Blood Red, Sister Rose Read online

  When Jacquemin, the big brother, came with his wife on Sunday Jacques spoke to him.

  Jacques: If she goes off with soldiers, I’d drown her. If I couldn’t catch her and tie her in a sack, I’d expect you to.

  Jacquemin: Do you think it’s really going to come to that? (Dropping his voice.) Soldiers like them pretty.

  Jacques: Look, whores get started with troubles they had when they were girls. Ask any of them.

  Jacquemin: I will. Next time.

  Jacquemin’s wife hit him on the head with a wooden platter.

  So in the summer when the mandrake was crowned in Boischenu, Jehannette thought there’s a way in which Bertrand’s voice is Messire’s, Aubrit is Madame Margaret’s, Madame de Bourlémont’s is Madame Catherine’s. Diminished, thinner, but somehow the same voices.

  She didn’t like the way Madame Margaret kept saying blood. She wondered too, how well Madame Aubrit knew Madame Margaret, if Madame Margaret was somehow in Aubrit’s guts. And how well Bertrand knew Messire was in his. And therefore, if she said to them, do you want my blood, all of it? would they too say yes?

  For four summer Fridays the mandrake was crowned king by virgin Jehannette.

  Late on the last Friday Jehannette rode home with Madame Aubrit. Jehannette was on her own father’s mare. The horses trod gently over the Gooseberry Fountain amongst the bewitched trees. At one time Madame Aubrit heard nothing behind the thud of her mount’s hoofs and turned in fright. She found that Jehannette’s horse was standing still and Jehannette was sitting there dazed, straddling the saddle. Her skirt was tucked up into her girdle. Her thick ankles were white under the high moon.

  Years later Aubrit would say Jehannette looked immobilised by outside forces in that second, stunned silly by decision. Perhaps that was hindsight.

  Jehannette: I’m that virgin.

  It sounded oracular and scared the delicate Aubrit.

  Aubrit: Of course you’re a virgin.

  Jehannette: I’m that virgin. The one in Merlin.

  Aubrit: In Merlin?

  Jehannette: The one who makes up for what the whore’s done.

  Aubrit: The whore Isabeau?

  A shiver of revulsion ran over the thick girl.

  Jehannette: She lets her tigers shit in palaces. I’ll clean the palace out.

  Madame Aubrit shook her head wildly. She pointed at the obscure forests in which the rites had been performed.

  Aubrit: Jehannette, it’s only a little ceremony. It helps the king.

  Jehannette: More than that, Madame Aubrit.

  The girl actually rode up to Aubrit and put her hand, frankly, with a sort of acceptance, on the woman’s face.

  Jehannette: I’ve heard your voice since I grew up. More or less your voice.

  Aubrit: My voice. We hear each other now and then …

  Jehannette wouldn’t relent.

  Jehannette: Madame Margaret’s voice, Madame Margaret’s.

  Aubrit: My God no.

  Madame Aubrit shivered in the knowing forest.

  Aubrit: That’s Friday nights, Jehannette. That’s the confraternity.

  The girl did a brusque little chuckle. There was a tough hysteria in her, a madness with sinew.

  Jehannette: You can’t decide on Friday nights to talk up for Madame Margaret. Then call it all off for the rest of the week.

  Aubrit: What we do – it’s only a formality.

  Jehannette: You and Bertrand and the other lady think so?

  Aubrit: It ends, its just a little ceremony.

  She remembered how all along the girl had tried to drag it beyond its modest local meaning.

  Jehannette: Since I grew up I’ve heard voices. They come out of heat and light. They blind a person. But they were sort of familiar too. Now I understand that Messire Michael used Bertrand’s voice, Madame Catherine used Madame de Bourlémont, Madame Margaret uses yours. So you see?

  Aubrit: But I’m not a good woman.

  She knew it was the truth. She felt sacrilegious. And all around her the woods milled with the presences and symbols of the old religion. Poisons and narcotics ran in trunk and bough.

  Aubrit: I haven’t always been pure.

  Jehannette: It doesn’t matter. I’m the one who has to be pure.

  Madame Aubrit thought, you need a damn farmer, right now, someone thick – like your old man.

  Aubrit: For God’s sake, Jehannette, how could you be that damned virgin?

  Jehannette: Someone has to be. If someone wasn’t chosen, someone would have to choose herself.

  Aubrit: Oh my God. I’m not Madame Margaret, Bertrand’s not Messire Michael. Bertrand? My God. Look, take me home!

  Jehannette: I know you think I need a boyfriend.

  Aubrit: All right. I do. And it’ll happen, Jehanne. A lot of plain girls get very good husbands …

  Jehannette: Do you think I want to be that virgin? Do you think there are rewards for it?

  Aubrit: Perhaps you think there are. When you’re young you can be attracted by all sorts of …

  The girl was trembling. Madame Aubrit thought she’s going to jump at me from the saddle. And she’s tough enough to beat me to death.

  Jehannette: Do you know that I haven’t yet bled? That I’m not a true woman?

  Madame Aubrit coughed.

  Aubrit: What can I say?

  Jehannette: I don’t want to be this.

  The girl began sobbing. She thought, maybe I can beg off through Aubrit. Maybe I’ll never hear them again. At that moment she didn’t care if she never did.

  Aubrit: What can I say?

  Seeing the girl weep Aubrit felt stronger and thought, what a funny little piece, thinking she’s chosen like that.

  For in Madame Aubrit’s nearly aristocratic world you were more or less what you chose. Madame Catherine at the Confraternity. Madame Maire on the Meuse, Jeanne to a twenty-four-year-old wine merchant in Neufchâteau. Only momentarily – as at the Hallowe’en riots – did the unchosen fall on you.

  Aubrit: What can I say?

  Soon the girl was fit to travel again.

  There was an eleven-year-old she liked called Hauviette who didn’t yet know, as others were finding out, that Jehannette was somehow outcast. Once when Jehannette was fifteen she went out with Hauviette and the cattle and lay on the hills while the cows grazed and Hauviette combed her hair soothingly, all day. Even then they ran into Nicolas Barrey peeing amongst his father’s sheep on the road outside Greux. He wagged his fluent penis in the sun.

  Barrey: Hey Jehannette, come and take the cure.

  She tried to be pert as any girl.

  Jehannette: If a person could see it.

  But there was the assumption in town that she needed a cure of some kind to make her decent. Some – Aubrit, Nicolas Barrey – thought the cure could come simply.

  Autumn. Incandescent Messire began getting even more specific with his suggestions.

  Messire: Duckling! You ought to go to the commandant in Vaucouleurs.

  She asked why.

  Messire: You’ll need escorts into France.

  Jehannette: How do I go about asking him?

  Messire: Tell him I told you to ask, that voices asked. My darling, it works. Voices scare people. You can refuse anything a farmer’s daughter asks. But you take a risk if you refuse voices.

  Jehannette: Do I have to do it straight away?

  Messire: Why not, love?

  Jehannette: Getting away from my old man. It’s not easy, Messire.

  Messire: A time will come up.

  Jehannette: Yes.

  Messire: Remember, always mention my name.

  Jehannette: With Jacques?

  Messire: Not with Jacques, duckling. But with the commandant.

  Jehannette: Oh yes.

  Messire: Remember how it worked with Aubrit. You had Aubrit awed. Then you spoiled it by getting weepy about periods. Darling. Goose.

  In the spring when Jehannette was seventeen Jacques had to go to Vaucouleurs
for a damages case about protection money he and the other victims resident in Greux-Domremy were paying. The 1426 dues had not been collected by February the next winter and the guarantor, a man called Guyot Poignant of Montigny-le-Roi, had therefore had £120 worth of horses, hay and wood taken by the Armagnac authorities.

  Zabillet: What sort of person is General de Baudricourt?

  Jacques: He’s a wild man. But he’s got the common touch. And he’s human.

  Zabillet: Human?

  Jacques: He adjourned the case. He said, I know you people don’t have the money and Vergy’s getting an army to come up the river. So we’ll see what happens. It’s not worrying him. It’s poor bloody Poignant who’s paying the bill.

  Jehannette: How does he speak?

  Jacques: Not much better than me.

  One morning on the south edge of town the girl was with little Hauviette when Madame Aubrit rode down the road. She was on her way to Neufchâteau. Two maids and eight armed employees were with her. You could tell she was afraid of the journey, of all the talk about Monsieur Antoine Vergy having got authorisation from the English to supply an army and send it into the Vaucouleurs area. She was at the stage of fright when she could look at her white wrist and foresee her whole white body crumpled by the side of the road.

  She rode aside to speak to Jehannette.

  Aubrit: Do you still hear those things?

  Jehannette: Yes.

  Aubrit: My … my voice?

  Jehannette: Yes, I hear that voice.

  At the start of the journey Madame Aubrit wanted a sibyl as much as she had feared one in Boischenu. She wanted to have it said, oracularly, that she’d make it the five miles to her wine merchant … Jehannette saw that clearly.

  Aubrit: Will I be safe on the journey?

  Jehannette: It’s only five miles, Madame

  Aubrit: But bad ones.

  Jehannette: You’ll be safe.

  It was a fair bet.

  Madame Aubrit smiled.

  Aubrit: I’ll be back by Advent.

  Jehannette: You have to help me go to Vaucouleurs, Madame. If I help you …

  Aubrit: Vaucouleurs?

  Jehannette: To see the general.

  Madame Aubrit coughed.

  Aubrit: I know the general. The general is a friend.

  The girl was ruthless.

  Jehannette: They say there are Irish in Monsieur Vergy’s army.

  A mist of atrocities rose in lovely Aubrit’s brain. She began to bargain.

  Aubrit: I could give you a letter. To the general.

  Jehannette: You’ll do that, Madame?

  Aubrit: Yes.

  Jehannette: You wouldn’t forget, after a safe journey?

  Aubrit: No. Jehannette. I’m reliable. I’m your godmother.

  Jehannette: You wouldn’t tell my father?

  Aubrit: Your father and I don’t speak very often.

  Jehannette: God give you a good trip, Madame.

  Madame Aubrit came back for Christmas. The next Easter she wrote a letter that said: ‘This girl is my godchild and seems to have some sibylline powers. I would be grateful, dear Robert, if you did what you could for her within reason. Her demands are likely to be high and I’m sorry to inflict them on you, but she did foretell that I’d get to Neufchâteau safely one day when I was absolutely certain I would be killed on the road or sold back to Aubrit in a heavily raped state. You understand that one has to keep one’s bargains by such people. Are you worried by all this talk about the English sending armies up the river? Aubrit tells me the Lord Bishop Cauchon is handling the quartermaster work for the Duke of Bedford over in Nyons and Chalon. He says Cauchon’s letting some beautiful contracts go. Are we on the wrong side? I hope your dear Alarde is well. It gives me a strange feeling still, to be able to write like this to a great man … Jeanne Aubrit.’

  Messire, Mesdames Margaret and Catherine still recurred at intervals to Jehannette. But though there were endearments, sweetness, Messire didn’t make it clear how the letter of introduction could be used.

  Then she was let go to her aunt’s confinement up in Burey. For one thing Zabillet seemed to consider now that Jehannette might become a midwife, even though that was a portentous trade.

  Burey was a tiny place, seven households. They called it Burey-le-Petit. A bad place to be in a war – a small unnegotiable community. But that was a quiet spring. And the homesteads at little Burey were only two miles from the Vaucouleurs fortress.

  Aunt Aveline already had a grown daughter. The daughter had a husband, a quiet man called Lassois. He told Jehannette one night he thought her Aunt Aveline was a bit old for having kids.

  Aveline herself was a little timid and had forgotten a lot about childbirth. About some pains that came she was too vocal and not vocal enough about others. The laying-in ached on. Mother and attendants were mystified.

  Meanwhile, in Greux during the small hours of the Sunday after Easter Catherine herself, Jehannette’s sister, woke up beside her husband Colin Greux and began retching. A fever mounted at a mad rate. She had severe belly pains. After sunrise she never said another rational thing. She lost consciousness at mid-morning and died in convulsions at mid-afternoon.

  Jacques, Zabillet, Jacquemot, Jehan, Pierrolot had come rushing up the road to Greux very early in the day, and Jehannette was fetched from little Burey. From long birth to quick death.

  Catherine was so nice that everyone had the sense of her death being gratuitous, more unfair than the reported deaths in the north, south and west. She was so perfectly the little wife, so full of the hint of children. Now Zabillet had only Jehannette to project her womanhood.

  They all keened so much. Colin Greux’s mother took time from keening to say that she was a champion at corpse-laying, but Jehannette insisted on washing the body and putting it in its shroud.

  Jehannette was becoming the sort of person you looked at and thought, No, she’s not worth fighting, she can make better fusses than I can,

  So she was let wash the body and dress it for the resurrection.

  The Jacques family were square-built. Catherine’s square belly was clammy from recent delirium. The jaw fell in a way that made her look disappointed. In the open eyes was the slightest protest. But it was a wanton death not an ordained one. You could therefore be sure she had been happy till last night. Blithe.

  Outside the men dosed themselves with sour wine, the women at the fireplace wailed the old wails. It was a service to Catherine: they judged you in the new world by the noise of your arrival.

  Jehannette, not wailing, not drinking, felt cut off from the warm country rites and etiquette of grief. She thought they all think I’m a cold girl. They have no idea how tender I’m being with the flannel. How delicately I rinse the sweat slick off her shoulders. How royally I do the feet and the light-brown pubis. The womb of woman corrupts first, said Père Morel of St Rémy, quoting from someone called Odo of Cluny. A wise man saw lessons in that fact. Had that Odo ever handled a dead girl, all the useless freshness of the dead flesh? So submissive that with one hand Jehannette rolls her on her side for her last wash.

  Private amongst the wails, Jehanne could feel the toughness of being alone flex itself in her belly.

  After the funeral she went back to Aunt Aveline’s in Burey. From Aunt Aveline at last a baby boy was drawn safely by the ankles.

  Then Aunt Aveline regained strength. So, after a few days, Jehannette got Lassois alone in the garden and told him she wanted to go to Vaucouleurs and give a letter to General de Baudricourt. She would need someone to escort her.

  Lassois’s strength was not in bullying but, instead, subtly, in looking easily scared.

  Lassois: Me? In the general’s house?

  The local landlord was a young knight called de Foug. One morning he came riding through Burey with a secretary, a chaplain, a squire, two troopers. Jehannette ran into the street and blocked their way with her head properly bowed.

  She said to excuse her but she had
news for Monsieur de Baudricourt at Vaucouleurs. De Foug asked her what news.

  Jehannette: I’ve got a letter for a start.

  De Foug: Who’s the letter from?

  Jehannette looked confidential.

  Jehannette: Madame Aubrit.

  De Foug made an appreciative mouth, as if he knew Aubrit well.

  De Foug: Show it to me.

  She showed it to him, seal-first. De Foug inspected the seal and then the writing on the front. Whenever he told the story, years after, he said the writing was jagged, done privately, not by a secretary. It was the hand of a woman who had learned to write, but arduously. The sort of hand in which love-letters often came. He coughed.

  De Foug: This is the Madame Aubrit of Neufchâteau?

  Jehannette: Nothing’s happened to her, sir.

  De Foug called in at Lassois’s house and told him to escort Jehannette on to Vaucouleurs.

  By early May the baby was starting to build fat and Aunt Aveline’s milk was in full flow. Lassois left his own wife and led the girl over the riverflats to Vaucouleurs. Jonquils were in the borders of fields and all over the pastures. Cows ate them thoughtfully for their freshness and nectar. Vaucouleurs ran down a slope above the river. In their highest corner its walls became a fortress. All about it was a siege of apple orchards, a froth of pink and white. As if war had become the playful feminine thing the popular writers made of it. A contest between the knights of Vaucouleurs and the apple blossoms.

  From half a mile off it looked a very unurgent town. Jehannette felt helpless before such a dormant city.

  There were two soldiers on the top of the south gate. The May had got to them. Looking down, they seemed drugged.

  The girl didn’t like cities in any case. The way the opposing balconies nearly met above your head, making a tunnel. Her aunt had died under a falling balcony in Sermaize. She smelt her aunt’s terror, there in the dusk. It was such a big thing to have a balcony to sit your wife and kids on! In the market stood a dying May-tree, lopped and brought into town for the May-day rites.

  Lassois: They’ve had a party.

  There were four stalls operating in the far corner of the market, selling chickens and vegetables and tench from the river to a few pensive housewives.