Love's First Light (5 page)
Scarlett’s round stomach bumped into the basket of bread and tipped it over, causing the steaming loaves to fall to the floor. “Oh!”
She bent, an awkward sinking, half-bending motion around her pregnancy, and scrambled to gather them up. Rising with effort, the bread clutched in her hands, she looked up into her mother’s stricken eyes. “I’ll dust them off.”
Her mother pursed her lips together and sighed. “We have no choice. There is not time nor enough flour to make more.” She turned back to the dough and began to knead the giant soft ball with her hands. “I do wish they would send more flour. We could sell double what we bake.”
Scarlett had heard the argument countless times before. Her husband’s uncle, the infamous Maximilien Robespierre, had arranged for them to receive flour from his powerful office in the Committee of the newly established government. He also gave them a small stipend every month to supplement a household of three lone women. But still, it was a struggle to keep the cottage and body and soul together. Becoming bakers had been her little sister’s idea. Stacia had her father’s entrepreneurial spirit and was always coming up with ideas to increase their bottom line so that she could buy dresses and shoes and fashion papers from Paris. Scarlett and her mother simultaneously despaired over Stacia’s reckless streak and admired her sharp business mind.
The baking of bread, though, had turned into a small gold mine. Scarlett’s uncle agreed to send what flour he could arrange, it being closely managed by the new French government, and so their business had begun.
As it turned out, all three of them had a knack for baking. The weeks took on a comforting if exhausting routine.
It was an ordered life. A simple life. In the wake of Scarlett’s father’s death, and then Scarlett’s husband . . . with no man to carry them . . . flour, yeast, water,
bread.
That was what sustained them now.
bread.
That was what sustained them now.
“Scarlett, did you hear me?”
She shook her head, turning from arranging the basket to best display the loaves. She seemed to have a knack for making the bread look more a decoration than something to eat. “I’m sorry. My mind doesn’t seem as keen these days. What did you say?”
“About visiting the grave as you do, so late or so early. It’s not fitting. Why do you insist on going only when it is dark?”
She would never be able to explain it to her mother. That in dark, it still wasn’t quite real. That in the bright light of day she couldn’t hide as well from the guilt that she was a little relieved her marriage was over. Had she known Daniel at all? There hadn’t been enough time. She would have, after this Révolution was over, been able to make it work between them if he’d lived, wouldn’t she?
She turned away, not knowing how to answer her mother, except: “I will try.”
“You will try.” Her mother put her hands on her rounded hips, making Scarlett sigh internally.
Please, God, let the lecture be finished.
Please, God, let the lecture be finished.
“What if some evil person comes upon you? What will you do then? I worry so about you.” Her mother paused, throwing her hands into the air. “And in your condition.” She thrust her hands out toward Scarlett. “You couldn’t even run away.”
It was true. She could
not
have run away this morning. She looked down and saw the giant mound of her stomach. Her mother was right. There had been a moment when she thought that she should run. Until he spoke . . .
not
have run away this morning. She looked down and saw the giant mound of her stomach. Her mother was right. There had been a moment when she thought that she should run. Until he spoke . . .
Who
was
he? She could not let her mother learn of him! Their encounter would send her into a worried state of agitation that would last for weeks. Scarlett didn’t doubt that her mother would even start to follow her, at a distance, thinking she was successfully spying. She had done it before to both Scarlett and her sister. But Scarlett was a woman grown, and about to be a mother herself. She should be allowed to make her own decisions.
was
he? She could not let her mother learn of him! Their encounter would send her into a worried state of agitation that would last for weeks. Scarlett didn’t doubt that her mother would even start to follow her, at a distance, thinking she was successfully spying. She had done it before to both Scarlett and her sister. But Scarlett was a woman grown, and about to be a mother herself. She should be allowed to make her own decisions.
Scarlett turned back to the hot fire, pulling the round, split, sweet-smelling bread from the heat with her flat, wooden paddle. Her cheeks burned from both the blaze and the thoughts of the dark stranger. How could she not recognize him? Carcassonne was such a small community, and being bakers at the market three mornings a week had assured that they knew every reaching hand. But this man, she was certain, had never been in the busy streets on market day, never reached out for their meager sustenance.
The baby kicked hard and then turned, folded, and stretched inside of her. She stilled her hands and then clutched her stomach. She could feel him stretch against the thin barrier of his world and hers. He wanted out . . . and soon. She smiled with the thought, her head down, her body curled into their private world.
“What is it?”
“The babe.” Scarlett rose up and motioned her mother over. “I don’t believe he likes it when I bend over. It must crowd him.”
Her mother took the few steps toward her, her hands dusted with flour. She hesitated. Scarlett took firm hold of her mother’s hands and laid them on the round stomach. Scarlett moved them to the place where she could feel the child move. “Here. Can you feel it?”
Scarlett’s mother looked up, her round face still unlined, her eyes closing. Her lips curved into a smile. “A baby in the house again.” She blinked rapidly, a look on her face that Scarlett seldom saw. Another sudden turn by the babe and both their eyes grew round as Scarlett’s entire mound shifted. They burst out laughing. “A strong one!” Her mother leaned in and kissed Scarlett on the forehead, and then waved a hand. “Go and get your slugabed sister up. I will finish down here.”
Scarlett ducked her head and smiled.
It wasn’t often that her mother kissed her.
CHRISTOPHÉ TUCKED THE curtain around the narrow rectangle of the old castle’s window. At one corner he propped up the dusty fabric with an old bottle in the corner of the sill. It allowed a small shaft of light into the vast, stone room. On a table he positioned a prism, hard won and a little stolen; convincing the woman it was but glass. God help him, that had been years ago, soon after he had fled Paris.
Alone.
The memory pained him like a stab in his belly, so that he bent toward the table and the prism. He lifted the triangular glass object toward the beam of light with shaking fingers. He held it steady though. He would stop living before letting this prize shatter on the floor into a hundred useless pieces. His life would not look like that ever again, so help him . . . please, God.
He looked down at the floor. He was standing in one of hundreds of rooms in a crumbling castle. It was a place so large, and in its time, so foreboding, that no army could stand against it. He saw a rusty stain on the floor. He’d heard his ancestral history told to him like a bedtime story. The castle was built in medieval times. It had watched, from this southern border of strength and impregnability, the crushing of the Cathers, a religious sect against the Catholic Church. It had seen the glory of standing firm during the Crusades, thus this floor bore the blood stains of horror stories—stories of the Cathers, the Crusades, the great Trenceval family. And now him.
Up . . . up . . . through the dust motes, through the darkness, to that one place of light. There. Just there. He held the prism steady as it met the beam of light. But it wasn’t right. Something was not quite right. The beam was too wide, there was too much light in the room. Christophé held the prism at different angles and variations, but all that showed through was a wash of shadows.
He fell into a nearby chair, frowning, holding the prism in his palms. He stared at it, pondering the mathematical equations springing to his mind. Leaping up, he took up a dry quill, cursed at it, then rummaged around for some ink. Dipping the pen, he scribbled down the numbers swirling in his mind. It always amazed him. This language of time and space and distance and matter. The language of numbers. That it could be put to pen and ink spoke of God. And it could. Somehow, he always knew just what the dripping black point should say. He sighed heavily, his hair hanging in his eyes, his mouth pursed, his jaw clenched until he had the full of his thoughts written out.
But he had to prove those thoughts through experiments. Like Newton and the scientific papers from England that he had studied over and over at school. Mathematics were only numbers until they could
prove
something by sight or sound, touch or smell, taste or even hunch.
prove
something by sight or sound, touch or smell, taste or even hunch.
He reared back and stared at his calculations. He’d learned all that the university could teach him of mathematics in one year. He’d studied geometry and the newer calculus until his eyes were blurry. He knew what he wrote on paper was sound. Now was the time for experiments. He looked at the calculations again and grinned and then frowned in the next moment. It was impossible. No one would believe him. If what he’d just written—and Newton’s experiment—was true, he could place a second prism some distance away and realign the colors.
White light . . . becoming color . . . back to white light. It was white light that held all the colors, not black as they’d thought.
His mind reeled with the implications. A sudden thought struck him as a blow. He breathed through his nostrils with the vision of it. What if God was like light? Pure and white. And what if man was the splitting into a myriad of colors? And then in the realignment with God, they became pure again.
“But how?” he asked aloud, rising suddenly, scattering the dust motes to pace in the echoing room. “How might we become pure and white again?”
He reeled in his agitation, bumped a table and fell. His head knocked against the sharp edge of a wood table. Dazed, he sat up, bracing his hands against the cold, stone floor. Something warm ran down his temple and cheek.
He lifted his hand to the spot, felt the oozing. When he pulled back his hand, it shone with blood.
He stared at the smear on his finger.
Red.
The color of sacrifice.
He rose, looked down at his disheveled dress—his shirt hanging open, his breeches and bare feet. He rushed to the room where he kept his few belongings, threw on clothes, and tied his cravat haphazardly. He shoved his feet into shoes that were worn and tattered from the long walk to this ancient, southern place next to the Pyrenees Mountains. Carcassonne.
He rushed from the crumbling, old castle, where no one dared live for fear the roof would cave in on them in their sleep. His cracked shoes sprang over the bridge to the other side of the Aude River, where civilization flourished—the real living people. Not the ghosts who haunted him.
The actual village frightened him in the full light of morning. Someone might see him, recognize him as the shabby aristocrat he was, and tell the Republic’s patrols that roamed to and fro across the land. He pulled his long, dark cape closer, hid his face deeper in the folds of the hood, and kept his eyes downcast.
His steps turned toward the noise of town—the marketplace. The woman’s face from the cemetery yesterday morning rose before his mind’s eye. He would like to see her face in the full light of the day, to drink it in for a few shadowed moments . . .
His eyes widened at the thought. No. His hiding place and careful routine, these were all he had. He must remember that.
He turned into the busy street of the city market. There were many booths on each side, selling food of all kinds and tapestries and cloth and anything a man confined to an ancient relative’s castle might need. But all he could smell was bread.
When had he last eaten? He couldn’t recall. Yeasty warm scents led his footsteps deeper into the street, deeper than he’d meant to go. He lifted his chin, the protective hood deep around his face, following his nose. There.
He opened his eyes and saw her.
The impact of her face made him want to shrink back, recoil from such beauty. This world, the world they lived in, didn’t deserve her. Her beauty might break all their hearts—certainly his heart—but he didn’t turn away. He stood and stared. Soaking in the creamy skin reflected by morning’s light. Her eyes were an unusual shade of green, wide and bright with dark, highly arched brows. Her features were perfectly symmetrical, an equal equation. Dark curls lay on either side of the lush display like a frame. She was smiling at a customer. A man.
Before he knew what he was doing he stepped forward, shouldering the man from her view and snatching up a round, still-steaming loaf.
“Oh!”
It was such a feminine squeak of both surprise and then something else—gladness, maybe?—that he pressed his lips together and could only stare at her from his hood. “I need bread.”
Ah. That was so wrong!
Ah. That was so wrong!
A gentle smile made her face glow in the morning’s light. It lit so, on her face and in his heart, that sudden equations sprang into his mind. Like the sun. When it ruled the planets. Like rotations. Beauty turning over.
Like starlight forever shining.
But he could only pull deeper within the cloak and nod as she handed him the steaming loaf.
Like starlight forever shining.
But he could only pull deeper within the cloak and nod as she handed him the steaming loaf.
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