“We’ll see.” I concentrated all my will on the mare, telling her silently to back up, to pull loose from the bond holding her and come.
In a second, the horse was prancing, jerking at the leather. Then she reared and the tether broke.
She came clattering towards us over the stones, and we were on her immediately, Gabrielle leaping up first and I right behind her, gathering up what was left of the rein as I urged the horse to go into a dead run.
As we crossed the bridge I felt something behind us, a commotion, the tumult of mortal minds.
But we were lost in the black echo chamber of the Ile de la Cité.
WHEN we reached the tower, I lighted the resin torch and took her down with me into the dungeon. There was no time now to show her the upper chamber.
Her eyes were glassy and she looked about herself sluggishly as we descended the screw stairs. Her scarlet clothes gleamed against the dark stones. Ever so slightly she recoiled from the dampness.
The stench from the lower prison cells disturbed her, but I told her gently it was nothing to do with us. And once we had entered the huge burial crypt, the smell was shut out by the heavy iron-studded door.
The torchlight spread out to reveal the low arches of the ceiling, the three great sarcophagi with their deeply graven images.
She did not seem afraid. I told her that she must see if she could lift the stone lid of the one she chose for herself. I might have to do it for her.
She studied the three carved figures. And after a moment’s reflection, she chose not the woman’s sarcophagus but the one with the knight in armor carved on the top of it. And slowly she pushed the stone lid out of place so she could look into the space within.
Not as much strength as I possessed but strong enough.
“Don’t be frightened,” I said.
“No, you mustn’t ever worry on that account,” she answered softly. Her voice had a lovely frayed sound to it, a faint timbre of sadness. She appeared to be dreaming as she ran her hands over the stone.
“By this hour,” she said, “she might have already been laid out, your mother. And the room would be full of evil smells and the smoke of hundreds of candles. Think how humiliating it is, death. Strangers would have taken off her clothes, bathed her, dressed her—strangers seen her emaciated and defenseless in the final sleep. And those whispering in the corridors would have talked of their good health, and how they have never had the slightest illness in their families, no, no consumption in their families. ‘The poor Marquise,’ they would have said. They would have been wondering, did she have any money of her own? Did she leave it to her sons? And the old woman when she came to collect the soiled sheets, she would have stolen one of the rings off the dead woman’s hand.”
I nodded. And so we stand in this dungeon crypt, I wanted to say, and we prepare to lie down on stone beds, with only rats to keep us company. But it’s infinitely better than that, isn’t it? It has its dark splendor, to walk the nightmare terrain forever.
She looked wan, cold all over. Sleepily, she drew something out of her pocket.
It was the golden scissors she’d taken from the lady’s table in the faubourg St.-Germain. Sparkling in the light of the torch like a bauble.
“No, Mother,” I said. My own voice startled me. It leapt out echoing too sharply under the arched ceiling. The figures on the other sarcophagi seemed merciless witnesses. The hurt in my heart stunned me.
Evil sound, the snipping, the shearing. Her hair fell down in great long locks on the floor.
“Ooooh, Mother.”
She looked down at it, scattering it silently with the tip of her boot, and then she looked up at me, and she was a young man now certainly, the short hair curling against her cheek. But her eyes were closing. She reached out to me and the scissors fell out of her hands.
“Rest now,” she whispered.
“It’s only the rising sun,” I said to reassure her. She was weakening sooner than I did. She turned away from me and moved towards the coffin. I lifted her and her eyes shut. Pushing the lid of the sarcophagus even farther to the right, I