A voice inside me urges me to roll back down the bank into the river and try again. Surely this time I’ll be too weak to resist. But I am cold now, and wet, chilled and shivering in the unfriendly dark. Discomfort and exhaustion cure me of my recklessness, and I rise from the carpet of twigs and needles and leaves and stumble after her, my wet woolen skirts tripping up my legs.
At the hut, she throws open a small wooden door carved with a sun and the phases of the moon and other characters I can’t begin to understand. My legs are still shaky, and it’s awkward for me to bend low enough to squeeze through the doorway that fits her so perfectly. But I find I can stand upright inside. Indeed, the interior is much more spacious than you’d think from looking at the outside. The floor beneath my feet is laid in dark green and ivory tiles. A cozy bed under a gauze canopy sits in one corner with a calico cat asleep among the pillows. A welcoming fire blazes in a fireplace of bricks, although I swear I never saw any plume of smoke rising out of the roof when I was outside.
Kitchen things are in the corner near the fire, and rustic carved cupboards are on the wall above a table laid with bowls and cups. Another larger table is half concealed in shadows, under a string hung with bunches of drying herbs. Two small armchairs are drawn up to the hearth. I smell chocolate steaming on the hob.
“Sit, girl,” instructs the old woman as she crosses the room, pointing to one of the armchairs with her stick. As I move toward it, I realize my frock and shoes are already dry, as if they had never been wet.
“What is this place?” My voice quavers. I’ve heard stories of the uncanny folk, but I’ve never seen one before.
The old woman leans her gnarled stick against the fireplace and turns toward me as she tosses back her hood. Her bearing is straighter, somehow, and her face, when it is revealed, looks less gnomish and wrinkled. It’s still a face older than time, full of experience, but she wears her age with serenity. She no longer seems frightful. She gazes at me, a thoughtful smile playing at her lips.
“This is my home. And you are my guest.” She nods again at the little chair, and I sit, surprised at its comfort. She lifts the beautiful china pot off the hob — the heat hasn’t cracked it, nor does it burn her fingers — and pours a cup of chocolate for me. The aroma is rich and beckoning; my first sip leads to a deeper draught as she sits in the other chair, facing me. “And now I must know why you’ve come to see me.”
I swallow another mouthful. “See you? I don’t even know who you are.”
“Folk call me Mère Sophie.”
“But I wasn’t looking for you,” I tell her.
“Ah, no.” She nods. “You came to throw yourself in the river.”
I shift uncomfortably in my chair, hiding my face in the steam from my cup. “I didn’t think anyone would be in the wood.”
“But the wood is full of life. Nothing happens here in secret.”
My humiliation is complete. All of nature has witnessed my shame. I hold my cup with both hands and stare into what’s left of its contents, rich and sweet and comforting, even with my heart in such turmoil. A tear slides off my nose and into the cup, disappearing into the dark foam.
“I know God will punish my wickedness —”
“Ptah! That’s a matter for the priests to debate,” she interrupts me with a careless wave of her hand. “It has nothing to do with the lives of women. Why should you suffer when you’ve done no wrong?”
I glance up, shocked, to see so much wisdom and understanding in her eyes — black eyes, like small, ripe olives. It’s as if she knows all the secrets of my heart. Fairy, witch, or wisewoman, she knows everything about me.
“The young Chevalier de Beaumont,” she goes on calmly, nodding at the badge on my bodice. “I know his livery. He is often spoken of in this wood, by mothers needing remedies for their hungry children. By tenants turned off their land and seeking refuge.” She leans confidingly toward me. “Do you think you’re the first woman who’s ever fled into the wood because of him?”
My gaze falls again to my chocolate.
“I carry his seed,” I whisper. And all of the desperation and despair that drove me to the river seizes me again, icy fingers clenching my heart. “It festers inside me. I can feel it! It will consume me.”
Mère Sophie reaches out one ancient hand to touch my arm with the gentlest of fingertips. “A seed need not bear fruit.”
I look up again. It is terrible to consider. It’s no fault of the thing itself that it was conceived. But even if I wanted it, what mother could willingly bring a child into such a life, knowing that only poverty, shame, and starvation would be its fate? I struggle to muster my resolve.
“Will it hurt?” My voice quakes.
She squeezes my arm very gently. “It is done.”
A part of me is fearfully alarmed, wants to leap up and dash the cup to bits in the hearth. But the wisewoman’s comforting presence gives me courage, and her reassurance is so beguiling, I cling to it, as I clung to the powerful hand that pulled me from the river. By strength of her will alone, by the serenity in those black eyes, the festering inside me eases a little. And yet, something gnaws at me still, troubles me, goads me.
“It will take time to heal your heart,” says the wisewoman. It’s as if she knows all about me, by her touch alone. “Be strong. You are not to blame for what happened, and you are not the one who deserves punishment. Arrogance, cruelty, beastliness . . . those are dark sins, more difficult to absolve.” Her fingers slide down my arm, and she takes my hand in hers. I recognize her grip from the riverside. “He has taken a great deal from you, my dear. Don’t let him have the rest. Prove you have the stronger heart and survive.”
I have no other choice. But her words give me comfort somehow, or perhaps I am simply relieved to have my story known to someone. Yet I dread the prospect of returning to Chateau Beaumont.
“But . . . I will have to see him,” I say. Until this moment, I never expected to go back, and now the prospect chills me. “I will have to face him. Every day.”
The memory of his smirks, his slanting glances, the callous way he used me, all come flooding back to me. I am outraged, and my rage burns off the last of my despair. In that instant, as if they were sparks leaping out of the fire, I see the face of Treville, the secretary threatened with the stocks; Nicolas, the young page so cruelly humiliated; the maimed doe torn apart for the sport of his dogs. A kind of power surges through me as my fury rises against him. Perhaps my hatred will give me the strength I need.
The wisewoman gazes at me, head cocking very slightly to one side, as if my thoughts were written in the air for her to study. She nods slowly.
“I see. Then watch and wait, Lucie.” I don’t even question how she knows my name. She sits so alert before me, her black eyes bright in the firelight. “There will be a reckoning at Chateau Beaumont soon enough, I promise you.”
But when I beg to know more, that is all she will say on the subject.
It must be fearfully late by now, and I know I must go back. As I get to my feet, it occurs to me that I have accepted her hospitality and her potion and have nothing for her in return.
“I can’t pay you,” I apologize. “But I will have my wage at year’s end, in silver coin, and I will bring it to you.”
“And what would you normally do with your wage?” she asks.
“Send it home to my mother.”
“No doubt she will make better use of it than I.” Mère Sophie smiles. “I have little need of coins, child. Your company is payment enough.”
She must get few visitors if she counts me as company, a mewling chit she’s had to drag from the river like a drowning cat. And yet she thinks mine is a life worth preserving. Few enough ever have before, not since I lost my father, and my mother sent me here. But now that she’s given me back the gift of my life, I suppose I must treat it with more respect.
At the door, I hesitate. Mère Sophie has restored my life, but more trouble is brewing. “It’s nearly nightfall. How shall I find my way back in the dark?” I ask her. “How can I explain where I’ve been?”