She thought of him as a secret friend, or in more fanciful moments when she dared risk the sin of impure thoughts, a secret admirer. Theirs was so far a relationship conducted via place, not proximity. Perhaps he’d heard her voice, but Sister Giselle had never heard his; and likely he knew her face, while his was a mystery that she found easy to dream of in idle moments. Which was improper, of course. She was the bride of Christ, and there was room for no other.
Were it not for the stable, doubtless they would have had no relationship at all … whoever he was.
She had been born to the farming life in a countryside still healing from the scars of the Great War, and as a girl she’d known much toil. Now, given her youth and experience with beasts of burden and her farmgirl’s strength, care of the horses fell to her. Certainly, Father Guillaume had more pressing obligations in the village and the surrounding countryside, and Sister Anna-Marie was growing too feeble.
Giselle didn’t mind. Horses belonged to God’s flock too, and the scents of hay and oats took her home again, if only in her imagination. She could talk to the four horses while currying them, while drawing them fresh water, while feeding them, talk to them as she might friends who stood patiently by and absorbed every word. They seemed wise and caring, with gentle souls beneath their muscular flanks, and placid brown eyes that seemed nothing if not protective.
Pity, then, that they could never speak in return.
Who has been caring for all of you before I can get to you? she would ask. And is he as kind and gentle as I believe he must be? For you never raise a fuss.
It began three weeks ago, Giselle leaving the cottage that served as their priory and realizing the horses were already well cared for and lacking for nothing. One day, and the next, then a third. Asking around did nothing to assuage her curiosity, and served only to whet it. Father Guillaume had been distractedly amused, had smiled and chuckled with vague superiority. “Perhaps the Lord has seen fit to send an angel.”
She hadn’t thought it nearly as funny as he had.
The next day, this unseen angel began to leave loads of fresh-cut firewood, as well. Giselle’s first explanation was that it had been one of the villagers of Château-sur-Lac, slipping about to perform Christian duty in absolute anonymity. But then, how to account for the fact that someone had been spending nights in the stable? More than one morning she had found a nest of matted hay along the far, rough-hewn wall, and when she lay a hand upon it she fancied it to still be warm from his slumbers. From then on, each night she coaxed Sister Anna-Marie into preparing a plate heaped with whatever remained from the evening meal, and she would set it on a tack shelf in the stable, out of reach of equine muzzles. And mornings she would set out a small loaf of fresh baked bread, perhaps a wedge of cheese, and a small crockery jug filled with wine drawn from the casks in the cellar below their cottage.
The food never went untouched, and not once had she seen whoever came to claim it.
How mysterious. And how thrilling.
“Could it be that your secret friend is a refugee, mmmm?” Anna-Marie smiled impishly at her suggestion, then went back to preparing another evening plate with stewed chicken and vegetables and grapes. She never had to be coaxed anymore. The old nun was likely enjoying the intrigue almost as much as Giselle. “Perhaps he fled one of the coasts.”
Giselle hadn’t thought of that, though it made sense. It was a time of war, but so far Château-sur-Lac had seen little of it. To them the war was planes, far overhead. More than two years ago, France had fallen and Hitler had danced his little jig of victory. Marshal Pétain had signed his armistice with Germany, and only France’s north and west coasts had been occupied, the interior spared. Father Guillaume had been furious, had called the man a traitor to his people. Giselle had, at the time, only just taken her vows, and tried to deal with it more philosophically. Tried to look at it as she might, say, a drastic measure in medicine … say, cutting off an infected limb to save the rest of the body.
As ones who followed a man who had died upon a cross for no fault of his own, surely they could live with sacrifice.
And so she fell to wondering: What sacrifices had been demanded of her mysterious ward, whom she’d never even seen? Had he been forced to forfeit love and the creature comforts of home and hearth, to rely on the bounty of nature and the kindness of strangers for each meal? Had he been forced to trade the company of his fellow human beings for that of animals, or none at all?
Perhaps he’d been a soldier, separated or deserted from his unit in the confusion of Dunkerque, with no choice but to now live and travel by stealth. Or maybe he’d been an artist, living in some garret on the Left Bank of Paris until he gave it up for life in one of the more peaceful coastal cities — Cherbourg, or Brest — and since the coming of the Germans, had submerged his disillusion with humanity in the countryside.
Oh, she felt she knew him already, knew his story. She had to — she’d come up with so many, it had to be one among them.
And probably she would have been content to continue on his own terms, providing the meals until the inevitable day when he moved on and she found the food cold, untouched … were it not for the gift.
On a chilled November morning in the fourth week since his arrival, an hour past dawn, Giselle wrapped her frayed cloak about her and left the cottage. Behind her, Sister Anna-Marie groaned of stiff knees and wrestled fresh logs onto glowing embers. The heavy door thudded shut and she was alone with the world. On the rear stoop sat bottles of milk and cream, left by one of the villagers. She glanced around, like a wary cat, then dipped her finger in the cream and quickly licked it clean.
Giselle scurried along the path back to the stable. In the distance, a late-rising rooster called. The morning stillness was a fresh and living thing, the air full of mist that clung to the skin and brought a shiver. As far as the eye could see, a pastoral tableau of rolling hills and flat fields, the distant lake that had given the village its name, and woodland that encroached upon it all with the patience of aeons. She would die here someday, Giselle knew, and be grateful for the life spent here.
The path curved back, halfway toward the church and the stone rectory that sat behind it. At one of Father Guillaume’s windows she saw the yellowish gleam of an oil lamp.
In the stable, the horses stood placidly, each with a heavy blanket draped across its back as they breathed out soft moist clouds. She spoke to them, called them by name, then crossed over the earthen floor to the shelf for the empty plate.
Beside it, positioned with such care that it sat perfectly straight, was a doll. With winsome painted eyes, it gazed out somewhere just over her head. For a moment, Giselle dared not violate it, then reached to gather it in her arms. It looked and even smelled of age, with thin, limp clothes that nevertheless retained a certain grandeur of pre-revolutionary court gaiety. Its head and limbs were porcelain, its complexion milk white but for a rosy blush upon each delicate cheek.
A gift? It must be. For her. For her.
“Are you still here?” she called out, and went running around the stalls for the far wall. As she passed, one of the horses whuffled noisily. “Have you stayed this time?”
The nest was empty. Just a shadowed bed of hay, nothing more. And was he even now crouched outside, within some sylvan hideaway, spying for a glimpse of her when she emerged with the doll in her arms?
She fingered her rosary and prayed for a moment. This was coming perilously close to courtship. Worse, in some hidden cleft within, she wanted it to be so.
Giselle knelt beside the matted hay, lay a hand upon it, felt the fading, radiant warmth. His, and may God the Father, Christ the Son, and the Blessed Virgin forgive her, but she did long to feel it from the source itself. If only once, just once.