A Citizen of the Country Page 5

  “He sells postcards in Arras,” Jules said.

  “He’s a white witch. He can cure toothache,” Ruthie said. “And infertility, infidelity, and diseases of cows. He can cast spells to get a woman a lover.”

  “Are there black witches?” Reisden asked.

  Oh, yes, Ruthie said. White witches were curers; they guarded against tuberculosis, typhoid fever, cholera, or simple starvation. But if the disease were stubborn, if the cow gave no milk or the crop failed, the curer diagnosed un mauvais sort, an evil fate or spell, and sent the victim to a sorcier to cast a contre-sort. Sorciers could be good or evil.

  “Most sorcerers are bachelors,” Ruthie said. “Priests or shepherds, people who live alone.”

  “A family is a hostage to fate,” Reisden said, thinking of Perdita and Toby.

  “That’s a sad way to think, Monsieur Alexandre.”

  “True, though.”

  “Sorcerers need time to wool-gather,” Jules said, grinning.

  “Jules,” said his sister.

  Sorcerers were supposed to be found near the old abbeys and monasteries, the Mont des Cats, Montfort, or near the old battlefields, Agincourt or Crécy. They used material from the Catholic Church and the battlefields: prayers, novenas, Masses, candles, dead men’s bones. Holy water often formed a part of their rituals, as did the water in which the soul washed itself after death. (Reisden raised his eyebrows.) The sorciers who did not use Christian consecrated water set store by the Holy Well of Montfort.

  “Holy Well of Montfort?”

  “Now there’s a military secret,” Jules said. “It makes soldiers invulnerable. Suppose the Germans would like that?”

  The well had been struck out of the ground by St. Éloi in the sixth century. According to legend, the saint had exorcised demons from the water. During the medieval sieges of Montfort, not only had the well provided water but, the soldiers believed, all soldiers who drank it were victorious in battle. The use of the water in country medicine had persisted until forty years ago, when André’s father, a freethinker, had forbidden the soldiers to use it.

  “And Monsieur Cyron won’t either. He’s angry because Monsieur Heurtemance wants to take his salary in water from the Holy Well.”

  “The Holy Well? It’s the water supply for the castle,” Jules said. “That’s all it is.”

  “But it means so much to poor Monsieur Heurtemance! Struck out of the rock by a saint!” Ruthie said. “Who was casting out demons! The witches want Monsieur Cyron to let them into the castle cellars,” Ruthie explained to Reisden. “They bribe the Montfort kitchenmaids to smuggle them bottles of water from the taps, but they say it’s not the same, they say the kitchenmaids cheat them with Evian.”

  “Witches don’t mix with the Friends of Montfort, I suppose,” Reisden said.

  “Monsieur Cyron says it would only cause trouble, one group against another, who got it, who didn’t.”

  “I brush my teeth with that holy water,” Jules said. “It’s water.”

  “You have no romance in your soul, brother,” Ruthie laughed.

  “None,” said Jules, who would be turned into a vampire in this evening’s performance at the Necro.

  ***

  “So, for a military secret, we have a radio antenna and the Holy Well,” Reisden summarized. “I can’t see Gehazy interested in either. Tell me about André’s wife.”

  “Sabine,” Jules and Ruthie said and looked at each other.

  “Sabine’s sweet,” Ruthie said hurriedly. “She’s very,” she hesitated. “Innocent.”

  It didn’t fit with Millie’s description, mad for sex, or with Jules’s, mad for attention. “Which means?” Reisden said.

  Jules and Ruthie looked at each other again.

  “Ruthie, I need to know.”

  “Sabine,” Ruthie said carefully. “Since we’re talking about witches. Sabine believes in witchcraft. A little. She tells fortunes. Just with cards, mind.”

  “Do you mean,” Reisden said, “André’s wife aspires to be a witch?”

  “Um,” Ruthie said. “You remember what I said, it’s only like a club. She’s a country girl. They’re not so sophisticated as us in Paris.”

  “She thinks she is a witch,” Jules exploded in frustration. “And she didn’t want to marry André. She wanted Necrosar.”

  “That could almost be convenient.” Not healthy, but— “What does ‘being a witch’ mean?”

  “We don’t know,” Ruthie said. “But I’m sure it’s harmless.”

  “It’s not,” Jules said. “André says she cursed him.”

  “She what? How?”

  Jules turned red. “André believes in that sort of thing, you know it’s his region, and—”

  “She’s not really odd or anything,” Ruthie objected. “She really isn’t.”

  “André doesn’t want odd,” Jules said.

  Ruthie said firmly, “She’s just young.”

  How Sabine became a witch

  WHEN SHE WAS TEN, Sabine Wagny began to see death.

  It started very suddenly on the street, one January day in Wagny-les-Mines. Though Papa had been rich even before the mines had opened, he was miserly; he always thought the Germans and the bad old days would come back. He kept no horse nor mule but always walked behind his dog-cart, he’d skin a mouse for the fur and the fat. Schools cost money since priests had given up teaching for free, so Sabine spent her days in the kitchen listening to the serving maids talk, and one day when Lalie the greying old cook-maid clopped off to the market, Sabine slipped on her sabots and went with her.

  She already knew her destiny. Lalie had said, “Your mama saw a grand fate for you. ‘This one will kill me,’ that’s what she said, your poor mama, ‘but my child will live, she’ll be the mistress of a great house.’” Sabine doubted. Who would be this master of a great house whom she’d marry, when she wore a grey flannel skirt and an orange blouse, Lalie’s cut-downs? When would she go to school?

  That day Lalie and Sabine had bought an old piece of steer-hock full of fat and gristle, which Papa would approve of because it had not cost much, and had bought rubbery whiskered carrots and sprouting potatoes, but with the coins they had left, they had gone to a patisserie for a pain au chocolat. They stood on the street corner to eat it. A man stopped in front of them. He was ragged, his cheeks were tattooed with dirt, his beard hung down in tangles. “Give me,” he said to Lalie. He held out his hand palm up, and Lalie, wide-eyed and pale, broke off a piece of the chocolate-filled bread and gave it to him, then hesitated and thrust all of it at him. He smiled wickedly with black ruined teeth, taking it and turning away without thanking them.

  “You gave him it all,” Sabine accused her. “Mine too.”

  “He would have cursed us,” Lalie hissed. “Don’t you know what he is? A man who never combs or cuts his hair? He’s a sorcerer.”

  “I don’t care,” Sabine said, near tears. “It was chocolate, I don’t care about being cursed.” She followed the sorcerer into the street, curiously, resentfully, halfway admiring his selfishness. Lalie jerked her back.

  “Shh! Do this.” Lalie held up both her hands, fisted, the thumbs inside the fingers.

  Sabine fisted both her hands, then unfisted them. “I curse him for stealing my chocolate.”

  The streets of Wagny-les-Mines were steep and unpaved, but in the January cold, the frozen slush and mud were as slippery as cobblestones. A delivery wagon was coming downhill from the butcher’s. On the ice the horse slipped and fell; the delivery wagon fishtailed, struck the sorcerer, threw him against the curb, and crushed him.

  Sabine opened her mouth, astonished.

  Bystanders lifted the wagon off him. Its heavy iron axle had broken his head. Sabine ran into the street and crouched down beside him. She had never seen someone dying before. His brains were leaking into the mud and his right eye was bulging almost out of the socket. It was awful and fascinating. She took his hand and looked into his left eye, which could still s
ee.

  She had cursed him and it had worked.

  The sorcerer smiled again, wickedly, recognizing her, baring bloody broken teeth. He held her hand tightly and murmured words at her. Peur té seuc’, he whispered. For your sweets. She felt some pulse flow from his hand to hers; then his hand went limp.

  “Come away, come away,” Lalie said, and drew her round the corner where she couldn’t see the man. “Wash your hands quickly!” Lalie forced Sabine’s hands under the cold splash from the street-pump.

  “I was holding his hand while he died!” she said.

  Lalie scrubbed at Sabine’s hands with her skirt.

  “He gave me something,” Sabine said.

  “Qué des puces! He gave you nothing,” Lalie said. She made the fists against evil. “Do that,” she said.

  Sabine thought about it and opened her dripping hands wide. If the sorcerer had given her anything, it was for her chocolate, and it was hers.

  ***

  I am growing up, Sabine told her father. It’s time for me to go to school. She stared into his eyes until he blinked and sent her to the convent school in Arras.

  Arras was an old city, centered around two great plazas with seventeenth-century arcades. Lime and chalk had been mined here since Arras was Roman; now the old mines, tunneled and retunneled, formed a dark honeycomb under the city. The shopkeepers showed the fascinated Sabine medieval basements and crypts, ancient chalk rooms that stored wine and cheeses and fresh flowers, an underground maze from the shops to the city hall and the cathedral. The boves seemed to her as strange, as fascinating, as the secret parts of her own body.

  From the postcard-seller in the Grand’Place, who never combed or cut his hair, Sabine heard rumors that des gens particuliers met in the boves. She heard certain rumors about a dressmaker whose shop was in one of the seventeenth-century buildings in the Grand’Place and whose uncle was a hermit. She developed an intense interest in dresses and soon was visiting Mademoiselle Françoise every week.

  She had been given a gift, and she intended to use it.

  The Scottish play, with real witches

  “NOT AT ALL ODD, just young,” Reisden asked. “But André’s wife thinks she’s a witch?”

  “You should meet her,” Ruthie said.

  See for yourself, in other words.

  “Does she come to Paris?” Reisden asked.

  “You could go to Montfort. André’s going there this weekend. He’s got to, for the film. He wants me to go,” Jules said. “But I don’t want to now, because of, you know, the rumors. It’d be fun for you to do with your wife gone.”

  Fun. “Will Cyron be there?”

  “Only on Sunday.”

  “He and I don’t get on. Still, yes, have André invite me.”

  He looked down at the neat piles of paper on the Aborjailys’ dining room table. Several of them were maps of Montfort. Ruthie had drawn them, then marked them with what looked like—

  “Are those troop movements?”

  “For the film,” Ruthie said. “There’s a big battle scene.”

  “Now you can tell me about the film,” Reisden said.

  Jules’ shoulders slumped. “Oh no,” he said. “The film. The soldiers. Do you suppose—“

  “Is someone holding maneuvers at Montfort?”

  “No, but the film has some big battle scenes and Cyron got his army friends to lend him three companies of soldiers. Reisden, you don’t suppose this Ferret has heard about soldiers coming to Montfort, and thinks--?”

  “André’s been promised a battle scene with corpses and disembowelments,” Reisden guessed. “And the Ferret’s been sent to see why the armies are gathering.”

  “Oh, this film!” Ruthie said. “It’ll kill us all.”

  “So: what film?” Reisden asked.

  “I used to laugh about that superstition,” Jules said. “Actors get sick, actors die, someone’s eye gets knocked out in the fight scene, ha ha. But it’s true. One thing after another. Pathé and Gaumont won’t sell us film; we had to get it from Britain. We lost our first cameraman; we’ve had to hire an American who doesn’t speak French. We had an American wrangler to handle the horses for the battle; he’s completely disappeared with some girl. Bad luck and then some.”

  There is only one play that has witches and soldiers and causes bad luck in every production. “André’s filming—?”

  Jules held up his hand, stopping Reisden from saying the name.

  “André is filming the Scottish play?”

  With real witches. Of course he was.

  “Reisden, it’s going to be a great film if we all survive it. We’ll have a cast of thousands, the Revolution, the Terror, the guillotining in the actual Grand’Place in Arras—you should see the guillotine scene André worked out, better than History of a Crime, one shot, no dummies, no stopping the camera, no jumps, we’ll leave the audience spattered with blood and screaming.”

  Witches, and battle scenes, and Cyron playing the lead.

  Cyron’s adaptation of Macbeth. With André directing. The Revolution, the Terror, witches, battles, guillotines. Oh G-d, it would be wonderful.

  “But why is Cyron letting André direct?”

  “Because it’ll get him down to Montfort,” said Jules awkwardly. “Where Sabine is. Sabine’s going to be in the film. It’ll bring them together.”

  ***

  Citizen Mabet. Cyron’s best play, though Shakespeare’s responsible for that. Cyron’s strangest play at least; Cyron’s version of Macbeth.

  It’s set during the French Revolution. At the beginning of the play, the heroic general Edmond Mabet (played by Cyron, inevitably) throws his lot among those who vote to execute the king. As a reward he gets the job of returning to Arras, destroying the monarchists, and establishing democracy.

  Our hero Mabet has an only son, Méduc. On the way back to Arras, the two men meet a trio of Shakespearean witches, who urge him to be bloody, bold, and resolute. Méduc distrusts them and urges his father to be careful.

  But Mabet’s young second wife, Lady M., urges him to believe the witches. Mabet vows to her he will wade through blood to make France democratic.

  He begins to guillotine aristocrats, revolutionaries, nuns, and everyone who stands in his way.

  The Reign of Terror has come to Arras.

  Méduc is shocked at the carnage. “This is not government; it is subversion of justice, humanity, common sense; it is the guillotine made the only law.” Méduc urges his father to stop. His father refuses.

  Méduc flees to ask help from--guess? The French army. It is Cyron’s play, after all.

  But Méduc has a young wife and child, and he leaves them behind.

  Mabet issues a warrant for the arrest of Méduc’s wife and child, his own grandchild.

  Rather than be arrested, the wife and child jump into the moat of their château and drown.

  Mabet gives a ball to celebrate the purification of Arras from nobles. But the townspeople are shocked and sobered by the deato of Méduc’s wife and child, and no one comes. Mabet and Lady M. are alone until, in the famous Ball of the Dead scene, the ghosts of Mabet’s guillotined victims come to dance with him. Leading the ghosts are Méduc’s wife and child.

  Lady M. goes mad. Another famous scene.

  Méduc and the French army march against Arras. The witches tell Mabet that he’s safe, he cannot lose; not until Birnam wood, and so on.

  Instead of killing Mabet, Méduc captures him. The son condemns his father and his father’s wife to death by guillotine.

  The famous guillotining scene: Mad Lady M. is guillotined first. Méduc is there, supposedly to watch his father die. Mabet gives a final vive-la-France speech, which so moves Méduc that, in spite of everything, he forgives his father; he understands that Mabet has loved France. (Not bloody likely, but Cyron has to be the hero.)

  Mabet goes to the guillotine, mourned by all.

  It’s a farrago, of course, Shakespeare stirred awkwardly together with
the real-life Revolutionary butchery at Arras. But it’s simply one good scene after another. The witches. The Ball of the Dead. The battle between Mabet’s forces and the French army. The climactic guillotining. Leaving the audience spattered with blood and screaming.

  But one problem, Reisden thought.

  There’s only one big female role in Citizen Mabet.

  “Jules,” he said, “could Cyron possibly intend to interest André in his wife by having her play Lady M.?”

  Jules held up his hands. “What other role is there? What other play of his would André direct? What other film of André’s would Cyron appear in? She’s doubling as one of the witches. That was the role she wanted.”

  “Angels and ministers of grace defend us.”

  Reisden visits Cyron

  ON THE THURSDAY BEFORE going to Montfort with André, Reisden went to see Cyron at his theatre.

  He arrived toward the end of the play. From beyond the auditorium doors he could hear Cyron’s voice, thunderous and booming. “Courage, my soldiers! They are only an army—we are French—” The voice dropped to a murmur as Cyron exhorted his ragtag army against impossible odds. Whatever the play was, the speeches were always the same. Reisden pushed open the door and stood at the back of the theatre, watching the audience. Every one of them was leaning forward, hanging on Cyron’s words like the soldiers onstage, as if their lives depended on winning this battle.

  Cyron’s plays had always been about impossible odds, military miracles. He was every French drill sergeant who had ever trained a crew of left-footed conscripts; he was every soldier looking out over the fields toward the enemy’s overwhelming guns, every unexpected hero. He was France, and he would be victorious.

  Onstage, on a hill above the soldiers, the shadows of innumerable enemies moved on the red-lit gauze. Cyron, soldier of France, yelled defiance at them. “The Germans are a thousand strong, boys!” he shouted to his soldiers. “Show them no mercy!” The soldiers charged the shadows; explosions shook the stage; the lights flickered, stage-smoke poured into the auditorium, enemy guns fired over the audience, cracking toward the heavens—and Cyron, triumphant, appeared through the haze, waving the enemy banner.