Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [210]
Choufleur had turned from her toward the window. The light was so bright it seemed to burn the features from his face. He looked back at her with his eyes full of sunspots.
“See?” he said, pointing a finger. “See how he marked you?”
Nanon glanced at herself. The streaming sun had picked out the faint white scars here and there on her skin—they were scarcely noticeable in dimmer light. Sometimes the Sieur Maltrot had burned her with the coal of his cheroot, all the while appraising her for a response. Sometimes he would make a shallow cut on her belly or buttock or on the soft skin inside her upper arm or thigh, then press his thin lips to the wound and batten on her blood. We will wipe out everything that has been before —she aimed the thought at Choufleur, but did not speak it. She had not remembered those pale scars since coming here, nor had he seemed to notice them.
“Jean-Michel,” she said, calmly as she could manage. “You are not yourself.”
Choufleur looked down at her with the frosty detachment she knew from his father. At this moment all his features belonged to the Sieur Maltrot. Only his eyes and the freckles were his own.
“Am I not?” he said.
Nanon reached for the hem of the sheet and drew it up to cover herself, but her movement seemed to release him from his stasis. He pounced, snatching the sheet from her hand, catching one wrist and pinning it down in the bedding. Not this. She fought him, flailing and clawing with the free hand and kicking her legs out in all directions, but he trapped the other hand soon enough, so that she could not help herself. Her heels were drumming on his back, her struggles merged with his excitement. In the lull that followed, it was her own response that angered her as much as his mistreatment. She pushed him away sharply.
“You want your snuffbox, do you?” she shrilled. “What have you done with my son? You have not killed him—you would not dare to kill him! And as he lives, so will I go to find him—”
Choufleur, his face swollen, was tearing a strip from the sheet. Alarmed, Nanon caught her robe from the bedpost and darted for the door, but he was too quick and strong for her to escape him. He gagged her with one piece of the sheet and tied her hands behind her with another. He threw her face down on the bed, stood panting, and jerked on his clothes.
Outside the room she heard him berating the house servants who were offering him coffee, an omelette—Get out! Why are you loitering here! Leave us our peace and our privacy! Then silence. Nanon lay numb. She did not stir from the position where he’d left her. Her hands throbbed in the binding. The sheet was damp and frothy in her mouth.
After a time Choufleur came into the room again, kicking the door shut behind him. There was a clatter of metal falling on the floor. Something in that sound made Nanon turn over and wriggle up against the headboard. Choufleur was coming toward her with an iron collar open in his hands; the chain attached to it rattled over the floor. Nanon shook her head wildly, and squirmed away into the corner, but there was nowhere to go. He shut the collar around her neck, and pounded a fat rivet into the rings to close it, the two metals melding together. The blows of the hammer bruised her shoulders. She closed her eyes and bit into her lip. There was more rattling, as Choufleur locked the free end of the chain around a bedpost.
She opened her eyes. He stood at a little distance, studying her with apparent