Chapter 3: Lonely Childhoods
As soon as she got into bed, Mireille curled up and started crying into her pillow. Elisa shook her by the shoulder. "Mireille, we need to talk," she said, and put an arm around her shoulder. "I won't put up with any more of your whining, you know. Marat wasn't worth it."
Mireille shook her head. "You don't know what it's like to kill a man."
"No, I don't. But I have a pretty good idea."
"What do you mean?"
"My brothers, of course! They've killed men in battle. I saw how they were when they came home. Very much like you. But they've gone on with their lives, and they will go back to the battlefield when they have to."
"Oh," said Mireille, feeling stupid. Of course Elisa's brothers were soldiers, and had been in battle. She should have realized they'd killed men. But somehow it didn't seem the same. "But they're soldiers. It's their job to kill people. It's not mine."
"So you don't think we're at war? Open your eyes, Mireille! This Game is just as much of a war as the one my brothers are fighting. Those people on the White team are absolutely evil, and Marat was the worst of all. They would not hesitate to kill us. Look what happened to Valentine. It could easily have been you, or me if I had been there. And the stakes are even greater than in my brothers' war. We don't know yet what the secret of the Montglane Service is, but it must be enormously powerful. Just think what would happen if these people got their hands on it. You might not have won the Game for us yet, but you took a huge step towards it. You saved thousands of innocent lives. Not just those about to go to the guillotine in Paris-I hate to say it, but I think Robespierre will send many more to the guillotine-but everyone who would have died if Marat had gotten his hands on those pieces. Who knows, he could have destroyed the whole world. You kept that from happening, Mireille! And now you go about whining and feeling sorry for yourself. You shouldn't. You're so much stronger than that."
"I know what you're saying is right, Elisa. Believe me, I do. But still, I will always have this stain on my soul. I'll never get rid of it."
"You have absolutely no stain on your soul. That's nonsense! Think of Valentine's soul. She's finally at rest, now that you've avenged her death. Remember what I told you, about the vendetta traversa, and how a murdered person's soul wanders the earth, until his or her death is avenged."
"Of course I remember, but that's just an old legend. I'm sure you didn't really mean it."
"Have I ever said anything I don't mean?"
Mireille shook her head. "No."
"And these old legends have a way of turning out to be true. We used to think the Montglane Service was just a legend, but it turned out to be all too real. So why shouldn't it be true that Valentine's soul would have wandered the earth until you avenged her death, and now she's at rest?"
"Well, it's true that those strange nightmares I was having about her have stopped. But then, I haven't been able to sleep since that night."
"Since you killed Marat?"
"Yes."
"Then why not say so? I've noticed you never say it directly. It's always 'That night,' 'What I did,' 'What happened.' You seem to want to avoid the matter. It might help you if you actually say it."
"Can you blame me for not wanting to talk about it?"
"Actually, I do. You're being very silly."
"If you'd killed a man, you'd be just the same way."
"Perhaps I would. Who's to say?" Elisa admitted. "I hope it never comes to that. But if it does, it does. As I said, we're at war, just as much as my brothers are. And I'll do what I have to, to survive, and to win the war."
"And you wouldn't feel bad about it later?"
"Well," Elisa let out a sigh. "I suppose I would. But I'd go on with my life. And so should you." She paused for a while, then went on, "Mireille, there's something else I want you to know. Remember what you said to me, just before you left Corsica? You said, 'It's good to have a friend again.' I'll never forget that. Well, I feel the same way. Perhaps even more so. I want to tell you how much your friendship means to me. You see, Mireille, I never had a real friend before you. I know you're devastated by Valentine's death, but at least you had her as a friend. I never had anyone until I met you. Well, except Lucien and Felix, but they're men and that's different."
Mireille threw her arms around Elisa. "Oh, Elisa, I didn't know. But you have your sisters, and perhaps... your sister-in-law to be? I like her very much, by the way, and I hope she will be your sister-in-law one day. And you must have had friends at St.-Cyr."
Elisa shook her head. "My sisters and I are not particularly close, as I think you can tell. They seem to like you better than me. I do like Désirée, but I haven't known her for very long, and there's no way of knowing if Napoleon will marry her. He does seem more serious about her than about his other sweethearts, but his heart has been fickle before, and who's to say it won't be again. But what I really wanted to talk to you about is St.-Cyr. I told you what a wonderful education I got there, which I will always be grateful for. I wish all girls, all over the world, could get an education like that. And I wish I'd been able to finish mine. As you know, St.-Cyr closed a few years before I could finish. The headmistress, who was a friend of your Abbess, of course, was very good to me. She was like a second mother, just as the Abbess was like a mother to you. But as for the other girls..." Elisa shuddered, and blinked back tears. "They were horrible."
Mireille held her closer. "All of them?"
"Yes. You see, St.-Cyr was a school for aristocratic girls. I was one of the few who wasn't. I got in on a stipend, and because my family has been noble since at least the sixteenth century. But we've always been very minor nobility, and poor. And not French, but Genoese and then Corsican. All those girls were from the old French nobility, and they looked down their noses at me from the beginning. They made fun of my Corsican accent, my tattered clothes, even my hair. Imagine what it was like for me. I was seven years old, I'd been torn away from my family and sent to this far-away school, and I couldn't even speak the language. As you know, we speak Italian at home. I didn't learn French until I went to St.-Cyr. But even though I didn't know exactly what those girls were saying at first, I could tell what they meant. And I learned French quickly, Not as quickly as you learn languages, Mireille-that really is a gift! But more quickly than most. But it was even worse after I learned French, because then I knew what they were saying about me." She burst out in tears, and Mireille stroked her hair.
"Oh, Elisa, how horrible! Not one single girl was kind to you?"
"Not one. Only the headmistress and some of the teachers. But not even all the teachers. Some of them were cruel to me. They thought it was somehow my fault, that I should have made more of an effort to be friends with the other girls."
"But that's crazy! How could you be friends with them when they were cruel to you?"
"Exactly. But that's not the way they saw it. Somehow the teachers thought I was doing something to make them act that way to me, even though I can't imagine what it was. Who can understand their way of thinking? I think, though, that they were awfully impressed by these girls' families' titles of nobility and, in many cases, their wealth. And I, of course, had nothing, and not only that, but I was a foreigner. It's obvious whose side they would be on."
"But they should have tried to help you."
"They should have, but they didn't. Anyway, I took refuge in books. My books were always my friends, much more than the other girls. But of course the girls, and the teachers blamed me for that, too. They all thought I should have been doing things with the other girls instead of spending my time reading."
Mireille held her close. "Poor Elisa! I had no idea they were so cruel there. It was the same way for me, about the books."
"I know it was. Then, later on, I found another refuge, when we started putting on plays. You see, in a play I could become someone else, and forget who I was for a while. That was a great comfort to me, and that's why I've always loved the theater. But even then, when we put on our plays, there were girls who'd make fun of my accent. By then I was older and I tried to ignore them, but it still hurt."
"Oh, Elisa! How horrible they were. But I'm glad you found a love for the theater."
"It is wonderful to become someone else for a while. Are you sure you wouldn't like to try it? It might help you."
Mireille shook her head. "No, I couldn't. I was too nervous when I tried to take part in your theatricals on Corsica, and that was before... before I killed Marat. Now I don't think I ever could speak lines in front of an audience. And there, I've finally said it. It doesn't make me feel any better."
"It takes time, but I'm glad you've taken the first step. Anyway, about acting in plays, you forget about it while you're doing it. You become that other person."
"It doesn't work that way for me. I wish it did. But, Elisa, I'm so sorry that you had to go through all that! It must have been absolutely horrible."
"And that's why I am so grateful for your friendship. It has made my life so much happier, being friends with you. And that's why I don't want you to waste your life crying over Marat. He was not worth one little tear."
"I'm not crying over him. I'm crying over what I've become."
"What you've become is a wonderful, kind, brave person. I'm extremely honored to have you as my friend."
"I'm honored to have you as mine. You see, Elisa, my experience was not that different from yours."
"At Montglane?"
"Yes."
"But you had such a close friend in Valentine."
"I was very lucky to have Valentine. I know that. Even though I'll always be heartbroken by her death." Mireille swallowed back a sob. "And the Abbess was like a mother to both of us. But Valentine and I were not the only novices there. We were the youngest, and the next-youngest were two years older than us, so we didn't have any companions of our own age. But the ones who were a few years older were never kind to me."
"Were they kind to Valentine?"
"Oh, yes. Valentine loved everyone, and everyone loved her. But it was different for me. You see, Valentine was the one with the aristocratic father. He died when she was seven, as did mine. There was a plague in Paris that killed our parents, as I've told you before. But Valentine's father was the heir to a title and a fortune-a fortune that came to her, when he died, and when our grandfather died a few years later. But my father was a younger son, and had nothing. No title and no fortune. My entire existence was dependent on Valentine. And the other novices knew it, and never let me forget it. They all looked down on me. At least, as novices, we wore habits. I hated it at the time, but at least I didn't have any tattered clothes for them to make fun of. But if it had been a school like St.-Cyr, they would have treated me exactly the way the girls treated you."
"Oh, Mireille, I didn't know! What a tragic life you've had!" Elisa held her close.
"Valentine and the Abbess were my only comfort. And my books, of course. Like you, I always took refuge in books. I remember when I was ten years old I decided I was going to read all the books in the library at Montglane. I started at the top of the first shelf and worked my way down."
Elisa smiled. "That sounds like something I tried to do, too. And did you read all of them?"
"No, Montglane closed before I could. I did read a lot of them, though, in five years. But Montglane had a very large library. I often wonder what happened to all the books there. We were thinking so much about getting the Montglane Service out of there, because of all the danger involved, we didn't really think about the books at the time. I wonder if they're still there, in the empty abbey, or if any of the nuns took them with them. How about you? Did you read all the books at St.-Cyr?"
"No, I also had to leave before I could. But, as I said, they were a great comfort to me, even though most of the teachers didn't understand."
"A lot of the nuns at Montglane were like your teachers. They thought I should have been friendlier to the other novices, instead of spending my time reading. A very strange attitude, isn't it?"
"Yes, these people should encourage learning, shouldn't they? But when someone wants to learn, they think they're strange for not spending time with the other girls."
"Anyway, my books were more my friends than any of the other novices except Valentine, of course. She was no reader, but she had the kindest heart imaginable. And if any of the novices started to act cruel, she'd step in to protect me. I wish you'd had someone like her." Mireille burst into tears, and Elisa put her arms around her.
"I wish I had, too. It would have made a big difference. But now I do." Elisa smiled at her.
"I could never be as kind as Valentine. She would never have killed a man."
"Oh, yes, she would. If Marat had had you killed in the prison massacres, she would have killed him to avenge your death, too. I have no doubt of it."
"I hope you're right, even though I hate to think it."
"I know she would have. Anyone would, if they had a chance."
"I suppose you would have, too?"
"No doubt of it! And I would have twisted the knife in him!"
"No, you would not!"
"Yes, I would! And I'm not going to argue with you any more. Mireille, you are the best friend I have ever had, and words cannot say how extremely grateful I am to you." The two girls held each other for a long time. Then Elisa said, "It's late, and I don't know about you, but I'm very tired."
"I'm tired, too, but I'm afraid to sleep. I know I'll have nightmares."
"I will comfort you if you have nightmares, just as I did on Corsica, never fear."
Mireille nodded. "Thank you. Believe me, I am very grateful for your friendship, too, Elisa. I just wish I were a better person."
"But you are! Don't ever believe you're not."
"i hope you're right." Mireille shook her head and sighed. "Do you mind if I read for a while?"
"Of course not. I think I'll read, too."
Mireille reached for her volume of Herodotus, but Elisa gave her the popular romance Paul et Virginie instead. "Mireille, I think this is just the thing for you now. It will relax your mind. Herodotus can wait."
"I don't read Herodotus just for pleasure, you know, even though it's true I enjoy reading him. I have reason to believe that Herodotus gives clues to the secret behind the Montglane Service, and that's what I'm looking for."
"I know how important it is to you, to solve the formula. But you've waited all this time, and you can wait a few days more. It's more important to put your mind at ease. And this book is just the thing for it."
"Very well. I will take your advice." And so the two girls read until they fell asleep. That night, for the first time since she had killed Marat, Mireille slept well.
