TE17 Mysterious Montenegro

Join the Dance novel excerpt by Jean Teulé Translated from French by Clayton McKee

Chapter 1

Strasbourg — July 12, 1518

Rue du Jeu-des-Enfants, a woman leaves a house with her child under her arm. She’s blonde, spotted with freckles on her nose and her cheeks no doubt due to the day’s still-blistering sun just before noon. Cradled into her arm, the overwhelmed child of three months makes faces. The very thin young mother extends the fingers of her right hand over the forehead of the littleoneas a visor, protecting him from the light. Pale, without bedazzlement or luxury—a gray, burlap dress and a used, large, black veil wrapped around the nude child whose skin is so very fragile— her steps guide her down the street accompanied by a regular impact of clogs amongst rotting excrement, rank odors, and swarms of flies. People in rags pound on the unopened door of a sanctuary in a square surrounded by timber façades. The child shudders. The blonde woman covers his ears. He folds his lips to cry, she places her index finger over them and crosses the empty marketplace with nothing in the stalls. Presently, the mother’s ankles twist the whole way down a larger road paved with round cobblestones under arches until reaching an official, imposing building crowned with a red and white weathervane, the city’s colors. She continues straight and gets to a covered bridge in the shadow of the ramparts. In the middle of this footbridge, she stops and throws her child into the river. In a wave laden with

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