was one to dawdle, you know. I knew that she had an arrangement
to meet Luis at the old castle at sundown. He was there; she wasn’t.
I know that he must have heard the wolves, but he has never spoken
of it.
They found my basket and the tiny glasses, so delicately cut, all
of them broken, and some of the little sugared cakes, strewn across
the forest floor. I have replaced the glasses. It was not so difficult.
I told them I had asked her to do the errand. O f course I told
them. I will never be able to forgive myself. Everyone knew that I
was only trying to be friendly, and to include her in some useful
way in a family celebration. With Luis so besotted with her. The
big fool. Yes, I admitted it was my basket — my best — my glasses,
my cakes. My errand. My errand sent her to her doom in the
forest. How can I ever forgive myself? Luis has forgiven me now.
He is married, as I said, to one of the relatives of the bishop. They
will have a son in the spring.
No, they never found a trace of Isabella. Not even a piece of her
grandm other’s lace. H er grandm other waited. She waited for a
year for that girl to come back. The old lady spoke to nobody but
the priest. And then, one night, she died. O f grief. She died with
quiet dignity, of grief. Oh, and old age, of course. She was a twisted
tree root, and she died — of old age. And of grief.
She loved Isabella. She really loved Isabella. The wedding dress
was on the bed, I believe. It was the finest lacework the nuns have
ever seen. I have not seen it myself — but the nuns said it was the
finest spiderweb of lace — and white — so white. Shiny. With
teardrops of crystal. A dress for the M adonna. So they put it on the
statue in the convent. It seemed the only thing to do.
They never found Isabella’s body. If they had found it, they
would have buried her in the dress. Naturally. But Isabella was
never found. The men went out searching through the forest, every
night, every day for months. It became an obsession with them.
Whenever a stranger appeared in the village, they would tell him
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the story of Isabella, and get up a hunting party to go out after the
wolves. But in all the two years since it happened, they never got
one. Until two nights ago.
Two nights ago, some soldiers from the north said they injured a
wolf, the leader. The Devil with the fires of Hell in his eyes, they
said. Well, maybe they got the animal. But Isabella, they never
found.
I had a long talk to the priest about my part in the tragedy. He
said that I was not to know, and that I must never dwell on the idea
that I sent the girl into the forest to her doom. She went, after all, of
her own free will. I was not to know. But what a fate, what a punishment! To be eaten by wolves. It’s the grandmother I feel most sorry for. Because, you know, she never really knew who that girl was.
Her son brought the baby home from France. Said she was his
daughter, and that the mother had died. Then he — a soldier he
was — died of a fever, and the grandmother brought the girl up.
She did her best, but I knew it would never work out. Everybody
knew that it would never work out. And it didn’t. Not a trace they
found of her. Not a trace. Nothing.
The girl in the tattered lace dress is burying the body. Toggled with
mud, the cloak parcels the dead. In the sweet pine forest, the girl
has wrapped the wolf in her scarlet cloak. With tears and ceremony,
herbs and stones, she is burying him
