Трейси Шевалье - The Virgin Blue

Except for one. She was letting the kid suck at a sack filled with its mother's milk one day when Jacob stepped out from behind a beech tree. Squatting beside her, he put his hand on the kid's back.

– Papa wants to know where you are, he said as he stroked the kid.

– How long have you known I come here?

He shrugged and played with the kid's hair, flattening it one way and then the other.

– Will you help me look after it?

He looked up at her.

– Of course, Maman.

His smile was so rare that to see it was like receiving a gift.

This time she was ready when she heard the pedlar's whistle. The pedlar smiled broadly when he saw Isabelle. She smiled back. While she and Hannah looked at his linen Jacob climbed up and began to show him his pebbles, passing on her message in a low voice. The pedlar nodded, all the while admiring the strange shapes and colours of the stones.

– You have a good eye, mio bambino , he said. Good colours, good shapes. You look and you say not much, not like me! I love my words, me, but you, you like to look and see things, yes? Yes.

When he began to recite messages his eyes lit on Isabelle and he snapped his fingers.

– Ah, yes, I remember now! Yes, I find your family in Alès!

Despite themselves, even Etienne and Hannah looked up at him expectantly. He warmed to his audience.

– Yes, yes, he said, waving his hands elabourately. There I see them in the market of Alès, ah, bella famiglia ! And I tell them of you and they are happy you are well.

– And they are well? Isabelle asked. And there is a baby?

– Yes, yes, a baby. Bertrand and Deborah and Isabella, now I remember.

– No, I'm Isabelle. You mean to say Susanne. Isabelle had not thought the pedlar could make a mistake.

– No, no, it is Bertrand and the two girls, Deborah and Isabella, just a baby, Isabella.

– But what about Susanne? The mother?

– Ah. The pedlar paused, looking down at them and stroking his moustache nervously. Ah, well. She died giving birth to the baby, you see. To Isabella.

He turned away then, uncomfortable at passing on bad news, and busied himself in sorting through leather harness straps for a customer. Isabelle hung her head, eyes blurred with tears. Etienne and Hannah left the crowd and stood silently at a distance, heads bowed.

Marie took Isabelle's hand.

– Maman, she whispered. Some day I will see Deborah. Won't I?

The pedlar met Jacob later, further down the road. In the dark the exchange was made, goat for blue. The boy hid the cloth in the woods. The next day he and Isabelle shook it out and stared for a long time at the block of rippling colour. Then they wrapped the cloth inside a piece of linen and hid it in the straw mattress Jacob shared with Marie and Petit Jean.

– We will do something with it, Isabelle promised him. God must tell me what.

In the autumn they harvested their own hemp crop. One day Etienne sent Petit Jean to the woods to cut thick sticks of oak which they would use to beat the hemp. The others set up trestles and began bringing out armfuls of hemp from the barn to lay across them.

Petit Jean returned with five sticks over his shoulder and the nest of Marie's hair.

– Look what I've found, Mémé, he said, holding out the nest to Hannah, the red catching in the light as he turned it.

– Oh! Marie cried out before she could stop herself. Isabelle flinched.

Etienne glanced from Marie to Isabelle. Hannah studied the nest, then Marie's hair. She glared at Isabelle and handed the nest to Etienne.

– Go to the river, Etienne ordered the children.

Petit Jean set down the sticks, then reached over and pulled Marie's hair as hard as he could. She began to sob and Petit Jean smiled, with a look that reminded Isabelle of Etienne when she first knew him. As he walked away he held his knife by its point and flicked it away. It lodged neatly in a tree trunk.

He is ten years old, she thought, but already he acts and thinks like a man.

Jacob took Marie's hand and led her away, looking back at Isabelle with wide eyes.

Etienne said nothing until the children were gone. Then he gestured at the nest.

– What is this?

Isabelle glanced at it, then looked at the ground. She did not know enough about keeping secrets to know what to do when they were revealed.

So she told the truth.

– It is Marie's hair, she whispered. She has been growing red hair and I pull it out in the woods. The birds took it to make a nest. She swallowed. I didn't want her to be teased. To be – judged.

When she saw the look that passed between Etienne and Hannah her stomach felt as if she had swallowed stones. She wished she had lied to them.

– I was helping her! she cried. It was to help us! I didn't mean any harm!

Etienne fixed his eyes on the horizon.

– There have been rumours, he said slowly. I have heard things.

– What things?

– The woodcutter Jacques La Barbe said he thought he saw you with a kid in the woods. And another found a patch of blood on the ground. They are talking about you, La Rousse. Is that what you want?

They are talking about me, she thought. Even here. My secrets are not to be secrets after all. And they lead to other secrets. Will they find out about them too?

– There is one more thing. You were with a man when we left Mont Lozère. A shepherd.

– Who says that? This was a secret she had kept even from herself, not allowing herself to think about him. Her secret secret.

She looked at Hannah and suddenly knew. She can talk, Isabelle thought. She can talk and she is talking to Etienne. She saw us on Mont Lozère. The thought made her shiver violently.

– What do you have to say, La Rousse?

She kept silent, knowing words could not help her, fearing more secrets would fly out if she opened her mouth.

– What are you hiding? What did you do with that goat? Kill it? Sacrifice it to the devil? Or did you trade it with that Catholic pedlar looking at you like that?

He picked up one of the sticks, grabbed her wrist and dragged her into the house. He made her stand in a corner while he searched everywhere, throwing down pots, stirring the fire, pulling apart their straw mattress, then Hannah's. When he reached the children's mattress Isabelle held her breath.

Now the end has come, she thought. Holy Mother, help me.

He turned the mattress over and pulled out all the straw.

The cloth was not there.

The blow was a surprise; he had never hit her before. His fist knocked her halfway across the room.

– You won't drag us down with your witchery, La Rousse, he said softly. Then he picked up the stick Petit Jean had cut and beat her till the room went black.

Either the smoke or the cold air from the open window woke me. When I opened my eyes I saw the orange button of a lit cigarette, then the hand holding it, draped over the steering wheel. Without moving my head I followed the arm up to the shoulders and then to his profile. He was looking out over the steering wheel as if he were still driving, but the car was stationary, the engine dead, not even ticking the way it does when it's first switched off. I had no idea how long we'd been sitting there.

I was curled sideways in the passenger seat, facing him, my cheek crushed against the coarse weave of the headrest; my hair had fallen over my face and stuck to my mouth. I glanced between the gap in the seats; the Bible was on the back seat, wrapped in a plastic bag.

Though I hadn't moved or spoken, Jean-Paul turned his head and looked at me. We held each other's gaze for a long time without saying anything. The silence was comfortable, though I couldn't tell what he was thinking: his face wasn't blank, but it wasn't open either.