The Virgin Blue

EPILOGUE

I stared up at the sky, a pale blue washed out by late September sun. The Tarn was still warm; I lay on my back, arms stroking out from my sides, breasts flattened, hair floating in the river like leaves around my face. I looked down: my belly was just beginning to push above the water. I cupped the mound with my hands.

There was a rustling of paper from the bank.

‘What happened to Isabelle?’

‘I don't know. Sometimes I think she left Moutier and returned here to the Cévennes. She found her shepherd and had her baby, and lived happily ever after. She even went back to being Catholic so she could worship the Virgin.’

‘Happy ending.’

‘Yes. But you know, I don't think that's what really happened. More often I think she died starving in a ditch somewhere, fleeing from the Tourniers, a baby dead in her womb, forgotten, her grave unmarked.’

There was silence.

‘But you know the worst fate, even worse than that, and yet the most likely?’

‘What can be worse than that?’

‘She lived with it. She stayed in Moutier and lived with her daughter's body under the hearth for the rest of her life.’

Isabelle kneels at the crossroads. She has three choices: she can go forward, she can go back, or she can remain where she is.

– Help me, Holy Mother, she prays. Help me to choose.

A blue light surrounds her, giving her solace for the briefest moment.

I sat up abruptly, crouching on the long smooth rock of the river bed, my breasts regaining their roundness. The baby had woken and begun to wail like a kitten. Elisabeth lifted him from his blanket on the river bank and guided his mouth to her breast.

‘Has Jean-Paul read this?’ She patted the manuscript next to her.

‘Not yet. He will this weekend. It's his opinion I'm the most nervous about.’

‘Why?’

‘It's the most important to me. He has definite opinions about history. He'll be very critical of my approach.’

Elisabeth shrugged. ‘So? It's your history, after all. Our history.’

‘Yes.’

‘Now, what about the painter you were telling me about? Nicolas Tournier.’

‘The red fish, you mean.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing. He has a place, no matter what Jean-Paul thinks.’

Jacob reaches the crossroads and finds his mother on her knees, bathed in blue. She does not see him and he watches her for a moment, the blue reflected in his eyes. Then he looks around and takes the road leading west.