Angel (Bartered Hearts 1)

Clara hefted a steaming pot and nodded her head toward the wall behind Melisande. Several notes were pinned there, most of the scolding sort. Do not take sugar without asking Fayette!

Melisande tore a strip from the bottom of one and used a nearby pencil to write a quick note.

It took only two minutes to get to Bill’s place. The shutters were locked tight, and she was afraid to get caught poking around, so she slid the note quickly through a space in the slats and hoped he’d find it. Maybe he wouldn’t care even if he did find it.

She stuffed the thought down and set off in the direction of the hospital. Her feet ached already. She supposed she didn’t spend much time on them. That was the joke men made anyway. Frowning, she kept her head down and walked as quickly as she could.

As it was, she might not make it in time to find her mother’s vault. There’d be rows and rows of them and surely no chiseled markers to help.

She picked up her speed, almost running now, though she didn’t understand her own urgency. Marie Angelle had been dead for eight months. Melisande had felt no difference in her world. She hadn’t noticed an emptiness in her heart. Nothing had changed for her in April and nothing was changed now, but she still raced up the street. She could see the great white building now, an instantly recognizable place even though she’d visited only once before.

Breathing hard, she reached the top of the steps and burst through the front doors, then gasped in relief when she saw the nun behind the tall reception desk. “Pardon me,” she managed to get out as she rushed toward the woman.

The nun glanced over Melisande’s shoulder in confusion. “Has there been an accident?”

“No…” Melisande gasped. “I’m sorry. I just…” She took a deep breath and pressed her hand to her chest to calm her heart. “I apologize. I wonder if you could help me find the location of a grave? She died here, and I assume…” She waved vaguely in the direction of the cemetery behind the hospital. “I think she’s there.”

“Oui, of course,” the nun said, dipping her covered head. “I have the book here.”

A few minutes later, Melisande left with the nun’s crudely drawn map and the number that would mark Marie Angelle’s grave. 817. Were there so many buried here, then?

Slipping between the iron gates that marked the entrance to the cemetery brought Melisande a little peace. It was quiet here, and the rows and rows of stone crypts had their own sort of beauty, especially when the setting sun caught the carved facades. Her pace slowed a little as she slid through the long, straight pathways, heading for the square the nun had drawn. Birds chirped from nests they’d built in cracks in the rock. A hymn rose up from a few rows over, the quiet voice of a woman visiting a loved one.

Individual crypts gave way to common vaults that seemed a mile long. It wasn’t until she reached the end of one of the narrow walkways that Melisande realized her mistake. She frowned at the paper in her hand, then looked around, hoping she was wrong. But no. There were no vaults here. No pale marble tombs to hold the dead. Dirt stretched out before her, some of it freshly turned, some packed down and covered with weeds. Tiny flat squares were laid on the ground every twelve inches or so. She approached the first and saw a number etched into the stone. 201.

This was Potter’s Field. This was where poor women like her mother were laid to rest. In the dirt, mingling with the bodies of others, waiting to be disturbed by the first big flood that came along. The air here wasn’t peaceful and cool. It was hot and thick, bringing the faintest hint of death to her nose. They couldn’t be buried very deep. The dirt would turn to mud a few feet down.

Some of the graves were marked with homemade crosses. A few were even outlined with rocks to separate them from others. But most had only the square stones to mark them, and for stretches at a time, even those were missing.

Melisande moved slowly forward, watching the numbers tick up as her shoes crunched through dead grass. She did her best not to step on any obvious graves, but it seemed impossible. They were so close together and so poorly marked.

She finally reached a row with a number that began with eight. Weeds had just started to grow on this soil. She tripped over one marker, and when she looked up from straightening it, she saw 817 just in front of her.

She moved closer and stood over the stone, staring at the narrow rectangle of dirt beyond it, waiting to feel something. This was her mother, after all. All that was left of her.

A few years ago, Melisande might have imagined spitting on this ground. When she was only thirteen, her mother had delivered her to a man who’d raped her. Cowed at first, Melisande had gone willingly, aware of how much money he’d paid. But as soon as the man had stripped her, she’d sobbed in terror, begging him not to hurt her. He had.

The next man had hurt her too. And the many men who’d come after that. Marie Angelle had remained stone-faced each time Melisande had begged not to be given away again. “You had to start some day, chérie. We all do.”

That hadn’t been a lie, really. Melisande had been the daughter of a whore. There had never been any social-climbing marriage in her future. Truthfully, she knew her mother had waited longer than most. Plenty of girls like Melisande had been turned out at age nine or ten, maybe even most of them.

Some of her anger had faded, it seemed. Because as she stood and stared at the grave, Melisande wondered if her mother had ever meant to sell her at all. There had been no talk of it in her younger years. It hadn’t happened until a customer had exploded in a drunken rage and knocked Marie’s front teeth out with one great blow. In that moment, whatever small beauty she’d possessed had been gone. There were no more high-paying customers. There were certainly no patrons willing to pay her rent for exclusive use of her.

She’d sold Melisande’s virginity then, but only then, and Melisande had become the breadwinner.

If that hadn’t happened, perhaps Melisande would have grown up and married some simple man. It was what her aunt had wanted for her. What Melisande had expected as a girl. She could have had a house, a family, a man to support them all.

But now, after everything she’d been through, even the dream seemed foolish. Maybe she wouldn’t have been better off, tied forever to a man who could drink and whore and gamble all his money away no matter who was waiting at home for him. At least as a prostitute, she made her own decisions, made her own way.

Whatever her life could have been, and whatever independence she’d claimed, this grave was what awaited Melisande now. She would be a whore for another decade, give or take a few years. Even if she managed to avoid getting scarred up or rotting from disease, she’d soon be too old to earn enough to support herself.

Like her mother, she’d take a lower-paying job, scrubbing sheets soiled with customers’ spunk or maybe cooking their food. And like her mother, she’d end up here. Thrown in the dirt without a name, without one person left to even stand here and care. She’d rot here forever just like every other dead whore in this town.

Melisande went to her knees. She didn’t cry. She’d cried over her mother hundreds of nights as a girl. Those tears had dried up years ago. She didn’t cry for herself either. She just closed her eyes and breathed, wondering what it was like when even your breath was gone. According to the church, she wouldn’t go to heaven.

She’d be stuck in this place forever, waiting for nothing.

Her knees ached and her feet went numb. It felt like praying, but she didn’t have any words to put to it. The light shining through her eyelids began to fade, and the air cooled.