Isola

by Allegra Goodman

Vanity, vanity, taught Madame D’Artois. Everything we treasure has a price. And everything we have will slip away. She told us we were dust and our lives brief as grass. We might understand this if we were truly wise—but I lacked wisdom.

Don’t you think him handsome? Alys had asked. And I had answered that I did not think of him at all. Of course, I had not considered him, but that was when I walked upon the ground. I was unmoored now, floating without a home or dowry or prospect of a family. In this place that was no place, I did think about the dark-eyed secretary. I believe in symmetry, he said. He was serious but young enough to look on the world hopefully. He was reserved but had risked speaking to me.

“Do you say you are not deserving?” Damienne demanded. Such was her loyalty, taking offense on my own behalf. “I used to think she was an angel, the way you spoke of her.” “She was beautiful and good,” said Damienne, “and she was my sweet mistress, but you are my child.”

I did not deserve to see such beauty, and yet this wonder spread itself before me. And I felt God’s presence as I had never done in grief and anger; I knew it in my insignificance. I had given up, and yet God came to me in winter and in ice, in the hard world and in the night. I asked myself, How could it be? But I could not doubt what I was witnessing. I thought, Judge by what you hear. Judge by what you see. “Forgive me,” I called out, and I meant forgive my lack of faith, my anger, and my willfulness—but most of all, I begged forgiveness for hiding in my cave. Silently, I pleaded, Raise me. Bring me back. Gather me as the tide gathers shards of ice. This was my prayer. Not for rescue or escape, but for my soul, which had been sick. I gazed at waves rising and shattering, and this was my resolve—to remember myself as God remembered me.