Chapter 27
27
He slept and woke again but could not eat or drink. He lifted his head and then fell back. His face was white, and all his warmth and light began to fade. All he said and knew, all that he believed and loved, began to sink away, and as I was his, I felt that I was dying with him.
“Don’t go,” I cried, but he flinched to hear the words, and I saw that pleading only brought him pain. Therefore, I said what I did not yet believe. “I will do exactly as you ask, and I will hunt and find a way to defend myself and Damienne—and the child.” I took his cold hand in mine and prayed as I had never done before. I asked God to save him—but Auguste was staring far away. I begged, “Can you still see?”
He did not answer that. He said, “Where is the fox?”
“The white fox ran off,” I told him. “It escaped us.”
“It was not a fox,” he said.
“Come back,” I begged.
“Where is my instrument?” he said.
I was afraid to turn my back, even for an instant, but I did find his cittern, and when I showed it to him, I saw his eyes flicker.
“You were right,” he told me. “Burn it.”
“No.”
He looked at me and said, “You have no use for it.”
I said, “I will do anything you want, but I cannot burn it.”
He smiled at that.
I took his hands in mine. “Stay here with me.”
But his breath came hard. “There is no priest.”
When Damienne heard this, she wept for pity—but I did not cry. I lay with him, covering his body with my own. I blew onto his nose and mouth and eyes.
“Come back,” I repeated. “Come back to me. Speak to me again,” I begged, but Auguste was silent.
I held him in my arms and rubbed his legs with mine. I tried to transfer warmth and life to him, but I could not stop the cold, and now Damienne was pulling me away.
She closed his eyes and wrapped him in his sheet, while I sat bewildered. I kept saying no, not yet. He had been well a week ago and strong. He had spoken to me just an hour before. How could he lie so stiff and white? He who had whispered in my ear and kissed my lips. He who had touched my wrists under the edges of my sleeves.
I had not known death before. I had pitied Nicholas Montfort, bold as he was, but from a distance. I had lost my parents, but I did not remember them. Now I did not understand what Damienne was saying.
“We must take the body out.”
I stared, uncomprehending.
“We must bury him,” she told me. But when she went out, my nurse saw the earth was frozen. Even if we’d had a pick and shovel, it would have been impossible to dig. Returning, Damienne said, “We can only cover him with snow.”
No one will remember those who die there, Auguste had told me. There is no consecrated ground. “He must have a grave,” I said.
“Alas, we cannot give him one,” said Damienne.
But I walked into the scouring wind. Blindly, I counted steps, and then I scrabbled at the drifts, searching with my hands.
“What are you doing?” Damienne called.
I did not answer. I cleared snow until I felt the rocks upon our trunks.
With our trowel, I cleared the lid of our linen trunk, now empty. “We will bury him here.”
We carried Auguste in his sheet and brought him to the place. The trunk was not long enough to lay him properly, but Damienne bent his body.
I closed the lid, piled up the turf and rocks, and gathered pebbles to make a cross on top. I took great pains with this, but fresh snow was covering my marker even as I made it. My work was hopeless, and my life was torn.
In the wind, I turned back for the cave. Inside, I hid under our featherbed.
Damienne spoke, but I did not heed her.
When she lay next to me, I turned away. I curled into myself, even as she called my name.
“No,” I cried out. “No!” I sobbed, and yet my eyes were dry. The cold had frozen all my tears. And now I thought, I am sick as he was. I cannot see. I cannot hear. I will die as he did. But I was not sick, and when I closed my eyes, I slept as I had not in days.
—
I slept so long and deep that when I woke, I thought, What a dream I had. What a terrible dream. And I rose, thanking God.
Then I saw that only Damienne was with me. She was sitting in the dim light of the cave’s opening.
“It is morning,” I said.
“Yes,” she told me.
I heard the sorrow in her voice, and I saw pity in her eyes, but I repeated to myself, No. It was all a dream. I imagined Auguste had gone to gather wood. He was tramping through the snow. Indeed, I heard him break a path. “He went out early!”
“Poor child,” Damienne said.
“Don’t you hear?” I asked her.
“I hear nothing.”
“Listen.”
And I was not imagining this. We both heard scuffling, loose rocks, and gravel.
“It is an animal,” said Damienne. “It is something digging.”
Together at the entrance of our cave, we peered out.
It appeared, at first, that the snow itself was shifting. It seemed a trick of light and shade. But this was not snow or shadow; it was a bear, white entirely except for its black eyes and nose—and the blood staining its great maw. This monster had scattered the pebbles I’d arranged and dug through rock and snow. With his great claws, the creature had broken through our buried trunk to devour Auguste’s body.
The bear sensed us watching from our crevice in the rock. He turned toward us, and the fur down his chest was bloody too. I heard Damienne’s stifled cry. I pushed her back.
This was no dream. The bear was real, and the blood.
Rage woke me. Fury shocked me like a cold hard wind. All was clear, and all was sharp. My love was gone, and I could not pretend. There was no way to bring him back. I could not have him; I could only become him.
I snatched Auguste’s cloak and draped it over me. I stepped into his boots, cavernous, indented where his feet had been. And now I seized his gun.
Although it was unsafe inside the cave, I took a flint and lit my long, slow-burning fuse.
I heard Damienne protesting, begging me to stop. It didn’t matter.
She said, “You don’t know how to shoot.”
I shook her off and blew upon my musket’s pan. Then, charging my gun, I rammed black powder down.
“Stop,” my old nurse told me. “You will kill yourself.”
“Stand back.” I knelt at the entrance of the cave and aimed.
The bear stepped closer. Quickly, softly, he approached. What was for me ten paces became two steps for him.
Great as he was, my hatred was greater. He seemed to me the embodiment of death, voracious, bloodstained, seizing any that he came upon. Did he glimpse me kneeling? Or could he only see the barrel of my gun? I wanted him to fear me. I wanted terror to rise up in him, but as I made my shot, the bear looked at me with curiosity.
The explosion knocked me back upon my heels.
In the smoke, I saw the monster’s fangs, his black jaw opening, but I heard nothing. The gun’s report had deafened me.
I tried to catch my breath as the bear sank, wounded in the shoulder. He fell but struggled up again, and now he rose on his hind legs, and filled the world. In the silence of my mind, I saw him and him alone.
He lunged.
I drew back like an archer in a tower.
He gathered himself as he prepared to charge.
I lit my fuse and felt for another plug of powder.
I heard him snarling as I loaded. I smelled the acrid smoke of my fuse burning.
All was slow, and all was still as I took my second shot. When my gun roared, I didn’t hear. The explosion rocked me, but I did not fall back. Was Damienne shouting? I knew that she was just behind me, but I had traveled far beyond her. On my knees, I crept close as I could to my cave’s opening.
The bear stumbled near the open grave and fell. I watched him writhe and lift his head. I waited as he suffered in the snow. I saw him die, but even then, I was not satisfied.
I rushed into the drifts where the creature’s black eyes stared. The bear’s body was now stiff and stretched, paws spread with claws like curved daggers. I touched the holes where my shot had singed and entered. I felt those burnt, bloody places on the bear’s shoulder and his chest. The destroyer was destroyed. He could do no more—and yet I raged.
Damienne cried out. I could hear her now as she begged me to stop. She called me back to rest, to reason, to return to her, but I would not.
I took Auguste’s sword and slashed the monster’s throat. Then I took our axe and chopped. Gore spattered my hands and soaked my gown. Blood covered me as it had stained the bear’s white chest, but I did not rest until I had severed head from body. I worked until I could do no more, but even then I felt no relief. My hands were numb. My heart was empty.