St. Bartholomew's Day

Elizabeth slumped against the brick wall, her heart hammering her eardrums. That late August night, the air was thick and warm, a labor to move it in and out of her lungs as she had sprinted several streets from her home. She looked disheveled. Her sandy blonde hair had fallen loose from its plait and slicked back by sweat from her brow. The leather shoes she had stolen from her father at odds with her dress of thick black lace draped over the yellow silk. Perhaps with some preternatural foresight, she had dressed in mourner’s black before anyone had died. She continued to grab at her left arm, ensuring that the white band fastened around her bicep was still there. At first, she checked only when she heard a scream or shout cut the night; but the screaming and yelling and the wailing and the banging no longer broke for even moment. So, she began checking whenever it occurred to her, which was quite often.

Her breath as steady as she hoped to make it, Elizabeth gathered her skirts in her arm, cradling them like an infant. With her free hand she untied the cloth from around her thigh. It crossed her mind that he would not come that night as they had agreed. Surely, she thought, he had heard—as she had—that the admiral had been killed, his body thrown from the window of his home and into the streets. Surely, he had heard that the Catholics were killing any Protestant they saw. Surely, he would have the sense to stay inside and hide. Still, even though she had convinced herself he would not come, she waited, spinning the extra band between pinched fingers.

The streetlamp above her head gave the bricks and their blanket of vines a yellow tinge. She considered finding a darker place to wait, since, surely, he would not come anyways. Elizabeth was still on the wall, spinning the band when she saw a figure approaching with his head hung in a grave way. She jolted up. The man’s head hung, all she could see was the black cap over his cropped brown curls.

“Jaques,” she whispered.

The figure glanced up. His face looked odd, so like his and so not. She couldn’t tell if the sickly hue was from the lamp or a symptom of his fate. It took a moment for the smile to form on his lips and another for it to reach his eyes. “Betty,” he replied. He moved with a light bounce in his step as he closed the distance between them, took her face in his hands and kissed her. “I wasn’t sure you would come.”

“Of course I came.” Elizabeth’s gaze fell to his black pants and purple sleeves streaked with mud.

“I fell,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

Elizabeth had stopped spinning the cloth and instead wrung it between clenched fists.

“Listen, Betty, I came to say goodbye.”

She cocked her head. “Goodbye?” Elizabeth let out a breath that could have been mistaken for a cry or a laugh. “Where are you going?”

His thumb traced the line of her cheekbone, from ear to nose and back again. He was always touching her face, as though he was trying to memorize it. At night, as they lay wrapped in each other’s arms, and he thought she was asleep, she would feel his fingers sliding along the curve of her nose and lips.

Jacques wore a dreamy smile that made Elizabeth wonder if he could hear the screaming and the yelling and the wailing and the banging. She wondered if he could hear at all when he said, “I love you, Betty. Do you remember when we first met?”

Elizabeth lifted the band between their faces. “I stole this for you,” she said. “If you wear it, they’ll think you’re Catholic.”

“I do,” he said, answering his own question. “I was on my way home when I saw you outside the church dressed in white. Well, I thought you were so beautiful I just had to stick around and see who the lucky bastard marrying you was. Wasn’t until you asked me for directions that I realized you weren’t a bride, but an angel.”

Elizabeth frowned. “Stop it.”

“I love you, Betty.”

“Jacques, stop it.” She gestured with the band between them. “Just put it on. Until it’s all over.”

“When will it be over?”

“In the morning,” she said, and he began to shake his head. “In a week, in a month, in a year. I do not pretend to know when, but I know it will end, it must.”

“I cannot do it, Betty. I wish I could,” he said. His eyes were on the ground rather than her. “But I cannot lie for an hour, let alone years. I do not have it in me.”

Elizabeth slipped her arm around his back and began to wrap the band above his elbow. If he could not bring himself to, she would do it herself. She was beginning to fasten the knot when his one hand slipped from her cheek around her neck. Two of his fingers hooked the fabric of the band and began to peel it back. “You need to go home, Betty. If they find you with me, they’ll kill us both.”

“They won’t kill either of us if you just wear it.”

“I cannot do that.”

Elizabeth eased her tugging slightly, afraid they would rip the fabric, and then there would be nothing to do but give him hers—and she could never convince him to do that. Still, she held on enough that he could not tear it away. “Could you, just once, not stand on your morals and think logically?”

Jacques tilted her chin back so they were looking in each other’s eyes. “It isn’t about morals.” He leaned down, so the tips of their noses brushed each other. “I only wished to say goodbye.” With that, he placed a final kiss on her lips, tugged the band free from her hands, and slipped into the night.

Elizabeth stood staring at her hands, which had failed to hold him. Still, he had taken the band. That was some small solace. Perhaps, she told herself, seeing the remnants of the massacre in the streets, the violence and the blood, would knock some sense into him. She told herself that he had put it on. That the discarded band she had seen on her slow march home had belonged to someone else. That he had fled the city and settled far away. That was why she never saw him again.