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I want you to be free.
Don’t want to be free want to be with you.
— Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson.
Lestat doesn’t dare breathe, the first time. Doesn’t blink, or flinch, or run. She’s a spectator, that’s all, her world gone dreamlike: Fingers on her chest, her face, her thigh. They wish to worship you, a voice says, her mother’s hand warm when it slips beneath a tear in her pant leg. She forgets to let the pleasure register; it’s all fever sweat and the stench of stale blood, infection taking root the longer she sits, untended, in her own filth.
It leaves her dizzy, uneasy, the distant, dull pain and the burn of bile overshadowed only by the simple comfort of Gabriella’s attention, the glint of pride in her mother’s eye, Lestat’s success a triumph shared. Your father and your brothers, bent with shame. Such seldom joy, so raw, so naked. Who was she to deny her mother her celebrations?
Wolfkiller, the town cries. Wolfkiller, wolfkiller! No repulsion now, no outrage; their judgement dies in the face of their relief. No longer the brat untamed, no longer a disgrace—she’s their saviour, their champion, brave, bold, valiant Lestat, Auvergne’s unsuspecting heroine.
My perfect creation, Gabriella calls her. The second time is different: softer, somehow, her mother uncharacteristically gentle as she traces Lestat’s half-healed wounds, the pads of her fingertips a barely-there pressure, hands like tendrils, everywhere, all at once, their touch enough to make Lestat ache. They ghost along her inner thigh, across the ridge of one wound, another. It turns her mouth dry. It makes her legs shake.
This time, she misses it when Gabriella pulls her hands away.
Third time, fourth time. Six, seven, eight, nine. Why keep count? Footsteps in the hallway, quiet coughing by her door. It’s innocent, she swears it. Innocuous. So her mother shares her bed—so what? It keeps her out of the Marquis’. It keeps her close to me. Back pressed to her mother’s chest, fingers between her thighs. So tender, this Gabriella, so tolerant. The doting mother she’d always wanted.
The nights Gabriella doesn’t come, Lestat can’t sleep. She tosses and turns and grows wet with want, hips grinding against nothing, insides empty, aching, as if a part of her has gone missing. Unbearable longing, never-ending need. She tries only once to finish the job herself—spends hours in the night rutting against her mattress, her own hand, her mother’s hand-me-down dress. Memory of a murmur: My wolfkiller. A desperate, frantic, tear-stained mess; she’d choked on her hatred, her hunger, the hollow pit of unattainable relief.
Better to tear out of bed at dawn, to take her flintlock, her musket, her new pup. Death and conquest, a title to keep. Better to be what her mother moulded her to be.
Winter to spring, back again. “You’ll leave this place,” Gabriella tells her, then holds her still when she attempts to protest, to turn toward her, her arm tight across Lestat’s torso, her fingers perched at the base of Lestat’s neck.
“No, Mother,” Lestat says. Panic in her lungs. “No, I ca—”
“You can.” Warm, damp breath on her back, her mother’s smile hidden against her shoulder. Gabriella drags a finger from the dip of Lestat’s throat to the centre of her chest, the curve of her breast. The wound the wolves left rests perfectly in the palm of her hand. “You can do anything.”
They were feeble in the eyes of the others—fragile, frail, weak, woman. A curse shared in her father’s house, Gabriella her ally, her advocate, the single supporting voice in a chorus of condemnation. Guns, dogs, hares. You’ll hunt the land, she’d said, then made it happen. You are stronger than the rest of them. Too late, it’d seemed, to save herself. Too late then, too late now.
The sickness is in her breath; this close, Lestat can hear it. The wet rattle. Blood in the lungs, iron in the air.
“You will go,” Gabriella says again. Steadfast and stubborn, her mother, with no time for Lestat’s objections, her daughter’s defiance unwelcome when focused in her direction. “I have procured your funds for travel. You will go to Paris. You will fi—”
A hundred nights shared in this bed, and not once had her mother ever let her touch her. To Hell with it.
Lestat turns, too quick, too strong, to stop, and plunges forward, grappling and desperate, her tears catching in her lashes as her mouth meets Gabriella’s, her touch callow, the kiss awkward. She wants to beg, to plead, to fall at Gabriella’s feet and say Come with me, Mother, as I’ve always dreamed. But already that rattling cough is back. Already Gabriella has pushed her away, body heaving with the effort, her energy drained.
Smell of death approaching. She can taste it in her teeth.
Lestat presses closer, burrows in, grateful, almost, that Gabriella’s too weak to fight it. She clings, childlike in her desperation, her anguish, this wave of rising fear. Ear to her mother’s chest, she listens for that wet, wheezing breath, tears finally coming free.
“You’ll go,” Gabriella says, a whisper in her ear. “For me, you will go. Promise me.”
Limbs entwined beneath her bedding, fingers combing through her hair. Lestat breathes, and settles, and shakes her head.
But still, she says, “Yes.”