His mother had once told him that her parents had tried everything they could to prevent her marrying his father. “Oh, but he was so handsome,” she’d say, “such a manly man.” This was after his death, when other aspects of him could be forgotten. The day after the wedding—“Where grandemère was dressed for a funeral,” she’d said laughing—his grandfather had died of apoplexy while drafting leases for hortillonages on the Somme. “He fell on his big bottle of ink,” she’d said, “and ruined six months’ work, and when we saw him, the side of his face looked bruised. But it was ink, just spilled ink. The women had scrubbed and scrubbed but they couldn’t get it out. Even when they practically rubbed his skin to the bone.”
She was gone. Only he now knew these things, and he had nobody to tell. Nobody cared.
He rubbed his eye with the heel of his hand. Someone coughed. It was a priest. Looking harder, he could see it was Father Lefroy, an anxious, thinner-looking Father Lefroy. He and his mother had thought the priest rather pompous, but now he was just grateful for a familiar face. Another wave of emotion swept over him.
“My child. My child,” said Father Lefroy, putting a hand on his head as if for a blessing. His lips moved silently for a second. “A son of Corbie returned. But to a tragedy. We all thought that you were dead, and you thought your dear mother was alive. What terrible misunderstandings. What sorrow God asks us to endure.”
“Why did my mother die? Was she ill? Was it an accident?”
“My dear boy, it was God’s will. But I shall take you to the nuns. They can tell you all about her end. But first, a restorative?”
“No. Please. I want to know about my mother.”
The priest, whom he remembered as so voluble, seemed to have little to say now. He looked tired and old. His cassock was fraying and dusty.
“My mother—” Jean-Baptiste began.
“The nuns will tell you.”
The convent had always struck him as a miserable place, even before old Godet’s accusations. A high flint wall hid all but its steep roof. He had peered at the orphans through padlocked gates from time to time. The village children liked watching one particular strange boy who made animal noises and flapped his hands. He dribbled too, and once he’d taken his trousers off and waggled his private parts and all the village girls had squealed. A nun came out, furious, slapping the boy with both hands and shouting at his audience. Later, when Jean-Baptiste was in Paris, he went to the Menagerie and realized that watching the idiot boy was a bit like seeing animals in the zoo.
It hadn’t changed. But this time, he and the priest passed through the gate and rang the bell of the great door. After a long and silent pause, it opened. A young maid in drab dress and apron listened while Father Lefroy explained that they had come to see the Mother Superior. They stood in the hall, gazing at the portrait of some violent martyrdom. Eventually a nun appeared, looking flustered, and they followed her down a corridor, her coif nearly brushing the ceiling. Despite the sunshine outside, it was very dark, and Jean-Baptiste became aware again of the distant explosions.
She ushered them into a room where a middle-aged nun, with a bony face and raw red hands clasped in front of her, was standing waiting for them. “Father?” she said, in a irritated tone of voice and then, looking to Jean-Baptiste, nodded.
“Jean-Baptiste Mallet. The boy wants to know about his mother,” the priest said.
The nun looked weary. “Madame Mallet,” she said with the emphasis on Madame. Her look was not of sympathy but of calculated indifference, somehow tinged with pleasure, Jean-Baptiste thought.
“Your mother,” she said, “was brought here for her confinement.”
He didn’t understand. Why had his mother been confined? What had she done that made Father Lefroy look embarrassed and the nun look stern?
The priest interrupted. “The midwife was delivering two other babies. The doctor had left to join the Army, and the elderly physician who replaced him was unwell. So she was brought here when things became—difficult.”
“It was a complicated delivery and unfortunately she succumbed, although not before receiving final unction,” said the Mother Superior, and she dipped her head toward the priest.
His heart was pounding and he hated the fact that his cheeks were on fire and that he had an audience watching his every reaction to this enormous news.
“The child survived,” the nun said, and this time he was sure her tone was one of regret. “He has been here ever since. Your brother is now nineteen months old and surprisingly healthy.”