Page 71 of The Strawberry Thief
The Crow
1
I know a story about a sad boy who was turned into a crow. He was not really abadboy, but badness and sadness are two black birds that always fly together. And as his sadness grew, so did his conviction that he was bad, and undeserving of anything. And, little by little, it turned the boy into a harsh and raucous bird, feeding on carrion, mocking the weak, envying their happiness.
Narcisse told me that story, of course. He told me so many stories. Stories of a girl like me: stories of a wicked witch. Now I know that the girl was Mimi, and the witch was Tante Anna. And stories of a sad crow, who I think was Francis Reynaud.
The crow had a deep, dark secret. It was even darker than the secret that had turned him into a crow in the first place. And he carried this secret with him, softly and sadly, wherever he went, in the form of a single pale feather, hidden away under his wing. No-one saw it but the crow. And yet it made him different. It made him long for the boy he had been. It made him long for sweeter things. And it made him long for love, though love was forever out of reach.
He was standing on the lip, looking into the darkness. He’d picked up a piece of metal from the ground; now he dropped it into the well, and I heard the splash from deep underground. I watched from the bushes, not knowing quite what to do or to say. Narcisse had warned me about that old well, how deep it was, how dangerous. And I still couldn’t quite believe what Reynaud was thinking of doing …
I made a little magpie noise from my hiding-place behind the trees. Reynaud didn’t hear it. The wind was quiet as a sleeping mouse. I knew I needed something more. But would Reynaud listen to me? Or would my appearance make him fall?
I summoned my new, commanding voice and stepped out into the clearing.
I said: ‘It’s me, Monsieur le Curé. I can forgive your trespasses. But you have to get down from there.’
For a second, I thought Reynaud might jump. He turned, and wobbled on the lip of the well. His eyes were wide as windows. I came a little closer. Now I was by the side of the well. I looked up at Reynaud and said: ‘Come down from there. You’ll fall.’
He looked at me. I could tell he wasn’t really sure if I was there or not. He said:
‘Rosette Rocher? Is that you?’
I nodded.
‘But you can talk.’
‘Of course I can. Now please, come down.’
He shook his head.
I tried to read his colours again. Reynaud has never been easy. There’s so much background noise in him – nothing’s ever simple. But now he was nothing but pain and regret – swirling purples and crimson and black – and I realized that if I had been even a minute later, he would have jumped into the well, and died there in the darkness.
‘You don’t want to jump,’ I said.
He laughed. It wasn’t a happy laugh. ‘I have the mark of Cain,’ he said. ‘You want to know what it looks like?’ And he pushed up the sleeve of his soutane and showed me a patch of pink skin on his arm. ‘She gave me this, to help me,’ he said. ‘She said it was what I needed.’ Then he gave that laugh again, that sounded like something breaking.
‘You mean Morgane?’
He nodded. ‘She said it would reveal something. Something that I needed to know. But when I looked, there was nothing there. But I can still feel it. The mark of Cain. And now—’
I took his hand. ‘Get down.’
‘You don’t know what I did, Rosette. If you knew, you’d hate me.’
I wondered. I didn’t think that was true. You don’t just suddenly hate someone, even when they’ve done something bad. It’s like Yannick, trespassing in my wood. Or Pilou, avoiding me because of his silly girlfriend. People sometimes do bad things. It doesn’t make them bad people. But I could hear footsteps on the path, and I knew what that meant. It meant I didn’t have much time before someone interrupted us.
‘Get down, Monsieur le Curé,’ I said. ‘No-one hates you. Not even—’
And then there came the rustling sound of someone entering the clearing, and I saw Roux and Joséphine standing on the strawberry path. Reynaud gave a tiny moan, and I felt him pull away from me. And so I grabbed at hissoutaneand dragged him backwards as hard as I could, so that he lost his balance and fell into the grass and the strawberries.
Roux was carrying Narcisse’s file. Joséphine was holding his hand. Roux’s colours were angry and confused; Joséphine’s were frightened and soft. She ran over to Reynaud, who was sitting in the grass where he’d fallen, his face in his hands.
‘Are you all right, Francis? Are you hurt?’
Reynaud didn’t say anything. He just sat there in the grass, looking like he wanted to die.
‘Why did you run?’ she went on. ‘We looked for you for ages. And then we found your folder, where you’d dropped it on the path, and followed you here. What’s going on?’
