Symmetries

It was remarkable how quickly the garrulous Dame took to palace life. Between her myriad shifts and duties, when she was at last allowed to rest those heavy, tired feet, she turned her eyes, her hands upon every trimming and decoration. “What wonder, what magic!” she exclaimed, with feeling. Iris tramped around after her grandmother, or sat with immense patience, multitudinous solemnity at her infirm mother’s bedside, or ran herself ragged on the grounds with riotous little Anais, who embraced the child, if out of more convenience than sorority. Aurore was consistently impressed at the girl’s mettle, that she could tolerate with such compassion what degree of upheaval, of privation, had constantly attended her young life. Aurore was no daughter of her mother, she understood with palefaced shame. Maternity bound her to Anais, and she loved her with a protector’s fierceness and might, but she saw herself drawn inexorably toward the somber Iris.

More than anything, she wanted to entreat her father, to challenge him, duel to the death for a smidgen of truth, but, for reasons undisclosed, her mighty avenging nature curled upon itself and slowly died.

For once in Aurore’s life, she hadn’t the courage.

I would punish them all.

I just finished reading The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and it really inspired me -Victor Hugo has such a lovely prose style. So I tried to approximate it in my own work, and this is the result. (It's part of a much longer short story; this was the only bit I felt like sharing.)

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Again, this is not necessarily connected to my novel -I like to reuse names.

Etienne is away appeasing the Portuguese delegation, which is all the better; I can’t have him finding out about this. I knew that woman would return to plague him; yet pestilence in this form seems a horror undue even him. This is an intimate plight, one to remain cloistered among women.

My breath rushes, and my lips tremble. Adia Scarborough was a common whore; a false beauty, emboldened with passions not hers to claim; no doubt rotting in a syphilitic grave in some impoverished district. And here is my daughter, my beautiful, impressionable girl, practically lusting over her, finding her image in the holiest of places!

I can’t look Aurore in the face, I can’t notice her beauties without the Adia's harsh countenance spoiling them! I leave her under the eye of Evanna, the palest, youngest maid, and take to my bed for the morning.

This is not necessarily connected to my novel -I like to reuse names.

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That night, I find Aurore, who has stationed herself in the corridor en route to the chapel. Mass has been ended for several hours, and the rows lay placid, empty beneath the fractioned windows.

“Aurore?” I display my lantern, throw my countenance into illumination. “Cherie? What takes you here, my love?” I lay my solid hands upon her shoulder blades, setting the lantern at my feet.

She does not raise her head. Her eyes are trained, predatory, on a fierce and sprawling tapestry. One in a series of telltale panelings, it spells the story of a woman, knee-high in flames, facing damnation for her especial sins.

“Maman,” says Aurore, “where am I?”

I peer at her over my dressing-table. My daughter, my Aurore, one month shy of her twelfth birthday, spindle-limbed, coltish. When she still allows my presence in the bath -more and more rarely, these days- I can see her soapy front whittling, her nipples round and shiny. My child, always, but not a child any longer. Tonight, her skin glows, muted pink, exposed at the lace edges of her nightdress, and her loose curls frame her countenance. I am proud of the beauty she wears so effortlessly, proud and jealous both, and at the same time I love her for it, too. Contradiction, thy name is motherhood.