A Place of Light Read online

  Robert sighed and Madeleine heard only the soothing whisper of his breath. Looking into his eyes, the darkest shade of blue she had ever seen, Madeleine felt both exhilaration and fear. But no matter how unusual Robert might be, he was a man like any other man. And since experience had taught her that most men liked a brief conversation before settling down to business, she dragged a three-legged stool from the corner of the room and placed it in the round spread of candlelight. “Please, sir, sit down,” she said, and prepared herself for the usual verbal fumbling regarding failed dreams and ungrateful lovers. His talk, however, proved more personal.

  Far more troubling than the nightly violations of her body, Robert’s words rubbed up against her soul and left her feeling vulnerable. She touched the amber lock of corpse hair woven into her lighter strawberry-blond braid and imagined that the strands of her dead sister’s hair tethered her to this world even as she prayed to join her in the next. Lowering her eyes, Madeleine slowed her breathing and retreated into solitude. Without even trying, her mind entered a grand portal into a sweet-smelling place of light where tall white columns rose to the heavens. She was making her way down a marble aisle towards an altar fragrant with gladiolas and carnations when Arsen’s companion’s grunts pulled her back to the smoky whorehouse. Marie said that Madeleine’s daydreams contained songs never sung, paintings never painted, stories never told. “Maddy girl, you’re an artist without an art form trapped in the body of a whore!” she pronounced, her voice bitter, her eyes wide with awe, a response held in reserve for the rare human desire she did not fully comprehend.

  Madeleine herself grew up in a household where the few objects of beauty—a carved crucifix and a trunk full of quilts—were functional, intended for worship and everyday use. One of her earliest memories was of her mother teaching her to quilt. Madeleine hastily cross-stitched Satan, with great curving horns that grew beautifully from his high forehead, harpooning a sinner. Using a precious bit of scarlet and orange thread, she shaped a row of eternal flames that flared brilliantly against his cloven hooves. Her mother shook her head when she saw the square. A look of disappointment and wonder flickered across her face. “Remove the stitches carefully,” she said. “Mind the linen and save the thread.”

  “I offer you salvation,” Robert said now. His voice reminded her of the belly fur of Marie’s tabby cat!

  Candlelight played on the water at his feet and buffed the glazed bowl into toasty iridescence. Dropping to her knees, Madeleine began working his feet with her hands.

  “There is a place of light with soaring white columns and marble tiles…”

  She sucked in her breath. How could this man know the details of her daydream?

  Suddenly, she wanted to tell him everything—how an older girl with coaxing hands and almond-tasting lips taught her to pleasure men, how she learned to leave her own body whenever she lay beneath a man, how earlier in the year she had lost her sister to hard work and pleurisy, and the loss had left her vulnerable and sad. She had to bite her lip to keep the words from spilling.

  How did this haloed man know her heart with such clarity? For while he may have guessed her losses—there was not a girl living at Marie’s that had not suffered loss, else why would she be there?—reading her dreams was another matter entirely. Robert’s voice radiated love, ensnared her heart, and marked him as a man who understood how to shape feelings into words. Calm took hold of her, and quite suddenly everything about this stranger felt familiar. Even the silence that separated his words she had known always and forever. Only her own galloping pulse surprised her. That and the miraculous way their colors mingled, swirling madly, bumping starlight, and emitting a scent like musk and apricot. She thought of the sudden still that heralds a storm, the muscled intent that announces a cat’s leap. She thought of skylarks positioned for flight.

  “Come with me,” Robert said, his face lit by candlelight.

  Madeleine heard the wail of Bertrad’s babe, a random gust of wind, and the scrape of a stool. Each sound seemed to resonate with some larger meaning.

  Robert’s temples throbbed with biblical injunctions and gospels of persuasion. An hour’s worth of words—the ones he had spoken and the ones he had swallowed whole—grated against his throat. Even his eyes hurt, each grainy blink a reminder of the smoke-filled air and feeble candlelight. Despite his fatigue, he straightened his shoulders and descended the brothel stairs with Madeleine at his side. Together, they would battle Marie in service of the Lord.

  He had known many madams over the years. Cynical, jaded women, they had carved out thriving businesses that exploited the vulnerabilities of the men they despised. Marie, he understood, would not be so easily convinced to follow him down the path to redemption.

  Madeleine entered the communal room first, dropping to her knees beside Marie’s barrel chair. “This man is a prophet come to save us!” she said.

  Marie examined Robert’s flushed face and damp feet. “If you were a prophet, you would know what kind of woman has been bathing your feet.” Her laughter rumbled up from her belly.

  Robert took a measured breath. “Oh, but I do,” he said. “She is the kind of woman who has loved many people, her mother and sister among them. She is the kind of woman who receives God’s grace.”

  A loud, urgent rap sounded at the door. Madeleine rose to answer it, her fingers trailing the back of Marie’s chair. A spasm of loss tightened Robert’s chest.

  “If loving many is all that’s required to receive God’s grace,” Marie said, picking up the poker and jabbing a log, “then my girls must be ablaze with His glory!”

  The fire popped and flared. The cat, asleep at her ankles, startled awake and leaped to his feet. The sharp howl of a colicky baby erupted from behind the wall hanging, momentarily drowning out the gruff voices of bartering men and the giggles of the whores.

  “If you’re not wanting another girl,” Marie said, “the door’s over there.” She lifted the poker and pointed, an imperial gesture that seemed at once grand and threatening.

  “I will leave you now, Mother,” an exhausted Robert said, signing the cross, “but I’ll be back.”

  “Every man’s entitled to his two pence,” Marie said and shrugged dismissively.

  The following evening Robert returned to the brothel carrying his two pence.

  “Well, if it isn’t the prophet! Have you come back for another one of your… daughters?” Marie asked, thrusting out her palm to receive his coins.

  “It’s not the young women’s bodies I’m interested in,” he said, scanning the room for a glimpse of Madeleine. “It’s their souls.”

  A stewing pot of pork greased the air with animal fat. A mouse scuttled along the baseboard and disappeared into a darkened corner.

  “Blessed is the man who stands up under trial,” Marie said, her voice curdled with sarcasm. “Don’t look so surprised. I wasn’t always an old whore. I lived for a while with a missionary and his wife. I know my Bible stories,” she said, delighted to have taken him off guard. “Madeleine’s upstairs, if that’s who you’re looking for.”

  Black bile burned the back of Robert’s throat. In truth, he both despised and envied the men who bedded Madeleine.

  “No? Then pick another. There are plenty of… souls… to choose among,” Marie said, a note of boredom flattening her tone.

  Robert nodded to a young woman with a scooped out face and a spotty chin. Without a word, she rose from her straw truss and mounted the stairs. The frayed hem of her linen shift swayed against the backs of her calves, drawing Robert’s attention to her slim ankles and the dirty soles of her feet.

  Once upstairs the woman led him to a pallet that was foul with spent seed. “What is it you like?” she asked in a sweet, fluid voice that surprised him.

  “To sit,” Robert said, pointing to the stool.

  Her face, as vacant as a melon
, revealed nothing. Loosening the tie that bound the neck of her shift, she shrugged the garment past her shoulders. It gathered in folds against her breasts.

  “No,” he said, raising one hand. “I want only to talk. Light the taper please.” Robert lowered himself onto the stool. He did not look beyond the pool of candlelight, for fear of seeing Madeleine in the embrace of a filthy farmer or greedy merchant.

  The woman frowned, retied her shift and lit the candle before settling at his feet. She recoiled when he reached into his pocket. “It’s my Bible I’m after,” he explained. The young woman stared boldly at his crotch, impatience tightening the skin around her eyes, until Robert stumbled upon a psalm that pricked her interest. “Deliver me, O Lord, from wicked men; protect me from men of violence…”

  She slid to the edge of her pallet and grabbed the hem of Robert’s robe. “How can He do that?” she asked “Can you tell me how?”

  “Forsake your evil ways. Embrace the Lord. I will take care of the rest,” he said.

  By the end of the week he had climbed the stairs a dozen times, each time with a different girl at his side. Looking past their flirtatious giggles and swaying hips, he asked the girls questions, as mindful of their mannerisms as he was of their responses. For Robert believed that much could be discerned in a toss of the head or a downward glance. Once he had discovered their hidden thoughts and feelings, he said whatever it took to open their hearts.

  On Robert’s final evening in Rouen, he asked for Agnes and Arsen. Marie held up four fingers. “Four pence for two girls,” she said curtly. Robert’s knock had awakened her from a nap. She sat slumped sideways in her chair and did not even bother to look at him.

  Upstairs, the twins sat on a pallet and motioned Robert to join them. He declined, taking his usual stool. Every head tilt, every finger curl offered its own obscene allure. “What would you like, sir?” they said in one voice. The dimples bracketing their mouths drew attention to their enormous eyes. Together they examined him with confident stares that seemed to reflect his darkest desires.

  “We will do anything you can imagine…”

  “Only better…” they whispered tossing their dark hair and licking their lips. Robert felt the heat of their bodies and smelled their caramelized scent. Studying the candle’s flame, he directed his thoughts back to God.

  “Tell me about your family,” he said, hoping their responses might give him an opening into their lives. They looked at each other and smiled. Still, he did not give up. Leaning forward on the stool, he described the better life he could give them if only they would follow him, but Arsen merely scratched her arm and Agnes looked at him with the placid gaze of a cow.

  As the hour wore on, he grew tired and frustrated, and despaired that he would ever find a connection with them.

  Then, just before dawn, as sleep began to overcome Robert and he faded in and out of consciousness, the stench of sulfur jolted him awake. The smell prompted the disturbing sensation that he was in the presence of evil. In desperation, he began telling the twins about Saint Pelagia the Harlot, the most beautiful courtesan of Antioch, who moved even religious men to despair.

  At first Agnes and Arsen combed their fingers through their dark hair and yawned unabashedly. Distracted by footfalls on the stairs, they glanced over their shoulders before readjusting themselves on the pallet, stretching their legs and rolling their shoulders.

  But once Robert began describing the depths of Pelagia’s beauty, they stilled their bodies and turned their faces towards him, listening attentively when he revealed Pelagia’s great wealth, explaining that she had ridden about town in an elegant carriage surrounded by her followers and worshipers. Robert paused for a breath, and the twins leaned into each other, whispering in such tones that he could not hear a word. For all he knew, they could have been humming words to the devil. “But Pelagia was no fool,” Robert told them. She knew her beauty would not last forever, so she did something unexpected. She entered the basilica of Antioch and confessed her sins to the Bishop Nonnus, a man well known for his sanctity and kindness. “Bishop Nonnus told her that if she truly repented her past existence, Christ would forgive her and make her his bride. Pelagia, overcome with hope, fell to the pavement and held the feet of the good Nonnus in her arms, washing his feet with her tears and wiping them with her hair. Bishop Nonnus, though tempted by Pelagia’s touch, focused on her soul. ‘You must declare with certainty that you will not fall back into your sinful way,’ he said to her. ‘Then you may be baptized.’”

  Quite suddenly, Agnes dropped Arsen’s hand and together the twins stroked Robert’s thighs, the identical pressure of their fingers increasing his torment two fold. Had Arsen not been distracted by a man’s hoarse gasp, they might have succeeded in their seduction. But her fingers stuttered and Robert, released from their spell, began praying silently the words that the Bishop Nonnus had spoken aloud to Pelagia—Do not entice me, for I am but a weak and sinful man intent on serving God. As if in answer to his prayer, Robert felt a falling off of desire, a settling in of divine direction that allowed him to continue. “Pelagia readily confessed to all her wrongdoings. And as the reformed harlot aged, instead of growing ugly and decrepit, she grew more beautiful with an inner light, God’s sign of sanctity.”

  Robert felt a sudden peace fill the room, a radiant presence that washed a warm light through his body. The twins gasped, withdrew their hands from his legs, and began sucking on their fingertips, as though they had been blistered by fire.

  “Repent,” Robert said. “Offer up your blemished souls to Christ and you, too, shall be saved.”

  “And if we do,” Agnes said, “Will we remain forever beautiful?”

  He hesitated. “Your souls will glow with a brilliance that surpasses physical beauty.”

  Downstairs a door closed with a whoosh of air that climbed the stairs, flickered candles and danced their shadows—a hideous beast with three backs—against the wall.

  “But who will know?” Arsen asked. “Who will know the brilliance of our souls if our bodies are ugly?”

  Descending the stairs that morning, Robert could think of little else but his failure. Down below, one of the children fussed and a cock crowed in the distance. Preaching is like fishing with a net that catches every kind of fish, he thought. Put the good ones into a basket and cast the bad ones aside. But the thought did not comfort him.

  A dim light lit the room. The fire ebbed to a dull glow. Some of the girls prepared for bed while others tended to the children. Marie occupied her familiar seat before the fireplace, her head lying against the back of her throne as she rested. Robert quietly took a place on a bench before the fireplace and, listening to Marie’s labored breathing, remained silent while she examined him through the slit of her eyelids.

  Finally she shifted in her chair. Without a word to Robert she plunged her poker into the banked fire, scattering gray ash in search of a hot spot.

  Madeleine appeared with an armful of wood. Dropping to her knees to release her load, she cast a troubled look at Marie.

  “I’m feeling the chill this morn,” Marie said. She grabbed a pinecone from a basket near the hearth and tossed it onto the coals. The sap sparked a flame and she grunted her approval, indicating with a wave of her hand that Madeleine should lay the fire.

  Madeleine nodded. She looked like a simple peasant girl, barefoot, wearing a plain wool chemise extending to her calves. She gingerly balanced a log between the andirons.

  “Maddy tells me you’ve promised my girls a better life.” Shaking her head, she sucked her teeth. “It’s my experience that men are big on making promises but not so keen on keeping them.”

  “My promise is God’s promise, for I have a holy vision,” Robert said.

  “Maddy told me of your… vision,” Marie said, waving her hand dismissively. “I’m not interested in your prophecies or dreams. My concerns are practical. You
say you want to help women, and perhaps you do. But why? I wonder.”

  Robert chose his words carefully. “It all began in Toulouse,” he said. “After Pope Urban heard me deliver a sermon, he gave me free license to preach anywhere in France.” Robert paused to adjust his robe, warm his hands by the fire and clear his throat, noting with satisfaction that his silence did not disturb Marie. “After a while I gained a reputation for eloquence among the people of Northern France.”

  “Bah,” she said. “People will listen to anyone as long as the words sound pleasant to their ears.” She blew air through her nose. Madeleine finished with the fire and made to leave, but Marie took her hand and kissed her palm. “Stay,” she said. “Listen to what your prophet has to say.”

  Robert studied the fire, watching a single flame fork into a half dozen tongues that licked the darkened firebox.

  “Go on then,” Marie said to Robert. “We’re listening.”

  “I prayed for direction. I asked God for the strength to resist the devil. I implored him to provide the answers to my questions: Why am I drawn to sin? What is the purpose of my gift? How may I serve thee?”

  Marie adjusted her great bulk, settling more comfortably into her chair. She did not bother hiding her yawn. “And then what?” she asked. “The good Lord told you to visit whorehouses?”

  “He told me nothing at first.” Robert paused to study the two women. Marie seemed caught up in his story, suspended between mistrust and curiosity. Madeleine’s lips parted and she touched her braid.

  “The answer came to me in the form of a vision. A beautiful woman who reminded me of a certain Parisian whore.” He said nothing of the resemblance to Madeleine.

  Marie no longer tried to disguise her interest. “I’ve sinned often in my life and struggle daily with the sin of lust,” Robert said. She leaned forward in her chair, her labored breathing growing more rapid. Madeleine’s brow creased with concern.