M. Rose - The Witch of Painted Sorrows

It wasn’t until I was fifteen years old and witnessed it myself that I understood what he’d meant.

I let the hand of fate fall again. Even if Grand-mère was upstairs and couldn’t hear the knocking, the maid would be downstairs, organizing the refreshments for the evening. I’d seen her so many nights, polishing away last smudges on the silver, holding the Baccarat glasses over a pot of steaming water and then wiping them clean to make sure they gleamed.

Certainly Bernadette, if it was still Bernadette, should have heard the knocker, but I had been waiting more than five minutes, and no one had arrived to let me in. Dusk had descended. The air had grown cold, and now it was beginning to rain. Fat, heavy drops dripped onto my hat and into my eyes. And I had no umbrella. That’s when I did what I should have done from the start—I stepped back and looked up at the house.

The darkened windows set into the limestone facade indicated there were no fires burning and no lamps lit inside. My grandmother was not in residence. And neither, it appeared, was her staff. I almost wished the concierge had needed to open the porte cochère for me; he might have been able to tell me where my grandmother was.

For days now I had managed to keep my sanity only by thinking of this moment. All I had to do, I kept telling myself, was find my way here, and then together, my grandmother and I could mourn my father and her son, and she would help me figure out what I should do now that I had run away from New York City.

If she wasn’t here, where was I to go? I had other family in Paris, but I had no idea where they lived. I’d only met them here, at my grandmother’s house, when I’d visited ten years previously. I had no friends in the city.

The rain was soaking through my clothes. I needed to find shelter. But where? A restaurant or café? Was there one nearby? Or should I try and find a hotel? Which way should I go to get a carriage? Was it even safe to walk alone here at night?

What choice did I have?

Picking up my suitcase, I turned, but before I could even step into the courtyard, I saw an advancing figure. A bedraggled-looking man wearing torn and filthy brown pants and an overcoat that had huge, bulging pockets, staggered toward me. Every step he took rang out on the stones.

He’s just a beggar who intends no harm , I told myself. He’s just looking for scraps of food, for a treasure in the garbage he’d be able to sell.

But what if I was wrong? Alone with him in the darkening courtyard, where could I go? In my skirt and heeled boots, could I even outrun him?

He was so close now I could see the grime on his face and hands. Smell his putrid odor. From the way he was eyeing me and my luggage, there was no doubt he was planning something. If he tried to grab my suitcase, I couldn’t fight him off. At least a foot taller than me, he was also broad-shouldered and thickset. It was my fault—I hadn’t stopped to ensure the porte cochère was locked behind me.

I fumbled in my bag for my keys. Little did it matter they were to our Fifth Avenue mansion in New York City. The familiar feel of them brought on a wave of sadness, but I fought it off. My immediate situation required acting quickly.

Jangling the keys, I pretended to use them, all the while feeling his eyes on my back.

Holding my breath, I waited to hear his retreating footsteps. But there was no such sound.

So I called out, as if to my grandmother’s maid, that it was all right, I would get the door myself.

I knew the beggar understood me. Even though I’d grown up in America, my father had taught me to speak French with an accent as good as any local’s.

When I still didn’t hear the stranger’s retreating footsteps, I called again to Bernadette that she should tell my husband or the houseman to come down, that the lock was stuck and I needed help with the suitcase.

Finally, from behind, I heard a sound. At last. The tramp was leaving. But no! I was wrong. He was laughing. And coming closer.

“There’s no one home,” he called out.

With my hand still on the doorknob, I half turned. “Get away from here before you get in trouble.”

“Everyone who lives here has been gone for over a week.”

“You’re wrong. They are all home. Someone is coming now, so you should leave while you can.”

The beggar laughed again. “Moved out. Saw them myself. The fancy madame and her maid and her manservant. Valises and boxes galore.”

“You are mistaken. They are all here upstairs, and my husband—”

“You may have a husband. And he very well might have been here . . . so very many women’s husbands come here . . . but if yours was here, he’s long gone.”

He took another step and reached out for my suitcase. At the same time leering at me with an expression that suggested he might decide to take more than my luggage.

I was frozen, unable to move, to run, to scream, or to make any effort at all to help myself. My shoulder pushed against the door as I twisted the doorknob, willing it to somehow magically open and give me entry. I might as well have been standing in front of a stone fortress. I was trapped. Powerless again.

And then something changed. I felt a surge of anger. A refusal to accept what seemed so inevitable.

“Get away from me,” I shouted as if my words were a weapon.

The vagabond laughed at me, knowing better.

Indeed, nothing should have suggested that my words were a force to be reckoned with except my sense that they were. I let go of the doorknob, shouted at him again to leave, and when he didn’t, outrage and anger and frustration all mixed together, and from a place that I didn’t know I possessed, determination and fearlessness rose up. I pushed the man away from me.

“ No! ” I shouted. And again, “ No! ” in a voice that was unrecognizable to me.

Something inside me refused to accept what was happening.

The surprise attack sent the stranger sprawling, and he slid down the steps into the gutter. I hadn’t known he was carrying a knife until I saw it fall from his hand onto the cobblestones. It lay there next to him, glinting in the street lamp’s light. Rushing, I grabbed it just before he did.

And then I felt the man’s fingers wrap around my ankle and grip it tightly.

No!

I kicked free. And then kicked again, the toe of my boot making contact with his nose, or his chin or his cheek—I couldn’t see, but I heard a sickening crack.

He let out a primitive howl far louder than my own shouts. Blood began to trickle from his nose. He writhed in pain.

Who was I? I did not know the woman capable of this. What were the limits of her abilities? I only knew that she was fighting for her life, and that unlike me she thought her life was worth fighting for.

“You whore,” the man bellowed as he began to rise up. He was looking at me so differently now. Before he’d appraised me as if I were a prize waiting to be claimed. Now I deserved punishing. It was there in his expression of fear mixed with hatred.

“Give me back my knife!”

“Don’t come any closer to me or I’ll use it,” I shouted back. My father had taught me how to use a pistol, but for me a knife had no use other than cutting the chicken or beef on my plate.

But I sensed this new woman I’d become knew how to wield one.

Suddenly the door of the mansion next to my grandmother’s was flung open, and a man rushed out, yelling as he ran down his steps. He brandished a pistol.

“Who is there? What is going on?”

The would-be thief cast one glance toward the newcomer and his weapon and took off. In seconds all that remained of him was an echo of his wooden shoes clattering as he ran away.