CHAPTER 5: THE MASK
Marie swam languidly through a black sea of sleep that was deep, warm and mercifully dreamless.
When she awoke, the fever was gone and her bed was once again cool and soft.
Seated on a stool by her bedside, Doctor Toureil scrutinised her with two small grey eyes that were cosy beneath great white bushy eyebrows.
“Good morning.” he said quietly.
CHAPTER 4: DOCTOR TOUREIL
If you were to meet Doctor Toureil, your first impression of him would be that he was a farmer. He had the broad red face of a man who spent his days tilling fields, or clumsily trying to catch agile sheep on misty mountains. His hands were huge, pink and covered in a sandpaper of calluses. His clothes were shabby, and had probably not left his body in ten years. This, of course, was one of the reasons why the villagers of St Anne trusted him so much. He wasn’t some polished outsider come to sneer at the simple little country bumpkins. If anything, Doctor Toureil was more of a bumpkin than anyone else in the village. He was also an excellent doctor.
CHAPTER 3: THE MASK
She had run home after the hanging, tears burning in her eyes like lime, her chest trying to wrestle breaths between sobs. But when she got home, the house was empty. She wandered the three rooms, hers, her father’s and the kitchen again and again, hoping that he would leap from behind some nook or cranny, or slide out from behind a picture on the wall. She could not accept that he was not here, in this moment when she needed him as she never had before.
She was still young.
CHAPTER 2: THE THIEF
It was exactly nine months two days and ten hours later when Marie learned that her father was not a soup maker. She was sitting on a wall on the outskirts of the village, watching horses galloping in the sun, as polished and brown as chestnuts. Marie had decided long ago that she was going to be a horse when she grew up. Perched with her on the wall were Olivia and Sylvie, and the three sat so close together that Olivia’s jet black hair ran off her shoulder and intermingled with Marie’s red, whereas on Marie’s opposite side Sylvie’s nut brown tresses mixed with her own. Four feet further down the wall, in compliance with the unspoken rule, sat Bernadette-who-smelt-of-cack. It had often seemed a shame to Marie that Bernadette always had to keep a distance, which she did amicably and without bitterness, because on the whole she preferred Bernadette to the other two. Olivia could bully and be patronising, and Sylvie had a tendency to be sullen, but Bernadette was very sweet tempered and pleasant to be with.
Just not too closely.
Hi guys, okay, so firstly thanks so much for all your kind words and support. I honestly expected to announce this to the world to deafening silence and maybe a polite cough in the darkness, so the fact that so many of you have said you’re willing to follow this story means the world to me. So, starting from today I’m going to be posting one chapter every Thursday that’s not a review day. But to get the ball rolling I thought I’d do three chapters so that we can actually get pretty far into the story and establish the setting and a few of the main characters, particularly Marie and Luke, the daughter and the hangman (seeing as they are kinda important). Alright, so, here we go.
Aaaaaand…deep breath.
unshavedmouse 