended in a particular moment, it transcends its time and place.’

New Yorker

Also by Tracy Chevalier

GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING
FALLING ANGELS
THE LADY AND THE UNICORN

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are
the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is
entirey coincidental.

Harper
An imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers
77–85 Fulham Palace Road,
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by
the Penguin Group 1997

Copyright © Tracy Chevalier

Tracy Chevalier asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library

Set in PostScript Linotype Giovanni by
Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

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EPub Edition © 2006 ISBN: 9780007324347

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