Wild Rose (55 page)

She got out of bed, and stood as if cramped and in pain, rising slowly to her full height.

She had had, during all of this waking time, even, she thought, when she had slept, an unshakeable sense of grandfather being in the room. It was overpowering although she couldn’t quite have said what it was: a memory, perhaps, of his physical presence made palpable, but as if he could be everywhere at once, his essence diffused through the air of her room. Although she wanted the comfort of his presence, still, she tried to shake the feeling away, telling herself that he was dead, that this could not be happening. It refused to go; she couldn’t make it, and it seemed to her that if she couldn’t control it, it was not caused by her, but came from elsewhere. She thought, grandfather has given her this remembrance; it was his gift. But
why?
When she so didn’t want it, wanted never to have to think of Hector or his visits to her room so long ago as long as she lived. She bent over, her chest a knot of pain, her mouth in a wide grimace, a soundless cry from the deepest well of her being. How would she live knowing this? Better if it remained forgotten.

She thought of Pierre then, and was baffled because Pierre’s caresses were to her so delicious, as if she had waited all her life for that meeting between herself and such a lover. As if Hector and his sin against her and Pierre’s touch were entirely different things. They
were
different things. She would cling to that thought; it would keep her alive.

Antoinette knocked sharply on her door.

“You must run an errand,” she said. “Sophie?”

“Yes,” Sophie said. “Yes, I’m coming.” Antoinette would know she wasn’t dressed, because her pitcher of hot water was still sitting outside her room. She could hear Antoinette going heavily down the stairs. She thought then, there is still Pierre. And the thought of him caused a rushing of lightness like a warm wind up from between her legs, through her chest, opening it, and upward into her mouth and brain. There was Pierre; she would cling to Pierre who would cherish her and protect her. Pierre would come; she had only to wait, and a calm settled through her surprising in its perfection.

After that, each night she waited. One night, two nights, three nights, and at midnight she went to the garden to see him, but he wasn’t there, not the first night, nor the second, nor the third. Her faith that he would come did not waver as she made the silent return trip to her room. On the fourth night, still no Pierre, and his continued absence made her waver in her belief, made her remember that she was only a child who didn’t understand the world, who could be disappointed or elated at the turning of the world.

But on the fifth night he was there, leaning against one of the fruit trees that flanked the bench where they had sat and held each other. When he saw he coming down the path, he rushed toward her, put his arms around her, and kissed her face, and then her mouth, drawing her into the shadows so they couldn’t be seen from any of the windows, although the only occupied room at the back of the house was Antoinette’s by the back door.

In the garden that night, when she had seen Pierre’s shadow against the tree she had called, “Pierre,” before she remembered to be silent, and he came forward, laughing, his finger to his lips.

“Sophie, Sophie,” he said, as he always did, while he kissed her face, her hair and then at last her mouth, and she held him as tightly as she could, pressing her body against his, until he lowered one hand from her waist to hold it firmly against her hip pushing against him, then lifting his other hand to touch her breast. Always, then she pulled back, and made him sit on the bench with her where once again they held tightly to each other and kissed and kissed, and such heat rose in her she thought she would burn, no melt – melt into him. He had begun to unbutton the long row of tiny buttons that started below her chin and went all the way down the dress to the place where her legs cleaved. She thought to stop him, but then asked herself why? When they would soon be married, one way or another. She longed for his hands on her breasts.

“Pierre, Pierre.” He took his mouth from hers, panting, one hand reaching down for the hem of her skirt, pulling the fullness of dress and petticoats up toward her waist. She held his hand still.

“What is it?”

“We will be married?” He drew back an inch or two.

“Married? How?” he asked. She was puzzled by this and pulled back too, one hand on the opened buttons of her dress, holding the bodice together.

“Married,” she said, hesitantly, as if to explain the term to him.

“We are forbidden,” he said.
“L’abbé
Deschameault will never marry us if your grandmother and your brother forbid it.” He seemed surprised. Her hands fell away from her dress, that he had unbuttoned to the place where her breasts, plump and full, began to separate.

“We must run away.” But she had grown uncertain. “Don’t you want to marry me?”

“Of course, I want to marry you,” he said, and reached toward her buttons and the skirt hem again.

“I love you so,” she whispered, leaning toward him, wishing she could see his face, but they were under the trees and the leaves made shadows on him so that she caught only glimpses of his skin, or a glimmer of light on his coal black hair.

“I love you too,” he whispered, putting his mouth back on hers. Then, although neither of them saw it, a light was coming down the path, and when Pierre began to push her down so that she would be lying on the bench, the two of them were suddenly bathed in yellow light. Pierre leaped to his feet, causing Sophie to fall backward and then to scramble up, one arm shading her eyes from the light that spilled over them. A hiss.

“Traître, putain.”

She had expected Antoinette, but it was grandmother.

They scrambled to their feet, side by side facing grandmother, Sophie fumbling for Pierre’s hand, not able to find it. Grandmother had moved the lamp so that it no longer blinded them and they could see her face. She seemed, Sophie saw, to have grown in size until she was larger than the two of them together; her shawl was black, her gown black, her small widow’s silk cap also black, and by it Sophie knew then that grandmother had been waiting for Pierre to come, had known that Sophie went out each night to wait for him. Her body stiffened with fear, she tried to speak but could make no sound. Pierre cleared his throat, put out a hand as if to ask pardon or for calm, but
grandmère
drew back as if it were the head of a viper.

“Inside.” Beside her Sophie felt Pierre twitch, as if all the remaining boyishness in him wanted to run, as if he had been caught stealing apples. Such a relief that he stayed.

“Grandmère,”
she began, a whisper.

“Vite,”
the woman said, and there was such icy rage in the sound that Sophie could do nothing but turn and start up the path toward the kitchen door. She hoped that Pierre was following, but in her mixed fear and confusion couldn’t tell. They went, not into grandfather’s study as she had somehow expected, but into the small sitting room across from the
salon
where, before grandfather’s death she had spent so many long evenings doing needlework beside her grandmother. Chills ran up and down her back and she too, wanted to run away, but forced herself to stay. Or else she stayed because she was too afraid to do anything else. They stood again side by side in the small room, their backs to the unlit fireplace, Pierre still not having taken Sophie’s hand so that she moved closer to him, wanting his protection. At this, he stirred and put his arm around her shoulders, she seeing then that her buttons were still undone, and beginning to fumble to do them up.

“Arrêt!” grandmère
demanded and Sophie found her hand stilling before falling to her side. The door behind her that grandmother had closed as she followed them in opened now. Antoinette. But no, it was the
le curé
, it was Deschambeault. He had been waiting too. Sweat broke out on her brow and she looked up to Pierre’s face and saw only puzzlement mixed with alarm on it. Would they send her to join Violette in the convent in Montréal? Would they send her to a workhouse? She gasped aloud at the thought.

Grandmother began to speak. She used full sentences as if she had rehearsed what she would say, her voice low, coming tightly from her chest, as if it hurt her to speak. “You have violated every rule you have been taught. You have shamed yourself, your mother, your father. You have shamed your grandfather and me. You are no better than the worst village whore.” If Sophie hadn’t been clinging so hard to Pierre, she would have covered her ears with her hands. That she should have to hear such things.

“I love him,” she began, “he loves me. We
will
be married one day. You cannot stop us,” although of course, they could.

“Be silent,” grandmother said to her. “You are a child.” Why didn’t Pierre say something? Why didn’t Pierre speak? Behind grandmother
le curé
Deschambeault stood quietly, a soldier in the Lord, waiting, for what Sophie couldn’t imagine. “I would send you away to the nuns to keep you, you could serve them to learn humility, but now –” she turned to the priest. “Speak to them,” she demanded, and went past him out of the room, shutting the door behind her. Deschambeault stepped forward, his movements slow, his expression stern.

“I am here to question you,” he said. He turned his face to Pierre, the two men’s eyes meeting in a lock that was broken by the priest after what seemed to Sophie an eternity.

“Madame,” he said, causing Sophie to draw her breath in sharply. Why now, Madame? But she was afraid that she knew only too well what was meant by this. She waited as his eyes went over her face as if he had never seen her before, then down past the opened buttons to her waist, before sweeping up again, up, beyond her head or Pierre’s. She lifted her hands and began awkwardly to engage the tiny buttons in their fabric loops.

“Êtes-vous enceinte?”

She gasped, wanting to protest, putting her hand over her mouth and dropping it again, lowering her eyes to the floor while she struggled to find a language in which to answer such a charge. She understood only that this was not a question, that he believed he knew the answer even though he looked harshly from one face to the other, seeming to collect information, and understanding, he thought, his visage hardening with his own determination.

She said, pleading, “We wish to marry.”

“Your family forbids this marriage,” he told her, “Your brother has told me not to allow it.” Why didn’t Pierre speak? He should speak, and she turned her head to look at him.

He said, as if she had prodded him, “We decide ourselves,” but he sounded feeble to Sophie, she hadn’t thought he would be so afraid of a mere priest. But he cleared his throat and said, “We want to marry.”

The priest shouted, or perhaps he didn’t shout so much as change his tone to something that even though Sophie had known him all her life and heard him say Mass a thousand times and deliver his messages to the congregation every Sunday in the churchyard, she had not heard before. Implacable, hard as iron. She understood it to be the same voice that would have, all those years, before, told grandfather that his brother could not be buried with the rest of the family in the churchyard.

“Silence,” he shouted, and paused, his mouth working as if to control himself. “Under the circumstances I have no choice but to marry you. Now.”

It took her a second, but Sophie understood in a rush that the priest was convinced that they had been intimate together, had had “relations” as men and women did, further, that by her lowering her eyes to the floor, or to her reaction to his question about being pregnant, he had understood her to admit that this was so. And she was amazed, at the same time as she opened her mouth to protest that she still had her innocence, her virginity, that she had not sinned in that way, that in her struggling to think of a way to be allowed to marry Pierre, she had never once thought of letting herself become pregnant by him, so that marriage would be certain. It hadn’t once occurred to her. She felt the air go out of her, and willed her mouth closed. Beside her, Pierre had grasped her hand too tightly, so that she had to twist it a little to get him to loosen his grip.

He said, weakly, as if in protest, “Now?” The priest didn’t answer, but went to the door and let grandmother back into the room with them. She looked questioningly into the priest’s face, who gave a brief nod, and her face contorted into revulsion, then smoothed again into the same implacability as the priest’s.

The idea was growing in her that they would be married if she would let them think she was a sinner. A small exuberance was growing in her as well; what did she care about what they thought if she and Pierre could this very night be one?

Pierre started to speak.

“Silence,” the priest said again, and Pierre, to her amazement also closed his mouth.

“I will get Antoinette to be the other witness,” grandmother said, and went out into the hall and called her by name. She came at once, fully dressed, and Sophie saw that she had known too that grandmother was setting a trap. And she hadn’t once warned Sophie. But then, Sophie thought rapidly looking at the woman who refused to look at her and who just might be crying, maybe she was only told tonight to be ready. The priest had gone to the table on one side of the room and was placing his silken scarf around his neck, lifting his missal, returning to them and making the sign of the cross over them with the edge of his long, pale hand.