She was called Isabella, and when she was a small girl, her hair changed color in the time it takes a bird to call to it's mate.
That summer the Duc de I'Aigle brought a statue of the virgin an child and a pot of paint back from Paris for the niche over the church door. A feast was held in the village the day the statue was installed. Isabella sat at the bottom of a ladder watching Jean Tournier paint the niche a deep blue the color of the evening sky.
As he finished, the sun appeared from behind the wall of clouds and lit up the blue so brightly that Isabella clasped her hands behind her neck and squeezed her elbows against her chest. When its ray's reached her, they touched her hair with a halo copper that remained even when the sun had gone. From that day she was called La Rose after the Virgin Mary.
The nickname lost its affection when Monsier Marcel arrived in the village a few years later, hands stained with tannin and words borrowed from Calvin. In his first sermon, on woods our of sight of the village priest, he told them that the Virgin was barring their way to the Truth.
"La Rose has been defiled by the statues, the candles, the trinkets. She is Contaminated!" He proclaimed. "She stands between you and God!".
The villagers turned to stare at Isabelle. She clutched her mother's arm.
'How can he know?' She thought. 'Only Maman knows'. Her mother would not have told him that Isabella had begun bleed that day and now had a rough cloth tied between her legs and a pillow of pain in her stomach. Les fleurs, her mother had called it, special flowers from God, a gift she was to keep quiet about because it set her apart. She looked up at her mother l, who was frowning at Monsieur Marcel and had opened her mouth as if to speak. Isabella squeezed her arm and Maman shut her mouth into a tight line.
After wards she walked back between her mother and her sister Marie, their twin brothers following more slowly. The other village children lagged behind them at first, whispering. Eventually, bold with curiosity, a boy ran up and grabbed a handful of Isabella's hair.
" Did you hear him, La Rose?. You're dirty!" He shouted.
Isabella shrieked. Petit Henri and Gérard jumped to defend her, pleased to be useful at last.
The nest day Isabella began wearing a head cloth, every chestnut strand wound out of sight, long before other girls her age.
By the time Isabella was fourteen two cypress trees were growing in a Sunny patch near the house. Each time, Petit Henri and Gérard made a trip all the way to the Barre-les Cévennes, a two-day walk, to find one.
The tree was Marie's. She grew so big and all the village women said she must be carrying twins, but Maman's probing fingers felt only one head, though a large one. Maman worried about the size of the head.
"Would that it were twins" she muttered to Isabella. The it would be easier.
When the time came Maman sent a the men away, husband, father, brother. It was a bitterly cold night, a tempest blowing snow into drifts against the house, the stone walls, the clumps of dead eye. The men were slow to leave the fire until they herd Marie's first scream. Strong men, accustomed to the sounds of slaughtered pigs, the human tone drove them away quickly.
Isabella had helped her mother at birthings before, but always in the presence of other women visiting to sing and tell stories. Now the cold kept them away and she and Maman were alone. She stared at her sister, immobile beneath a huge belly, shivering and sweating and screaming. Her mother's face was tight and anxious, she said little.
Throughout the night Isabella held Marie's hand, squeezed it during contractions, and wiped her forehead with a damp cloth. She prayed for her, silently appealing to the Virgin and all the saints were powerless and should not be called upon. None of his words comforted her now. Only the old prayers made sense.
"The head is too big. We have to cut...". Maman pronounced finally.
"... Maman" Marie and Isabella whispered in unison. Marie's eyes were wild and dilated. In desperation she began to push again, weeping and gasping. Isabella heard the sound of flesh tearing, Marie shrieked before going limp grey.
The head appeared in a river of blood, black and misshapen, and when Maman pulled the baby out it was already dead, the cord tight around its neck. It was a girl.
The men returned when they saw the fire, smoke from the bloody straw billowing high into the morning air.
They buried mother and the child in a sunny spot where Marie had like to sit when it was warm. The cypress tree was planted over her heart.
The blood left a faint trace on the floor that no amount of sweeping or scrubbing could erase.
The second tree was planted the following summer.
It was Twilight, the hour of wolves, not the time for women to be walking on their own. Maman and Isabelle had been at a birthing at Felgèrolles. Mother and baby had both lived, breaking a long string of deaths that had begun with Marie and her baby. This evening they had lingered, making the other and child comfortable, listening to the other women singing and chatting, so that the sun had sunk before Mont Lozére by the time Maman waved away cautions and invitations to stay the night and they started home.
The wolf lay across the path as if waiting for them. They stopped, set down their sacks, crossed themselves. The wolf did not love. They watched it for a moment, then Maman picked up her sack and took a step forward to it. The wolf stood and Isabella could even see even in the dark that it was thin, its grey pet mangy. Its eyes glowed yello as if a candle were lit behind them, and it moved in an awkward, off-balance lope. Only when it was close that Maman could almost reach out and touch the greasy fur did Isabella see the foam around its mouth and understand.
Everyone had seen animals struck with the madness, dogs running aimlessly, foam flecking their mouths, a new meanness in their eyes, their barks muffled l. They avoided the water, the surest protection from them, besides an axe, was a brimming bucket. Maman and Isabella had nothing with them but herbs, linen and a knife.