“Promised what?”
She shook her head. “This is mine, my secret. The secret I share with Père Colombin. I don’t want to share it with you. You’ll know soon enough, anyway. You’ll know on Sunday.”
“Sunday?” I was dancing with impatience. “Antoine, what did he say?”
She put her head to one side, an absurdly coquettish gesture. “He promised. All the women who laughed at me. All the ones who made fun of me and made me do penances for greed. No more poor Soeur Antoine, stupid Soeur Antoine to blame or to bully. On Sunday we light a flame.”
And from then on she was silent and would say no more, but folded her fat arms onto her bosom and turned away with that maddening, angelic smile.
48
AUGUST 14TH, 1610
She found me in the church at daybreak. For once I was alone. The air was rancid-sweet with last night’s incense, the thin sunlight filtering through layers of floating dust. For the luxury of a moment I closed my eyes and smelt the hot reek of smoke, the scorch of flesh…But not mine, this time, Monseigneur. Not mine.
How they would dance! The habits, the virgins, the hypocrites. What an act it would be! What a rapturous, unholy finale!
Her voice jolted me from a reverie that had sunk me almost into slumber. True, I had not slept in three days. “LeMerle.”
Even half-conscious I knew that note. I opened my eyes. “My Harpy. You’ve worked well for me. You must be looking forward to seeing your daughter tomorrow.”
Three days ago that ploy might still have worked. As it was, she barely acknowledged my words, shaking them aside as a dog may shake water from its pelt.
“I’ve spoken to Antoine.”
Ah. A pity. I always knew my plump disciple to be a little unstable. It was like her to let something drop without considering the implications. A loyal slave, Antoine; but no thinker. “Yes? I trust she was a stimulating conversationalist.”
“Stimulating enough.” The sequin eyes glittered. “LeMerle, what’s happening?”
“Nothing that need concern you, my Winged One.”
“If you’re planning to harm anyone, I’ll stop you.”
“Would I lie to you?”
“I know you would.”
I shrugged and held up my hands. “Forgive her, Lord, her hurtful remark. What more can I do to make you trust me? I’ve kept Fleur safe. I’ve asked nothing more of Perette. I was thinking that tomorrow you could skip mass and collect your daughter—take the road while I’m tying up my few loose ends—meet me, perhaps, on the mainland, and—”
“No.” Her tone was final.
I was beginning to lose patience. “What then? What more do you want of me?”
“I want you to announce the bishop’s visit.”
I wasn’t expecting that; trust you, my Winged One, to find my weakness. “What, and spoil my surprise?”
“We don’t need any more surprises.”
I touched her face with my fingertips. “Juliette, it’s of no importance. Tomorrow night we’ll be in Pornic, or in Saint-Jean-de-Monts, drinking wine from silver cups. I have money put aside; we can start again, start a theater troupe or anything you’d like—”
But she was not to be cajoled. “Announce it at Chapter,” she said. “Do it tonight, Guy, or I’ll do it myself.”
Well, that was my cue. I should have liked your cooperation, my dear, but I had never really expected it at this late stage. I found Antoine by the well—the spot seems to hold a special place in her heart since Germaine’s hanging—and she reacted quickly to the signal she has been anticipating for the past week. Perhaps she is not as slow-witted as I take her for, for I saw her face light up in real pleasure at the task. In that moment she looked neither dull-witted nor ugly, and I felt a moment’s unease. Still, she follows me without question, which is what counts; she does not have your scruples, and she at least understands revenge.
Oh really, Juliette. You always were a simpleton despite your learning. What do we owe to anyone but ourselves? What do we owe to the Creator, sitting there on his golden throne dispensing judgment? Did we ask to be created? Did we ask to be thrown into this world like dice? Look around you, little sister. What has he dealt you that you should take his side? Besides, you should know better by now than to play against me; in the end, I always win.
I knew she would wait until Chapter. Knowing that, I struck first, or rather, Antoine struck, with the help of Soeur Virginie. It was a rousing performance, so I hear; a vision led them to your cache and to the evidence concealed therein—the tarot cards, the poisons, and the bloodied quichenotte of the Unholy Nun. You would have fought but were no match for Antoine’s brute strength; on the orders of the abbess, you were taken to the cellarium and imprisoned there, awaiting a decision. The rumors took wing at once.
“Is she—”
“Possessed?”
“Accused?”
“No, not Auguste—”
“I always knew she was a—”
It is a sigh almost of satisfaction, the whisper taken up—wishwishwish—with a coyness, a fluttering of eyelash and lowering of lids more at home in a Paris salon. These nuns have more feminine tricks than a battery of society prudes, exercising their false modesty to captivate. Their desire smells of sour lilies.
I made my voice grave. “An accusation has been made,” I announced. “If this is true, then we have—we have nurtured—hell’s catamite in our midst from the very first—”
The phrase enticed them. Hell’s Catamite. A good name for a burlesque or a tragédie-ballet. I saw them squirm in scarce disguised excitement.
“A spy, mocking our rituals, secretly in league with the forces that seek to destroy us!”
“I trusted you,” you said as I led you to the cellar door. And then you spat in my face and would have gone for me with your nails if Soeur Antoine had not pushed you into the room and shut the door.
I wiped my brow with a Cholet handkerchief. Through the slit in the door I could see your eyes. Impossible to tell you at this time why I have betrayed you. Impossible to explain that this is the one measure that may save your life.
49
AUGUST 14TH, 1610
COMPLINE
At first I was disorientated. The room—a storeroom annex to the cellarium, hastily reconverted into a cell for the first time since the black friars—was so like the cellar in Épinal that for a time I wondered whether the past five years had not been a dream, my mind’s attempt to play its fleeting sanity like a fish on a line, reeling it inward and inward until understanding breaks the surface.
Giordano’s cards were enough to confirm their suspicions. I wish now that I had paid more attention to their warning; to the Hermit, with his subtle smile and cloaked lantern; to the Deuce of Cups, love and forgetfulness; to the Tower aflame. It is past noon now, and the storeroom is dark except for half a dozen slices of sunlight against the back wall from the ventilation slats, too high to reach, in any case too small to present any hope of escape.
I have not wept. Perhaps some part of me expected his betrayal. I cannot even say that I feel sorrow—or even fear. Five years have sown a kind of serenity. A coldness. I think of Fleur at noon tomorrow, waiting by the tamarisks.
This was once a cell, I realize. Today it reverts to its original function. The black friars once did penance in such cells, hidden from the daylight, their food pushed through a narrow slot in the door, the air rank with the stink of prayers and guilt.
I will not pray. Besides I do not know to whom I should do so. My Goddess is a blasphemy, my Marie-de-la-mer lost to the sea. I can hear the surf from here, carried across the marshes by the west wind. Will she remember me? Will Fleur grow with my face in her heart, as I kept my own mother’s image close to my own? Or will she be the child of strangers, unwanted or worse—to grow to love them as her own, to be grateful, glad to be rid of me?
The thought is useless. I try to regain my serenity, but her image troubles me too much. My heart aches for he
r touch. Once more, I ask Marie-de-la-mer. Whatever it costs me, once more. My Fleur. My daughter. It is not any prayer Giordano would understand, but it is a prayer nevertheless.
Time’s black rosary counts the interminable seconds.
50
AUGUST 14TH, 1610
VESPERS
I think I slept. The darkness and the hush of the surf lulled me, and for a time I dreamed. Bright images pranced by me: Germaine, Clémente, Alfonsine, Antoine…The snakeskin-silvery scar on LeMerle’s shoulder, the smile in his eyes.
Trust me, Juliette.
My daughter’s red dress, the scrape on her knee, the way she laughed and clapped at the players in the dusty sunlight a thousand years ago. I awoke to find the slices of sunlight high up on the wall, reddened as the sun began its descent. Feeling refreshed in spite of everything, I rose to look about me. The room still smelt of the vinegar and preserves that had been kept there; in a clearing space a pickle jar had been broken and a damp patch remained on the earthen floor, redolent of clove and garlic. I searched the floor, thinking perhaps to find a sliver of glass overlooked in their haste, but there was nothing. In any case I do not know what I would have done with it if there had been one; the thought of my blood on the earth, mingling perhaps with the aloes and vinegar of the spilled pickles, revolted me. Tentatively I touched the walls of my cell. These were stone, the good gray granite of the region, which sparkles with mica in sunlight but in shadow looks almost black. There were indentations scratched into the stone, I realized, short, even marks chiseled at intervals in the granite that my fingertips discovered in the semidarkness: five marks, then a neat cross stroke; five marks, then another. Some brother had perhaps tried to mark his time in this way, I realized, covering half the wall with the orderly down-and-cross strokes of his days, his months.
I went to the door. It was locked, of course, the heavy wooden panels banded with iron. A metal hatchway—secured from the outside—might serve as a means to deliver my meals. I listened at the door but could hear nothing to indicate whether or not anyone kept watch over the prisoner. Why should they? I was safe enough.
Daylight waned until it was nothing but a purplish blur. My eyes, accustomed to the dim light, could still make out the shapes of the door, the twilit pallor of the ventilation slats, a heap of flour sacks that had been left in a corner to serve as bedding, a wooden bucket in the opposite corner. Without my wimple—it had been removed when I was led here, as was the cross at the breast of my habit—I felt oddly estranged from myself, a creature from a different time. Yet this l’Ailée was cold, and her quick calculation of time was like that of a mariner measuring the approach of a coming storm, not that of a prisoner awaiting the hours to execution. In spite of everything there was still power to be had, to be used, if only I knew how.
Interesting, that no one had come to speak to me. Strangest of all that LeMerle should not have come—to justify himself, or to gloat. Seven rang, then eight. The sisters would be making their way to Vespers.
Was this, then, what he had planned? Was I to be removed from the scene until his game—whatever it was—had been played out? Was I still a danger to him? And if so, how?
I was roused from my meditations by a rattling at the door. There was a clang as the spy hole was flung open, then a clattering as something was thrust through, bouncing noisily off the hard floor as it fell. I saw no light at the spy hole, heard no voice as the metal hatch was locked again from the outside. I felt on the ground for the object that had been pushed through and had little difficulty in finding a wooden plate, from which a piece of bread had rolled.
“Wait!” I stood up, the plate in my hand. “Who’s there?”
No response. Not even the sound of footsteps receding. I concluded that whoever it was must be waiting behind the door, listening.
“Antoine? Is that you?”
I could hear her breathing behind the metal trap. Five years’ worth of nights in the dorter had taught me to recognize and identify the sounds of breathing. These short, asthmatic breaths were not Antoine’s. I guessed it was Tomasine.
“Soeur Tomasine.” My guess was correct. I heard an indrawn shriek, stifled against a forearm. “Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.”
“I won’t—” The voice was almost inaudible, a high whimper in the dark. “I won’t let you out!”
“That’s all right,” I whispered. “I’m not asking you to.”
Tomasine paused for a second. “What then?” The high note was still in her voice. “I’m—I’m not supposed to talk to you. I’m not supposed to—look at you.”
“In case of what?” I said scornfully. “In case I fly through the hole? Or send an imp to leap down your throat?”
She whimpered again.
“Believe me,” I said, “if I could do any of those things, would I still be here?”
A silence as she digested that. “Père Colombin lit a brazier. Demons can’t pass through the smoke.” She swallowed convulsively. “I can’t stay. I—”
“Wait!”
But it was too late. I heard her footsteps recede into darkness.
“Damn.”
And yet it was enough to begin with. LeMerle wanted me hidden, had frightened poor Tomasine so badly that she did not even dare to speak to me. What was it he wanted to conceal? And from whom—the bishop, or myself?
I paced the cell after that, forcing myself to eat the bread Tomasine left me, though it was dry and I had never been less hungry. I heard the bell chime for Vigils, then Lauds. I had maybe six hours. To do what? Pacing, I asked myself the question. There was no means of escape. No one would help me, even though there was no one posted at my cell door. No one dared disobey Père Colombin. Unless—no. If Perette were going to come, she would have done so already. I had lost her the day in the barn, lost her to LeMerle and his trinkets. I was a fool to believe that she, of all people, might help me. The clear gold-ringed eyes were witless as a sparrow’s, pitiless as a hawk’s. She would not come.
Suddenly there came a scratching at the door. Shh-shh. Then a low hooting sound, like that of a baby owl. “Perette!”
The moon was up; the light from the ventilation slats was silver. In its reflected glow I saw the hatch open a crack, saw Perette’s luminous eyes through its mouth.
“Perette!” Relief suffused me so that I felt almost weak, stumbling in my haste to reach her. “Did you bring the keys?”
The wild girl shook her head. I moved closer to the hatch, close enough to be able to touch her fingers through the opening. Her skin was ghostly in the moonlight.
“No?” I forced myself to be calm, even through my disappointment. “Perette, where are they?” I spoke as slowly as I could. “Where are the keys, Perette?”
She shrugged. A speaking gesture of the shoulders, a movement of the right hand to indicate width, a round face: Antoine.
“Antoine?” I said eagerly. “You say Antoine has them?”
She nodded.
“Listen, Perette.” I spoke slowly and clearly. “I need to get out of here. I need you—to bring me—the keys. Can you do that?”
She gave me her blank look. Desperate now, my voice rising in spite of myself, I pleaded. “Perette! You have to help me! Remember what I said—remember Fleur—” I was gabbling now in my desperation to reach her. “We have to warn the bishop—”
At my reference to the bishop she cocked her head abruptly to one side and hooted. I stared at her. “The bishop?” I questioned. “Did you know he was coming? Did Père Colombin mention his visit?”
Again, the hooting sound. Perette grinned.
“Did he tell you what—” It was the wrong question. I rephrased it as simply as I could. “Are you playing another game tomorrow? A trick?” My excitement was clenching my fists, fingernails scoring my palms, knuckles cracking. “A trick to play on the bishop?”
The wild girl gave her eerie laughter.
“What, Perette? What trick? What trick?”
But sh
e was already half turning in sudden disinterest, her attention caught by some other thought, some shadow, some sound, her head ticking to one side, then to the other as if to some unheard rhythm. One hand came up slowly to close the hatch.
Click.
“Perette, please! Come back!”
But she was gone, without a sound, not even a cry, not even a farewell. I laid my head on my knees and I wept.
51
AUGUST 15TH, 1610
VIGILS
I must have slept again, for when I awoke the moonlight had faded to a greenish blur. My head was pounding and my limbs were stiff with cold, and there was a draft at the level of my ankles, which made me shiver. I stretched out first my arms, then my legs, chafing my frozen fingers to restore the circulation, and I was so preoccupied with this that for a moment I did not realize the significance of that draft, which had not been there before.
Then I saw. The door was open a crack, allowing dim light to penetrate into the cell. Perette was standing in the doorway, a hand to her mouth. I sprang to my feet.
She gestured urgently at her mouth, to indicate silence. She showed me the key in her hand, slapped her thigh, then mimed Antoine’s lumbering gait. I applauded her soundlessly. “Good girl,” I whispered, moving toward the door, but instead of allowing me to pass, Perette motioned me frantically to let her through. Slipping past me, she pushed the door shut behind her and squatted on the floor.
“No, Perette—” I tried to explain. “We have to go—now—before they find the keys are gone.”
The wild girl shook her head. Holding the keys in one hand, she performed a series of rapid movements with the other. Then, seeing that I did not understand, she repeated them more slowly and with barely concealed impatience.