Wild Cevennes. 1400. A middle-aged woman living alone. You can only go home after a long walk through the forest. We respect it, but we fear it. "Witch" is heard muttering. When we mention it, the villagers sign themselves. Maria. Nothing but his name seems to them a sacrilege. His very physique is inspired by the Devil. Busty, with long hair of fire. But the men pay her to sleep with her. Women pay for it to extract strange ointments for the skin. The children are fascinated by its beauty and its landmark filled with heterogeneous and odd objects. She welcomes all this little world with a flawless sweetness. Some people walk several days to meet her.
Indeed, she is also recognized for her "talents" and her discretion as an angel maker. Even the richest and most middle-class women use her services. Everyone knows it, everyone is silent. The older ones whisper the place of his hut to the younger ones. She had appeared one day, a few years ago, nobody knew where she came from, no one wanted to know.
Autumn, hide and seek the sun through the branches. Silence, except the steady sound of footsteps crunching on the thick carpet of dead leaves. An old lady holding hands, or rather trailing, a very young girl, even a little girl. The latter has a prominent belly. She cries noiselessly, she seems terrified. Maria is waiting outside, indecipherable look.
She guessed that a child would arrive today. She waited and was not mistaken. She knows the Old Woman. She has already brought her patients. Girls of joy most often. But here it's different, she knows it. Clotilde releases an aura of unbearable suffering. She became pregnant after a rape. That of his father. It is he who ordered the "thing" to be thrown away, or it would be the little one who would disappear. A father who is a rapist, but does not wish to have a job on his name. While the girl is only a few meters away, Maria frowns. The pregnancy is advanced; the operation is going to be tricky. Especially as the youth, and the narrowness of the child's pelvis are all factors of danger for his life. When the woman is newly pregnant, it is enough that it makes him absorb a light poison and that it inserts a thin pointed stick into the hole to trigger the bleeding. Except that the fetus must be at least six months, maybe seven. Maria will have to start delivery with a very strong infusion, and probably kill the viable infant right out of her mother's hot, bloody belly. She is furious that the Old Woman has not come before with the girl. She hates doing that.
She brings the two women back into her cottage and stretches out Clotilde. She takes her pulse, breathes her breath, observes the color of her eyes. She deftly feels the tense belly in order to take a mental note of the size and position of the fetus. He is not quite well placed yet and moves in an incredible way. Maria grunts outright, the operation seems more and more difficult. None of the other two women dare to talk to him, let alone question him about the reason for his grunts. To tell the truth, they are even afraid of her. But the touching hand is soft, and when the witch speaks to explain to the girl what she is going to do, it is in a calm and gentle voice. Clotilde relaxes and stops sniffing. All she understood was that this red-haired woman was going to get rid of the thing that stirred in her belly. And that is rather good news.
Maria gets up abruptly and spins into a tiny, dark, remote room, where her entire pharmacopoeia stands. In a few minutes, she selected what she wanted. She puts water to boil over the fire in a strange skin hide as she reduces the dried plants into a fine powder. She throws it into the bottle as soon as big bubbles blister the surface. The mixture gives off a strong and unpleasant odor. As soon as she has cooled down, she orders the child to drink it in one gulp. Clotilde succeeds not without repressing a gag. While waiting for the potion to take effect and start not only to cause contractions, but also to dilate the cervix, Maria makes the girl talk to relax her to the maximum. And probably to hide his own anguish. It is very rare that she is so anxious before operating. She trusts her gifts and most of the time makes fun of her patients. But this child touches her, she can not explain why, and it seems to her essential that she live. The little girl finally begins to shake, and grimaces of pain to twist her thin face. Maria examines her at regular intervals, measuring with her fingers the progress of the work. After several hours, it's time. The witch pierces the water pocket and asks La Vieille to press her entire weight on the girl's abdomen during the outbreaks. Time passes, the contractions are eroding, they are all glistening with sweat and Clotilde grows with excruciating cries of pain. We finally see the baby. But it's his shoulder that shows up, not his head. Maria spits her fingers into the gaping mouth of the vagina to try to turn the baby a little. In vain. She catches a wrought dagger, burns the blade quickly and incises. Blood flows. Clotilde screams. The old woman slaps her. Clotilde fainted, her belly twitching. The old woman shakes her like a plum tree to wake her up. Maria shouts to leave her alone, while she takes advantage of the looseness of the flesh to catch the fetus and pull it to her. A little blue being
finally appears in its entirety. She quickly breaks the umbilical cord with her teeth, smearing her face with blood, and pulls it to expel the placenta, which she drops to the ground before placing the baby motionless on it. The old woman takes it and undertakes to empty his mouth to make him breathe. The fire-haired woman loses patience and rebuffs her saying that it is useless to revive him because she will have to kill him, and that she should rather help him to bring back Clotilde. She washes it summarily before stitching it with a tendon filament that has been broken up beforehand. The girl moans without getting out of her fainting. She is white, emptied of too much blood. The old woman cradles a tiny and silent boy who has never shouted. Maria is almost as livid as the little one. She takes the pulse of the latter, which is extremely weak. The night has long since fallen. She did everything she could to save the child. Must wait.
In the morning Maria falls asleep on the ground holding the hand of a cadaver of a ten-year-old girl, as for the Old Woman and the baby, they are gone. A hunter will discover them both at the edge of a path a few days later, tight against each other. The infant's eyes were wide open. It seems that it means that his soul rode without having found peace.
