“Is there something you wish to say to me, Charles?—something
that you find especially difficult, even more so than what you confessed to me
earlier?”
He rose and walked behind the bench, leaning against it
as if to separate him from Marguerite’s
physical presence, as if he were using the bench as a barricade.
“I am going to ask you a terrible question, Sister
Marguerite Kircaldie, and you are going to hate me for having asked
it.”
She saw that his pain was real, and that whatever it
was affected him deeply
“I could never hate you, Excellency.”
“You will learn, Sister Marguerite.”
She laughed a mirthless laugh..
“No, it is not possible. Hatred is no part of my nature, and if it
were, you would be the last person alive… whom I could ever hate.”
She began sorting through the apples on the sideboard to
mask her nervousness.
“How do you do it, Sister? How are you able to be so
full of sunshine even when there are dark clouds all around?”
“Why would you assume it to be the sun, Charles? Why
not the light of God? And I take it that
was not the question you were so hesitant to ask.”
He laughed at himself.
She tilted her head. She did not frown but her nose
twitched.
"Charles, are you ill?
“No, Sister, I am not ill. I am merely fat.”
It was her turn to laugh.
“No one is merely fat, Charles. Merely and fat are contradictions in terms, I
think.”
He joined her in laughter, but his did not last long.
“Do you love me, Marguerite?”
“Oh!”
She dropped the apple.
“Oh my God!”
She sank to her knees on the tiles.
She looked at him as if he had just told her that
someone dear had died. Perhaps someone had. Then she sucked air and tightly
closed her eyes as if she were sealing her soul inside her body. He could barely hear her when she finally
spoke.
“How could you
be cruel enough to ask me that?”
She pretended to rub her nose, but she was really
wiping tears from the corner of her eyes.
Neither was fooled by the gesture.
“And yes, Charles.
I truly do believe that by the time your questions settles from the air
where it hangs between us, I shall discover that I, too, can hate.”
“I am so very sorry that I asked it.” Then he rethought
his answer. “Actually, no, I am not.”
Then she stood.
She was a tall woman, and the habit made her appear taller. Her face was
flushed with a mix of embarrassment and anger. Both of her hands were drawn
into tight white-knuckled fists.
“You were there the day they brought me to Les Grande
Jardin. I was three or four or five
depending on which dissembler I listened to as I grew older. I spoke no French other than my parroted
greeting, Bonjour, Madame et
Monsieur. Je m’appelle Daisy.
“You were there when the woman whom I thought was my
sister was ushered into a coach and sent away. Then you and your family kindly
announced to me that she was nothing at all to me but a surrogate and an
escort. Do you remember that day, Charles?
“She was all I
had—my lifeline, and I was there surrounded by strangers who did not even know
my name, who insisted on calling me Marguerite, and who laughed behind my
back. When Lady Ferniehirst left me,
Charles, you were the one who held my arms and kept me from running after the
coach.”
“You kicked and clawed like a wild animal you were so
distraught.”
“Why should I have been distraught, Charles? I was to be afforded the charity and
protection of the mighty House of Guise!
I was to be taken to a strange place where stern women dressed in black
made strange sounds or did not talk at all -- a place where other children also
lived but with whom I was forbidden contact.
They sang songs in the garden, but
I was forbidden to listen. I ate
with the nuns and prayed with the nuns and slept with the nuns and chanted with
the nuns, a perfect little five year old Benedictine, just a tad too young for
vows, so there I stayed. The amusement in my life was the adventure of Saint
Doda’s Hole, a dead place in the chapel
floor where I was taken to hide when outsiders visited.
“And in spite of
it, I grew to love it, to embrace it, and I also embraced the holy vows of
Chastity, Cloister, Poverty and Obedience. And thus I remained chaste, cloistered
and obedient, but never poor, because somewhere along the way I was enriched by
my faith in God and the Holy Virgin and the connection I felt to my Holy Order. And you, who knew better than anyone because
you were there –you were in the barn and knew how much I had suffered, how
gravely I had sinned, how much I had to
repent, how hard I struggled to move beyond the ugliness, and
how much it meant to me to find the strength to finally take my vows.
“So how dare you ask me such a question, Charles? How could you be so cruel?”
He picked up his gloves from the bench where he had
laid them and walked to the library door.
“Forgive me if you can,” he mumbled.
“Oui” she said
“Merci”
Her voice rose to a pitch he had never heard, not even
as he entered the barn in response to her screams.
“Not ‘Oui, I forgive you, Charles’, because I do not
forgive you. You asked a question and I
have answered it. You asked me if I love you, Charles, and the answer to your
question is ‘Oui.’ So there you have
your answer. And it is terrible, is it
not.”
When he turned there were tears flowing down his
cheeks.
“I have loved you since you were a little girl.”
“…The little girl who ruined your shins and stomped
your toes and dug her fingernails into your wrists?”
“A different love then, but yes, even then. I loved your spirit, your determination.”
“You danced with me.”
“You were such a pretty little thing, all dressed out
in crimson velvet, with ribbons in your hair.”
“You lifted me high above your shoulders in a Volta,
while your grandmother bit her lip until it bled.”
Her own tears began to flow.
“If you had known, Marguerite, would it have made a difference?”
This is beautiful, Linda. I feel honored to have been mentioned, although you are the mastermind here. I am humbled.
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