my attention that she has succeeded in writing letters, and these efforts have led to simple words: “oui,” “non,” “maman.” This leads me to believe that one day she will begin to understand complex language. We are introducing words in numerous languages, to gauge if one might be better suited to her abilities. The introduction of English has yielded the most words thus far. I have written to my cousin in London, asking her to send us an English tutor.
We had a British naturalist at our gate the other day. He had heard, on his travels through our mountains, of a noble-born, malformed child and, after making inquiries, was directed to the castle. I was enraged upon learning that our secret, so carefully guarded, could be discovered so easily as this! If that is the case, anyone throwing about questions and a few gold coins is able to discover Vita. I have spoken to Ambrose about this, and he agreed with me. We must suppress all talk of Vita among the peasants. We must hide her existence. We will announce that Vita has died, hold a funeral, and be done with it. We will hide her away. She must live in secret.
There is, as Ambrose warned, something devilish in her.
Sometimes she studies the world with a cold, calculating regard, one devoid of gentleness. It is an expression that chills the senses, it is so devoid of emotion, so outside the realm of human interaction. I wonder then if the defects of her body do not reflect the defects of the soul.
When I try to give the child affection, which I admit is rare and unnatural for me—frankly, my heart closes when I see her; I reject this imperfect copy of myself—she stiffens, as if I have shown her violence. Perhaps she senses that I have no love for her, only compassion, tolerance, and duty. And, more and more of late, horror.
The other evening, for example, I went to her rooms in the northeast tower to wish her a good evening. Vita was with her nurse when I arrived, a collection of rag dolls scattered about her. I was pleased by this simple scene, as I thought she might be playing the kind of domestic games I played as a girl. Indeed, the doll had come from my own collection. But when I bent to see her, I found that every one of the dolls had been ripped and torn, violently denuded and decapitated. The child had gnawed through the dolls with her sharp, strong teeth. In the process, she had bitten her own flesh, and blood had dripped over the wreckage, drying brown and hard on their mangled bodies. When I asked the nurse about this state of affairs, she informed me that Vita had eaten every one of the dolls’ heads whole.
“Eaten?” I said, perplexed. “Surely, she could not have eaten rags. She would be ill.”
The nurse assured me that Vita had, in fact, devoured them.
Suddenly, there was a scratching in the corner of the room, a cacophony of claws, as a rat scrambled across the nursery. A look of fascination passed over Vita’s face, and she stood and darted about the room, following the noise. Her gait was uneven, her weight shifting from leg to leg as she moved, as if her hips were not joined to her body. Then, without a word of warning, she lurched at the rat, grabbed it by the tail, and bit into it. She struck so fast, and there was such elegant ferocity to her movements, that I wouldn’t have understood what had happened had it not been for the burst of blood spattered across the stone floor. As I watched, Vita devoured the rat, dropped the tail on the floor, and wiped the blood from her lips with her sleeve. She must have seen my astonishment, because she began to laugh.
“I believe,” the nurse said, her voice dropping to a whisper, “that she is catching more mice than the courtyard cats, madame.”
I stifled a sob in my throat and turned to hide my pain from the nurse. I thought of the butterfly Vita had killed some time before, the pleasure she had taken in the kill, how she had crushed its wings in her jaws.
December 1928
My child is possessed.
Satan has rooted himself into her body, and through his nefarious means—so cruel and various in their tortures—has created a vessel in the body of my girl. Priests from as far away as