Free Goddess by Kelly Gardiner Page A

the kitchen gate. There are no fathers here to stop them, curse them, beat them. Only Him, and Julie is willing to risk even His wrath. For this. For Clara.
    ‘There’s a story,’ she says, ‘written down by one of the old Romans, about two girls who are meant for each other. Iphis and Ianthe, they were called. Iphis grew up as a boy, just like me, and they fall in love, by accident almost. I know the poem—every word.’
    ‘Tell me.’
    Their heads are close together, their breath mingles.
    ‘Love came to both of them together in simple innocence, and filled their hearts with equal longing.’ Julie quotes the old Roman, but leaves out parts of Iphis’s story: the despair, the longing, the excoriation of the soul. Instead she smiles. ‘You see?’
    ‘So we are not alone?’
    Clara’s eyes glitter in the moonlight. Julie wonders if perhaps she is an angel. If perhaps she is crying. She moves a little closer until their thighs touch.
    ‘Iphis and her mother pray, all night, to one of the pagan goddesses.’
    ‘Blasphemy.’
    ‘Never mind,’ says Julie. ‘Let me finish the story.’
    ‘They are cured?’
    ‘No, of course not. They don’t want to be cured. Do you?’
    ‘Sometimes.’
    ‘That’s not the right answer, Clara.’
    ‘Forgive me, but it hurts, to think of it all.’
    ‘Then don’t think. Just hold my hand and listen.’ She does. ‘So they pray all night, Iphis and her mother both.’
    ‘You can read Latin?’
    ‘Yes. But I read it in French. In a romance. Some fellow had rewritten it.’
    ‘You are a wonder.’
    ‘You’re not concentrating.’
    Clara giggles. Julie has never heard such divine music. Her chest aches so much she needs to take a deep breath before she can go on.
    ‘They pray to Diana or one of those old naked goddesses—’
    ‘Now you’re being wicked.’
    ‘She grants their wish so Iphis becomes a boy, after all.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Would I lie to you?’
    Clara leans back against the cold stone wall and stares up at the stars, the outline of the chapel dome, the palm trees.
    ‘But it’s just a story,’ she says at last. ‘It didn’t really happen.’
    ‘You never know with those Romans.’
    ‘We can’t pray to their goddess.’
    ‘We could try Saint Jude.’ Julie nudges Clara’s shoulder with her own. ‘Or Saint Catherine.’
    ‘You’re teasing me.’
    ‘Perhaps.’ She grins.
    Silence. The half moon is now high over the convent wall. Clara shivers. She has always been good—even her mother said so, during the violent family tempest that brought her here. She’d always imagined herself godly and pure. But she was wrong. Inside her was a demon—red with black eyes, like those painted in her Book of Hours. She feels it writhe; it warms her skin, makes her breath shudder. Perhaps it’s been there all the time and she had no idea. Perhaps it arrived with the Opéra. Now it claws at her, pinches her cheeks, leaves her aching. She tries to cast it out—with herbs, with prayer, with tears of repentance. It won’t go. She won’t let it.
    It’s worse, and much better, when she’s with Julie. She despairs in the demon’s delight, quivers under its touch, nearly weeps with fear. She won’t listen to its whispering, to its promise. She will not let it touch her.
    It’s not Julie’s fault. The red demon is hers alone. She will pray for them both, like Iphis, unsure what she’ll do if God answers.
    ‘Would you like to turn into a boy, Julie?’
    ‘No, not really. I’d rather be as I am. But somewhere else. With you.’

Act 2, Scene 3
Recitative
    H ERE YOU ARE AGAIN . Well, well. Here we both are—me in the sunlight, bare feet in the grass, for possibly the last time.
    Couldn’t stand lying in that room another moment. It smells of death … of me. I never used to smell like this. The stench alone is enough to kill me. And I’m sick of staring at that dying man hanging over the door. I’m sure he’s sick of me, too.
    So I had the laundresses