Healer and Witch, page 4
Sylvie turned back and gasped. There in the open doorway of the stone house stood the most beautiful woman imaginable. She was as tall as Sylvie, her head nearly brushing the arch, and her straight graceful limbs were swathed in yards and yards of a thin black fabric. Laughter seemed to surround her. It took several seconds before Sylvie realized that, although her hair was untouched by gray, the skin of her face and hands and of her slender neck was softly crumpled with age.
This, then, was Ceciline.
But Ceciline, too, was staring. She stared for a long time. Then she spoke. “But it’s Sylvie. Sylvie, young again . . .” The wisewoman lifted a hand to her own cheek. “Sylvie’s daughter?” she asked. “No. Granddaughter?”
It was a miracle. “Yes,” Sylvie said. “I am her granddaughter.” Relief filled her. Not only was this woman a healer, she knew Grand-mère Sylvie! She said eagerly to Ceciline: “You knew her?”
Ceciline nodded. “A long time ago.” She hesitated. “You said ‘knew.’ Sylvie is dead, then?”
“Yes,” Sylvie said, and watched the woman’s gaze shutter, just for a second.
Then, although she was clearly having trouble speaking, Ceciline said, “Sylvie’s granddaughter is welcome here.”
Sylvie said, “I also am called Sylvie. This is my friend, Martin.”
Ceciline managed a smile for Martin, who was staring dumbly. Then she gestured them inside her house.
It was a single large room, well swept but rather bare, with a wooden ladder fastened to one wall and leading up to a loft. An unusually subdued Martin sat down on a stool, but Sylvie remained standing. Her gaze was drawn to the windows, beneath which struggled a very few, very common garden plants. Thyme, basil. Chamomile. She thought of Grand-mère Sylvie’s extensive medicinal garden. Grand-mère Sylvie could never have lived in a town, with only an uneasy bare courtyard like Ceciline’s.
As if she could read Sylvie’s mind, Ceciline came up to her and said: “We were never alike in the obvious things, Sylvie and I. But then, true friendship does not concern itself with the obvious.”
Sylvie said slowly: “You were my grandmother’s true friend, then.” She had a sense that the world had spun and opened around her; become wider, full of unknowns. She remembered that moment when she had held Grand-mère Sylvie’s hand and had a tiny peek into her grandmother’s unknown past.
“Yes,” said Ceciline. “I was Sylvie’s true friend. And now I will be yours.” Unexpectedly, she stepped closer and cupped Sylvie’s face in her palms. They were eye to eye. Sylvie held her breath. This woman pulsed with knowledge. Sylvie could feel it.
And she had had Grand-mère Sylvie’s friendship.
What did Ceciline see in Sylvie now? Would she somehow sense what Sylvie had done to Jeanne? Her own knowledge of it, forced aside for days, returned now like a knife in Sylvie’s throat.
“My dear,” said Ceciline gently. “Whatever it is, hadn’t you better tell me?”
Sylvie burst into tears.
She never was able to fully recall the minutes that followed. The strength of Ceciline’s arms guiding her to a seat. Soothing words, the sense of which Sylvie could not quite take in. A shawl wrapped about her, a tisane to drink, pressed into her hands. Martin hovering somewhere nearby, both embarrassed and concerned, deferring with obvious relief to Ceciline.
The miracle of being cared for once more; of not being alone, or responsible. Oh, the kind landlady at the inn had offered care, but only because of a misunderstanding and Sylvie’s implicit lies. That mismatch made it even more of a relief for Sylvie to set down her burden of worry now.
She wondered if perhaps Ceciline might be the very teacher Sylvie sought, even if she had not read Sylvie’s mind just now.
“Thank you,” Sylvie said, when she could. She wiped away her tears and sat up straight.
She looked at Ceciline, and then at Martin. She began to apologize, but Ceciline cut her off with a wave of her hand.
“La politesse is not important or necessary,” said Ceciline. “Not for us.” She smiled wryly. “I never cared for polite rules, in any case, as your grandmother could have told you. Did she speak of me ever? Not at all? Well, Sylvie was always one to keep her focus on the present. It is clear that she led a full life after we parted, and that is happy news at least.
“And yet you cry, Sylvie, so all is not well. What has happened?” Ceciline had pulled a chair close to Sylvie; Martin’s stool was also nearby. Sylvie felt both sets of eyes on her. “It’s best that you talk about it.” Ceciline’s tone was firm, but not unkind.
Involuntarily, Sylvie glanced at Martin.
“You called him your friend,” said Ceciline, who seemed only to need half the explanations that other people did. Her voice was almost reproving.
“Yes, but he’s a child,” Sylvie said doubtfully. “I should never have let him come with me to Montigny —”
Martin interrupted, his voice fierce and hurt. “It had nothing to do with you! I decided! She told me I might go with you if I liked, when the time came for you to leave, and I decided to.” He met Sylvie’s incredulous stare defiantly and added: “And don’t ever talk about me like I’m not here. I am here.” He scowled. “Me.”
Sylvie was speechless.
Ceciline said quietly, “Who said you might go with Sylvie, Martin?”
“She did.” Martin calmed as Ceciline visibly accepted his words. “Grand-mère Sylvie.” Then he shrank a little on his stool, anxious, stealing a look at Sylvie. “She said I could call her that. She really did.”
“I believe you,” said Ceciline. But Martin was looking at Sylvie.
Sylvie’s thoughts were as snarled as a dropped spindle. “I don’t understand,” she said finally. “Grand-mère Sylvie talked to you”— she managed to swallow the words to a child —“about me? She told you I would be leaving Bresnois? She told you to come with me?”
“If I chose,” corrected Martin. “She said she had a vision of you leaving one day. She said she saw me with you. But she also said visions were only possibilities, and though she hoped I would go with you, it was up to me to choose.” He paused. “Last spring, it was. We talked then. For a long time.”
“Oh,” said Sylvie. Last spring? So, then. A full year before Sylvie had known about her gift, her grandmother had had one of her rare visions. She pressed a hand to her head. She looked at Ceciline, who was watching the two of them with great interest. She managed to grasp one of the questions whirling through her mind and ask it. “Martin? Did she tell you why I would have to go?”
“She didn’t know. She just saw you leaving,” said Martin baldly. He was visibly regaining confidence. “But when I saw you walking away that morning, I thought that this was probably it. Something about how you were walking. I can’t explain it. So I went after you.” He added, as if he felt the point needed still more emphasis: “Because I decided to.”
Sylvie buried her head in her hands for a moment. She thought, why? Why Martin? Why would Grand-mère Sylvie want to send a child with her?
She heard Martin say to Ceciline, with a hint of bravado in his voice: “Grand-mère Sylvie said I’m a special person.”
“I have always made a point of paying close attention to whomsoever my friend Sylvie found worthy of attention,” said Ceciline.
Then Ceciline said, “But the young Sylvie has not told us what is troubling her.” She turned to Sylvie. “It’s why you left home, isn’t it?”
Sylvie gathered herself. “Yes.” She looked at Martin, and then away. She would think about Martin’s connection with Grand-mère Sylvie later.
Ceciline was nodding. “I thought so. And perhaps it is also the reason that Sylvie — your grand-mère — felt you would need Martin with you. I speculate.”
“I don’t know,” said Sylvie. She took a deep breath. “I just know what I have done.” She dared look straight at Ceciline: an appeal. “I need your help.”
“I’ll help you if I can,” said Ceciline calmly. “As will Martin. We are your friends.” Sylvie saw Martin nod; even in her distress she noted his shy pride at being included. “But first,” Ceciline was saying, “you must tell us what has happened.”
“I know,” said Sylvie slowly.
Ceciline was silent. Martin, too, was attentive. Waiting. And so Sylvie fixed her eyes in her lap and began. It was more than the tale of what had happened on the day she hurt Jeanne. It had begun long before that.
Grand-mère Sylvie and Jeanne had raised Sylvie to be a healer, just as they — in their different ways — were. From when she was small, Sylvie was allowed to watch when someone came to the cottage with an ailment or complaint. Jeanne explained to her daughter exactly what should go into a poultice, or how to stop bleeding, or what to do to bring down a fever. Jeanne had endless knowledge of simples, and endless concern and patience too. While she had originally learned the healing arts from her own mother, Jeanne had in time far surpassed her in the ways of ordinary healing.
But there were times when ordinary healing was not sufficient.
“The ones that Jeanne could not help — they were for my grandmother,” said Sylvie. “She could . . .” Sylvie paused, unable to find words. Grand-mère had never spoken of it directly, and neither had the villagers ever put anything into words. She looked up, helplessly, at Ceciline, who was nodding.
“She could lay hands to heal sometimes,” said Ceciline. “A rare gift.”
“Yes, her gift from God,” said Sylvie.
Ceciline said, “And oh, how I envied her it, when I was young and foolish. It was wondrous to see.”
Sylvie nodded in solemn agreement. She remembered the first time she had seen it. She told them.
Jeanne had helped Françoise, the miller’s wife, through the difficult birth of an eighth child. The child had been large and lusty, but two days afterward, Françoise still lay wasting with a puerperal fever. And so Grand-mère Sylvie had come, bringing Sylvie. She had been six.
Françoise’s husband, and all the children save the eldest daughter, had been sent from the room. Sylvie and the daughter had wrung out soft cloths in cool water and handed them to Jeanne, who gently washed Françoise’s body, cooling her fever somewhat. But the room was filled with Françoise’s low mutterings and moans. “If it’s my time, then it’s my time,” she said once, almost with relief, before falling back into incoherence.
Then Jeanne had stepped back. Sylvie had felt her hands on her shoulders and looked up to see Jeanne’s face, filled with an odd longing. She had followed her gaze.
Grand-mère Sylvie knelt on the pallet beside Françoise and was staring intently into her sweating, pain-filled face. She held her hands suspended in midair, flexing them.
Then she lowered them to Françoise’s forearms, closed her eyes, and began to stroke, slowly, blindly, pressing on Françoise’s arms.
Grand-mère Sylvie’s forehead broke out in sweat, matching Françoise’s. She said nothing. Sylvie felt Jeanne’s hands bite into her shoulders. She watched Grand-mère Sylvie sway, holding Françoise, touching her. Both of them covered in sweat now. Dripping.
“Françoise,” said Grand-mère Sylvie. Her voice was low, singsong. Sylvie had to strain to hear it. “Françoise, you are loved. Françoise, you are needed. Françoise, Françoise. Stay, Françoise. Stay.”
For how long this went on, Sylvie did not know. But then: “No!” shouted Françoise distinctly, the single word completely discernible. “No. Tired. So tired.”
“Françoise, you are loved. Françoise, you are needed . . .”
“. . . tired . . .”
“Françoise, you must stay. Choose to stay . . . choose.”
And finally, Grand-mère Sylvie straightened her back and opened her eyes. Françoise lay still now, no longer moaning. Her eyes, which had been glassy with fever, fixed themselves on Grand-mère Sylvie’s face. They were exhausted but clear. Then she sighed and closed them again, turning her face away. Her chest fell up and down evenly.
“She’ll sleep now,” said Grand-mère Sylvie. Her voice was the merest thread; she had to clear her throat twice to make any sound emerge at all.
“Will she be all right?” asked Françoise’s daughter. Throughout, she had sat still as a sheaf of wheat.
“Yes, I think so,” said Grand-mère Sylvie. “If she has plenty of rest, and time. You will all need to help her, my dear. You and your father and your brothers and sisters. If you want to keep her, then, as much as you can, you must help her. Life has been . . . heavy for her.”
“We will,” said the girl earnestly. “I’m almost eleven. I can take care of the baby and the little ones. I can cook.”
Grand-mère Sylvie sighed. “I know you can,” she said to the girl, who nodded with purpose and began right then to pick up around the room. Grand-mère Sylvie’s eyes followed her determined little body for a few moments. She shook her head and her lips moved as if she would say something else to the girl. But she did not. Instead she reached to pat Françoise’s unconscious hand and stood up.
“I must go home now,” she said. “I must rest. Jeanne?”
“I’ll stay here for a while longer,” said Sylvie’s mother. “Sylvie can go with you and support you.”
Sylvie left with her grand-mère to begin the walk home. She felt the heaviness with which Grand-mère Sylvie leaned on her as they walked. And after a time, she said, “Grand-mère? You took Françoise’s fever away when you touched her?”
For a while she thought that Grand-mère Sylvie was not going to reply. But then she said, “I eased it a little, yes. But that is not so important.” Grand-mère Sylvie stopped, right in the road. She knelt down and looked with her tired eyes right into Sylvie’s. “I gave her some of my will, to strengthen her. Marriage can be hard on women. It can break us, in body and spirit both. Even with a good and loving man like the miller.”
Sylvie nodded. She thought she understood. It was women who bore children, after all, and sometimes they came one after another after another after another, as with Françoise. “But you made Françoise better.”
“Yes, I think so,” said Grand-mère Sylvie. “For while I can sometimes heal the body with my will, my gift works even better when it is about healing both the mind and the body. Sometimes, though not always, they are connected in illness, as with Françoise today.”
“Oh,” said Sylvie. She thought. “Maman cannot do what you can,” she said. “Use her will to heal mind or body.”
“No,” said Grand-mère Sylvie. “She cannot. She would like to, but she cannot. It is just a fact.” She stood up and brushed off her skirt. She began walking again. Sylvie rushed to catch up, to give Grand-mère Sylvie her shoulder. She knew she should say nothing more; she knew Grand-mère Sylvie was weary. But she could not stop herself from saying what she suddenly knew.
She said, simply, “One day, I will be able to heal like you do.”
And Grand-mère Sylvie said: “Perhaps. Yes. Your mother and I both think that may be so.” She had smiled then.
“Everyone knew about Grand-mère Sylvie,” Martin said. “And that Jeanne was not like her. And everyone wondered about you, Sylvie.”
Ceciline was leaning forward, intent. “So, Sylvie? You can lay hands as well? Do you have visions as well?”
Sylvie found herself being evasive. “I have not done very much.” She explained about having only recently come to womanhood and into a sense of her new gift. “But Grand-mère Sylvie asked me to be patient and not to use it.”
“Why was that, did she say?”
“Because — because she felt I would need help to use my gift properly.”
“Why?”
“Because — because . . .” There was really no sense in being vague, Sylvie realized. The words came out steadily after all. “You see, when I”— she fumbled for the phrase Ceciline had used —“when I lay hands on people, I can sense things in their minds. Read their minds, or their emotions, or parts of them.”
Ceciline was staring, clearly fascinated. “As if the mind were a book?”
“No, it’s more like pictures.” Sylvie lifted her hands and then dropped them. “It’s hard to describe.”
“You know what people are thinking.”
“Yes. If I touch them, and — and if I look. I don’t have to look. But I can.” She added, compelled, “Have you ever heard of anything like this?”
After a long moment, Ceciline nodded.
“You have? But you — oh, you can’t do this yourself.” Sylvie, disappointed, read the answer in Ceciline’s sweet, regretful smile.
“No,” said Ceciline smoothly. “I cannot.” There was a furrow in the middle of her forehead. She tilted her head. “But you haven’t finished, have you, Sylvie?”
Sylvie reminded herself that this was her grandmother’s friend. And Martin, her own friend. She whispered, “I don’t know — I don’t know yet all that I can do. But sometimes I can — I can reach in and touch the pictures I see. I can — take things out. Like removing a splinter.”
“You have done this very thing?” said Ceciline. Her face was utterly still.
“Yes,” said Sylvie. She meant to say it quietly, but it burst from her like a cork. She took in a deep breath. Martin was listening closely, his eyes fixed on her face. Ceciline, too, was intent, entirely still and yet somehow also visibly tense. Sylvie turned back to the window, away from them. She would say all the rest. She would say it quickly, and it would be done.
“I told Grand-mère,” Sylvie said. “I explained what I believed I could do. She said I should not actually try to do it. She said she could not help me with this, that we needed to find a teacher for me.
“But . . . but then she died, and Maman needed my help.”
Jeanne had slumped like a rag doll without stuffing after Grand-mère had died. She had become someone else. Someone not strong at all. When people sent to the house for her, she did not go. If people came to her, she sent them away. She would not eat, or talk, or cry. And the days passed.
“I had to help her,” said Sylvie to the plant on the windowsill. “Do you understand? I was only trying to help. I thought I could help her.” She waited for Ceciline’s voice, but it was Martin who spoke.
