Holy Fools (17 page)

Of course, I could say nothing of this to Isabelle. But I explained as well as I could until her sobs lessened and her limp body grew rigid next to mine, and she finally pulled away. “Your own mother should have told you,” I said patiently. “It’s certain to be a shock to you otherwise. But it happens to all girls when they become women. It’s no shame.”

She looked at me, already hardening. Her face was contorted with disgust and rage.

“There’s nothing bad about it.” For the child’s sake, I had to make her understand. “It isn’t the devil, you see.” I tried to smile at her but her gaze was accusing, hateful. “It only happens once a month, for a few days. You fold the pad like this…” I demonstrated with a panel of my habit, but Isabelle seemed barely to be listening.

“Oh, you liar!” She pulled away from me, kicking the water jug aside with such violence that it flew through the fence pickets and into the well. “You
liar
!”

I tried to protest, but Isabelle struck out at me wildly with her fists. “It isn’t true! It isn’t! It isn’t!”

I knew then that I had committed the unforgivable sin. I had seen her without defenses. I had offered compassion. Worse, I knew a secret now, a secret she considered shameful enough for her to wash her soiled rags at night to ensure privacy…

I read all this in her last look at me as she turned momentarily to face me. “You liar! You filthy witch! You’re the one! You’re the devil’s whore and I can prove it!”

I tried to call her back.

“I won’t listen!” Even then I could feel pity for her: her youth, her frailty, her terrible loneliness…“I
won’t
listen! You’ve always hated me! I see you watching me with your insolence! Comparing me!” She gave an angry sob. “Well, I won’t be deceived! I know what you’re trying to do and I won’t-I
won’t
!”

Then she was gone.

Three days
have passed with the slick certainty of nightmare. Since the incident at the well, Mère Isabelle speaks to me rarely and without reference to what has passed between us, but I sense her mistrust and dislike. Her words on that occasion, the accusations and threats, have not been repeated, in private or otherwise. Indeed, she treats me with something like tolerance, which was not her manner from the first.

But she looks unwell; her face is mottled with angry-looking blemishes, her eyes purplish and heavy. LeMerle has twice more invited me to his cottage. He hints at favors to be won, but I am afraid of what he may ask me to abet this time. Already, Marguerite’s Apparition has been seen in various parts of the abbey, each sighting growing more detailed in the telling, so that now the ghostly nun sports hideous features, red eyes, and all the trappings of popular romance.

Unsurprisingly, Alfonsine has seen her too, in far greater detail, and I wonder to what extent the ghostly nun is not an invention of their mutual rivalry. Alfonsine, who looks paler and more ecstatic as the days pass, even swears now that she recognized Mère Marie’s kindly face beneath that sinister
coiffe,
now distorted with hate and demonic glee. It will not be long before Marguerite finds something even more distressing to report, and thereby steals Alfonsine’s thunder once again: meanwhile, she spends her free time in cleaning and prayer, while her rival fasts and prays-and coughs with increasing frequency.

What is becoming of us? We talk of little else but of blood and Visitations. Normal relations among us have been suspended. Penances have reached a level hitherto undreamed of, with Soeur Marie-Madeleine keeping vigil in the church for two nights without sleep for having dared to query some novice’s tale. Our diet now consists of nothing but black bread and soup, Mère Isabelle having decreed that rich foods inflame the baser appetites. She says this with such ferocity that the bawdy jokes to which such a pronouncement might once have given rise in the days of Mère Marie stick in the throat.

We thrive on gossip and whispered scandal. Clémente has revealed herself to be a zealous informant at Chapter. Few escape her innocent, wide-eyed spite. If Soeur Antoine gobbles her bread before grace, Clémente sees it. If Tomasine closes her eyes during Vigils, if Piété shows ill-temper when disturbed at prayer, if Germaine speaks slightingly of the Visitations…This last is especially cruel. Words spoken in confidence are revealed in public with bland complacency. Mère Isabelle commends Clémente on her sense of duty. LeMerle seems not to notice.

Germaine accepted her
penance with cold indifference. She looks stony now, her damaged face rough and hard-looking as the effigy of Marie-de-la-mer, the saint who never was. And yet it is easier for us to believe, in our abbey buffeted by the bitter west winds, in a Goddess of the Sea, a watchful, dangerous Goddess with stony, gouged-out eyes. Easier in any case than in the Mother of God, that Virgin claiming still to be the mother of us all.

Three days ago a fine marble statue of the Holy Mother arrived by cart from the mainland, in replacement for our loss. A gift, said Mère Isabelle, from her favorite uncle, for whom we will say forty masses in thanks for his generosity. She is all white, this new Marie, smooth and bland as a peeled potato. She sits in the corner of the church where the old Marie used to be, her lips curved in a tiny, meaningless smile, one hand outstretched in a limp gesture of benediction.

The morning after her arrival, however, the new Marie was found defaced, obscene words scrawled across her features in black grease pencil. Germaine-who had been doing penance in the church on the night of the outrage-claimed to have seen nothing during her vigil, though her mouth curled as she said it. Perhaps a mysterious robed nun did it, she suggested insolently, or a monkey from the Far East, or a manifestation of the Holy Ghost. She began to laugh then, softly at first. We watched her, embarrassed and anxious. Patches of scarlet marbled her cheeks. For an instant she turned to Clémente with an expression of entreaty on her scarred face. Then she fell backward, stiffly onto the flagstones, hands clutching at air.

Germaine went to the infirmary after that. Soeur Virginie declared that she was suffering from the
cameras de sangre,
and spoke of a possible recovery with noisy confidence whilst in private she shook her head and whispered that the patient was unlikely to live out the month. Soeur Rosamonde, too, is causing concern. During the past week her decline has been dramatic; now she remains in the infirmary all day, barely moving and refusing to eat. Of course she is very old-almost as old as poor Mère Marie-but until the removal of the saint she had been a cheery soul, sound in body if not in mind, and enjoying what small pleasures she could with enviable simplicity.

I feel oddly responsible and would try to intercede on her behalf, but I know that to do so would accomplish nothing. In fact, at this point, Mère Isabelle is far more likely to show sympathy to Rosamonde if I seem unaware of her condition.

It is a part of his trap, of course. Every day I spend here deepens the pit into which I have dug myself. LeMerle knows it; doubtless he meant it so. He despises my loyalty to the sisters but understands that I will not leave them while Fleur is safe and they are not. I have become my own jailer, and although every instinct tells me with increasing urgency that I must escape, I am afraid of what may happen if my vigilance is withdrawn. Every night I tell the cards, but they show me nothing but what I already know; the Tower in flames, with the woman falling, arms outstretched, from the top; the hooded Hermit, the cruel Six of Swords. Disaster, poised like a crushing rock above our heads, with nothing I can do to prevent its fall.

At last,
a reply to my letters. Monseigneur takes his time, it seems, and sees no reason to thank me for all my hard work. I am privileged to be given the chance to devote my life to the noble house of Arnault. However, the generous gift, the marble statue that accompanied his letter, shows his unspoken approval. Monseigneur is most gratified to hear of his niece’s reforms. As well he might-a pretty picture I drew of the young abbess, radiant in her innocence and unearthly beauty; of adoring nuns; of birds flocking to hear her speak. I hinted at marvels; showers of rose leaves; spontaneous healings. Soeur Alfonsine will be pleased to hear that she has been restored to health from a fatal illness. Soeur Rosamonde too has regained the use of her withered arm. One must not speak too hastily of miraculous cures, but one must always hope, and if God wills it…

The lure is cast. I have little doubt that he will fail to take it. I have suggested the fifteenth of August as a favorable date. It seems appropriate, it being the day of the Virgin, to celebrate thus our reclamation of the abbey.

Meanwhile, I must work day and night to make things ready in time. Fortunately I have my helpers: Antoine, strong, slow, and undemanding; Alfonsine, my visionary and spreader of rumors; Marguerite, my catalyst. Not to mention Piété, who runs errands, my little Soeur Anne, and Clémente…

Well, maybe that
was
a miscalculation. Despite her meek appearance she is by far the most demanding of my disciples, and I find it hard to keep up with her changes of mood. Purring like a housecat one day, the next perversely cold, she seems to take pleasure in goading me into violence, only to indulge in extravagant protestations of love and repentance afterward. I believe I am expected to find this appealing. Many would, I am sure. But I’m no seventeen-year-old anymore, to be ensnared by a pretty face and some girlish simpering. Besides, I have so little time to give her: my hours have become at least as long and as wearisome as those of the nuns. My nights are divided among various clandestine pursuits; my days are filled with blessings, exorcisms, public confessions, and other everyday blasphemies.

Following the first sighting of the Unholy Nun there have been a number of further incidents that may or may not be of a demonic nature; crosses removed from nuns’ habits during the night; obscene writings on statues in the church; red dye in the font and on the stones in front of the altar. Père Colombin, however, remains defiant in the face of these new outrages and spends hours each day in prayer; an occasional catnap saves me from complete exhaustion, and Soeur Marguerite ensures that I do not starve.

And what of you, my Juliette? How far will you follow me, and for how long? The market at Barbâtre has served its purpose. There cannot be another visit there without arousing suspicion. Isabelle watches me with something akin to jealousy, and her vigilance, assiduously honed, is a compass needle ever pointing in my direction. Père Saint-Amand is an innocent for all his wordly wisdom, easily swayed by feminine wiles. Far harder on her own sex than any man could be, she knows this is my essential weakness and values this proof of my humanity. If she learned of my involvement with Clémente now, she would take my side, assuming that the girl led me into temptation. But her eye is on Juliette. Instinct shows her where the enemy lies. My Winged One works in the bakehouse-hard enough work, I’m told, but an easier task than digging the well. She does not approach me, though she must long for news of her daughter, but preserves that look of stolid, almost stupid docility that goes so ill with what I know of her. Only once she slipped and drew attention to herself when the old nun was taken to the infirmary. Yes, I heard about that. A foolish lapse, and for what? What loyalty can such as she have to these people? She always had too soft a heart. Except, of course, with me.

This morning I spent two hours I could ill afford with Isabelle in confession and prayer. She has a study of her own next to her bedchamber with a shrine, candles, a portrait of herself by Toussaint Dubreuil, and a silver figurine of the Virgin taken from the sacristy treasures. Time was when I would have coveted that figurine, and the treasures too, but the time for pilfering is long past. Instead I listened to a spoilt girl’s rantings with a grave, compassionate air whilst deep in my stomach, I grinned.

Mère Isabelle is troubled. She tells me so with the unconscious arrogance of her breeding, an adult’s pride masking the child’s fears. For she does fear, she tells me. For her soul; for her salvation. There have been dreams, you see. She sleeps only three or four hours a night-is the sea never quiet?-and what sleep she finds is stitched through with uneasy dreams of a kind she has never before known.

“Of what?” I narrowed my eyes to hide the smile within. She may only be a child, but her senses are alert, her instincts uncanny. In another life I might have made a fine cardplayer of her.

“Blood.” Her voice was low. “I dreamed blood flowed from the stones of the crypt and into the church. Then I dreamed of the black statue in the chapel, and blood came welling from beneath it. Then I dreamed of Soeur Auguste”-I told you her instincts were sound-“and of the well. I dreamed blood came from the well Soeur Auguste was digging, and
it was all over me
!”

Very good. I never credited my little pupil with such an imagination. I notice that her face is marked with a number of small blemishes about the mouth and chin, indicating ill health. “You must not push yourself so hard,
ma fille,
” I told her gently. “To encourage physical collapse through self-denial is no way to ensure the completion of our work here.”

“There’s truth in dreams,” she muttered, sullen. “Was not the well water tainted? And the Sacrament?”

Gravely I nodded. Difficult to remember that she is twelve years old; with her pinched small face and reddened eyes she looks ancient, used up.

“Soeur Alfonsine saw something in the crypt.” Again that mutter, half-sullen, half-imperious.

“Shadows,” I told her crisply, feeding the flame.

“No!” Her shoulders hunched instinctively; she put her hand to the pit of her stomach with a grimace.

“What is it?” My hand lingered at the nape of her neck and she pulled away.

“Nothing.
Nothing!
” she repeated, as if I had contradicted her. A cramp, she tells me. An ache that has afflicted her for the past few days. It will pass. She seemed about to tell me more, the wizened mask falling for an instant to reveal the child she might have been. Then she recovered, and for a moment I could clearly see her uncle in her. It’s a welcome resemblance; it reminds me that this is not a normal child I am dealing with, but one of a vicious and degenerate brood. “Leave me now,” she told me haughtily. “I wish to pray alone.”

I nodded, hiding a smile. Say your prayers, little sister. The house of Arnault may need them sooner than you think.