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She was called Isabelle, and when she was a small girl her hair changed color in the time it takes a bird to call to its mate. That summer the Duc de l’Aigle brought a statue of the Virgin and Child and a pot of paint back from Paris for the niche over the church door. A feast was held in the village the day the statue was installed. Isabelle sat at the bottom of a ladder watching Jean Tournier paint the niche a deep blue the color of the clear evening sky. As he finished, the sun appeared from behind a wall of clouds and lit up the blue so brightly that Isabelle clasped her hands behind her neck and squeezed her elbows against her chest. When its rays reached her, they touched her hair with a halo of copper that remained even when the sun had gone. From that day she was called La Rousse after the Virgin Mary. The nickname lost its affection when Monsieur Marcel arrived in the village a few years later, hands stained with tannin and words borrowed from Calvin. In his first sermon, in woods out of sight of the village priest, he told them that the Virgin was barring their way to the Truth. —La Rousse has been defiled by the statues, the candles, the trinkets. She is contaminated! he proclaimed. She stands between you and God! The villagers turned to stare at Isabelle. She clutched her mother's arm. How can he know? she thought. Only Maman knows. Her mother would not have told him that Isabelle had begun to bleed that day and now had a rough cloth tied between her legs and a pillow of pain in her stomach. Les fleurs, her mother had called it, special flowers from God, a gift she was to keep quiet about because it set her apart. She looked up at her mother, who was frowning at Monsieur Marcel and had opened her mouth as if to speak. Isabelle squeezed her arm and Maman shut her mouth into a tight line. Afterwards she walked back between her mother and her sister Marie, their twin brothers following more slowly. The other village children lagged behind them at first, whispering. Eventually, bold with curiosity, a boy ran up and grabbed a handful of Isabelle’s hair. —Did you hear him, La Rousse? You’re dirty! he shouted. Isabelle shrieked. Petit Henri and Gérard jumped to defend her, pleased to be useful at last. The next day Isabelle began wearing a headcloth, every chestnut strand wound out of sight, long before other girls her age. 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 |
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