Curse of a Winter Moon Read online

  CURSE OF A

  Winter Moon

  Also by Mary Casanova

  Published by the University of Minnesota Press

  Frozen

  Moose Tracks

  Wolf Shadows

  Riot

  CURSE OF A

  Winter Moon

  MARY CASANOVA

  Originally published in 2000 by Hyperion Books for Children First University of Minnesota Press edition, 2014

  Copyright 2000 by Mary Casanova

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published by the University of Minnesota Press

  111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290

  Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520

  http://www.upress.umn.edu

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Casanova, Mary.

  Curse of a Winter Moon / Mary Casanova.—

  First University of Minnesota Press ed.

  Summary: In sixteenth-century France, ruled by a church that overtaxes peasants and burns heretics, Marius must postpone his apprenticeship to care for his six-year-old brother, whose birth took their mother’s life and whom the villagers, backed by the church, believe will become a “loup garou”—a werewolf.

  ISBN 978-0-8166-9207-1 (pb : alk. paper)

  1. Huguenots–Juvenile fiction. 2. France–History–16th century–Juvenile fiction. [1. Huguenots–Fiction. 2. Brothers–Fiction. 3. Werewolves–Fiction. 4. Catholic Church–France–History–16th century–Fiction. 5. France–History–16th century–Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.C266Cu 2013

  [Fic]–dc23

  2013039466

  Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

  The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.

  20 19 18 17 16 15 14 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  With deep gratitude, I acknowledge the many individuals who left their fingerprints on this book. From reference desk librarians to scholars, from writers and teachers to friends and family—without their hearts and minds, this book truly would not have been possible.

  A special thanks to Christine Charles, our French exchange student; Grandpa Max, who “held down the fort” so I could go to France for research; and to Charles, my husband and photographer, who traveled with me to Provence to explore its landscape and complex history. Merci beaucoup!

  BIRTH TO GRAVE

  SOUTHERN FRANCE

  December 24, 1553

  All night, the Mistral wind blew down from the Alps, damp and chill, and howled through cracks, despite windows shuttered tight against December. At the start of my mother’s birth pangs, Papa had fetched the midwife, who bustled into our one-room dwelling. She joined Madame Troubène at my mother’s bedside, then sent me and Papa downstairs.

  In my father’s smithy, I lay before the fire wishing there was something I could do. Through the overhead floorboards, my mother’s cries rose and fell, quieted for a time, then came again. I wanted to help, to get her a drink of water. Instead, I waited for the midwife to leave.

  Sometime during that long night I drifted off to sleep and my father must have carried me upstairs to my straw-filled mattress. Before dawn, I awoke.

  In the amber light of the hearth’s blazing fire, in the room’s only chair, sat Madame Troubène. She looked so tired that I hardly recognized her, my mother’s nanny, like a grandmother to me. Lines crossed her forehead and tugged at the corners of her gray eyes and mouth.

  “Marius,” she whispered, inviting me closer with a curve of her finger. “Kiss your brother.” In her arms she cradled a tiny bundle.

  Barefooted, I jumped up—strewn rushes protected me from the icy wooden floor—and came nose-to-nose with a sweet-smelling face, red as a ripe apple. The nose, eyes, and lips—everything—were tiny and perfect. “Wh-what’s his name?” I asked.

  “Jean-Pierre,” she said, her voice guarded.

  I smiled at my new brother and touched my forefinger to his nose. Madame Troubène pulled the blanket back from the baby until he squirmed and cried like a lamb. Only then did I remember it was Christmas Eve; soon the villagers would follow the cart with the lamb to church to celebrate Christmas Day.

  “Poor one, this one,” Madame Troubène said, gently caressing the baby’s soft cheeks. “The mark is upon him.”

  “What mark?” I studied my little brother’s body, pink and wrinkled as a newborn mouse. I breathed in his scent—sweet as lavender fields in bloom—but saw no mark.

  She paused, chewed on her wrinkled lips, then spoke. “Why … the mark, the curse … of the loup garou, the werewolf, to be sure.” She lifted her fingers to her forehead and made the sign of the cross over her chest.

  I stared at the baby.

  “Everyone knows that a child born on Christmas Eve is cursed,” she said. “Only God knows what will become of this one.”

  My stomach tightened. I inched back from the baby. The loup garou? Only a short time past, I had helped Madame Troubène bury a wolf’s foot outside the village walls to keep away such evil.

  Suddenly, I longed for my mother, her arms open, ready to draw me close. From somewhere outside, a rooster began to crow. “I want to see my mama,” I said, starting boldly for her bed in the shadowed corner.

  Madame Troubène’s arm stopped me like a thick branch. She was short but solid. With her other arm, she held the baby close against her chest. She kissed the top of the baby’s head, and then, through tears, she slowly shook her head. “Your mother is gone.”

  I stared at my parents’ empty bed.

  “Her strength,” she said, “faded … vanished moments after your brother was born. She died, Marius.”

  My body stiffened. Death meant bodies carted off through village streets, sometimes piled outside the walls until they could be buried. Death meant burnings at the stake or bodies hanging, toes purple and cold. I had touched the bare foot of a hanging man, just once, colder than anything I’d ever felt. Crows pecked flesh clean from the skeletons. Then, and only then, were the bodies—what was left of them—removed from the village. I shuddered. Refused to believe my mother could be dead.

  “Where’s Papa?” I demanded, fists tight against my sleep shirt. I began to shiver uncontrollably. “I want my papa,” I demanded. “I want to see my mama.”

  Wind rattled a shutter, then blew it open, and pale light fell into the room. Low in the distant sky, the moon hung like a halo over Venyre. Madame Troubène rose with the baby and hurried to the window. “I will care for you,” she said. “You and your papa and little Jean-Pierre.” Then she closed the shutters.

  Tears came, blurring everything. I wanted my mother. I wanted to hear the sweet sound of her lute, which she strummed every evening as I drifted to sleep. I wanted to watch her braid and coil her hair, to feel her fingertips gently tickle my sides until I filled with laughter. I dropped to the mattress, buried myself beneath the wool blanket, and began to wail.

  Madame Troubène’s voice came, raised more loudly than my own. “I wouldn’t put this burden on you,” she said, her voice breaking, “but your poor mother’s last words … she made me promise I’d tell you. …”

  Curled beneath the scratchy blanket, tight as a clam in its shell, I stopped crying long enough to listen, my breath trapped in my throat.

  “She said, ‘Tell Marius to take good care of his brother.’”

  THE VILLAGE

  SIX YEARS LATER

  December 12, 1559

  I raced down Venyre’s narrow and winding dirt str
eets, searching for my brother, Jean-Pierre. One moment he was right at my side, and the next he had vanished. Rounding a corner too quickly, I tripped over a woman huddled near a basket, and fell.

  Below the edge of my wool breeches, my knees were scraped red and I wanted to curse, but my mother had taught me to show charity to everyone. “Sorry,” I mumbled, picking myself up from the ground.

  The woman, who was forever cross-eyed, huffed and lifted the edge of her mud-crusted skirt, checking her hem and revealing layers of underskirts and petticoats. She wagged her finger. “Kill my chickens and you’ll have to buy them!” At her feet, five chickens clucked nervously in a round woven cage, which the woman picked up by its handle. She walked away, grumbling, “… barely survive as it is.” Then she called out, “Chickens! Plump chickens!”

  I walked briskly through the square, filled with midday activity, where a crowd formed around a caravan of merchants setting up their wares. Perhaps my brother was there. This was the third time he’d vanished in a week. His sudden disappearances caused me worry, especially with the approach of Christmas Eve.

  “Goods from the Far East!” called one merchant. “China, silks, the finest spices!”

  More and more, the streets and shops of Venyre were filled with goods made beyond the village. Villagers traded olive oil, wool, and wine for strange things, new things. I searched the crowd for a waist-high boy, dark hair cropped above his eyes.

  “Italian pottery!”

  With a sideways glance—I had no need for fancy bowls or expensive spices—I passed merchant stands and walked up rue des Fleurs, a narrow street shaded by two-story houses and shops built tightly side by side. In the shade, the air grew chilly and I shivered.

  Though my hair, like my father’s, covered the nape of my neck and was tied back with a leather string, I pulled my cap—wool-thrummed with gray tufts like down from a bird’s nest—over my ears. My jerkin, shoulders tufted, hung to midthigh; I wore it over two wool shirts and belted it with a cord. I was glad I wasn’t like some, struggling to get through winter in threadbare clothes. Each year, my father bought me and Jean-Pierre a new set of garments.

  Outside a tavern, in a patch of sunlight, two soldiers were laughing. They sported knee-high leather boots with overhanging cuffs and silver buckles.

  I glanced at my simple leather shoes and hurried on. Other boys my age were working as apprentices, learning artisans’ trades as silversmiths, woodcarvers, cobblers, potters, weavers. … At twelve, I was well past the age at which I should have begun to learn a trade. Most boys followed in their father’s footsteps. Everyone respected and needed the skills of the blacksmith; it could be a good trade for me. Someday I’d be more than my brother’s nursemaid.

  Pigeons pecked at crumbs outside the mill owned by Seigneur Beaumont, where most village women bought flour and baked their bread. The smell of baked goods met my nose; I breathed in deeply, could almost taste the fresh, warm loaves. But I kept walking.

  I headed toward the wide wooden door of my father’s blacksmith shop and closed it behind me. Like fog, smoke hung thick in the smithy. My father was pounding at his anvil, his muscles hard and strained as those of a working ox. Coals glimmered red in the forge.

  He looked up with probing dark eyes. A slight smile passed across his bearded face, the way sun peeks through heavy clouds and disappears again. “Marius,” he said.

  Arms at my sides, I clenched my hands into fists. “Have you seen Jean-Pierre?”

  Face smeared with soot, skin flushed and sweat-beaded, my father shook his head. “No, Marius. He’s your responsibility.”

  I was tired beyond words of this reminder. “But Madame Troubène can care for Jean-Pierre. I should start working here, with you.”

  “She’s as old as a tortoise,” Papa said. “She can barely rise from her bed every morning as it is. Soon, we’ll be caring for her, not the other way around. Your brother needs you. Some would harm him, you realize.”

  “Yes,” I replied wearily. Only last year, I had watched soldiers drag two women to the stake to be burned as witches. If someday the villagers became convinced that Jean-Pierre was truly a loup garou … I clamped my arms tightly over my chest and exhaled heavily. If only the midwife had been willing to say that Jean-Pierre was born on Christmas Day, things might have been different; but she prided herself on being a “godly woman” who always spoke the truth. Moments after my brother was born, she must have told the whole village of his Christmas Eve birth. Certainly, my father’s words were true, but putting the burden of my brother’s safety on me wasn’t fair.

  “I’ve heard talk,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean anyone would actually harm him. He’s only a child. Even if he were—”

  “No, don’t say it,” my father scolded. He glanced toward the door.

  My chest grew tight with resentment, tight with holding back all the things I wished I could say to my father. “All you care about is Jean-Pierre,” I blurted, daring to show my real feelings. “What about my apprenticeship?”

  With a slight shifting of my feet, I drew back, even though I knew my father wouldn’t beat me, not like many fathers who regularly reminded their children of their place. Still, I couldn’t stop myself. “Doesn’t my well-being matter at all to you?”

  My father studied me, seemed to look through me to somewhere far beyond. One hand went to his beard, which he kept shorter than most men’s so it wouldn’t catch fire, and he grasped his chin.

  I waited for a reaction, wanted a reaction. Even if he swung at me, that would be better than the distance he kept.

  Finally, he spoke. “It’s not that simple,” he said, meeting my eyes, as if he wanted to say more.

  I hoped he would continue, but he returned to pounding at the anvil. A flurry of sparks flew in the dim light. Leaning hard against the door, I stared beyond him at the fire. At that moment, I hated him and the way he was beyond my reach. “That’s all, then?” I asked, my voice tart.

  My father paused. “I’m thinking on it,” he said, his hand to his chin again. “Marius, times are not what they seem.”

  I let out a frustrated sigh. Were his words meant to comfort me? They left me cold. I sank into my own thoughts. Many times that first year after my mother died, I sat on the wooden bench in front of my father’s fire to heat my body. I watched my father, wanting more from him, but he was quiet and dark as the shop in which he hammered, holding the thing he was working on up to the firelight, as if looking for answers.

  Day by day, he hammered at his anvil, forging metal. He dipped red-hot shapes into water, pounded them into various objects, both ornate and useful: candelabra, bowls, goblets, hinges, armor, chains. … On occasion, he sent me to the monastery to deliver his wares. Most of the time my father was bent over his work, hunched like a tree beneath an unceasing great wind.

  The fire spit a small ember to the edge of the forge. It glowed brightly for a moment, then darkened. Papa didn’t understand, didn’t realize how chained I felt, didn’t see how I’d grown in the past few years. Since late summer, I had nearly reached his height. My shoulders, though about as muscular as a scarecrow’s, were beginning to widen.

  My father’s voice broke the silence. “Marius. Go find your brother.”

  My anger burned. I turned, pushed open the door, and let it slam behind me, leaving the warmth of the smithy behind for the cool December air.

  Maybe Jean-Pierre was a little boy.

  I was not.

  MADAME TROUBÈNE

  “Marius!” called Monsieur Dubois from his butcher’s shop, directly across from the smithy. “Marius Poyet!” Reluctantly, I glanced in his direction. Plucked chickens, wild boar, and sausages hung from his shop rack, food mostly for wealthier merchants and noblemen.

  “Why so long-faced? That brother showing signs, is he?” He laughed deeply, crazily, until he started coughing from his pig-sized belly, covered with a bloodstained apron. Others whispered about my brother, but Monsieur Dubois always teased
—the way boys poke sticks at snakes, scorpions, spiders—just to see what might happen.

  “Devil got your tongue?” Monsieur Dubois called. “Or did he snatch your brother from under your nose?”

  I kept my distance and kept my words to myself. If I stopped too long, I’d be fed an earful of Monsieur Dubois’s expert advice on ways to keep away the loup garou.

  During the summer and fall, harvesting kept everyone occupied, but every winter, villagers turned indoors, and the warmth of their fires stirred up fearful stories. They talked about Christmas Eve, which followed on the heels of the winter solstice, the darkest day, when witches and werewolves gathered deep in the forest to celebrate with the devil himself. Villagers feared, especially on that day, that the loup garou, a human transformed into a bloodthirsty wolf, might enter the village or snatch a traveler from his path and rip open his throat. As Christmas Eve approached, I too had learned to watch my brother more closely.

  Only a day earlier at the well, Martin, the tailor’s son, had said about Jean-Pierre, “Did you see his eyes? More wolf than human.” And it was true. Jean-Pierre’s eyes were an unusual amber color. When the light hit them just right, they nearly glowed.

  And the week before, as we sat on thatched chairs beneath the carved pulpit, Father Arnaud had said, “We must watch carefully for the devil’s handiwork.” Candelabra glowed with the finest beeswax candles. A tiny man, Father Arnaud’s silver eyebrows, hair, and beard framed his pink, nearly translucent skin. He cast a long look at Jean-Pierre. “These are dangerous times,” he said. “Through unconfessed sin, villagers suffer plagues and fall prey to marauding soldiers. They bring it upon themselves. May God protect us!”

  But on this day, I wanted to think about only myself. I wanted to feel my own wishes and dreams, not to shoulder the concerns and fears of everyone else. I ignored Monsieur Dubois and turned to the stairs leading up to our home. Ivy, green even in winter, framed the arched entrance. Slowly, I climbed the stone steps, my thoughts heavy as storm clouds. I pushed open the door.