There are times when I almost believe she could become a normal child.
Yesterday, in a spasm of optimism, I dressed her in a blue silk dress and took her into the gardens to take the sun. The sky was clear, the pond glistened in the light, and the mountains were colored by wildflowers. It was as calm and pleasant a scene as one could imagine. The servants set up a chaise near the pond, not far from my precious grove of M?rier blanc, and brought us our lunch, making sure no one was about to witness our strange, secret party. We have learned to be careful in recent years. I allow no one in the northeast tower save our priest, and he has sworn to remain silent on the matter of my daughter. Half the servants have been dismissed. The other half are kept far from the east wing of the castle. The truth is: I fear them, fear they will gossip in the village, fear their talk of the monster child of Eleanor Montebianco.
When I was certain we were alone, I instructed the nurse to let Vita go free. She unharnessed the child, then placed her on her extraordinary feet, and let her go. At first, she was timid. She had never been allowed to play in such an open space before. Then the child began to run. What speed she has! I could not match it, nor could any in our household. It wasn’t long before a Papilio machaon, with its brilliant yellow butterfly wings, came flitting down from the heavens, pausing on a bush of pink flowers. Vita, her eye drawn to its quick, colorful movements, endeavored to catch it. Of course, the butterfly lifted into the air, eluding her with ease. As it flitted away, she watched it, her large blue eyes filled with wonder, but also something more. Something intelligent and calculating. I could see that she wanted to capture the creature. She wanted to catch it and possess it.
Vita waited and watched for many minutes until the beautiful thing flitted back to the bank of flowers. Slowly, quietly, Vita closed in. Soon it was within her reach. With a ruthlessness that one might find in a mantis, Vita snapped the butterfly in her teeth. I gasped in horror. There it was, her true nature, plain as the sunlight on her white-blond hair. One minute, she was a child at play. The next, an animal.
The moment has stayed with me, bolstering my resolve to keep her from contact with the exterior world. If others see her instincts at work, she will not survive long.
Aside from physical dexterity, and a sharpness of eye, the incident showed me that there is more to this small unfortunate creature than the ruins of a human being. No, there is more to my child than monstrous deformities. God has not abandoned her, as Ambrose claims. Rather, He has blessed her with unseen gifts, given her a richness of physical gifts that, because they are not like ours, we call demonic. But she is not a devil. She is not a curse. She is special. We must only wait and allow her nature to unfold so that we might see her for what she truly is.
Against the wishes of Ambrose, and the warnings of the priest, I brought the child to Pré Saint Didier to take the waters. Ambrose planned to make the journey, and as the carriage had been prepared and he would have our usual rooms at the hotel, I insisted he bring us along. The waters are miraculous, rich with iron and arsenic, their curative powers discovered by the Romans and known to one and all in these mountains. How could I, who has tried every other method, deny my child the benefit of this source of health?
“But my cousins,” Ambrose objected, when he understood that I would not be dissuaded. His fear wasn’t without reason. The House of Savoy knows nothing of our misfortune. And yet I insisted, promising that the child would be treated privately, in the presence only of our doctor, and that not a soul from the House of Savoy would see her. It was a promise that I should not have made, for, as anyone who has taken the waters at the source knows, privacy is an illusion. Those of our milieu mingle in the waters freely. I would have to invent new means of discretion. I would have to find a