No Man on Earth

      The way Maman squirmed in her chair, fiddled with her hands in her lap, suggested a deep discomfort I’d only known her to experience once before, when she received news of my brother’s defection in 1813. Never had she mentioned him since.

The reason for tonight’s uneasiness came in the form of a confession, and it was I who delivered the intolerable news. It was a marked departure from my usual role as the reticent and obliging daughter, characteristics belied only in the secrecy of my bedchamber where I took to books which would be considered above my station.

           We faced each other from armchairs spaced a polite distance apart, before a fire that half-buried our faces in shadow. Maman’s eyes flitted between my own and the subtle bump of my stomach carrying a life that would find no welcome under this roof. Of that she was quite clear.

           “Christine,” she uttered after a silence so long I thought it might choke me, “a good friend of mine, Madame Fortin, knows of a lodging for women like you—”

           “Women like me? Or in my condition?” I protested dourly.

           “However you might characterize yourself is of no concern,” she replied. She fixed me with the gaze of a judge. “All that is left is to sort out the arrangements of how it shall be dealt with.” Her tone was flat, transactional.

           “And if I want to keep him?” I chanced, hoping the idea of a boy might soothe her hostility.

           “His face will be no less carved in sin, whether or not you insist on acquaintance.”

           I sighed and stared into the fire, beseeching the licking, pointed flames for some unearthly guidance.

           “Madame Fortin’s own daughter spent a season away. You’ll remember the suddenness of her disappearance.”

           I did. I remembered, too, the excuses lavished upon the situation; she was merely out of sorts, away in the countryside for a spell of fresh air while recovering from a paroxysm of ostensible poor health.

           “The same shall be done for you,” said Maman, rising to stand before the hearth, her back to me. Her gnarled, knotted knuckles kneaded themselves anxiously.

           “Please, Maman,” I entreated, “you speak as though my crimes were as great as Robert’s…”

           She whirled around, her face a crimson masque of hate. “Do not speak that name in this house.” The thunder of her voice seemed to rattle the very foundations. I instinctively brought my arms round my belly.

           “I am not treasonous,” I insisted.

           “You are as stupid as if you were,” she hissed.

Resuming the calm façade of a strategist, she insisted on calling on Fortin the next day. “The details will be sorted. Your promise not to repeat this behaviour shall be as good as repayment.”

It was an expectation rather than mutual agreement.

“Your state is not so conspicuous as to require your immediate removal,” Maman went on, “but resist the temptation of indulging in comfort while you are here.”

Her exit concluded our meeting. Over the next days she treated me with a level of courtesy reserved for a servant-girl or an unhappily tolerated houseguest. An iciness pervaded our every interaction such that I feared she had lost all recollection of my raising, apparently defying the fact that she ever had a daughter. My stout protectress became my despotic captor.

I was allowed no walks for exercise, and all books were removed from the library other than the chastely didactic. The good book was thrust upon me more than once, the marked passages foretelling my place amongst the damned. My dinners were brought to my room where I ate in isolation, a contagious leper.

But there was an impersonal element to the equation that suggested I was not on the receiving end of my just desserts, but rather that I served as a receptacle for the pain under which she languished for my brother.

“Where did I go wrong with you?” she asked me one night, her palm upon my cheek in a peculiar moment of vulnerability.

“You didn’t, Maman,” was my reply. “It could not have been prevented. It was willed.”

The palm drew back only to return with a force across my face that left it numb and red.

“Blasphemous girl. The minute you are out of this house it shall be cleansed.”

The day of my exile arrived. Just before morning’s first light, we stood at the road before the carriage that would take me south to the chateau, where I would birth and surrender my firstborn. I embarked as the driver loaded my cases and took his place upon the box. Maman approached, bringing her face close to the open window.

“Who is it?”

My face was the picture of serenity. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Who is it?” she repeated, casting a glance at my swollen torso.

“I’m afraid you’ll never have that answer. It is no man you know.”

“Tell me his name, Christine!”

“As I said,” I demurred, “it is not for you to know.”

I settled back in the carriage, tucking the blankets around me. The horses grew suddenly frantic, as if spooked by some slithering serpent. They stamped their hooves and rolled their wild eyes; the driver, perturbed, attempted in vain to settle them.

I leaned forward and kissed her cheek. As I retreated, a change passed over her face as a dark cloud mutes the sun, at first subtle but intensifying rapidly.

She made horrible choking noises, and a reddening flush crept up from her neck and into the thinning strands of her hairline. Her eyes bulged like a toad’s. She fell back onto the pavement, clutching her throat as the carriage jerked forward, the driver too preoccupied with the unruly beasts to notice the business of an old woman. I smiled at the cloaked figure beside me, seeking and yet knowing approval. Its contours melded into the shadows of dawn’s grey light, choosing to whom it appeared.

As I have said, there was no man on earth who could pledge paternity to my growing child; I had bargained with sin for my freedom. The lure of voices in the dark had been inescapable, promising liberty in exchange for my soul. But do not, dear Reader, suppose that things would have been different had I not given in to temptation. The circumstance was but a vessel for the evil already inside me, the burning resentment that festered in the face of my stark insignificance, following the events of my brother’s betrayal.

This is not to say that my life was then free from all difficulty, for a child is perpetually curious, indeed; and it was quite impossible to confess to his lineage or surmise with him as to his destiny, without shrouding it in the blackest of lies.