Belle Morte Bites (Belle Morte 4.3)

That Familiar Silence

Carcassonne, France, 1421

At first, Ysanne Moreau wasn't sure what had woken her.

She scrubbed sleep from her eyes and pushed tangles of blonde hair off her face, debating burrowing back into the warmth of her bed.

Something was wrong, though.

Something had woken her.

Then she realised.

The house was too quiet.

There was no sound of her baby brother crying. But Joachim always cried. For the whole four days of his life so far, he'd done nothing but cry.

Now, silence.

Ysanne's heart turned cold.

It was a silence she knew only too well.

She climbed out of bed and made her way to her parents' room, pausing outside their door. It swung open before she could knock, and the solid shape of her father filled the doorway. He was breathing hard, his fists clenched at his sides, and Ysanne wondered if this would be the time that his rage spilled over and he finally struck her.

"Joachim . . ." She couldn't find words beyond his name.

Pierre Moreau's face darkened. He pushed past her, knocking her against the door-frame.

Ysanne looked into the room.

Victoire Moreau sat in bed, her hair twisted into a loose knot at the nape of her neck, her face utterly blank. At the foot of the bed was a small bundle, wrapped in a woollen blanket, and any hope that Ysanne might have clung to slipped through her fingers.

Another brother dead.

"What happened?" she said, creeping into the room.

Her mother didn't respond.

The first time, she'd lost a baby, Victoire had wept. She'd wept for the second and third and the fourth, but by the fifth the tears had stopped coming. Now, on this seventh death, her eyes were empty.

"Mother?" Ysanne touched her hand, but Victoire didn't respond. Her skin was cold. A slow blink was the only sign that she still lived.

Ysanne looked at the blanket-wrapped bundle. She should be used to losing siblings by now, but the pain of it was a shard of glass in her heart. She blinked back tears.

She climbed onto the bed and tried to hug her mother, but Victoire was as stiff and unyielding as wood.

Pierre strode back into the room, and scooped Joachim's body into his arms. He looked as though he was about to say something, then his eyes landed on Ysanne's, and she was sure she saw a flash of something that could only be described as hate.

Ysanne shrank back.

She'd always known that her father had been disappointed that his firstborn was female. He wanted a son, a hearty, strong boy to follow in his father's footsteps and carry on the family name. Instead he'd got Ysanne. He'd never been cruel to her, but he also hadn't masked his relief when, after two miscarriages, Victoire finally delivered a boy. Named after his father, baby Pierre hadn't survived his first birthday.

And so it had continued, throughout the fifteen years of Ysanne's life. Victoire birthed sons, but none of them survived, and every time one of them died, Pierre grew colder and harder towards his daughter, looking at her with undisguised anger, as if it was somehow her fault that she was stronger than her brothers.

Now, pinned under the weight of her father's glare, Ysanne realised something.

Victoire wasn't getting any younger, and her body was worn out from birthing child after child after child. Pierre was running out of time to secure his cherished male heir. If he could have sacrificed Ysanne's life in order to save Joachim's, she was quite sure he would do it without a second's hesitation.