《Obscurity》


 Prologue

    The doors opened slowly, a sealed peace pouring across the threshold as shuttered doors creaked on humid hinges.


    The abbess appeared against that perfect darkness, her wrinkled skin lit by a sole candle, her hair shrouded by the veil of her order. She stood against the night as though she stood against the gates of Hell, holding the estate fast from its encroaching grasp.


    The abbess regarded the young woman who stood on that doorstep. Whose evening gown slipped from beneath her cloak, whose diamonds dripped from her d¨¦collet¨¦, whose lips appeared pressed with crushed rubies. Her skin was porcelain and fair, her ebony hair combed into an elegant knot, and in her arms was held a portrait of the Virgin Mary weeping.


    She stood framed between the tall colonnades of that darkened plantation, her eyes glistening like midnight hills flecked with sapphires, her breath held like captured secrets yet untold. Her countenance so still and poised she could have been a portrait, painted against a backdrop of that wild paradise, tropical palms falling into the frame with abandoned intention.


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    Within the shadows of the leaves, there stood a gentleman we admit to be of questionable character. He wore a black hat and a cloak that rustled in an imperceptible wind as he stepped forth to greet the abbess. "Here is Madame St. Vincent," he said, indicating the woman before him. "Delivered to the care of her husband, Monsieur le Propri¨¦taire of the Estate St. Vincent."


    The elegant woman on the doorstep took a breath, the diamonds shuddering against her neck as she did so. She could smell the scent of frankincense and myrrh falling from within, touching her with its solitude. It mingled in her lungs and, for a moment, that held breath transported her to another life. One far and away from this one. She shivered at some recollected memory. Some past unreckoned with.


    The abbess saw clearly the woman who stood before her and the shadow that touched her, and she welcomed both into the darkness within. "Bienvenue," she said simply into the night. "Monsieur le Propri¨¦taire is nearing the hour of his death, I would that Madame hasten to greet him."

 Chapter 1

    The brewing melancholy outside seemed to quiet as the cloaked man escorted the young woman into the estate?¡ª?the night sinking its teeth into their skin as they followed the abbess down narrow corridors, through winding passages, and up creaking staircases, a single candle lighting their way through that perfect stillness.


    Hushed voices followed them where they walked, whispered prayers lost from the mouths of the nuns who kept vigil, their words wandering against the walls until they could be heard no longer. At last, a heavy wooden door sealed them in silence as they found themselves in the bedchambers of the baron of the estate?¡ª?the air shrouded with infection and sickness.


    A large four-poster bed, Gothic in its carving, was draped with a red velvet canopy and laden with red velvet quilts?¡ª?the man beneath them tortured by the weight of his own demise. Blackened veins coursed through his pale complexion, his face was contorted in agony, and his blood seeped into his sheets from some unseen ailment.


    The woman knelt by his bedside, removing her silk gloves that he might take her hands. His lips were rough, calloused with the dread of the dead, his breath hollow as the air in an ancient crypt. With that stale kiss upon her hand, she bowed her head in penitent prayer by his bedside, that his soul might seek rest, and her own absolution.


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    The evening prior, that same woman sat in the private quarters of the cloaked man¡¯s ship, anchored just beyond the shores of the port de Nouvelle-Orl¨¦ans. He poured a glass of eau de vie for his guest as the candlesticks dripped to their ends between them.


    The woman studied his face over the flickering light as they sipped lower into their glasses, the evening slipping away with the last dregs of their spirits. At one time, she imagined, the captain might have been a young gentleman, living his life in Paris and readying himself for a life at sea. Perhaps he was ambitious. Perhaps he was desirous of increasing his stature by working his way through the ranks until those around him, at last, called him captain. Perhaps he had intended for his life to be one of prestige and reverence.


    She wondered what had turned him from honest work to dishonest work. From the merchant sailor who imported fine silks for her parents¡¯ textiles business to the opportunist who had since sailed her across the seas. Had it only been the times and the inability to make a living from a country on the brink of revolution?


    Perhaps he wondered the same about her. How a Comtesse of noble birth and marriage came to flee France aboard the ship of a privateer?¡ª?without the benefit of her husband to escort her or her wealth to support her. Perhaps they were both escaping some forlorn past, she thought, and hoping for a more favorable future.


    ¡°I have been working with your family since I was ten years of age,¡± he began, as if able to determine the contents of her mind from the contents of her eyes. ¡°At the time, the business was my father¡¯s and I his first mate. And if you¡¯re wondering how long I¡¯ve been in the business of privateering, the answer is about five years less than that.¡±


    He poured them each a second glass of eau de vie before continuing.


    ¡°Your parents were honest traders, at first. Just as we were honest merchants, at first. Together we had big plans. Plans that would see your parents successful traders and myself, one day, a successful captain.


    ¡°As a young man, I dreamed not of wealth but of adventure. I heard tales of exotic lands where a woman¡¯s skin was as dark as the night sky, where vines grew unruly and untamed, and where wild hunters prowled the jungle. I heard tales of bloodthirsty predators, of creatures living beneath the swamps prepared to eat the spirits of those who trespassed in their murk.¡±


    ¡°Is it true?¡± the Comtesse asked, fascinated despite herself.


    ¡°All of it and more. But I also learned the way of the world and I saw the dishonesty in it. A steadfast merchant such as myself did not stand a chance against someone less virtuous than I. Whatever I bought or sold could so easily be stolen once aboard the ship. I returned to France often enough without a cent to my name and with a crew sick and dying of fever.


    ¡°By the time I was fifteen, my father was added to the list of the dead and your parents were penniless with a five-year-old to feed. Their fledgling textiles business could not afford to purchase another shipment and I was only one famine away from losing the only thing I ever owned, this ship, which was handed down to me by my father.


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    ¡°Despite our best intentions on land, the seas were dishonest, and if we were to sail them we would have to play by their rules. It was easy to find a crew disreputable enough to work for naught and hardened enough by life to fight for it. I promised them only food when we had it and a share in the profits when we made it. But that was well enough for those who had nothing.


    ¡°Within five more years, your parents had all the finest dyes and silks they could get their hands on and wealth, the size of which, could not even be measured. They flooded the streets of Lyon with manufacturing facilities and jobs. The town even had the wherewithal to make your father the mayor. Another five years passed, and your parents had set their sights on Paris. All they needed was a means of distribution.¡±


    ¡°My marriage,¡± the Comtesse answered knowingly.


    The captain nodded. ¡°An entrance into society. And useful you proved on such a front. Your dressmaking business turned a small fortune for your parents and I heard tales it lined your own pockets as well.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sure you are aware that none of my wealth remains,¡± the Comtesse answered, holding his gaze.


    ¡°Ah, but it does. You have wealth of spirit and that is of the greatest worth to enterprising individuals such as myself. I¡¯ve seen you on the bow of the ship at night, your eyes fast on the horizon. And I see the same character in you that I once saw in myself: a world that has tried to shackle you and a will to be set free.¡±


    The Comtesse turned her gaze and a tear fell down her cheek unbidden?¡ª?a small hint of the secret she still kept and the sin she still bore.


    ¡°I know what you¡¯ve done,¡± the captain said, more thunderously than before. ¡°At least I can guess to it. But you were merely playing a game that was stacked up against you, just as I was. And before you speak to me of sin and all the perils of Hell, allow me to tell you that I do not believe a word of it. Not for a second.


    ¡°I have seen the very edges of this earth?¡ª?the mountains cloaked with Providence¡¯s glory and the geysers spewing Satan¡¯s wrath. I have seen missionaries murdered by the natives they had come to serve, their organs cut from their bodies while their lungs still had air enough to breathe, and I have seen proprietors grow rich from the hands of the slaves they slaughter, hanging their heads from the fence posts in warning to the others.


    ¡°When you see the world as it is, you recognize it for its truth. That there is good in it as surely as there is evil, but a person¡¯s character has nothing to do with it. Amidst the spiritual warfare that rages between God and Satan, what can humans do but play the hand we¡¯ve been dealt? If we get caught up in this evil or that good, it¡¯s only because we¡¯re the spoils of war, not because we deserve it any more or any less.¡±


    The Comtesse felt as though the captain was responding to the very anguish of her spirit. He saw the darkness that lived inside her and he appealed to it. Though only his eyes touched hers, she felt as though she were naked before him. As if he touched every part of her body, though in actuality he only touched every part of her soul?¡ª?and that was perhaps all the more exposing.


    ¡°The most virtuous person on earth can be killed by the Devil and the most murderous wretch can be rewarded by Providence,¡± he continued. ¡°The only thing that matters is that we have the grit enough to make it through the battlefield. I may know nothing of the next world, but in this one, we have only the choices we make and the consequences that result from them. And even then, the consequences can be mitigated if you take care enough to avoid them.¡±


    The Comtesse considered the captain. His arms were bronzed by the sun, strengthened by years of heavy labor and scarred by the many battles of living.


    ¡°What is your Christian name?¡± he asked her then.


    ¡°S¨¦verine?¡ª?¡± she began.


    ¡°S¨¦verine,¡± he interrupted. ¡°You will not need the rest where we are going.¡±


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    ¡°Who is there?¡± the dying man rasped, his voice scratching at the gates of Hell as the memory lapsed from her mind.


    ¡°It is your wife,¡± the woman replied, glancing briefly at the abbess. ¡°S¨¦verine St. Vincent.¡±


    The man smiled then, the stale breath of the dead falling from his lips as he attempted a laugh?¡ª?a retched thing that fell from his mouth in fits of anguish and blood.


    ¡°My wife,¡± he repeated when he regained his composure, his eyes appearing for a moment to see the captain beside him. ¡°Please, a kiss for your husband before he departs.¡±


    S¨¦verine leaned in slowly, aware that the abbess watched from the doorway as she placed a kiss upon the man¡¯s cheek.


    ¡°Please,¡± he requested, ¡°I would but taste your lips once more.¡±


    S¨¦verine drew near to her husband, allowing him to taste, with his last inhale, the succulent dew upon her lips and drink, with his last exhale, the warm summer¡¯s day upon her neck. She shivered, as though a cruel winter¡¯s night had touched her, draining the moisture from her lips and the warmth from her skin.


    The door creaked open and a chill shuddered down her spine.


    ¡°He¡¯s gone,¡± the captain said. ¡°Madame St. Vincent.¡±


    The abbess stood in the doorway, a fortress against whatever spirits might attempt to lay claim to the corpse.


    ¡°Madame,¡± she said finally, ¡°are you feeling altogether well?¡±


    The widow St. Vincent looked up at the abbess, unable to comprehend her words at first. But then she removed her hands from the grip of the dead man and, touching her fingers to her lips found the blackened blood of death upon them.

 Chapter 2

    That evening, the river rose and flooded the Estate St. Vincent.


    Water filled its rooms, one after another, as a piano played its keys without a set of hands to escort them. A dinner party of the most inviting sort became lost to the sea as carpets became imbibed by the swamp, and alligators swam amidst the salon as strands of kelp strung themselves about the crystal chandeliers.


    The waters crept up the curling staircase and into the hall, flooding the bedchambers and wettening the trousseaus. Cloaked beds became canopied with reeds and vanities decorated with drifting moss. Oil paintings were obscured by tendrils of Queen Anne¡¯s Lace?¡ª?even the piano, at last, succumbed to the swamp, its tune gurgled into the sea as its strings became drowned in its depths.


    In the grand bedchamber, the proprietor¡¯s corpse floated amidst the sheets that once held him, suspended above the room that once cloaked him in death. Now his pallor appeared ghastly in its demise, his hair unruly in its exile from the living. Blood seeped from his chest in curling ribbons of wrath and his mouth carved itself into a most dangerous smile.


    In the morning, when the spell was broken and her eyes were opened, the m¨¦nag¨¨re of the Estate St. Vincent found the waters receded from the estate, the carpets dried out by the Louisiana sun, the chandeliers cleansed of their saline visitors, and the piano once more playing an idling tune?¡ª?the lingering humidity in the air the last remnant of a night spent in the swamp.


    And yet, washed away by those most ominous waters was le Propri¨¦taire St. Vincent, his body removed from the estate and never to be seen again, and left behind in his wake was the woman who would come to be called his widow. The Veuve St. Vincent.


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    The plantation was set amidst the brooding lush of an island paradise?¡ª?but the swamp slept behind it, stifling the land with a most impenetrable mud and choking the lungs with a most burdensome humidity.


    Against the reaches of prickling palmettos and the tantalizing grasp of mangroves stood a grove of wooden cabins, each sinking into the land with an assortment of haste, with crooked walls and crooked floors and porches that were much too heavy for those most rudimentary huts to hold.


    She could already hear the humming.


    The old woman sat on her stoop in a rocking chair, curled into herself as she might have been in her mother¡¯s womb. Her skin was heavy with the years that dragged her nearer to the earth and her teeth had grown a rather unsightly centimeter or two. As her body swayed, her mumblings fell through the end of a lit cigarette, puffing perfumed visions into a world that would no longer hear them.


    Her words were spoken in opaque poems?¡ª?their meanings long ago lost to the end of a whip or the battering of a backhand. No one could quite remember when it was that that the old woman¡¯s mind became lost, only that they had searched for it for years on end until, at last, it was determined to be lost for good.


    The m¨¦nag¨¨re sat with the old woman in the evenings, rocking in creaking wooden chairs upon crooked wooden stoops. There was something left of the old woman still, she thought, some remembrance of a woman once awake. She had been shattered like a pane of glass and shaken into disarray, that much was true, but the pieces were all still there, reflecting some part of her still gleaming.


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    The m¨¦nag¨¨re was born on the island, but we would be loath to omit that her mother was born in the Before-land.


    The place was naught but a dream to the old woman now, and only wisps of memory remained?¡ª?glimpses of the sun seen through the trees. She wore layers of muslin about her body?¡ª?if she could see her past clearly?¡ª?in rich shades of blue. She bathed in the smoke of potent woods and earth?¡ª?her hair perfumed by the fire.


    During the day, she prepared medicines from poisons and poisons from medicines. In the evenings, she stewed wild goat meat with plantains and yams and seasoned them with peppercorns and wood ash. She purified her hands as if in ritual before each meal and drank palm wine fermented from the trees. She smoked tobacco leaves when the light began to dim and at night she would dance around the fire with uninhibited joy.


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    How beautiful it had been once, she must have thought in the mired depths of her mind, to enjoy life in the Before-land. How wonderful it would be to see it again.


    When she was first taken, the woman struggled against her restraints and was beaten into submission. She was rubbed with vinegar and drowned in a pan of water. Soon after, she found herself on an island surrounded by more water than she could possibly swim and surrounded by a jungle more unruly than she could possibly navigate. Barracudas watched over the waters with a prowling eye and the dead slaves who once attempted escape kept vigil in the forest. Conch shell horns alerted owners to the marooning of their slaves and pepper sauce rubbed into their wounds when they were returned.


    Against such obstacles, the woman¡¯s options were submission or death?¡ª?and she found submission a rather difficult poison to swallow. Death seemed a much sweeter sorrow, and she walked toward it with open arms, her mind consoled by nothing else but the embrace of the Before-land and the solace that it would once again greet her when she was no longer confined to the limitations of her body.


    In preparation for this journey, the woman took neither food nor water. Her fate, resigned to a sort of purgatory, was neither in this world nor in the next one. Her body worked the sugar fields, cutting through thick canes with a large machete, but her soul never went out to work with her. Instead, it watched from a distance, waiting for the day death would come to her and her journey back to the Before-land would begin.


    The plantation was reigned over by a tyrannical master, but his son was a pitiless boy. He took the woman into his bed and gazed into her eyes, but she looked the other way. He held her naked in his arms, but she only watched their embrace from a distance. When their dalliance was at last discovered, her master sent his own son to the whip and she to the post.


    Like a woman possessed, she did not cry out when the lash met her skin. She was removed from her body and could no more feel the pain than she could do something to end it, so she endured it. Lash after lash met her skin until there remained hardly enough of it to whip. Finally poised at the very precipice of death, the woman smiled as her tired lungs drank in their last breath. It was then that she saw a flutter of movement near her right eye.


    The spirit did naught but stand there, staring at that wretched display of flesh and bone. The last drop of water that could be found in the woman¡¯s body formed in her eye a tear as she recognized the spirit of her daughter, standing before her with all the hope of a future not yet lived. The mother took another gulp of air and a vow that her daughter might grow to see it.


    From then on, the woman attended the fields once more, but this time her soul traveled with her, as did the soul of her unborn child. She cradled that new life in her womb and determined that if her daughter had saved her from death, so would the mother save her daughter from life.


    The babe was exquisite, a rare beauty, and her mother loved her more than her own life. Though she was raised in the religion of the French and apprenticed as a housemaid, her mother taught her also the ways of the Before-land, and introduced her to her ancestors, whose spirits would always walk beside her.


    The young girl grew in beauty and in stature, as well as in moral fiber and fortitude. She was deeply attuned with her own inner well and she swam in its depths quite regularly. There, she found an endless source of happiness that sprung from her being like a brook, bursting forth from the earth to the surface, providing fresh water for all around her.


    But even as she was able to find joy in a life half-lived, she still yearned for the other half. By the time she was fully grown, that yearning grew until it became a low rumble, an earthquake trembling just beneath the surface of the island. Dark clouds shrouded the land as an omen and wild animals retreated to the jungle in fear. The young woman sensed the storm but did nothing to stall it?¡ª?determined that she might at last have the life her mother once meant for her when she decided to live.


    The night came unbidden and slaves rebelled against their masters. The master¡¯s son was killed in his bed, and his lover broken by the end of a machete. The young woman carried her mother through the jungle, her head dripping blood upon the leaves that crushed beneath their feet, but their flight was for naught. When at last they reached the coast, they were met by a character who would take them into his care and assign to them a price.


    They were sold to the Proprietor St. Vincent and sent away to work at his sugar plantation, making rum for cabarets of Nouvelle-Orl¨¦ans and sitting in rocking chairs upon their stoops, as the mother babbled incoherently at a past her daughter would never remember, and a future she would come to regret.


    The m¨¦nag¨¨re listened for a time, the old woman¡¯s tale flavored by a language long ago left behind as she babbled incoherently in mired truths and submerged secrets. And yet, amidst the incoherence of a mind long ago lost, the m¨¦nag¨¨re thought she heard mention of the rising of the swamp, and a woman with seaweed crusted beneath her fingernails.


    ¡°Hatched from a rooster¡¯s egg,¡± she said of the arrival, rapping at her head with her knuckles ¡°with breath as deadly as a snake.¡±

 Chapter 3

    Where the great river met the land, the water struggled to seep through the murk that was determined to stall it. Only a pole sent into its depths could row them toward their idling destination, the flat-bottomed boat heaped high with trunks of personal effects, large quantities of Rhum Agricole, and one portrait of the Virgin Mary weeping.


    The land was strange and wild, just as the captain had foretold. Large overgrowths of trees and roots sunk into the mud as if summoned by it. Wild ferns and palms crawled over one another in a gnarled attempt to reach the sun. The air was humid and thick and the insects that swam in it so large they might have crawled over the corpses in the valley of Gehenna.


    Tropical rainstorms poured down upon them, giving the impression that they were swimming their way to the city more so than rowing to it and dark scaly creatures blinked their eyes above the surface as if waiting for one of those precarious rafts to overturn. Indeed, S¨¦verine had the creeping feeling their small party was navigating the river Styx, avoiding at every turn the lures of the underworld.


    At long last, they made it to la Nouvelle-Orl¨¦ans, a strange and beautiful place with cobbled streets, wooden sidewalks, and two and three-story buildings built in the Spanish Style. Though tropical groves reached out to meet it, the city rose up in fortitude against the nature that would attempt to swallow it?¡ª?with buildings leaning to one side or the other, depending on the inclinations of the wind, and ferns clinging to the balconies in spilling piles of leaves.


    If we were to compare the city in those times, we might have recalled the ruins of a forgotten Mediterranean isle, ever haunted by the ghosts of its French past, and yet overcome by its Caribbean present?¡ª?and it is here that we shall see the widow settled at last, and entering into a society as unruly as the tropical landscape they lived in.


    For a time, it might do us good to remember, France sent only her discards to the city. Prostitutes, hedonists, sodomizers, gamblers, opium dealers, and all other manner of the morally depraved were sentenced to a life of harsh realities. Wooden cabins became their lot and freedom their intoxicant?¡ª?and then there were the Catholics.


    As the city ravaged itself into ruin, France placed amidst it a small contingent of nuns. It was the country¡¯s hope that such morality would influence the land¡¯s depravity, and thus, crowning the edge of that town stood a convent both enriching and imposing. A living testament to the beauty of Divine Providence amidst the treachery of men.


    S¨¦verine eyed that sanctuary with longing. How simple the life of a nun must be, she thought?¡ª?as we all do when the burdens of life become too difficult to bear?¡ª?how wonderful it must be to spend decades perfecting their voices only for the joy of lifting them up. More than anything else, however, she longed for their innocence, for an innocence that might never be returned to her; and what a beautiful thing that innocence had been.


    Their destination thus achieved, the captain and his men heaved their baggage onto the wooden banquets as the m¨¦nag¨¨re saw to all the particulars. As he settled about securing shipments of Rhum St. Vincent from the plantation she secured its mean of distribution, purchasing an abandoned hotel in the Vieux Carre where the widow established a cabaret on the first floor and a private residence on the second and third.


    The Cabaret St. Vincent was furnished with seclusion in mind, harkening the attendant to a particular establishment in Paris where secrecy was spent as currency and a lover¡¯s touch spoken as its native language. The apartment above was adorned in much the same taste, its darkened interior crusted with all the finery of black marble, brass fittings, and crystal chandeliers, and most harrowing among its effects, one portrait of the Virgin Mary weeping, installed above the mantle where she would forever mourn the mistress who beheld her.


    There did remain some vestige of the building¡¯s former life, which shall come to be of particular interest to us as we further our tale: the check-in counter remained on the ground floor, admitting entrance to the cabaret; and in the widow¡¯s quarters there was one door that would not open, a hotel room without a key and no longer any means of entering it.


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    In those days, in that place, we must remind the reader that one¡¯s reputation was considered social currency?¡ª?a means by which one could elevate their rank or stature. For the Veuve St. Vincent and her retinue, there was no reputation to precede her, and so her entrance into society incited rumor instead.


    Society watched her most closely as she built the most elegant cabaret in the city and established her residence above it. She did not subject herself to social niceties nor did she accept favors from those who requested her company. Even the governor was turned down from meeting the illustrious widow, his calling card so quickly returned.


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    Furthering speculation, no one spoke to the widow apart from those who lived with her. During the day, she disappeared into the convent. Then at night, she entered into the cabaret where, concealed within the confines of red velvet booths, she drank a glass of red wine and listened to the piano play as smoke twirled across the lounge in lingering shadows. And all the while, she wore the black veil of mourning, shrouding her in yet another layer of secrecy.


    The cabaret became known for keeping all kinds of company, both moral and amoral, and the Veuve St. Vincent was seen as a masquerader of both. She never appeared to eat, and never appeared to drink anything save a glass of red wine. It was this trait, most of all, that caused them to wonder whether she was a member of the undead. She had drunk the life from her husband¡¯s veins, they said, and lived as the inheritor of it.


    We, being a more sophisticated and educated sort, no longer believe in such stories, but in 18th-century Nouvelle-Orl¨¦ans, there were a plethora of odd phenomena that contributed to the tale¡¯s vibrance. As the reader will see, at that time it was difficult to discern whether or not a person was truly a member of the deceased. Some merely suffered excessive trauma or became so ill with fever they appeared to be dead?¡ª?at least for a time. After funeral ceremonies were held and the victim had sufficiently recovered from his ailments, he would rise from his coffin and attempt to remove himself from it.


    Of course, this led to fear and uncertainty among the living and they would not open the coffin lid for the sheer terror the knocking and screaming that came from beneath it occasioned. They encapsulated those poor men in heavy sarcophagi and enclosed them in mausoleums, praying they would not rise from their graves in the middle of the night. Of course, they wouldn¡¯t. For if these poor souls were not dead from trauma at the first, they were surely dead by suffocation at the last.


    So it was that society watched from the corners as the widow entered the convent each dawn, convinced that she there hid herself away from the light of day until night could once again take her. We may know all of this to be heresy, but the villagers at that time were not concerned with such piety. What concerned them most was that this woman threatened their own place in the world and so they secured it with tales and obscurities.


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    The widow¡¯s own household was not exempt from the reaches of rumor.


    The m¨¦nag¨¨re entered the widow¡¯s chambers one night to find the woman standing before a portrait of the Virgin Mother weeping. Her dark hair fell in reckless waves down her back, two pearls sat perched upon her ears, and her neck was the sweetest shade of peach, adorned by a simple strand of diamonds.


    Among those who now lived and worked for the Estate St. Vincent, there was great fear of the woman who was now its heiress. For it was naught five years prior that her husband, Monsieur le Propri¨¦taire, arrived in la Louisiane without kin or acquaintance, the sole survivor of a ship wrecked at sea.


    Speculation among those living in la Nouvelle-Orl¨¦ans at the time maintained that his wife must have perished in the crossing, and her husband left by the grace of God to mourn her memory. Alas, the proprietor himself never sated such curiosities and said not a word to those gentlemen who once retrieved his body from the turbid waters.


    As it were, Monsieur le Propri¨¦taire cared not for la Nouvelle-Orl¨¦ans and he took great care to seclude himself away from it. He purchased a large tenement of slaves and built the most wealthy sugar plantation in all of la Louisiane before setting himself to the task of running it. The master himself was seldom to be seen thereafter, save by the slaves who attended to his every eccentricity.


    Throughout the years, his slaves came to disagree with what public opinion determined was the Madame St. Vincent¡¯s fate. As they soon discovered, their master had such a foul temperament about him that it was quite common to find a gold mirror shattered over the head of some well-intentioned cook or a candlestick struck through the eye of some malfortuned maid.


    Indeed, we are inclined to agree, for if there ever were such a person as Madame St. Vincent, Monsieur her husband would surely not have mourned her demise, but more than likely been the harbinger of it?¡ª?her ghost left to wander the abyss until at last she emerged from the sea, an effigy in search of the one who had brought about her most sorrowful fate.


    These thoughts thus considered, the m¨¦nag¨¨re wondered whether the woman had spent any time in the sea?¡ª?and whether her soul remained waterlogged by her secrets. When the widow turned from the painting the m¨¦nag¨¨re found her eyes the most startling shade of blue?¡ª?almost indigo?¡ª?as though they were tiny prisms that reflected another world, one long ago drowned by the realities of this one.


    For a moment, the m¨¦nag¨¨re was frightened and wondered whether the widow had noticed the wound at her husband¡¯s chest, or at least speculated as to its cause. Indeed, the implement of the proprietor¡¯s destruction was held in the hands of a slave one room away from his deathbed, a wooden trowel carved into a point and discarded to the floor once the widow had entered the estate.


    But the widow gave no inclination of her suspicions nor had she fretted of theirs. In the days to come, the Widow St. Vincent would only don the dress of mourning and gaze upon one portrait of the Virgin Mary, her eyes dark with an empty torment. The portrait appeared to mourn some unseen peril, the m¨¦nag¨¨re thought. Her hands were outstretched against it, her eyes pleading with an unjust heaven, her countenance overcome by a terrible darkness.


    The Virgin Mother took on an almost apocalyptic quality?¡ª?a harrowing portent at the end of the world?¡ª?and the m¨¦nag¨¨re wondered briefly if the death of that woman¡¯s son could atone for the anguish of her own soul. And then in a moment of madness, she wondered whether she saw a drop of water fall from that Holy Woman¡¯s eye.


    ¡°Madame,¡± she said then, shaking herself from her reverie. ¡°Bienvenue ¨¤ la Nouvelle-Orl¨¦ans.¡±

 Chapter 4

    The nuns were singing vespers in the chapel at the hour the man approached the convent door. He was tall, dark, and stoic, ever the portrait of justice as his long black cloak billowed behind him on the convent steps. Three steady knocks announced his presence on the precipice and the abbess opened the door quietly and invited him in.


    Music wailed through the hallways, the nuns singing a hymn that seemed an omen of the evening to come. Their voices echoed throughout the convent halls and when the man spoke, his voice lent a rich baritone to the nuns¡¯ angelic soprano. He spoke to the abbess in hushed tones, but she spoke to him in much harsher ones.


    If the reader had been privy to their conversation, it might have been surmised that the man was looking for something. But whatever words were spoken between them were halted when the abbess refused him entrance to her convent. He would not be allowed to conduct his audit here, she assured him, and the women in her care would not be removed of their piety for the sake of his lack of creativity.


    Her words lent a foreboding legato to their terse discussion, but the man¡¯s voice resonated deeply beneath it, attempting to soothe into those condemnable tones some sense of reason. To find some alternative that would see her convent¡¯s piety ensured, and not the recipient of unfortunate and unintended consequences.


    ¡°Consequences,¡± the abbess seethed. ¡°For whose sins must the convent pay?¡±


    The nuns¡¯ voices reached dizzying heights?¡ª?as though they knew what had entered into their midst and yet determined to raise their voices against it. The music reached a dramatic crescendo, the melody coursing through a tangled and tormented harmony until all at once it stopped, unresolved in a suspended minor key.


    ¡°Perhaps,¡± the man said as he departed her office, ¡°your reticence comes only because you have something most treasonous to hide.¡±


    <figure></figure>


    The man was unable to gain access to the convent that night, but we, being a more knowledgeable entity on the matter, would like to open those doors and introduce the reader to three nuns named Marie: all former members of a convent in Paris, all current members of a convent in la Louisiane, and all present on the manifest of the ship that carried the widow St. Vincent across the ocean.


    There were a number of reasons why a maiden of marriageable age might consider the veil in those days: perhaps she lacked a dowry or desired to evade an ill-suited husband, perhaps she feared pregnancy or childbirth, perhaps she even joined for the love and devotion of Providence. None of that mattered in the least, however, when the revolution came to claim their habits.


    In France, the revolution was caused by a Beast more fearsome than most. It stalked the rich and took the poor as its prey. It courted those with power and consumed those without it. Men, women, and children died at the hands of this Beast, and so they gave the Beast a name: Despotism.


    Despotism plagued the nobility?¡ª?It caused in them a desperation for more wealth than they already enjoyed and instilled in them a hunger for more power than they already beseeched. It tortured them with the thought that they were not quite as great as other men, but that they might reach that pinnacle of success one day?¡ª?if only at the expense of those more miserable than they.


    The less fortunate, Despotism taught those noblemen, were ever so deserving of their fate. For they were simple, uneducated, unclean. They washed their dishes in sewage and hung their clothing over coal fireplaces. Their teeth rotted from their mouths and their illnesses distorted their faces. They became that way because of their own ineptitude, the beast told the nobility as they shook the miscreants from their freshly polished shoes.


    The nobility gave no mind to the true cause of poverty?¡ª?for it hurt their most proper heads to do so?¡ª?and so they gave themselves no blame for how dire those impoverished circumstances had become. Instead, they dabbed the bacon from their lips with handkerchiefs made of silk and pitied those who could not earn for themselves even a morsel of bread. On perfumed pillowcases they slept as they allowed the words of Despotism to sing them sweet vanities. How very merited their own lives were, It told them. How very earned were their inherited fortunes, It whispered.


    Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    In this way, Despotism taught the rich to disdain the disenfranchised?¡ª?and what could the disenfranchised do but gather their torches and their spears and turn against It? With parched throats they protested, with hungry mouths they revolted. At last desperate for the lives that had been taken from them, they tore their way through the city, storming the Bastille, and marching on Versailles, until at last they came knocking at the door of the Church and demanded they give up their initiated.


    At the very moment when three nuns named Marie fled the revolution by night?¡ª?who should they find fleeing that very same revolution, but a woman with blood beneath her fingernails and one portrait of the Virgin Mary weeping beneath her arm, and just beyond her most harrowing figure, the ship of one notorious captain and the harbinger of all of their salvations.


    <figure></figure>


    The man who darkened the convent door was also a product of the French Revolution. He had been a mercenary, one whose task it was to live amongst society and hunt out those most treasonous souls within it. Those who accepted bribery, committed treachery, and acted lecherously silently disclosed themselves to him from among the nobility and commended themselves up to the gallows for their sins against the government.


    This task proved exceptionally useful during the Revolution, where he became adept at rooting out those royalists whose loyalties fought against the revolution in secret, turning them over to the Jacobins for their treasonous behavior. In this way, he fought against the Beast, and took only those cases most salient to his cause. In fact, he proved so expert at his task that he became known to his contemporaries only as ¡°the mercenary.¡±


    Once the tides of la revolution turned and the state rested surely, if not indefinitely, in the hands of the nation, the mercenary turned his attentions toward the private sector, establishing a retainer with an investor whose fortune was swindled by a less than honest Comte. It was his task to find this embezzler and follow his laundered path through the West Indies and into la Nouvelle-Orl¨¦ans until his location could be discovered and the investor¡¯s money returned.


    Toward this goal, the mercenary had stalked every member on the manifest of that ship?¡ª?the one that had silently left the port of Dieppe by night, and landed on the shores of la Louisiane months later?¡ª?a treasure trove of royalist riches in her hold, quickly laundered away into some nefarious enterprise or other. The convent unwilling to give up her Maries, the widow was the last remaining member of that crew, and indeed seemed a more deserving suspect. Her new investments into her sugar plantation produced a fresh wave of rhum that quickly inspired the local caberets?¡ª?her own, the best positioned to profit from it.


    It was thus that the widow reclined to her estate one evening only to discover a dark and foreboding figure standing within her salon and the deep, welling recognition that justice had at last found her.


    The man stood perfectly still; his eyes focused on the portrait of the Virgin Mother before him. His face was emotionless, his jaw firm, and his dark hair curled over his forehead as though he were the very portrait of a Greek philosopher pondering the fate of the plaintiff before him. The painting was dark and haunting, he thought, not because she was covered in soot and ash, but because he had seen her likeness before?¡ª?one could not forget a portent such as that.


    Only a year prior the mercenary had seen that same portrait in the estate of the Comte and Comtesse de Saint Germain. It was the Comte who was suspected of stealing the fortune of his investor. The mercenary was meant to find proof of this disloyalty and arrest the man quietly, and so he let himself into the estate Saint Germain where he discovered it endowed with every finery. There were no missives in the Comte¡¯s study, nor ledgers in his portfolio, but in the boudoir of the Comtesse he discovered a sachet of secreted letters addressed to a merchant sailor in the West Indies.


    For a moment, he pondered that evidence, and as he did so he regarded the rather harrowing portrait above the mantle. It was the Virgin Mother weeping, her tears darkened, her feet bare, her countenance full of an emotion he knew all too well. There was a sense that she was mourning for the unjust, he thought, and a pity that the unjust could not seem to recognize themselves as such.


    Just then, his reverie was interrupted by the sound of the Comtesse and the approach of the Comte. With haste, he removed himself from the boudoir and hid himself within the courtyard. Behind the stone walls of that fortress he heard not the sounds of violence, nor the impending sighs of murder. He only stood still against the night until, at length, he surmised the Comtesse must have retired for the evening and the Comte might be discovered alone.


    The mercenary returned to the estate once it had darkened, but by the time he reached the boudoir, he was stunned to discover the Comte laying in a perfect pool of his own blood, and the portrait no longer in residence behind him.

 Chapter 5

    S¨¦verine always had a fair amount of darkness within her. Like an enchantment, sometimes she could only feel the very edges of it, and yet other times she felt entirely enveloped by it.


    In her dreams, she saw beings beyond her recognition?¡ª?shadows that hung suspended over her bed as she slept. Demons, her confessor had called them, lost souls who clung to those at Providence¡¯s doorstep. Pray, he instructed her, and be assured that they cannot reach you. Providence created us as human beings for a reason, he said, to lovingly spare us from the dangers of the spiritual world.


    She hid as best she could?¡ª?attending church, singing hymns, reading scripture, and dedicating her life to charity?¡ª?but as soon as the lights were out and her eyelids closed she would fall victim to the reverie of her dreams and the darkness would descend upon her once more. Visions of those sinister beings filled her head, until at last she awoke, lit the candle by her bedside, and tried to forget her visions of the dark.


    But S¨¦verine no longer had to sleep to see her demons for her waking life was filled with them. Chaos swirled around her as she recognized her own disgrace in the familiar folds of the darkness. In fits of agony, she experienced what philosophers know as la nuit obscure de l¡¯ame?¡ª?the night of the soul.


    Recounting her sins in her head, she tried to find reason in them?¡ª?to convince herself that she was still inherently good. Alas, there is no escaping a mind ill at ease. As soon as she could attempt to forget her past, she would remember?¡ª?and the memory would threaten to drown her.


    No longer content to wait for the evening¡¯s end, S¨¦verine stepped from her chambers into the night. The door creaked loudly into the silence, her bare feet guiding her down the stairs, out the door, through the empty streets, and into the darkened chapel of the Ursulines.


    Catholicism was firmly planted in the very best and the very worst of humanity, S¨¦verine knew. The sins. The sorrows. The remnants. The ashes. The sacrifices that were made. The blood that was spilt. These were symbols she understood and found comfort in. For they were not made to make one feel lighter in countenance. They were made to be a mirror of the world?¡ª?connected to the dark.


    S¨¦verine touched her fingers to water, crossed herself, and knelt upon the floor, her nightdress pouring upon it in rivers of muslin. Her muscles ached from holding onto her past too tightly, her joints cracked from bearing the weight of those woes for too long. She passed some indeterminate hours in this way, the echoes of trauma reverberating through her body in waves of pain.


    As she stretched herself onto the floor, her muscles released from their grip a memory. Her husband floated before her shut eyes and she saw him as he once was. How her parents had desired his title and name, and he their wealth and commerce. How that had promised to be a happy union once. How they had stood on the very precipice of nobility and prosperity, two youth joined before the eyes of Providence.


    How Providence had left her once they reached their estate in Paris. How her husband was transfigured once they crossed the threshold of their new home. How he tore the dress from her body and defiled her with a violent passion. How he ravaged her within an inch of her life, her screams bellowing against the thick stone walls that would conceal her torments in the years to come.


    How the morning came, but the dawn never did.


    Now her husband was gone but his shadow flickered near her soul, dwelling with her on that chapel floor, reminding her how much power he once held over her?¡ª?and still did. S¨¦verine allowed him to linger, if only for a moment more. For his memory could do nothing to harm her, even if it would forever haunt her?¡ª?trembling through her body in waves of lingering pain, ever a reminder of what she once endured by his hands.


    At first light, nuns gathered in the chapel for their morning prayers. S¨¦verine tried to listen to the words they sang, but beads of saltwater pooled upon her skin and the cold depths of an inner ocean tugged at her fingertips. The darkness pulled her further beneath, choking her as a torrid ocean does its victim?¡ª?a current of guilt dragging her further and further beneath until at last she thought she had met her watery grave.


    Alas, the water turned out only to be the sweat of fever and she awoke to the bishop dabbing her forehead with a cool cloth.


    ¡°You lost consciousness during morning prayers,¡± he said simply.


    S¨¦verine looked upon her surroundings. She was still in the modest chapel where prayers were held, though the nuns were no longer in attendance, their song no longer echoing the halls. She lay on the stone ground, her eyes filled with remorse and regret, her gown soaked through with sweat and sorrow, her present exhausted by the weight of her past.


    The bishop held her cold hands in his and determined his diagnosis. He knew there to be two types of fever: the fever that comes from disease of the body and the fever that comes from disease of the soul. Knowing her fever to be of the latter sort, the bishop stood, taking her into his arms as he carried her through the darkened chapel.


    He was a man of some distinguished years, tall and strong, with thick black hair and eyebrows that were combed through with grey. He wore a black shirt with a white col romain at his throat and a solemn furrow upon his brow. S¨¦verine felt weak in his arms?¡ª?as though she had drowned in her sins and was now wasting away, slipping into the shadows where she belonged?¡ª?where she had always belonged. She was a creature of the darkness now, she believed, and she would at last be granted admission to the darkness that so longed to swallow her up.


    Her vision dimmed, her thoughts wan with feverish submission as she cried into the bishop¡¯s shoulder, resigned to her fate at last.


    When she awoke, S¨¦verine found herself sitting in a confessional. It was intricate in its design, with wooden carvings that made it appear as a wild forest, still against the darkest night. At first, the silence seemed absolute, but then she heard the rustle of a cloak and saw her confessor sitting before her through the latticed opening in the wall.


    And then she remembered.


    <figure></figure>


    There arose, on the eve of the French Revolution, a domestic dispute between the Comte and Comtesse de Saint Germain.


    A royalist whose only title came from an aristocratic family now generations removed from their wealth, the Comte had demanded the endowment of his wife?¡ª?but his wife refused. She knew her only power came from the inheritance of her wealth and the death of her mother had caused her to become very wealthy indeed.


    The only child born to wealthy silk merchants in Lyons, the Comtesse had been arranged to marry the Comte when she was only sixteen years of age. Her parents had desired his reputation and real estate and his family had desired her wealth and commerce. The couple wed in a quiet ceremony before moving to Paris where they established their estate in the Faubourg Saint-Honor¨¦.


    Stolen story; please report.


    Shortly thereafter, the Comtesse¡¯s father expired and though the Comte had thought himself the inheritor of his father-in-law¡¯s corporation, he was dismayed to find that his mother-in-law intended to run the business in his stead. So it was that the Comte found himself in the very unfavorable position of having no preoccupation, no income, and only a title to sustain his name.


    Where the Comte floundered, however, the Comtesse flourished. Having spent her upbringing sewing garments from the fabrics her parents imported, she established an atelier near their estate in an abandoned parfumerie. Her mother handled the production of fine silks and brocades and the Comtesse sewed them into fashionable dresses for the Parisian bourgeoisie. One particular gown of note was even found in the trousseau of the queen, may God grant peace to that weary head.


    With each passing day, the Comte grew in insecurity of the two women who were responsible for his wealth and reputation. As his wife became a couturi¨¨re of great renown, he was left to become a rather insignificant, and worse, a rather desperate man?¡ª?and desperate men, as the reader might well be aware, are known for causing a great many matters of strife.


    The Comtesse long held a suspicion that her husband had murdered her father and her suspicions were confirmed when, upon returning to her home unannounced, she witnessed from boudoir as her husband took her mother¡¯s life as well. Now he intended to arrange himself as the sole inheritor of his wife¡¯s fortune, and to use that fortune to flee the country before the Jacobins turned the tides on the aristocracy.


    What he could not have known was that his wife had taken similar precautions. Knowing full well the scope of a political landscape on the brink of collapse and fearing the reproach of her husband, the Comtesse had closed her mother¡¯s silk facility in Lyon and sewn every piece of jewelry she owned into the seams of her gowns, sending them ahead with her mother¡¯s ship merchant.


    Thus arranged for the coming insurrection and planning to leave her husband by night, she had only to make her departure. But the Comte was desperate for her fortune and suspicious of her intentions. An extra glass of vermouth only secured him in his anxieties. Behind the closed doors of their Parisian estate, he reproached his wife for her insubordination, grabbing her left wrist in his hand.


    Sitting at her vanity mirror, the Comtesse regarded her features in the mirror. Her skin was so porcelain and beautiful, her dressing gown of rose silk was secured about her waist with a strand of pearls; her ears adorned with diamonds that hung suspended against her soft throat, twinkling in the light of the gilt chandelier. Her long slender fingers were decorated with sapphires and emeralds and she watched them glimmer in the evening glow as she settled her comb upon the bureau.


    For more than a decade, her beauty fooled every patron of her boutique. For she was beautiful beyond words, the daughter of wealth, the wife of nobility. Her husband was the most handsome man in Paris and his wife the envy of every noblesse who knelt before her and kissed her gloved hands. But they never saw the scars that ran down her arms or the deep purple shade of her thighs. They never heard the trill beneath her words or the trembling of her soul.


    They never could have guessed at the atrocities reaped by so esteemed a lady.


    Now she flinched beneath her husband¡¯s hand, watching as he ran his fingers along her throat and wrapped them securely around her neck. The Comtesse watched her own eyes in the mirror, the slow fading of her life as her husband strangled the air from her lungs. And then, in the pause of one breath, an inhale that might have been her last, she made a different decision, pulling the knife from beneath her dressing gown as she slashed it across her husband¡¯s face.


    His eyes were wild with fear as he fell to the floor, his chest heaving with disbelief as his wife stood above him?¡ª?removing the gloves from her wrists. She looked at him for only a moment, with anger in her heart and vengeance in her bones, then she plunged the knife through her husband¡¯s chest and did not regret the fading of his wasted life.


    The blood seeped into her dressing gown, slowly creeping up the fabric as her eyes met the portrait that hung above the mantle. The Virgin Mary was reticent in her mourning, she thought, and weeping at what her eyes had just seen.


    <figure></figure>


    ¡°Madame,¡± the bishop said, ¡°you are forgiven.¡±


    The words were powerful, but they were not enough.


    ¡°If I am forgiven,¡± she said, ¡°then how am I to forget?¡±


    ¡°Ahhh,¡± the bishop sighed, relaxing into the confessional as though he were the patron of a philosopher¡¯s salon. ¡°Priests and mystics alike have pondered that question for thousands of years. But allow me to share my own personal tale if you¡¯ll indulge me.¡±


    The widow nodded.


    ¡°A long time ago, when I was a young man, I was something of a nobleman. Ah, I can see the surprise in your eyes, but let me tell the rest of my story and you will surely come to understand it.


    ¡±You see, I had everything a young man could wish for. I had wealth, an admirable estate, the best upbringing a family could provide, and a name that opened every door. That was just the trouble, you see. For when someone has the world they grow tired of it, and that is just what I did. Nothing would satisfy me?¡ª?no sweet, no drink, and no woman¡¯s touch?¡ª?and I tasted every one of those things I could find.


    ¡°It wasn¡¯t that I was particularly promiscuous, you understand. There were men of my upbringing far more hedonistic than I. Alas, it was just such a rationalization that was ultimately the cause of my degradation. For I fell in love with a woman¡­ a married woman. She was luminously pale and had the most beautiful red hair I had ever seen. At the time, I never wanted anything more than to stroke that fine mane with my fingers.


    ¡°I knew she did not belong to me, but she was as eager as I and so I took her into my bed. When we held each other it was as though, for a moment, I could grasp some sense of meaning in the world when the rest of it had none?¡ª?but such is the way of sin. It provides temporary relief for our souls and so blinds us from our smarter sensitivities.


    ¡°She took me into her life, and I took her into mine, as though there were no other man to thwart it. There was, bien sur, and my actions had disastrous consequences for the both of us.


    ¡°Her husband eventually found out, as they always do, and he cast his wife into the streets. She was a ruined woman and there was nothing I could say or do to alleviate her treachery. I was of the aristocracy, of noble breeding and blood. Society would not allow me the grace of marrying so marred a woman, nor would I abide it. My parents eventually sent me away to Paris where I would become involved in politics and pleasantries alongside the rest of the bourgeoisie, and my lover, I would come to find out, would fall into prostitution, become plagued by disease, and die.¡±


    S¨¦verine knew all too well that those of fortune and favor could cover up any number of indecencies, even the murdering of one¡¯s own in-laws with the hope of inheriting their fortune, and so she was not shocked to hear his tale. The very injustice of it seemed to turn her sorrow to anger. And then, she remembered what that anger had caused. ¡°You were explaining how you were able to overcome such failure?¡± she prompted.


    ¡°Yes, yes. Though the scandal had not touched my own reputation, it had touched hers, and that fact haunted me for years. I lived in darkness, plagued by my failure, my lack of integrity, my lack of virtue. I was an immoral character who was playing the part of a moral one on the stage of my own life. Then one day, I was sitting in a pew and the priest recited those most harrowing words from Matthew:


    ¡°¡®And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.¡¯


    ¡°I realized then that I wasn¡¯t afflicted by demons, I was afflicted by just One: Lust. And there was only one way I could rid myself of the vulgarities of Lust forever: to take a vow of celibacy. I did so at that very moment. I said a silent prayer, probably my very first one, promising that I would never again engage in such vulgarities. The demon immediately lost its power on me and left me alone?¡ª?I was free.


    ¡°I joined the order against my parents¡¯ wishes. I did not believe in Providence and yet entered my period of discernment completely devoted to Him. It was the one way I felt I could redeem my actions and eventually I came to feel that I did. I was not thwarted by my experiences, but made stronger by them. As a consequence, I am now a man of principle, of discipline. And I have spent my life in complete opposition to the loose morality I exhibited in my youth.


    ¡°It¡¯s true that you cannot undo what has been done,¡± he said at length. ¡°But you can recognize the true demon who plagues you?¡ª?and you can rage against it with all your might.¡±

 Chapter 6

    S¨¦verine sat alone in the convent chapel for the remainder of the day. She felt, for the first time, some sense of peace, and so she wrapped herself up in her faith and knelt on that chapel floor in prayer.


    A cool breeze settled on her skin and she closed her eyes against the night.


    When she awoke, she was in a beautiful valley?¡ª?her body wrapped in the delicate lacings of an intricate veil. Wildflowers bloomed up beside her as a warm wind rustled their leaves against her skin?¡ª?every part of her body touched by the evening dew.


    There was a man beside her, so it appeared, and He wrapped his arms around her, cloaking her in a blanket of stars. His lips touched her eyelids, one and then the other, her eyelashes fluttering with the dust from comets and creation. Sometimes she wondered if He remembered her creation, the moment she fell from her mother¡¯s womb. The moment her head left the heavens and her feet met the earth.


    She was born breach, she remembered her mother saying, feet first?¡ª?as though she was not yet ready to meet that cruel and brutal existence and so clung to the Beyond. She cried as the air touched her lungs, the pain of breathing forced upon her. She wailed as the weight of gravity crushed down upon her.


    Her parents held loving conversations above her pram, attempting to soothe that ailing spirit, and eventually they did. Tthe girl grew up in the world, as all children do, and the Other One became long forgotten?¡ª?the fantasies of child turned to the harsh realities of an adult.


    There were still glimpses, brief moments of wonder, small hints of some Other. Sometimes S¨¦verine felt His hand in hers as she walked down the streets of Lyon and she would turn around frightened?¡ª?wondering who it was that stood beside her. Other times He wiped a tear from her cheek when she cried for the death of a flower in her hand and she would wonder how it became stolen by the wind.


    Her wedding day was meant to be a happy one?¡ª?her parents attempted to convince her of that fact, as well as they did themselves. But she looked at her groom¡¯s eyes across the threshold and saw greed?¡ª?hunger?¡ª?a desire to solve some deep and existential pain. She knew that pain. It was the pain of existence. But when the two became one, a light fell upon her face and a shadow crossed his.


    She felt His hand then, this time with more certainty. He brushed the hair back from her face and for a moment she saw His eyes looking adoringly into hers. She felt, in that instant, the collision of two worlds: The small alter where her feet stood and the farthest point in the universe where her soul dwelt?¡ª?her hair a shimmering cascade of star dew, alight against a thousand galaxies as Her eyes fell captivated by the cosmic dance of His.


    Alas these sentiments were soon forgotten. As her world darkened, so did her vision, and she ceased to look for Him. When she did look for Him, she couldn¡¯t find Him. She would let her hair fall back into her eyes and look the other way, tormented by her husband¡¯s demons, drowned by her tears. But even when she was planted solidly in the ground, He saw her. Like a lover longing for his desired¡¯s touch, He always watched her, and waited for her.


    Some nights she remembered to return His gaze but could not find Him. She would become lost in the torments of her reality, her consciousness waning between one world and the next. She tried to see her Savior¡¯s face through her tears. She cried out for Him. She would become desperate for Him to save her, to take her from the world at last. But she could not find Him.


    But even in that darkness, she knew now, He heard her voice. He wept for her. He waited her for to remember. Now she did. Like two lovers lost from one another for many centuries, He kissed her and cherished her. The skies wept stars against her cheeks, the winds touched their breath against her breasts, the wildflowers rustled against her thighs. He touched her body with the cool dust of the moon and kissed her body with the sweet taste of the sun.


    S¨¦verine felt that they used to spend eternities like this, and that they would spend eternities like this once more. Silently, tears began to stream down her face, overcome by the remembrance that her time had not yet come, and she would have to return to the world once more, her toes returning to the ground even as her hands reached for the heavens.


    With that realization, the memory left her and she fell to the floor of the chapel. Opening her eyes once more, she found the world as it was: her neck bent against a wooden pew, her body stiff with sleep, her head aching from where it lay. The last light of the day fell waning through a pane of stained glass, and she felt the distance between herself and her dream so plainly it hurt.


    <figure></figure>


    S¨¦verine left the chapel that evening to find a steady rain pattering against the palm leaves. The wood, brick, and iron buildings were drenched all the way through, coating the air with a sweet, terra cotta scent.


    The dirt turned to mud beneath her feet, and the sound of her boots touching the soft ground squished softly beneath her. The town was abandoned, the whole of it scattered into the taverns that would hold them, warming their bodies near raging fires as barmaids tended to their every thirst.


    At first there was just the sound of the sun leaving, the early evening calm. Then, slowly, a small fear trickled into her consciousness and she could not rid herself of the feeling that she was not so alone as she believed. She looked behind her, but peered only into an empty night. Light flickered into the streets from candles perched on nearby windowpanes, and it played tricks with her eyes.


    She hurried her steps past small alleyways that hid unseen secrets. She thought she heard a step not too far behind her, but when she turned no one was there. Fearing she was being followed, the widow turned down the first alley and stopped, her body obscured by the wall that hid her. She caught her breath, silencing her exhale as her heart raced through her chest. She listened, her ears straining for some foreign sound. She watched, for some shadow to pass. But nothing did.


    She remained in place for a moment more, trying to determine how much of her fear was intuition and how much of it was paranoia. Water dripped from the rooftops, and the widow became steadily more soaked by it. Finally convinced the intrigues of the night were all in her head, she stepped from the alley into the street.


    The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    It was then that a sound rose behind her. She turned, and nearly startled herself to death at the sight of a slight silhouette that stood there. He was a small boy, dark skinned, no more than four years of age. She knelt before him, looking into his eyes. He had been crying. She spoke to him in French, but the boy did not answer her.


    Unsure as to his circumstances, she was hesitant to remove him. But he was clearly destitute, and so she made up her mind quickly. She reached a hand toward his. Hesitantly, he took it. They walked in this way until they reached the cabaret, their bodies drenched by the evening¡¯s downpour. Then the widow lowered herself to the boy¡¯s level and held out her arms. He hesitated for a moment, but wrapped his hands around her neck, nonetheless.


    Without a thought as to her reputation, she picked him up and carried him through the cabaret, the entire town peering from behind velvet drapes as she did so.


    <figure></figure>


    There were three men particularly transfixed by the widow that night?¡ª?each curious for their own set of reasons, each driven by their own set of motivations, each acting by their own sense of morality. They tilted their heads from their tables as the widow walked past, watching her with a sort of synchronized fascination.


    The first man our mercenary. What a coincidence it must have seemed when an unknown, yet entirely wealthy constituent turned up in his path, opening a cabaret with a surfeit of funds and furnishing its upper levels with a most decadent sum. It was thus that the mercenary watched the widow with a sort of rapt apprehension?¡ª?determined to discover the source of her ceaseless coffers?¡ª?and perhaps even the location of her murderous weapon.


    His mind stumbled, however, when the widow walked past, cradling a small child against her hair, her red lips pressed against his Black cheek. Indeed, the mercenary pondered these circumstances quite thoroughly.


    As the reader may be aware, there are some individuals who have a deeper interior well than others?¡ª?by this we mean the reservoir of emotion living deep within the human psyche. Some can tap into this well easily, much as one can catch a handful of water from a running stream. Others have more difficulty?¡ª?they can sense the presence of this well, but they either cannot or do not wish to reach its surface, much less break beneath it. To those, the interior well is quite difficult to reach, if not impossible. It remains hidden from them, keeping secrets even from themselves, much as a ship that has become lost at sea cannot be found by its captain.


    Those who do not examine their own depths do so at the peril of their morality. They assume themselves to be men of logic, not emotion, and they pride themselves on following every order and unquestioning every command. These are the men who fight the revolution with brawn, power, or at the very least, prestige?¡ª?never pondering whether the actions demanded of them are right or just.


    But the mercenary was one of the sort who knew his own interior well intimately, and had explored its depths thoroughly. He was not one to brush off a feeling or leave a command from his clientele unmeditated. Led by an inner compass that pointed only toward justice, every decision he made was designed to meet just such a qualification, even if it might appear run to the desires of his employer.


    The mercenary was the keeper of his own mind, and he kept his mind closed to the public. Like a stone fortress keeping its inhabitants safe from turbulent weather, he guarded his interior well with steadfastness and so was able to protect his mind from those who did not possess such a quality.


    So it was that he regarded the widow with a sort of suspenseful fascination. Wondering whether she was one who swindled a man¡¯s great fortune or whether she might have some other motive entirely. He turned these thoughts over in his mind for a moment or two, then downed the last of his drink and placed them into his pockets for safekeeping as he stepped out into the storm to think.


    The second man watching the widow that night was a philanthropist, a Spaniard of some sixty years whose ruddy, worn complexion, thick graying eyebrows, and sternly set jaw belied a man of insatiable brutality?¡ª?one which was formed by a poison as ancient as Cain and Abel themselves.


    According to the biblical story, the reader might do well to remember, one brother is favored by Divine Providence while the other is not. This incites in the less favored an envy and lust after those fortunes obtained by the more favored brother. Unable to obtain for himself the attentions of heaven, Cain became consumed by jealousy and made a vow of vengeance: To eliminate that competitor with whom he could not compete.


    Cain murdered Abel in the first act of violence the world has ever seen, and so the descendants of Abel are no more, and the descendants of Cain continue to wander the earth in search of their reward. We see this lust most commonly among the wealthy. Those individuals who have much, and yet could never have enough. They lust after the fortunes of those more endowed than themselves and disdain the poverty of those less fortunate than themselves.


    This is the very affliction we will come to see in the figure known as the philanthropist. For though he accumulated great wealth for himself and used that wealth to purchase a name, a title, and a position among the society of la Louisiane, he could not reach the fame and fortune he so desired. Despite his attempts, his constituents did not admire him. Indeed, they scorned him. He was a foul man, they said, languid and uncultured. He was not born into such privilege but bought into it, and that was all the more insipid to them. He may have donated nearly every building in town, but he could still not reach the true aristocracy he so desired.


    It was for this reason that the philanthropist made a thorough study of the widow. For she appeared in their midst without a past and yet was already the most powerful creature in town. Her intrigue equaled her notoriety and she was spoken of behind every door, in every home, in every office. Her fortune made her alluring, her past made her an enigma, and her reputation made her an obscurity?¡ª?all things the philanthropist could not attain in some sixty years of his life.


    For that, he watched her. She was hidden away at the convent during the day, she went home at night, drinking red wine in the cabaret before retiring to her residences at night. Then one evening, if he could see it correctly, all eyes turned to the woman as she entered her cabaret in the most spectacular fashion, soaking wet from the rain and holding a Black child in her arms. They very sort of thing that would keep the city talking for going on a decade.


    Mierda, the Spaniard muttered to himself, as he ordered one more drink from the bar.


    The third man to have witnessed the widow in the cabaret that evening we are less familiar with. In fact, all we can be certain of is that he lingered in the cabaret, drinking a rather stiff liquor as he peered at the widow from behind his illusory table.


    We are not yet aware who this personality is, or what his motives are. All we can notice at this time, is that he was there?¡ª?perhaps always so. For while we have been following the mental and spiritual intricacies of the woman named S¨¦verine, and the three others we have found so incensed by her, this man has been following the physical tendencies of the very same woman, yet ever on the outskirts of her tale.


    If we were to have paid closer attention, we might have found him sitting at the edge of her story, watching, waiting. Indeed, on the night in question, as he sat in the cabaret, watching as the woman made her way past it with child in tow, this man appeared mysteriously wet, as though he had just come from the rain. As though, perhaps, he had been watching as she walked from the convent, as she hid in the alley, as she found the child, as she held his hand, as she reached out to him and held him in her arms.


    But again, these wonderings are only hearsay. It is possible he had other errands to run while we weren¡¯t paying enough attention to his whereabouts. But then again, we do recall the widow feeling as though she were being followed. And perhaps she was.

 Chapter 7

    The child fell asleep in the m¨¦nag¨¨re¡¯s arms. She watched his tears run out, his eyelids close, and she placed the palm of her hand against his heart, feeling it beating quietly against her skin. As she did so, her own heart began to ache. As if feeling the sorrows of this small child¡¯s heart, coursing through her own.


    This formed in her mind an image. The boy, sitting outside a windowsill, the day warm and humid. He played with rocks in the street and watched people as they walked by, though none seemed to notice him. Every now and then there would be a breath, an exhale heard from the window above him. He would stand on his toes then, peering his eyes over the ledge to look at the woman he loved. The one he called Maman.


    She was a warm being?¡ª?the raft upon which this child would float, safe from the turbulent waters beneath it. She would tell him magical stories about another land, a place where the people lived amongst the wildness and danced along sparkling shores. She told him stories about the beasts that roamed the lands and the monsters that lived beneath the waters. Most of all, she told him of the spirits who kept them safe from such frights.


    The boy especially loved the stories about the moon. She was the one who knew the ancestors?¡ª?those who had gone to the life beyond. She cared for the dead and carried them in her womb. She also cared for those yet to come to it. She held children on her lap and shined her wondrous light down upon them. Every night the boy would cuddle up next to his mother, blow out the candles, and remember that they were always safe so long as they had each other and that the moon looked down on them.


    The boy lived in a small cabin set apart from the convent. His mother worked in service to the clergy until one morning she was not feeling so well and struggled to wake herself. The nuns discovered her and took her to the infirmary, but the boy hid himself outside her window where he could not be seen.


    The boy tried to care for her. He watched over her and prayed for her. But most of all he told her stories. He told her about very scary monsters and about very happy spirits, and he could see that she loved them because she smiled?¡ª?she could never stop smiling at her son and the stories he told her.


    But late in the afternoon, his mother stopped smiling. The boy tried to wake her, but she did not answer. He heard another breath, another exhale, only this one would be her last. The boy wept. Tucking himself into the building¡¯s edge where he could not be seen, he cried all night until he was very tired and fell asleep. His small life raft tipped over and his life spilled into the waves.


    When he awoke, his mother was gone, but the moon was awake. He looked up into it and wondered if she would care for his mother, and himself too. Just as he was thinking such things a shadow crossed the moon. A woman. She was wearing a long black dress and a beautiful black veil, but there was something glowing about her. He tried to get a better look at her. He tried to follow her, but then she was gone?¡ª?lost in the shadow.


    For a moment, the boy felt lost, but then she appeared before him. She knelt before him, lifting the veil from her face and there he saw a woman with skin as bright and luminous as the moon with lips as red as though she had eaten it whole. The boy gasped. He was scared. But the woman reached out her hand to him and he took it?¡ª?following his new destiny.


    The m¨¦nag¨¨re knew better than to think this image a product of her imagination. It was a memory. The story written on his heart and read by hers. She tucked the boy into her arms and sang him the songs of the moon, remembering her own mother and the stories she used to tell her daughter. The ones now kept alive only in their memories.


    <figure></figure>


    The boy woke up to murmurs, small words spoken between the woman who had found him and the woman who had rocked him. These women performed some kind of ritual now, preparing coffee as they spoke amongst themselves.


    In the warm morning air, with the sun shining through opened shutters, he almost forgot about his mother. Until he remembered. Then he began to cry once more, silently so as not to disturb the women who were speaking of him.


    The women, however, were disturbed and rushed to the parlor sofa where he lay. The widow wrapped her arms around him then, humming sweet songs as they spoke in hushed tones about him. There was no orphanage for boys at that time, not yet. The convent only sheltered young girls who could be developed into marriageable women. And yet, here was this child who would be resigned to the life of an orphan. The widow would not consign the boy to so harrowing a situation, she said.


    The widow was living far beyond the reaches of despotic Paris now, and she intended to live a life of freedom, however eccentric that might make her among society. She vowed to make decisions that had nothing to do with what others thought of her, and only those that had something to do with what she thought of herself. And of herself, she believed there was no greater good she could do than to love this child who might otherwise go without it. And so, her mind was made up.


    The m¨¦nag¨¨re took in the scene, the early morning light seeping through the shutters, the fire crackling, the candles spooling, and here this woman, draped across her velvet settee with all the elegance in the world and in her arms a child, wretched with grief, his face pressed against her gown as his tears slipped down the satin. The woman held him close. Her arms wrapped around him. His body nestled against hers. He was destitute and yet comforted. Lost and yet found.


    The m¨¦nag¨¨re saw in this scene the remnants of broken promises and dreams. The shattered images of how their lives were intended to be. The widow would have been a wealthy shopkeeper living in Paris with an aristocratic husband. The m¨¦nag¨¨re would have lived in a faraway land with her mother, dancing by the fireside at night. And the child, would have lived with his mother, in their own castle set apart from the world. And yet from the wreckage of those lives, they were building a new one, now entwined.


    This small family was not bound by blood but by something other. By money, and tragedy, and fate. And yet, there was something at work that might threaten even that which they had built so far. For as the child slept, a slow fever crept into his cheeks and up his forehead, until at last its flush could be felt by the woman who held him.


    She kissed his forehead, then pressed her cheek to his, her mind slowly wandering down torturous avenues until at last she recognized in them a buried truth. His mother died only a day before. And now it appeared so would he.


    <figure></figure>


    The hospital in those days was a rather crude affair. The doctors were educated men, of course, and they had slaves equipped enough to assist them. But nothing could compensate for the fact that none yet knew the cause of the ailments that ravaged their tropical city so thoroughly and so fatally.


    At first, it was thought hazardous gases were emitted from the swamplands, but tar burned into the air and cannons fired into it did nothing to deter the illness from returning. Without an understanding of cause, treatment could hardly fare any better.


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    At best, most doctors believed anything held within the body must be expelled from it. To this end, several treatments were devised: Laudanum and ammonia impelled one to sweat, tartar emetic taken in tea incited vomiting, wine and bark were taken as a purgative, and various vinegars were soaked into one¡¯s sheets to induce blistering. All these treatments were inflicted on the child, but in vain. He appeared only to grow sicker.


    The widow knelt by his bedside, watching as the many experiments afflicted by the doctors had the only result one might suppose: a child, already comatose with pain and fever, was now also soaked in sweat and losing liquids through every possible outlet.


    The widow had seen it all before, of course, everyone had. Though some doctors swore upon one antidote or another, the next wave of fever would prove indifferent to it. It seemed all antidotes were naught but a wild guess?¡ª?a mad flailing of human will against the death that would always conquer it. Then, as now, there is nothing so hopeless as the fleeting whims of our own mortality.


    When abrasive measures do nothing to delay death, prayer is the last resource available to those who wish for will count for something and so the widow sent for the bishop, keeping vigil by the child¡¯s bedside. All that was left to her now was to wait?¡ª?for her words to count for something, for the cosmos to rearrange themselves for the sake of one small child.


    The waiting stretched into minutes and hours. Then finally, another came to be present for the waiting. The bishop settled next to the widow, two figures in black now hovering over the child like an omen.


    The m¨¦nag¨¨re watched these two figures as they made a ritual of the waiting. The widow knelt over the child, her dark veil concealing her tears as she prayed. The bishop appeared just as formidable, the lines in his face so deep that light appeared unable to reach them. He spoke words in a forgotten tongue, his fingers crossing the child repeatedly as he whispered. He broke bread, administering it to the child¡¯s lips, though only a crumb would pass them. Then he sang a small hymn, before they both whispered, ¡°Amen.¡±


    The bishop kissed the widow on the forehead, then departed.


    At last, in wretched despair, the m¨¦nag¨¨re decided she could attend such proceedings no more. She had watched the child become exposed to every conceivable agony, and yet she knew there was more that could be done. Not by the French, not by the Catholic, but by another. By one who had brought the gift of healing from her own country to their new one, just as her own mother had.


    The m¨¦nag¨¨re whispered to the widow, who was despaired enough to consider her m¨¦nag¨¨re¡¯s words. After a moment, she dropped her veil across her face, wrapped the child in clean linens, and the three departed the white room and strode down the avenue toward a destination they knew not the address of.


    <figure></figure>


    It was nearing dusk as they drifted past the city in their pirogue. In those times, every plantation home faced the river, the very portrait of wealth and prosperity. Behind them however, nature was not quite so tidy. The river did not heed the will of the riverbanks, penetrating deeply into them, and leaving behind the watery entrails that made up the swamp.


    The swamp was disobedient to the settlers who attempted to tame it and thus remained every bit as enigmatic as the beasts rumored to live within it. None would venture into the swamp, at least not without good reason. There were, however, those who had good reason and the m¨¦nag¨¨re heard mention of them.


    Reaching the outskirts of the Plantation St. Vincent, they lit a lamp and set out into the unknown marsh, the two of them taking turns holding the child in their arms as they sunk down to their knees and thighs in the murk. The swamp dragged on the women¡¯s skirts, forcing them to become heavier with each step. Their shoes become lost in the quagmire.


    At long last, as dusk turned to darkness, there was a hum. A far-off rattling tune that came deep from within the swamp. They followed the sound in silence, attempting to discern from it the woman who had once marooned the Estate St. Vincent. There was a petit marronage out and away from the plantation she absconded, the hut fashioned from thatched palmetto leaves and bark. It was circular, about the size of a large tree, with a wooden deck protruding like an apron out in front of it.


    On the deck sat the humming woman, the sound emanating from a place deep in her chest.


    ¡°What can I do for you?¡± she said in heavily accented words, her eyes never leaving her weaving.


    The m¨¦nag¨¨re spoke in the sort of French that had become stripped of its heritage, robbed of its privilege, and left only with the soul of the people who spoke it. It was messy and beautiful. Perhaps more beautiful than the tongue from which it had been adapted. The widow understood only fragments of what was said but witnessed the kindling in the woman¡¯s eyes as she took the words in, looking toward the widow, and finally the bundle she held in her arms.


    The woman was a traiteuse, a healer. She wore brightly colored fabric tied tightly around her body, and her hair knotted with intricately woven cloth on top of her head. Earrings that looked like gold plates fell from her ears and large necklaces hung heavily from her neck. When the m¨¦nag¨¨re had finished her entreaty, the woman stood and gestured for the party to follow her into her abode.


    The room was small, so much so that everyone was made to sit against the walls as the healer placed the child on a makeshift bed in the center of the room. The hut was crude, but warm. The sort of place one might consider primitive were it not adorned with a certain devotion. Bottles of tinctures lined the walls; small trinkets hung from the thatched roof; and colorful gems, jewelry, and bijoux ornamented every nook and cranny. Despite her remote location, the woman evidently had her share of guests, and they brought with them a great assortment of treasures.


    Now the woman looked on the child, clicking her tongue in distaste at the afflictions wrought upon him by the doctors. He had ceased vomiting, but his body was trembling and weak. His eyes were closed, his condition comatose.


    The traiteuse began to speak, her words narrated by the m¨¦nag¨¨re in overlapping streams of Creole. The boy¡¯s fever was dire, she said, but the cure had been passed down to her from her father?¡ª?a flower known as holy herb, or devil¡¯s bane, depending on one¡¯s perspective. It was the same flower used to treat the messiah¡¯s wounds after he was pulled down from his tree, she told them.


    The traiteuse gathered several dried flowers from a tin, ground the leaves into a tea, and busied herself with the process of boiling water and pouring it over the leaves. She hummed as she did so, the sound soothing those anxieties that had so exhausted themselves throughout the day.


    Once the tea had sufficiently steeped, the woman used the discarded leaves to create an emetic. She administered the treatment to the child, then placed her hands on his arms and closed her eyes. She held him firmly and took a deep breath, then she began to sing. Her voice was low at first, hardly audible to those around her, but then the sound rose, picking up with it the spirits that had fallen.


    The m¨¦nag¨¨re closed her eyes, as if brought home by the sound. She was reminded of her mother, transported by the music to her childhood on the islands. She remembered it fondly, seeing only that which had been good and true. Suddenly, she felt as though her mother¡¯s spirit were with her and a great happiness overcame her. Tears slipped down her face as she allowed herself to dwell in her mother¡¯s presence. To feel her forgiveness. To feel her healing.


    S¨¦verine too was comforted, though not in the same way. There was healing in the room, this she knew, but it was not the same healing she felt in a cathedral, or while praying the rosary. This was a different kind of healing. A tangible healing. A generational healing. Perhaps the kind of healing this child needed most. For it was not the presence of a man of science that proved the most efficacious, but the presence of three women who cared for his wellbeing.


    Here she sat, a Catholic whose philosophies were decidedly European, inspired by the world¡¯s great thinkers, philosophers, and logisticians, and yet before her was a scene that might be considered highly unscientific, superstitious even, had not the child chosen just that moment to awaken.


    The traiteuse helped the child sit up, then gave him the tea to drink. The child coughed, at first, but the tea soothed him. His eyelids closed softly against his cheeks as he drank. Relief streamed in ribbons of tears from the women¡¯s eyes as they hugged one another and then the child. They thanked the traiteuse, who gave them the tin of tea so that they might continue to apportion it out to him three times daily.


    In their relief, they spent the night on the hut floor, holding one another in their arms as they slept. In the morning, the sun dried out the swamp for their departure, the stone rolled away from the tomb so they could return to life once more.

 Chapter 8

    Pursuit of an eligible husband was the most popular pastime among European ladies of a certain age. The courting season began each winter when local plantation owners brought their daughters to the city for a surfeit of social soir¨¦es.


    Exultant balls, parties, dances, symphonies, operas, and theater performances set the stage for what would appear to the modern sympathies, a kind of harlotry. One in which wealthy European fathers solicited their daughters into the hands of equally wealthy suitors.


    The women, for their part, played their roles flawlessly, flaunting their coquettish ways in an attempt to lure the most amiable of bachelors. For this, they required the most extravagant ensemble: a dress fitted with all the trimmings wealth could provide and jewels that would draw the eye to the most alluring of locales.


    The quality of these women¡¯s lives greatly depended on the status they were able to achieve through marriage, and so they adorned themselves with every possible armament in their pursuit of the opposite sex. Attraction, however, was a competitive game?¡ª?one in which a very small quotient of European women vied for a very large quotient of European men. More often than not, those bachelors selected their mates from the much more abundant sum of gens de couleur libres.


    One in particular was the desire of all la Nouvelle-Orl¨¦ans. Indeed, for a woman of her place in society, she lived quite well and was thus rumored to entertain a number of particularly high-profile guests in her salon. These gentlemen paid her every living expense, rumor told, and in return she had only to provide a number of maritally inclined services.


    The woman was a couturi¨¨re of some renown?¡ª?the most requested in town. By day, she entered into the city¡¯s wealthiest salons, measuring the waists and busts of the women of the house and fitting them with every finery for the coming social season. By night their suiters entered her salon, rumor told, removing their cloaks and garments for another sort of service entirely. All customers, it must be told, were equally satisfied with the woman¡¯s merits.


    In fact, it was through these rumors that she came to entice another member of our town. The Veuve St. Vincent arrived at the couturi¨¨re¡¯s salon late in the afternoon. The room was furnished simply, but elegantly, with all the leanings of a European salon and yet garnished with a certain Creole charm. Wooden tables and chairs framed a bed laden with intricately patterned linens. Fabrics, scarves, feathers, and whimsies hung from walls and draped from furniture and foreign fragrances spewed themselves about the air with great exoticism.


    The couturi¨¨re entered with all the majesty of a queen. She was a palpable beauty, outfitted in the finest fabrics India produced. Her dark hair was wrapped around her head in a gold-gauze handkerchief, her neck ornamented with fine chains of gold, her body draped in a gown sewn of precious muslins interwoven with pearls. She was the very portrait of concubinage right down to her ornamented petticoats and richly embroidered slippers.


    The widow understood immediately the effect this woman had on her detractors. For she must have aroused the jealousies of a great many French women by the effect she must have had on their lovers. And yet, those same women relied on her services if they had any hope of securing a suitable match. Though the widow knew better than to believe the gnarled intrigues of rumor, she couldn¡¯t help but admire the woman¡¯s guiles.


    ¡°Ah, so you are the widow who kills her husbands?¡± The couturi¨¨re said with a thick Creole accent.


    ¡°And you are the seductress who lures suitors into her bed?¡± the widow countered.


    ¡°One never knows when one¡¯s reputation will come to be of use,¡± the woman replied with a smile.


    <figure></figure>


    From that day forward, a business partnership was formed. One in which the couturi¨¨re went about her business, calling on the city¡¯s young ladies, dressing them, adorning them, and reporting their gossip back to the widow for a handsome sum.


    It was a pleasant enough arrangement, one that was equally fortuitous to both women involved. As the season approached, young ladies were quick to call on their couturi¨¨re, inviting her into their homes so they could select the silks, taffetas, laces, ribbons, and other embellishments necessary for their impending mating rituals. The young women delighted in such frivolities, and were infatuated by their opulence, though it was not just the gowns they found to their liking.


    The couturi¨¨re herself was a wealth of intimate knowledge. She knew all the secrets of the opposite sex: the hidden jealousies, the occult sympathies, and the carnal entreaties of men more hedonist than most. Though the ladies would, at times, wonder how the couturi¨¨re came to be in the presence of such knowledge, their insatiable minds would not allow them to question it.


    ¡°What of M. de V?¡ª??¡± they would ask. M. de V?¡ª?, the couturi¨¨re told them, worshipped at the altar of intrigue and lived in the inimitable pursuit of women not so easily attained. He especially favored those who were married and of a devout nature, though they were hardly so virtuous by the completion of his conquests.


    ¡°And what of M. C?¡ª??¡± another lady would question. Well, the couturi¨¨re said, he was something of a sodomist. He engaged in erotic endeavors unrelated to the marital goals of procreation and his lovers were quite charmed by his wayward affections. He was known to let his fingers wander up a woman¡¯s skirts and to send her searching for paradise at his touch. Sometimes, it was said, he was known to use the benefit of his lips as well, brushing them against his lover¡¯s thighs.


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    The ladies blushed at topics so impious to them, though they could not, in their curiosity, stop their ears from hearing them. ¡°What of M. M?¡ª??¡± one young woman asked, her eyelashes aflutter. He seemed to her the very portrait of an upstanding gentleman. ¡°Not all men desire the fairer sex,¡± the couturi¨¨re answered with a smile.


    Every now and again, a woman would be so bold as to ask of the couturi¨¨re¡¯s relationship with the mysterious Veuve St. Vincent. The couturi¨¨re was not one to leave a client¡¯s appetite unsatiated. ¡°The woman drinks blood every night,¡± she would say in a whisper. ¡°I¡¯ve seen her cut the necks of fine young gentleman with her teeth and drink the life from their veins.¡±


    The women would swoon, their youth making them highly susceptible to the allure of superstition. Once their gowns had been designed and fitted, the ladies returned to their salons, telling their friends and families the exorbitant tales they heard from the couturi¨¨re of the Veuve St. Vincent, and the couturi¨¨re returned to the salon of the widow, with stories of the young women and their most rapt fascinations.


    <figure></figure>


    The couturi¨¨re saved her most opulent gown for the widow. White clouds of fabric swooped in billowing skirts of taffeta with diamond petticoats dripping subtly beneath. The corset held S¨¦verine closely without the need for extraneous adornment, drawing the admirer¡¯s eye to her creamy porcelain skin, dark brooding eyes, gold powdered hair, and lips that might have been painted on by an artist¡¯s brush.


    It was late in the evening by the time the widow arrived at the ball. She found couples in various stages of undress hidden in the alleyways. Suitors kissed their lovers passionately, feeding one another cakes with their fingertips and licking the icing from one another¡¯s lips, all of them so besot they thought themselves hidden by the night. How wonderful it was to be young, S¨¦verine thought, and to satisfy one¡¯s every cravings.


    Inside, the Mardi Gras ball was in full effect. The music was feverish, the dancing frenzied, and all who participated in the merriment feasted on endless trays of shellfish and spirits, satiating their every desire as they whiled away the evening. By the time the hour tipped toward morning, the ball had devolved into a sort of pious chaos?¡ª?those more upstanding individuals retiring to their homes and those more audacious sorts reveling in an evening that was only beginning.


    Despite the frivolities, when S¨¦verine took her first step into the ballroom a hush overcame it, as though every breath ceased, the men from her exquisite beauty and the women from their inscrutable envy. ¡°Trop de z¨¨le,¡± some ladies whispered over half drunk champagne glasses. ¡°Trop d¡¯audace,¡± others murmured in agreeance, aghast that the couturi¨¨re would be so vindictive to create a gown so insatiable as that. Indeed, it was the first time many had seen the widow free of her veil and her black dress of mourning.


    Even the musicians seemed to flounder a note at the sight of that corporeal vision. A group of gens de couleur libre, who earlier in the evening had played an eclectic menagerie of boleros and waltzes, changed their tune, now drawing from depths of their own spirits to play a tune both soulful and lively. European and African men alike vied for the attentions of those free women of color as they turned around the dance floor, and at the center of it all was the couturi¨¨re, lifting her glittering skirts in the most provocative manner.


    Her dance was tantalizing and seductive, one of the most beautiful things the widow had ever seen. It was hope. It was faith. It was destruction. It was annihilation. The men knew not how to dance with such a vixen. They could only watch with an insatiable lust as she moved her hips with mesmerizing torment, her eyelids closed in some private ecstasy.


    Through that menagerie of seduction, a single gloved hand offered the widow a glass of red wine on a silver platter, but as she reached to take it another hand interrupted hers and handed it to the m¨¦nag¨¨re behind her. When the widow turned toward the hand in question, she found at the other end of it the mercenary. That stoic savant wore a coat of frosted rose silk with broad facings of black velvet. At his neck was a cravat of rose silk, his dark hair curling above his porcelain complexion with all the integrity of a scholar.


    Behind his eyes lay secrets unbetrayed by his facial expression. Only the gentle pull of his gloved hand on hers could lure her into a dance, and the music at once consumed them in its chaos. There was the sensation that the ballroom in which they danced contained the whole of the Caribbean?¡ª?and all of them danced as though spellbound by it. Drunk with merriment and pleasure they forgot their prejudices and reveled in the exotic remnants of lost humanity that dwelt in so forlorn a place.


    Their bodies brushed against one another. Their minds were hypnotized by one another. He held her closely, touched her lingeringly, and looked into her eyes most intimately. She returned his gaze with unbridled ferocity. It was as though they had met lifetimes before this one, that memory lost to the strange preoccupation of existing and forgotten to the far reaches of the universe in which they spun.


    Their bodies forgot to dance as he held her even closer, her cheek so excruciatingly close to his. She closed her eyes as though to remove herself from the moment, but then he touched her cheek gently with his fingertips, and then her lips. For a moment it appeared they might fall deeply into some other world, allowing themselves a moment of mystery and passion unencumbered by the consequences that might follow it.


    How wonderful it is to be young, S¨¦verine thought, and to satisfy one¡¯s every craving. His lips touched hers, and she allowed herself to enjoy them. Their kiss was slow and savored?¡ª?as though it elapsed them into a rather tantalizing trance. The ballroom was forgotten, the party gone on without them, and yet their kiss remained suspended between them, like the sweet taste of vermouth that lingers after each sip.


    The next moment a chilling scream fell through the ballroom and they were startled from their spell.


    S¨¦verine rushed to the sound, her dress catching the light as she reached the front door. A young couple had stumbled into an alleyway, only to discover in their dalliances the swooned body of the m¨¦nag¨¨re, her mouth marked with blood, her breath bubbling to her lips in fits of anguish.


    Tears poured from the widow¡¯s eyes as she held her friend tenderly, her white dress once more stained by the blood of her sins, the red of it reaching for her heart. Of all the lives she had been privy to, of all the deaths she had borne witness to, she felt this fading life more than any other. For she had allowed herself a kinship with this woman, and to have hope in it.


    ¡°Mother¡± the m¨¦nag¨¨re whispered, her eyes alight with the wonders of the world beyond this one. And then with a breath, she slept.

 Chapter 9

    There was one man in town, an Englishman, who brought with him to the territory a knowledge of sorts. He was an apothecary?¡ª?one who curated herbs and chemicals from every corner of the world and used them to prepare materia medica for the city¡¯s physicians and patients.


    Though the room was dark, the apothecary¡¯s services were primarily used for light. To bring healing to the ailing, or to tempt those bodies who lingered too closely to the veil to return from it. For these services, he was well sought, and a great many were healed by his remedies. But though the apothecary was greatly emboldened by his profession, discovering in his clients the natures that ailed them and delighting in finding the treatments that healed them, he knew there was no money in a cure. Circumstance had long taught him that fortune favored a touch of the gods and so he had become adept at administering them.


    As a young gentleman, the apothecary left England to learn from the doctors of Europe. As we have thus far ascertained, the methods employed at those times left something to be desired?¡ª?there was merely a lot of bleeding and leeching, methods that, needless to say, did not meet the desired end of wellness. So, our apothecary continued his search for the herbs and tonics that would remedy the sick and draw fortune from the rich. When he did not find what he was looking for in the West he set sail for the East.


    How amazed he was by the Orient and how knowledgeable they were in the healing arts. There he discovered a people who were not only well, but thriving. Whose skin was not marked by smallpox, nor ailed by yellow fever, but rather was smooth and beautiful, as though dipped in healing waters. He asked after their physicians and, for a time, apprenticed under a man who served his patients herbal tea on golden platters and set brass needles upon their skin.


    From this healer he learned of the tides of the oceans and the direction of the stars?¡ª?and how the two could provide such potent magics to his patients. After several years of study he became an apt enough practitioner in his own right and once he had sufficiently learned all he could about those ancient Eastern medicines, he packed up his belongings once more and traveled south to India where he had heard about doctors whose patients were freed from illness through the cleansing of their livers.


    The Indians knew about the energies of their food and ate in such a way that their bellies stayed clean and their digestive tracts remained unhindered. Indian physicians massaged their patients¡¯ bodies with oils and stretched their muscles with their hands. In so doing their muscles were more pliable than the rest of Europe, their joints fluid and youthful, and they were able to contort themselves in a variety of postures, as only children are wont to do.


    For a time, the apothecary studied there, and learned all he could about those ancient medicines. He even learned of an ancient text in Sanskrit which, when practiced between lovers, had rather pleasurable consequences for a couple¡¯s health. These things he studied with most fervent rigueur.


    But after spending nearly a decade in the old world, he could not keep his mind from dreaming of the new one. Once more, he packed up his belongings and set out into the unknown, and after a long period of travel, he discovered himself on the other side of the world.


    How primitive South America had appeared to him then, how uncivilized. When at first his sea legs grew accustomed to the wild landscape, he thought there was nothing to be found save a scattered assortment of Spanish settlers on a mission to leech the land of gold and silver. But then he discovered an indigenous people who, though they were not as well in body as those in the East?¡ª?indeed they succumbed quite readily to the diseases of the West?¡ª?they had, to their credit, one medicine that proved quite profitable.


    The coca leaf was so potent that it administered energy, strength, and vitality to those who chewed it, and even more so when combined with the vitality of tobacco. These were highly coveted qualities by the miners at that time and, learning from the natives how to harvest a resource that would make their hardened lives more bearable, our apothecary grew quite wealthy from his dealings with the plant.


    After so many decades, our apothecary became a physician of some renown, a healer of some knowledge, and a botanist of some note, but he had also procured an arsenal of eccentric herbs in his cabinet. Indeed, in two large leather trunks were stowed herbs from the Orient that drowned its users in the stars; a blue flower from India that, when steeped in tea, helped its users have the most languid dreams; and a leaf from South America that simulated the strength of a thousand men.


    A wise merchant, he kept his contacts in each position, securing small shipments whenever he required use of their more desirable tonics?¡ª?and these he sold at a premium. This allowed him to not only heal those who were not well, but to be handsomely paid for it. And it was with that goal of affluence that he decided to move his business to la Nouvelle-Orl¨¦ans, where all the West Indies might partake in his healings and intoxicants.


    It was there that a man we have perhaps seen before entered his shop. He appeared hidden, at first, by his cloak. It was only as he drew closer to the counter that the apothecary was able to see in this being a deformity?¡ª?a visage twisted by some disease or ailment. He even had a gash torn through his face, as though he were the victim of a most frightful beast, though it was difficult to discern from the shadow that obscured him.


    The apothecary asked the nature of this creature¡¯s ailment. The reply reverberated, as though it came from a deep part of that being¡¯s throat, a part that somehow remained intact though the voice became garbled by the treacherous route it took to his deformed lips. His baritone sounded as though it came from the underbelly of the ocean and then was hurled over the sides of a ship during a storm. With it he requested argentum colloidal for the wounds of his flesh which, he said, had refused to heal.


    From this, the apothecary suspected syphilis, an ailment that could be helped by the tonic requested and could certainly lay cause to the wounds of this man¡¯s flesh. If, however, the man was, as the apothecary feared, more beast than man, the same treatment might be used to cause harm to another. The apothecary knew well that if he dispensed of the poison, he might save the life of a man who sorely needed it, or he might cause the demise of one he wished to harm. If, on the other hand, the aptoehcary withheld the poison, he would forfeit, he was sure, a rather handsome sum.


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    Unfortunately, our apothecary, renowned healer though he was, was not one to turn down payment. He had many expensive habits, you see, and was not keen to dispose of any of them. And so, placing the powder in a small brown jar, and with instructions to apply it nightly, he sent that most hideous creature back to the swamp where he came from, and did not give it another thought thereafter.


    <figure></figure>


    We must interrupt this scene to insert our mercenary into it. For it had come to his attention in the days prior that certain ill appropriated funds were discovered in the company of gamblers and spent on the services of prostitutes.


    It was in following this trail of hedony that our mercenary discovered the arbiter of those tasks in the company of our aforementioned apothecary. He watched from the shadows as the cloaked man took his package and paid his dues, the mercenary wondering all along, whether he had seen that cloaked creature before.


    Perhaps he had, albeit briefly. Yes, wasn¡¯t he the very individual who had watched the widow from the cabaret? Who clung to the very edges of her tale even as his cloak dripped water upon her floor? Did we not suspect him then of following the widow through the streets? And could the mercenary have not come to a similar conclusion?


    Indeed, we are inclined to believe such a theory, and perhaps we should take better notice of this individual¡¯s whereabouts in the future. For there was something most familiar about him, our mercenary noticed. Perhaps he was even more familiar than he thought.


    The creature took its leave of the apothecary¡¯s shop?¡ª?a rusty bell announcing his departure from a crook in the doorway. In the shadows of the alley, the creature would almost have gone unrecognized by the mercenary were it not for the flash of a streetlamp that illuminated his fearsome features. In an instant, the mercenary saw the hideous scar that carved through the man¡¯s face, distorting it with the touch of the Devil.


    He had seen that scar before?¡ª?the mercenary could be sure of it now. It was he who once quarreled with his wife in an estate in the Faubourg Saint-Honor¨¦. It was he who was discovered in a pool of his own blood shortly thereafter. It was he whose face was slashed through with a knife, the harrowing portrait of the Virgin Mother no longer weeping behind him.


    The mercenary remembered that night. He had left quietly to retrieve his superiors, but when he returned for the body it was gone?¡ª?lost to wherever the portrait had gone before him. What a curious turn of events had cursed that night: when a man, his wife, and one portrait of the Virgin Mary became lost to the tides revolution, only to wash up on the shores of la Louisiane sometime after.


    It was under such circumstances that our mercenary decided to attend the ball, to see for whom that loathe vial was intended?¡ª?and to ascertain once and for all whether that person might be the man¡¯s wife.


    <figure></figure>


    It was thus that the m¨¦nag¨¨re found herself the recipient of a rather deleterious plot. Returned to the city with the widow, she spent the week readying the household to attend the Mardi Gras ball.


    She could not have known that there was a man who wished ill of her lady. Who poured a glass of wine only to fill it with poison. Who cloaked himself with the shadows even as he pressed white gloves to his wrists. Who put that glass on a silver tray and then handed it to her lady.


    But the widow had a suitor, that night?¡ª?a mysterious man with a darkened countenance and a rosy complexion. With the skill of a soldier he whisked that glass of wine from the widow¡¯s hand, and placed it in hers. She watched the widow swirl into the dizzying fray, her hands held in his, her eyes lost in his.


    It was then that the m¨¦nag¨¨re touched the glass to her lips and found in it a bitter tonic. One that, when it met her tongue, left her gasping for air. She hadn¡¯t more than a drop before she recognized its intent. The dose was potent, and it coursed through her body in waves of delirium. She choked on the air, and clasped her hands to her throat?¡ª?that simple act of tarnished potation drawing death into her veins and hastening it toward her heart.


    The crowds sunk into the shadows as the m¨¦nag¨¨re attempted to discern from them the being who had cause to harm her lady. Her vision shifted and she clutched the table as the room spun around her in an array of velvets. Before she could fall to the floor, she witnessed the widow hurrying toward her, her white dress billowing behind her in her haste, but the woman was transfigured before her. ¡°Mother,¡± she whispered, as she reached for that harrowing specter.


    She was dead by the time she awoke within the convent walls to find the abbess and three nuns named Marie keeping vigil by her bedside. The windows were dark, but candles had been placed throughout the infirmary, flicking away the darkness as diligently as they were able. The other patients were asleep, small children checked on by the nuns as they said small prayers for their charges.


    The m¨¦nag¨¨re too was tucked into the familiar white bed sheets of the convent. She was stripped to her chemise, her body damp with perspiration and fever. She felt weak and chilled, her body simultaneously hot and cold, and her skin took on the slightest blue complexion, as the moon can do against the backdrop of a twilit sky.


    Her eyes were closed and still she could see the women by her bedside as her consciousness clouded and her cognizance waned. She looked at the women by her bedside, four nuns draped in the dark vestments of the Ursulines praying the words of their order. Their mouths appeared to move in blurred unison. Their eyelashes wavered in mesmerizing content.


    The vision fell into fits of mirage as she watched their heartbeats quiver gently in their eyelids, coloring them with the purple hue of their hearts. How their cheeks were flushed by their aliveness and their lips stained with vitality. How beautiful that sentience existed within them. How strange that it occupied them at all.


    Just as the m¨¦nag¨¨re fell into the cold clamor of fever, the first Marie looked up into her eyes, a certain ferocity kindling within them. Her eyes were like a wolf, their color amber and gold. She appeared so alive, so sharp, so vibrant?¡ª?her picture clear against the blur. She knew about her mother, the m¨¦nag¨¨re thought. She remembered.


    It was so long ago, it was so deep within the jungle. The storm had come for her and it possessed her to take a knife into bed with her master. She had raised the hilt above her head even as she tore it toward her master¡¯s heart. She hadn¡¯t known he would be in bed with his lover, that the tip of the knife would not reach his heart but the head of her mother. She had not remembered the things she had done while drunk on the madness of fury and wrath.


    And then the nun blinked and the m¨¦nag¨¨re fell into the blackness of death, never to remember such horrors again.

 Chapter 10

    The cathedral burned to ash in the great fire of 1788, so the next morning, the city¡¯s most wealthy constituents gathered in the Ursuline chapel to celebrate the solemnity of Ash Wednesday.


    The people sat divided, those of lighter complexions toward the front, and those of darker complexions toward the back. Yet every eye turned toward the widow as she entered the chapel, crossing herself with drops of holy water before she walked toward her pew, the child clutching her hand.


    The philanthropist winced from his position of honor. Though he sat before all these constituents and was the financier of the new cathedral soon to be completed, no eye turned toward his direction, no word whispered their thanks, no head nodded in appreciation. Instead, they all turned toward the woman in black, who sat in a pew with the small child beside her.


    A canter sang a harrowing hymn, her childlike voice spiraling the words of Providence into a dizzying soprano, reaching higher and higher into the heavens until at last it stopped, the key suspended for a moment in the chapel until a bell rang, the congregation stood, and the processional began. A thurible swung from side to side as the bishop entered, emitting tendrils of frankincense and myrrh into the air, as parishioners crossed themselves in its wake.


    There was a silence at first?¡ª?a breath?¡ª?and then the bishop spoke most forcefully, his voice echoing a warning to the sinners who sat congregated before him. He spoke with such authority and in such accusatorial tones that many felt he blamed them for the occurrences of the night prior. Overindulgence frequently becomes the cause of repentance and even those souls convinced they had nothing to do with the m¨¦nag¨¨re¡¯s murder, could find in themselves transgressions if they searched their souls honestly enough.


    ¡°The day of the Lord is coming, it is near, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness!¡± the bishop forewarned. ¡°Those unprepared for the darkness will face their wrath. Fire will devour them. The land is like the garden of Eden before them, but after them a desolate wilderness, and nothing will escape it. The earth quakes before them, the heavens tremble! The sun and the moon are darkened, and the stars withdraw their shining!¡±


    The people became desperate, during this examination of the soul, to find themselves blameless, to believe themselves good. And so they did what many who attempt to avoid the wrath of their own guilt do: they placed their blame on another.


    Blame is a rather inventful thing. It comes with a creativity that only the most self-preserving mind can concoct. It allows the individual to believe they are spotless before that Great Judge and conspires to convince their fragile minds that there is someone else more deserving of their punishment.


    From the very beginning, blame has perverted the human psyche?¡ª?even Eve, in the garden of Eden, blamed her sin on the snake. So it was that as the entire town sat listening to the bishop speak, their minds invented new reasons for their sins, and they chose for their snake the woman in black.


    The widow, however, did not excuse her blame. In her own examination of the soul, she found only the darkest truth of her depravity, and it at once threatened to pull her back beneath. She wept; her attire once again shrouded by the black veils of mourning. She mourned not only her friend¡¯s soul, but her own. For there is no greater sorrow than the truth of one¡¯s own faults, and the knowledge that those faults cannot be undone.


    The child sat next to her; his own tears fresh upon his face. He loved the m¨¦nag¨¨re as the widow did and he had found in her a shared spirit.


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    Now they were the survivors of a tragedy they had no idea how to overcome and they clung to one another as if they anchored one another to the pew, to the cathedral, to the city, to the world. As if somehow, they might descend beneath the chapel, into the crypts that would house them, down the river that would welcome them, and into the underworld that was ever worthy of them.


    And, then at last, hope.


    <figure></figure>


    On Ash Wednesday, olive trees which only a year prior had been living, are burned and blessed. The ritual is a humble reminder of the end that will come to each of us in our turn. That another generation will be born, another generation will die, until at last, there will be nothing left of us, no memory of our lives, no remnants of our existence, save the ashes of our bones which will have been crushed into the earth¡¯s most aged crust.


    It is with this perspective, that the human being can once again find hope. For if all our good deeds will come to nothing, so too will all our misdeeds. We are only a drop in the ocean?¡ª?a mere speck in that great plane of existence. One¡¯s actions can hardly affect so great a plan as Providence¡¯s, and so it must be remembered, in the smallness of our time, that nothing truly matters. Even the very worst of our faults will fall through the cracks of time, never to be heard of again.


    This is the hope of lent.


    ¡°¡®Yet even now,¡¯ says the Lord, ¡®return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments!¡¯ Return to the Lord, your Providence, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and repents of evil!¡± the bishop concluded.


    Alas, morality is a subjective thing. There is a line between good and bad, and when that line is crossed, it comes with a deep remorse?¡ª?a feeling that one has lost their sense of integrity. But, as the reader might well be aware, that line has changed throughout the centuries. What one person, in one time, once considered sin, could to another person, in another time, be considered salvation. And that boundary has constantly been redefined.


    Over the course of many centuries, the Catholic Church attempted to establish that line, and they used it to establish an enforced morality among their constituents. For a time, it worked. Moral laws were considered legal laws and the people were persecuted, imprisoned, and killed for them. But the French Revolution sought to change that. The political upheaval that would uproot the monarchy, would uproot morality as well and it was in just those crosshairs of time that our widow found herself in.


    For rooted deep within her darkest secrets, was an even darker truth. That the sins she committed were not of her own doing but were forced upon her by the oppression that faced her. For before she committed murder, she was abused, and before she was abused, her body was sold to the highest bidder, and before her body was sold, she was a child who had no choice in the future that would be chosen for her. She was raised in cages and chastised when she raged against them.


    But rage up against them she did. She clawed through the chains that bound her and forged a new life for herself with the steel. She was a murderer, yes. She was a sinner, perhaps. But if she were the darkest dregs of humanity, so be it. For her immoralities were formed only from a line society had forced her to keep. A line that was designed to keep women from misbehaving.


    But misbehave she would. For she established a new line for herself. One that would allow her to rise up against her oppressors and be the fearsome creature they thought her to be. She might live in the shadows, she thought, but that would be their power. She might be a being of darkness, but that would be her strength. For it is only from the hottest fires, that the sharpest weapons can be forged.


    When her pew stood, the widow considered the two men who handled their transgressions so differently. The bishop before her who spent the entirety of his life yoked to his past sins, and the captain who lived free of his. In a moment, she felt as though she finally understood the way of the world. That all beings contained both darkness and light, but that it was up to the individual to live tortured by them, or free of them.


    When she reached the bishop, she felt a weight drop from her shoulders.


    ¡°Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris,¡± he said as he crossed her. Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.


    ¡°Amen,¡± the widow whispered.

 Chapter 11

    The child moved with the moon woman to a large plantation home down the river. It was beautiful?¡ª?a castle the likes of which his mother could never have imagined. Large white columns supported the estate as though it were held aloft by the hands of giants, and the slumbering swamp behind it could transport one to any number of adventures.


    The child became enveloped by his new surroundings. They became a magical canvas upon which any number of landscapes could be painted?¡ª?where the Leopard King reigned over the swamp from his green velvet chaise and firefly fairies danced at nightly balls. Giant pink birds of paradise bowed to the child where he walked and a toucan with a damask beak sang for his entertainment.


    In life, the child had experienced both sadness and happiness, but he knew no other life than that kind and so he felt both feelings deeply. Sometimes he imagined his mother lived in the reeds, and he could hear her whispering in the wind. The plantation workers joined in his adventures. They told him stories in their own language and sang him songs from their home land. They spoke with his mother as though she were queen of the jungle?¡ª?the wife of the Leopard King finally returned to her throne.


    One of the plantation workers, an old crone who spoke only in riddles, made the boy a makeshift machete from the branches of a tree. ¡°The holy man comes,¡± she said as her eyes glinted into the mangroves/ ¡°His treasure is in gold and emeralds and rubies, but he has lost it in the swamp, and it sinks beneath the estate.


    She at something the boy could not see. ¡°He will come for it,¡± she said then?¡ª?a fierce warning to her eye.


    The child was happy to have a blade of his very own and he used it to carve a path for himself through the swamp. Where the grasses grew so thick and tall that he could not see above them, he cut a great estate with bedchambers and barricades and a watch room where he could peer through the brush and look out for predators: The black panther who crept silently by night, perhaps, or the giant snake who wrapped itself around its pray.


    One evening, as the sun fell behind the gnarled branches of the swamp, the child saw a shadow. At first, he thought the apparition a trick of the light, but then his eyes adjusted to the dusk and he saw a long, dark cloak obscuring the face of the one who wore it. It was the panther, he thought at once, transfigured into the body of a man, his yellow eyes blinking through the reeds.


    The child was afraid, but he had been preparing for this day. He was a jungle prince and he had to protect those who lived within his realm. Tiptoeing around the back of the estate, careful not to make a sound, he snuck through the workers entrance, stealing the key from the moon woman¡¯s skirts so he might lock the door behind him.


    <figure></figure>


    It started to rain that night, the droplets dinging against the glass windows. S¨¦verine was just about to retrieve the child for supper when she found him running into the parlor, his shirt wet from the rain and his clothing in disrepair from the day¡¯s delinquencies. She pulled the child up into her arms where he tucked himself into her neck, safe from the coming storm.


    In a manner of minutes, the rain began pouring in earnest, creating a sound so loud that it roared through their ears. The wind picked up then, the shutters banging themselves against the house in a thunderous ballad of sound. The effect was quite frightening for the child, and he wept in S¨¦verine¡¯s dress as she called for the housemaids to close the shutters. The rain wet their hands as they closed themselves into the storm.


    For those who have never been inside with the shutters shut tight, we should explain how very dark the darkness becomes. The shutters eliminate even the faintest of stars, bringing the estate into a terrible shadow that is accompanied by an even more terrible quiet. It can be a most fearful experience, the quiet that rests in the middle of a storm, and indeed the storm became more viscous by the minute.


    A housekeeper lit the fire and it became the only light against the cavernous darkness of the night. S¨¦verine took the boy into her arms and they sat together in silence, listening to the wind bellowing with all it¡¯s might. Even S¨¦verine had to admit that the storm had taken a rather treacherous turn and she hoped her home had been built to outlast it.


    She asked one of the kitchen maids to bring her and the child tea with extra sugar so that they might soothe their anxieties. They held each other closely as branches whipped against the shutters in earnest, thudding like giants banging their fists against the walls as the windowpanes creaked in the battered wind.


    A shiver was shared between the widow and the child, just as tea was brought out to soothe them. S¨¦verine poured herself a cup and a cup for the boy as well, placing a cube of sugar in each of their drinks so sweetness might do away with their sorrow. The boy calmed, though his eyes were alert to every shadow as the candlelight flickered against an imaginary wind. At last, their ears perked, they heard a sound more harrowing than most, the scream of an anxious young maid who came hurrying into the salon.


    S¨¦verine asked what was wrong, but the girl laughed nervously and said she only had a fright. She had walked past the servant¡¯s entrance only to find the door banging back and forth on its hinges as though someone were attempting to enter it. But she had checked the door and it was locked. The maid reassured her mistress and herself, that it was only the wind that had been the cause for her alarm.


    The boy burrowed into S¨¦verine¡¯s dress ever deeper, and she held him even tighter. The wind turned at a frightening pace and a loud whistle screeched through the rafters. Everyone kept quiet as their anxieties edged around them, listening as the sounds grew louder, and the battering grew fiercer. At last, all were startled by a loud banging at the front door.


    The child clung tight to S¨¦verine, fearful of the face that might appear at the door. The banging continued with great urgency until S¨¦verine instructed the young maid to answer it. The boy screamed out in warning, but the maid had already opened the doors and was struggling to hold them fast against the wind.


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    There on the doorstep, soaked with rain, his cloak billowing around him in the wind, was the foreboding figure of the mercenary. The storm waged outside as the man dripped its remnants onto herringbone floors, the maid hastening to shut out the sound as she shuttered the doors.


    ¡°Madame de Saint Germain,¡± the mercenary said, speaking an old name into a new salon.


    S¨¦verine¡¯s mind fell, toppled from the ledge of where she stood, her hair fastened with black sapphires, the long pointed waist of her dress the same color as wine drunk from a long forgotten cellar, the child clinging to her skirts as though she were already lost.


    She saw her whole future then. Her hands were bound. Her eyes wandering past the life she created. The hand-tufted rug, intricately woven with bright blue peacocks and plumes of emerald feathers. The Campeche chairs framing a most austere blue velvet settee. The chandelier weeping fronds of crystal into the room as a palm tree might despair of its branches into the wind.


    She was led into the storm, it¡¯s chaos hurtling gusts of guilt against her. It¡¯s wrath wept tears of rain that drenched her. The wretched cries of the branches wailed about her. The moaning of the trees trembled deep inside her. The storm was the last thing she would feel. The unruliness of the world trembling against her skin.


    In the morning, her footsteps were lost to the mud and the old woman sat on her stoop muttering about something that once occurred there but that existed there no longer. The child was lost to the whims of slavery. The estate sold to the highest bidder. Its inhabitants turned over to another master and haunted by another history.


    By the evening her heels hung from the gallows, knocking against one another in the breeze as passersby wondered what sins that woman had committed, whose red velvet dress now drifted against her toes, and whose diamond earrings now dangled against her neck.


    How strange it was to no longer exist, and even stranger to have existed at all. That for a brief, wondrous time, there existed upon the earth a creature who had the awareness enough to know of their own existence, and the awareness enough to fear the ending of it. In all of creation, we wonder if there ever was so anomalous an event as that, and whether there will ever be such a thing again.


    Then, as suddenly as her mind had fallen, it returned, awakened from it¡¯s descent by the deep hum of the mercenary¡¯s words. ¡°Madame de Saint Germain,¡± he said again with great urgency, shaking her with the timber of his truth.


    ¡°It is my belief that your husband, the Comte de Saint Germain, is very much alive, and very much a threat to your existence.¡±


    <figure></figure>


    The child was perhaps too much a child to be privy to such intimate conversations. And yet, he had fallen asleep against his moon and so she had allowed him to stay, listening to the lull of soft voices speaking late into the night as though they were the gentle rocking of a lullaby.


    From time to time, the fire would crackle, awaking the child ever so slightly. It was in these moments that he heard his moon speaking of a phantom. Her voice was tender and afraid, as though she knew what darkness haunted her. Childlike phantoms become all the more terrifying when they are real and the child, in his dreamlike state, could not determine how very real those conversations were.


    When the evening grew late, the moon scooped the child into her arms and brought him up to bed?¡ª?but not before he could see with his own eyes that the door to the servant¡¯s quarters had been shut. It stood solid, barred against the wind, with only the gentlest rock to it despite the chaos that still raged outside. The child reminded himself that there was nothing that could harm them that night?¡ª?that it was only the man he had seen earlier that day.


    The moon tucked him into his bed, kissing him on both cheeks before she bid him goodnight. ¡°Madame,¡± the boy said sleepily before she left. ¡°Will Monsieur stay the night?¡±


    ¡°Oui, mon cherie,¡± the moon responded, soothing his hair with her fingertips and appearing in the light of her candle as though she were the very portrait of heaven. ¡°He will stay in the guest quarters to wait out the storm. Do not fear my child, for we will protect you. Now say your prayers and attends-toi to sleep.¡±


    His moon left, folding the child into a darkness so deep and terrible it was only possible when the moon was out. The boy drew his blankets to him, widening his eyes as though it would help him to see in the shadows. His room was elegantly furnished with a large bed, a canopy, a chest of drawers, a collection of toys, and a beautiful velvet settee. But he could see none of these things in the dark?¡ª?there was not even a light from beneath the door, nor a shadow that could be detected. Only the purest of darkness.


    ¡°Now I lay me to sleep,¡± the boy recited softly, ¡°I pray the lord my soul to keep; if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.¡±


    The wind picked up then, and a dull thud against his shutters caused the boy to jump. It must have been a tree branch, the boy reasoned, his ears now searching every sound. The silence was impenetrable, and yet it was not complete. Every sound was muted by the thick walls of the estate and the heavy wooden shutters that protected its windows. The boy could hear the wind whistling through them, causing them to rattle on their hinges like a ghost in its chains.


    And then there was an even smaller sound?¡ª?a breath. The boy was sure of it. He tried to reason it away as the wind and yet his mind could not keep from hearing it so plainly. It was the sound of a man breathing not a few steps away from his bed. He stared into the darkness as though he might be able to see into it, but he could not. The darkness was consummate. Blanketing the room as though one might never escape from it.


    Except there, where his settee should have been. Was that a pair of eyes? The boy searched for some source, some light that could be toying with his vision, but he could find none. The two lights remained, and then, did they blink? Without the benefit of his senses, the boy could see only the things he could not see and hear things he could not hear. His mind wandered in this way for what felt like hours, unable to discern the edges of his reality from the edges of his dreams. He lingered between the two. Unable to stay awake, and unable to fall asleep.


    In the dark he whispered to his mother. Maman, he called softly. He asked for her protection?¡ª?that she might spend the evening with him and his family in the dark and protect them from harm. Eventually he felt the embrace of his mother¡¯s arms around him and at last was able to fall fully into sleep, and there dream of a better world that would awake him.


    <figure></figure>


    We do not know whether there was actually a man who watched the boy sleep. What we do know is that the next morning, when the young maid awoke and settled about her chores, she let a piercing scream fall from her lips.


    The door to the servants¡¯ entrance was completely and entirely absent from the estate, the hallway wet where it hadn¡¯t been protected from the storm.


    A check was made of the house and everything was found to be in order, Monsieur and Madame made a rather thorough examination of it, but the door to the house was not to found, and the reason for its disappearance impossible to ascertain.

 Chapter 12

    Lent, in those days, was a somber affair. The observant took only a small collation of bread each morning and a portion of fish and vegetables each evening. Those less so remained subdued by the season as social occasions slowed to a simmer and spirits flowed less freely.


    Businesses remained open, but were frequented less often as rainstorms settled into the streets, turning them to mud and keeping the city¡¯s inhabitants indoors. It was as though the entire town were a dripping bucket and its residents forced to sit quietly and watch it leak.


    This was especially true for the women. Without the benefit of a profession, the hope of entertainment, or the stimulation of intelligent company, there was nothing more salient to occupy their minds save the monotony of church and the idlings of rumor?¡ª?which they nurtured most faithfully.


    Each morning they trudged through the mud to Mass, and each afternoon they gathered in one another¡¯s salons and attended to their gossip as one would a fledgling fire. They poked and prodded their stories, adding fuel and fodder until at last those embers were nurtured into a raging fire.


    Naturally, conversation could not be deterred from the city¡¯s most stimulating of topics: the image of the widow in her white gown, its diamond edges sparkling against her victim¡¯s crusted blood as she held that lost soul in her arms. When those members of society tired of speaking of the murder, they contented themselves to speak of the funeral and this drew the more imaginative sort to the conversation.


    The funeral was witnessed by only a select few and those few took great poetic license in recounting the tale for their most captive audience. A private affair attended only be the widow, the child, and a spattering of her employees, the widow was last seen kneeling aside the tomb of the woman she had killed, her veil obscuring her visage as she reached into the grave.


    As no members of society were in attendance that day, those despondent souls who witnessed the event from afar could only invent more fanciful fare for the facts they could not know, and so it became a Lenten pastime to guess what had occurred on that day in the cemetery and to be found the most convincing of it.


    One woman explained that the widow had reached her lips into the casket to drain the m¨¦nag¨¨re of her blood. Just as Christ was drained of his blood on the cross with a dagger, she said with a bit of fanfare, so too did the widow take from her victim that eternal life so promised by the Savior.


    Not to be outdone by her hostess, a second woman told that the widow had reached into the casket so that she might give the entombed woman a drink from her wrist. As the priest gave Christ¡¯s blood to all who attended mass, so did the widow offer eternal life to the woman who lay in the arms of death. Like Christ, the m¨¦nag¨¨re would rise, her body cold from the tomb and thirsting for the blood which had been removed of her.


    The couturi¨¨re had the benefit of being privy to such conversations and she smiled as the widow¡¯s tale grew ever more grandiose. The couturi¨¨re measured the waists of her insatiable clientele, pinned their shoulders and hemmed their skirts, and as she did so she listened to the meanderings of those women¡¯s minds, so desperate for the season of Lent to end that they might at least have some productive task to set their minds to.


    Alas, there would be no such reprieve.


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    <figure></figure>


    In the bible, there is a story about a plague. One in which the sun was blotted out by a swarming infestation of locusts. So pervasive were they, it is told, that the ground became black from their number, the fields became swallowed by their hunger, and none could walk a single step without a wall of insects to stop them.


    But even the Egyptians could not have drawn the ire of Providence¡¯s fury as did the pestilent population of la Nouvelle-Orl¨¦ans. For in their midst was a more fateful omen. One that drained one of one¡¯s life force and suffered one¡¯s pallor bloodless. Even as the sun was still seen, and the fields were still sown, there was a more fearful killer among them, and it was far more vengeful than the locust.


    Fear spread though their number as death tore through the city dispassionate of class or cloister. Members of society were quick to blame the widow, believing her to be the cause of their every misfortune. She was death lurking among them, they said, waiting to add more ranks to her number, that she might remain young and beautiful, with the ceaseless youth of one undead.


    The couturi¨¨re watched it unfold as though she were attending a drama at the theater. She heard tell of the widow¡¯s curse?¡ª?that she sought the blood of the living and that she walked in the night to retrieve it. There was only one way to protect oneself from such a curse, the couturi¨¨re advised them, and so at night they followed her advice, locking their doors tight against the widow and seasoning them with garlic and holy water.


    As the reader may be aware, there was a deadly presence who drank from their veins each evening as they slept. It did not care for the garlic and was even enticed by the holy water. It crept in through the cracks, through the windowpanes and the door jambs, and made its way into the beds of its unsuspecting victims. There it would sink into the flesh, drinking from one individual and then another until every household became poorer by a drop of blood or two.


    The creature of whom we speak was not so mysterious as the undead. In fact, it is one quite commonplace to the modern reader. For we speak only of the mosquito. A being so inconsequential it could hardly have been guessed to be the cause of so much distress, and yet, from the blood of its victims it spread the perils of fever and formed a plague among them unlike any they had before seen.


    When their victims woke the next morning, shivering in the heat, they would find red welts upon their wrists and at their throats and believe the widow had come for them at last, sinking her teeth into their flesh as they slept and adding them to the ranks of her undead.


    As we may well know, death becomes all the more fantastic to those who do not accept their mortality, but rather live for some small hope of eternity. Whether they find that hope in their religion or their superstition, they sleep hoping beyond all hope that it will not be for the last time.


    <figure></figure>


    There was one woman most taken by the rumors?¡ª?in social circles there is always one woman who is. She is perhaps most idle with her time, and therefore most concerned with societal recreation. She spends her days seeking drama and lavashes the attention she garners by fanning the flames of conspiracy and becoming a conspirator in her own right.


    We need not concern ourselves with her name?¡ª?for our intents we shall merely call her the dilettante?¡ª?what most concerns us about this individual is that one afternoon she simply turned up dead. The reader must know the effect this would have. For one afternoon she was telling a most salacious tale about how the widow had never been seen in the sunlight without the protection of her veil, and the next she was discovered in an alley outside the woman¡¯s cabaret, her blood pouring from her neck into those poorly drained streets.


    The widow was the obvious suspect for such an enemy?¡ª?even if she never concerned herself to listen to the gossip. Even we, who know better than the rest, know that the widow did intend to murder someone once before?¡ª?though evidently, she refrained from finishing the job.


    But then, as we recall, her husband is a rather vengeful sort too. And perhaps there was a third?¡ª?yes, one other member of our society who hated rumors about the widow most of all.

 Chapter 13

    The philanthropist was not so taken with the widow¡¯s stories. He found them the consequence of idle minds and so became determined to unidle them. To this end, he invented an Easter feast, a happy occasion to forgo the fasting that had consumed most of the winter and once again enjoy the luxuries afforded by those most affluent in the city.


    On the designated evening, a dinner table was set in the courtyard of his residence where guests could bask beneath the shadow of the Cathedral which towered high above them, its scaffoldings concealing the monument it would soon become. The philanthropist spared no expense in building the landmark and he wanted his guests to admire it. To see for themselves what this arriviste had built for his city, and to esteem the man who built it thanks to his boundless generosity.


    The courtyard was embellished with every accoutrement: the table was draped with starched linens and inset with exotic floral displays, brass candlesticks, and freshly polished silverware. Vines crawled up the interior walls of the courtyard and heavy branches hung into it, candelabras suspended from them. It almost appeared to the guests a woodland paradise, a scene pulled from the pages of A Midsummer Night¡¯s Dream, where lush gardens flourished and fairies might be found secreted away amidst the leaves, whispering their whims to the unsuspecting guests who might hear them.


    Guests dressed in their finery, thirsting for the coterie they had for so long forgone. Here they discovered an antidote for their monotony: pastries of every variety, confections that would satiate the most gluttonous king, and a large platter of meats the likes of which attendants had not consumed in some forty days.


    Spirits were handed out on trays of gleaming silver and guests drank deeply from their goblets. After so many days without indulging, their intoxication came quickly, each of them wondering what libations were in their cups and what fairies might be manipulating their conversations.


    There was, in fact, some sprite to blame. For the philanthropist had contrived of the event in such a way that his splendor could not go unnoticed. He paid attendants to circulate among the guests, talking of the philanthropist¡¯s many accomplishments and the accolades for which he should be commended.


    Guests nodded in response, though often they whiled away into more amusing conversations. As the evening settled in, guests laughed with uncontrollable ardor and wandered into the corners for pleasantries and mirth. It was as though the evening were enchanted by some otherworldly magic, inviting guests into an uninhibited world they wished would never end.


    The philanthropist walked among them, watching as they took in every delicacy he offered to them. He was the richest man in town, he reminded himself, and they must be wooed by it. As he listened in on this conversation and that one, he thought he might hear some mention of his due. Perhaps how gracious he was to host such a gathering or how accommodating he had been to purchase streetlights for the city and pay lamplighters to light them.


    Instead, he found the whole of them taken by the widow and her intrigues. Every hushed lip spoke of spilled blood, every drunken tongue wagged of the undead. The philanthropist grew steadily at unease. Why should they discuss a woman who was not even present? Who for all intents and purposes had left the town, fleeing from the words that were spoken of her, and yet somehow became the topic of high superstition?


    Stolen story; please report.


    He was baffled by their ignorance and angered by their obsession. Despite his attempts at distraction, the people remained entranced by the widow¡¯s allure and ensconced by her mystery. He had to find a way to break this woman¡¯s spell, he thought. To expose her for what she really was and make of her a mystery no more.


    <figure></figure>


    The next evening, the philanthropist sat on the balcony of his residence pondering the widow. He could not release her from his thoughts and so sat gripped by his anxieties.


    At that moment, by accident or perhaps design, a woman stepped into the courtyard of the residence beside his. She was exotically beautiful, with dark skin that matched the night sky. She wore an exquisite gown but found herself alone and so removed it gently, her chemise the only barrier remaining between her skin and the moonlight.


    The philanthropist recognized the woman, in fact, he had seen her with the very woman who so consumed his consciousness. The couturi¨¨re made dresses for the widow, he knew, though she appeared far wealthier than her career would endow. Many men spoke of her behind closed doors. That she was known to keep an exclusive repertoire of wealthy guests and they frequented her salon with great discretion. These men were titled, honored, and well-endowed?¡ª?certainly no more so than he?¡ª?and they took advantage of their status and wealth to imbibe in the pleasures of her touch.


    In the glow of the full moon, the philanthropist watched as the woman prepared a basin with warm water, fragrant salts, and exotic spices, steaming the moonlit bath with a sensory aroma. The perfume reached his perception and he was instantly besot with desire. Desire for passion, for pleasure, for a woman¡¯s caress.


    The woman, dressed only in her chemise, dropped it to the floor then dipped her toe into the warm water, testing it gingerly. He took in her body as though he had never seen something quite so mesmerizing before?¡ª?sipping it in with his senses as he became so suddenly aroused by her naked form.


    She sighed as she anointed her head with oils, smoothing it into her hair and onto her throat, shoulders, and breasts. She appeared wanting as she poured oil into her bellybutton and massaged it into her thighs, lifting one leg to the basin, and then the other.


    The ritual bathed her skin in a soft glow as she smoothed the oil down her legs, lingering ever so slightly when her fingers slipped between her thighs. The hum of a hymn left her lips with a sultry sound, as she sung the words of her ritual into the night.


    The philanthropist¡¯s body thirsted, his heart hungered as the woman sank into the bath, oils pooling around her. She exhaled in the warmth, allowing the water to sink into every crevice of her body, soothing her spirit.


    She untangled the dark mass of hair from her head, releasing it into the water as her fingers delicately graced her breasts before they slid between her thighs and into the water, free from his sight but not his imagination.


    He could not believe his eyes. She seemed to sigh then, as though her hands eased her body into a simmering pleasure?¡ª?and perhaps they did, for her sighs increased in intensity, sending audible whispers into the courtyard as she surrendered to her own touch.


    The philanthropist gasped out loud as as her fingers slid to places he could not see but longed to touch. Just as she held herself in a most intimate moment, she gasped to discover the philanthropist standing in her doorway, his eyes burning with unsatiated desire.


    She startled at first, as if caught in an unguarded moment, her body drenched in the cool reflection of the moon, then her eyes gleamed. She gestured to the man to join her and he dropped his robe to the floor.

 Chapter 14

    In the silence left behind by the storm, the mercenary awoke to a small sound. It was a gentle creaking, he thought, followed by a very soft thud. Without lighting a candle, he stepped from his room, opening the tall doors that once belonged to the proprietor, and peered out into the hall.


    Though the estate was entirely dark and entirely silent, the hall was flooded with moonlight. A large window looked out upon the river; its shutters opened to let the sky fall in as the curtains rustled against an imperceptible wind. He saw the captain first, silently returning to his bedchamber, only the closing of his door visible amidst the shadows, then he saw the widow, standing in the moonlit glow.


    She appeared pale, pensive¡ªa silhouette perfectly captured in the rectangle of light that fell through the window frame. She did nothing but stand perfectly still and, for a time, the mercenary wondered whether she really stood there at all or whether there were some other monument casting a shadow upon the sky. Then at last, her lashes closed against the night and her hair stirred delicately in the breeze, reviving his assurances of her presence once more.


    He wondered if she knew of his presence, if she could feel it behind her, if she could perceive, as she looked out on her plantation grounds, that there was someone who looked at her-who was moved by her and was tantalized by her. But then, a hand reached toward one shutter and another toward the other, closing them tightly against the night and sealing them into the darkness with a soft thud.


    The mercenary did not know whether she walked away, for he never heard her footsteps against the floor. Instead, he wondered if she remained where she stood. Standing in the darkness. No longer visible to him in that absolue nuit, and yet aware of his presence, nonetheless.


    <div>


    <figure></a></figure>


    We must be forgiven for an omission made on our part. For we have neglected to mention until this very moment that the m¨¦nag¨¨re we have come to know and love was not so dead as she seemed. Through sleight of hand, the widow had whisked her confidant away from the scene so that she might recuperate in peace within the walls of the plantation St. Vincent.


    That those members of the city presumed her dead was merely a precautionary measure. For the widow had become far too prominent a fixture in society and needed a way to escape the prying eyes of her enemies. When that enemy struck, poisoning the m¨¦nag¨¨re at the ball, a strategically placed henchman had been there to remove her from the scene, placing a sheet over her head as the contents of that ballroom spilled out into the night.


    The widow had known that her life, and the ones protecting that life, would be in danger if she attended a ball so publicly announced, and so she called upon the captain to help them. That evening he held the m¨¦nag¨¨re in his arms, carried her to the infirmary, and spent the evening devoted to her care. The widow visited her in secret to ensure her wellbeing, then three days later, when she was well enough to travel, the entire party made their way to the plantation.


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    There was no police case opened against the widow as there was no murder to be investigated, but those details remained little known by the general population. Their searching minds were left to discover fault which the aforementioned funeral only served to confirm. There was indeed a funeral, lest we deceive the reader further. For the mother of the child, we will not soon forget, passed away only shortly before and the widow had arranged to hold funerary services for she who had raised that now orphaned son.


    The boy wept, the couturi¨¨re threw a dash of salt over the dead woman¡¯s body, and the widow reached her hand into the casket to place upon that corpse a rose from the convent gardens and a letter promising love and affection for the boy now in her care. She tucked those sentiments into the woman¡¯s heart and promised deeply within her own that she would never cease to love he who was without a mother.


    The widow held the child in her arms as that casket lid was sealed against the light of day, and it was this sequence of events which led the plantation St. Vincent to house the matriarch herself, the child in her care, the couturi¨¨re in her employ, the m¨¦nag¨¨re still recovering, and the captain attending to her care.


    And it was this party the mercenary would come to discover when he awoke the morning after the storm in the residence of the widow St. Vincent.


    <div>


    <figure></a></figure>


    There was a scream¡ªif we remember that morning clearly. The one bestowed upon them by the young maid who, only moments prior, had discovered the back door to the estate unhinged and unaccounted for. This led all parties to assemble themselves in the library, attempting to discover the cause for that most disturbing alarm.


    The room was most storied¡ªwith pasts that had long preceded its owner and would long succeed her. Hundreds of portraits hung from high walls, each in decorated gilt frames, and even more leaned against the walls covered in cloth and dust and dimming rays of light. Each image contained the commissioned image of some famous French lord or lady whose death, by whatever means it had come to them, had rendered their titles quite useless.


    Books lay opened on tables, their contents spilling about the room in sketches of science and knowledge and healing. Stacks of odds and ends were scattered about them¡ªlittle bones and odd keepsakes, relics of dead saints, remnants of holy sepulchers, and among them an assortment of distilled spirits, bitter tonics, and aromatic herbs.


    Shadows fell across marble busts, light catching their unliving eyes as cobwebs wept from chandeliers in dire need of dusting. A curling stairwell climbed into stories unknown. All of it was awash with the memories of poets and philosophers and doctors and scientists. Those who had made the most fervent study of the meaning of life, and yet who found of it nothing but a blank tapestry upon which one could create something beautiful¡ªif only for a fleeting moment around the sun.


    It was an interesting experiment, much like the gathering who assembled within it. An assemblage of things that were somehow separate, and yet congregated together in an amalgamation of curiosities. The widow looked about the people in that room and saw the fragments of her new life. Pieced together from the old one like shards of shattered glass that had been dyed and assembled to create a beautiful framework of stained glass.


    There had been a time when she believed a woman¡¯s only lot in life was to take a husband, submit to his will, produce for him an heir, and so die a woman of great virtue and piety. But marriage to the Comte had hardened her to that life and forged in her the determination to live her own version of it. And now it appeared, he was her adversary.


    She had not known how far she would deviate from the path once set before her, but now she found some semblance of solidarity and lived determined to keep it.

 Chapter 15

    There are two types of fear. The first is fear of the unknown death. This is the kind of fear that, if left unmeditated, can cause one to become fearful of every ordinary thing: confined spaces, great heights, a seafaring voyage, etc. etc.


    Because the human person has been known to perish in such conditions, these ordinary experiences can cause within the human person a fear that they too will perish by such unremarkable means. This, however, is merely a bout of anxiety. Though spontaneous death remains a possibility for all of us, fretting over its every unlikely occurrence is a rather useless affair.


    The second type is the fear of the known death. This is the kind of fear that is actual, for death is indeed on its way and the individual has some premonition of it. In some cases, the human person is ill and can thus feel the imminent arrival of death. For others, murder lies in wait, and the victim can feel its eventuality. In either case, death has a way of making itself known and the person is merely biding their time until its arrival.


    We must note, for those with no experience in the matter, that the second kind of fear is not so fearful as the first. For with the first type there is fear of the unknown, and with the second type there is merely fear of the known. There is a certain peace that comes with acknowledging death¡¯s presence, meeting it by the dawn, and shaking hands with it when it comes to call.


    The widow knew this second kind of fear well. She felt it through the dark years of her marriage when every evening carried the promise of her eventual demise, and now she felt it reaching for her again. Her mind felt the presence of a more sinister mind, her body felt the reach of a more sinister body. The grasp of death was ever approaching, ever searching for her across the swamp, and it was only a matter of time before it found her and had her in its grasp once again.


    That knowledge made her bold. During the dark years behind her she was a creature held in captivity, now she was a creature escaped into the wild. She would not allow herself to be caught or tamed again, nor would she allow death even the slightest gain. Instead, she tempted it, taunted it, dared it to entreat her. Like a rose blooming in shadow ever safe for the sea of thorns around it, she defied her admirer to reach for her?¡ª?all the while knowing that the predator had long ago become the prey.


    <figure></figure>


    As the widow sat on the terrace of her boudoir one evening, drinking a glass of red wine with the mercenary, a storm sparked to life across the river and they felt the welling of watching eyes upon them.


    They looked at one another with a knowing recognition, watching the lightning as it crackled through one another¡¯s eyes, the air trembling through their hearts, waking them from the depths of an enchanted slumber. The widow¡¯s hair twirled in loose tendrils around her face and she breathed in the most delicate breath, a small hunger trembling across her lips as though she could feel the wind brewing inside her. Perhaps she could, for the same wind was swirling inside the mercenary and it raged against the piety that had thus far restrained him.


    The two said not a word to one another and yet the silence of the coming storm sent currents through their skin. Apprehension sent birds scattering across the swamp, the warm, humid air waiting to break until at last a bolt of lightning struck the Earth, the rebellious flame slashing through the veil that separated rationality from recklessness, ripping life from death and death from life as the rain began to pour forth in earnest.


    Their lips met the moment the thunder reached them, pulling their roots up from the ground, shaking their souls free from what tethered them to their bodies and scattering them violently to the wind. They kissed madly, the rain flooding their senses with unmet passions, their spirits no longer concerned with matters of life even as they were stalked by the figure of death.


    Tears of rain fell into their eyes, dampening the current that held the air so taught until the last tendrils of the day tucked themselves behind the moon and they fell into the darkness of their dreams. The trailing rain of moonlight pulled them into its dust?¡ª?gravity no longer confining them, space no longer bounding them. Just the floating sensation of being lost from the Earth and suspended in a sparkling ether.


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    Their bodies met in a collision of stars. A crashing of the cosmos. Comets streaked through their hair, galaxies dappled their fingers in color, and the spirals of the atmosphere circled their toes. Time slowed to a standstill. There was no aging to contend with nor death to concern oneself with. Just the ever-deepening pull of paradise and the lulling bliss of succumbing to it.


    They held one another in the beyond, their bodies clinging to the last edges of the world even as their souls longed for the pleasures of the next. At last, the euphoria afforded them was too great for their earthly bodies to bear and they spilled breath from their lungs in heaping rivers of stars, their elysium lost to the skies that stirred them so quickly out of reach.


    When the last tears of the storm pattered against the windowpanes, the couple lay by warming hearth. The humid air returned heavily to their lungs as they resigned themselves to the realm of humanity once more. Brushing the storm from each other¡¯s skin with their fingertips, their clothing still dripping upon the terrace, they fell asleep in one another¡¯s arm, hoping to return to the dream.


    ¡°What is your Christian name?¡± she whispered in the late reaches of the night.


    ¡°Remy,¡± he replied. ¡°Remy Delacroix.¡±


    ¡°Remy,¡± she whispered in reply. ¡°Je suis S¨¦verine.¡±


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    His thoughts were consumed by his wife, as they always were, and now they simmered into a gentle rage?¡ª?kindled by the fire that now burned in his wife¡¯s bedchambers and brewed deeply within the basest nature of his being.


    He had stood outside the plantation, half-hidden by groves of orange trees, watching as she kissed another man. He witnessed the ravenous way she drank from his lips, the thirst with which she tasted the dew of his skin. He saw them fall onto the terrace in a heap of limbs and silk, their hands wandering unchaperoned of their lust.


    The sky broke with a violent fury then, the rain shuddering his wife¡¯s gown to her breast, exposing the sweet crest beneath the silk, and clinging his trousers tightly about his groin. He watched the man¡¯s hands stir beneath his wife¡¯s skirts, the rain wettening their adulterous path up her thighs. The sighs of her lips went unheard against the crashing of the thunder. The thunder of their intensifying chaos unmet by his ears. The only sound the Comte could hear was the deafening depravity of his own thoughts and the drowning degeneracy of his affliction.


    The couple removed themselves to her boudoir then, and the Comte remained perfectly still against the rain, his imagination wandering with them into the bedchambers and watching them undress. How their naked bodies warmed themselves against an idling fire, he thought. How she knelt before him in the prayer of pleasure. How she whispered words of absolution into her lover¡¯s lap.


    The Comte was driven mad by his visions and he fell into the distorted torment of them. Slipping his hand into his trousers, he imagined his wife¡¯s mouth upon her aroused lover. Her tongue sated by his growing fortitude, her eyelids fluttering in perfect pleasure. How they would heave against one another in perfect extasy, her lover pressing her into the plush carpets as they fornicated on the floor.


    His hands grew wet with the thoughts of his vengeance: The moment his wife would see him emerge from behind her lover, a blade gleaming from his hand. How she would fear her husband then, watching with wide eyes as he slashed the blade across her lover¡¯s throat, spattering his blood across her naked body. How she would cry out in passion one moment, he thought, and then scream out in horror the next.


    Perhaps that would reprimand his wife for her behavior. Perhaps that would punish her for her sins. His own wife?¡ª?who never honored her marital duties, who laid like a corpse while he bedded her, who did not satisfy her husband, but left him endlessly unsated?¡ª?now lay with another man, the very idol of her sins, and enjoyed it. She must submit to his will once more, he thought darkly. Crying in anguish, she would appear the very portrait of Mary Magdalene, the scarlet letter upon her, written in the very blood of her lover.


    His grip tightened as he pondered her punishment. It would be up to the Comte to punish his wife for her sins?¡ª?to return her to his righteous possession once more. He would pull her toward him, bend her to his will, and desecrate that wretched woman, the remnants of her lover still dripping from her legs as her husband reminded her what a good wife must be.


    His grip grew violent as he imagined his wife¡¯s face pressed into the floor, her eyes inches away from her lover¡¯s. She would see the retribution she wrought upon his corpse then, and so repent from the wickedness of her sins. Her husband would not forgive her indiscretions?¡ª?he would not stop until she screamed out in confession. By then the entire household would awake to find their mistress as she truly was: A fornicator, a sinner, the truth of her harlotry exposed of her.


    He would once again be in control of his life, in control of his destiny, he thought as he relieved himself into his trousers, and heaven would reward him for his ardor.

 Chapter 16

    S¨¦verine knelt at her prie-dieu, her black veil covering her head, her fingers intertwined before her. She did not pray the lord¡¯s prayer, for it no longer suited her. She did not pray the rosary, for it no longer nourished her. Instead, she just sat there.


    She should feel guilty for her dalliance, she thought, for taking a lover into her bed. Indeed, she was still a married woman in the eyes of the Church and would be considered a harlot for such crimes. And yet seemingly overnight had no use for such stipulations and now determined to remove all trace of them from her mind.


    She was disinterested in being yoked to some sense of regulatory goodness. That path only subjected her to the depraved tortures of her husband and the insidious haunting of his unmurdered soul. Instead, she resolved to follow her own sense of goodness, and those were much easier set of steps to determine.


    Though she did not know what her purpose was or if there was such a thing, that only instilled in her the need to protect those near to her. Though she did not know where her soul would rest when she died, that only instilled in her the need to fight for each moment. There were no hours to pray, no scriptures to read, no penance to do, she had only to live her one and precious life and see that it was lived to the full.


    She still adored her Catholic faith, but no longer for its truth. She attended mass, but only to admire its beauty. She pondered the Virgin Mother, but no longer required her virginity. She meditated on the resurrection of her son, but she no longer required that act literally. She cherished the stories of the bible for they enriched her contemplative life, but her faith no longer depended on their truth to exist.


    Where once religion had provided all the answers, now she allowed herself to question, and in that question, she found a new sense of freedom?¡ª?as though Divine Providence had been slowly unraveling the fabric from which she had been woven and now she was free to be fashioned into anything she liked.


    How long ago it seemed, that she bore the guilt of her husband¡¯s supposed death, and how far she had come since then. Moving to la Nouvelle-Orl¨¦ans had been a gift, a gentle freeing of her spirit. She was under no obligation to live life by any other means save her own, she realized, and sometimes love, and even murder, could be acceptable aspects of that life, if used under the appropriate conditions.


    She bowed her head and felt that contentedness sit over her, much as a cloud sits over a bed of wildflowers. There she found her peace and so remained for many moments, safe from the snares of hell that dwelt so near her.


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    Across the marshes now hardened by the sun, where the muddy streets of la Nouvelle-Orl¨¦ans began to dry and the stench of sewage began to recede, the city once rendered sordid by the spring, became sultry by the summer. The air hung heavy above the cathedral, as the bishop rang his bell and errant feet quickened to their pews.


    The cathedral was yet unfinished, allowing vines to creep in through the exposed roof and rays of sun to pour through unpaned windows. The heat from those rays was intoxicating. Over clad women fanned sweat from their necks, attempting to keep each drop from falling between their breasts. Equally over clad gentlemen sweat into their coats as their eyes lingered at so sinful a sight. Latin words drifted above that tropical tableau, but no ear paid them any attention. An islandic fever had taken hold of every mind until it could think of nothing else save the impending allure of a warm afternoon triste.


    Religion was important to these individuals, bien sur, for it provided, if not the moral foundation for their society, then at least the societal one. Piety, or at least the appearance of it, came with a certain status and prestige and they used it to separate those wretched individuals who were exiled to their city from the more devout Catholics who came to save it. They even invented hierarchies for it?¡ª?ones that would place them at a higher standard merely by their ancestral conformity to it.


    The rule of limpieza de sangre, as it became known, was created to certify that an individual¡¯s lineage was free from heresy for at least five generations. This was difficult to achieve in a place so diverse as la Nouvelle-Orl¨¦ans, and for all that, a more coveted a position.


    Our philanthropist surely could not provide such certification and our society made sure of that. His background was unknown, his ancestry disputed. Were it not for his wealth, he would have achieved no stature and the lords and ladies of la Louisiane used that knowledge to supersede his influence, placing themselves at an elevated class than he by the very virtue of their birth.


    It was a convenient clause for it made superior the self-righteous, and inferior the devout. The Christ had met beings such as these. On an afternoon not dissimilar to this one, the Pharisees prided themselves on their virtuosity and used their religiosity for personal and professional gain?¡ª?until a carpenter from Galilee turned the tables on the hierarchy. Those lords and ladies of la Nouvelle-Orl¨¦ans did much the same, lauding their devoutness as proof of their own prestige and yet they foolish not to see that their own tables might be turned soon enough.


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    As we well know, there are none more judgmental of the Catholics, than the Catholics. Though Providence can be used by quiet thoughts for love, it can also be used by loud voices for hate and the lords and ladies of la Nouvelle-Orl¨¦ans used their religion to shout their superiority?¡ª?their godliness. They made clear their distaste for the philanthropist and his incessant attempts to purchase their regard, even as they considered themselves more sanctimonious than he.


    And so, that afternoon, when the summer heat had worked each mind into a mild cacophony, the philanthropist attempted to sit in the box he had purchased for himself and the governor stood to contest him. All eyes turned toward the conflict, unwilling to provide their sympathies for the philanthropist, and yet unwilling to deny their loathing of him.


    The governor held his face stern, desperate to prove himself more in control of the city than his wealthy opponent. The two men looked at one another for a moment, then the philanthropist turned to leave, a small smile curling at the corner of his lips.


    It was said that the governor sent a strongly worded letter of the incident to his superiors after that, but the next Sunday, the philanthropist would resume his position in the cathedral, and the governor would look on with loathing.


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    The philanthropist could not be bothered by the ilks of society. For those with the most wealth held the most power and he was a very powerful man indeed. He laughed at their feeble attempts to place themselves above him in rank and in stature, for they knew in their hearts they had no choice but to make obeisance to him.


    He held their very lives in his hands. He had purchased the hospital and staffed it. He had purchased the lamplighters and policed them. With all his riches, he could pay a man to kill every single one of them if he so desired and he could pay off the police to get away with it. They were mere gnats biting at his skin and they could never impale a giant such as he.


    Of course, the philanthropist¡¯s reality was not an agreed upon one. For he saw himself through a lens that magnified his accomplishments and diminished his misdeeds. Lacking the sort of self-doubt that allows an individual to be humbled, he achieved a level of self-satisfaction that only his own ego could agree upon. Like Narcissus before him, he saw his own reflection and felt most deserving of it, or at least he told himself so with great regularity.


    Indeed, he enjoyed his prosperity immensely and he used that prosperity to purchase favors from the couturi¨¨re who now frequented his bed. She came to his quarters whenever he called for her, beholden as she must have been by his wealth and prestige. Even as he passed by her pew in the cathedral, she stood to follow him, knowing him to be of one mind.


    The two walked in silence behind one another until they reached the philanthropist¡¯s quarters, he entering through the front door and she crossing into the courtyard through a servant¡¯s entrance. In her presence the philanthropist felt himself like the sultan from the Thousand and One Nights. And, like the woman from the Thousand and One Nights, she was more adept than any courtesan he¡¯d had the pleasure to bed.


    Her mind was that of a cunning snake and her body that of a skilled seductress. When she entered his chambers, she withdrew her cloak, allowing him to watch her undress as he laid back on his bed with his hands behind his head.


    She would tease him at first, taunting his body with her fingertips before focusing her lips between his legs. As she lured his body into pleasure, she coaxed his mind into ever climaxing heights of his own grandeur. Some lowly governor might attempt to take his seat in church, he thought, but what need had he of a pew, when he could purchase the finest mouth in all la Nouvelle-Orl¨¦ans and place it wheresoever he chose?


    That the governor might be reduced to such petty measures was proof enough of his ineptitude, he thought. For the man had not the means nor the power to bed any woman save his wife?¡ª?and if he could not afford such a modest favor, what use was he to a bustling city, with ample financial burdens.


    As the sun shone through his windows, alighting the gold gilded frame of his four-poster bed, the philanthropist reveled in his own virility, his own strength. For there was nothing money could not buy him and there was nothing it did not allow him to control. He was king of this town and every peasant in it at mercy to please him.


    As he bestowed upon this woman the honor of drinking from his most holy scepter, he filled his mind with delusions of grandeur. He could achieve anything he wanted to, he told himself, and there was no height to which he could not climb. His mind grew intoxicated by his own self-aggrandizement. Even more so when he witnessed the pi¨¨ce de r¨¦sistance of his plan.


    He exulted in his ingenuity as the couturi¨¨re¡¯s eyes lit upon a door?¡ª?unhinged and unhung?¡ª?leaning against his wall. He saw her shock and became unable to contain his arousal as she recognized it as the one missing from the widow¡¯s plantation. Drunk on his own indulgence, the philanthropist spilled his seed upon her. Then relaxing onto his bed, he allowed her to lick his thighs, reminded as she now was that he was the king of this small town, and she should be so lucky to lap up his largesse.


    She may have charmed the sultan, he thought, but may she be reminded: just like the Thousand and One Nights, she was always one night away from her own execution should she cease to please the king.

 Chapter 17

    If we remember correctly, Marie the first, second, and third happened upon the widow in a port town on the brink of the French Revolution. How they got there was a matter of some consequence. The convents had been largely turned out by that point, l¡¯Assembl¨¦e Nationale having determined another use for the Church¡¯s most lucrative real estate. Unfortunately, there was a particularly rebellious convent in a suburb of Paris who had decided to evade those orders.We have not spoken of the three nuns named Marie at any great depth, for until now we have been preoccupied by other stories. But the first Marie comes to our attention now with great urgency. For as the town was ravaged by malice, she became its next victim.


    The convent at Saint-Denis was a teaching establishment?¡ª?one that taught the poor children of its community and could not see a viable reason for the cessation of that teaching. The priest of that convent was a determined scholar, set upon the belief that as followers of the Ursulines, their focus was on education, not renunciation. He had thus resolved himself not to give up that spiritual vocation for the greed of his fellow countrymen.


    At the same time, there was a young boy named Ignace who attended the convent for school. He was a bright child, yet impoverished?¡ª?exactly the sort the priest did not wish to forsake. Ignace dreamed of being an explorer and a discoverer?¡ª?of charting new territories and discovering their secrets. But though the priest prayed the child might one day meet those dreams, that through education he might rise above his station and have every opportunity to succeed, the child made one crucial and fatal error.


    One afternoon, as the day turned to dusk and the sound of vespers were heard rather severely, Ignace happened to overhear a conversation between the priest and a member of l¡¯Assembl¨¦e Nationale. He listened most attentively, though he could not understand all that was said, until his teacher discovered him and shoved him away toward the door. Thus reprimanded for his lingering, Ignace departed the convent and made his way home, wondering what he should tell his father of his discoveries.


    The father of Ignace was a most fearful man. He was a Jacobin, though we use that term quite loosely in his case. Like many Parisians of his time, he was a Jacobin only by means of protection and would be a royalist just as easily should the monarchy happen to return. Self-preservation was his religion, more so than any particular ethos, and so the father of Ignace was careful not to associate with anyone who could be seen as an enemy of the state. When his son mentioned the rebellious streak of the priest, he boarded up his home lest any should try to convict him of such treasony. Times being what they were, a convent who refused orders was a great danger to the community that harbored it.


    From that day forward there were murmurs in Saint-Denis. Ignace¡¯s father mentioned to his butcher that the convent was hiding some royalist. The butcher wondered aloud to his bartender whether it was a refractory priest the convent were hiding. With only a few whispered words, the beast that had destroyed the monarchy of France had come to destroy the Church of Rome. The community became so ruled by the notion that their country might consider them conspirators, that they became conspirators in their own right. This was not, we hasten to add, the most logical of reactions. But fear works in that way, it can rid even the most sensible man of his senses. Especially when he is already intoxicated by the fear of his fellow men.


    Coiling up from the ground like an asp preparing to strike, the villagers rose up against their religion. They stormed the convent walls and desecrated the abbey. They tore nuns from their beds and threw their naked bodies into the streets. They tied them to bedposts and flogged them with belt buckles. They spat in their faces and ripped hair from their heads. They raped them and beat them. They burned them with fire. Fear swept through the town like a plague, touching each and every soul until at last, the priest walked into the center of it and the chaos fell still.


    Silence settled upon the town as everyone turned to see their tormenter. The one who, only three months ago was their saint and now was their sinner. The sky ripped in two as a dark storm cloud rumbled across the brilliant blue sky, framing the holy man with both darkness and light and the effect produced a sort of twilight?¡ª?that moment when dawn and dusk are suspended in a delicate balance until at last the twilight tips in one direction or the other. Either to day or to night.


    For a moment, the world stood still, hovering in the space between. Every breath held wondering which way the winds would turn. Just as it was at Calvary, there was the presence of evil just as clearly as there was the presence of good and the two clashed against one another violently.


    The priest looked toward the sky for a moment, then there was the gleam of a blade and the spatter of blood. And the darkness descended upon them.


    <figure></figure>


    Sometimes it is only in the midst of hell that we can see heaven. So it was for the first nun named Marie. She felt the commotion as surely as she heard it and ran out into the streets to meet it. There a hand had grabbed her arm, spinning her to face the center of the village. When she turned to see the one who had grabbed her, no one was there.


    Her eyes adjusted to the commotion and she saw her advisor in the middle of it. He stood framed by a tormented sky. On the one side a summer¡¯s day, on the other a stormy night. His eyes gazed toward hers, holding her with a knowing look. She knew what was about to happen with every fiber of her being, so did he. Both knew the darkness intimately and saw it gathering toward him.


    But then, just as surely as she had seen the shadows pull from every corner of the town, dimming the scene as in a vignette, she saw a light?¡ª?a celestial presence that poured down upon him. The man looked up, transfixed by it as she was. It was then that the darkness reached the hand of the father of Ignace, forcing a blade into his palm and slashing it across the spiritual man¡¯s throat.


    It was too late. For the light had found the priest before the darkness, and it had taken his soul away before his very last breath?¡ª?Marie bore witness to it. She knew the darkness, but she saw the light?¡ª?It had loved him, It had known him, It was as though the holy man had signed a contract many lifetimes before this one, to live in the mire so that those who did also might find relief from it.


    Marie felt this profoundly in her being. As though she remembered it from a dream. She too walked through the valley of the shadow of death, but death could not touch her. Like the darkness that hovered over the deep before Providence whispered, ¡°let there be light,¡± it was there before it all. And so was she.


    <figure></figure>


    Gathering two of her comrades, the three nuns named Marie escaped on the back of a spice cart, traveling to the port town of Dieppe with no hope of crossing the ocean. None, that is, until they happened upon a mysterious woman standing alone on the dock. A deep slab of darkness obscured her, and then a flicker of the ocean revealed the portrait in her arms. The Virgin Mary mourning the torments of humanity. A sign from the heavens above.


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    We will not devote much time to the journey. For though it was eventful in every sense of the word, all transatlantic journeys were at that time, and that is not the focus of our story. Of course, food and water rations ran low, storms rendered the ship off course, and the journey took twice as long as originally estimated. The most pandemic of all was the fever, but then, even that was to be expected. Before Christophe Colombe had found his way to San Salvador, there had been no crossing of the seas and therefore no exposure to the hazards of the western lands. Tropical climates and the air they breathed proved detrimental to French sensibilities. Half the crew died fevered and delirious during the perilous journey.


    But our story concerns not the ones who left us, but rather the ones who continued: the Comtesse, and three nuns named Marie, all of whom arrived grateful that they had survived and anxious for what was to come. They landed first on the southernmost coast of Saint-Domingue, then continued to the port of la Nouvelle-Orl¨¦ans.


    Over the course of one year, this small camaraderie had seen one husband murdered, one convent closed, and one priest sacrificed to the revolution. Now, for the first time, they stood on the bow of the ship together with the luxury of free thought and the ability to let the unconscious mind wander where it would.


    The four women stood on the bow of the boat, free from the cloak of the nobility or the veil of the clergy. The air was warm and thick, holding them as if in a comforting embrace. They breathed in the tropical air, reveling in it its extraordinary scent, and thought only of the sunrise, the one that would light up a very new life for her by the time it dawned in the morning.


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    The first Marie was the most devout in nature?¡ª?one who joined the order not out of poverty or responsibility, but for spiritual enlightenment alone. How she had always loved her Savior with the utmost attention, pursing Him as one would a lover or a father.


    Now fever reached her, a wasting sickness slowly luring her to her death. This was not uncommon in those days, and there were many who succumbed to the fevers that so ravaged that city, but the first Marie was happy with her lot, feeling her Savior draw nearer to her by the day, inviting her beyond the veil that separated this world from the next one.


    How she longed for that world, she thought. How she prayed for it. How she never ceased to devote herself to it even as fever gripped hold of her body and delirium took hold of her mind. As the second and third Marie¡¯s knelt by her bedside, the abbess joining them in their vigil, Marie descended into sickness, calling out to her Providence with all the ecstasy of a mystic now nearing her heavenly home.


    ¡°How beautiful!¡± she said brightly, her eyes rapturous with emotion as tears streamed down her face. ¡°How beautiful! Oh, but it is all so simple! How very blessed are we! How very blessed am I! Take me Spirit! Take me into Your love! That I might see what You see and hear what You hear. That I might love as You love and so live eternally in Your favor. Oh, take me Lord!! Take me!!!¡±


    She began weeping in earnest, her arms outstretched for some unseen specter, her body yearning for some unknown paradise, and then all at once she collapsed onto the bed, weary and exhausted, shuddering with tears and moaning with otherworldly pleasures. ¡°Take me.¡± she kept repeating, muttering softly as her lips purpled and her skin paled?¡ª?the fever falling upon her as a dew falls upon a bed of wildflowers.


    For a time, Marie appeared unconscious, her body sinking into the white starched sheets as Christ¡¯s might have done in his shroud. A lone ray of sunshine fell through a shuttered window alighting upon her face and then a flood of light poured in as the door opened suddenly, the striking figure of the widow appearing before them.


    Her face was pale and stricken, her eyes wet, she hurried to her sister and held her into her arms. ¡°Oh, my darling,¡± she cried. ¡°Oh, my darling sister.¡± She pulled back to look at Marie then, and at once the girl appeared to awake.


    ¡°Oh S¨¦verine,¡± Marie cried softly, ¡°don¡¯t cry for me! Don¡¯t waste your tears on so perfect a day as this. For today I go to my Creator and how I have longed for His embrace! To have Him hold me in His arms! To have His breath upon my skin. Oh blessed day!¡±


    S¨¦verine held her friend¡¯s face in her hands, searching into that half gone soul, wondering what wonders lay beyond so mysterious a door as death. Marie¡¯s eyes glistened with a hope that might yet be realized and an eternity that might yet exist. She fell back onto her pillow, her eyes filled with rapture.


    Marie reached one hand toward that ray of light, her fingers touching it delicately, scattering sparkling particles in their wake. Then with one last breath, she looked into that beyond, her eyes welling with tears as she was taken into that mystery and a gasp of awe befell her.


    S¨¦verine fell to tears, kneeling on the floor as her sisters placed their hands in hers, pondering a loss that would never again be found. In that holy moment, the four watched as the sun shifted, the ray ceased to shine through the shutter, and a black night befell that faithful spirit. Silent prayers were murmured on trembling lips, as they held one another¡¯s hands in their own.


    There is a recklessness that attends to those living in captivity, and S¨¦verine found herself in its grips. After so many nights spent barricaded within her home, now she now stood in the cemetery at the tomb of her friend, daring any troubled spirit to near her. She was a dangerous woman, she thought, and none could stand against so wild a spirit as hers.


    She stood alone, a low wind tugging at her veil as a restless cloud obscured the dimming sky. She did not attend the funeral, for it posed a public risk to her person, but she came to her friend now, the mercenary watching at the gate for any phantom that might harm her. The sound of a violin fell upon her ears, though she could not discern if it were that of a nearing troubadour or the workings of her own solemn mind.


    She did not cry, for she was not sad?¡ª?such adverse emotions could no longer reach her. Rather, she felt a great peace. Death was no longer the grim clanking of a man in irons, she thought, but a sweet melody upon the wind. Though she would hear her friend¡¯s voice no longer, her song would continue to be sung by those who had loved her, and her spirit would live on in them. As she pondered that beautiful soul, a shadow moved before her, just as she knew it would.


    ¡°Monsieur le Comte,¡± she said, welcoming her visitor.


    There was no response. Not a sound, not a movement. Somewhere from within the convent walls she heard the chorister voices rise in song, a low hymn hummed by mourning spirits. The song shrouded S¨¦verine¡¯s ears until she could no longer hear the movements of her obscured guest. She knew his presence was near to her, she felt his rotted spirit watching her, and yet she had no fear. This was but a troubled man, she thought, and one who would haunt her no more.


    Her recklessness made her bold, and she turned to face her wayward husband. She could not see him, nor could she sense his location, but she wanted him to see her. To see the woman she had become. She was no longer the wasted property of a depraved man, but the strengthened woman who had freed herself from his tyranny. Here she was unfettered by the chains that once bound her, emboldened by the freedom that now consumed her, and unwilling to be captured once again.


    As if in evidence of that fact, a blade was revealed from the folds in her skirts, shining in the gleam of the coming moon. He sensed her danger, this she knew. She was a great threat to him now and he was well aware of it. She stepped forward with authority, walking between the tombs, and daring him to make his move against so foreboding a woman as she. No move was made, no rustle save the branches now stirring in a warm wind, and then she moved to the gate where Monsieur Delacroix stood.


    She gave one last look to the cemetery as R¨¦my shut the iron gates behind her, and they left.

 Chapter 18

    There¡¯s a certain kind of tree, though we can¡¯t remember its name, that weeps of its branches as though burdened by them. They pour into the river as willows, thinking only of their own despair. How gravity tugs at them so, begging them to return to the water¡¯s depths, and how unable those branches are to resist their thirst.


    One morning, with all the promise of a quickly warming day, a mysterious omen appeared within those reeds. A canoe without passenger or crew drew up to the promenade seemingly of its own volition. Those walking the promenade that morning watched with anticipation as it drifted down the river toward its lonesome destination, settling at times against one branch, and then leaning for a while on another.


    A lingering humidity fell exasperated upon the early afternoon and the plants crinkled at the edges, brown and parched from their basking in the summer sun. The water rippled gently in the wake of that unmanned vessel and the palms lulled against it as it lazed through those still waters.


    It was a slow and tedious journey, and many who watched its path grew bored in their waiting for it, continuing toward their mid-morning destinations without satisfying their curiosities. Those who stayed, however, were rewarded for their perseverance. For when the canoe finally neared the port and drew close enough that their reaching hands could touch it, they discovered the canoe not so empty as it seemed.


    There, laying in the bottom, was a small bible and a leather-bound journal, and beside those personal effects, the missionary who owned them, his mission now complete as his corpse lay at rest.


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    As we have thus far ascertained, la Louisiane was an unusual place in an unusual predicament. Not just for the unusual characters who dwelt there, but also for how those unusual characters happened to arrive there.


    We struggle with the matters of citizenship to this day, and it works out as follows: every one of us are immigrants, until at once we decide that those who are here now, however we so happened to arrive here, are the natives, and those who attempt to arrive here tomorrow, are the immigrants. It is a strange manner of reasoning, with a rather movable definition of ¡°now,¡± but it appears to be the most widely adhered to rule in matters of immigration.


    Ah, but then it is even more complicated than that: what of those who came before those immigrants who are now suddenly natives? What of the original natives? Well, the reasoning further contends that if no one claimed said land to begin with, the first one to do is the claimant, and therein becomes the owner and native occupier of that land. To borrow the old English adage: finders, keepers.


    In la Louisiane it was no different. The native populations did not claim the land, for they found the notion of doing so absurd. Naturally, when the French arrived without such whimsical ideals about the Earth, they put their little flags upon it and claimed it for their very own. That is, until France quarreled amongst themselves across the sea, and was then forced to cede it to another quarreling party, Spain.


    Both European parties brought with them the perils of slavery and created a mingled citizenship that was the first of its time. Those of French, Spanish, African, and Caribbean origin merged to create the Creole, a new native descended from so many different ones, and those cultures collided in beautiful and unusual ways.


    They were intimate yet estranged, integrated yet segregated. A European foreigner visiting the territory at that time might have found it intoxicatingly eclectic, yet startlingly primitive. As though the descendants of Cain at last mingled with the descendants of Seth and were forced to wander the land of nod together, forever banished by God, yet protected from the Devil.


    And yet, therein lay the struggle of that fledging little town lingering on the mouth of the Mississippi. For though the natives did not claim the Earth for themselves, they did still reside upon it, the French who had decidedly ¡°found¡± the land, thought themselves the keepers of it, and yet according to treaties written on rolled-up papers, at roll-top desks, in beautiful mansions across the sea, the Spanish were the official owners of all of it.


    But if Louisiane was a dangerous experiment in citizenship, it was also one the governor was uniquely suited to oversee. Born French, but orphaned at a young age, he enlisted in the Spanish military where he rose to prominence as a colonel. For his tenacity, he was married into the Spanish court and granted an assignment in the new world. A product of two worlds, and yet tasked with administering a new one, he was well equipped to navigate the intricacies of a French people living under a Spanish rule.


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    But in so tempestuous a country as that, the governor found himself with more than just the French and the Spanish to contend with. To the east, there was the threat of American expansion¡ªa newly annexed country craving military power, and a port town besides. To the south there was the threat of uprising¡ªSaint Domingue slaves still fought against their masters and its aftershocks could be felt in the hearts and minds of those who lived on the mainland.


    The small colony built by their ancestors was not fortified enough to handle either eventuality, much less the native populations who grew more hostile by the day. Just a few weeks prior, a Frenchman and his pregnant wife were traveling to a neighboring fort when they were captured by a native tribe and forced to watch in horror as their unborn child was cut from her belly, roasted over a spit, and eaten before them.


    If the governor had any hope of keeping his territories free of American occupation, African disruption, and Native annihilation, he would need all of them as allies. Especially as the Spanish government was not keen to invest in so small a subsidiary, rife as it was with the threat of foreign, domestic, and civil war.


    So it was that the governor found himself sitting in a leather chair, made from hides that had been given to him by Indians, in the governor¡¯s mansion that had been donated to him by Spain, smoking a pipe of tobacco that had been harvested by slaves, pondering how he might align these disparate communities to keep their territory safe from their ever-encroaching common enemy: the United States, whose lust for gold and whiskey had them thirsting for a port town of their very own.


    He would not cede his territory to those ruffians, he grumbled to himself. He could not. He had enough on his plate, as it was.


    Alas, a journal arrived from the port from a now-deceased missionary. Though he was fearsome to read what foes he might next face, the governor settled into his armchair, took a breath from his alabaster pipe, savored a long draw from a glass of cognac-colored liquor, then ran his hand over the leather binding, before opening it to find the following entry:


    <blockquote>


    For one month now I have been living with the natives where I have discovered among them a most disturbing superstition. With the thunderstorms increasing, they seem to have developed a fear that their gods have great ire toward them, and to my great horror, they have decided to sacrifice more than 20 young girls so they might appease those vengeful spirits.


    I tried to convince them otherwise¡ªI told of the Lord¡¯s love, that His sacrifice has already been made, and that sacrifice need be made no longer. I told how our people have lived without the blood of sacrifice for almost two thousand years, and yet have remained unscathed from that once vengeful God.


    Some of the women appeared to believe my words, or at least wanted to do so for their daughters¡¯ lives were among those in danger. On the evening before the event, their pleading gave me an audience with the elders. I read to them from the book of John. I told them of Christ¡¯s sacrifice¡ªthat He died for our sins, that it was not sacrifice He desired but repentance. The elders were not convinced, but the women implored them. Asking for one evening during which they could repent for their sins and so appease the spirits that plagued them.


    At last, the elders appeared to agree. How happy am I to have at last fulfilled that mission which Christ has entrusted me. It has been a long and vagrant voyage through which I have navigated a turbulent ocean and a wild country so that a people unknown to our Savior might, at last, come to know Him. I prepare now for their baptism and pray that they may be faithful to the Lord for his mercy. How blessed am I.....


    Oh, what a horror I flee! Oh, what misery has befallen me! Woe! Woe! T¡¯was not but an hour after so glorious a baptism than the very fires of hell rained down upon us. For at the hour during which their sacrifice went uncomplete, the most torrential storm befell us, shattering the earth with lightning and thunder. A most fearful crack fell through the sky, raining fire and brimstone on a city so primitive in design that each thatched roof caught on fire from its striking.


    The natives became convinced that the gods were angry with them. The chaos that ensued still ails my spirit as families began throwing their children into the fire. Even infants were thrown into the inferno that now raged among them. My eyes still burn from the sight of those children wailing in the fire, their flesh burned away from their ribs in the heat. How I pray for those innocent souls!


    When it appeared my person might be added to their fate, I made haste to depart, running through the wood and using my machete to further my advances toward the stream upon which I came. I found my canoe upon the bank and, with only my bible and my journal on my person, as well as some ink with which to write, I made quick work down the river, hoping to reach the next mission before three days¡¯ time, at which point I will tell some priest of my tale, and hope for his forgiveness for my failings¡­..


    I have been only one day upon the river and it appears a dark crow has been following me. First, there was one, then another, and now a whole flock attends me. They call out to me night and day, their words insufferable to my ears. What misfortune must befall me for my sins! I left children to die and I can still hear their screams upon my ears. The birds seem to know of my treachery, and they taunt me just as they did the Christ on the eve of His death. I fear I might go mad by their unrelenting words¡­¡­


    It is my second day upon the river, and at last, the birds have ceased their screaming. In their silence I have found an even deeper madness. For what must have frightened those foul demons away? There must be something hidden in the wild. Some other demon set to devour me. I can feel its eyes upon me, watching as I drift down a soundless river. It pursues me night and day and I can do nothing but wait for it to come to me. And pray that Divine Providence delivers me¡­


    </blockquote>

 Chapter 19

    After breakfast, as the philanthropist reclined naked in his bed, his courtesan draped elegantly beside him, a servant brought him an envelope. It contained neither address nor return and must have been hand-delivered to his door. Even more curious, the wax seal was black and embossed with a crow, a crest that was yet familiar to the man.


    Tentatively, the philanthropist broke open the seal whereupon sweat instantly appeared upon his brow. Emptying the contents of the envelope, he felt the familiar weight of one Spanish doubloon in his hand. He looked at this token for a moment, his eyes closing intensely as his temples throbbed. Then, with sudden urgency, the philanthropist ran to his window and wretched over the balcony, passersby changing course to avoid his breakfast.


    <figure></figure>


    There was, in the southernmost region of Spain, a child without a penny to his name. The boy had no father and his mother had wasted away from consumption, so he stood on street corners and begged for morsels to eat.


    At night, the elder urchins took advantage of him. They robbed him of what pittance he had earned and rendered his day for naught. Beaten down by a desperate lot and spit upon by passersby, the urchin wallowed in self-pity and doubt when he had the time to ponder it, and was consumed by the pain of hunger and the fear of death when he did not.


    One morning, as if in a dream, the urchin caught sight of a man of great fortune who appeared as an angel before him. This man was important, the boy thought, a businessman. His clothes were made from the finest brocades and his hair coiffed in the highest fashion. When he walked down the street every man bowed before him and every servant rushed to greet him.


    The businessman did not hunger or thirst. He did not demand the pity of his peers. With a cane in one hand and gold rings on the other, he commanded respect, passing the urchin by without a glance as he strode to his place of business. Even when he arrived at work, he did not step in the puddle before it, but upon a cloth placed carefully by a footman so as to spare his elegant shoes even a speck of mud.


    Once the doors to his business had been closed, the urchin peered at himself in that puddle and, inspired by this apparition to change his lot, splashed water onto his face and into his hair, scrubbing away the dirt that had caked into his skin. In the evening, when all the town was quiet, he tiptoed into the courtyard, hiding in the shadows of the streetlamps as he pulled the rags from his body and washed them in the fountain. Then, finding the door to the baker¡¯s left ajar, he snuck a heel of burned bread from the hearth.


    The urchin hid himself in the doorway of a cathedral, laying his bread out before him as though it were the meal of a king. He would be like that businessman one day, he thought. He would work hard every day to be sure of it.


    It was at this moment that the elder urchins found him. They pushed the child against the door and stole every crumb from his pockets, laughing at his combed hair and cleaned face as they kicked him to the cathedral steps and left him relegated to yet another foodless night.


    The boy knelt in shadows of the cathedral and, catching sight of the saints carved into its recesses, he spoke his first ever prayer. ¡°Dios mio,¡± he whispered. ¡°Please make of me what you have made of that man. So that I might grow in favor and fortune and be spared my miserable lot.¡±


    A lone tear fell to the child¡¯s cheek, but he brushed it off with the bravery of a boy twice his age. He would not be forlorn, he thought. He would find a way to escape the fate of his parents and find a way to make something of himself. Finding these thoughts a comfort, he nodded off to sleep, his head bobbing softly against the church steps as he dreamed of a better life. One filled with pastries, and meats, and gold rings, and a cane, and the respect of a people who for so long had scorned him.


    And who would one day would place cloths before him, so he might never look at another puddle again.


    <figure></figure>


    Through the window, the rector watched as the child fell asleep. He had seen the food prepared with such care, the rags cleaned with such devotion, and the tear that graced so delicate a face, and it brought the man to weep.


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    The life of a rector was a lonely one. For it held great power and great responsibility, and yet came without benefit of a person to share it with. God was meant to be that person, the Church taught, to be his most loving Spouse, and yet when his prayers ended each evening, his chambers fell silent and there was naught but the sound of his own breath to accompany him.


    For close to a decade, Divine Providence saw fit to ignore the rector. During the day, when he was wrapped in the vestments of his order, the people treated him with all the dignity and respect his position afforded him and yet at night, they returned to their homes, warm in the beds of the spouses, and the rector was long forgotten.


    Alone in his chambers, he cried out to the Lord. But there was no one to hear him when he spoke, no one to console him when his mind was troubled, and no one to hold him when he wept. God was but a ghost to him and the rector was left to face his lot alone.


    At night, when the demons drew close, the rector thought of taking his own life. How beautiful it would be to die to this world and so awake to the next one, he thought. Oh, to be able to see the face of his Savior, to hear the timbre of His voice and live forever in the warm embrace of the One who loved him. To at last be listened to, and spoken to, and held. To have someone tell him time and again how loved he was?¡ª?how cared for.


    Alas, the thought brought him no reprieve. For in taking his own life, he would commit a most cardinal sin and thus become relegated to an even deeper corner of hell, where his misery would become his eternity. So, he lay in bed, alone and forgotten, living in the prison of his thoughts, waiting for death to come to him, until he happened to see a boy just as forlorn as he, and yet with so small and beautiful a devotion.


    The rector wanted nothing else but to hold the child and to comfort him. Perhaps, if he had examined his soul properly, what the rector really wanted was for someone to hold him and to comfort him. But the rector did not examine his own soul and instead walked to the door, waking the child softly and inviting him inside for a warm meal and a hot beverage.


    Wearily, the boy followed the rector to his bedroom, wherein both would come to regret the events that would occur there and would weep for what innocence was lost there.


    Hate took root in the boy that day, and everyday thereafter. He became hardened to the world, resentful of the injustices of it, and scornful toward those reaping the benefits of it.


    For 10 years he watched as parishioners attended mass at the cathedral, allowing the rector to place a piece of bread on their tongues and a drop of wine at their lips. How repulsed they would be to know the man¡¯s own tongue was used for lechery, and his own lips for sodomy.


    The boy had grown, but he could not conjure such memories without heaving the putrid contents of his bowels onto the streets. Passersby stepped aside him, more horrified by his defilement than they were of his defiler. They looked on the boy with disgust, while the one who was the cause of the boy¡¯s misfortune they viewed with esteem. The rector profited highly from the praise of his parishioners and the fortune of their tithes and the boy was left to become bitter by his fortune.


    During this time, the businessman seemed only to grow in fame and fortune, and he strode to his place of work each morning as royalty, untouchable by the commoners who would beg from him until, taking pity at the boy who slept in his own vomit, he tossed the child a single gold doubloon.


    The boy had never held so much money in his hands, and yet he was repulsed by the gesture. He scoffed that the man saw fit to pity him. That he was only worth a pittance to a man for whom a pittance was made every minute. The boy¡¯s bitterness made him bold. The next time he saw the businessman, he stepped forward, held out the doubloon and appealed instead for an apprenticeship. The businessman refused him, hardly glancing at so lowly a person as he continued to his place of work.


    The boy persisted, meeting the man on his walk every day, and devising new reasons the businessman should see fit to hire him. After one year, the businessman finally looked at the boy, considering him for the very first time. Seeing a perseverance that could go unmatched, the businessman at last agreed to give the boy an internship and sent him along to the hiring manager.


    The boy worked hard, earning himself the respect of his employer, and a wage that could provide him a small apartment nearby and enough food to fill his stomach. But it was not enough. He learned everything the businessman knew, and was even made an associate partner, but the boy was not content to be the businessman¡¯s second?¡ª?he wished to be the first. He wanted to be the one who pitied his employer, rather than the one his employer once pitied.


    As the boy became a man, his hunger turned to greed. Knowing the business in its entirety and trusted by his superior to manage its finances, the young man waited until his employer was away on business, then he took every bank note from the coffers, bankrupting his mentor within an inch of his life save one gold doubloon that he left behind?¡ª?the one he had been given so many years ago.


    The one he now held in his hand as he wretched unceasingly over the balcony.

 Chapter 20

    The captain traveled to the south of Spain where he was quick to learn the secrets the philanthropist left behind there. The residents would not soon forget the crimes committed against so prominent a businessman. They pointed him toward el Monasterio de Santa Mar¨ªa de las Cuevas, and he walked toward the water briskly as the sun began to fall.


    In Moorish times, the small islet was honeycombed with ancient caves. Draped in the billowing white vestments of their people, women wandered through the caverns, their feet pressing softly into the earth as they discovered rich deposits of clay within it. Pulling the clay from the ground, they molded it with their hands and baked it in the dim underground inlets, creating beautiful sculptures that adorned the rich tapestry of their lives.


    Indeed, Moorish Spain was perhaps the most beautiful sight the ancient eye could behold. Their streets were paved and lit; exotic oranges, figs, and dates draped heavily above them. Libraries and universities were plentiful, educating residents in philosophy, astronomy, and arithmetic. Music drifted through the streets from every manner of foreign instrument. Even the poorest among them had access to the baths, hundreds of which graced the town, perfumed as they were with the incense of aromatic oils.


    The Moors lived in this way for many years until a Christian king overtook them. The Moorish buildings became Christian ones and the caves that once beautified them crumbled into disrepair. It would be many years before a soldier would discover those labyrinthine caves and the elaborate vessels formed there by the hands of ancient women.


    Entranced by the treasures he had found, the soldier followed the caves deeply beneath the surface of the Earth, imaging the fame and fortune that would accompany such a discovery. Soon, he became lost within the caverns, and unable to discern from which direction he had come. After a number of hours, he could no longer see the light, nor could he ignore the ghosts that dwelt there.


    In utter darkness, the soldier spoke a prayer to the Virgin Mother, his words sinking softly into the cavern walls. At that moment, as though from a gleam in his armor, a light fell upon a woman¡¯s face. It was a portrait, crudely painted by hands long ago. He reached out for it and held it to his breast as she led him away from those caverns, and out into the day. With the sun now burning brightly in his eyes, he made a study of his savior and found it to be a portrait of the Virgin Mother, her eyes dark and wizened with age, her skin bronzed as a Moorish woman.


    His eyes welled with tears as he sat by the water, overcome by this miracle. Soon after, a monastery for Santa Mar¨ªa de las Cuevas?¡ª?our lady of the caves?¡ª?was built to house that precious icon. She was, to them, a flame of the Christian faith that was miraculously kept burning during the years of Moorish occupation, and the Catholics came to cherish her. Over the years, her skin darkened with time and her portrait weathered with age, until the image disappeared, and there was naught but the legend to sustain her.


    In her arms, men still took comfort, and so took vows of chastity before her?¡ª?kneeling in the chapel as though her gaze still lingered on their skin, even though her portrait could be found no longer. It was there that the captain found the monk?¡ª?a brother who had once been a very fortunate businessman but now wore the long white robes and cropped hair of the Carthusians.


    His white, bowled hair belied his age and his stiffened joints the years he spent on his knees. He had lived at the monastery for ten years, leaving his cell only three times each day for the hours and once a week for a long walk in the hills. The monk lived entirely separate from the ilks of society. He took his meals in his cell and spent the great majority of his time in solitude and contemplation.


    Sometimes he would garden or breathe in the salted sea air. It was different from the life he lived before, the one in which wealth had been his God, and the pursuit of it his religion. The monk had since found solace in his faith, he told the captain, and by and by found it more comforting than the wealth he worshipped in his youth. But though he spoke words of forgiveness, the captain still heard between them the smoldering coals of betrayal.


    When it was the captain¡¯s turn to speak, he spoke to that betrayal. Of a man who arrived in the new world with wealth beyond measure and who used that wealth for the subjugation of others. The captain spoke of greed, and lust, and violence. Of a man so consumed by ceaseless hunger that he would destroy an entire city for his incessant need to hold superiority over it.


    A spark wandered through the monk¡¯s eye as the captain spoke, hinting at the torch of anger he still carried inside him. When the captain had finished speaking, the monk looked up at the chapel walls, his eyes affixed as though he could still see the Santa Mar¨ªa de las Cuevas suspended before him. She was not an ordinary woman?¡ª?she was a Moorish one. One who had known the infidels intimately. Who had walked with them through the caverns, her bare feet touching the clay floors beneath them. And yet she carried the torch of the Christian faith inside her, so that one day it might be rekindled again.


    The monk could no longer ignore the spark that leapt inside him. That burned for the conquest that had gone unfinished. For the score that was yet unsettled. For the wealth that had taken decades to amass, and yet now resided with another. The monk had been patient, discerning. Waiting, just as our lady had done before him. But now he was called to action. Like the lady of the caves, he too would be brought out into the light once more. His face would once more see the sun.


    The monk joined the captain on his ship with nothing but the robe about his waist, the sandals upon his feet, and a brown leather ledger in his hands, but the sea was vengeful and his health not up to the fight. With each passing day, monk¡¯s skin grew sallow and his body grew weak, but he refused to submit his soul until he could meet his traitor.


    He made it to la Nouvelle-Orl¨¦ans and entered into the widow¡¯s plantation. But when he entered her sitting room and saw above her mantle a portrait of the Virgin Mother, her skin darkened as the Moorish legend had told, his eyes became wet with splendor, his hands outstretched to her glory, and he fell to the ground, never to rise again.


    When his eyes closed and his body slackened by death, a single coin fell from his hand, rolled across the sitting room floor, wandered beneath the velvet chaise, circumvented the elaborate rug, and landed at the widow¡¯s feet. One Spanish doubloon, the history of which was explained by the man¡¯s leather ledger.


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    <figure></figure>


    In a rage, the philanthropist pulled the couturi¨¨re by her hair onto the bedroom floor. She screamed, her fingers clawing at the plush red carpets beneath her as he pulled her body toward him. Her eyes, rimmed with kohl, blackened like the eyes of a serpent, were now widened with fear. Her breath, once heaving with passion, fell unevenly, forcing the jewels at her breast to pitch light wildly across the room.


    Tearing the negligee from her skin, the philanthropist turned her body to the floor, pressing her face into the carpets as he took possession of her body from behind, just as someone once took possession of his. A hot tear streaked his cheek as the memory dislodged itself from the darkest recesses of his mind. It assaulted his senses, taking hold of his lungs without his consent and causing bile to rise in his throat.


    He shut his eyes tightly against it, but the memory entered his consciousness unbidden. Flashes of the small room permeated his being. Glimpses of the twin bed. The memory of a child¡¯s young cheek pressed roughly into threadbare sheets. Tears falling from shut eyes as the priest forced his weeping, withered body upon him, his night shirt draping the child¡¯s head like a curtain as though concealing the old man¡¯s sins.


    The philanthropist wiped the tar from his face, shoving the memory from his mind as he attempted to erase the scorn that still dwelt inside him. He was not that child anymore, he reminded himself. He was the keeper of his own destiny. He had conquered this woman¡¯s body and now he would possess her soul.


    Overcome with rage, he desecrated the woman, penetrating her so deeply he thought he might slice her open from within. But he would not stop. He wanted her to remember this moment for the rest of her life, to replay the shame every time she shut her eyes just as he was forced to replay his.


    Scorned by his memories, he grew vengeful, his movements wrathful. He tried to put it out of his mind. To forget the way the priest had pushed him onto the bed, had touched his underside tenderly, longingly, had thrust his own flaccid body upon him, moaning into the child¡¯s neck as he thrust his body inside him, so overcome by decades of dormant pleasure, the remnants of which poured down the child¡¯s thighs in salty streams of semen long ago spoiled by age.


    Trying to forget only made him remember, and the philanthropist¡¯s body grew more aroused, more ecstatic, more consumed by a naivete once ruined, a hate left unpaid for. Betrayed by his own body, he forced himself more violently on the woman beneath him, trying to take from her what had once been taken from him. His eyes welled with tears as he thought about the rector and allowed the memory to rudely arouse him.


    Impassioned by his own decrepit sins, his body at last reached the very pinnacle of pleasure, spilling the remains of his tormented soul upon her, just as the priest had once done to him. Repulsed by his own thoughts, he removed himself from the couturi¨¨re and fell to the floor weeping?¡ª?the couturi¨¨re sobbing silently beside him, her soul tormented by an entirely other hell.


    <figure></figure>


    With each passing day, the philanthropist grew in his anxieties, muttering to himself as he paced in his chambers. There appeared to be no further word concerning the coin, nor of the man who sent it. The widow had suspiciously returned to town and remained secluded within her residence and the convent, the mystery drawing around her as a tempest.


    After the rumors of her m¨¦nag¨¨re¡¯s death, the widow¡¯s reputation had retired to new depths. Where men once reviled her, now they feared her. Where women once gossiped about her, now they remained silent. Where once the widow¡¯s allure and intrigue used to entertain them, now it frightened them. And quite unsettlingly, she frightened the philanthropist too.


    For he could not cease from wondering what information she knew, and what plot she entertained. For it was her slanted handwriting upon the envelope, he worried, and her silver crest that sealed it.


    His mind grew troubled. Far more so than had the widow written the truth out in its entirety. Why did she not unmask him? Why obscure him in her shadow? Why draw him into the depths of her delusions? Perhaps she was ill at mind, he thought. Perhaps she was not well in spirit. No matter which way he turned the widow¡¯s actions over in his mind, he could not find in them any reason, any logic.


    His mind tossed and turned in frightful fits, obsessing over every possible reasoning. If the widow knew of the philanthropist¡¯s past, did the governor too? Would the rest of the town know soon enough? Would they remove him of his wealth, or worse, expose him of his childhood treachery? Would they know of the sins that stained him? That left a blemish on his soul that could not be erased? Why had no further word been said?


    The philanthropist continued in this way for several days until at last he fell into disease. His servants began to fear for him as his hallucinations drew more agitated, his lips humming words like devil, demon, and vampire. they could not decipher from them any meaning except that he was nearing his death, and that his death would not be a very restful one.


    Attempting to separate themselves from the caverns of hell the man must be nearing, the servants brought in turns the bishop, who attempted to exercise him of his demons, and the doctor, whose Francophilian methods we have formerly expressed the ineptitude of. After descending into madness for several days, the philanthropist seemed to settle in some baser inferno where his mutterings took on an even lower pitch, his moaning transforming into something evil and wrathful.


    His servants attempted to reassure him, to lure him back to the world, and they did so by fanning his sweating body with palm leaves and spouting aspects of life he might cling to, if only so that he would not dwell in that charred underworld any longer. Perhaps, one said, if he were to marry, to find a woman who might elevate him in the eyes of his peers, he would be able reach that most pinnacle of satisfaction.


    Seeing that this idea kindled in the philanthropist some interest, this servant hurried to continue. There was a woman newly arrived from Nouvelle France, he said, whose beauty was yet unsurpassed and whose regality could not be denied. Her social standing alone would assure him favor with the king, for her father was a most decorated man. The philanthropist¡¯s delusions turned more sensical then, as his fevered mind grasped some semblance of a scheme.


    Yes, a bride, the philanthropist thought to himself, holding to that branch as though it were the last one on the side of the living before he fell into the abyss of the dead. A bride and her offspring would secure his immense riches should any foe attempt to destroy him. Yes, she would be his security. For they could not ruin him without ruining his bride and his offspring as well.


    A title, and a favor from the king, would ensure his social standing should any retaliatory measures be taken. He would have the fortitude to mark them as libel, as heresy. For how could a man of his good providence ever be guilty of such treasons, especially when accused by those insipid as they.


    They were jealous, he would laugh, as he donated more money to their unfortunate causes. After all, what proof could they have of his past? And what wealth could not overcome it? Even the widow, whose vengeful tactics were indeed well funded, could not do more than frighten a man of his standing.


    When at last he had pulled himself back upon the precipice, recovered enough to remain firmly planted among the living, he called for the young woman¡¯s father, determined that he should rise above this scandal and be considered foolproof against the widow¡¯s advancing plots once more.

 Chapter 21

    For those who desire decadence in their lives, the swamp is a beautiful place to find it. There the reeds and grasses draw up to the land and the water seeps between them. When stepping barefoot into the mire, one can feel the wind gently lulling against the skin, the air so thick it holds one still against it, the mangroves so heavy they weep their branches into it.


    In the swamp, the insects sing a suspended tune, a sound not dissimilar to the call of a canter, their melody echoing into a nave of nature¡¯s making. In that nave, more sinister beings dwell, though they keep to themselves so long as they are left unprovoked. In the stillness, eyes blink above the water, hardly discernible from the mud that permeates around them. These creatures find in the mud the decadence they long for. For in the swamp, the rich earth cakes into the skin, a salve for all that ails it.


    It was to just such a swamp that the m¨¦nag¨¨re turned at night. For while she healed from her illness, she waded out into Bayou St. John, allowing the swamp to seep into the recesses of her skin. With naught but her chemise draping her body, she walked into the waters, wetting the white cloth until it clung to her. She massaged the mud into her arms and down her legs, allowing it to soothe every crevice of her body and every ache in her spirit.


    Sometimes she would sing?¡ª?her voice sweet against the sticky air that heard it, the lurking things listening to her hum?¡ª?others she would undress and lay amidst the reeds to feel the waters lap up against her skin, intimate in its embrace. The water caressed her tenderly as she lay at its edge, her mind longing for the moment it would reach her, touching her gently as it seeped slowly up her thighs, and into her belly button, until at last it languished at her breasts.


    Sometimes, another would join her, he would wade into the waters without his boots, sink his bare feet into that wettened earth and reach his waterlogged fingers toward that saturated woman. The waters would soothe them. There was nothing so serene as the trembling wake that lapped against the skin and the wind that breathed gently upon them.


    The water touched them inside and out, and so did the wind, stirring their bodies with the healing ecstasy of the earth and the sky. Every sensation simmering with the gentle release of a slow boiling pot, the taste of the fresh herbs that drift within it settling upon their senses. Their scent of sweet moss in their nostrils, the taste of jasmine on their lips. Every pore awakened to the feeling of the water. And the wind. And one another.


    The captain touched the m¨¦nag¨¨re where her wounds healed. Where the small marks on her neck remembered the poison that once coursed through it. Once she had appeared at the brink of death, now it appeared death had not touched her at all, and the captain marveled at so intricate a healing. That it could even exist at all was like the origin of life itself, hauntingly mysterious. He shivered as he touched the veins that ran up her arms, their dark course intertwining toward her heart?¡ª?that vessel that kept her alive somehow separate from the power that had kept her from death.


    She saw him wondering. In the waters of the swamp, the captain and the m¨¦nag¨¨re touched one another with the ease of the trees, their movements swaying within the underwater reeds, who dipped their toes into the water, their souls soaring like the birds that flew free from them, floating on the sky in alternating arcs of slowness and speed. The lullaby sung by nature echoed in their minds as their bodies collided, strands of kelps encircling their thighs as they touched one another and were touched in turn by the swamp.


    Even the sound of the leaves mirrored the sighs of their lips. The wind falling from them in moans of mercy as they whispered their secrets with one another, shaking spirits from their hair and loosening their leaves into the waters. The water had a sparkling sound as the dew fell into it, and it glistened with magic. The waves were warmest where they drew near to the sun and their bodies bathed in them, the waters of their love mingling with the waters of the bayou, forming a medicine of the purest kind.


    And yet, as the water held them in her comforting embrace, so too did another¡¯s touch. The captain and the m¨¦nag¨¨re had thought themselves alone and so turned to face the one who¡¯s fingers reached them and there found that hand attached to the most beautiful woman, with long blonde hair spiraling out into the waters in tendrils of seaweed, her corpse pale and perfect, bobbing up from the bowels of the swamp.


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    The child tossed and turned; his mind gripped by nightmare.


    The dreams came unbidden, violent enough to cause his small body to tremble, but not violent enough that those trembles would wake him. Trapped in the artistic leanings of his mind, he peered out the window of his room, seeing the moon hung so brightly above him. It was beautiful, and he looked upon it with awe. Its glow was otherworldly, a halo crowning the night sky. Were it not so bright, he would have been unable to see anything else. But it illuminated the night sky around it and appeared to come alive.


    At first the stars began to bounce, until one by one, their light dimmed and went out. Then the darkness appeared like the waves of an ocean, roiling in their fury, ready to upend any ship that should travel upon them. Indeed, now that the boy looked more closely, there was a ship, sailing upon that night sky toward that light which guided it. It seemed to sail on a cloud more sinister than most?¡ª?its dark waves containing every manner of demons.


    Serpents and sea dragons fell from the ship¡¯s wake, drowning in their own currents as their wasted bodies reached toward that great light. They wailed at the light they could not reach and became blinded by the light they could not see. They fell into whirlpools of despair, the darkness swirling around them as the ship left them to drown. The child watched with growing anxiety as the ship neared the moon. For a moment it appeared to obscure it, but then the moon could be seen once more, and the child drew a steadying breath.


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    The wave upon which the ship sailed grew darker and more threatening, the wind more howling. Serpents squealed with wretched breath as the sails were filled. The ship sped toward the crest of the moon and when it reached it, the light touched the bow, and that¡¯s when child saw him. The phantom stood at the helm, his cloak fluttering in that unruly wind and where the light touched his face the child saw upon it that gruesome gash. The child screamed to warn the moon, but his small voice could not be heard against the giant howling of the wind.


    He watched in horror as the darkness consumed the moon, those demons delighting in their harvest. A shudder drew near him, until at last he knew what he could do. The child jumped from his window, landing in the night sky with a soft splash. He swam against the cloud currents as the serpents writhed within them, scales of silver brushing against his legs as he propelled himself away from them. They continued toward the moon as the child swam among them.


    At last, just as the phantom prepared to strike, the boy took advantage of the one gift he had been given: the knowledge that it was all a dream. He stirred up the depths of the sea, watching the clouds twirl around him in a whirlpool of darkness. One by one, the demons fell into it. Their wails fearful of the darkness into which they would once again descend. At last, the whirlpool grew so large that it swallowed up the entirety of the sea, and with it, the ship upon which the phantom stood. It fell into the abyss and was gone.


    The moon remained bright and beautiful, her light holding the child that saved it on rays of pure gold.


    And then he awoke.


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    The m¨¦nag¨¨re held the child in her arms, the remnants of his dream slipping in through her fingertips. The dream felt visceral and dense, like an oil painting laden with thick swaths of paint. Overcast blacks and blues were painted in menacing tones, each brushstroke betraying the violent proclivities of the artist. Like a storm cloud, the images cast a shadow on the child¡¯s mind, threatening to consume him.


    But the m¨¦nag¨¨re would not allow evil to near him. After he had fallen asleep, but before he could fall back into dreams, the m¨¦nag¨¨re laid the child upon his bed and drifted down the stairs and out into the marsh, a woven basket held tightly in her hands and a linen shawl draped about her shoulders. Her dress was of a muslin fabric, its hem rustling against the reeds. The crickets so loud there was no silence.


    Calling upon her mother, the two sang into that lonesome tune a harmony sung adrift in the swamp, with words that hung opaquely against a silent sky. She gathered fronds and herbs that grew wild. When she returned from the marsh, her dress was wettened at the edges, leaving a trail of mud upon the wooden banquets. The cabaret was lonesome, only a few men talking over digestifs as she slipped past the door unnoticed and continued up the stairs to the widow¡¯s residence above.


    The apartment was dark, the floorboards creaking as she walked upon them. The widow designed the rooms with all the elegance of the plantation, dark portraits watching from the walls, their gilded frames shimmering in the night. Arched cast iron windows adorned with heavy black shutters looked into a courtyard spilling over with ferns, a lone gas lamp casting a wavering glow against the brick. There was no moon that evening, the world having obscured it with its shadow.


    For a moment, the m¨¦nag¨¨re wondered if the phantom stood among those shadows. If he looked upon her face, visible from the candle she held in her hand as he remained concealed amid the ferns. She shuddered to think of the darkened face, touched as it was by the underworld. His tortured mind twisting with the vile appetite of a murderous snake. For a moment she could almost sense the illness of that mind. The lustful craving it had for her mistress. The longing it had to harm her. The blood slipping from his lips in anticipation of his next victim.


    Visions flickered in and out until she could no longer ascertain the reality of them. Turning away from the courtyard, she found the widow standing before her, hardly discernible from the darkness were her dress not of a more luminescent sheen. Yards of skirts cut to the floor in a dramatic figure, strands of pearls cascading from her neck, exposing the gentle whiteness of her skin, so delicate, a kiss marked that neck, blood trailing from it onto the front of her gown.


    The m¨¦nag¨¨re breathed. A bead of sweat slipped between her breasts, the warmth suffocating her as she tried to ascertain the reality of her visions. Then a pair of white hands reached toward her into the darkness. The sweat slid from her breasts into the bodice of her gown as those ghostly hands encircled her, gripping her neck, digging into the place where she had had swallowed the poison until she screamed out in anguish, the vision evaporating before her into the dark.


    She shivered despite the heat?¡ª?the sweat now settling into her dress as a cool breeze fell upon her. She shook herself of her visions, pouring a pitcher of water into a wash basin and using her hands to pat it into her skin before she continued with her task, protecting her home and those whose souls dwelt within it.


    She built a fire in the stove and set a pot to boil, placing within it the water from the swamp, and the fronds and herbs she had found there, adding strong spirits to fortify her intentions. While she waited for the water to tumble, she set a pot of red ink and a piece of parchment upon the table. There she etched her thoughts and prayers onto the page, the ink forming in spiraled threads of Creole and French, a rhythmic blend of words woven from the ones her mother told her, the ones the boy knew from his own mother, and the Catholic prayers of her mistress and her mistress¡¯ lover.


    She placed the parchment in the pot as the water simmered, watching the words to dissolve from the page and into spirits, turning the waters red with the ink.


    Using a wooden spoon, she added eight eggs, allowing them to bathe in the protective waters for a period of minutes until their yolks had hardened and their whites had clotted. When the night left and the dawn drew up behind it, she prepared the eggs with collard greens and served them to the members of the household for breakfast.


    The mistress and her lover were unaware of the evening¡¯s ills, and the child was now free of his dreams. They ate their eggs in silence, without a thought to their preparation, only the slightest hint of red ink discernable amidst their yolks?¡ª?protecting them from a haunting they did not see, but could feel nonetheless.

 Chapter 22

    Sometimes one must collect oneself when the pieces go scattering about.


    Such was S¨¦verine¡¯s intent when she walked to the convent one morning. Free from the stimulations of society, S¨¦verine was able once more to experience the stimulations of her own mind, and they were all too disquieting. Beneath her skin, she felt a mild panic that could not be soothed¡ªa sort of anxious energy coursing through her body. This feeling was not unfamiliar, for S¨¦verine was sensitive in nature and any stimulation, excessive or otherwise could contribute to a greater sense of her unease.


    We are well aware that all who read these words do not experience the world in this way¡ªand we do not fancy ourselves expert in such matters. But perhaps we might, at the very least, explain to the reader that which is felt so strongly by those more empathic in nature.


    That morning S¨¦verine felt something akin to the feeling one gets after a great scare, perhaps a frightening experience or a near brush with death. Such an experience might leave one feeling shaken or disturbed. In fact, it may take a moment, or a great many of them, to regain one''s composure and calm one''s nerves after such an arduous ordeal.


    Though ordinary individuals experience this feeling only on very rare occasions, those who feel the world more deeply do so at a more frequent pace and it can be altogether unsettling. At night, S¨¦verine would lay in her bed with her hands at her chest, clutching her heart as it faltered beneath so strenuous a load. One heart cannot beat for very many, and S¨¦verine¡¯s beat not only for herself, but for all who risked their lives by their very proximity to her.


    One of her greatest fears, and this one she recognized plainly, was not that she would finally face her foes¡ªfor she always knew that would be the case¡ªbut that someone else might face them in her stead. That the child might be found drowned in the river, that her lover might be found at the edge of a dagger. That blood would follow those who loved her, and that produced a great dread within her.


    During the day, such anxieties were eased from her mind. Indeed, she could not have told the reader that she felt them at all, though we can assure the reader with great certainty that they remained on her consciousness if not so plainly at the surface. For the body senses things that the mind cannot, and hers, being more attuned than most, sensed a great number of things simultaneously.


    We know that positive stimulations, such as joy, love, and happiness fill the body, nourishing every organ as a spring nourishes a nearby meadow, so also negative stimulations such as fear, worry, and pain, poison the body as a contaminated spring turns those fields fallow. Overburdened by the toxic tributaries of her mind, S¨¦verine¡¯s body struggled to function optimally. Her heart ceased to beat, her lungs gasped for air. In those moments she thought she might perish from the world altogether, but then her heart would beat once more, her lungs would breathe another breath, and she would live to see another dawn.


    S¨¦verine was no stranger to the trauma that could dwell within a person, submerging itself in that great ocean of the human psyche only to wreak havoc on the ships that dwelt upon its surface. She also knew that she must recognize its symptoms, and to seek for it a cure. To root out the serpents whose ripples were felt at the surface, or at the very lease subdue them before they pulled her and everyone around her into the deep.


    S¨¦verine took a deep, steadying breath into her lungs, then she walked through the convent doors.


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    S¨¦verine hadn¡¯t walked through the gardens in quite some time, and the wild had grown closer since then. Birds chirped madly, flinging themselves from branch to branch above her with reckless abandon. Palm leaves fluttered in their wake and thick ferns hung over the white walls of the convent, draping heavily into the garden in which she stood. The air drew near, holding her in its warm embrace as the sun permeated her being with a deep contentment.


    Here their French proclivities led the sisters to grow a gentler sort of flora, roses of every color, jasmine crawling up the walls, and lavender peering out from blossoming trees. But the native environment was more brash than those fragile creatures from across the sea and they would not be outdone by such dainty figures. They blossomed wildly, their tropical fronds pouring in every direction, creating an exotic perfume that was both wild and tame, native and foreign.


    The air felt purer here and S¨¦verine found she could breathe it into her lungs more deeply, allowing her thoughts to flow unbidden as a stream might tumble over a tumultuous riverbed. She did not give attention to any particular thought, but merely allowed them to flow, recognizing the overall direction of them and seeing how very stupidly they bent toward her own inequities. They told her that she spoke her mind too clearly. That she disregarded social custom too easily. That she followed her own mind too detrimentally. And then, perhaps most painfully, that those she loved might come to know those faults and discontinue kinship with her.


    Tortured by the weight of every improper thing she might have said or done, she found herself dwelling in her own failures and consumed with the fear that others might know of them. Perhaps the child could never love another mother apart from his own, she thought. Perhaps the m¨¦nag¨¨re was never really her friend, but merely her employee. Perhaps the captain was not her benefactor, but a pirate using her for her position and rank. Perhaps the man she loved only loved her in the way that all Frenchmen loved women: for their wealth and piety.


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    The anxiety, the panic, the self-flagellation¡ªit was not so simple as she had supposed. It was not that the family she had built for herself might one leave her, but that they might choose to. There, at the very bottom of her being, in the place toward which every underground thought flowed, lay her deepest, darkest fear: the plain and simple fear of not being loved, and the even darker fear of being left alone for it.


    She had been alone before with nothing but the darkness to console her, but that life had not mattered. She could have been swallowed up by the world, were it not for the light that Providence kept enshrined about her, leading her from the darkness as a prisoner led from his dungeonous cell. But then she had found this community. One that made her life richer, fuller, solely by their presence in it. And that made her every misdeed all the more offensable, for there was so much more to lose.


    S¨¦verine allowed herself that deleterious moment. To dwell in the darkest thoughts of her soul. The ones that told her she would never be enough. That she was not good¡ªnot as a friend, not as a mother, not as a lover. That all would pass away and perhaps it was for the best.


    The darkness works in that way. In a weak moment, when the mind is tired and the faculties exhausted, a dark thought can more easily slip between the mind¡¯s fortifications, and there spiral those thoughts in a downward direction. It is a rather unpleasant feeling, and one not easily remedied. But as her mind wandered through the twisted pathways of fear, like the snake that once plagued the earliest of gardens, she at last recognized it for what it was and stomped it beneath her feet.


    Determined to change her mind¡¯s course, she took a deep breath of that warm summer air, intoxicating as it was, and built a levee in her mind that might reroute those languid waters, purifying them as freshwater does when added to a marsh. Those fresh thoughts were much lighter in continence, like the scent of a rose against the wild chatter of the jungle. She was good, she thought. She was alive. She was free.


    For a while, she lay down on a white marble bench, its touch cool against her skin, and allowed the wild to close in on her. Leaves fell onto her skirts as they twirled from the trees, butterflies fluttered against her cheeks, insects crawled over her toes where they touched the wild earth. For a moment she thought she might die happily in that embrace, as though the gardens might grow in around her, and she might be lost in their vines forevermore.


    Words drifted through her mind. L''¨¦ternel est mon berger, they said. The lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.


    She felt that Presence hover over her once more and she felt His peace within her. It was a relief, that though she lost her religion, she did not lose that which was most beautiful about it. Her body relaxed as she closed her eyes and returned to her field of wildflowers, where her Lord could meet her once more, and kiss her eyelashes gently as she slept. Beloved in her Creator¡¯s embrace.


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    When she awoke, S¨¦verine found that the second of the three Maries had discovered her and was sitting on the bench beside her, brushing S¨¦verine¡¯s hair with her fingertips. Beneath the veil of mourning and the veil of consecration, they were but two women who had once been French girls swept up in the arms of Revolution.


    They spoke of simpler times. Of baguettes with beurre blanc. Of oyster shells rich with treasures, fresh from the sea in the wintertime. How the sea had soothed their countenances, how it had flowed over their toes and brought curls to their hair. Those times were far away from both women, before the years of had turned them away from such things and placed roles and responsibility upon them. Life was so simple then, and yet had become so complicated now.


    The second of Maries, we must introduce to the reader as a romantic. In another life, she¡¯d fallen in love with a Provincial farmer and been forbidden to marry him for her nobility. When she was found to be pregnant with his child, her parents sent her away to a convent where her sins might be concealed. But the convent at Saint-Denis proved more curative than her parents anticipated. She grew to cherish the companionship of her sisters, and they clasped her hands tightly in theirs as she gave birth to a most beautiful baby girl.


    Marie wept when she handed the child to a farmer and his wife, a couple that could have been her and her lover, if she had lived in another time and another place. When the bleeding stopped, she decided her mourning was over. She did not answer her parents¡¯ pleas to return and instead stayed in the convent where the Lord had preserved her and created a life for her.


    In this small rebellion she found herself among a community of women who were free from the shackles of society. How wild an adventure they had been swept up in then, and who could have foreseen where it would end. Here she and her sisters were an entire continent away, and an entire lifetime. They swatted insects away from their faces and laughed at the absurdity of it. They were in God¡¯s country now, and the civilization hardly accomplished at taming it.


    S¨¦verine smiled at her friend and felt happy in her embrace. Together they held hands and meandered through the gardens¡ªsweet nothings spilling from their lips as they walked. Nothing could be said for the future, they thought, but the present was always available to them. The sound of a friend¡¯s voice is more comforting than the sound of one¡¯s own mind, and they spent the afternoon bathing in one another¡¯s words.


    When at last the dusk began to settle, and the roses drew into themselves once more, the second Marie, hesitant to speak fear into the calm, at last whispered to her friend: ¡°If only the other Marie could feel so happy as this,¡± she said demurely. ¡°It appears she has grown quite restless with scrubbing floors, when she knows a greater adventure exists out of doors.¡±

 Chapter 23

    In the northeast corner of town, tucked behind le Couvent des Ursulines, an old woman sat on her stoop, her skin darkened by her ancestors and hardened by her memories. She wore her hair in a turban, a richly colored dress hanging from her shoulders. Her fingers were callused from years of hard labor, her bare feet dusted with red clay. Dried tobacco leaves hung smoking from her lips, each exhalation potent with fragrant earth.


    Without turning her head, her eyes watched as a white woman walked by¡ªa ghost amidst the living. The woman was dressed in black, her dark veil obscuring her pale face.


    Songs followed where the woman walked, drifting from one kitchen to another, sung like spells by those preparing their evening meals. Metal spoons clanked against cast iron pots, the fires infusing the warm summer air with a smoky bouquet. Somewhere there was the sound of a fiddle strumming the kind of tune that can only be found in the South. It was something lost from a past life but found in this new one. Passersby knew the words, singing the song beneath their breath as they walked by, greeting one another in the street as friends do.


    They laughed with the easy mirth of a Sunday afternoon, freshly returned from Church and now attending to their afternoon leisure. Some sat smoking in rocking chairs, some shined their shoes. Men played cards on wooden stoops and women pinned freshly cleaned sheets to the clothing lines that were strung between houses. Children played games in the streets and emptied dirty bedpans in alleys.


    The widow walked among them, navigating the boulevard with the memory of one who had been there before. The old woman watched from her stoop as a slight stiffening occurred in her wake. Men tipped their hats as she passed and women curtseyed, all of them adjusting their mannerisms from the joviality enjoyed among kin, to the formality reserved for their employers.


    Where the silence brewed behind her, the evening turned gently to dusk, until at last the veiled woman slipped through an open door, out of sight of the old woman on the stoop, and into the home of the cooper.


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    The cooper was a man of some thirty years, whose occupation it was to make barrels for the city¡¯s thriving import and export business and who, in his spare time commanded the free Black militia, a battalion of some two hundred men.


    The militia was the pinnacle of respectability, with uniforms that were impeccably creased and guns that were polished as silver. Every month they mustered at Place d¡¯Armes, their role calls flawless, their formations perfected, and their marksmanship precise. They were men of a higher order, a class built not by economic station but by the integrity of their being, and the commander was the master of all of these, holding himself to the highest standard and commanding the utmost respect.


    As a child, the commander was enslaved on a sugar plantation, but alas, it was his father¡¯s belt that left the most tremulous scar. The welt left behind was of an emotional sort, handed down to him by a father who was beaten by his father who was beaten by his father, a weakness that now condemned him to endure the legacy of slavery until one evening, after he had been whipped within an inch of his life, his father was found drowned in a barrel of cane syrup, his drunkenness blamed for his most unfortunate condition.


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    The commander spent every day since in direct opposition to that life. He saved his money, he purchased his freedom, he started his own company, he volunteered his time to the militia. His body became forged into thick cords of muscle and his mind hammered into the most impregnable steel. He spent every day in the pursuit of self-mastery, strengthening his body and mind against the perils of his youth and the realities of his present.


    Indeed, when the widow entered his shop that evening, it was a most formidable man she met. Steam billowed from wooden casks and every iron implement of the commander¡¯s craft hung on the brick wall behind him. It was an artillery of the most primitive order, and he their most expert wielder. He wore no shirt at his breast, and his skin gleamed with the sweat of hard labor. His hands worked a plank of steamed oak, bending the wood to his will as he secured it with metal fittings.


    He seemed, to the widow, the rock against which every wave will break and he stood when she entered his shop, polishing some metal tool on his breeches as he held her eyes with a most deserved scorn. For a moment, it appeared as though he might not let her enter his home, and then, without saying a word, he stepped aside, watching her pass so the widow might meet with his wife.


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    S¨¦verine stepped into the courtyard where she found an open hearth, okra and collard greens bubbling in a rich tomato roux as the rusted pot infused its brew with the coppery twinge of dried blood.


    A woman stirred slowly with a wooden spoon, a low melody drifting from her lips, a memory of the more pungent one sung outdoors. ¡°The devil am a liar and conjurer too,¡± she sang. ¡°If you don¡¯t look out, he¡¯ll cut you in two.¡±


    Her body swayed, her chemise falling from her shoulders as it drifted idly about her. Her feet were bare and earthen, her hair wildling away from her in reckless abandon. Heavy gold jewelry hung from her ears and draped from her neck, and a bangled wrist rested on her stomach, now six months round with child. ¡°I¡¯m cooking him nice and slow,¡± she said as the widow approached. ¡°With all the fixings of a fine stew.¡±


    ¡°Then he¡¯ll turn out just like his maman,¡± S¨¦verine answered.


    The couturi¨¨re turned to face her. There was a darkness about her, and yet also a strength¡ªas though she¡¯d been stirred into the shadows and yet sweetened by them. Her eyes appeared darkened, the creases around them deepened. She did not appear older, only longer brewed, like the blackstrap molasses that fortifies a dark rye, a raw understanding of a world now fermented and stewed, aged and baked.


    Hatred is the irksome shadow lurking beneath anything the light touches. Indeed, hatred is the most infectious of diseases for it is most difficult to be touched by it without hating in return. In this way it spreads¡ªone person hating another, one family hating another, one city hating another, until the fissures of hate have separated community from community for generations on end¡ªwith no reason for their hate except that they descended from it.


    A solemn silence slipped between them. A wary tension between two women, two communities. A rift between humanity that might never be healed, that might remain torn apart as the earth does where the gods break it, and yet, for all the chasm that existed between them, there also existed a child. Who knew nothing of the chasm and yet would exist within it.


    Crafted from both molasses and buttermilk, from Caribbean spices and Spanish, with the blood memory of his mother¡¯s people and the blood memory of his father¡¯s, he would be baked into a tender young baby, and born a Creole tried and true.


    ¡°You do not have to work for me again,¡± the widow said at last as the smoke from the fire consumed her. ¡°I will pay you severance for your service.¡±


    ¡°No,¡± the couturi¨¨re answered firmly. Lifting her lashes to look squarely at her employer. ¡°I will work. I will make a better world for my son.¡±

 Chapter 24

    On the most perfect day, five young women took in a picnic luncheon near the bayou¡¯s edge. They had gone to extraordinary measures to plan such an outing and their cooks had prepared the most insatiable meal. There were oysters freshly shucked, the most delicate mignonette, cheeses wrapped in crisp paper, and freshly baked baguettes.


    Mlle. G¡ª brought baskets overflowing with peonies from her garden, the very scent of them herbaceous against such a softly gusting afternoon. Mlle. L¡ª provided chilled champagnes from her cellar, the taste of them sweet as a lilac blossom. Mlle. D¡ª had her cook prepare tiny cakes to accompany them, a small rosette adorning each one. And Mlle. A¡ª brought honeycomb for scraping onto their crusts.


    Their attire was most decadent, each of them outfitted as though they were to attend a ball later that evening. One lady wore a gown of pink satin, French lace tied at the sleeves and d¨¦collet¨¦ and a ribbon about her waist. Another wore tulle, which floated around her in soft clouds of blush. Mlle. D¡ª wore a gown of damask, woven with strands of gold so that it highlighted her fair features. And Mlle. A¡ª wore a gown of aquamarine, the silk clinging to the light as though her gown were the very waves of the ocean, shimmering in the sun.


    None wore jewelry save the debutante, whose fine necklace would have been a true rarity at the time of our story, much as it would be today. Four hundred diamonds were set into an elaborate collar that dripped delicately into her fine porcelain breast. Her dress was cut to accentuate it, it¡¯s color the most opalescent shade of pearl. Layered skirts formed plumes of taffeta around her as she sat among her friends, the focus of their affections, yet she all too humble to accept them.


    She was not used to such admiration, she told them, her eyelashes lowered demurely, but she was grateful for it all the same. The debutante was newly arrived to la Nouvelle-Orl¨¦ans, it was told, though her disposition quickly occasioned her to be favored by many. She was as sweet as a sister in the convent, as beautiful as a swan on a most serene lake, and as graceful as a ballerina who had only to courtesy to capture the crowd¡¯s affections.


    For all her amiable qualities, she was also the most complimentary toward her friends, treating them as cherished keepsakes, and bringing them small tokens of her fondness whenever they met for tea. She always saw in her friends their most perfect attributes, and they adored her for it, fawning over her like sprites who watched over a babe left amidst a tender wood.


    News quickly spread of the young debutante¡¯s arrival. Her father was a naval officer from la Nouvelle France, it was told. He was a most respectable man, an aristocrat of the highest order, and a decorated war hero for the many battles he there fought against the natives to the north. He was appointed by the governor to oversee his more tenuous territory, and his company was soon sought by every eligible aristocrat about town.


    But despite his graying temples, his most distinguished facade, and his impeccable wit, his daughter quickly became his most prized asset. She was only one week into her tenure when she was courted by one most persistent in his aims. The philanthropist met with her father shortly after her arrival and made clear his intentions to marry her.


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    The debutante¡¯s father could hardly be blamed for such an ill-suited match. Though his daughter was less than half the age of her beau, the philanthropist seemed a most admirable suitor. He was wealthy beyond measure and could thus provide a most adequate life for his daughter. And he was most charitable with his alms, giving with bounty to the rebuilding of the church, the hospital, and the cabildo.


    A finer specimen could not be found, her father must have thought, and she most easily acquiesced to her father¡¯s wishes. The luncheon had thus assembled to celebrate that young woman, who would soon wed the most eligible man in all of la Nouvelle-Orl¨¦ans, who would be outfitted in the finest of gowns, put up in the most elegant home, and blessed with a most winsome fortune. Any child of her issue would be the inheritor of great wealth and she would live most luxuriously for the remainder of her days.


    If they did not love her so, her companions would have been envious of her great fortune. But she did not lavish the affections put upon her and instead showered them upon her friends, grateful as she was to them for their patronage and for planning such an eloquent party to celebrate her great joy.


    The women ate oysters with tiny golden forks and drank champagne that tipped merrily from their coups. Indeed, they whiled the afternoon away with such gaiety that they slowly became drunk from their indulgence. They lay in the lawn, their fingers entwined, ballgowns drifting around them in billowing tufts of opalescence. The water lapped softly at their feet, their stockings long ago discarded by the bayou. They watched the clouds, and laughed at their folly, and dreamed of a day that could not be more perfect than that one.


    And while they ate and drank, they made wreaths from the roses, put them in crowns upon their heads, and spoke romantically of the future¡ªof the marriage that was about to take place and the ball that would accompany so beautiful a day. It would be held in the yet unfinished cathedral, the open ceiling draped with so many boughs of laurel it would appear a grand hall¡ªa banquet from some faraway kingdom, a fairytale castle tucked away in the clouds and unspoiled by the misery that dwelt so far beneath it.


    Of the marriage bed, however, the young girl was hesitant. She had not yet been with a man and had no mother to explain the intimacies of it. She could only hope he was a most modest gentleman, she told her friends, he looking into her eyes and taking her gently as a peacock flume to the skin. Her ladies assured her it would be so as no finer gentleman could be found. He was generous, they told her, and most caring for the poor. She would be as a babe in his arms they said, and cherished as she was by Divine Providence.


    The debutante nodded solemnly, her eyes betraying some hesitation, or perhaps some fear. But then, all women had some fear of the marital bedroom, especially in those days, and her ladies understood all too well the mystery of their future husbands¡¯ sexual proclivities. They looked up at the sky as the clouds drifted by, wondering at their futures as they ate cake with their fingertips, the frosting sticking to their fingers as they laughed happily at their fates.


    Come what may, the time would come to return to their homes. To place stockings on wettened toes and sweep sweet crumbs away into baskets, the afternoon spirited away to the place where other such afternoons go, lost and lovely in the corners of our memories. But the debutante would never forget such kindness in her heart, and the happiness that came from having such women about her.

 Chapter 25

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    In those days, the most savant thing one could do, was attend a salon in the home of some grande dame or other, and this particular salon was hosted by the Veuve St. Vincent. Not a single calling card from that woman went unanswered, so lustful were their recipients of being granted access to her most secretive lair¡ªand they were certainly not disappointed by her ornamental aesthetic.


    The black brocade walls were adorned with green embroidered silk curtains, and the most decadent chandelier glowed with the light of a hundred candles sending a scattering of jeweled light about the room. They sat in blue velvet chairs, overlooking a most overgrown courtyard, their gloved hands holding coups of champagne and aged cheeses marbled to antiquity, as the jungle tipped into the windowpanes from below.


    Hand painted playing cards sat upon small marble tables, as well as gold gilded decks they could not recognize. A clock with hands of emerald ticked silently against its face of pearl. Butterflies were trapped in crystal decanters, from which the servants poured the most beautiful libations. Guests held green silk napkins in their laps and ate food so beautiful it was as though they were eating jewels with forks of gold.


    Small drizzles of tobacco smoke warmed the air with a most delicious scent, while unlabeled bottles of orange liqueur sloshed merrily into their glasses, and yet the widow was the most exquisite portrait among them. Draped in blue velvet, the most astonishing shade they had yet to see slip from beneath her layers of black outerwear, there were a string of sapphires wrapped about her waist and layers of amber agate around her neck. Her dark hair was brushed delicately into pearl combs and her lips were like rubies¡ªher eyes kindling blue as though they were far away oceans crashing against tepid glass.


    Their host welcomed each guest with a small kiss on both cheeks, but did not propose a toast, nor venture a topic of discussion. She merely sipped her glass of red wine and wandered about the room. At first, they spoke of art and leisure, of poetry and song, of the benefits of youth and the benefits of age, but their minds could not keep from the topic most salient upon their minds.


    Their recourse turned to the revolution¡ªfirst the Saint Domingue one, and then the French one¡ªand they devolved into a debate about the sentiments that created them. The two guests most inclined toward that topic were none other than the governor and the philanthropist, each attempting to outwit the other¡ªtheir verbal sparring coated with envy and greed as onlookers hesitated to watch.


    ¡°How ironic,¡± the philanthropist spat, ¡°that a Frenchman should be responsible for keeping the revolution out of Spain.¡±


    ¡°And yet,¡± the governor countered, ¡°it is only the very richest members of society, that the French take to their guillotine.¡±


    Their threats hovered in the salon as a smoke, garnishing the room like a twist of orange. Just then, a letter arrived for the governor and was served up to him by his servant on a silver platter.


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    The governor excused himself to an adjoining room where he settled himself in an armchair at the widow¡¯s writing desk. Tourmaline rimmed glasses sat upon parched letters, purple ink spiraling out beneath them, and black feather quills tilted against an aquamarine vase. He pondered those curiosities for a moment, then broke the wax seal, and read the letter to himself. It read as follows:


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    Dear sir,


    I write to you with the most remarkable tale. For it was only a fortnight ago that my son and I decamped at the Noxubee River to take in our evening meal. We disposed of a campfire, for we had heard talk of the tension that lived in that area. Even some of the natives who we had come across had warned us not to travel by this route, though we, imagining ourselves under the protection of Divine Providence, took no heed of these warnings and continued our way into the wood.


    We had furs to deliver and would not be dissuaded from our task by tales of disagreement. We thought ourselves above any wordplay and haughty enough that we would be able to make a case for our encampment. Alas, it was only one day into our journey that we discovered ourselves at the mercy of misfortune. For as we approached that river, furs in hand, we heard the screams of some hundred men, attacking their brethren on the other side of it. Unsure as to what massacre was occurring, we took measures to hide ourselves along the bank of the river.


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    There appeared to be some court, whereupon two tribes had competed for several months. I had heard tales of such sport on my travels before¡ªand well, it appears that the result of that match was disagreeable to the side who lost it. They devolved into battle and fought ruthlessly until the sun fell down from the sky, setting into motion a most merciless slaughter.


    My son and I watched with great apprehension, until my son was discovered hidden in a thicket. I attempted to scream out but was silenced by my son¡¯s pleading eyes. I could do nothing but watch as he was hung from the trees, the natives knawing at his fingers and toes with their teeth and smoking bits of his fingers in their pipes.


    It was so gruesome to behold, my eyes spill tears upon this page as I remember it, and yet I could do nothing to remove myself from seeing it, so fearful was I of being discovered within those banks. Even now my guilt does not cease to torment me for my errs and I pray Providence to take pity on my most anguished soul.


    I held my lungs still, and said my most fervent prayers, but fortune seemed fit to spare us by the dawning of the moon. I watched with great apprehension and stayed within my hiding spot until every native had removed themselves from the spot, some five hundred men left to sleep forever at that river.


    I removed my son from that shadowed tree so that I might bury him in the ground, and we left under the cover of night, spared by Divine Providence to tell of this great story.


    This is my full account of all that occurred at the Noxubee River, on this day of November, the year of our lord 1792.


    With great sorrow and affection.


    Your loyal servant,


    M. D¡ª


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    The widow stood in the doorframe, watching the apprehension pass through the governors most expressive features. His brown hair was neatly combed, his navy blazer embroidered with gold stitching, a watch fob and seal attached to his waistcoat, and Parma Violets in his buttonhole¡ªand all these small attempts at grandeur belied a much larger insecurity. He was a French man in a Spanish world, and a pauper playing among the princes.


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    The crone¡¯s hands, old and weathered, ran through the waters now red by her sons¡¯ blood. The sun made clear what her sons could never see¡ªthat as they fought between each other, the Spanish made to take that which was on their left, and the Americans made to take that which was on their right.


    In many years, she had seen many things. Her people made Catholic, married to merchants, housed in brick buildings. But her memory could not be taken from her, and it remembered women dying strips of cane, their fingers pink as the sunset as they wove them into baskets. Open hearths that sent sparks of gold through corn the color of the mountains. Thatched roofs had once let in the warmth of the sky and the sparkle of the stars. The trees that grew tall around them and whose branches broke at night when the people of the woods saw fit to torment them.


    And then they grew¡ªin intelligence and ignorance. They sold to the white men the baskets they braided with their hands and the husks of corn they harvested with their brow, and in return they received from them weapons and liquors. Their fingers turned cold from the guns as they held them, and their throats burned with fire from the whiskeys as they drank them. And they could not see, though they could at least suspect, the reason they were given beastly things.


    The weapons that were made to be used against the Americans or the Spanish were turned on one another. Their fathers, who chased after the sun to see where it went, sired sons who were kept from going so far¡ªthe secrets of the sun secured only by those who made claim to its sleeping place. They fought for the land they had left, the banks upon which the woman sat, the cool waters from another part of the world now drifting through her fingertips.


    The old woman had watched as the sons turned sour, tormented by the spirit whose name she would not speak. Their thoughts flooded with fear, their cheeks flushed with want, and for those attributes they were overcome by the one most skilled at thwarting them. The one whose shadows could be seen chasing them, and yet could never catch them until the hour of their death.


    The shadows had small beady eyes and long, pointed ears. They slid on their stomachs like snakes and screeched from the trees like owls. At first, they stalked the children, attempting to corrupt those innocent minds, but then they turned to their elders. They crept into their minds and made a feast of their souls. The old woman knew her sons had succumbed to such beings, for they had gone to battle like men and then died like babes, their shadows released from their corpses at last to wander the land as ghosts forevermore.


    She heard their whispering as their blood sifted through her fingertips like gold. She heard their moaning as they saw clearly the ground from the trees. The branches clattered against each other with the sound of a thousand spears and the wind howled about them with the sorrows of a thousand deaths. Two large birds tumbled above them in a bloody brawl, squawking through the silence, as they wept the blood of their wounds upon the ground.


    In the aftermath of that calamity, when the winds had calmed and the rustling of the river could be heard once more, the old woman heard a small ticking. She followed that sound to the place where the young man had died the night before and there discovered among a scatting of his fingers and toes, something the reader might recognize as a pocket watch.


    She held in her hands that small token and watched with wonder as the hands turned slowly within it, then she put the glass to her ear and heard the beating of that young man¡¯s heart, wondering whether his spirit now lived inside that small gold vessel and whether he would haunt her sons for the remainder of their days.

 Chapter 26

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    We wonder if there has ever been a moment when the reader has noticed something rather peculiar¡ªa person standing quite near, perhaps, or a hand placed upon a shoulder¡ªonly to realize in the next moment that nothing was there. That, by some trick of the imagination, the reader was startled into thinking someone else was with them, when on second glance, no one was.


    These occurrences happen to all of us, and yet, despite their regularity, we bat them away, convinced that what we see with our eyes is more reliable than what we see with our minds. Like the moment just after one wakes from a dream, we quickly shake the visions from our heads, believing them the imaginings of an overactive mind, our five senses providing the only information that can be trusted.


    And yet, there is another sense¡ªone that cannot be seen and touched and felt and tasted, and yet for all those things cannot be explained. Do we not feel a loved one¡¯s touch on our cheeks after they have left us? Do we not have a premonition that something will occur before it does? Do we not live moments that we have clearly lived before? And do we not deny ourselves those mysteries all the same? A wishful thought, we think. A coincidence. D¨¦j¨¤ vu.


    The abbess, though she once did much the same, could no longer afford such thinking. Her eyes were aged and weathered and ceased to be as useful as they once were, but though she had become quite blind by all literal connotations of the word, by another she was able to see more clearly than she had since she was a child¡ªthat being, of course, when all of us see most clearly.


    As children we are not encumbered by the sensibilities of adults. We are not expected to look at the unexplained and attempt to explain it. The abbess was no exception. Her father passed away when she was young and so she had grown up with her mother and her grandmother, a small trilogy of women who had been forced to live without the rationalities of a father but all the mysticalities of a mother. In this way, their rural lives were imbibed with a certain magic. An inherent belief that life was so much more than could be seen with the eyes and that, in fact, it could only be felt¡ªlike the breath of the wind.


    Tucked away in a small corner of France, they lived in a Provencal house amidst the hills, where vines grew up the walls and flowers blossomed around them. Every day, the women followed a stone path out to the grotto, a patch of wild roses that grew amidst the caves where the girl¡¯s father had been buried. They prayed the rosary before his tomb and crossed themselves in his memory, and then they shared a picnic lunch amidst the thorns, talking with the young abbess¡¯ father as though he were a party to it all.


    They were poor but they were happy, and though the girl¡¯s father could no longer provide for them the blessings of an income, he always remained in their hearts, providing the three with every happiness they could need to be nourished and sustained. He spoke to them with the spring rains, told them he loved them with the summer sun, and held them in his arms with the taste of wild raspberries on their tongues.


    He blessed them with a garden and helped them harvest the lot into their aprons, and when the summer¡¯s bounty became overflowing with fruit, he helped them preserve it in jars of glass, each one sealed with a kiss and a prayer so that it might sustain them during the long winter months. In the winter he helped them build fires that billowed plumes of smoke into the chilled air and he tucked them into wool blankets where they drank red wine seasoned with pomegranate seeds¡ªsmall tokens of his affection adrift in their glasses.


    One day, when the girl was seven years of age, she sat before her father¡¯s tomb alone, a tear streaming down her face that she might never again be held in his embrace¡ªat least not in the way she once had. Just as she spoke his name out loud, telling him a story of how greatly she missed him, she looked up from her tears and was startled to discover a woman picking roses from the briars before her.


    ¡°Mon dieu,¡± the young girl cried as she stood, frightened that the woman might be stealing her father¡¯s roses.


    The woman turned to face the girl. She was striking, her black gown more devastatingly beautiful than the girl had ever seen worn at the parish church. Above her head, the sun shone so brightly that the girl had to squint her eyes shut to protect them from the light. Indeed, the girl could not make out the woman¡¯s face for the light that bathed her so gloriously in its most heavenly rays.


    ¡°Pardonne-moi,¡± the woman said, kneeling so that the girl might at last see her face. Her veil was lifted, her skin pale and ethereal, and the girl could see that the woman was in mourning, her eyes weeping tears that fell from her cheeks and into her prayerful hands. They looked to the girl like small rivers¡ªas though the woman had sprung them into being, creating waters so deep they might one day reach the ocean, sweeping the rest of her sorrows out to the sea.


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    Her son had died, the woman explained, and she had seen those beautiful roses and only thought they would be perfect to place upon his grave. A rose for each of his hands, she had thought, and one for each of his feet so that he might be planted within the earth as a flower, his body becoming roots that would grow strong in the soil and his blood the life-giving waters that nourished it.


    So taken was the girl with this story, this dream, that she might one day fall into the earth as one falls into a bed of flowers, that she gave the woman every flower in the grotto so that the woman¡¯s son might sleep as a fairy does nestled in a wood, the most cherished babe to bless the earth.


    ¡°Merci,¡± the woman replied for the blessing, her tears shimmering from her cheeks as rivers did when they dried, sparkling from her skin like gold. ¡°Please, take my veil for my gratitude.¡±


    When the woman left, the young girl held the veil in her hands, and wondered how the woman came to be present in a grotto so far from the nearest road. Then she wondered what funeral she would attend, when she had not heard a bell from the parish church that day. As she stood in the grotto, pondering these mysteries in her heart, the sun touched her face just so and she felt as though a memory had suddenly occurred to her, dislodged from the place in their hearts that only small children can access.


    The apparition stayed with the girl all her life, though her memory of it changed as she grew. By the time she had become a fine young woman, blessed with all the graces of her mother and her grandmother, she could no longer ascertain whether the woman had even been real in the first place, or whether she had only been imagined. All proof of the occasion was lost¡ªshe must have misplaced the veil in her youth, never to find it again, if she ever held it at all.


    No matter what had occurred on that day, the girl knew it was meant for her to be a sign. Divine Providence wanted her to take the veil. Her mother requested only that she take some time for introspection before making so permanent a decision, though the girl knew her mother really hoped she might meet a man and discover the kind of love her mother had enjoyed with her father.


    The girl did come to find those things, but in the arms of her Savior. She spoke to Him with great passion, wrote Him letters in her journal every evening, heard his voice in every sentence spoken to her, until at last, the magic of her youth was lost. When she could no longer find His name on the wind, His breath on her cheek, His voice in the dark, she turned where most adults do: to theology¡ªto finding proof that her childhood whims were more than the fancies of a child, but the eternal truth of a great Spirit. She studied the scriptures and the liturgy, said the prayers and the hours, took her vows.


    Alas, that had been a restless existence. By the time she had reached old age, the abbess had grown tired of her studies¡ªof trying so hard to believe. In truth, she tired of searching the scriptures for something she always knew in her heart. It was a blessing to her when, at last, in her old age, her senses started to decline and she was able to once more see the Divine without attempting to make sense of it. To once again feel the touch of her Savior¡¯s hand upon her cheek.


    At last, she was able to enjoy the Bridegroom she had long ago married in her heart¡ªHis lips tender upon her forehead, His fingers caressing her hair as she slept. In her waking life, she felt His hand in hers as she walked through the convent and His arms encircled about her waist when she knelt in the chapel. During mass, she would lean her head upon His shoulder, and when she took His body in her mouth during the eucharist, she did so with a lover¡¯s touch. Savoring the taste of Him with perfect happiness.


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    One day, when she was leaving the chapel, the abbess felt the Lord¡¯s touch at her arm and stopped in front of the orphans¡¯ classroom. At first glance, she thought she saw the woman from the grotto. But then in the next moment her face was transfigured, and the abbess saw it was only the widow, a sunbeam fallen across her face as she held a small child in her arms.


    She rocked the babe gently, her black veil falling from her hair. The elaborate bun at the nape of her neck was pinned with pearls and her neck adorned with most perfectly cut ruby, suspended between her collar bones as though it had been made for her neck alone. Her gown was astonishing, of red velvet that held her closely as though she were the gown¡¯s most beloved person to adorn. Pearls drew around her waist and encircled her bodice.


    The way she held her fingers, just so, was as a painting, stunning for its elaborate detail. The graceful way she held her arms, the adoration that could be seen in her face as she looked upon the child. The babe smiled as all babies do, wiggling within the white silk that cocooned him, draping elegantly to the floor in a most beautiful array of light. It was as though she had been placed that way, with her gown dripping to the floor and the child placed in her arms so as not to disturb it, the perfect portrait of love and affection.


    The abbess was made ecstatic by the image¡ªfor it appeared to her a living portrait of the woman she had once met in the grotto. After a long moment of reflection, the abbess suddenly felt that something was amiss¡ªthat the Lord was signaling to her once again.


    Quitting herself of the classroom, the abbess walked to the third Marie¡¯s cell. It was too dark to be seen with her eyes and so she traced her fingers along the desk, across her dresser, and into the folds of her bed. There was not a relic left of Marie¡¯s presence in the convent, save her veil atop the ruffled sheets¡ªa veil much more intricate than those typically worn by the order, and one the abbess believed she had seen once before.


    In the darkness of the night, the abbess wondered where the third of the Maries had gone, and for what cause her Lord had led her to such a discovery.

 Chapter 27

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    The mercenary stepped into the residence where he was met with the most discerning silence, the kind left behind once an intruder has left. At first there was only the sound of his breath, the step of his shoe, the rustling of his cloak, and then there was a feeling to it. A creeping sensation that bled into his skin, just as the sound of a cello stirs cloyingly into one¡¯s bones.


    The strike of a match did nothing to abate it, save light the candle in his hand and illuminate a room that was not quite as he left it. Nothing was moved, and yet nothing remained as it was. There was a lingering sense that someone else had been present, had touched a finger to the brocade walls, had left an indentation on the velvet furniture, had read the widow¡¯s letters at her desk, had smelled the scent of her perfume.


    And then, there was a drip¡ªa soft padding of condensation upon his shoulder. As he held the candle before him the darkness receded as a curtain to reveal a most troublesome tableau. Above the mantle, black with mourning, the Virgin Mother was now obscured with red. Thick blood dripped demurely down her face, seeped down her gold frame, and fell onto the hearth where it pooled in vibrant shades of crimson before cascading in rivulets to the floor.


    There was another drip, and with it the sensation of an over rosined bow screeching across cello strings, plucking the sanity from one¡¯s chest. The mercenary turned his gaze upward as another drip touched his face. He felt the blood at his cheek as his eyes rested on the chandelier, a constellation of candles now dripping with blood.


    At first, he thought he witnessed a crow perched amidst the chandelier, its tiny feet scratching at the brass, its beak pecking at some matter unknown. But just as quickly as his eyes had seen it, it was gone¡ªa flicker of imagination perhaps, a play of light. His mind attempted to rationalize away the image, to find some reason for its entry into his thoughts. Alas, that reason was dissipated by disquietude.


    Perhaps it was some danger left behind by whatever malice occupied the room moments ago. A reminder that the widow was not safe, that her aliveness was in contention. Perhaps, she was the victim of that avarice already, the mercenary thought darkly, taken by the birds to unseen afterlife, her blood remaining to drip obscurely into the night.


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    The mercenary stood before the Virgin, her eyes now opaque with blood, falling heavily from her lashes in an unholy miracle. Then he heard S¨¦verine¡¯s breath exhaled into the silence.


    Immediately he took her in his arms as relief flooded him. He was grateful that her breath still moved in her lungs, that her heart still beat in her chest, that there was still existence suspended in her veins and animation still pulsing through her extremities.


    The mercenary embraced her, the blood from his hands streaking her cheek and drying upon her skin. She was cold as ice, her cheek as stone, a drop of blood upon her lips as they trembled with dread. Remy looked down at her hands where she held a blade within her skirts.


    They heard a sound then. Some movement. A clunk upon a floorboard, the creaking of a shutter from another room. They held their breath.


    The drapes fluttered eerily into the room and the mercenary stepped to the balcony to peer into the courtyard. A young maiden with rose colored skin lay asleep in the morass, her body as though asleep in a meadow, her negligee fluttering from her corpse in the breeze, her neck gashed through with blood.


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    S¨¦verine inhaled, and the mercenary watched her lips as she did so. She appeared beautiful and strange. Almost otherworldly¡ªas though her skin glowed incandescent in the dark, as though she were part of some beautiful dream. As though she slept, and yet was awake.


    Another sound of a crow, and the mercenary turned to find the chandelier littered with them, the flickering candlelight obscuring them in darkness one moment and illuminating their raven eyes in the next. They pecked at their feet in their lust for blood and S¨¦verine shivered as they clawed at the metal, her skin so sheer the mercenary could see their screeching crawling beneath it.


    Another sound, glass clanking against one another. The birds cawing madly in their disturbance. The mercenary drew around the hallway and into the boudoir, his gun concealed in his hand. The bed had been mused, as though someone recently slept in it. Blood stained the bedsheets and dripped across the floor. At her vanity, every huile de parfum had been opened, every oil sopping into the aromatic wood.


    Another sound, this time a crash. A waterfall of metal.


    Turning around, the mercenary drew his weapon only to aim it at an empty window frame, its drapes bellowing in the breeze, and below it, the copper bathtub filled with a scattering of brass keys, still clanking where they spilled. Moving to the window he saw the last remnants of a cloak dissipating into the darkness. Their pursuer lost to the night.


    The mercenary returned to the salon to find S¨¦verine awakened by the clamor, spell broken and bewildered as the blade fell from her hand and clattered to the floor. The mercenary took her in his arms and held her close, her fingers shaking as she was severed from her hypnosis.


    Sheer exhaustion flooded them, and they fell to the settee in flickering bouts of reality. She lay her head upon his shoulder, his arms around her, as cascades of shadow, of love and darkness consumed them. Leftover terrors wept from their eyes. Violent visions overcame them. They could no longer hold back the darkness when death hovered so near, when it touched them and taunted them. When it followed them into their dreams.


    In their delirium, they fell into a fitfull sleep, as enveloped by one another as they were by the woman who haunted them. Who wrapped them in her blood and shrouded them with her possession. They awoke in bouts of distortion, the feel of her hands reaching for them, her sweet breath upon them, her rose perfume intoxicating them.


    The night folded into itself into layers of illusion until reality could no longer be discerned from the madness.


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    The Comte watched the light flicker from his wife¡¯s apartments as he left. The cabaret below still languished with the drunk and ornery¡ªthe last remnants of sea merchants lost to copious amounts of spirits and consoled by the love of purchased women.


    The Comte was no stranger to pleasure¡ªto whores who offered their bodies so desperately to him at night and yet regretted their very birth by the dawn. Hungering for what was not in his possession, he purchased from them the very light of their souls, feeling it dim as he held his hands to their throats, their gurgled screams smothered into their pillows as he ravaged their bodies from behind.


    There was a moment, thereafter, when he would come to regret his vulgarities¡ªbut it was brief. Less the pangs of regret and more an existential sadness that was left unsated¡ªan intense spiritual apathy consigning his soul to a purgatory in which he could understand the reason for his existence no more.


    How he had wished that day in the cemetery, to bend his wife over the grave and press her face against the stone. How he would have bloodied her cheek against her friend¡¯s crypt and enjoyed the last taste of her obedience. How he would have split her body with a blunt blade, slicing it open from the bottom to the top. How that would have satisfied his soul at last and rid him of the hateful fixations of his soul. How that would have admonished his obsessions and spared him henceforth from the disease of dissatisfaction.


    Alas, his wife¡¯s lover had been in attendance and obstructed her husband¡¯s attempts at salvation. The Comte avowed that would occur no longer, then he dissolved into the shadows where only one would find him.


    Those of us with wellness of mind might see in these tortured thoughts the whilings of a mad man, and indeed we would be correct in our diagnosis. But those with illness of mind cannot escape from their demons. Instead, they are consumed by them, their thoughts rotting their bodies away from the inside like a corpse at last meeting its end against the beetles. And all the while, they remain living among us.


    Without a cure for what ail them.

 Chapter 28

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    There was, in that town, a woman as beautiful as she was sensual. She knew she could not live out the modesty so desired of her, so when she found a man as salacious as she, she allowed herself to become completely enveloped by him.


    At first, they were just a duo, but then there was a third brought in for their delight in him. Soon after a fourth was brought into their midst, and at last a fifth, so consumed were they by their love for one another. Thus that beautiful young woman found herself the beloved muse of a small quartet of men.


    A rose delivered to her home was signal enough to abandon her life and flee to the one they created for her. She wore silk that caressed her waist and lace that slipped from her shoulders. Ah, those shoulders! How delicate they were and how adored by her suitors! When she arrived, one beau kissed such a shoulder as another kissed the other. Still another touched his lips to her hand as the last kissed those most elegant lips.


    She was their muse, their inspiration. Her skin was the color of creme, her long brunette hair unencumbered by pin or pearl, her fragrance as spring blossoms, her fingernails as perfectly shaped as petals. The four delighted in the soft sighs of her lips, the whispered desires of her heart, the lingerings of her touch. Their love was more than desire, it was the complete adoration of her. They kissed her, and they kissed one another for their love of her, delighting in the sweet symphony their love for her inspired.


    She was as a honeysuckle to a small child, tender to touch and even sweeter to taste. Their fingers could not cease touching her, their lips could not cease to savor her. Entranced, her lovers drew her into the most beautiful ecstasy. They touched her until she sighed and caressed her until she wept. Her eyelashes fluttered as a butterfly''s wings as her body awakened with pleasure, wettening sweetly as the nectar at dawn.


    Drunk by their own desire, they were the very envy of Bacchus, their love worshipped as a god, their pleasure savored as a holy wine, their passion drunk deeply as from the goblet of life. But unlike those Greek gods of old, their mortal bodies could not stay in that ecstasy forever and, when the last of their pleasure had been tasted, the last sighs fallen from their lips, the last heave of their breasts released, they collapsed into one another¡¯s arms as rain upon a meadow and slept soundly until the dawn.


    This being a tale of the gothic tradition, we are reticent to admit a sixth party into that haven. Alas, unnoticed amidst that manage a cinq, tangled limbs obscuring their vision, relinquished pleasures holding their dreams rapt, the intruder had only to reveal the fine edge of a blade and slice it across that young woman¡¯s throat, plucking that sweet rose ripe from the tree. Her blood fell as a waterfall upon the men she loved, and it was only another moment before every man in those chambers fell prey to the same fate¡ªthat most beautiful chamber of love, now a bloodbath of hate.


    It was she who was found asleep in the widow¡¯s courtyard the next morning, whose hand fell limp from behind the palms, whose form fell wilted like a rose, whose body lay blanketed beneath the morning dew. And it was she, whose blood was spilt in the widow¡¯s residence upstairs. That dripped from the paintings and hung from the chandeliers. It was she whose soul could not be saved from that avenger of her sins.


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    The m¨¦nag¨¨re could not go on living with that spirit, and the residence was filled with her. The resins of her perfumes, her bare shoulders shivering in the breeze, strands of chestnut hair fluttering across her eyes. The m¨¦nag¨¨re could not keep herself from seeing that wasted youth in every corner and she was determined to remove her from its memory.


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    The young woman had been discovered in the courtyard. Her body, slackened against the stone walls and hidden amidst the birds of paradise, exposed nothing but her fingertips to the courtyard floor where she lay. The mercenary nestled that delicate soul in his arms and removed her of the widow¡¯s home, carrying her to her final rest with solemn remorse upon his brow.


    The residence thus removed of its inhabitants, the m¨¦nag¨¨re set about removing it of its spirits. Pouring boiled water over the courtyard she formed dark tidepools of water and blood, each pool a capsule of secret notes and whispered words and lost loves. She could almost hear the maiden¡¯s voice calling gently from the eaves, longing for the simple pleasures of her life with a perfect sadness.


    The m¨¦nag¨¨re shivered against the sounds of that soul, wishing she could no longer hear her words. She sang her own tune under her breath in hope that it might drown out the whispers, and as she did so she washed away those pools of memory, sweeping the remnants of that woman¡¯s life into the plants so that her death might at least come to some life.


    Of the interior rooms, the m¨¦nag¨¨re washed every wall and every ceiling and every chandelier. She washed the window frames, and the portraits. She freed the mantle of its dust and washed it of its soot. Each book was turned from its location, dusted, washed, and put back into place. Using buckets of boiled water and brushes of wild boar¡¯s hair she drenched the carpets with water and scoured them of their blood. Then she hung them over the balconies to drip their memories into the courtyard below.


    Once the residence was cleansed of its spirits, the m¨¦nag¨¨re proceeded to infuse it with good ones. She purchased bottles of holy water from the convent and used them to water the plants so they might breathe holiness into the air as they drank it. She set small stones about in the soil and placed them where they might see the sun, reflecting its warmth into each room.


    The candelabras she removed of old wax and filled them with fresh candles from the country. She oiled wooden countertops, window frames, and door jams with essences of wild rose and orange. Then she burned bundles of sage rosined with frankincense and myrrh and set them upon dishes about the home, so the whole of it was filled with a fragrant smoke.


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    The m¨¦nag¨¨re spent the evening wading through the bayou, filling her basket with wild herbs and flowers as her chemise trailed in the waters behind her. She gathered all the things she would need for her cooking, her healing. For a meal provides sustenance and medicine, three pounds of it each day, and she intended to fill her family¡¯s bellies with goodness so that they might be sated and fortified.


    She wandered for several hours, humming a tune with her mother as she sang herself into the deep¡ªwhere the branches claw at one another up above and the grasses moan in the wind down below until at once her toe brushed something sharp. She was aware, by this point, of her penchant for discovering lost artifices in those waters, and yet this was not the soft flesh of an abandoned soul, but the serrated edge of something solid.


    Setting her basket to float atop the water, she reached into the bayou with her hands and pulled up a skull, dripping with tangled reeds and grasses. It was an alligator, its eyes vacant of life and teeth gleaming with blood from her toe. It was dead, the bone dry, and yet when she touched it was relieved of its memories. As though they had been locked inside, burdening their corpse, until they unburdened themselves into the mind of the m¨¦nag¨¨re.


    There was a man swimming. He must have been 25 years of age, as spritely and active as he was dashing and youthful. A soldier, she felt, he washed his body and scrubbed his toes, splashing his face with fresh water as though there were no dangers lurking beneath. And yet there was danger to fear. Submerged beneath the surface was a predator uncompromising to those who disturbed his home. Indeed, the alligator was greatly disturbed¡ªand not for the first time.


    It might be difficult for us to understand the inner workings of an animal¡¯s mind, and yet of the alligator the m¨¦nag¨¨re knew one thing to be true: there was a feeling of aggression. A slow rage building from within, an all-consuming desire to attack. It was instinctual¡ªunpaired with emotion or feeling or rationality. It was merely preservation. A reaction to that young man splashing about so freely into the waters, unaware completely of the beast whose ire he awoke.


    It rose from the deep, brackish waters falling from its back, and then that jaw opened so quickly and powerfully it could not have been stopped. It latched onto that human quickly, blood spooling out into the waters. Screaming could be heard from the shores, then gunfire. The alligator was shot, his jaw released, his body slackened, he sunk. He drifted for days that way, until at last he joined the deep from whence he came.


    The m¨¦nag¨¨re wondered, for a moment, what had happened to that young man. Then she removed the reeds from the skull as though relieving the last memories from it, placed it in her basket, and resolved to set it upon the mantle in their home where it would come to protect their home, just as it had once protected his.

 Chapter 29

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    R¨¦my carried that deceased woman to the chapel where she was laid in a wooden box washed with white paint and poured over with peonies. How S¨¦verine desired to crumple to the ground, to be held and loved and supported by the Earth solely for her existence upon it. Only that ground that held her could love her and adore her, and for that she envied the corpse her fate.


    S¨¦verine¡¯s soul ached that the woman should die. She prayed the rosary over in her mind and on her breath as she admired those cheeks as rosy as apples and stroked that hair as lovely as silk. There would be none to mourn that most beautiful soul, for nothing was known of her and there were none to claim her. S¨¦verine beheld those perfect fingertips as though they were hers to mourn and kissed those perfect eyelids as though they were hers to close.


    There were rumors that a number of men had reached a similar fate. They were discovered in some secreted location nearby, naked in the embrace of love yet veiled with the shroud of death. The church would not honor those fine young men for the sake of their behavior, nor would their mothers claim them for the sake of their impropriety.


    Their bodies were laid in a heap of one another¡¯s arms, interred in some undisclosed and unimportant location, the truth of their love lost to moralist minds who had neither experienced a thing so profound, nor were free enough to enjoy it. Those disapproving minds adhered only to what they had been taught and never what they thought, and thus they deserved to be mourned for their miserable lives. For they outlived their children, perhaps, but they had the added misfortune of under living them.


    This fate rested heavily on S¨¦verine¡¯s mind. How she longed then, as only adults can do, for her childhood. For a time when she would play outdoors all day and fall asleep in the meadow. When her father would carry her to her bed, unlacing each of her shoes as she slept. How many days since then, she wondered, had she gone to bed of her own volition and unlaced her shoes by an act of her own will?


    How carefree it was to be a child, she remembered, for she was not expected to be good and yet was loved unconditionally. She was an untamed creature escaped into the wild, and yet was cared for completely. She had no knowledge of the world or concern for its fate. She had no future to fear nor darkness to contend with. She had only the small happiness of a child, and that was always the most perfect and idyl thing.


    Instead, she had fallen asleep in that woman¡¯s blood and it crept into her skin and darkened her veins. There would come a day, she knew, when the sun would rise upon a woman with skin so sheer one could see her blood, and veins that ran black for all to see. And that day was hastening toward her.


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    We have mentioned, albeit briefly, that the widow¡¯s residence was once a hotel¡ªone she had transformed into a cabaret on one floor and a residence on two. We have also mentioned that there remained in that residence one room unopened, its door lost of its key and impenetrable to its owner.


    Now there appeared a bevy of keys at the mercenary¡¯s disposal, and he set about discovering their secrets. It took him the larger portion of a day, sitting upon the hallway floor, setting one key and then another into the brass latch at the end of the hall, until at last its mysteries were unlocked and its contents discovered.


    It was not so unexpected at first, a narrow stair curled into an abbreviated attic wherein lay a room both ordinary and sparse. Perhaps the lodgings of a former caretaker, it had a metal bed with tightly made sheets, a wooden coatrack, a modest desk. Wallpaper curled from the walls in strips of red damask, the wooden roof pitched steeply at the edges.


    What was perhaps less expected was that the room was disturbed of its dust, the spider webs trailing where they broke, the shroud of age shifted where someone once stood. There was a tome upon the nightstand marked where the reader had left it. A leather briefcase leaned against the desk, a small green oil lamp recently lit atop it.


    The mercenary struck a match illuminating heaps of journals and loose pages, the mad scrawlings of the Comte slithering across them in tortured epithets. Beneath them were found untidy rows of paperwork¡ªledgers and bank notes signed in the hand of the mercenary¡¯s investor. That businessman who once paid him to find his ruiner was none other than the priest who journeyed from Spain, and his ruiner none other than the philanthropist he had come to spite.


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    Alas, as alleged by those documents, some portion of the philanthropist¡¯s sum were spent to the care of the Comte and then proffered at an assortment of disreputable establishments, among them, the apothecary.


    It appeared the Comte was well planned and well endowed, and ever more present than they knew him to be. He was also, the mercenary thought, a dead man.


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    R¨¦my stood on a street corner, his cloak obscuring his hatred, his face dark and determined. The streets were empty save for the besotted sort, then the moon dipped beneath a cloud and a movement was caught within the impending darkness. It was naught but a flicker, but it drew R¨¦my¡¯s eye to the apothecary.


    Tall glass windows allowed him to see into the dimly lit shop. Amber bottles settled on wooden shelves. Phosphorescent elixirs rattled gently from some disturbance and a lone gold bell sat atop the counter. R¨¦my entered quietly into the store, a musk drifting mercurially from the shelves, the remnant of powders lost from their jars throughout the day. Those remnants drifted abstractly to the back of his throat, causing him to choke silently on the particulate air.


    He made not a sound but drew near to the counter, sensing some specter which was present only a moment prior. There arose some sound therein, from behind the counter where a red velvet rope closed off a downward stair. There was a gentle timber to the air, a tone from some melodious sound. His finger touched the bell and a chime rang out, it¡¯s pitch distinct against the sedated quiet.


    There was a sound from the stairs. The gentle cadence of an elderly man, his step at last reaching the precipice where the apothecary would come face-to-face with the mercenary. The two looked upon one another. They had never met and yet both knew of one another¡¯s intentions. Without a word, the apothecary turned and led the mercenary down those spiraling stairs.


    The room was as a sultan¡¯s palace might have appeared many years after its fall. For all its decadence¡ªbrocade curtained walls, velvet tufted cushions, a sanctuary of smoke and spice¡ªit was also ruinous: tassels frayed, wine glasses half drunk, untethered limbs draped from bedposts, unmoored minds sleeping sleeplessly.


    The apothecary led R¨¦my to a glass enclosed counter laden with bottles and tinctures and implements. The apothecary set about preparing some morsel. There was an oil lamp involved, a light of the match, a sparking of the stars; and then that sweet morsel was melting, contorting, seducing the senses as a courtesan might taunt her lover from his worth.


    It was sensual, nocturnal, a gathering of the stars that might convince one to abandon the ground altogether. Indeed, R¨¦my was drawn into its most illustrious fragrance. Coaxed by some tempestuous muse, some blighted poet, he struggled to stay grounded in his senses, to remain fastened to the earth by some sheer sense of willpower. Against his best wishes, his senses faltered and his faculties weakened.


    He had been poisoned, R¨¦my realized, as he coughed the remnant dust from his throat. The hinges had been powdered, his mission thwarted, this whole thing an elaborate ruse at the design of the Comte to eliminate his competitor. R¨¦my was meant to find the key, to read the ledgers, he was enticed to follow the Comte out into the night, to meet the end that would await him.


    ¡°I know who you seek,¡± the apothecary said softly, procuring a wooden pipe, the morsel now suspended within a chamber of stone. ¡°But he does not wish to be found.¡±


    He inhaled of the pipe deeply, his alchemy alighting as the waves do at night, splashing brightly against a darkened shore. The perfume was intoxicating, as a blossoming woodland caught in a breeze, every fragrant gust an invitation to curl up in its embrace and enjoy a most peaceful sleep. R¨¦my buckled to the carpets, his mind succumbing to the allure of a long dream as the apothecary placed pillows behind his head, and the vessel to his lips.


    He gazed at those about the room, their souls forlorn in some far-off place. Men disrobed of their cloaks, women with stockinged feet exposed draped upon a dais. They were elegant in their unconsciousness, asleep in their extasy and yet none were the man he sought, the phantom evaporated into oblivion. He attempted to remember that man, who might bring harm to the woman he loved if he did not maintain some sense of rationality. Alas,  it slipped from his mind in one tantalizing sweep of delusion.


    R¨¦my breathed tentatively the paradise perched at his lips, and then was lost¡ªhis mind free from the inferno, the purgatorio, the plight of Virgil now complete as the gates to paradisio were at last allowed. His Beatrice became S¨¦verine, a woman so deserving of his every devotion. He thought of her lips at first, and then her skin, and then by some trick of the imagination he fell into her very being, as though she were a museum and he wandering every room of her soul.


    It was a collection of her. A painting of a rose, a crucifix splintering to the floor, a marriage book signed with her signature, a hymnal missing of its pages, a strand of pearls, a portrait with no picture in its frame.


    For a moment, he was afraid, aware that there was some harm that might come to that woman whose rooms he walked, but then the worry went scattering away from him¡ªa splash of stardust careening him off the cliffs of the world until he was hovering in some ether beyond it. He was drawn into the very center of life and he wanted nothing more than to peer into it. To at last see who stood at the precipice and to not be left craving for it.


    As he tumbled into that starless night, his mind leaving behind all woes and entering, at last, that beautiful beyond, through some last cloud of cognition he recognized a man, a scar carved abstractly through his most menacing face as his eyes peered at R¨¦my with a most delighted gleam.


    But then in the next moment, he existed no more.

 Chapter 30

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    In the street there was a man playing the violin, its melody mournful and melancholy. The music that earned his keep could not contain his sorrow and so he rose with the dawn to play for his soul.


    We might hear those notes from time to time if we are still enough to listen. For they strike at the strings of our spirits when we least expect them. This affliction is known to the modern reader as melancholia, and it is an ailment without cause or causality. As the sound of a violin, it only haunts us when we are at our most vulnerable¡ªand there threatens to consume us.


    Those who hear its notes know well their allure. For there has never been a feeling so beautifully despairing, no emotion so elegantly despondent. Like the sirens who lure sailors to their shores, melancholia asks us to abandon ourselves to her sound and become possessed by her song¡ªand yet we risk our own ruin in doing so. For melancholia can lure her suitors into the deep until the sound can be heard no more.


    For those so thoroughly drowned in their despair, death appears an altogether enticing opportunity. One that will alleviate the adherent of their struggle and allow them the gentle reprieve of feeling nothing at all. There is a certain romance to sinking into that sweet sorrow, adrift in the arms of melancholia at last¡ªdeath¡¯s song no longer jarring to the senses but whispered softly into one¡¯s ears.


    Not all who hear the violin¡¯s tune succumb to its seduction. For many can hear the music for a moment or two, and yet still withdraw from its whiles¡ªand this, it must be said, is the more fruitful endeavor. For idleness begets idleness and happiness begets happiness, and it is only the individual who can choose their eventual fate, leaning into or away from that discomforting melody.


    Our Veuve St. Vincent was one of those who leaned away from her melancholia, but only because she knew well what lay at the bottom of that abyss and she was careful to close her ears against it. Alas, her unfortunate husband, the Comte de Saint Germain leaned too deeply into his, and so became completely mired by it.


    In that lonesome descent, he could hear only his own sorrow and he became mad by its sound, tortured by the strings that played in his head until they became muddled by the waters that lured him into the deep¡ªhis ears muted of their ability to hear, his senses distorted from their ability to feel. His life forgotten. Indiscernible from the waters into which he sank.


    How many times had he cried out to Providence? How many times had he asked that his burden be removed from him? That he might think of his wife no longer? That his head not be filled with vulgarities and his hands removed from their ability to create them? How many times had he asked to be freed from his madness and yet wept from its persistence? And how many times did God turn His head? Determined to look away from the creature He created?


    The Comte did not mourn for his soul, for he had always known it to be lost, but he wept for hers. For hers was his destiny¡ªthe blood that called out to him from the ground, that would give him the power to remain remembered for his spilling of it, just as Cain became known for the death of his brother. Wretched as one descending into Hell, he was determined to arrest the devil playing his strings¡ªto pluck the fiddle from his grasp and play his own tune.


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    And so, he devised a scheme. To feel her breath rise and fall beneath his hand and to know it was within his power to decide its end. To take her with him into that lonesome chasm where they could drown in the gentle arms of melancholia at last¡ªhis soul no longer tortured by his song but descending into that sweet silence together¡ªfulfilling at last their morbid destiny.


    ---


    S¨¦verine awoke to the harrowing aria of an inconsolable violin.


    Drawn by its eerie reverie, she draped a cloak about her nightdress, lit a candle in her hand, and stepped tentatively to the door. She could hear the music playing so remorsefully and could feel its sorrow permeate her skin. Her hands touched the door, her eyelids closed. It was as though she heard her future and was lured toward it. At last, she became so consumed by the song that she opened the door and met her future in that dark early dawn.


    There was a slight chill and a gentle fog, the stillness so desolate and dark. There was not a soul in those streets save the man that played his tune and the two who were tormented by it. S¨¦verine stepped tenderly into the night, so did her shadow. Their delicate dance drawing one toward the other.


    The candle in her hand flickered and S¨¦verine shone bright within it¡¯s glow, the pallor of her skin free from her veil, her face and neck exposed as though she were not afraid to brave the darkness. And then, a lone streetlamp fell across the face of her husband, the first time she set eyes upon him since she thought him dead on her boudoir floor¡ªhis mangled face contorted into a wicked smile.


    She took a breath.


    S¨¦verine had compassion for her husband. His only fault was weakness in spirit¡ªhis mind so easily overcome by the demons that would possess him. How she had wished, once, that he would see fit to occasion his own demise, at last drowning himself with the darkness that consumed him. Alas, he was not fit enough to meet that end.


    The demons that plagued him were no longer a danger only to herself, and she knew no other way to rid him of them but to kill the man who harbored them. Like the pigs Christ once sent careening over the cliffs, she too would be forced to excise those demons so he might harm her city no longer.


    He took another step toward her, but it would be his last. Looking into the eyes of the one who had once been her husband, S¨¦verine let the candle spill from her hand as she pulled the knife from her cloak, slashing it across his throat as the violinist¡¯s strings screeched to a stop. He fell before her, the beating of his heart the only sound she could hear, until it¡¯s beat slowed to an adagio and then ceased to play at all, the silence deafening to her ears at last.


    If one had been gazing upon the two, they would not have seen star-crossed lovers, as is often found in stories such as these, instead they would have seen two halves of a greater whole. The husband in his cloak of black, the wife in her nightdress of white, her candle spilled beside her as a splatter of blood fell upon her.


    It was only as she recognized the silence, that the music of the violin had at once retired of its song, that there was an actual man who had played it. She lifted her head to see the dawn. A new day, one without the sounds of melancholia to darken it, and there in the middle of it, a lone violinist with his eyes agape, the village opened of their doors and standing in their nightshirts, and the philanthropist smiling most delightedly.


    S¨¦verine stood tall, the knife clattering to the cobblestone as its blood fell to the streets. She knew what they saw¡ªthe murderess they had always rumored to her to be, at last proven to be so. Beneath the quiet elegance of her exterior, she was exposed for her flaws and seen for her inequities. The light tumbled toward her, the warmth rising from foreign lands to the east, but she could no longer feel it.


    The widow lifted her veil to her face, the darkness shrouding her from the sun as the townspeople cried against her.


    "Mesdames et messieurs," the philanthropist said as he stepped into the square. "Place this woman under arrest."

 Chapter 31

    On the night of the Comte¡¯s murder, there were three members of society for whom sleep would not come.


    The first was the child, who watched from his window as the moon grew so large it might have eaten every star in the sky for supper. It hung, suspended amidst twinkling raindrops, dripping its glow down to the world down below, as the boy kept guard over the night and the miscreants who dwelt in it.


    Night after night he kept his eyes trained on deep recesses the light could not reach, pockets unseen by that celestial stardust. And in those darkened corners, unlit by the moon''s rays, the child bore witness to God¡¯s most vile creatures, those who had been shut off from the light as prisoners doomed to the deepest dungeon floors¡ªwho wept at their own indiscretions, their tears sparkling from their eyes, as they at last touched the twilight.


    The captain had regaled the child with stories of the Chateau D¡¯If, and the boy could see it in his dreams. Far from the shores of civilization, adrift in an unforgiving sea, their deviant demeaners shackling them to their god forsaken cells, tormented souls dwelt in a dungeon more deleterious than most¡ªits recesses haunted by the sinking sins of their pasts, it¡¯s ceilings dripping with their despair. No longer able to see the light, their eyes became blind, so accustom had they become to their darkness.


    But if those beings were prisoners, the child thought himself their keeper. Warden of the woe begotten. Overseer of the ill-intentioned. Ever since the dream had come to him, an ominous warning of the perils that might befall his moon, he had christened himself her watchkeeper¡ªprotecting his household from those who wished to harm it until, at last, the sun returned and the shadows and the shadows could obscure it no more.


    He felt the memory of the dream that had once tormented him. He could see it painted across the sky¡ªa tableau of torments yet to come. The sun dipped below the horizon as those who lived in the shadow came out beneath the cover of darkness. Unaware that their every act was committed beneath the gaze of an unsuspecting child¡ªhis blinking eyes lit by the glow of the moon, awake as a lighthouse keeper who keeps shipwrecks away from his shores.


    The boy was part of the shadow and could peer into that underworld unnoticed. A pair of eyes watching as the phantom waited in the alley, the eaves dripping drudgery upon his head, his teeth sharp as daggers beneath a cloak that obscured his most gruesome face. But just as quickly as he was seen, the phantom was gone, lost to the port where merchant sailors drank themselves into oblivion and took their pleasure with purchased women.


    And yet there in that darkness was a gleam. For he did not see that torn flesh flayed from within his cloaks, nor did he catch sight of the gleam of his teeth. But tucked into the shadows, unnoticed by the men standing on the corners or the carriages that clattered opaquely against stone streets, stood the mercenary, his eyes kindled with a knowing gleam. Their light borrowed from the stars and yet stolen away into the streets.


    Several streets over, the physician too could not sleep. He was a pensive man, that being perhaps his most admirable quality. Each night before bed, he reviewed the files of his patients by candlelight and attempted to discern from them some cause for their ailments. He turned the pages over and over, scratching his chin as he sought from his mind some pattern that might emerge.


    Some were more easily discovered, as when those young mademoiselles, whose corsets were the tightest, who had the rosiest of complexions and the most charming of countenances, seemed to share an inability to conceive. He was able to ascertain from these fine observations, that there was a sort of restriction attached to such an ailment. That perhaps they were raised in a society that reared them to perfection and then caused in these women the inability to be so.


    It was a protection mechanism, he believed, one in which Providence used the body to share with his daughters a message: that they were perfect enough as they were. That they need not seek their goodliness in the eyes of others, but only in the eyes of the lord their Providence¡ªand of that, they were already assured.


    The physician, in this case, prescribed a host of treatments: A tonic of cacao, milk, and honey to arouse the long forgotten pleasures of life; the reading of the twenty third psalm to stimulate sensations of goodness; and the loosening of one¡¯s corset so as to allow in the womb space for a babe to be formed should Divine Providence so desire it.


    Often, the women would return to the physician satiated, joyful, and with child. And more importantly, awakened to the goodness Providence had long desired for them.


    Others, however, remained a mystery to him, as when they arrived the victim of some foreign poison, or some bewildering concoction. Indeed, he noticed a pattern among his patients that attended the apothecary with great regularity, and so became well versed in the antidotes required to salvage them. But there were still those whose ailments could not be named and whose symptoms could not be found amidst the annals of his medicinal encyclopedia.


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    When his candles at last burned to their ends he put his papers back in order, his questions reserved within them for a fresher day and a fresher mind, and then he made the sign of the cross and said his prayers, wondering what crisis might arrive at his doorstep that evening, when the moon was at its very best and human nature at its very worst.


    As Providence would have it, that evening, at a quarter past midnight, he awoke to a small rapping at his window. There was naught that could be seen, when he looked at first, but the rapping continued and so he ventured to explore its cause even further. Lighting a match, he unlatched the window and there discovered a small child, obscured within the shadows.


    He recognized the child at once and made quick work with his cloak, fastening it over his white nightshirt and lighting a lantern in his hand before following the child out into the night. He was led to the apothecary (how odd that he had been thinking about the apothecary and his intrigues only moments before) where, upon opening the door, he discovered the hinges to be powdered, suspending a fine powder in the air with the intent of inebriating some unsuspecting soul.


    Putting a finger to the dust and then to his tongue, he identified a leaf, that when crushed and inhaled intended to bring someone to the apothecary¡¯s den already inebriated of his senses. Indeed, as he descended the stairs, his nightshirt trailing on the stairs behind him, he found the mercenary, asleep in some other world and lost to the realm of consciousness.


    He checked the man¡¯s eyes, and then his tongue, and, after ascertaining there was some means of salvation available to him, he borrowed a strength that came only from God to carry the man up the stairs, through the streets of la Nouvelle-Orl¨¦ans, and into his home, where he placed the man upon a wooden table reserved for just such a purpose.


    The mercenary was clearly not the intended victim of the devil''s whiles that evening, and yet he was almost lost. The physician put on his spectacles, sat upon a small stool, checked the man¡¯s pulse, then took the child in as his nightly apprentice as they set about restoring the mercenary¡¯s soul to his body, if Divine Providence would be so willing to allow it.


    That same evening, a young woman requested the bishop for the sacrament of confession. The chapel was dark, save a small alter where candles had been lit for one lost soul or another. Slowly they put themselves out as their wicks neared the end of their solemnities, the last of their prayers drifting toward the heavens in tendrils of smoke.


    Just as the bishop pondered the lamps, and whether it might be prudent for him to light them, a young maiden appeared before him, making the sign of the cross before she knelt in the darkness. All that could be seen was the ivory of her skin and the gentle cover of her cloak. The bishop looked upon that vision and blessed her as she repeated her formalities.


    After a moment pause, her lips tip-toed into the state of her soul, her words caressing against one another as a dove¡¯s wings do at nightfall. He knew the sound of her voice and yet could not place it¡ªnot that it was the bishop¡¯s intention to know the identity of his confessor, but it tapped gently at his memory nonetheless, his mind restless for some answer.


    Unsuccessful in this endeavor, he closed his mind from such thoughts and turned his attention to the woman once more. Her breath rose and fell evenly as she spoke, her story steady and dispassionate. She meant only, she said, to satisfy her soul before she entered that most holy sacrament of marriage.


    Ah, then this must be the young debutante, he thought, for it was only a fortnight until the wedding of the philanthropist and his young bride. He had not yet seen that tender young woman for confession, nor had he had the pleasure of being introduced to the woman he would marry so forthcomingly¡ªshe was new to the city and had yet to amend herself to the bishop¡¯s keeping.


    Ah, but then how did he recognize her voice? Drawing his attention to her words once more, the bishop noticed a gentle trill and there sought to understand it. She was concerned about the wedding night, he thought knowingly. So many pious young women were fearful of that moment¡ªalone in her husband¡¯s bedchamber at night, her breasts at last freed from her bodice, her body now given to the keeping of another.


    He tried to comfort the young mademoiselle, to explain to her the holiness of that union, the sacredness of that bond. But though she nodded at his speech, she did not seem pacified by it. There was a pause, and then she spoke perfectly, as though reciting a poem, her words chosen carefully and placed purposely.


    ¡°I only wonder,¡± she said, ¡°whether it is moral for a man to hoard wealth, and yet refuse it to those in need?¡±


    The bishop became confused. Did her husband not give alms? Did he not give generously of his own money that their cathedral might be rebuilt? That their city might be restored?


    ¡°My mother was left with nothing,¡± she continued, ¡°when her husband discovered her pregnant with another man¡¯s child and cast her into the street.¡±


    ¡°My dear, that must have been most difficult to¡­¡±


    ¡°I heard tell that her lover became a bishop and moved to the new world,¡± she continued gently. She lowered her veil, revealing coppery, red hair that fell in undone waves from that porcelain complexion. ¡°That he continued to live a life of great piety when his lover was deemed a prostitute and died a wretch.¡±


    The bishop choked on his breath.


    ¡°It is strange,¡± she continued. ¡°How one became a saint, and the other a sinner, when both were accomplices to the very same crime.¡±


    "Mademoiselle!¡± the bishop said desperately, his lips trembling with the fear of God. ¡°Please, it could not be¡ªit cannot be. But your father is the esteemed naval officer! You must have been raised with all life had to offer! You must have known satisfaction! Please, I beg of you!¡±


    He knelt prostrate before her, his eyes closed in a penitent prayer, his knees quaking as they hit the floor. His shaking hands clasped together as though he had always known this moment would come for him. ¡°Mademoiselle please,¡± he whispered. ¡°What would you have me do? Ask of it and it will be yours.¡±


    The young woman nodded her head. ¡°Merci, mon pere, for your most generous offer,¡± she said with a satisfied bow. ¡°For there is rather something I would ask of you.¡±

 Chapter 32

    The Christmas season was upon them, and the philanthropist¡¯s wedding hung suspended above it as the star that once guided the magi to their new king. In the courtyard, where the cathedral was still under construction, preparations were being made for that most anticipated moment, a menagerie of sorts filling the square with performers and sellers and carolers.


    Holly was draped about the lampposts; a giant tree was erected in the square and decorated with cranberries and candles. Chestnuts popped over street fires, persimmons appeared as jewels upon sellers¡¯ carts, vintners mulled wine in barrels and ladled it out to passersby. The air smelled of cinnamon and cloves and the occasional meddling of frankincense, boughs of which lay bundled upon the cathedral floor for the coming revelries.


    Before the steeple, members of the free black militia heaved a giant brass bell into the heavens. The bell was commissioned from Spain and had spent months being hammered by hand, etched by artisans, and tested by monks for pitch and timber before traveling across the ocean where it would toll from the cathedral¡¯s tower, forever a testament to the philanthropist¡¯s glory.


    The philanthropist watched from his salon, and even stepped out to his balcony for a brief benediction. He said only a few words to remind them of his importance and benevolence before a member of the battalion wrapped the rope about his arm and pulled with all his might. The bell tolled once, then twice, its song slow and methodic as the bells of a Buddhist temple summoning young monks to prayer. The sound was elegant and warm¡ªit echoed in all their hearts and minds with the sentiment of the season.


    When the philanthropist turned back toward his salon, he became overwhelmed by his own importance. For he achieved what he had desired since he was a small boy peering at his loathsome face in a puddle, hoping he would one day become a man of great renown and stature, whom fortune favored and whom Providence could not fell. Now, he looked upon the Plaza de Armas and saw in it a reflection of his most accomplished self.


    Turning his gaze inward, he looked upon the woman who had raised his reputation to such heights. Whose elegance and piety had instilled upon him some remnant of her goodness, and whose fine recommendation had won him a seat on the cabildo and a place of honor within the presbyter. Now he sat as king, presiding over his city¡¯s government and his city¡¯s religion, as his betrothed was fitted for her bridal suite.


    Indeed, the debutante now stood upon a parquet before him, lifting and lowering her arms with all the grace of a swan as the couturi¨¨re took measurements. The philanthropist smiled smugly at the scene. How he adored watching his former lover dress his future bride¡ªat turns touching her fingers, d¨¦collet¨¦, and waist, each movement piquing his interest more than the last.


    The philanthropist had instructed his mistress that his fianc¨¦ would be adorned with every possible display of wealth. There would be tulle, so much of it and the exact color of her skin that she appeared to float within it. Damask imported from France for her underskirts, lace sewn by Belgian nuns for her undergarments, diamond combs crowning her head, and a veil of clouds to mask her eyes. With all these things she would be adorned and was now being fitted for such embellishment.


    ¡°Mademoiselle, I would have you remove your garments,¡± the couturi¨¨re requested.


    The young debutante lowered her eyes gracefully to the floor, her eyelashes melting upon those fair cheeks. ¡°If it would please monsieur, I would have him take leave of the salon,¡± she said softly.


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    How pious she was, the philanthropist thought, how devout. She was the most beautiful woman in town¡ªher skin like silk, her cheeks as roses, her hair the sweet color of copper. She would be the envy of every man in every pew, he thought as he left the room, and then in a fortnight she would be his, her breasts bared for his eyes to see, her corset untied for his hands to feel. Only a couple days more and he would be like Herod, his kingdom assured and his place in it satisfied.


    He could not have known, or perhaps he did not wish to acknowledge, that just like that ancient dignitary, there was a metaphorical babe sleeping in the wood, whose very existence threatened his rule.


    As outside the bells tolled, their sound filled S¨¦verine¡¯s soul, resonant in her chest like the soft padding of rain the forest floor.


    S¨¦verine knelt on the floor of her cell, her silk chemise falling from her shoulders, her hands folded in their desolate prayer, her eyes softly shut against her tears. There was no prison in those days, for the cabildo had burned down in the fires, and thus the commander had no choice but to confine her to the convent under house arrest.


    She looked into his eyes as he released her, his grip firm on her arm, and then he was gone. Her cell was bare save a small wooden bed, a chair, and a desk. There was a wooden cross hanging upon the wall and a small leather-bound bible upon the desk. She saw no visitors save the abbess who brought her daily bread. And she heard no voices save the sound of the choristers singing their lamented song.


    In that makeshift prison, her mind twisted down darker avenues than she had thus far explored. It wound down stone steps and descended obscured alleyways, the chorister voices haunting her soul until it reached the very bottom of the abyss and there discovered her most grievous exile. She was alone, and the world was dark and desolate around her.


    Those who have been consumed by their own melancholia might once have discovered themselves in that place. Indeed, our S¨¦verine recognized it, and trembled from it. It was cold and cloaked with misery. Devoid of life and lost of those with whom she had once shared it. T¡¯was the valley of the shadow of death and naught but her own demons dwelt there.


    S¨¦verine could hear their voices, and they taunted her. They were ruthless, and they clawed at her mind with all the ferocity that exists within them. Their words struck at her with sharpened teeth, salivating that they would have at last the feast that was so long dangled before them. In that complete isolation it became easier to believe their words, for there was naught a single soul to visit her and there was none who could console her.


    Alone in that darkest of nights, writhing from a pain that comes only from within, she met at last the beast that had for so long pursued her. That hungered to be triumphant against her. It knelt before her, poised to take her very last breath, and then, she looked up and a tear fell from her cheek. For there, in her darkest mind, she faced her most fearsome beast, and she knew its name. It was Loneliness.


    For a moment she allowed herself to feel that reality. That her family had left her. Her friends abandoned her. Her religion refused her.


    But God did not.


    The sound of a single chorister met her ear and Divine Providence found her laying on the ground, a ray of light upon her skin. Tears fell from her eyelashes as she felt His arms wrap around her¡ªHis loving embrace lifting her to her feet¡ªand then she was held in His arms, cherished as a babe in the loving arms of her Creator. His hand was upon her hair, her head upon His chest, His breath the very tempo of hers, her heart the very cadence of His.


    How she longed to leave the pain and the suffering behind. To be pulled from the melancholia that threatened to drown her. To be led into that Elysian night, crowned with the moon and enrobed by the stars, enveloped at last in their sweet Euphoria. Alas, God willed her back into the world and so she awoke, the touch of His hand on her cheek naught but the memory of a tormented soul.


    The feeling of His breath was lost to the life that lay beyond this one. His light removed of her surroundings. The darkness returned to them. Slowly her senses returned to her, the stone upon which she lay prostrate cold against her cheek, her lips pressed to the floor in prayer, her hair drying the tears that touched the ground. Picking herself off the floor she peered through the window, the world now silenced, watching as the stars blinked themselves into existence.

 Chapter 33

    In the days following the widow¡¯s imprisonment, a series of perfectly explainable, if we must be curt, occurrences drew the town into hysterics.


    First, despite the fact that none were ever seen in the cemetery, a bouquet of white roses found themselves atop the Comte¡¯s tomb and then ceased from wilting. They remained fresh as the afternoon they were plucked for many weeks, until it could only be presumed that they were cursed.


    Then, a noblewoman fell from her third-story balcony and was found dead on the street. When questioned, her husband exclaimed that a bat had flown in through the bedroom window and attempted to bite her, happenstancing her great fall. Naturally, this led to conjecture that the widow had the ability to change form at night, slipping through the bars of her prison cell to frighten poor misses from their windows.


    Perhaps even more spectacular, when the lamplighters were granted access to the widow¡¯s residence, a portrait was discovered behind the peeling wallpaper of her study. Hidden beneath the white herons that wallpapered the small room, the corners slightly curling from their proximity to the hearth, appeared to be a portrait of the Veuve St. Vincent, removed of her veil of mourning, and cloaked with the veil of a bride.


    Her hair was dark and solemn, her lips forcing a smile. She hid some intrigue behind her eyes, but it was of the undeveloped variety. And yet, when the portrait was more thoroughly examined, she was found to be much older than her living likeness, her hiding place left unrevealed for more than a century beneath blankets of dust and delirium.


    It was even discovered, when the bills of sale were recovered from the widow¡¯s plantation, that her husband, the former M. St. Vincent, had never married. Even more, no mention of a Mme. St. Vincent was ever made, neither at home nor abroad. She simply appeared one afternoon at his home, her husband mysteriously dead in her wake.


    Even the manifests made no mention of her, for no ship arriving during those years carried a woman with her namesake nor her stature, neither had any passenger on their pages gone unaccounted for. She simply appeared in their midst as though she arose from the waters or emerged from the wood. A nymph stolen from the pages of Shakespeare and sprinkled about so destitute a city.


    As the investigations continued and were made public in the papers, the gentry delighted in deciphering abstract meanings from them. Indeed, when they discussed it among themselves, society could not agree upon the widow¡¯s age. Some said she was in her 20th year, others in her 40th, still others claimed she was in her 70th year or perhaps her 700th.


    Of even greater speculation was the widow¡¯s origin and the origin of her wealth. For she arrived out of nowhere and from that nowhere arrived fully formed, with an education worthy of the Medici¡¯s and a philosophy worthy of Voltaire. She spoke many languages, each with the affluency of the first and neither did she have any accents, denying any hint that might belie her origins.


    Some believed she was the forgotten daughter of a Transylvanian princess sent to be raised in France for fear of the Hapsburgs. Others that she was raised in a convent, the illegitimate child of some Turkish monarch, sent away with her riches but without her name or title. Still others claimed she must be of Moorish origin for her hair was an extreme shade of black and her lips so thoroughly stained with scarlet.


    Even her wealth, which was thought to be bottomless, could not be found among her possessions. Her pearls and sapphires and rubies and diamonds were gone from her apartments before she was ever removed from them. There was no velvet to be found, no dresses of satin or silk. Her trousseaus had long been stored away, and to where none could ascertain.


    Her retinue too had disappeared. None knew the whereabouts of those who had once frequented her, save the couturi¨¨re who continued in the employ of the philanthropist. When questioned about her former employer, the couturi¨¨re only addled their minds even further, claiming on one occasion that the widow was raised in a lighthouse on Belle-?le, and on another that her mother was an Albino woman from the Arabian sea.


    Even her childhood memories seemed rapt with affectations. The widow¡¯s father was a wealthy miner, the couturi¨¨re said, who pursued his riches in the new world. As a child, the young maiden had hung her laundry with clothing pins made of rubies until she was orphaned, forced into convent where she lived until she was old enough to abscond. At last, the couturier embellished, the young Mme. St. Vincent escaped to the north, the remainder of her father¡¯s fortune sewn into her undergarments and clutched between her fingers.


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    The stories were fantastical and outlandish, their plots contradicting and inconclusive, and yet they were perhaps less so than the truth. For, as the reader well knows, truth is a rather subjective thing, and it can rather run away with itself if not cared after prudently enough. Our minds and our memories are not altogether adherent to the truth, and so over time, those things that are true become mingled with those things that are imagined, until we cannot remember truthfully the truth of the matter.


    The people were quite overcome by such stories. Particularly troubling was the death of a young maiden. She was fair and beautiful¡ªone of the debutante¡¯s ladies in waiting¡ªand when the hour of her death tolled nigh, her soul spirited away from her body leaving those who dwelt near it bewildered by so quick and painless a death.


    The young woman was surrounded by a retinue of ladies at the hour of her death, none of whom could discern wither her last breath was taken. Afterward, they spoke of blasphemous things, of some omen that appeared at the woman¡¯s window each night. That she never took her last breath, and in fact, never ceased breathing at all, and yet would not awake.


    The priests hushed the maidens and their mothers chided them. They were not to speak ill of the dead nor were they to raise pandemonium over the cause of it. They interred the young woman in the cemetery, her body unsure of its own death, only to watch in terror as each of those ladies who had witnessed the mystery of that death so also took to their death beds.


    This incited in their mothers a panic. For surely, as was to be the most obvious conjecture drawn, their children were the victims of the widow, whose influence only expanded in the event of her imprisonment. A fevered panic rose among them, so much so that the first maiden was exhumed of her resting place and discovered less dead than she had once appeared. Her skin maintained its glow, and at her lips a touch of blood.


    In a most gruesome display of fear and horror, they cut the heart from that poor woman¡¯s body and burned it at the blacksmith¡¯s forge. Uncontented that the disease ended with her, they followed the poor woman¡¯s trail, repeating the procedure on each of her ladies in waiting until all were returned to their tombs with no hearts and no heads, and thereby no means to meet the Resurrection when it came.


    It was then that they turned to the Comte¡ªthat first victim of the widow. Removing the lid from the Comte¡¯s tomb, they gazed upon that most gruesome face and were frightened by his eerie smile. How had he lasted so long so interred? How had his breath not transfixed, and his heart not crumbled? Perhaps, they reasoned sensibly, he no longer needed such faculties to tip the lid from his casket and take his victims each evening.


    The Comte¡¯s heart so removed, they had only to follow his death to the widow, whose imprisonment did nothing for the form she took at night, who could easily remedy herself slender and slip from its grasp. The abbess refused them entry to the convent time and time again, but that would not keep them from their fear or panic. Or from rattling the gates at night.


    S¨¦verine had resolved herself by the dawn. The sentimentalists can waste an entire lifetime to their tragedies, but S¨¦verine would not live another minute with hers.


    How strange that one can oscillate so severely between two conflicting emotions. To fall into such blighted weakness one moment, and to reign with such strength the next. S¨¦verine wondered momentarily what kind of person that would make her altogether. Was she weak or strong? Perhaps, she thought admirably, it was one¡¯s weaknesses that made them strong.


    Indeed, S¨¦verine felt more boldened than before. Aware that she was complicated from one moment to the next, with all the fleeting sadnesses of humanity and all the triumphant happinesses too. With boundless empathy and ceaseless indifference. With a craving for social wit in one moment, and solitude the next.


    If she contained the very worst of human nature, then she also contained the very best. Their sin and their salvation. Perhaps that was as God divined. An Eden that for all the beauty Divine Providence bestowed upon it, contained also the vilest creatures capable of destroying it. Perhaps God Himself was both good and evil, she wondered.


    So many years later we have still not discovered the answer to life¡¯s complexities, except to announce that it is complex indeed. The line between good and evil remains a mystery to us all. Perhaps even to God. For attempting to discern among us who is right and who is wrong will only harden both parties in their mutual distrust of one another and seek to divide them without reason.


    The truth is that no one person harbors it. Perhaps God¡¯s only aim is that one day we will see the good that exists in one another, without seeing the evil. Until her imprisonment, S¨¦verine saw her own faults too clearly. She would fall asleep at night aware of each thing she did wrongly. But no longer. For the moment, if not forever, she would attempt to see within all, and at the very least herself, the good.


    Thus resolved, when the villagers clamored for her soul out of doors, their panic inciting them all to frenzy, S¨¦verine knelt with her prayers and contemplation within the solitude of her cell. By the morning, when the villagers at last opened the gates and reached her quarters, S¨¦verine was gone, and their greatest fears were confirmed.

 Chapter 34

    In that town, there was painter who rented out a portion of a more prominent man¡¯s home. The painter was a yet unaccomplished man though there were hints of his genius. He took commissions to pay for his sparse way of life and spent the remainder of his days in pursuit of the masterpiece that had yet to be painted, the view of the world that had yet to be seen.


    He searched ruefully for a model who would capture his fancy, and whose fancy could be captured in his art, but she was most difficult to find. On one afternoon, as the sun fell through the well-lit space, a young woman posed in the nude, draping herself upon a most elegant settee with what she presumed was desired aplomb. The painter posed her gently, attempting to find the angle most natural to the eye. The one that brought forward the woman¡¯s charm and youth and hid away the harsh realities of her life.


    The nature of nude models at that time was that they were either old and uncaring for their bodies, or they were young and adherent to their morals. The painter grew tired of painting minds that were unencumbered by their nudity and despaired that he might never find a model both chaste and willing, whose modesty would still present itself in the portrait of a nude, and whose figure would look at home in even the most pious salon.


    The painter did not find morality in this woman, but he did find, as she looked up into his eyes, a certain sadness. As though perhaps, only a few years prior, she had been one of those young maidens he so wished to paint, with all the promise of a suitable marriage and all the godliness of a noble upbringing, and yet whose wasted dowry could not save her from her most forlorn fate¡ªwhom circumstance had forgotten, but perhaps art could find.


    A man rapped upon the door, losing the painter of his fantasy. Startled, the woman clutched her chemise to her chest. In that action the painter saw the woman he wished to paint, and he stopped her from moving further. ¡°Hold still,¡± he whispered to his muse, for he found her most beautiful in that moment¡ªher hair falling into her face, her body sold but her mind still modest. There she was, he thought, the woman he wanted to paint.


    The mercenary greeted the painter and paid him handsomely, thanking him both for the portrait he made of the widow, and then, when counseled about it, for electing that it had been of a certain age. The painter bowed graciously, happy to be of service to such a well-paying customer. Indeed, it had been a most enjoyable commission, for the portrait of the widow was redolent of mystery, with wine-dashed lips unsure whether they were smiling.


    The two men spoke of art and shared some eau de vie, and in the end the mercenary took his leave, and the artist returned to his work, eager to capture the maiden who fortune unfavored.


    That evening, a gentleman and his wife took in the opera. At first, they were alone in the privacy of their box. He brandished a pair of opera glasses, looking through them in turns, and his wife held a pair of white gloves in one hand, a red ruby ring glistening from her left hand as she fanned herself elegantly with the right.


    Then, at the second act, another couple joined them, amusing themselves with flutes of champagne and spoonfuls of caviar and creme. They laughed at those patrons whose lot lay in the tiers above, whose superstitions covered them with the dust of the dead, who had not the wherewithal to appreciate art and poetry, nor the intelligence to boast of politics or philosophy.


    They pitied the lowly, all wit and grandeur erasing the pain of malnourishment and poverty that so lamented the lower classes. They sipped their bubbles with a certain superiority. It was no matter that they knew not what opera they attended, their mere presence was enough to ensure their regality¡ªtheir minds educated against the irrationality of their peers.


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    They clapped politely when monsieur was overcome by his love and yelled ¡°brava!¡± when madame¡¯s voice trilled up into the rafters. They fanned themselves when madame¡¯s bosom heaved with passion, and tsked to themselves when the villain was afoot. But then they returned to their banter, uncaring of the story or its drama, their minds lost only in the frivolities of the rich.


    The maestro gestured maniacally, hands flitted across piano keys, the sound of cellos wept softy in their ears. A crescendo reached its very apex and then a kiss fell upon the two stars, dooming them to some fate or another, poison upon their very lips. The music told them what to feel, how to react, and yet their box insulated them from the emotion that settled among the rest of the audience, providing a backdrop to their grandiosity. Velvet curtains hung from gold banisters, masking their faces from those whose eyes wettened with sadness and whose lips smiled with joy.


    The gentleman kissed the hand of his wife as they trained their eyes on another couple across the nave. There the philanthropist sat with his young fianc¨¦, their eyes lost of laughter and bereft of emotion. They sat with all the solemnities of a church service and took no pleasure in the theater. And yet there was a certain smugness to the philanthropist¡¯s face, as if the sitting in his box was all that was required to secure his place among the cosmos.


    There was no ghost to haunt that opera house, no chandelier that would fall from the rafters. And yet, when the last curtain was called, and the last curtsy taken, a janitor discovered in that box the most beautiful handkerchief, woven of a fine white muslin, and stitched upon it the most marvelously plumed parrot, with a beak threaded with gold, and wings embroidered with the most vibrant jungle greens and ocean blues one had ever seen.


    It must have come from some sailor, he thought idly, one who traveled very far and wide.


    Swallowed by the swamp was an estate once gilded and grand, pulled into the earth by the vines and collapsing softly into the wetlands that would one day forget the fine family that once lived there. The jungle creeping in around it as it returned to its former life. From ashes to ashes, it whispered, and dust to dust.


    Inside it retained a certain regality. Though the windows were covered with vines and the birds of paradise grew indoors, there was a beauty to living among the ruins¡ªbetween indoors and out, between civilization and savagery. Brick steps led to cast iron balconies, wooden shutters fell from erstwhile hinges and doors no longer closed in their frames.


    Walls wallpapered with a menagerie of monkeys met the wild parakeets who now nested amidst its peeling panels. Persimmon trees grew through the floors and into the ceilings sprouting yellow tourmaline fruit from its branches. Strings of pearled vines clutched to railings and fell from unlit chandeliers, and all of it was darkened by the shadows of the ceiling, protecting that indoor jungle from the light of the coming moon.


    It was there, in that dilapidated kingdom, disinherited of its splendor, that the couturi¨¨re met with the healer who had once cured the child. An idling humidity clung to their bodies as they stepped over wild snakes and spoke in hushed tones. Sweat settled upon their skin like a dew until at last the sky broke and a deep rain pattered upon the plantation, leaking down the walls and into the terrarium in which they stood, a subtle winter storm to break the fever of the day.


    The couturi¨¨re had come to the healer for a potion and the healer handed it to her. Here was an elixir so sweet, so savory, so potent of life and death, of love and hate, that it filled the vial with a smoky pseudocide, a thick molasses syrup that laced the interior of the glass with a suspicious sanctity. The contents sidled about as the couturi¨¨re held it in her hand, her eyes betraying her hunger.


    Water fell to the floor, filling it with the sea, as the healer warned against misuse and reminded that it was meant to be used wisely. Bowing graciously, the couturi¨¨re set back out into the swamp, sidling up to her knees in the water and the reeds as the sky poured uncertainty upon her, the clouds crackling above with an abstract ire.


    All the way, she clung to her growing belly and sang to that vial an unearthly incantation¡ªa haunting request that her ancestors might use it toward its most salient end.

 Chapter 35

    The servants waited by the windows for their mistress to arrive. The hour was late, the candles burned to their last, and her dinner grew colder. Each held their breath in anticipation of the moment that would startle them from their waiting. Wondering when, if ever, it would arrive.


    They waited in a spare but furnished room hidden from the remainder of the inn by a door that appeared to be a broom closet. The innkeeper was a friend of the captain¡¯s, who had rented the entire inn and settled S¨¦verine¡¯s servants within it, establishing a room for each of the inn¡¯s inhabitants.


    The servants fidgeted with their gloves and inspected their shirts. They filled and refilled the water pitcher and tenderly touched the leaves of an alligator fern that bathed leisurely in a shallow vase. They peered from the windows, fogged by night and obscured by botany. They paced the floors and checked the locks.


    They listened for the sound of a hinge or a footstep on the stair, and worried that whoever occasioned such sounds might not be the person they expected. There seemed to be so many sounds in that silence, and each of them lacking some salient cause. There was no person roaming the attic, and yet steps could be heard nonetheless. There was no hand running the length of the hall and yet a woman¡¯s glove appeared on the bureau.


    The innkeeper was a retired privateer himself and kept in his company those compatriots in need of a room. So, he ran an inn of sorts, a common escape for erstwhile sea captains¡ªone that appeared a most reputable establishment from the front, and yet hid an entirely separate one at the back. One with shrouded tables, secret stairways, hidden attics, and a hallway that reached in one direction toward sin and in the other toward salvation.


    In that inn was kept the secrets of a century. The ghosts of shipwrecked sailors and forlorn lovers. Of those who were so scorned by life that they could not keep from living some semblance of it even after their earthly lives were through. They were unable to turn from the darkness that had swallowed them for in that despair dwelt also their delight. The last caress of a lover lost.


    The servants had lived in that place a fortnight and none found solace in it. Two claimed to have seen a maiden ascending the stairs into an unused chandelier. Another claimed to have seen a man in the hallway with a patch upon his eye. These were naught but flickers, visions seen and yet unseen as only ghosts can be¡ªassuring their obscurity among the living by the mere fact that anyone who could claim to have seen them, could in the next moment doubt whether they had seen them at all.


    The unease wrapped around them, the darkness deepened, and then the door opened. A small commotion drew each of their idling minds to attention, gulping fear down their throats as they willed the silence to sustain so they might discern which patron entered the establishment below. They exhaled as voices were heard and recognized: the captain and the m¨¦nag¨¨re returned from the opera. The innkeeper greeted his guests and took their coats before establishing them in a private booth where they might take their supper.


    Though the servants could not see within in that booth, so shrouded by red velvet curtains and concealing a red velvet settee, they could eventually hear the child sneak from his own chamber to join them, the sounds of their silverware clinking against aged china, and the sounds of whispered voices filled with worry.


    A long hour stretched after as fires were stoked and rekindled, candles replaced and relit, and then the door opened anew. This time the sound of the couturi¨¨re filled the inn. She had returned from her errand drenched in errant rains, the sound of the storm sprinkling upon the herringbone floors as the boards creaked from age and angst beneath their new visitor.


    She was greeted by the captain and the m¨¦nag¨¨re and the child, their whispers hesitant and tired, until at last they ceased and the hours stretched forth for an indefinite amount of time. The inn mustered itself for another period of waiting, her wretched body fortifying itself against the rain and settling into its ire as her inhabitants waited for the remaining three.


    At a quarter past midnight the mercenary too returned to the inn, shaking the rains from his cloak as his boots thudded dimly against the floor. By then each party was haunted by an unattainable sleep, sipping shallow coups of absinthe as they lounged against the velvet tapestries, waiting for the sounds of their remaining guests.


    The mercenary nodded at the group, poured himself a measure of absinthe, and drew himself a pitcher of water before mounting the creaking stairs to the room which the servants had so solemnly prepared. Greeting each of them in turn, he released them to their respective beds and sat at the desk, settling various paper around him as his restlessness dissolved into the silence.


    There was a gentle ticking, and it began to trouble his mind so much so that he retrieved his pocket watch from his coat and tucked it beneath the mattress, returning another sip of absinthe to his lips before settling at the desk once more. This time a small tapping took hold of his attention, as though someone rapped at the wall behind the desk.


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    He had not the time for his imagination, he thought at first, before realizing that he had far too much time for it. Seeking some reprieve from his waiting, from the agony of a moment which was outside of his control, he moved the desk out from the wall and peered into a crack behind it.


    There was nothing there, of course, and he made to return the desk against the wall when the tapping returned and once more caught his attention. The mercenary was not a man who believed in spirits or specters, thus far he had attempted to comfort the servants by telling them so, and yet it is altogether possible for a man who does not believe in ghosts to see one.


    Used to having his mind changed by evidence, he removed the plank from the wall and there discovered a small alcove containing a bundle of letters wrapped in twine, layers of dust sifted atop them with spindles of spider webs strung elegantly around them. The mercenary removed them from their lair, closed the wall of its secrets, and returned to the desk where he cleaned the letters of their age and set about unsealing them.


    The letters contained a love story between a woman who was married and a captain who was seafaring. Their love story was dark and sordid, told in haltering moments of passion and aching moments of separation. They spent nights together at the inn, he read, and then they were apart for long months, she spending lonesome nights in bed with her husband as her lover spent lonesome nights at sea. Their love lived only in this small room and their lives lived away from it.


    Perhaps, the mercenary thought, it was they who haunted that space, for it was the only place where they could love one another. Even if it was a doomed and disoriented afterlife, it was there that they had one another and that their love could live on in eternity, encapsulated within the walls that once sheltered them.


    But then, perhaps his mind was weary from the poison. For days he had lain mostly dead in the room of the physician as the spectacled old man worked diligently to undo what harm was caused him. His muscles had since returned to their former strength, but his mind sometimes lapsed into visions, the world tilting sideways for a moment as though he might fall off it, until the world righted itself once more and gravity firmly affixed him to it.


    Just then, there was a sound at the door. The one every one of them awaited.


    At last, a breath inhaled as the door opened, and into that wasted waiting appeared the commander and upon his arm, S¨¦verine. They were met with relief and happiness. S¨¦verine held the boy in her arms and the commander kissed his wife. The captain and the m¨¦nag¨¨re embraced each of them turn.


    M. Delacroix entered the scene, seeing in it all the poetry we have so far encountered. He saw the rise of his lover¡¯s heart as she breathed a shuttered breath, and he scooped her into his arms, kissing her eyelashes as she began to weep with the relief. S¨¦verine¡¯s body shook as the years of sorrow left her. For so long she had been haunted. Now she was no more. Now, she felt, it was all over. She kissed R¨¦my on the lips, knowing he could have her heart, now that it could live only in light.


    When the clamor and excitement had wound to its end, the candles burned to their last, and the refilled coups of absinthe dwindled to their dregs, their excited minds finally allowed them the reprieve of sleep. S¨¦verine tucked the child into his bed with a kiss and released the last candle of its duty as the inn returned to its creaking silence and she wandered down the hall to her rooms.


    S¨¦verine entered her bedchamber, the one with the letters and the washbowl and the botany, and closed the door. R¨¦my stared at her a long while, her eyes deepened and beautiful, her hair long and unfurling, her skin incandescent and perfect. She was a thing of beauty from her head to her toes, a pearl in an oyster shell drenched in the light of an undersea opulence.


    In a reprieve from his pensive mind, he touched her hand and held it in his, her outstretched fingers reaching for his touch in return. It was a strange and beautiful thing, the love the dwelt between them. For it came with all the longing of those haunted sailors, and all the passion of their lost lovers, and yet it would follow them from this inn and out into their lives. A love that would be lived for centuries and be sustained in their hearts even after. This, they felt, could at last be the truth.


    She closed her eyes as he drew her into his chest. Her hair falling down her back like the waves, a tear slipping down her cheek, a sigh falling from her breath. And he, in his unbelief, could not help but let a tear fall down his. A relief that they were together at last, that the great tragedies of their lives was soon to be complete.


    They touched one another¡¯s fingertips and held between their hands some small happiness. Their dead hearts alive and awake, returned to life after such a sustained absence, rekindled from the crypts where for so long they had despaired. They might have spent hours that way, holding one another to their hearts, impassioned that they were even alive. But then their love evolved into something more desperate and desirous.


    R¨¦my, who spent his life pondering the philosophies of life, could now find in it only two truths: that life remained a mystery and that this woman was his favorite one. He savored her on his lips as though he were the monk who sipped the very first glass of champagne, the man who drank deeply from the cup of life, her wine-red lips the most delectable delicacy. She was as a Bordeaux, grown from limestone crosses crushed underfoot and obscured by fog, all so that she could become something obsessed with mystery and alight with fantasy.


    At times, in the night, they became so frenzied that her hair would fall in into her mouth, their lush lovemaking glistening like peeled oranges glac¨¦ed in the summer sun. Other times they were so tender and anguished it felt as though they were in whispering in a jungle, kneeling at the altar of a waterfall, feeling the ecstasy of God rain down upon them as they bathed in His splendor.


    When at last they were satiated, their bodies redolent with wild palms, oiled as though by coconuts, and warmed by a waxing sun, they watched the dawn break on a new day. One that would mark the end of so many bad ones, so they might live anew, with only the good ones.

 Chapter 36

    The wedding was stunning. The bride¡¯s gown immaculate upon the alter, the priest holding his hand over them in blessing, the open air hung with boughs of palm leaves and ferns, the stars petering in from on high. It was as a castle upon a cloud. A dream within a dream.


    But if the wedding was a treat for the eyes, the feast that anteceded it was a triumph of execution. In a matter of moments pews were removed from the cathedral and tables filled it as though they had been waiting outside the cathedral for that cherished moment and then arrived at the party to provide the most elegant sustenance for it.


    Each table was the perfect still life. A tableau of the most perfect oranges the eyes could behold?¡ª?dewy as though picked that very morning, their leaves still attached and framing them in splendor. There were apricots from some far-off continent and plums burnt with brown sugar. Large vases were filled with confectionaries and dusted with slivered almonds.


    Orange oyster shells filled with the shallow fruits of the Mississippi invited slurpers to become sea drunk on otherworldly urchins, searching among those treasures for a pearl or two to take home as a parting gift. A baked variety padded those creatures with butter and garnished them with parsley or tucked them into a bed of fromage bleu for richer dreams with far flung fantasies.


    Meats were coddled with banana leaves and crab claws were heaped upon trays. Some tables held parchment braised by charcoal and flame, the contents of which enveloped its opener with a puff of warm steam to the skin and a crab-scented complexion. Stewed in shrimp and velout¨¦d with champagne, the contents spilled onto oily spoons, buttering unsuspecting lips with an enviable glow.


    Bananas removed of their peels were doused in liquor and scorched with fire, burnt cinnamons and brown sugars and rums lending a taste to the air infusing it with a Caribbean contentedness, warmed as if by the sun and cooled with clotted creme.


    Bottles of rum were infused with cacao, rosemary, and horchata, each bottle a portrait of an inward bouquet, as though an entire floral arrangement had somehow been captured inside the glass before that sugared spirit was distilled within it. The flavors were decadent and discombobulated, as though they were meant to meet on the tongue for a moment only to never meet again.


    Colorful birds nestled in the tropical canopy, contented to preside over the festivities without speaking, their beaks sealed of some forsworn secret. They watched as imbibers became intoxicated with a plethora of sensory pleasures. Scent and scenery. Taste and touch. The present moment sweeter than it could ever be remembered.


    Indeed, those patrons, as they danced and sang, the opulence of the wedding mingling with the tropicality of an open-air cathedral, would, the next morning, feel only a vague sense of enchantment. They would remember the palm trees that for one night had been moved indoors, and harbor lust for the coffee served with orange liqueur and scented with myrrh.


    But most of all, as the evening drew to a close and their eyelids fell into the most sound slumber, their waking minds would come to remember the haunting melody that thrummed through their drifting bodies as they danced and the lingering feeling that they did not wish the magic to end.


    ¡ª


    The musicians had retired for the evening, their last song left unplayed, and a ruin of wildflowers lay strewn about the floor, remnants of a fairytale now undone?¡ª?a night of decadence devolved to degeneracy, a reverie now a requiem. And beneath the last sliver of the disappearing moon the couple danced, their fingers idling against one another as they were held together by their most solemn vows.When the rum had dwindled, the sweet sugar dripping from their lips as guests departed the dance and returned to their beds, there remained on the dance floor only the groom and his bride, swaying subtly in that empty apse.


    The philanthropist clung to his bride; his breath warm with rum as he murmured intoxicated nothings into her neck. He held her by the waist, the tulle bunching beneath his sweaty fingers as though he had at last captured a cloud and held it within his hand. Her lips sang a soft song, hardly heard beneath the silence as they swayed under the last of the evening¡¯s stars.


    The groom¡¯s fingers drifted delicately at her neckline, his hands caressing the jewels at her neck with an overdone delicacy. The silence was pierced only by the sound of her dress swishing slowly against the floor as they danced and the haunting melody that fell haltingly from her lips?¡ª?the evening settling among them like a fog and the two of them completely alone.


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    The bride felt that at any moment, the evening might collapse upon itself, like a souffle pulled too quickly from the oven. She felt it in her hands as she wrapped her arms around his. The sweat that lingered at the nape of her neck. The nerves that shook her softly as her eyelashes tremored against his cheeks. Their dancing was slow and lingering, rife with anticipation and wanting.


    And then, she drew her lips to his, kissing him slowly, so that her husband might taste the nectar of her lips.


    Unwilling to prolong her games any further, the groom broke the necklace at her neck and the diamonds went crashing to the floor, scattering across the ballroom in a sparkling cascade of brilliance. The groom was not distracted from his greed, frenzied as he was to unwrap his bride from her gown. Lifting the chiffon skirts from her legs he loosened his belt and dropped his pants, throwing his wife onto the table as he prepared to take his pleasure at last.


    At first, he did not notice the tang in the air, the coppery relish that hung from his lips and occasioned his mouth to salivate. but then, just as he was about to take possession of his wife, his eyes were opened to her treachery, and he fell to the floor.


    ¡ª


    His eyes lost sight of the life he had built for himself, his mind recognizing that it would all be for nothing if he died. No title would come where he went. No riches would be shored up for him in his coffin. He feared with an ever-increasing anxiety that this moment was his last, that he would no longer be of any importance, that he was only seconds away from falling into obscurity. He mourned that he would not know what would become of his name. That he would be lost to life at last. A person no longer in existence, like everyone who had died before him. Lost to the decades that would come after them, with not even a memory to sustain their legacy.His lips sputtered, his eyes boldened. His heart fluttered and his stomach turned. He beheld his bride with a shock that reverberated through his body. Was she his murderer, he wondered as his cognitive function faded, her lips drenched with the poison of the kings?


    His lips trembled. He wept that he would exist no more, that all his accomplishments would be for naught. That he would only ever be the boy in the puddle, the one whose life a priest once stole. Was there a paradise before him, he wondered? Was there some purgatory that would keep him? Would he descend to the bowels of hell forever? Or simply cease to be of existence?


    He did not know which frightened him more, that an afterlife might await him, or that one would not. In his mind the only thing he could fixate on, the only thought that contained any importance, was the fearsome idea that there would, at least, be nothing left of him. Even the cathedral he had built to carry his memory would be left unfinished and would bear the name of the one who completed it.


    He would rot away in his most grandiose tomb, the marble losing its luster when the rains came, and none would be left to polish it or speak highly of his aims. His aims! What use were his accomplishments in the face of death? What use were his titles, his riches, his sexual conquests when they could not enter that fateful grave?! When none would mourn that industrious soul, save the insects who suckled away at his fingers and toes when he at last rotted away into the earth!!


    If, by some fate, he was remembered by this generation, he would be forgotten by the next, and that horrible insufferable fate that comes to all of us would at last befall him. He would be forgotten. He would be nothing. Nothing. Nothing. From nothing he had come and to nothing he would return. He may as well have died an urchin in the street, that faraway day in Spain, for there was no point of it all.


    How he trembled then! How he despaired! Even those accomplishments that had once enticed him now haunted him. For even if he had achieved all the fame and the fortune and the glory that he intended to one day be his, his death would occasion the end of it all?¡ª?the complete and utter loss of all he had worked for. Whatever small sliver of respect he had achieved during his lifetime would dissolve with time and his life would become irrelevant. A wealthy dead man, after all, is quite simply a dead man.


    And who was to blame for this misfortune? This gross assault on the only thing that is ever really dear, life itself! That, for a brief and altogether fantastic moment it exists at all is a terrible phenomenon. What a spectacular occurrence! what a miraculous event! And then, just as fleetingly, it is gone. That flame extinguished. The light lost as though it was never really lit at all. The forlorn soul crossing that strange and mysterious veil through which every one of us passes and not a single one of us returns.


    With one last look about him, at the dinner yet uneaten, the cathedral that remained unfinished, his wife unconsummated. Ah, his wife! That desperate whore who had poisoned him at last, who held him in her arms, her delicate hands draped with his jewels, her dress of clouds cradling his head. And then with one last flicker of existence, he thought he saw the angel of death. Alas, it was only the widow who appeared at his feet, his nemesis finally come to collect her victory. Alas!

 Chapter 37

    The governor returned to his study and settled himself at his bureau. The wedding had been a lavish scene, the aspirations of that groom most grandiose, and yet the man was so unaware of his own hauteur. Out for the benefit of his own ego, he could hardly have noticed the detriment of his fellow man.


    The governor pondered these mild provocations as he made a pipe for himself and set a match to it. The air sparkled and fizzled, the long allure of tobacco scented the room. Sitting back in his chair, he looked at the portrait above his desk. He and his wife had sat for the portrait on their wedding day with all the honor and regality they received from the Spanish Court.


    He looked about the room. They lived in a modest home now, and yet it was quite amenable to their circumstances with all the furnishings befitting of that era. A fireplace warmed his skin as he enjoyed the drag of his pipe, the mantle was fitted with a brass clock, the walls paneled and adorned with gold gilded frames, a plush carpet piled high beneath his feet.


    He looked at the painting again. They appeared as royalty, and yet he was an orphan. Now he was the governor of a town that was filled with orphans. Death ravaged that place and revolution pursued them. Perhaps humans were not meant to live in a place as wild as this, he thought, and yet how much worse had it been among the great civilizations of Europe.


    He fell into a vision of the future. Some betterment for humanity. Some longing for peace.


    It was war and conflict that created such a place as America. Patriots from thirteen colonies rose up against their country and claimed for themselves independence. France tore the heads off their kings and queens and still ravaged the cities in their anger. In the West Indies, natives and slaves woke up in bouts of rebellion, slaughtering settlements and eviscerating plantations.


    He thought back to the most recent massacre. How troublesome it had been to see an entire town murdered with hatchets. Their skulls cracked open and their meals uneaten. Their children hidden beneath beds and in barrels.


    Still, he could not shake the haunting visage of the woman. She stood naked, a hatchet in her hand, having hacked her husband to pieces for breaking his treaty with the French. The governor had been on horseback, leading the militia to the settlement when he saw her. She looked up at him for a moment, and their eyes locked. Then he blinked, and she was gone.


    She was to him a spectre. Some vision of what would befall them if they could not find it within themselves to find some means of peace between them.


    He turned these thoughts over and over in his mind, sitting with them in discomfort. They had needed to be angry to rid themselves of tyranny, he reasoned. They had needed revolution to throw off the blankets of oppression. They had needed to get bloody to fight for their freedom. And perhaps they had need of that anger still as they brought about an entirely new continent and established within it entirely new ideals.


    But there would come a point where they would need to develop an entirely different skillset, he thought. Not to burn to the ground, but to build. Not to rip apart, but to piece together. Not to fight, but to work together. To start from scratch and build something new, and that would require casting aside the anger and aggression that had gotten them this far and replacing it with the ideals and progression that would take them into the future.


    They would need to remove themselves of the inclination to fight problems and instill within themselves the inclination to come up with solutions, the governor thought, and that was something that thus far had never been achieved in the whole of humanity.


    Of course, the reader is well aware of the Moorish times of Spain, the Renaissance in Italy, when great civilizations enjoyed periods of advancement in art and architecture, philosophy and literature, music and science and technology, and all aspects of intellectual inquiry. But those times came with the benevolence of the wealthy. When the rich poured their prosperity into art and libraries and monasteries and thinking. When men who might have been lost to poverty, were instead endowed to become Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, and Michelangelo.


    The affluence that allowed ordinary men to become writers, philosophers, inventers, and thinkers was lost when greed returned and hoarding proliferated. When the Medici¡¯s became corrupt and then bankrupt and the monarchies did much the same. It was thus that the gap between the rich and the poor widened, and the Leonardo da Vincis and Michelangelos were left to become farmers. It was thus that they were forced to rise up in revolution.


    His wife knocked on the door, wondering whether he might come to bed.


    In a moment, he replied, for he needed another moment to quiet his thoughts?¡ª?to wonder whether there might ever come a day when there would peace. Whether it might be achieved if certain initiatives were installed. Whether by thinking through the problems at hand he might stumble upon some methods of solving them.


    It was a problem of humanity, he thought. For humanity was filled with greed. It was all about hoarding one¡¯s riches and flaunting them with spectacular balls and lavish weddings. By what methods could they be urged to spend more benevolently, the governor wondered? Not on cathedrals that would bear their name, but on institutions that would give every individual an opportunity to do something great.


    He sighed, thinking of things he might never be able to affect, no matter how many hours he spent contemplating them.


    The governor wrapped himself into the last smoke from his pipe, pondering the very inefficiencies of the wealthy, and the missed opportunities of the lowly. And then a servant entered into the room and presented him with a package. A brown leather ledger wrapped in cloth and a letter newly arrived from the convent.


    ¡ª


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    He was in his bedchamber alone, and everything was as it was before he left for his wedding the evening prior. Someone had undressed him. His hair was combed and cared for. His room was arranged with all the splendor of beautiful trousseaus and boudoirs filled with velvet things. The tassels hung from his bedposts just as they always had, and then there was the sound of a servant banging at the door.The philanthropist woke to a knock at his door. For a moment he did not stir until, disoriented by the evening¡¯s events he coughed into his pillow, snorting boisterously as he groped with his waking reality. Relieved to have breath in his lungs, he blinked his eyes deeply before sitting up, suddenly unnerved.


    The philanthropist turned his attention to the door. ¡°Come in, come in!¡± he shouted, attempting to compose himself.


    ¡°Monsieur,¡± the man said with great haste, ¡°the bishop is here to see you.¡±


    ¡°The bishop?¡± the philanthropist asked with great surprise. Quickly he adorned himself with his cloak and hurried to the door, anxious to discover what events led the holy man to appear at his door. Indeed, the very fact that he was not yet dead deeply surprised him, and he found he could not contain his incredulity, his madness at what had occurred the night prior. If, that is, it had even occurred at all.


    He found the bishop seated in the salon, the col romain nearly choking the man¡¯s most wrinkled throat as a harrowing gleam passed through his eyes.


    ¡°Monsieur,¡± the bishop said firmly. ¡°Madame l¡¯abbesse wishes to thank you for your generosity. She wishes also to commend you for your most noble conversion.¡±


    The philanthropist was bewildered, uncertain as to what the priest was implying.


    ¡°Rest assured,¡± the man continued, ¡°that your wealth has secured a most honorable position within our order, and certainly Divine Providence will see fit to reward such a considerable donation. But know also that the road before you will be long and harrowing. I tell you truly, it is easier for a man to enter into the eye of a needle, than it is for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.¡±


    The philanthropist could not grasp the words the old man was saying. Only moments ago, he had belabored the thought of his own inexistence. Had some charitable contribution been made in that state? Had he occasioned some donation? His poisoned mind was confused by this confronting reality and struggled to decipher from it any explanation. And now was he being lectured on his own impiety? Was the priest scolding him for his immorality?


    The priest continued speaking, his wrinkles betraying decades of condemnation as they shook woefully in his priestly attire. He was dressed quite ornately for a man who vowed poverty, and the philanthropist wondered at the secretly excessive lives the priests of this town must live to afford lacy cuffs and silk stockings, a pocket watch at his waist, and a snuffbox on his person.


    The old man spoke at length of retribution and penance, of perdition and damnation. He spoke the same destitution that was taught to him as a boy of eighteen and dwelt in the same lulling hells, but the philanthropist could not hear his blather nor comprehend his ire. He could only attempt to understand why the bishop brought with him a change of clothing, a black woolen cassock that hung at his door and the col romain that adorned it.


    ¡ª


    For hours after the priest left, the philanthropist was befuddled by the very words he had spoken. But then his circumstances grew stranger still when the governor arrived at his doorstep to evict him from his home.


    ¡°By what means!¡± the philanthropist shouted, ¡°by what cause am I to part with my possessions and be removed from my home?¡±For hours after the priest left, the philanthropist was befuddled by the very words he had spoken. But then his circumstances grew stranger still when the governor arrived at his doorstep to evict him from his home.


    ¡°Why, by your very hand yourself,¡± the governor answered confusedly. He reached to the ground and picked up the morning paper, dusting it of the morning¡¯s detriment and handing it over to the philanthropist. The philanthropist regarded the paper with suspicion, and there discovered upon its first page the most incredulous story. It read as follows:


    <blockquote>ATTENTION!</blockquote>


    <blockquote>PHILANTHROPIST RUINED!!!</blockquote>


    <blockquote>A ledger sent to the governor¡¯s attention last night contained proof that Monsieur the philanthropist, whose vast fortune is responsible for the construction of the new cathedral, cabildo, and presbyter, stole his riches from his former business partner, a prominent and well-respected man hailing from the south of Spain.</blockquote>


    <blockquote>After committing extortion, it appears Monsieur fled to la Nouvelle-Orl¨¦ans where he spent this money lavishly on hedonistic pleasures, hiding beneath his feigned benevolence a most perverted and lecherous nature.</blockquote>


    <blockquote>His former business partner, once ruined financially, found solace in the priesthood, where he served at the monastery at Santa Mar¨ªa de las Cuevas in Spain for several years. In his final days, with the intention of offering forgiveness and conversion to his betrayer, the priest traveled to la Nouvelle-Orl¨¦ans, where he had the misfortune to meet his fate at the hand of fever. He was buried at la Cimeti¨¨re Saint-Louis.</blockquote>


    <blockquote>After discovering the ledger on her wedding night, and unable to offer restitution to her husband¡¯s victim, Madame the philanthropist¡¯s wife generously agreed to donate the entire sum of their vast fortune to the Couvent des Ursulines that it might be used finance an orphanage and school for boys. Their hope, she said, was that their immense financial support might offer a better life for children born into the same misfortune her husband had been.</blockquote>


    <blockquote>Madame added that her husband was greatly sorrowful for his actions and deeply lamented his past. He has agreed to annul their marriage on the condition that he join the priesthood where he might spend the rest of his life in repentance for his sins.</blockquote>


    The philanthropist felt as though he were teetering on the brink of a bad dream. As though he were trying to keep his mind from tipping into mental illness. He was ill at ease, confounded and confused. Unable to ascertain what aspects of life were corporeal and material and what were the effects of some psychoactive poison.


    He slapped himself several times, he splashed cold water upon his face. He yelled at his servants and rang bells for more water. He fell into fits of fever, hallucinating about a boy and a puddle, a barren room and an errant priest. Hysteria swept over him as he begged and pleaded for the very things moments ago he had abhorred seeking. His wealth, his riches! His status, his prestige!


    To no avail. Every remnant of comfort and prosperity were removed from his life and replaced with the austere reality of poverty. The beds were stripped of their red silken linens, the walls were removed of their pomegranate painted wallpapers, the peacock tapestries plumaged with pearls were retired of their decoration.


    Oh, how the philanthropist lamented his fate. He shouted at the governor and wept at his feet. But though the governor pitied the philanthropist his lot, he also eyed the man with the vitriol reserved only for the leprous. There was nothing that could be done, he said with distain, save take up the mantle that was reserved for him.


    When at last the home was empty of her positions and the sun waned in her position, the former philanthropist knelt in the shadow of the door and lay prostrate on the floor. With nothing left to him but a wooden cross that hung on the empty wall before him and the black cassock that hung from the door, he fell upon his knees.


    The cathedral bell tolled five times, and then the philanthropist met his fate.

 Chapter 38

    We have mentioned slightly the third of the Maries, who traveled with the widow from France, was interred into the convent, and was discovered to be missing from it some time later. What we have not discussed is how she came to be a most important member of this most peculiar story.


    The third of the Maries was born into poverty, her mother a seamstress, supporting her child in a small unheated and unfurnished room shared with her employer, a most disreputable clothier. There was peeling paint upon the walls and no beds upon which they could sleep. Eventually, her mother passed away from a lingering influenza¡ªher coughing had become more ratchet each year, and at last she could do nothing but succumb to it.


    At the passing of her mother, the clothier became despondent. Unable to turn a living without a seamstress to fulfill his orders, he turned to the drink to suppress his existential angst. On the brink of hunger, with none to support her, the girl who would come to be called Marie began taking the orders herself.


    The wages were meager, and not enough to support the small room her mother had rented. The clothier treated her badly, he spat on her hair and cursed her¡ªeventually he became violent and disorderly, blaming their lot on her mother and how her death had ruined them both.


    Marie moved onto the streets, living in an empty crate as she sewed night and day, taking every reputable job that would help her position. Alas, it was never enough¡ªshe had hardly enough to preserve her own life, though she certainly wished to keep it.


    One night, as she sat outside to sew, attempting to glean a few extra working hours from the light of the moon, a man approached her. He was disorderly and drunk and looking for her mother. The man was crude and missing his teeth, and with his slurred words he spoke of her mother¡¯s beautiful hair, then he looked at the young Marie and saw the same shade.


    It became clear to the young Marie that she would have the opportunity to earn extra wages if only she offered her body up to him. But her mind was fortified against that reality and she could not abandon her spirit so easily. She fought him off with the blade of her sewing scissors and resolved to find another way to earn a respectable life.


    But that evening she was changed. She calculated her wages over the coming years, noted the likelihood that someone in her position would ever have the opportunity to increase their earnings, and realized that in a few years¡¯ time she would be exactly where she was now, hoping only for that day¡¯s bread and that the wind didn¡¯t weep too coldly that night.


    Marie became angered by her reality, understanding that there was naught she could do but wait for the day she would miss her income and starve. What she needed was a stool¡ªsome ledge upon which she could prop herself up, to see above the poverty that consumed her so that she might stand a chance to rise above it. But no stool was offered to her. No ledge supported her.


    It was not that she wished the rich would hand her money, but they walked the streets flaunting their silken breeches and did nothing to earn them save be born into a father¡¯s wealthy estate, while her mother did nothing to earn her own lot save be born a woman, scorned for her inability to hide the sin of her pregnancy. Between both realities hung the lie that circumstances were determined by merit¡ªand that lie allowed the wealthy to maintain their preeminence.


    Marie had never seen any proof of that fact¡ªno member whose hard work allowed them to rise above their station. Especially no woman. There were shopkeepers and chimney sweeps and notaries and pensioners, but they too had some penance to begin with to enact such an enterprise, and they too were men. Was there no help from humanity, she wondered? Was there no way to earn a better circumstance? Was every act of injustice merely a bad hand dealt by God?


    In the morning, she was determined to change her fortune. Destitute and hungry, she walked into the basilica and sat between the pews. Just as she whispered her most desperate prayer, a lamp was lit in the cathedral and a man stood upon the dais. Slowly the pews filled with men and women just like her, whose clothing were wretched and whose children clung to them. These were the working class and they assembled to find some hope for their lot.


    When the darkness fell overhead, and the stained-glass dome spilled stars across the floor, a priest stood up, or was he a bishop? He told a story that was both haunting and familiar. Of a young noble man and a woman with red hair. Of an error that was made and a retribution that would follow. Of an imbalance built into the fabric of the world. Marie listened to his words with rapt attention and then a man got up from his pew and stood before the dias.


    The man spoke of injustice. Of the weight of oppression that held them to the floor and the societal structure that reaffirmed their place there. Of the thumb that held them to the ground so they could not rise. They did not wish to take charity, he said, they only wished for social equality and economic viability, so that they might work hard and have it count for something. That they might have the opportunity to improve their lot and feed their families, just as the wealthy were able.


    Marie¡¯s eyes were enlightened for, in that moment, she understood that there was some governmental power that might help her to rise but had thus far refused. So it was that when the rumbling of the revolution drew toward her, she threw her lot in with these people who called themselves the sans-culottes. This was her stool, she thought, her chance to improve her means and earn a better life. She attended meetings and became educated about her options. She supported fixed wages and price controls that would assure affordable food for people like her.


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    But the fighting and the hoping did nothing to improve her life in the interim. After the reign of terror took nothing back save a few criminals, she was forced to retire her rebellious nature and use the rest of her hard-earned money to enter the convent where she became a novice at the convent Saint-Denis. There she intended to spend her life as a schoolteacher in service to those youth who might one day rise above¡ªa second generation that might be better off than the first.


    In the convent, she watched over the orphans. She watched over also, the bishop, and attended his confessional with great regularity. It was there that she met two other nuns named Marie, who also had some desire to make this life a better one, to undo the trials they were born into for the next generation. And then the revolution came for them and they held one another¡¯s hands and fled into the night.


    Upon her arrival to la Nouvelle-Orl¨¦ans, however, Marie became angry once more. For there installed was the bishop, the one she had seen speak at the basilica and assumed dead at the end of the revolution. He dressed with frills and wore a pocket watch. In spite of her own poverty, he lived with great frivolity.


    The third Marie fell into listlessness. For she felt she was no longer working toward the purpose the revolution had given her. The fight for libert¨¦, ¨¦galit¨¦, fraternit¨¦ had ended. Cloistered in the convent she saw only the inequality that continued to proliferate among the orphans they cared for. The European parents who, though they were equally poor, were upset that their children were educated alongside native and African students as well as French and Spanish. Was there no end to the segregation, Marie thought? Would even the poor divide themselves into those who were better and those were worse?


    When S¨¦verine came to her in the cloister, Marie begged to be of assistance. To fight for those in most need and not allow them to be swallowed by the despotism that had once consumed them abroad. S¨¦verine agreed. That very day, Marie removed the veil from her head, and spilled a trove of red hair upon her shoulders. The truth of who she was at last exposed to the world.


    It was thus that the third Marie took the persona of a young debutante arrived from la Nouvelle France, a prime candidate for the philanthropists¡¯ future bride. It took only a couple of strategically placed servants to introduce the idea of marriage into the philanthropist¡¯s fevered state and the captain disguised as the girl¡¯s stately father to seal it. A marriage contract was drawn up imminently, with a clause included by the captain to allow for every asset in the philanthropist¡¯s position to become common property upon marriage.


    So it was that the third of the Maries woke the morning following her marriage, put on her dressing gown, and read the morning paper with some feeling of accomplishment and success. That all the things she had been working for had at last come to light, and that the orphans who had no families upon which they could stand, could at least have the benefit of a meal to eat three times daily, and an education that might help them avoid her fate.


    Because of her, they might now have some stool upon which they could stand.


    A few days after her wedding, Marie sat at a wooden desk in her room and penned a letter to her friend, it read as follows.


    <blockquote>


    My dearest S¨¦verine,


    Oh, to be used is such a marvelous feeling, for at last, I have come to be helpful to my brethren, and my joy does not cease to abound at such an opportunity.


    As requested, I dispatched a letter to the governor on the evening last, along with the parcel you entrusted me. As evidenced by this morning¡¯s paper, it appears he received my words and acted upon their merit. You were right, of course, to understand his ambitions, and to cater toward them.


    Oh, to be so fortunate and yet so frivolous. To have watched my transient husband spend so tirelessly and extravagantly on a feast that would feed only those who do not need to be fed. I can hardly fathom that those who have so great a fortune squander it on so little.


    It is to my great happiness that at least, in the aftermath of such frivolity, I am in the position to be of service to the next generation, that orphans who are the recipients of that most bountiful endowment might be fed and clothed and educated and be treated as equals in a country that might allow them to be so.


    I will also treasure that two men, who were once the beneficiaries of that frivolity will now provide service to the future generations. Their pasts at last expunged by their futures. Their wrongs at last righted by their own hands.


    The first man took no convincing, for the bishop was already so convinced of his guilt that he was ready to right it. As to the second man, it appears my husband did require some convincing. The fellow, though he appeared quite amiable at the start of our wedding proved quite the aggressor at the end. Were it not for the couturi¨¨re¡¯s most divine potion I might have discarded with my virtue before our purpose was accomplished.


    I thank you for your thoughtfulness, and for arriving in time to help me escort that sedated man to his bedchambers. I am glad to hear that all went amiably and according to your most well-designed plan. I thank you also, for this small furnished room in the city, where I may walk to the convent each morning and work there as you do. I will treasure this act of grace to the end of my days.


    Thank you for using me to such a purpose, Madame, in so doing you have entrusted my life with more than the hope of God, but with the action of man. In so doing, I have come to experience a great hope in our society, that we may do something about those ills of it and not remain idle in our homes as the rich squander their resources and the poor go without any. That future generations be not so unequitable, and that the divide among them ceases to exist.


    I have discovered a great many things along this journey together, not the least of which is how blessed my life is to be among such fine company. Thank you for entreating me with so many fortunes, I feel very rich indeed. It is my most sincere hope, dearest S¨¦verine, that we will continue to be friends until such a time that Divine Providence sees fit to take us into his keeping, and that He sees fit to forgive us our deception when He does.


    With love, and penance, and many happinesses, and devotion,


    Marie


    </blockquote>

 Chapter 39

    There are some who imbibe, not in too much drink, but in too much thought. Though they take much different paths to get there, the destination can feel quite the same: reflection, regret, reverie. But on the former journey, one has only to wait for more sober feeling to come, and on the latter one must endeavor to change their thoughts entirely¡ªand that can be a most troublesome undertaking.


    To reverse one¡¯s thoughts and feelings, to turn them from their downward spiral into an upward ascent requires a conscious shift. A recognition that those thoughts have quite gotten away from oneself and to prevail upon them to conjure more joyous feeling. To breathe in life¡¯s most intoxicating elixirs and savor its most delightful tonics. To return from the bowels of winter into the most cheerful ease of the summer.


    Indeed, in the summertime it is easy to feel those gaieties. To delight in a time of such abundance and wild freedom. To enjoy this one and precious life most fervently and most vibrantly. To drink it in with all its merriment and mirth and savor its contentedness even if it is so contrived. To live in happiness and healthfulness despite all thoughts to the contrary. To believe in beauty and to see it in all things even when the mind seems determined to upend it.


    Such was the way S¨¦verine felt as she drifted one morning upon the bayou, her toes lingering in the cool waters as R¨¦my rowed their pirogue toward its destination. Her pale pink gown bustled around her thighs and she did nothing to dissuade the waters from wettening it. Her lily rose complexion was shaded beneath a wide palmetto hat, a sheer veil hiding her face and her thoughts as they spiraled into places only interior mind can go, and ever so relentlessly.


    The child slept in her lap and she stroked his hair idly, wondering if his thoughts too turned to dark places when he stopped paying too much attention to them¡ªif he too had to battle the darkness on occasion. But then, she thought, perhaps those thoughts were not some beast to be faced nor some demon to defeat. Perhaps that had always been the wrong metaphor. Perhaps sorrows and joys only come upon us as waves, free to come and go as they please, lapping against us with the tides.


    And perhaps all we can do, S¨¦verine thought peacefully, is to remain steadfast amidst those tides as they rise and fall, and not hold too tightly to any particular wave as they do.


    Out beyond the bayou, once one has waded through the neck-deep waters and submitted themselves to the swaths of mosquitos, there lived a most insightful woman. It was said she was the keeper of lost spirits¡ªthat when the ancestors could not find their way back to the homeland, they came to the woman who lived in the swamp who could sing them across the sea.


    The woman wore a red cotton dress and a bright green turban about her head and listened to her mother¡¯s stories as she washed her clothing in a nearby stream and hung them to dry in a grove of wild orange trees. The woman fed wandering chickens and gathered their eggs from knots in the trees that looked like wizened old men, and it was said she could boil a pot of water without even a flame.


    Every evening she would go out into the bayou and collect wild things into her baskets¡ªthe honey from bees, the bones of small birds, the twigs from a nest, or the roots of a tree¡ªand while she did so she kept a portion of gratitude within her heart. Thus settled away from society she had found a freedom both in body and mind. It was not perfect, nor would it be so for quite some time, but she savored what portion she had and endeavored to enjoy it thoroughly.


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    The woman lived in a cottage that had long ago gone uninherited, with a dovecote that had gone to ruin and a roof that was only protected by the shade of a wild oak. Her husband brought supplies from the islands: sugarcane from revolution-ravaged plantations, cottons from the fields, holy water from the churches. And when he rowed his small pirogue up the bayou from his ship, he was always satisfied to find his wife among the wild. Her thighs lulling against the tropical waters as she gathered medicines. Her skirts trailing behind her in those murky waters.


    They lay out under the moon at night and bathed in the cool waters of the bayou, and eventually were joined by others so marooned themselves away from their plantations, establishing their homes in the hollows of trees and the inlets of coves. They build their settlements deep in the swamp, where they would never be found and where, when the waters were still, they could still hear the old woman sing as they fell to sleep.


    Theirs was a community of people who did not belong to any country¡ªinstead they belonged only to themselves. They sundried orange peels for their rhum and crafted their own medicines. They held their own church services, and they sang their own prayers. They lay in the waters of the bayou, and they hummed songs of their love into the swamp where only the spirits could hear their whispers and sighs, their desires and devotions, their promises and pleasures.


    Some nights the wise woman and her husband spent all evening in the swamp, letting the waters bathe their naked bodies as her gathering baskets floated lonesome nearby. Then one morning, a lone hen found its way through a bramble bush and died upon her doorstep¡ªand it was then that she knew they were coming.


    When the summer was at its warmest, the couturi¨¨re, bathed by the swamp with sweat slipping through her chemise, appeared at the m¨¦nag¨¨re¡¯s sanctuary¡ªshe was nine months pregnant, and the birthing pains had just started to begin. The commander held her beneath the arms as the m¨¦nag¨¨re crouched beneath her, ready to catch the babe who struggled to be born into the swamp.


    The m¨¦nag¨¨re spoke to the spirits and she heard their songs¡ªbut the babe refused to be born, so reluctant was he to enter so turbulent a world. For a moment, the m¨¦nag¨¨re sunk into the mud as the couturi¨¨re relaxed into the waters of the swamp. It seemed that the child and his mother might fall into the swamp forever, their lives lost to the land of the spirits if the child did not see fit to make his appearance.


    But the couturi¨¨re would not have it. With a sudden surge of energy, she grabbed one of the chickens as it appeared to get stuck in the swamp near her head. She pulled the machete from her lover¡¯s belt, and slaughtered the chicken in one smooth motion. Blood fell from her womb and was mingled with blood from the chicken, the swamp turning shades of crimson where they lay in the waters.


    The m¨¦nag¨¨re released her breath. The motion had reminded her of another death, another lifetime ago, when she had slashed a knife across her master¡¯s throat, and used the back end of it on his lover. This time she watched as that lost life found hope in a new one and contrived to not let it go to waste. She felt her mother¡¯s love in her heart, the whispers of her song in her ears, the waters trembling in her wake, the reeds restless in her winds. She felt her mother¡¯s forgiveness, and she felt it accept the chicken¡¯s life as an atonement for her own.


    A small baby boy was born into that swamp, with the strong will of his father, the rebellion of his mother, and the brilliant love of those ancestors who helped bring him to the world. In the days to follow he would be swaddled with palm leaves and held in turn by each member of the swamp: the couturi¨¨re and the commander, the m¨¦nag¨¨re and the captain, the widow and the mercenary, and the child. A strange but unusual company of people who loved him all the same, in all the many ways people are able.

 Chapter 40

    In the morning, she set an old copper kettle to boil. It was dented and worn, its patina tarnished, but it was perhaps the most beautiful thing the woman owned, and she treasured the heirloom as though it were fine china. As steam rose from its spout, she lifted it from the stove and poured it into the basin, kettle by kettle filling it with warmth, and imbibing the room with steam.


    By the time she had finished drawing her bath more than an hour had passed and the elapsed kettles of boiling water had layered over one another with a contented heat. The woman disrobed, draping her robe to the side so that she might sink into the waters, slowly warming her limbs until even her fingers and toes settled into that divine soup. The waters were a salve, a warmth she sunk into. Her breath drew in the warm, wet air and was nourished by it. Her muscles could not cling to their burdens any longer and were released from them. Even her heart sighed of its anguish, at last released of the memories it clung to, so that it might beat free, her body at last filled with wellness and peacefulness and contentedness.


    A slow sigh fell from her lips as she allowed herself to surrender to the beauty of the moment. The hours repose she passed in adoration of the kettle, the fog that pressed against the windowpanes, the rose-colored garments that awaited her when she dried, the tortoiseshell comb she would brush through her long tresses. She was no longer a woman of mourning, but a woman of happiness. And though she could feel that she would always be marked by her past, she would no more be burdened by it. Her darkness now existed only in the crypts of cathedrals, buried beneath a most beautiful spire, a living testament to life''s more beautiful moments.


    Once her limbs threatened to drift away from their lightness, the woman stepped from the tub and dried. Her robe of silk fell lullfully across the carpets as she settled into a gilded chair. How beautiful, she thought, as she looked upon herself in the mirror, for the first time seeing the skin that had been her mother''s, the happiness that had been her father''s. She placed her fingertips at her cheeks and upon her lips. She was a vision, and all the room around her a still life. A vignette of the many lives she''d lived.


    The portrait that was once hidden behind wallpapered walls leaned against a wall, the silk robe woven from fabrics at her father''s mill, the veil she had worn clasped with a pair of pearls within her attach¨¦. Every jewel she owned fell from every trunk. And she, the most beautiful creature¡ªthe mirror holding something of her soul. Some elegance that was not outward, but was held inside her, alight as though she were a lamp placed at the top of a hill. She smiled, her red lips curling into a state of bliss, her eyes crinkling from sheer happiness.


    The m¨¦nag¨¨re stepped into the room, as did the couturi¨¨re, and the women smiled at one another, even laughed. The couturi¨¨re combed S¨¦verine¡¯s hair and pinned a small white veil above her eyes, as the m¨¦nag¨¨re handed her a small bouquet of white roses, spirited with wild palms. They held hands for a moment, those three, and were happy.


    S¨¦verine St. Vincent married R¨¦my Delacroix that morning in the small chapel of the convent, lit with the light of a thousand candles, and she felt an unimaginable happiness as she did so, as though her heart could not possibly contain the surge of happiness that caused it to flutter. As though she must cease to be happy, just to settle so overcome an emotion.


    The abbess was elegant in her age, wearing her wrinkles as only a French woman can do, the appearance of every laugh adorned upon her face the way a ray of light might appear in a doorway. She held hands with the bride and groom and looked upon them with love as their friends gathered round them and threw flower petals upon their heads.


    It was a joyous occasion, but a small one, and when they were two joined at last, their kisses bestowed upon one another, their friends clapped their hands to bear witness to such happiness. All save one, a newly ordained priest who sat in the very last pew, wringing his hands at his own misfortune and praying for long-lost salvation.


    Society types are easily distracted, and the ruin of the philanthropist was like a slight of hand to those who, until that moment, had been perpetually disturbed by the widow and her myst¨¨re.


    She would go on to complete the cathedral, of course, and the cabildo, she would use her wealth to house the clergy. In the years to come she would establish an atelier where the couturi¨¨re and her son would create the city¡¯s most illustrative fashions. She would rebuild the captain¡¯s inn and make it one of the most glamorous and sought after in town. She would continue her work at the convent and help with the establishment of the orphanage and the school for boys. She did so much for that small city where she lived, and yet she remained the most elusive member of it.


    Those who lived in that town, and even those who did not, attended the cabaret with great regularity in hopes that they might catch a glimpse of that fair hand holding a glass of red wine, shrouded behind the secrecy of red velvet drapes as a pianist played forgotten tunes late into the evening. Even the governor lived in fearful awe of the woman who had once escaped from her prison cell and now could not be condemned for her valuable contributions to the city he presided over, and which only added to his good name and stature.


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    Indeed, of the stories added to the widow¡¯s reputation in those days and the many days after, how she had escaped the convent walls beneath the eyes of a vengeful mob was among their favorites. The most accepted version of that tale had at the center of it the widow who was discovered in her cell unconscious, and at the outskirts of it the abbess who had assumed her charge dead, and not, as she actually was: in a state of sunlit slumber.


    They placed her in a whitewashed tomb, it was said, and carried her upon the backs of men¡ªthrough the throngs of people fearful for their children¡¯s lives and hungry for the widow¡¯s death. Once locked away in her crypt, her fingers clutching cemetery dirt in her fists, her eyes were opened by the prodding of the moon. She used the strength of the dead to lift the lid from her crypt and stepped out into the humid night to find the man who would become her husband, that she might drink the life away from his veins.


    Of all the stories told about the widow, this one was perhaps closest to the truth. S¨¦verine had, of course, escaped from her cell in coffin, for there happened to be one just beyond the reaches of her cell. As the reader might remember, there lay in the chapel a woman, a young rose whose coffin the widow had recently filled with peonies and prayers, and she was due to be transported to her grave site that very day.


    The abbess allowed the widow leave of her cell, for this had always been her destiny. Despite her age and occupation, the abbess shared an unconventional yet productive goal¡ªone that would do far better by the humanity that would endure after their deaths, than their government could be expected to provide. She escorted the widow to the chapel and kissed her on both cheeks before she entered the coffin, sharing the final resting place of that sweet young soul, their lips almost touching as they lay face to face in that tomb.


    The black militia was called upon to remove that woman to the cemetery and the commander and his men heaved that box upon their shoulders and carried it through the unsuspecting villagers who clamored at the gates of the convent soon to be opened to their horror and dread. Once safely within the gates of the dead, S¨¦verine was lifted from her coffin, the kiss of death upon her as her as the commander escorted her in her nightdress to the inn where she would be met by most expectant company.


    When she reappeared at her cabaret a week later, drinking a glass of red wine in a dramatic gown of red silk and with an enormous emerald ring upon her finger, society could do nothing but whisper, so fearful had they become of her reputation and so convinced had they become of their suspicions.


    Madame St. Vincent entered the convent one afternoon, one gloved hand holding the hand of the child as the other lifted the veil from her face. Upon the wall was a portrait of the Virgin Mother, a gift she had long ago endowed to the care of the convent.


    S¨¦verine hardly recognized the holy woman, whose eyes had once witnessed her husband¡¯s shadow, and had seen the knife she held against it. Once, S¨¦verine thought the Virgin Mother mourned the state of S¨¦verine¡¯s soul. That she saw a sinful woman and lamented her greatly. Now S¨¦verine smiled at the nostalgia of such thoughts.


    The Virgin Mother did not mourn for sodomites or hedonists, for gluttons or heathens, for sexual deviants or murderers. She knew nothing of sin and how it would come to be cast upon one another like stones, creating a moral high ground for the ones who threw them and a ceaseless guilt for the ones who received them.


    The face now darkened with age was once a living breathing girl, the hands outstretched in prayer once rested on her growing belly, the mind that sought some meaning from the heavens was once bewildered by that small new life. The historical reality of the woman who once lived now lost to the artistic renderings of the woman they wanted her to be.


    Her son had risen up against their oppressors and was annihilated for doing so, as was every man who had followed him and loved him¡ªhis life lost in the memories of the ones who were left among the ruins. Bodies that had fought for freedom. Minds that hoped to live free from persecution and to see in humanity not saints and sinners, but an even ground upon which they could build life together.


    S¨¦verine wondered what happened in the hundred years after the birth of Mary¡¯s son and before their story would come to be written about. Were they words passed about on the lips of child soldiers? Murmurs of hope that they might one day defeat their oppressors? They failed, S¨¦verine thought, for 70 years after her son''s birth, the temple was destroyed, as was the movement they created and the cause her son died for.


    It was only after that cataclysmic event, that their persecutors saw fit to resurrect it. To pull from the rubble some shadow of the truth and use it to make of the man and his mother a pair of martyrs, ones that would enforce the better behaviors of their adorers and adhere them more ardently to the regime who reigned over them.


    But the movement the mother and her son created was not dead in that destruction. It lived on in the peasants and the rebels, in the enslaved and the oppressed, in the native and the immigrated, in the ones who rose up against the hands that attempted to silence them, in those who believed that an even ground could in fact be built, and strove underground to attain it.


    The small flame that was sparked by a young girl and her son lived on in the hearts of la Nouvelle-Orl¨¦ans and was lit in the soul of that city. A small recognition that though they might not be able to heal the world of its hardness, they could at least treat everyone around them with kindness and see in everyone the good.


    In this, S¨¦verine felt a peace. A freedom. She turned away from the mourning woman and walked out of the convent, determined to mourn no more.

 Epilogue

    Years later, a most beautiful man inherited a most beautiful estate. It was a large plantation home in the yawning sprawl of the deep south, and he the choicest caretaker of it.


    A man of many curiosities, this young man had established for himself an antiquities shop wherein he sold every manner of ornamentation befitting the times. His mother was a clothier of some repute, so he knew well the finer things in life, and most treasured among his possessions was a white gown, dripping with diamonds, once rumored to have been covered with blood before it was so thoroughly cleaned and cared for.


    So it was that as this young man toured this beautiful home, and wondered at the many eccentricities of it, marveling that he was the owner of it. A large glass window framed the comings and goings of the river, and within those wood heavy shutters was a house as cloaked and mysterious as the woman who once owned it.


    A stairway in the library led to nowhere, neither did the books within it have any meaning?¡ª?some were written in languages no one had ever heard of and others contained no words whatsoever. A door off the hallway led only into another wall and though there was a small graveyard plot near the swamp with several crypts installed, no one was there interred.


    The walls were papered with black, the furniture awash with velvet. A grandfather clock no longer tolled the hour, and a mirror held no reflection. Letters at a bureau were written in a tilted hand and sealed with signets from far off lands. A black marble hearth framed a room most dramatically cut with ebony furniture sculpted to appear as exotic animals and carpets that were woven with peacocks and plumage.


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    None of it still, could have prepared him for the boudoir. Trunks were filled with every manner of finery, silks and satins and velvets and brocades. Hand-sewn lace collars were folded into silk handkerchiefs, rubies and emeralds and sapphires secreted among them. He could not keep himself from putting a black velvet turban atop his head and adorning it with a gold tasseled brooch that fell elegantly to his neck.


    Tentatively, he tried on a cashmere dressing gown from one of the trousseaus and slipped his feet into a pair of Turkish slippers. He pulled a pair of gold gloves up to his elbows each fastened with twelve tiny buttons. He settled himself at a vanity beset with small treasures, small rosettes pinned with pearls for the hair and upon the mirror a comb of pure ivory.


    Vials of glass and French porcelain contained the vestiges of Far Eastern perfumes and long forgotten poisons. Small golden pots harbored lipsticks and rouges and were hardly discernible from those containing Prussic acid or powdered white lead. Among them was a small box of trinkets that played a most haunting tune when opened and beside it a bottle of red wine, its label peeling away at the edges.


    Among those personal affects was a cameo, the small ivory portrait of a woman embossed upon a rose quartz brooch. The image was worn and rounded but her face was beautiful and mysterious, as a statue carved from the finest white marble. He wondered if it was the woman of the manner, and where she had been laid to rest if she died.


    The man sat on a velvet chaise, the black walls seeming to envelop him, wrapping him in its arms as though he would always come home to it. He turned the cameo over in his fingers and there discovered an inscription at the back of it. ¡°Madame St. Vincent,¡± he read, as he uncorked that bottle and poured it into a crystal coupe.


    He put the glass to his lips and there discovered something rather unusual to the taste. The warmth of summer, he thought. The tang of iron. The sensation of blood.