Holy Fools (3 page)

That he had been an actor I did not doubt. He had the gift of mimicry, a broad and winning smile, a certain flourish in his way of walking, of carrying his head, which spoke of the stage. His skills served him well-be it selling fake cures or bartering a winded horse, his powers of persuasion were little short of magical. But he had not begun his career as a performer. He must have studied; he could read Latin and Greek, and was familiar with several of Giordano’s philosophers. He could ride a horse as well as any circus equestrienne. He could pick pockets like a professional, and he excelled at all games of chance. He seemed able to adapt to any circumstance, acquiring new skills as he went, and however much I tried, I was unable to pierce the layers of fiction, fancy, and outright lies with which he surrounded himself. His secrets, whatever they were, remained his own.

There was one thing, however. An old brand high up on his left arm, a fleur-de-lis faded almost to silver over the years-which, when I questioned him, he dismissed with a smile and a claim of forgetfulness. But I noticed that he took care always to cover the mark after that, and I drew my own conclusions. My Blackbird had lost feathers in that encounter and did not care to be reminded of it.

I have never
believed in God. Not in
your
God anyway; the one who looks down onto his chessboard and moves the pieces according to his pleasure, occasionally glancing up at the face of his Adversary with the smile of one who already knows the outcome. It seems to me that there must be something horribly flawed in a Creator who persists in testing his creatures to destruction, in providing a world well stocked with pleasures only to announce that all pleasure is sin, in creating mankind imperfect, then expecting us to aspire to perfection. The devil at least plays fair. We know where he stands. But even he, the Lord of Deceit, works for the Almighty in secret. Like master, like man.

Giordano called me pagan. To him this was no compliment, for he was a devout Jew, believing in a heavenly reward for his earthly sufferings. To him, to be pagan was to be immoral, ungodly, to indulge freely in the pleasures of the flesh, to delight too frequently in the other hazards encountered on the road. My old teacher ate sparingly, fasted regularly, prayed often, immersing himself for the rest of the time in his studies. He was a good companion-our only grievance was that on his Sabbath he refused to help with the work around the camp, preferring to go without a fire, even on a winter’s night, than to take the trouble to light one. Apart from this peculiarity, he was just like the rest of us; and I never saw him eat the flesh of children, as the Church claims his people do. In fact he rarely ate any kind of flesh at all. Which simply goes to show how misguided the Church can be.

Perhaps Giordano was misguided too, I told myself, as I strove dutifully to be more like my mentor. His Jewish God seemed so very like the Catholic God-which One True Religion seemed to me almost indistinguishable from that of the Huguenots or the Protestant heretics in England. There must be something else, I told myself repeatedly; something beyond sin and solemnity, dust and devotions; something that loved life as indiscriminately as I did.

My thirteenth birthday brought a kind of awakening. All that summer was a languorous procession of delights: a new awareness, a boundless energy, a heightened sense of taste and smell. For the first time, or so it seemed, I really noticed the flowers along the roadside; the scent of night falling by the seashore; the taste of my mother’s new bread, baked black in the coals but tender inside the crust of ash. I noticed too the delicious friction of my clothes against my skin, the icy splash of stream water as I bathed…If this was to be pagan, then I wanted more of it. The world had become maternal almost overnight, and her mysteries were boundless. I opened myself to her initiations. Every shoot, every flower, tree, bird, creature filled me with tenderness and joy. I lost my maidenhead to a fisherman in Le Havre and the world exploded in a revelation no less momentous to me than that of Saint John.

Giordano shook his head sourly and called me shameless. For a while he taught me nothing but theology so that my head spun and I rebelled, demanding the return of my history lessons, my astronomy, my Latin, my poetry. For a while he resisted me. I was a savage, he told me with disapproval, little better than the natives of newly discovered Quebec. I stole his books and pored over Latin erotica, my fingers following the script with agonizing slowness. When winter came my senses froze and my teacher forgave me, resuming our studies with his habitual sour shake of the head. But secretly, pagan I remained. Even in the abbey I am happier in the fields than in the chapel, the burn of my working muscles a kind of remembrance of that summer when I was thirteen and ungodly.

Today I worked
until my back ached. When no more could be done among the herbs and vegetables, I moved to the salt flats, regardless of the sun’s glare, my skirt kilted to my knees, ankles mired in rime and mud. At the abbey we have lay folk to do the heavy work, the fishing, slaughtering of cattle, curing of leathers, and work in the salt fields, but I’ve never been shy of hard labor, and it keeps the fear at bay.

There is no word yet from Rennes, and last night my dreams were terrible, a nightmare hand of flung cards with LeMerle’s face on every one. I wonder whether I have brought these visions upon myself by writing so much about him in my journal, but the tale, now begun, is a runaway colt beneath my hands. Hopeless to try to break it now; better to hang on and let it run itself to exhaustion.

Janette taught me to value my dreams. They are like waves, she told me, of the tides that bear us, from which strange jetsam may be gathered, strange eddies from the deeps for those to read who can. I must use my dreams, not fear them. Only a fool fears knowledge.

Our first winter
was the worst. For two months the Théâtre du Grand Carnaval was forced to a standstill just outside Vitré, a small town on the Vilaine. It had snowed throughout December, our money was almost gone, our food was running low, one of our caravans had lost a wheel, and there could be no hope of moving on until spring.

I think we all took it for granted that LeMerle would not beg. He was, he told us, writing a tragedy which, when performed, would prove to be the solution to all our problems. Meanwhile we scavenged, scrounged, danced, juggled, and tumbled ankle deep in the frozen refuse of the streets. The girls earned more than the men-at times we rivaled even the dwarves, once their novelty had worn off. Le Borgne grumbled, as ever, and seemed to take this as a personal affront. LeMerle accepted what money we brought him as if he expected no less.

One day, as January thawed to rain and mud, a fine carriage swept past our camp and beyond toward the town, and later LeMerle gathered us together and told us to prepare ourselves for a special performance at the castle. We arrived freshly bathed and in the dancers’ costumes we had salvaged in our flight from Paris, to find half a dozen gentlemen assembled in the large dining hall, where a game seemed to be under way. There were cards on the table, and I caught the glint of gold in the candlelight. There was a scent of mulled wine and woodsmoke and tobacco, and LeMerle was sitting in their midst in his Court finery, a cup of punch in one hand. He seemed on excellent terms with the little company: we might almost have been in Paris again. I sensed danger, and knew that LeMerle sensed it too. But he was clearly enjoying himself.

A plump young gentleman in rose-colored silk leaned forward and peered at me through a lorgnette. “But she’s charming,” he said. “Come closer, my dear. I don’t bite.”

I moved forward, my satin shoes whispering over the polished floorboards, and made my courtesy. “My card, sweetheart. Come on, take it; don’t be shy.”

I was feeling vaguely uncomfortable. I had grown since we left Paris, and my skirt was shorter, my bodice tighter than I remembered. I regretted now not taking the time to make the necessary adjustments. The rose-pink gentleman smirked and handed me a playing card between finger and thumb. I saw that it was the queen of hearts.

LeMerle winked at me and I was reassured. If this was one of his games, I thought, then I could play it with the best of them; certainly it looked as though the others were familiar with the rules. The three of spades fell to Hermine, to Cateau the jack of clubs, and to Demiselle the ace of diamonds until at last each of us had been given the name of a playing card-even the dwarves-and this to ribald laughter, though I was far from understanding why. We danced then; first some comic acrobatics and then a simplified version of the
Ballet des Gueux
-the Beggars’ Ballet, which had earned such a success at Court.

From time to time I was aware as I danced of playing cards being tossed into the center of the table, but the dance was a strenuous one and my attention could not be spared. It was only when it came to an end, and four winners rose to claim their prizes, that I realized the purpose of the game-and the stakes. Comic cursing from the losers, who were left with the dwarves. As I was led up the broad stairway toward the bedchambers, feeling trapped and stupid, I heard LeMerle behind me calmly suggesting a rubber of piquet.

I half turned at the sound of his voice. Hermine caught my eye and frowned-she alone of the four dancers understood what was going on. In the golden light from the sconce I thought she looked old, her painted cheekbones shining with grease. Her eyes were hard and blue and very patient. Their expression told me everything I needed to know.

The rose-pink gentleman seemed to notice my hesitation. “Fair’s fair, sweetheart,” he said. “I won, didn’t I?”

LeMerle knew I was watching him. He’d gambled on my reaction as well as on the turn of the card, and for a second I was an unknown quantity to him, a thing of passing interest. Then he turned away, already intent upon the new game, and I hated him. Oh, not for the brief moment of inconvenience on the couch. I’d had worse; and the lordling was quickly spent. No, it was the
game,
as if I, and the others, had been nothing more to him than the cards in his hand, to be played or set aside as the game dictated.

Of course, I would forgive him. “But Juliette, do you think I
wanted
to do it? I did it for you. For all of you. Do you think I would have let you starve to safeguard my own delicacy?”

I had taken out my knife, its dark blade sharpened to a sliver. My fingers throbbed with the urge to bleed him. “It didn’t have to be that way,” I said. “If only you’d told me-” It was true; if he had told me of his plans I would have accepted: for his sake.

His eyes fixed mine and I saw the knowledge there. “You could have refused,” he said. “I wouldn’t have forced you, Juliette.”

“You
sold
us.” My voice was trembling. “You tricked us and you sold us for money!” He knew I could not have refused. If we had withheld our favors that night it would have been to see LeMerle in the pillory-or worse-the following morning. “You used us, Guy. You used
me
.”

I could see him measuring the situation. I was a little overwrought, but my anger wouldn’t last. It wasn’t as if I were a virgin, after all. Nothing was really lost. Gold clinked between his fingers. “Juliette, listen to me-”

It was the wrong time for cajolery. As he reached out toward me I slashed at him with the knife. I only meant to keep him at a distance, but my movement was too quick for him to evade and my blade sliced cruelly across his outstretched palms.

“Next time, LeMerle.” I was shaking, but the knife was steady. “Next time I’ll take your face right off.”

Any other man would have glanced at his wounded hands-instinct demands it-but not LeMerle. There was no fear at all in his eyes, no pain. Instead, there was surprise, fascination, delight, as if at some unexpected discovery. It was a look I had seen on his face before, at the card table, or in front of an angry mob, or flushed with triumph in the gleam of the footlights. I held his gaze defiantly. Blood dripped from his fists onto the ground between us, and neither of us looked down.

“Why, sweetheart,” he said. “I believe you would.”

“Try me.”

Now blood was the only color about him; against his black coat, his face was ash. He took a step toward me and stumbled; without thinking, I caught him as he collapsed. “You’re right, Juliette,” he said. “I should have told you.”

That disarmed me, as he had known it would. Then, still smiling, he passed out.

I bandaged his hands myself with betony and fresh linen. Then I found him brandy and stood over him while he drank it, mentally replaying the scene as I did so until it seemed to me almost as if he had sacrificed himself for us instead of the other way around. The greatest risk
had
been his, of course. Besides the gold paid for the performance-public and private-LeMerle fleeced the young cardplayers with shameless expertise whilst Bouffon and Le Borgne searched the house for valuables, standing up fully five hundred livres richer than when he arrived.

When his victims finally understood the imposture he had perpetrated upon them, it was too late. The troupe had already left town, although reports and rumors of LeMerle’s deception followed us all the way to La Rochelle and beyond. It was the beginning of a long chain of impostures and deceits, and for the next six months we traveled under many colors, many names. Our notoriety dogged us for longer than we had expected, but in spite of the risks and the continued efforts for our capture, we felt little anxiety. LeMerle had begun to take on an almost supernatural character in our minds. He seemed invulnerable-and so, by association, were we all. If they had caught him, they would certainly have hanged him, and probably the rest of us for good measure. But traveling players were not uncommon in the West, and we were now the Théâtre de la Poule au Pot, a group of jongleurs from Aquitaine. As far as anyone could tell, the Théâtre du Grand Carnaval had vanished into smoke. And so we escaped from the encounter-and others of the same kind-and I forgave LeMerle for a time, because I was young, and because I believed in those innocent days that there was good in everyone, and that one day, perhaps even he could be redeemed.

It has been more than five years since I saw him last. Too long, to be sure, for me to be so deeply troubled at these long-ago recollections. He may even be dead by now-after Épinal, there’s reason enough to believe it. But I do not. All these years I have dragged the memory and the pain of him behind me like a dog with a stone tied to its tail, and I would know if I were free of him.

Today we must bury the Reverend Mother. It has to be today. The sky is pitiless in its clarity, promising wide blue spaces, scorching sun. No one wants to take responsibility, I know; but the corpse in the chapel is already overripe, liquefying in its bath of spices. No one wants to bury her before her successor arrives. But someone has to make the decision. And it has to be today.

I have not slept since yesterday night. My herbs are no comfort: neither geranium nor rosemary brings me any respite, and lavender fails to clear my head. Belladonna, brewed strong, might show me something worth seeing, but I have had enough of visions for the present. What I need is rest. From the high window I can see the first sliver of dawn as it opens up the sky like an oyster. Fleur sleeps beside me, her doll tucked under her arm and a thumb lodged comfortingly in her mouth, but for me, in spite of my exhaustion, sleep is a distant land. I put out my hand to touch her. I do this often, for my own comfort as well as hers, and she responds sleepily, curling into the half circle of my body with a blurry sigh. She smells of biscuit and warm bread dough. I put my nose into the baby hair at the nape of her neck, which is sweetness and joy and now a kind of anguish, as if at the anticipation of some unimaginable future loss.