Chapter 31
31
When I lived for Damienne, I worked as I had never done before. Each day I filled our kettle from the rocky pools. I carried fresh water to our cave, and then I gathered wood. Damienne tended the fire. She cleaned and butchered, and I hunted.
Had I once feared the blue-eyed birds? Had I avoided their sharp glances? I had lived a year upon the island, and in that time, I had lost and dared so much that I could face them without flinching. I walked with my knife tied at my waist, and with my arquebus, I shot into the crowd. I am like you, I told myself, because I kill to eat. But I could not fly or dive, and this was my disadvantage—that I must shoot to live.
As sailors watch sand in the hourglass, I measured time by powder I had left. I reckoned my ammunition would only last the season, but I did not speak of it to Damienne, for I had resolved to serve, not burden, her.
I fished with our remaining hooks. I used birds’ entrails for bait and I grew confident upon the rocks, With birds and cod I helped Damienne set meat by for winter. We will have enough this year, I told myself. After that, God’s will be done.
I began to see the wisdom of Damienne’s busy hands. Working, I had little time to mourn—but in my dreams, I grieved.
I dreamed Auguste was captured by birds, who feasted on his flesh. I tried to beat them off, but with their claws, they carried him away into the sky. Then I dreamed he was a bird. He spread his wings and I became a bird to follow him. We flew over the waves to search for our lost child.
When I woke, I sat up, blinking. My heart ached, but I dressed in my worn clothes and stumbled out to fetch our water. Then I went to hunt the birds that preyed upon my lover. I went to kill the bird that I had been while sleeping.
In the afternoons, I worked with Damienne, packing meat. Although we had scant salt left, Damienne had contrived to harvest some. We collected seawater in our kettle and spread it in depressions in the rocks. The sun absorbed the moisture, leaving a white crust, and we used this salt to replenish our supply.
My nurse was ingenious. Because we had no whetstone, she collected two smooth stones by the shore. With these, she worked for days sharpening our knife until it cut anything it touched. She was proud of this accomplishment. Alas, we were both proud of our fine blade, never thinking of the danger.
In the long summer days, my nurse undertook to mend and clean our clothes. In addition, Damienne washed and dried our sheets upon the brambles because she said we must take advantage of the sun. To this end, we stayed outside as much as possible, and in the long evenings, we sat upon the rocks, and I would read to her.
I read the parable of the coin, in which a woman with ten coins loses one. Does she not light a candle and search her house? And does she not call her neighbors to rejoice when at last, she finds it? In just this way, the angels rejoice when one sinner repents.
“It is beautiful to think of angels rejoicing,” Damienne said. “And I hope that when I die, I will return like the lost coin.”
“What have you to repent?” I asked.
She confessed, “I have been querulous.”
“You had reason,” I said.
But she told me, “I am braver now and wiser.” And this was true. Cleaning and sharpening, storing food for winter, Damienne was clever as she had never been at home where we had cooks, butchers, and laundresses. “And I am thin,” she said. This was true too. She was no longer pillowy but light and weathered. No one at home would have recognized her now.
“I am not wiser,” I said. “But I am beginning to be brave.” I picked up our knife and turned it in the light, and the blade seemed more beautiful than any jewel. “I understand what it is to be a man.”
“God forbid,” said Damienne.
But I said, “To be a man is to have your way.”
“And is that good?” she said. “And is it right?”
“It is satisfying,” I told her.
Like a man, I decided what to do. I caught fish and gutted them. I gathered sticks and built the fire. I devoured the isle’s tart berries, for I no longer cared that they were bitter. Damienne was hungry enough to eat them too, and we grew accustomed to the taste. Indeed, these berries became a delicacy because they were the isle’s only fruits—and they were so juicy that we savored them. We harvested such a quantity I said, “Let us dry them like raisins of the sun.”
Then we spread the berries on the rocks, and in the sun’s heat, they shriveled, and we stored them in our cave, so that now we stocked our pantry with salted fish and meat and raisins. In this way, we used the season well.
Although our cave was close, with scant light shining through the entrance, we adorned our dwelling with white flowers we found growing in the brambles. They were no larger than my thumbnail, but they were perfect five-petalled stars, and we collected these because they were the only blossoms in that place. I plucked them whenever I could and Damienne placed them on our altar.
When autumn came, Damienne gathered colored leaves to place before the Virgin. “I offer these,” she said, “because they are the most beautiful I have ever seen.”
And I could not deny this. Our autumn leaves turned scarlet, umber, gold, and no garden was more beautiful than our jeweled island.
When nights were fair, we slept outside because no animals could cross the water. The winter wolves and bears and foxes were prevented, and Damienne said she never slept better than she did in open air.
We sat before our fire, roasting our meat, and she breathed deeply. “These nights remind me of harvesttime,” she said. “When I was a child, we slept in the fields and woke at dawn to cut the hay.”
“Did you help?” I asked.
“At first, I helped with gathering, and then I learned to use a scythe.”
“Your father allowed you?”
“After my mother died, he had none but me and my younger brother. My older sisters were all married.”
I heard this with surprise. “You never told me you had sisters.”
“Oh yes. I had three.”
“I feel now as though I scarcely know you,” I said. “I only know what you have done for me.”
“Isn’t that my work?” she said. “And isn’t that my life?”
“How could your father spare you when you came to us?”
“He could no longer feed me,” Damienne answered simply.
I looked at our meat on the spit. “How sorrowful he must have been.”
“He would not let me starve, and so my aunt brought me to your family, where she served as scullery maid.”
“Did you begin in the kitchens?”
“Yes, but when your mother was a girl, she fell ill, and I was brought to serve her. All the other maids got sick but I did not, and after she recovered, your mother kept me with her.”
“She was a true lady,” I said.
“Yes,” said Damienne.
“And she deserved your love.”
“Do you say you are not deserving?” Damienne demanded. Such was her loyalty, taking offense on my own behalf.
“I used to think she was an angel, the way you spoke of her.”
“She was beautiful and good,” said Damienne, “and she was my sweet mistress, but you are my child.”
—
Always, Damienne worked as she was able, doing what she could with what she had. Always, she was faithful, cleaning, sewing, butchering. Alas, in butchering she wounded herself.
Far down the shore where I was fishing, I could hear her scream. Then trailing line and hook, lifting my tattered skirts, I ran. “Damienne, what is it?”
I found her drenched in blood. Our knife, sharpened so beautifully, had sliced her palm while she was cleaning fish. Blood poured down her arm.
I tied a rag across her hand, but the blood soaked through. I ripped a piece of Auguste’s shirt and pressed hard, even as I held my nurse.
“I cannot feel anything,” she said.
When at last I staunched the blood, her face was white. Damienne’s fingers, once so agile, were now numb. She could scarcely move them, nor could she use the knife again because she had injured her right hand.
“You will recover it,” I told her.
“I’m afraid I won’t,” she whispered. “And now I cannot work.”
“Then I will work for you,” I said. “And I will nurse you as I did at home. Remember how you despaired your tooth. God restored you then.”
But Damienne shook her head.
I unwrapped her bandage and tied on yet another. I made a broth of seagrass and fed it to her. Cushioning her inside our cave, I brought our picture of the Virgin close enough to touch. I took every care, and yet the cut began to fester. Instead of improving every day, my old nurse worsened. Her hand swelled, and it grew hot.
“My blood is poisoned. I must die,” she said.
“No,” I said. “I will not let you.”
“It is not up to you,” she said.
“You will heal with God’s help.”
“He will help me from this world.”
Her body burned, and yet she shivered, begging me to cover her with all our furs. Like fire, the contagion swept through her so that in just three days, my nurse could not sit up. I brought food, but she could scarcely eat. I lifted her head so that she might sip water, and I helped her to relieve herself because she was so weak.
I recited psalms. The Lord is my rock and my fortress. He delivers me from my distress.
“Deliver me,” she said. Touching the picture of the Virgin, she prayed for a good death, for peace, and for an end to all her striving.
But secretly, I prayed for her to live.
“Do not go,” I whispered when I thought she slept. “Oh, do not go.”
She overheard and murmured, “But I have no choice.”
I said, “I cannot live here by myself.”
“Alas, you must.”
“It is too hard,” I sobbed.
She looked at me, but she was now so weak that she could no longer grasp my hand. Her body ravaged, her very soul exhausted. She said, “I hope it will be soon.”
Then I knew I was selfish to keep on hoping. Kneeling by her side, I offered her these words. “ Who shall go up to the hill? Who shall stand in the holy place? The one with clean hands and a pure heart. He will receive God’s grace. ”
“Yes,” she echoed. “Who shall go?”
“You will,” I said, because I thought the psalm described her—but she turned it back on me. “I wish it for you.”
“No,” I whispered. “I am doubting. I am weak.”
“You aren’t weak. That is your trouble; you are strong.” With her left hand, Damienne reached as though she wished to tell me something.
“What is it?” I begged.
“Nothing,” she said.
I strained to hear a lesson or a blessing. Some instruction. “Tell me what it is.”
But she spoke now to herself. “God is good.”
And I bent my head and said, “I know he is because he brought you to me.”
After that, she lay quietly, and I gave up begging her to speak. Damienne had taught me every day, and she had blessed me with her life. I could not ask for more.
She died quietly, without complaint. As I had seen her do for Auguste, I closed her eyes and wound her in a sheet. Then I took her body and buried her in our third trunk.
The autumn weather was still clear, the colors of the island royal. I scattered gold leaves upon her grave, and there I knelt and prayed to the Virgin. “Holy Mother, welcome her to heaven—she who was my mother.”