You can now read her full origin story below, pertinent to her character in
Emelyn Morley and the Waking Dark
In the rainy summer of 1528, in the town of Chinon, where the Vienne River winds through the French countryside, Vaela Audette de Massein was born. Her father, the Baron de Massein, had been long renowned for his stable of golden Arabian horses, and dwelt with his family in the beautiful Château de la Croisée, a 13th century Angevin fortress nestled in the bend of the river. From her Saracen mother, Vaela inherited striking features: raven hair and large, deep brown eyes, and though her mother Maryanne was cool in her affections, she was quick to exhibit her daughter’s sweetness and quiet demeanour to any and all company.
Alas, her father’s storied stables were depleted to the last when Vaela was yet an infant. The Baron had become entangled in a vicious rivalry of wagers with the Duc de Blois, after the Duc’s insinuation that Saracen horses had no place at French court. This Massein had taken to be a slight against his wife, and after many lesser losses and triumphs hunting both stag and boar against the Duc and his party, Vaela’s father sought to settle the matter once and for all. Against the pleadings of his wife he bet his entire stable against that of his rival, the winner to be determined at a grand hunting tournament hosted by King Francis I. Trusting to the superior speed and agility of his Arabian, the Baron aimed to take the grandest prize at the outset, but in charging down a magnificent stag his horse was frightened by a boar across its path, and he was thrown. With cracked ribs and a broken collar for his trouble, the Baron woke to find he had lost the tournament. Not only his stables, but great sums he had wagered upon himself were dissolved in the bargain, and his estate was left with little more than the castle itself. Generous ridicule was heaped upon him at court, and all his boasting plans for the French stable turned to ash in his mouth.
When Vaela was but two years old, her mother secured a position as lady-in-waiting to King Francis's new queen. Witnessing the king's indifference to his childless bride, Maryanne determined that her own daughter was to be shielded from any such fate, and took it upon herself to groom little Vaela for an advantageous marriage, in hope of restoring the family's diminished fortunes.
Despite the financial decline of the house of Massein, Vaela enjoyed rare privileges for a girl of her time, including early education, though owing to her mother’s grievous fall from a horse, she was neither taught nor allowed to ride. Her closest companions were her brothers: Martin, the elder, and Marcel, the younger. When her governess was dismissed due to mounting debts, Vaela's curious mind found other ways to learn, particularly through Martin's tutelage in natural history, by which she took to memorizing the Latin names of flora and fauna. This precious fellowship ended in 1538 when Martin departed for an academy in Lyon, pursuing a military career that would take him far from home. Yet recovering from the long grasp of her injuries, Maryanne took the departure of her favourite son very hard, and cleaved to social diversions rather than spending time with her remaining children.
As the family's resources continued to wane, they were forced to lease portions of their estate, finding for tenants the agents of an eccentric merchant financier who would only take meetings at night. Obliged to decamp to the upper floors of the castle, Vaela’s parents grew increasingly short of temper, caught up in the strain of closer quarters, and with no idea to surrender her luxuries or rehire a governess, Maryanne prevailed upon her husband to have Vaela, now thirteen, given responsibility for Marcel's education after his tutors were dismissed. The siblings grew inseparable until the cruel winter of 1541, when Marcel fell ill. Vaela remained devotedly at his bedside until he passed in the early hours of the new year.
His son's death left the Baron utterly despondent, and thereafter increasingly malleable to his wife's demands. Despite their mounting debts, Maryanne dressed her teenage daughter in the finest fashions, parading her at every court function until under an auspicious moon by the light of palace candles her efforts bore fruit: the Compte d’ Orognac, known as Le Duc des Coupes after his fondness for drink, took special notice of young Vaela’s demure beauty and striking dark eyes. For her part, by now more accustomed to affection from servants than parents, Vaela was captivated by his theatrical displays of kindness and attention.
Their wedding in the Spring of 1544 marked sixteen-year-old Vaela's transition to life in Aquitaine, where within earshot of the rapid Dordogne river, among the hills of Périgord Noir, she found the lush parklands of Château-Rone much to her liking. Initially, this life of marriage agreed with her, and the Compte’s tender felicities warmed her heart. Here all the grounds were her own to wander, without restriction, save her husband’s promise to Maryanne that he would keep her from riding, and Vaela’s indifference to it. The elaborate gardens affected her deeply, and she spent luxurious hours in the study of nature, Latin, and poetry. A year passed, and with it came close friendship with the Compte’s younger sister Davine, who visited often with her twin boys and baby girl, which for a time promised joy and harmony enough for all. But after two years, and Vaela not yet with child, her husband’s demands for an heir became more pointed; consultations with doctors, and every accessory treatment suggested by her mother, brought no progress, and the Compte's felicitous demeanour darkened. After three years of marriage without issue he declared her barren, and took to spending most of his time with Davine and her brood, leaving Vaela to fill long days on her own, her spirits flagging under the weight of her circumstances. Her letters home went often unanswered, days of reading and solitary walks began to lose their lustre, and more and more she would sit idle, staring over the drive lest she miss some sign of the Compte’s return.
And return he did, but not in the way she hoped. Again tragedy played its card, and in the Spring of 1548 the Compte’s sister, anticipating her third son, died in childbirth. After an absence of nearly six months the Compte climbed down from his carriage in a drunken haze, scarcely acknowledging Vaela’s expectant kiss as he entered Château-Rone for the last time, in search of a drink. A broken man, he increasingly shut her out in the weeks that followed, alternating between violent outburst and deep withdrawal. Vaela dedicated herself to his care, but as a patient he proved aggressively uncooperative, and in the end she could do little more than languish outside the locked door of his chambers. Not six weeks after his return, following a particularly egregious night of indulgence, he died in his bed before dawn.
Suspected of complicity in his death by her husband’s family, and afraid for her life, Vaela fled back home, where she found little of the sympathy she might have expected. Devastated by the loss of so critical an alliance, her parents imprisoned her in the upper chambers of the ill-used south tower, overlooking the boiling curve of the river below. Her mother managed only the barest of sympathy for her daughter’s plight, and as Vaela was more likely to choose miserable silence over making her own defence, Maryanne soon found her entirely at fault.
Vaela’s banishment was, at first, not strictly enforced, and she was allowed still her garden walks. Finding herself a widow at only nineteen years of age, she hoped against hope to make some new gentleman’s acquaintance, imagining a man of worthy noble breeding and, most critically, of merciful and understanding heart, who might deliver her to honourable marriage once again. But her captivity only worsened; soon books, meals and other necessities were brought to her, and she was kept increasingly hidden from those within gossip’s reach of the scandal. Her most regular visits were from the family confessor, a priest summoned to help the wayward Vaela atone for the sins of barrenness and neglect of her husband, that her soul might be saved. Meanwhile prominent voices at court suggested the Masseins had tricked the Compte into marrying “la fille stérile et venimeuse,” a sterile and venomous girl who had surely hastened his death.
As her isolation deepened, the quiet hope for better things seeped away, and beside her strict regimen of prayers Vaela took to crafting cloth dolls for some sense of companionship. These she confided in and lectured to on things she read or remembered, until even to speak aloud became an activity foreign, and she heard the sound of her own voice less and less. By her twenty-fifth year the confessor had quit his post, declaring hers “une âme remplie d'oisiveté, sans trace de contrition ni de remords. [a soul full of idleness, expressive of neither contrition nor remorse.]”
The days stretched, the nights lingered, and she spent countless hours at her prison window watching the sky, or the curling wend of the river. Time and again she saw, or imagined she saw, a man in black on the dark grounds below, returning her gaze. Some nights she watched him unceasingly, staring down as he stared up, until in a long blink she lost him, and found herself wondering whether he’d ever really been there. Her parents matured into their sickly grey with bitterness, speaking no more of their barren daughter, widowed too young, and lamenting instead of their eldest son’s estrangement—Martin’s protest for the ill-treatment of his sister. But the Baron and his wife could not forgive the ruin of their prospects, nor especially the loss of their place at court, and continued to put the blame to Vaela, with her father’s ruinous gambling long forgotten.
That is until the night she disappeared. By 1557 Vaela Audette had been nearly ten years confined to the tower, and so it was on the eve of her twenty-ninth October birthday, that she opened wide the casement shutters of her window, and wearing only a thin black robe she sat on the sill, turned to face the darkness, and jumped.
The story told of that night, in Chinon and for many leagues around, was that the mad daughter of the fallen house of Massein had thrown herself from her window, to dash upon the rocks below. But not so much as a single raven hair was ever recovered. All that remained was a cryptic note, pinned in parchment to her desk… yet even this soon disappeared.
‘L'homme estoit encore là hier au soir, je le pouvois presque voir dans l'obscurité au-dessous. Peut-estre le rencontreray-je au Ciel. Je veux renaistre.’
'The man was there again last night, I could almost see him in the dark below. Perhaps I shall meet him in Heaven. I want to live again.'
