The Thirteenth Tale

his sister's subtlety; there was an incident that could have been a scandal, and a vexed Isabelle told him that if that was how he intended to go about things then he would have to choose a different sort of woman. He turned from the daughters of minor aristocrats to those of farriers, farmers and foresters. Personally he couldn't tell the difference, yet the world seemed to mind less.

Frequent though they were, these instances of forgetfulness were fleeting. The shocked eyes, the bruised arms, the bloodied thighs were erased from memory the moment he turned away from them. Nothing could touch the great passion in his life: his feelings for Isabelle.

One morning toward the end of the summer, Isabelle turned the blank pages in her diary and counted the days. She closed the book and replaced it in the drawer thoughtfully. When she had decided, she went downstairs to her father's study.

Her father looked up. 'Isabelle!' He was pleased to see her.Since she had taken to going out more he was especially gratified when she came to seek him out like this.

'Darling Pa!' She smiled at him.

He caught a glint of something in her eye. 'Is there something afoot?'

Her eyes traveled to a corner of the ceiling and she smiled. Without shifting her gaze from the dark corner, she told him she was leaving.

At first he hardly understood what she had said. He felt a pulse beat in his ears. His vision blurred. He closed his eyes, but inside his head there were volcanoes, meteorite strikes and explosions. When the flames died down and there was nothing left in his inner world but a silent, devastated landscape, he opened his eyes.

What had he done?

In his hand was a lock of hair, with a bloodied clod of skin attached at one end. Isabelle was there, her back to the door, her hands behind her. One beautiful green eye was bloodshot; one cheek looked red and slightly swollen. A trickle of blood crept from her scalp, reached her eyebrow and was diverted away from her eye.

He was aghast at himself and at her. He turned away from her in silence and she left the room.

Afterward he sat for hours, twisting the auburn hair that he had found in his hand, twisting and twisting, tighter and tighter around his finger, until it dug deep into his skin, until it was so matted that it could not be unwound. And finally, when the sensation of pain had at last completed its slow journey from his finger to his consciousness, he cried.

Charlie was absent that day and did not return home until midnight. Finding Isabelle's room empty he wandered through the house, knowing by some sixth sense that disaster had struck. Not finding his sister, he went to his father's study. One look at the gray-faced man told him everything. Father and son regarded each other for a moment, but the fact that their loss was shared did not unite them. There was nothing they could do for each other.

In his room Charlie sat on the chair next to the window, sat there for hours, a silhouette against a rectangle of moonlight. At some point he opened a drawer and removed the gun he had obtained by extortion from a local poacher, and two or three times he raised it to his temple. Each time the force of gravity soon returned it to his lap.

At four o'clock in the morning he put the gun away, and took up instead the long needle that he had pilfered from the Missus's sewing box a decade before and which had since seen much use. He pulled up his trouser leg, pushed his sock down and made a new puncture mark in his skin. His shoulders shook, but his hand was steady as on his shinbone he scored a single word: Isabelle.

Isabelle by this time was long gone. She had returned to her room for a few minutes and then left it again, taking the back stairs to the kitchen. Here she had given the Missus a strange, hard hug, which was quite unlike her, and then she slipped out of the side door and darted through the kitchen garden toward the garden door, set in a stone wall. The Missus's sight had been fading for a very long time, but she had developed the ability to judge people's movements by sensing vibrations in the air, and she had the impression that Isabelle hesitated, for the briefest of moments, before she closed the garden door behind her.

When it became apparent to George Angelfield that Isabelle was gone, he went into his library and locked the door. He refused food, he refused visitors. There were only the vicar and the doctor to come calling now, and both of them got short shrift. 'Tell your God he can go to hell!' and 'Let a wounded animal die in peace, won't you!' was the limit of their welcome.

A few days later they returned and called the gardener to break the door down. George Angelfield was dead. A brief examination was enough to establish that the man had died from septicemia, caused by the circle of human hair that was deeply embedded in the flesh of his ring finger.

Charlie did not die, though he didn't understand why not. He wandered about the house. He made a trail of footprints in the dust and followed it every day, starting at the top of the house and working down. Attic bedrooms not used for years, servants' rooms, family rooms, the study, the library, the music room, the drawing room, the kitchens. It was a restless, endless, hopeless search. At night he went out to roam the estate, his legs carrying him tirelessly forward, forward, forward. All the while he fingered the Missus's needle in his pocket. His fingertips were a bloody, scabby mess. He missed Isabelle.

Charlie lived like this through September, October, November, December, January and February, and at the beginning of March, Isabelle returned.

Charlie was in the kitchen, tracing his footsteps, when he heard the sound of hooves and wheels approaching the house. Scowling, he went to the window. He wanted no visitors. A familiar figure stepped down from the car- and his heart stood still. He was at the door, on the steps, beside the car all in one moment, and Isabelle was there.

He stared at her.

Isabelle laughed. 'Here,' she said, 'take this.' And she handed him a heavy parcel wrapped up in cloth. She reached into the back of the carriage and took something out. 'And this one.' He tucked it obediently under his arm. 'Now, what I'd like most in the world is a very large brandy.'

Stunned, Charlie followed Isabelle into the house and to the study. She made straight for the drinks cupboard and took out glasses and a bottle. She poured a generous slug into a glass and drank it in one go, showing the whiteness of her throat, then she refilled her own glass and the second, which she held out to her brother. He stood there, paralyzed and speechless, his hands full with the tightly wrapped bundles. Isabelle's laughter resounded about his ears again and it was like being too close to an enormous church bell. His head started to spin and tears sprang to his eyes. 'Put them down,' Isabelle instructed. 'We'll drink a toast.' He took the glass and inhaled the spirit fumes. 'To the future!' He swallowed the brandy in one gulp and coughed at its unfamiliar burn.

'You haven't even seen them, have you?' she asked.

He frowned.

'Look.' Isabelle turned to the parcels he had placed on the study desk, pulled the soft wrapping away, and stood back so that he could see. Slowly he turned his head and looked. The parcels were babies. Two babies. Twins. He blinked. Registered dimly that some kind of response was called for, but didn't know what he was supposed to say or do.

'Oh, Charlie, wake up, for goodness' sake!' and his sister took both his hands in hers and dragged him into a madcap dance around the room. She swirled him around and around and around, until the dizziness started to clear his head, and when they came to a halt she took his face in her hands and spoke to him. 'Roland's dead, Charlie. It's you and me now. Do you understand?'

He nodded.

'Good. Now, where's Pa?'

When he told her, she was quite hysterical. The Missus, roused from the kitchen by the shrill cries, put her to bed in her old room, and when at last she was quiet again, asked, 'These babies… what are they called?'

'March,' Isabelle responded.

But the Missus knew that. Word of the marriage had reached her some months before, and news of the birth (she'd not needed to count the months on her fingers, but she did it anyway and pursed her lips). She knew of Roland's death from pneumonia a few weeks ago; knew too how old Mr. and Mrs. March, devastated by the death of their only son and repelled by the fey insouciance of their new daughter-in-law, now quietly shunned Isabelle