Short Stories

You were expecting, perhaps, a long one?  As ever, all content is by Caitlin LoTruglio (née Clancy) unless differently noted.

The Lily of the Isles

First featured in Agora, the literary magazine of Belmont Abbey College.


Silently, Isabelle slipped out from under the embroidered covers.  She hesitated for a moment, standing beside the huge, canopied bed.  Beside her, in a similar four-poster of down and gilded wood, little Jeanne lay still.  The girl’s small, tired limbs hung limp among the silken sheets and over the side.  Isabelle crept past her sister and past the open window, feeling the light summer breeze swish the curtains and skirt of her nightdress.  The moon shone down, soft but bright, dancing on her dark curls.  She cracked the door open – it creaked ever so slightly – and stepped into the hall.  Little Jeanne did not stir.  Slowly, very slowly, Isabelle came out onto the landing.  With baited breath she tiptoed to the banister, her bare feet making scarcely any sound on the rich carpeting.  At first, all seemed dark about her.  She waited for her eyes to adjust to the lack of light, then descended the high, curving staircase until she could just see the full length of the hall beneath.  Sitting down on the steps, Isabelle drew close to the twisting, carved bars of the railing and pressed her face between them.  The moon, now a bit higher in the sky, spilled its light in through a high window.  Plus belle que les diamants, as Madame Durand would say: more beautiful than diamonds.  Isabelle cringed mentally at the thought.  How she despised learning French!  Though not yet twelve, the raven-haired child had already forgotten the dulcet tones of her mother’s native tongue, spoken, as though from far away, over her cradle. 
Isabelle shivered as she saw the vast emptiness of the tall stone foyer.  She felt now, though not for the first time, how alone she really was.  But it was not being alone that bothered her – not tonight, at least.  No, Isabelle knew – vaguely, and for reasons she could not explain – what troubled her was that someone might come along and then she would not be alone.  And yet – Isabelle grasped at straws as she sat there in the night, looking down at the velvet-covered walls, now deep purple in the dark, and the shadow-wreathed paintings of noble men and important ladies.  What am I looking for? Isabelle asked herself, sighing.  She was restless tonight.  Why could she not feel well, even when she was with little Jeanne?  Jeanne, the only thing she had left in her desolation.  Good, beautiful, tiny Jeanne!  Little Jeanne, who ought to be a queen or a princess or a duchess at the least – but not here.  Not here.  The fair child’s heart was too noble, too pure, to live in such a place.  Surely little Jeanne, of all people, had not deserved this?  Isabelle sat unmoving upon the stair, unable – or unwilling – to shake off these thoughts which now hurried unbidden to her mind.  Why had the two of them been sent here?  Why must they, out of all the happy girls in Britain, be stripped of home and what bit family they had left – Papa – to inherit some dusty titles and a hollow mansion in a foreign land?   Yes, they were better dressed, and better fed, than they ever had been before.  But that was beside the point.  The grounds and gardens and bright, dignified halls, so exquisite, so lovely, by day, were revealed in the night.  They were cold, unloving, unfeeling. 
Staring straight ahead, Isabelle made out a large mass in the dim hall.  There, she knew, was the magnificent chandelier.  Made of gold and polished mahogany, it hung between this staircase and the one opposite.  Once a thing of splendor, the silent night watches saw it transform into a grasping black hand.  Isabelle looked around and felt that everything about the high manor house and the long, sprawling grounds had transformed this way.  She was alone, but alone with the darkness.  She was alone, but the mute presence of the splendid, yet soulless, objects pressed in on her mind.  These things were of a time gone by, the bones of a family history that was almost dead.  Almost.  It had, it seemed, just enough life left to choke an uprooted flower.  Isabelle thrust her head into her lap and covered it with her hands, but even there she could not escape.  Warring within her, sometimes so fiercely she thought it would drive her mad, the young girl now perceived the clashing of her own blood – that of the Isles with that of Gaul.  Inside her it was Britain against France; the stout-hearted Saxons once again standing ground, facing the Norman invaders.  Would the conflict never end?        
At the little house at Eventide they had been poorer, Isabelle reflected, but even the walls there had a friendly feeling.  The very earth had seemed warm and sweet, as if the world itself had its hands in that place, as Papa said; hands that curled up to enfold even the lowliest lily, no matter how far from its native soil it grew.  And now all that was gone – at least, for now.  The lily was torn from its bed.  But little Jeanne, precious little Jeanne, Isabelle thought.  Here was her last bit of hearth and home, the last thread that could hold her wavering hope.  She did not deserve the small girl’s sweetness, and yet she could not live without it. 
            Isabelle started as something touched her shoulder.  She looked around quickly, then put a hand on her heart and exhaled gratefully.  It was only little Jeanne.  The diminutive girl stood a step above, one fragile hand rubbing the sleep from her eye as she yawned.  Her wispy brown hair, tumbled about from the bed, reached down so that it just brushed her delicate shoulders. 
“Come back to bed, Is’bell,” she whispered, tugging the older girl’s sleeve.  Isabelle rose, took the child by the hand, and led her upstairs.  As she went, Isabelle gave the desolate hall a last glance, and turned away.  However these next few weeks played out, she sensed she must pass a test: either she would remain here and become a great, but empty, lady, or she would return whole – someway, somehow – to humble Eventide.  She kissed little Jeanne, tucked her in, and stood one last time before the moon-bathed window.  Below her stretched the wide expanse of grey that was the nocturnal world – forests, fields, cultivated gardens.  And there, so distant that it hovered on the edge of her sight, a faint glitter rose from the water of the Channel.  Isabelle stared and scarcely breathed.  There, so remote yet so maddeningly close, was England.  There was Papa.  Far below in the forbidding hall, the long, somber tones of the grandfather clock pronounced the hour.  The time had come; Isabelle knew she must decide.  The lily, left unplanted, would surely die.  One moment passed.  Then two.  Then, just as the last deep note faded on the air, she chose.         

No comments:

Post a Comment