The Poisoning Angel (5 page)

It was inside Viltansoù's curious dwelling that she was stirring away with a wooden spoon amid the sugary fragrances, and singing in shrill tones. In actual fact the house was the upturned back half of the hull of an inshore fishing boat, which had been wrecked one night, sheared across as if by a razor on the Witch's Fangs archipelago.

Once pulled with ropes to the top of a dune, the upturned
hold of the old tub henceforth formed the curved roof of a most individual home. Daylight came in through the portholes. Yann had covered up the open part of the wreck with boards from another vessel's bridge, placed upright. Then he had cut an opening to put in the mahogany door from a captain's cabin. There it was, squeaking as Viltansoù came in through it.

There was no floor at Yann's. When it rained, the ground ran with water. For this reason he had not put a sailor's mattress on the ground. He had preferred to extend the triangular sail of a fishing boat horizontally in the air like a hammock. Through the eyelets in the three corners of the jib, he had stretched ropes to three places in the shelter. Viltansoù's eyes went from the sail to the girl from Plouhinec, who was pouring her orange jam into jars, turning them over as soon as they were closed.

‘You can taste it in a moment.'

‘No, it's only you I'm hungry for.'

While the jam was cooling, Thunderflower's lover was growing hotter. ‘The seductive power you exert is so sudden and so commanding. The enchantment of your smile is even more disturbing. A pollen of sensuality floats around you. You perfume the air.'

Goodness, the wrecker was growing sentimental. He went on, ‘Your eyes are like blue flowers in milk' and that kind of nonsense, before suggesting: ‘You know, we'd be comfortable, just the two of us, hidden in that sail.'

All the furnishings here had been looted in various shipwrecks: a whalebone crucifix was nailed up beside a clock whose glass was broken, above an anchor with its rope for decoration. The portrait of a stern Irish sea captain, complete with a hole made
by a hooked pole, appeared to be making a disapproving face. Was it because, across from him, the sail was beginning to move without his orders? The white sail rocked as the entwined lovers tumbled like pebbles on the shore. One moment it wrapped them round completely like a cocoon, the next it unfolded, and grew taut, tossing them up into the air. The girl from Morbihan lobbed her cook's headdress, her hairpins and her dress over her head. She straddled Viltansoù's bare hips as he lay on his back, her long wavy blond hair tumbling down to the points of her breasts. The wrecker cupped them in his killer's hands. This girl was his favourite shape. With her pert bust, she danced, seated on him, moving her navel, and his eyes went spinning with delight.

As Yann's gaze became more vacant, she began to sway, casting the flying net of her caresses around the young man, who turned her on to her knees. She: arms stretched wide apart, holding on to the eyelets of the tack and sheet as her guitar-shaped bottom burst into melodies. He: clinging to Thunderflower's sides. Into the swing of things now, she moved her hips from right to left, backwards and forwards, then Viltansoù began to cry out Jesus's name again and again.

‘Will you try my orange jam, Yann? There's a secret ingredient in it.'

‘I don't eat jam.'

The dawn mist was licking itself like a she-cat emerging from its dreams when Viltansoù woke up. He patted the area around him with his hands, and was surprised not to feel anyone there. Sitting on the edge of the hanging sail, he noticed that his marine anchor
had disappeared as well, and that the door of his half-hull house was standing wide open. As he finished dressing among the reeds of a dune at the foot of a high escarpment that summer morning, he noted that little remained of the vessel loaded with citrus fruit, guided to its destruction two evenings before. Almost everything had been looted, carried away: cargo, furnishings, portholes, sails for making into rainproof garments or covers, and practically all the wood, which would serve for heating or building. The ship that, in the storm, had sought the port of Saint-Brieuc was now nothing but a washed-up fish skeleton.

Viltansoù heard someone calling him from near the wreck: ‘Are you coming?' It was Thunderflower, sitting naked on the furthest rock of the Maiden's Teeth. Yann was concerned for her.

‘Be careful you don't topple over. There's a huge abyss behind you.'

‘Come …'

On the cliff top, the two Norman wigmakers were walking along the coastal path in front of their horse, holding its reins to get the covered cart to go between the spiny thickets. The shorter of the two griped, ‘You can shay what you like, but I'm telling you that the reputation of Breton bone fixersh is vashtly overeshtimated. You can't tell me it'sh normal to have a shoulder like thish.'

‘But the healer promised it would sort itself out.'

‘Yearsh later? Look, he'sh put my arm back the wrong way round.'

It was true that the joints of the limb formed unusual angles.

‘And it'sh not at all practical for cutting hair.'

The speech defect resulted from the hoof kick to his jaw
received at Bubry, which had been equally badly set.

‘It'sh annoying me. Would it be all right with you if we untied the horshe and I had a little resht?'

‘Ash you wish,' joked his tall colleague with the one eye.

Thunderflower spotted the two Normans unharnessing their outfit up above, then looked down to watch Viltansoù coming towards her. He jumped from one rock to another, approaching her in the same way one falls in love, aware it is a risky journey.

‘You madcap, the men who associate with you will soon lose their way. Ah, you're leading me a merry dance, you enchantress.'

‘Come …'

He was helpless to resist the call of the nymph, seated gracefully, legs crossed to one side. The reflections of the light on the waters played along her ankles and calves, more than knee-deep in the sea, drawing scales on them, while her feet, heels together but toes apart, looked like a fishtail.

‘Goodnessh, a shiren.' Thus the portly wigmaker, with his arm making the shape of a figure five above the cliff as he pointed.

‘A siren? You poor thing, you're becoming more and more Breton since that hoof-kick in the head,' moaned the one-eyed man, turning towards the sea.

Down below on the rocks, surrounded by the mirrors and chandeliers of the waves, Thunderflower held out her hand to her lover, singing in an unearthly voice, ‘Come …' In her slow, clear voice there crept a serpent, like the rope that, as a joke no doubt, the woman from Morbihan was winding round Yann's neck. Then, behind her back, she gave a push to the anchor she had stolen from him. Viltansoù swayed, ‘Aaaargh,' before plummeting head first to the bottom of the abyss. Large bubbles
burst on the water's surface; the tall wigmaker was dumbstruck. Thinking he must be seeing things, he rubbed his good eye. ‘That can't be happening. It's just not possible.'

‘Ha, Monsieur Viltansoù didn't like jam.'

On her rock, Thunderflower resumed the pose of a mermaid dwelling in the sea.

Her lovely eyes were languid – beautiful, sad, the last of her line – as she ran her fingers like a comb's teeth through her sunbeam hair.

‘No, it can't be real.' The one-eyed man couldn't believe what he saw. ‘Sirens don't exist!' He raised his hand and brought it down hard, unfortunately on the horse's rump. It kicked its hind legs in the air. The short wigmaker was relieved to be standing by the beast's nostrils but, as it brought its hoofs down on the ground again, the horse slipped on the cliff edge. It tried to save itself with its forelegs, only in the end to topple backwards in a shower of pebbles. The tall Norman, seeing their horse skinned and already rotting, white among the rocks, yelled out, ‘I'm growing heartily sick of Brittany!'

Guern

In the church, death flitted among hideous grotesques and bizarre, mocking faces, and paintings depicting tears and agonies, thorns and nails hung all around. Cries could also be heard.

‘If you don’t take my child’s fever away, I’ll whip you like a mule!’

‘Heal me, or watch out for a beating!’

‘Here, take that!’

In a wall niche stood the polychrome plaster figure of a Breton saint who, when he failed to answer prayers, was roundly whipped.

‘Saint-Yves-de-Vérité, during your lifetime you were just. Show that you still are, by God!’

‘The profits of my shop are almost nil. It’s in your interests to sort out my business.’

‘I’d warned you I didn’t want the Le Rouzic lad to get me pregnant, but it’s been two months now and I still haven’t had the decorators in! Do you want a slap?’

It was a strange form of devotion, where the adulterous wife threatened to slap the coloured statue of the sturdy saint. Others proceeded to action. Fragments of plaster broke away and paint chipped off under the leather straps. Oh, the cries coming from Breton heads and chests harder than iron! Their voices howled like the wind. Beneath the lofty vault with its calm swirls of muted light, a superstitious din resounded: a mixture of Catholic faith and heathen practices. The people were transposing on to Saint Yves miracles worked by idols of times past, demanding them with whip strokes, to the great displeasure of a priest who appeared just then.

‘Will you stop that! It’s madness.’

The rector came running, clutching his liturgical cross and threatening to beat them with it as if it were a club.

‘Watch out. My temper is fraying, my stomach’s rumbling and my patience is wearing very thin.’

Fat and pink as could be, he hitched up his cassock, and berated his flock. ‘Get out of here, you itinerant beggars. Saint Yves doesn’t need trouble from you.’

A voice argued, ‘That saint is so often absent-minded, lazy or difficult that he doesn’t do anything unless he’s threatened with violence.’

‘Be quiet!’ ordered the priest. ‘And get rid of that Bas-Breton
gullibility. Everything that doesn’t belong strictly, exclusively and abundantly to the Roman Catholic Church must be thrown down the pan.’

Someone else protested, ‘But, abbé Le Drogo, your little outburst is both laudable and reprehensible at the same time. It’s fine for a priest, but coming from a Breton it’s bad. In trying to suppress this belief you’re diminishing the soul of the Celts. You’re throwing our custom to the winds along with the dust of Saint Yves.’

Abbé Le Drogo, with cheeks plump as a pig’s bottom, and who lived by Jesus alone, insisted: ‘Hitting Saint Yves’s statue is just a nonsense! We should breathe nothing but God, in the same way we breathe the fresh air through an open door.’

He lifted high his avenging cross amid the odours of incense. The parishioners scuttled off like deer towards the door of the church.

Back in the dining room at his presbytery, which was done up like a cuckoo clock, the abbé Le Drogo declared, ‘Oh, those Bretons who resist the cross and hit Saint Yves – I’ve given them a reception they won’t forget in a hurry. Just let other pilgrims of that sort turn up to whip the saint and I’ll be greeting them with a blow in the teeth from a censer.’

‘Calm down, dear boy,’ advised a mild, elderly man, seated alone at the end of a table almost completely set for the coming lunch. ‘Let these people shake off their wretchedness a little. Understand them. They must be really desperate and not know where else to turn before they resort to this idolatry. We may find it stupid, certainly, but when one is completely at a loss, one is ready to clutch at anything, isn’t that so?’

‘No! We pray to God, and that’s it. We leave Saint Yves in peace. Maman’s not ready to dine, then?’

‘Louise is with your new cook and the two daily women.’

Still muttering – ‘After the spring we’ve had – there’s never been deeper poverty caused by inclement weather – the raving minds of the ruined peasants will form a huge midden. That will make for a strange summer for Saint Yves!’ – the starving priest pushed open the kitchen door to demand, ‘Are we finally going to be able to eat?’

It was the priest’s mother, Louise Le Drogo, who turned to her son and replied, ‘But, Marcel,
we’ve
been waiting for
you
while you were at the church.’

‘I see the
écuelles
are missing from the table,’ the priest yelled at his two daily servants. ‘Marguerite André, Françoise Jauffret, do I have to do everything myself – set the table
and
save Saint Yves?’

‘Ah, it’s still that matter of the statue that has put you in a foul mood,’ realised the rector’s mother. ‘As for our
écuelles
, as you call our plates, rather than bringing in the big serving dish for everyone to put their fingers into, Hélène is suggesting she serves up in the kitchen. In these times of infection, when there’s talk of the cholera returning, I do believe it’s more hygienic.’

Near the window, Thunderflower pulled the curtain back and watched birds flying in the sky. ‘Especially since crows circling over a village mean disease.’

‘Fine, fine.’

The grumpy cleric’s mood softened at his mother’s touch as she accompanied him to the table, caressing his tonsure, saying, ‘I know how highly you thought of Anna Jégado, who’s gone to
the new rector at Bubry to replace the aunt who died so suddenly, but her younger sister, whom you’ve taken in, seems very good as well. I do believe she’s a pearl.’

The pearl being spoken about in the dining room had two of them hooked to her ears – river mussel pearls, which she had had set in cheap steel pendants.

Surrounded by griddles for making pancakes, pots, milk cans, saucepans, skimmers, ladles, a rag … Thunderflower began to fill pewter plates with a light gruel with honey, each topped with a piece of delicately grilled black pudding. It was then that she noticed another plate, made of blue porcelain, hanging on a wall. The cook grabbed it and placed it in front of her. From behind, Thunderflower could be seen spending a little longer stirring the gruel in that one.

‘Right, who’ll have this blue plate with the picture of a little Breton girl dancing on the bottom? First I’ll give it to Joseph Le Drogo, then to Louise Le Drogo. Next it’ll go to …’

The priest of Guern was at his wits’ end.

‘Dear Christ, what a shower of shit.’

From a priest’s mouth, this was disconcerting.

‘What else am I going to have to bear?’

The man, who had been stretching sleepily at daybreak to yawn out his prayers, was now, at the end of the morning, ready to knock down anything that got in his way.

‘Saint Yves, how could you allow this to happen?’

Beneath the vault of the church, opposite the statue in its niche, Le Drogo was bathed in tears.

‘First of all my father. He fell ill on 20 June and died on the 28th. He was very old, admittedly, but I didn’t expect this to happen. He was in fine fettle for his age. Next my mother, who succumbed on 5 July. Yet she wasn’t one to go without putting up a fight. I’ve a good mind to rip your tongue and your eyes out, Saint Yves, and impale you on a spike!’

Inside the Catholic edifice, the parishioners present were stupefied to see their rector tearing strips off the polychrome statue of the Breton saint as he whipped it. ‘Bastard! Swine! Here, take that in the face! You’ve certainly earned it.’

His despair had burst its banks. In the emptiness of the stained-glass windows, heavy with silence, the priest, with his bare fingers, was looking for answers in the reflections.

‘But why, Saint Yves? Why?’

The darkness seemed to bark round about him. ‘I was so wretched that my sister sent me her seven-year-old daughter to brighten my days a little. And then Marie-Louise Lindevat too, on 17 July? You must be mad, Saint Yves!’

Sorrow rushed into the priest’s soul, howling like wind in deserted castles. ‘My niece, taken just now as suddenly as if she’d been struck with an axe. Her death was something diabolical. The way that child looked on the infinite … And somewhere there’ll be one more little grave.’

The abbé Le Drogo – Breton through and through – took hold of the saint by the shoulders and shook him violently. ‘You knew how much I loved them! When each of these three fell seriously ill, I came in secret to order you to save them. Take this in your stupid face, you idle saint. What good are you, you useless creature?’

Other insults rotted in his mouth. ‘What a fate. It’s enough to make a man hang himself.’

He swung his liturgical cross against the coloured statue until it came adrift and flew into a thousand pieces on the slabs.

‘Saint Yves is dead! He’s been unseated. The priest has destroyed him with his stick!’

While the flock ran out of the church shouting to alert the whole village, the abbé Le Drogo went back to the presbytery kitchen where Thunderflower was singing to herself: ‘Which day servant shall I give the blue plate to? Ah, Marguerite André.’

‘Marguerite André on 23 August, then Françoise Jauffret on 28 September. Both of my day servants.’ The priest of Guern was at the table in the dining room at the presbytery, alone. He unfolded his napkin from pure habit as he had lost his appetite (a new phenomenon in this glutton, and he had slimmed down a lot). Thunderflower came into the room carrying the blue plate. Even when the pretty servant walked it was as if she were dancing. She placed the steaming plate in front of her employer.

‘It’s one of those
soupes aux herbes
I’m so good at making. It will give your heart a good clean out.’

Prematurely aged by his suffering, and holding his head in his hands, the rector wept into his soup. He was worn out by grief and felt profoundly downcast. ‘Isn’t it beyond comprehension, and simply heartbreaking? What do you think, Hélène?’

‘To be honest, what do you expect me to say? Life is short.’

‘I’m full to overflowing with horror. What day is it?’

‘It’s 2 October,’ the soubrette by his side informed him.

The abbé Le Drogo dipped a spoon into his soup, and lifted it up, blowing on the steam. He opened his mouth and slipped the spoon in, like the host, amen.

Anna Jégado, in a violet
mantell ganu
(Breton mourning cape) was three years older than her sister, Thunderflower. She had come from Bubry for the funeral and now stood in the kitchen, with the blue plate in her hands. ‘It was very kind of you, little sister, to have made that for me before we go to the cemetery. The abbé Le Drogo was very kind as well.’

‘Yes, he certainly was, no question about that.’

‘Aaargh!’ Breaking out in a sudden sweat, Anna began to sway, overcome by dizziness. The kitchen walls were spinning, and the blue plate went flying through the air. Thunderflower rushed to catch it while her older sister collapsed on the floor.

‘I’ll have to hang it up again. It was almost dropped yesterday.’

The stunningly attractive cook in the presbytery at Guern was holding the blue plate up against the wall, feeling for the nail to hang it on, but she fluffed it and the plate slipped and fell, smashing on the floor. Watched in silence by Dr Martel and the Mayor of Guern, Thunderflower gathered up the remains.

‘That said, it would have been of no use to anyone now – I certainly shan’t be eating out of it.’

Dr Martel could not get over the shock – not of the plate falling but the carnage.

‘What unbelievable cataclysm can have descended on
this house in the space of one summer to wipe out almost all its inhabitants? The wind of death has passed through the presbytery. Perhaps it’s the return of the …’ The doctor hesitated to say the word aloud.

‘Do you think so?’ the mayor asked, understanding his meaning.

While Thunderflower untied her apron, Dr Martel recalled: ‘Last autumn the cholera claimed more than a hundred lives in Rennes, before the epidemic came to an abrupt end with the frost – it spreads better in the heat. Do these initial deaths, in the summer at the presbytery, herald the curse’s passage through Morbihan?’

Into one of the sides of her bag, on the kitchen table, the cook was tidying away two handkerchiefs embroidered with different initials, three napkins, a rosary, a child’s doll …

‘And if your fears turn out to be justified, Doctor?’ the mayor wanted to know.

‘Well then, Le Cam, we’ll have to get used to it the way we get used to bed bugs or scabies. And if we don’t manage to get used to it, then we’ll needs die of fear.’

The girl from Plouhinec slipped her arms into the sleeves of a coat and buttoned it up. She was adjusting her collar when the mayor suggested, ‘I think it would be wise to refrain from mentioning it for fear of triggering a general panic.’

Marcel shared his opinion. ‘It is indeed preferable not to terrify the populace.’

‘Right, that’s me ready,’ said Thunderflower, leather bag over her shoulder. ‘May I go?’

‘What? Yes, yes …’ the mayor said hurriedly.

The cook left the presbytery. She walked under the dim vaults of the church, emerging into daylight through the porch. At the top of the steps she looked at Guern. It was market day with its wealth of honey, butter, leather, tallow and cloth. When people saw her, they called to others, ‘Look! It’s the one who didn’t croak at the priest’s house! She’s alive.’