Fatal Women by Tanith Lee

Author:Tanith Lee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fiction, short stories, lesbian, speculative fiction, historical fantasy, novellas, femmes fatales
Publisher: Lethe Press

An Interval

The day after the “marriage” of la Reine and Virgile the widow, summer returned to Bois-la-Diane. There came to be a light the colour of a pale wine from Xérés. On this, the last leaves were pinned like flags of peeled bronze, and garnet scales. And the leaves which had fallen, turning to a damson mush, lit with singular orange streaks, out of which thrust the purple splash of autumn crocus. More than half unveiled, the trees showed pockets of apples, pears, left stranded like glowing lamps, or showed the fruit smashed on the ground in bitter ciders. Grapes on the vine turned gold with sweetness. A final rose the wind had overlooked, yellow-amber like the afternoons, stood upright in the garden of the house on the rue Dalle, for thirteen days, before the head fell on the path, intact, brown as a cobnut.

Warm, so warm, and hot, at noon.

The birds, misled or only driven mad, sang wildly and opened their wings to gild them like the mask of a pharaoh, and keep death out.

The town shone.

On the street Laure, fetching (strange, perhaps misguided) purchases of the Aunt’s from the leaning shops behind the church, met Rose and Honorine Éperve.

“How washed-out you are, Laure—is it the heat? Oh this weather! What it would have been, to be at the château. Do you remember the luncheons on the terrace, or when we had picnics under the great chestnut in summer?”

“And the little stream. Do you remember that scalding day we took off our dresses and bathed in the pool, and we were dry again in five minutes?”

Laure stood, quiet and solemn. Did she remember?

“Well,” she said. “There.”

Honorine leant forward, her hat with its cornflowers of cloth tilting to cut off the sun. “Lucide went back there. She did. With Marie-Jeanne. We were talking with them yesterday. And can you imagine, Laure. That woman. Oh! That woman.”

Laure, standing, idle. “Whom, Honorine?”

“That one. She! You know who I mean.”

“Ah.”

“Yes, that depraved person who calls herself Virgilie.” Almost—just able to prevent her tongue tripping out the correction—No, no, Honorine. Not Virgilie—“As if that could be her proper given name. The effrontery. The cheek of it.”

“And,” said Rose, deceptively mild, “it seems she takes her lunch alone. Dines with la Reine only in the evening—so her days mostly are all her own.”

“And there she sits. My goodness, queening it. Lucide said the lunch was very opulent. Better than we generally had. But then, oh yes. And in comes the woman, all in her black dress, and sits there. And there are two servants, the men, if you please, serving her. And Lucide and Marie-Jeanne, they can just serve themselves. And not a word, not a word.”

“And so,” said Rose, deceptively urbane, “Marie-Jeanne says to the woman, ‘Excuse me, but what lovely weather we’re having.’ And this woman, this Virgilette, she just nods—graciously, Jeanne said, as if she were the comtesse herself.”

“When all the time she’s from the gutters of Paris or Marseilles or the

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