the east lawn, by the pond. Sometimes, she disappears into the mountains. What she does there, alone in the snow and ice, I cannot imagine, but when she leaves, she is gone for many days at a time. She returns calm, almost at peace. This alone is enough for me to be thankful.
I passed an hour with Vita today before leaving her to the surgeon.
She was found in the mews in a terrible state. The groundsman came to me in the library, his face white and twisted with fear. “Mademoiselle is unwell” is all he said, averting his eyes in the way they all do when speaking of Vita: with shame and confusion. I put my book aside and followed him through the courtyard to the mews.
“She is in the northeast tower?” I asked.
“In the mews, madame,” the servant said. “Where the soldiers were sleeping.”
The soldiers may have left, but the smell of them remained, the scent of sweat and wine, and the mineral odor of blood and festering wounds.
Vita stood in the shadows, beyond the hay piles, her eyes wide. It was a look I had never seen before, one of confusion mixed with shock.
“Vita, come,” I said. “You shouldn’t be here.”
She stepped closer. The dead of winter, and she was without shoes—that was the first thing I noticed. The second was the blood on her hands and on her dress. On her legs and her feet. Blood everywhere.
“What has happened here?” I asked, beginning to fear that she had raided the barns again. The goats were always in danger when Vita was unattended. We relied on them for cheese and milk and meat all winter. We could not afford Vita’s plunder.
But as she came closer, I understood that this was not one of her usual episodes. My child was in pain. For the first time in many years, I felt something close to the sentiments I had felt at her birth: awe at what I had created. Compassion.
Vita threw her hands in the air, to show me the blood, waving her arms in a crazed fashion. She was not in her right mind. She howled and howled and howled, and the pain in that howl alerted me that something terrible had happened, some new violence. Finally, I understood that Vita had been violated.
I dismissed the groundsman, telling him to go to Nevenero to fetch the village doctor. Then I asked Vita to explain. In a number of gestures she made me understand that the soldiers had tied her hands to a post and covered her head with a sack. I could see that she didn’t understand what had happened. There being no hope that she should marry, I had never thought to explain the nature of men and women’s relations. She must have been utterly unaware of what the soldiers wanted from her when she came to the mews. She had wandered into a trap without knowing how to defend herself.
Later, in the tower, the doctor examined her, but his concern was less for mending Vita’s wounds than for discerning what variety of creature Vita was to begin with. He brought the candle close to her, illuminating the pallid skin of her cheeks and neck, the white hair that grew over arms and chest, the unnatural feet. He looked at her as if she were a demon.
“What kind of beast is this, madame?” he asked.
“She is a Montebianco,” I said. “And you will treat her with respect.”
What a look he had as he put the candle on the table! How his hands trembled as he took up the scissors and thread! I thought he would turn and flee the tower. I took out my purse and gave him an enormous sum so that he would stay and tend to her. Pocketing the bills, he lowered his eyes and did not raise them again. He sutured the wounds and promised to return with medicine from the village. “Do not speak of this to anyone,” I said as he left.
All that night, I sat at Vita’s bedside. She was asleep, spots of blood staining the sheets, and it seemed to me that, in her weakness, she was more my daughter than ever before.
The perfume pleases Vita. It came today with the shipments from Paris, a crystal bottle wrapped in cloth. I unwrapped it and the air filled with the scent of oakmoss and bergamot. I knew she would like this gift. Fragrance has always soothed Vita, her sense of smell