E-Book, Englisch, 320 Seiten
Kiner The Mirror of Simple Souls
1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-78227-831-3
Verlag: Pushkin Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
A Novel
E-Book, Englisch, 320 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-78227-831-3
Verlag: Pushkin Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
ALINE KINER (1959-2019) was born in Moselle, France. She later moved to Paris where she became editor-in-chief of special issues of the magazine Sciences et Avenir. The Mirror of Simple Souls was the fruit of three years of research and writing on the beguines of Paris. It was a bestseller in France and won the Prix Culture et Bibliothèques.SUSAN EMANUEL (SUSAN BOYD-BOWMAN) has been a French-to-English translator of academic and general audience books and articles for forty years. In 2022 she received an award from the French-American Foundation for two works of non-fiction. This is her first literary translation.
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A day and a night have passed, and all this time the little girl has lain curled up on her bed in the infirmary. Ysabel tried to undress her with the help of her assistant, Agnes. The child was sweating and feverish. The miasmas exuded by her damp rags would only further weaken her body. But she struggled, resisting Ysabel’s attempts with all the strength of her wiry frame.
We have been clumsy, the beguine reproaches herself. Too hasty. Sitting at the table in her kitchen, she breaks pieces of plane and willow bark into little fragments, throws them into a pot of water—two portions of willow for one of plane—adds a sprig of agrimony, before stirring the mixture and putting it on the fire. This is a sure remedy for fever. But for anger? For it is anger that troubles the girl just as much as fear.
Ysabel has asked for a curtain to be hung about the girl’s bed in the infirmary’s great hall, to calm and reassure her, and to reassure the other patients too. For the patients in the neighbouring beds have seen what the child was hiding under her hood. The band that held back her hair had come undone as she fought off any attempts to comfort her. Her hair had spilt out over her shoulders. A thick mass, fire-red.
In the hearth, Ysabel’s concoction quickly comes to the boil, turning a yellowish colour. The herbalist raises the rack and pinion, letting the liquid simmer while she thinks. A sovereign remedy against fever—but what against anger…? For it is indeed anger that troubles the girl, as much as fear…
Lifting the hem of her robe, she climbs the wooden stairs to the floor above. The door at the top of the staircase opens into a single room serving as both living and sleeping quarters. She has no fireplace, but the conduit from the chimney runs along the wall, bringing enough heat even in the cold spells to make the infirmary liveable.
Near the bed is a trunk of dark oak, with forged iron locks in the shape of stylized stems, the only possession Ysabel brought with her when she came here, a gift from her first husband. Ysabel raises the lid, and rummages beneath linen shirts and woollen tunics to pull out a stitch-worked case from the bottom of the chest. Inside is the jewellery she has not worn for years. But this is not what she is looking for. Her fingers feel among the rings and bracelets, until they recognize the angular hardness of the object they seek.
*
Outside it is even colder than it has been recently. The ground is slippery with ice, the sky frozen solid. The beguine examines the heavens for a moment. It will not snow; the temperature has dropped too low. The bailiffs will be gathering up new cadavers from the abandoned hovels and waste grounds of the city, unless the stray dogs find them first.
Like the herb and the vegetable gardens, the infirmary is situated between the south side of the chapel and the rampart, sheltered from the comings and goings of outsiders. It is flanked by a dozen two-storey dwellings, aligned in two rows, which are granted primarily to the older companion-sisters or to those who want more solitude to devote to prayer. Here, for convenience, is where Ysabel lives. On the other side of the chapel, which more or less splits the Beguinage in two, is the great courtyard around which are crowded most of the lodgings, including that of the mistress, and the communal hall where the youngest and the least well-off of the sisters are lodged.
As she skirts the long, low building where the sick are cared for, the old beguine imagines the look of worry on Agnes’s face. Despite her best efforts, rumours are starting to circulate in the dormitory, fears to spread, amplified by the weakness of sick bodies and spirits, by pain and sleepless nights.
Rufus, the redhead! The monks fling this insult at each other when they quarrel. Red, the cursed colour, the colour of the traitor. The red hair of Judas and Cain, of Esau who sold his inheritance to his brother for a plate of lentils, of Ganelon who sent Roland and his companions to be massacred. The colour of the flames of hell that burn without illuminating. Of Satan and his evil spells. Of children who are conceived during their mother’s menstruation. A few days ago, the abbot of Sainte-Genevieve expelled a girl from the town, her only sin that of being born with flaming red hair. But being cast out from her home with no resource but her young body would lead her to damnation more surely than the colour of her hair, thought Ysabel.
If red was so bad a colour, why had God put it on the flanks of the beautiful horses she once rode on the lands of her estate? And on the necks of the does that glow in the rays of the sun when they bend tenderly to their newborn fawns?
*
From the herbalist’s belt hangs a pouch that never leaves her side. Inside it is the gift for her young patient, a gourd full of the draught made from barks and flowers, and another flacon containing a thick wine mixed with a paste of poppy seeds. Only a few drops of the latter. But before the girl will accept the offered remedies, Ysabel must speak with her.
She pushes open the door of the dormitory. It is well-heated, a fire burns in the hearth, maintained by the young girls who assist Agnes. The straw mattresses are lined up either side of a central walkway, covered with white cotton sheets that have been bleached with soap and ashes. Fumigations of fennel and anise are performed several times a day and give the air an aniseed smell. Ysabel is satisfied. Of course the beguines’ infirmary is infinitely more modest than the Hotel-Dieu hospital, but it is well maintained.
Currently a dozen beds are occupied by elderly sisters and poor women from the neighbourhood. Many are suffering from the cold, and one is recovering with difficulty from childbirth. There is no husband and the infant has been given to a neighbour. The beguine hopes the mother will recover, but the poor woman has lost a lot of blood and will not eat.
Ysabel passes between the beds, glancing to either side, lingering a moment near old Cathau, whose condition has been worsening for several days. Her eyes are closed, but at least she has stopped moaning. Her breathing barely lifts the two blankets laid on top of her. Ysabel adjusts the cloth tied around her head, gazing tenderly at the face on which new hollows have been etched. Then walks on to meet Agnes, who suddenly appears from behind the curtain put up for the new arrival at the end of the dormitory.
‘She still hasn’t eaten anything,’ Agnes whispers.
‘Has she drunk a little water?’
‘She refuses everything we bring her.’
‘Leave a goblet at the foot of her bed and a plate of food so she can eat when she is alone.’
‘That is what I have done!’ Agnes’s expression stiffens. Her sour face is a renunciation. The deep lines at the corners of her mouth, the wrinkles and folds in her skin, all seem to pull her face down as if a hand wanted to wipe it clean of features. Only her pointed nose sticks out, and her dark, arched eyebrows.
‘Go and rest, Agnes,’ suggests Ysabel. ‘I will take care of her—and the others.’
*
The girl is still dressed in her soiled cape, the hood drawn down over her face. All that Ysabel can see of her are a sharp chin and a bony knee poking through her tattered breeches.
On the ground beside the cot, a bowl of soup has gone cold, the good chicken fat clotted in circles atop the golden broth.
Ysabel keeps still. She has noticed, from a small stiffening in her body, that the child is aware of her presence. She sits calmly at the foot of the bed and remains silent.
A ray of blurred light falls into the room through the oilcloth stretched across the window and onto the girl’s back and shoulders. Ysabel rests a hand lightly on the sheet. On the other side of the curtain around the bed one woman clears her throat. Another breaks into a coughing fit. Then silence falls again, disturbed only by the crackling of the wood in the fireplace. Little by little, from the slight movements of the sheet under her palm, Ysabel feels the girl relax.
She waits a little longer, then starts to tell a story.
‘As a child,’ she says, ‘I was unruly. A strong character. I liked nothing so much as galloping in the woods.’
On the bed, the girl stiffens again. The storyteller pauses, then carries on, her voice low and steady to begin with. She knows that the rhythm of her words—the force or softness she puts into them, the silences that she places between them—is just as important as their meaning.
‘My father’s estate was a few miles from Autun. We had meadows and forests, soil that grew wheat as high as you wished, hardy vines that hung heavy with grapes. At the end of every summer, I would ride my horse through the fields alongside my brothers. We would watch the ears ripen and yellow until our father gave the order for the harvest.’
The child is paying attention now. Ysabel can feel it. This attention must be the thread that guides her story.
‘And then I grew up. I was asked to stay in the...
