Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Terror

The two houses, though, were only half an hour’s walk from each other. One day or another, the man and the woman must meet.

It was a fact, there were dual elements in the village, indeed in all the villages and farms of the region. A sort of peasant bourgeoisie existed, gossipy, religious, caste-conscious, exacting. But, too, there was the more feral peasant blood, which had other values, and was considered little better than a pack of wild beasts. These latter had actually troubled properly to see Mademoiselle Hāna – she was yet young enough for that, twenty-four years, which to them looked nineteen. Two men had carried boxes to the house of Monsieur Ernst. A woman had brought eggs, and later come to see to the washing. These people knew quite soon that it was the brother who was the stiff one. If he had not married, it was because he had never seen a woman he liked sufficiently. And his sister gave him the best of care – she was what the middle shelf of the region would have termed devoted. To the “wild beasts”, perhaps, she was dutiful, and this while she was not the sort of girl who would be naturally constrained. She too had vestiges of the wild woods, where once witches had danced with flowers in their hair, just as they had ridden from the mountains on their broomsticks not thirteen years before.

Of Ysabelle also this wild quality might have been noted, in her girlhood. They had seen her, wandering the fields with blood-red poppies in her basket. Or watching the moon from her window while her clever father pored over his books.

To the Wild Beasts, Hāna did not represent an obstacle nor Ernst a rescue. Although they were not insensible to ideas of rescue and obstacle in the arrival of the foreign couple.

Ysabelle met Ernst one morning. He was riding along the lane, or road, that ran by the wall of the garden at the front of her house, and she was standing there with Mireio, over the scattered feathers of a chicken some fox had taken in the night.

Mireio was cursing the fox, and promising that Jean would set a trap, and Ysabelle impatiently was desiring that rather than do this, the house of the chickens should be repaired.

They argued in the way old servant women did with mistresses they had known as children, and youngish mistresses with old servant women who had almost been their mothers but were not.

Ernst stopped the trap, and frankly watched, in cool amusement.

When Ysabelle looked, he raised his hat and introduced himself.

Doubtless he could see the old servant eyeing him, evaluating him, but with Ysabelle there was none of that. As he had heard, she was educated and well-bred, and he liked the look of her, her coal-black hair softly but neatly dressed, her dark dress, still in part-mourning apparently, for an adored, respected father. Her lush figure, too, her graceful features, her sensitive, noble hands.

She answered him politely.

Ernst said, with his perfect command of language and dialect, “I hope my sister may come over and visit you? Of course, there’s no one else suitable for her to see, for miles. She’s an absolute angel to me. I want her to be happy, but how can a woman be happy with no other women sometimes to chatter to?”

Ysabelle dipped her raven-coloured eyes. She did not smile. As she was doing this, Mireio said, aggressively, “There is the duck, Madame. I said it was too much for us. But for a proper supper for three, it would be perfect.”

Ernst let out a roar of laughter. This was as good as a comedy at the theatre, and really he had no objection to sitting over a good country meal, and looking at Ysabelle, and watching her come around to him.

“Well, I should be honoured,” he said, “but Madame hasn’t yet asked me.”

Ysabelle glanced at him. No smile. Quiet as silence. She said, however, “Mireio has decided you must taste her cooking. Please come and taste it.”

They agreed an evening, and Ernst rattled away to the town, whistling, and that night told his sister they were to meet a true witch of a woman, who, he was sure, had already laid a spell on him, because he was going to take with them a bottle of his best wine.

“When I first saw you tonight, with the sun just down and the moon just risen, I was so angry and nervous. The stupid supper. Not since my father had I had to suffer in that way. When he died, the freedom gave me wings. And now, I should be trapped, as Jean wished to trap the poor fox, gnawing through my paws to get away. Seeing you, I hated you. You. One entire second, that I will never forget or forgive. I hated your freshness, your glow, your light-coloured hair, your face, eager to be liked, and nervous too, I am sure. Hated you. I punished myself later, when you were gone. I went upstairs and said to myself in the mirror, you hated her. And I slapped my own face, hard, and left a red mark that lasted two hours. I know, I was awake so long.”

Ernst made the meal “go”, talking all the while, a sort of lecture. He was studying many things, philosophical, medical, and had also an interest in fossils, many examples of which he would find, he said, in the local countryside, for it was rich in them. Hāna, of course, did not understand these interests. “She calls me to task, and says I march about all day, obsessed by stones. Stones , Madame Ysabelle. I ask you.”

Ysabelle looked at Hāna, and Hāna said, softly, with her slight accent, her slight always half-stumbling in the new language, “Oh, but I know they’re – wonderful, Ernst. I do. I only wish I could have seen them – when they were alive. The big animals like dragons, and the little insects.”

“She is a tyrant. She also insists archeology is tomb robbery,” said Ernst.

Ysabelle said, “Mademoiselle Hāna would prefer to travel in time.”

“Yes,” said Hāna, “to go back and see it as it was.”

“She reads that sort of nonsense,” he said.

Ysabelle said, “But monsieur, you know what we women are. Creatures of feeling, not intellect.”

“That takes a clever woman to say,” gallantly declared Ernst. He added, “Of course, I’ve heard of your father. I read a book of his. An excellent mind.”

“Thank you. He was much admired.”

“You must miss him.”

“Yes,” she said, “every day.”

And turning, as Ernst applied himself again to the duck, Ysabelle saw Hāna stare at her almost with a look of fear.

Later Ysabelle took Hāna to inspect the garden, to show her womanly things, domestic herbs, the husbandry of the grapevine, the moon above a certain tree.

Hāna said abruptly, “You take a risk, Madame.”

“Oh? In what way?”

“Making fun of him. He has a horrible temper.”

“Yes, I’m sure that he does.”

“He doesn’t see it now, what you’re doing—”

“I’ll be more careful.”

“Please. Because I’d hate there to be a rift.”

“Since you have no other female companions.”

“Of course I do,” said Hāna. “There are lots of woman here I like very well. He’s often away on his business, things to do with his money, and clever papers he’s written. Then I sit on the wall of the court with the servant girl, shelling peas, giggling. We takeoff our shoes.”

“I’m sure that is a risk, too.”

Hāna said nothing.

Then she said, “We’ve been to many places. I like this valley.” Though her delivery was still hesitant, it was now a fluent, unafraid hesitancy.

The moon stood in the top of the birch, which held it like a white mask upon feathers.

Hāna lifted her face. She was so pale, her white skin and lightly-tinted mouth. Her eyes were dark, although not so dark as Ysabelle’s. As Hāna tipped back her head, Ysabelle, who had drunk Ernst’s very strong wine, had a momentary irrational fear that the incredible weight of Hāna’s chignon would pull back and dislocate her slender neck. And throwing out one hand, she caught the back of Hāna’s head in her palm, as a woman does with a young child or baby.