Chapter 28
28
When Damienne saw what I had done, she shook her head but did not chastise me. Stooping, she gathered Auguste’s limbs and his torn body. When she spoke, her voice was gentle.
At first, I could not understand, but gradually I heard her words. “Come, we will rebury him.”
This time, I did not mark the tomb with pebbles. I hunted for great granite pieces, and I piled these on Auguste’s grave. This was his monument—as Queen Artemisia built hers for Mausolus—except mine was for protection, not for glory.
While I built up the burial mound, Damienne took our long knife and sliced through the dead bear’s fur. She cut across the creature’s shoulders and down his limbs, each like a tree, each paw big enough to rip off a man’s head. Slicing the corpse along the sides, she pulled and tugged the pelt. The bear was giant and his skin thick, but she kept working patiently. Later, she used our broken bottle’s shards to scrape and soften the pelt’s underside, but on this day, she said, “It is enough for now. We will take this fur to cover us at night.”
“No,” I said. “I cannot rest under it.”
Damienne chided, “You must not freeze and kill your child too.”
Still, I protested, “I cannot.”
“I will wash away the blood,” she told me.
We had no soap left, but she rubbed the pelt with snow until the red stains changed to brown. Gradually the brown stains lightened, but she could not make them disappear, for, as she said, only Christ could accomplish that. She spread the fur upon the snow to dry, but she did not stop working. In the last light of that short day, she cut meat from the bear’s flesh to roast, and saved the fat because she wasted nothing.
“Eat,” she told me, but I could not. The bear’s flesh was foul to me. Damienne coaxed but could not convince me. She decided to finish butchering the next day, so she could sleep.
Exhausted as I was, I lay down with her, but when Damienne spread the bearskin over us, I pulled it off again.
“Why are you afraid?” said Damienne.
“I am not afraid.”
“Why, then, are you angry at the remnants of an animal?”
My voice caught. “You did not see what this beast did.”
She sighed. “A beast will behave in beastly ways.”
In the morning, after she ventured out, Damienne told me the bear’s carcass was picked clean. In the dark of night, some other creatures had devoured this devourer. She thought wolves must have run across the frozen sea to feast on the bear’s body. “Alas,” she said, “I had not time to save the meat—and now it’s gone.”
But I stared uncomprehending. Why did she still speak of eating? Wrapped in Auguste’s cloak, I slept all that day and the next.
I slept until cold woke me, for I could not escape the world while winter pinched my body. I sat and rubbed my hands together painfully.
“Chilblains,” said Damienne, and with a shock, I saw that her cracked hands were bleeding.
She rubbed her chilblains with bear’s grease, and gently treated mine, but the cold grew worse and our hands cracked again. Even the Virgin succumbed. Cold crazed her painted face in tiny lines. Flecks of gold fell from her crown.
“Nothing lasts,” I told Damienne as I showed her gold dust on our dirt floor.
Seeing this, Damienne sighed, but she was faithful even then and asked, “Would not Our Lady shed light in just this way?” Even in the dark, my nurse found signs of grace, but I saw none.
I dreamed of shooting, lighting my fuse, and setting fire to the isle. I flung myself against the rocks. I rose up as a bear and roared.
Then Damienne shook me awake. “If you scream like that, the devil will take you!”
I said, “He has taken me already.”
“No.” She gripped me. “Remember who you are. Take care, or you will lose the child.” And these words pierced me. Hadn’t I promised Auguste to defend our son?
I did not recognize myself at all, but underneath my skin, I felt the baby moving. He will be tall. He will be wise. He will fear nothing. I remembered all we had said.
—
In the morning I woke to hunger pangs. As I dressed, I had to steady myself because I was lightheaded.
“Have we any fish left?” I asked Damienne.
And she said, “Almost none.”
She lit the fire and melted snow to make a broth with just a little fish and our dried seagrass. She managed this, and she said, “Drink.”
Sipping slowly from my cup, I warmed myself, but this slight nourishment made me even hungrier. “If creatures come across the ice,” I said, “then I will find some animal to kill.”
“God help us,” Damienne said, alarmed by my cold voice. “It isn’t safe.” But I knew that we must eat or die.
Once again, I wore Auguste’s boots, but this time I wrapped my feet in cloth so they would fit. I donned Auguste’s cloak. Across my chest I strapped the heavy bandolier with plugs of powder.
Damienne said, “It isn’t right to wear the trappings of a man.”
“I promised I would live,” I said. “And I have no choice but to shoot. If I must shoot, then I will carry what I need.”
Weighted down, I stepped into the drifts and looked about me in the dusky light. Entering the pale world, I wanted none of it, but I began to walk, and with each step I crushed the diamond snow. I saw my own breath pluming before me, and I thought, I must try. I saw the prints Auguste’s boots made, and I thought, Now my footprints are his.
The gun was heavy in my arms, and it grew heavier. My back ached under the bandolier. More than once, I stopped to rest, but I never stopped looking for an animal to hunt. We must eat. Those words echoed in my mind. We must eat to live. Lightheaded as I was, weak from long days sleeping, I spoke to Auguste, and I said, I will find food.
Even as I spoke, I saw a shadow run across my path. A wild-eyed doe, frantic and alone. Long-legged, tawny, fleet, she raced past almost close enough to touch. What did it mean? Was it a sign? I did not stop to wonder. With trembling hands, I tried to light my fuse.
I fumbled for rope and flint, but they were damp. And now I saw why the doe was running. Five, no, six wolves bounded after her. The wolves were white but touched with gray. Their snouts were narrow, their bodies low and muscular as they sprang upon the doe from every side. She turned one way, and they cut her off. She turned another way, and they surrounded her. Floundering in the drifts, she fell, and two wolves ran up from behind and pinned her legs. A third seized her by the throat.
The beasts had her. The doe’s head fell limp, and now, in bloody snow, the hunters tore apart her body.
A month before, this sight would have frightened me. A year before, this gorging would have disgusted me. Now I watched jealously. Such was my hunger that I thought of shooting to scatter the wolves and steal their prey. I lifted my weapon—and the beasts raised their heads to look. With yellow eyes, they studied me. Together they could have taken me and torn my throat, but they did not. They returned to their kill.
Slowly I backed away, and, feasting as they did, the wolves did not pursueme.
When I returned, Damienne did not need to ask how I had fared. I shook snow from my cape and skirt, then sank onto our low bed and kicked off Auguste’s boots. Silently, my nurse warmed my feet. She rubbed my cracked hands with bear’s grease, but I wept with disappointment even as she ministered to me.
She prayed then to the Virgin, but I did not join my voice with hers. Nor did I open Auguste’s book or keep the calendar. I thought only of my promise. To live meant finding deer to kill.
I saw deer again, not one but many, standing dappled in the winter light. I found them nosing snow for foliage and dead berries underneath, but I was never quick enough to charge and load my weapon. Hearing flint and lock, the deer would run. Glimpsing my black shadow, they bounded over the frozen sea. Alone I watched and wished I could be one of them.
Deer were safe in numbers. Birds flew together. Wolves hunted in a pack. I remembered the Montforts riding out with dogs and trumpets. Servants would beat the brush to drive deer into a close. “If only I could lure them,” I told Damienne.
I searched the bags where we had kept our grains and found a little of our wheat. I scattered kernels before the entrance of our cave, and then I watched to see if deer might come.
The first day there were none, and on the second, none came either.
I began to think the creatures had left our island altogether, but on the third day, when I woke, I saw the light was stippled. Shadows striped the snow outside our entry, where six deer gathered. They had found the grain.
Then softly, I knelt and loaded, while behind me, Damienne scarcely dared to breathe. Concealed in the cave, I chose my prey, and he was not the largest but the closest nibbling our seed. He was a slender buck, his eyes big and his face gaunt.
Even as I aimed, I waited, because my shot would frighten all the herd. Pulling the trigger, my hand shook because I must hit the first time.
The buck nosed the snow, then raised his head, ears quivering. Alert, he listened and he watched, as I watched him.
I shot.
Thunder, and the herd disappeared. Only my victim struggled in the snow. How I wished for dogs to chase and circle him! I was afraid he would limp off and I would lose my prize, or wolves would scent his blood and seize him. Please let me have him, I prayed. Please, we need this meat.
The moment the buck stopped struggling, I ran out, knife in hand. Faint with hunger, I waded through the drifts. The deer’s eyes were staring, not quite dead. Dark blood beaded where I sliced his throat.
I dragged the body to our cave, and together, Damienne and I broke down the running creature into leather, meat, sinew, and bone. She skinned the animal, and we built a fire and roasted his lean flesh. All that we could save, we packed in our box now empty of fish. We had no salt left to preserve our food, but we needed none because it was so cold.
This deer strengthened us, and even when we finished our venison, we sucked marrow from the bones. In our iron kettle, Damienne made a broth of bones and snow, and this was the best food we ever tasted on the island. It was so flavorful and warm. I thought Auguste should have sipped this broth to cure him. And this was another weight. Not only missing him but knowing what he missed.
—
Alas, the winter cold did not relent. As soon as drifts began to melt, another storm would blow. Snow returned, as did our hunger. The deer ran away over the white sea, and we had no meat at all. No wine, no biscuit. Scarcely anything but Damienne’s quince jam. She gave me a taste like medicine each night.
“Will you have some?” I asked.
“You are too thin,” she answered. “And you need it more.”
Although I was with child, my clothes hung loose, and Claire’s ring slid up and down my bony finger. I should have kept it with my pearls, but I wore it, because it had been hers.
Often I remembered Claire, but as a figure in a dream. I saw her walking in the sun and covering her mouth, trying not to laugh. I remembered her wise mother and our book of ladies—but at a distance, so that our past lives were dim and small. My old jealousy, my frustration, even my disappointment in Claire faded. From this vantage point, Claire’s silence, and her plan to stay, seemed necessary. I had not understood necessity before, but I did now.
I understood her better—but I did not think Claire could ever comprehend what I’d become. Ragged, thin, and desperate, I was relieved she could not see me. Nor did I wish to see myself. I was glad our looking glass had tarnished and my reflection was now clouded.
In this place, nothing weathered well. Claire’s ring was the exception, pure gold still glittering. Sometimes I turned the band to catch the light. And then, at times, the shining ring surprised me because I had forgotten that I wore it. One day, however, as I walked outside, I glanced down and saw my hand was bare.
I searched and searched, and Damienne did too. We retraced our snowy steps but could not discover where Claire’s treasure had fallen. How long had it been gone, this relic of my former life? My finger was too thin. My hand unworthy. Small and heavy, the signet had slipped into the drifts.
Quietly, Damienne said, “It is a little thing.”
“Yes, it is little,” I said. “And I am lost myself, so Claire will never know what happened to her gift.”