The Rainbow Bridge (22 page)

The room felt warmer now and the air was sweet with the scent of wood-smoke and fresh logs. Jacquot was standing back from the cavernous fireplace to see that his logs had caught from the blaze of kindling below them. He had brought hot coals in a bucket from the kitchen to get the fire started, now he heaped on a few dry logs from the pile stashed inside the wide chimney breast. Late evening sun was streaming through the tall windows and straight onto Louise’s portrait. The boy looked up and their eyes met. Louise, who had been only vaguely aware of his presence up till now, felt the electric tingle of his gaze. The Master had been right; there was no telling who would have the eyes to bring his picture to life. The boy involuntarily pulled off his cap and murmured, ‘Mademoiselle’. At that moment a voice called from the door.

‘What are you doing, Jacquot?’ Young Marie was standing there. The boy scratched his head as an excuse for having taken off his cap while the girl skipped towards them. He blushed at her presence. He stood a good head higher than she, but he was clearly in awe of her. Louise thought how pretty she looked in the warm glow of the evening light, her face tilted up to him.

‘Do you like me, Jacquot?’

‘Oui, Mademoiselle Marie.’

‘Will you kiss me?’

‘Non, Mademoiselle.’

‘Pourquoi pas?’ She was indignant. Why not?

‘Because it is not my place, Mademoiselle.’

‘Oui, Mademoiselle… non, Mademoiselle… I am Marie… Jacquot.’ He was looking at the floor. The girl looked up past him and noticed Louise’s portrait. ‘Who is that?’

‘I don’t know, Ma’m … M… Marie.’

‘I see her name! It’s painted on that vase thing. She’s Louise.’ Then the girl asked, ‘Can you read and write, Jacquot?’

‘Oui, Marie,’ the boy said uncomfortably. ‘Pardon … I must go.’ Marie watched him pick up his bucket of ashes and his empty log-basket. When he’d gone she turned to Louise’s portrait and smiled, then she put out her tongue at her, and skipped after Jacquot out of the room.

Louise came to look forward to Jacquot’s visits and to watching young Marie’s innocent attempts at seduction. She was an engaging creature and Jacquot clearly liked her, but something was wrong. They would appear to be happy together, then Marie would say something, or perhaps move a little too close to him, and he would back away. It was as if a shutter had dropped between them. One day Marie lost her temper with him, calling after him:

‘Le Jacquot, you are a clod, a country bumpkin! And you smell of trees!’ Louise remembered how Madame would bring Margot to heel by referring to her loudly as ‘la Margot’, the servant. She could see now that ‘le Jacquot’ could be just as effectively used. When the boy had retreated, head down under her blast, the child turned to Louise’s portrait and said in a meditative voice:

‘Jacquot … you know, I don’t think he’s a log boy after all; he is really a handsome prince in disguise, condemned to live alone in a hut in the forest to the end of his days. Perhaps a kiss from me is all he needs to be released from
his spell, like in the fairytale? Oh, why won’t he let me near him, what is he afraid of?’ And she wandered from the room, for once disconsolate.

Louise felt genuinely sorry for her, but also vaguely disturbed. Then, deep inside her a memory stirred, and she was alert. It was the child’s reference to a fairy story that had reminded her. She recalled M. Morteau’s concern about a young girl who might be in danger at the chateau. He had wanted Louise to ‘keep an eye out for the child …’ It seemed absurd, what danger could she possibly be in? Jacquot looked harmless, and she hadn’t been aware of another male about the place. If only the Count could have been an ally – but no – there had been something predatory about him; he made her shiver. The idea of being an ‘ambassador’ had been attractive when M. Morteau had mentioned it first. But what on earth could she do? When Colette and Gaston were on hand, acting on her own initiative had seemed entirely possible. They were her hands and eyes; now she just felt helpless.

Marie did not appear on the evenings when Jacquot came to bank up the fire and make sure that all was safe for the night. When he had done that, he would stand in front of Louise’s portrait for minutes on end, holding a candle in one hand, exploring every inch of the room that the Master had created for her. Finally his gaze would come back to her and linger on her face. He had not spoken to her since his startled ‘Mademoiselle’ that first day when their eyes had met, but Louise felt that he was wondering about her rather as someone will wonder if the ice on a canal will hold their weight. She waited.

Her first surprise came when Jacquot arrived to bed
down the fire, concealing a book under his jacket. When he had finished making the fire safe he placed his candle on the mantelpiece, checked that the door was closed, and took up the book. As if solely for Louise’s benefit, he began to read aloud, slowly at first, his finger following the line.

‘Cendrillon – as told by Charles Perrault,’ he started. Louise was enchanted by a story of a fairy godmother who had enabled poor Cendrillon to go to the King’s ball, and how the prince – who had fallen in love with her – identified her by the glass slipper she had dropped when midnight struck. Each week Jacquot read her another story from his book. She was horrified when the wicked wolf threw himself on Little Red Riding Hood and ‘gobbled her up’. She laughed at Puss in Boots, and was satisfactorily horrified by Blue Beard, who systematically murdered his wives. Some of the stories she had heard from Annie, but Annie’s endings were always very moral. Louise gave up wondering how it was that a mere log boy like Jacquot could read, or even why he should choose to read to her. In the end she just enjoyed the stories.

One evening she noticed Jacquot behaving nervously. He went several times to check that the door was closed. When he opened the book, she saw that, this time, he was reading from pages that he had concealed inside the covers. Had he found some new manuscript? Lousie watched his fingers as they followed the words, and remembered her own early efforts with a pen. The telltale marks of ink were on his first and second fingers. Surely he hadn’t written this himself? While she listened to his now familiar voice, she had an uneasy feeling, as if she had forgotten something, something that this story was to remind her of …? Her unease lasted only a few seconds, then she was caught up in his tale.

There was once a just and a noble king whose castle stood in the middle of a great forest. He was loved by all and feared by none. Close to the castle walls there lived a boy, who made his living by cutting wood to burn in the castle fires. The boy had scarce seen twelve summers when his mother died, leaving him an orphan.

The king, taking pity on the boy, put it abroad that he should be allowed to eat in the castle kitchens, and gave orders that his chaplain should teach him his letters. When however he commanded the boy to leave his cottage and to take up
residence
inside the castle walls, the boy fell to his knees.

‘Sire,’ he said. ‘As my poor mother lay dying, she bade me promise that I would not leave the cottage in which we had lived together until such time as I should find a bride who would be content to share it with me. In this way, said she, I will know that my bride’s love for me is true.’ The good king wept to hear the wisdom of the wise mother and went his way.

So it came to be that the young woodsman lived alone in his cottage in great contentment; the forest was his friend, neither wolf, nor bear, nor lynx held any terror for him. Only when the moon was full and the forest glade was filled with silver light, did the young boy know fear. He would bar the door, pull in the cord that lifted the latch, and lie with his woodsman’s axe beside his bed. Then, while he listened to the sounds of the night about him, he would remember his mother’s words.

‘My son,’ she had whispered, ‘There is one secret that I must tell you now that you must pass on to no man, not even to the king himself. Come close, my love; my voice is failing.’ The boy knelt and took the dying woman’s hand. ‘All is not well within the castle walls. Our king is just and our king is noble but you must know that there lives within the castle walls a monster over which he has no power. Once a month, at
midnight, when the moon is full, this monster creeps forth from his lair and roams the castle at his will.’

‘Mother dear,’ cried the boy, trembling like a leaf. ‘What could this monster want with me?’ His poor mother drew him close.

‘He seeks the flesh of one who is both young and fair,’ she said, and here the poor woman wept and trembled in a way that the boy did not understand. He pressed a cup of water to her lips. ‘Listen to me, son, for here the danger lies. The people of the castle are now too old for this foul monster’s meat, but you, my son, though manly for your age, are both young and fair.’ Terror alone held back the poor boy’s tears.

‘Mother, what must I do to save myself?’ and he bent to hear her whispered words.

‘Watch the waxing moon, my son, do not forget! On the night that it rises full, pull in the cord and bar the door. Open it to no one, fair or foul. Beware of honeyed words!’ At this the woman lay back in the boy’s arms and died.

A twelve-month passed; at each full moon the boy pulled in the cord, and barred the door. He lay trembling, waiting for the monster’s stealthy tread, but all he heard were the sounds of the forest. In the mornings that followed the full moon he would say to himself. ‘Surely, in her last hours, my dear mother was wandering in her mind; there is no monster.’ On the
thirteenth
month that followed his mother’s death, the moon was late to rise and so the boy forgot to bar the door. At midnight he was woken by an unfamiliar step outside. A late traveller on the forest road, perhaps? He sat up. His room was flooded with silver light, and there was the moon standing full over the castle roofs! The door – it was unbarred! Even as he leapt from his bed he could see the cord tightening on the latch. Wielding his axe, he struck at the cord. A cry of rage and pain met his blow. He leapt to the window and there his terrified eyes beheld the monster: grotesque and hunched, half human, half animal. In a second it was gone, scrabbling and snarling
towards the castle walls. In the morning the boy saw that his axe had passed clean through the door. Black blood speckled the forest leaves.

It was a twelve-month before the monster came again but this time it found the cord pulled in and the door barred against it. Now, for the first time, it spoke and the boy sat up in bed, wondering that a fiend so foul could fashion human words. At one moment it was the voice of reason and concern. Next it commanded, as if of royal right, then it was a voice of silk. But when it took on the sweetness of honey the boy remembered his mother’s warning and pulled the blankets over his head and listened no more. From this time on, scarcely a month passed without a visit from the fiend but still the boy kept the door barred against him. Then one day everything changed.

It had come about that, since the moon last waned, a lady of grace and nobility had come to live within the castle walls, and with her came her daughter, a maid of just thirteen years, lovely as any princess. To all within the castle, she shone like a ray of sunshine. Her laughter echoed down the corridors, and the sound of her feet running from room to room made even the old feel young again. Within days she had so filled the thoughts of the young forester that he was sure that he would burst for joy. When the full moon came, and he barred the door, he looked forward to a night of thinking of the maid. He was thus engaged when the monster spoke:

‘So, boy, we have a visitor within the castle walls?’ The
monster’s
tones were warm and honeyed, but the boy did not think before he answered.

‘Oh yes, her laughter is like the ringing of bells, and the patter of her feet is like the sound of running water …’

‘Go on, my boy…?

The boy laughed, ‘What joy at last to have someone in the castle who is both young and fair …’ Even as he spoke, his blood ran cold. His mother’s words were sharp in his ears: He
seeks the flesh of one both young and fair. What had he said? How had he not thought? In vain he tried to undo his words. ‘Her beauty is nothing to speak of, and…and she is older than she looks …’ When the monster spoke again, the honeyed tones were gone.

‘Do you think I do not know? Do you think I have not feasted my eyes on her, too? Why should I waste my time rattling at your barred door when I doubt not that hers hangs merely on the latch? Surely she will be sweeter meat than you!’

‘Stop!’ cried the boy. ‘You must not touch her!’

‘And how will you stop me, safe in your snug little home?’

‘Take me instead, but spare the girl!’ And the boy thought of his promise to his mother and wept.

‘Perhaps you are over-tough by now?’

‘Do with me what you will, but promise me to spare the maid.’

‘Open the door and I promise that the girl will be spared at least until the next full moon.’

In terror and despair the boy opened the door. The
monster
’s teeth were like daggers, and his eyes were like burning coals, and over all his parts clung a coating of green slime. The boy fell back. ‘Give me your right arm,’ the fiend commanded. The boy held it out, whereupon the foul creature seized it and bit it off at the shoulder. Then he set about eating it, drooling most horribly the while.