Holy Fools (23 page)

So far, so good.
But the task that remains is a delicate one. I have only five days until his arrival, and the skeins of my delicate weaving become ever more twisted and tortuous. Clémente remains in her bed in the infirmary, quiet now but not, I suspect, for long. I have spent many hours at her side with Virginie in attendance, incense and holy water in hand. A sharp needle concealed in one sleeve ensured her cooperation throughout the final stage of her drug’s effects; with it I pricked her with scientific precision when a scream or a curse was required, and in her dazed condition she was unable to distinguish the pains of her visions from those of the hidden instrument.

With becoming gravity I pronounced Clémente possessed by 250 demons. I spent much of the remainder of the morning in my library, engrossed in several texts on the subject, then emerged some little time before midday with a list of their names. This I proceeded to read to Clémente in slow, measured tones whilst Virginie watched in slack-mouthed awe and the doomed girl on the bed writhed and pleaded.

I knew that Juliette would refuse to administer another dose of her morning glories, but I had enough for my immediate needs, and as the day wore on and I saw Clémente begin to regain her senses I began to foresee the need for a repetition of the procedure. I knew already that my l’Ailée would disapprove. But what could she do?

Mass was, of course, canceled. I “studied” in my rooms, with a book of Aristotle’s maxims hidden within the covers of the
Malleus Maleficarum.
Services without me were a dull affair, I gather, but I made a show of fearing another repetition of the frenzies and the Dancing Mass.

Meanwhile, Marguerite watched over Clémente and-in spite of strict instructions from me not to breathe a word of the day’s events-diffused the terrible news of her possession throughout the abbey. Of course this had been my intention all along, and the rumors, all the more appealing for being forbidden, were soon repeated, expanded, embellished, and otherwise disseminated as widely as dandelion seed.

My principal source of unease lies in Juliette. Her discovery of the identity of my Unholy Nun was perhaps inevitable but nevertheless troubles me a little. The wild girl is her friend, so I’m told, and she feels loyalty to her. Not so the wild girl, who can be bought for a trinket and whose silence is beyond rubies, but if Juliette were to learn the full extent of my plans…

Foolishness, of course. Perette is a primitive creature, an unformed mind with no more intelligence than a trained monkey. It took me a little time to break her-indeed, I spent two sleepless nights in the crypt curing her of her unreasonable fear of the dark-but now she fawns on me as trusting as a spaniel, her small hands cupped, begging for the next treat. I’m sorely tempted, when I leave this place, to take Perette with me. There are so many uses to which I could put her. And Juliette-But I must not think of Juliette. By Sunday she will have learned the full extent of my treachery, and I cannot hope to be forgiven this time. But Perette is another matter. Even untrained, she is nimble beyond expectation. Sleight of hand is child’s play to her. She can move unseen and unheard in a room of sleepers without disturbing a single one. She can run like the wind, climb like a squirrel, curl up and hide in the tiniest of spaces. I could even teach her to dance on a rope. No one could hope to equal my Ailée, but perhaps with practice…I could paint her face with walnut juice and pass her off as a savage from Canada. They’d pay to see that.

Yes, among all the rest I might yet save Perette.

Of course,
after what I had seen in the infirmary I went to Perette as soon as I could. That was in the morning, after Prime. We all went to our duties a little late, for the abbess was with her confessor and we guessed that discipline might be a little relaxed. I found Perette, as I expected, in the stables where we kept our beasts. She had taken some stale bread with her, and the place was awash with the hens and ducks and speckled pullets that had followed her in. She looked at me inquiringly.

“Perette.” She smiled then, a wide-open smile of delight, and indicated the birds. She looked so happy-and so innocent-that I felt oddly reluctant to speak of the morning’s incident. I steeled myself nevertheless. “Never mind the hens, Perette. I saw you in the infirmary this morning.” She looked at me pertly, head to one side. “I saw you pretending to be the Unholy Nun.”

Perette gave the hooting cry that in her passes for laughter.

“It isn’t funny.” I took her arms and turned her to face me. “It could have been very dangerous.”

Perette shrugged. She is clever enough at some things, but when we broach the subject of might-have, or could-have-been, or would-be, she tends to lose interest.

I spoke slowly, patiently, using simple words she knew. “Perette. Listen to me. Tell me the truth.” She smiled at me, giving no sign of whether or not she understood. “Tell me, Perette. How many times have you-” No, that was wrong. “Perette. Have you played this game before?”

Perette nodded and hooted happily.

“And did-did Père Colombin ask you to play this game?”

Again, the nod.

“Did-Did Père Colombin say
why
he wanted you to play this game?”

That was more difficult. Perette thought for a moment, shrugged, then held out a grimy palm. In it rested a small brown object. A piece of sugar. She looked at it, licked it, then replaced it carefully in her pocket.

“Sugar? He gives you sugar when you play the game?”

Perette shrugged again. Then, fumbling around her neck, she drew out the small medallion I had seen LeMerle take from her only a few weeks ago, now secured by a piece of twine. Christina Mirabilis smiled out from the bright enameled disc.

Again I made my voice slow and coaxing. “So, Perette. You played the game for Père Colombin.” Perette smiled and ticked her head from one side to the other. The medallion winked in the sunlight. “But why did he want you to play the game?”

The wild girl shrugged and turned the medallion over in her fingers, catching the light. I tried to curb my impatience. “Yes, Perette, but
why
did he ask you? Did he tell you why?”

Again she shrugged. What did it matter why he wanted it, said the shrug, as long as there was sugar and trinkets?

I gave her a gentle shake. “Perette. What you did was a bad thing.”

She looked puzzled at that, beginning to shake her head in denial. “A bad thing!” I insisted, raising my voice a little. “It wasn’t your fault, but it was bad all the same. Père Colombin was bad to make you do it.”

Perette turned her mouth down sulkily and made as if to pull away. I held her back. “Do you remember Fleur?” I said suddenly. “Do you remember when they took Fleur away?”

Perhaps she did not, I told myself. It had been almost a month since Fleur’s disappearance, and Perette might already have forgotten her young playmate. For a moment she looked puzzled, then raised her hand in the gesture she had always used to indicate the child.

“It was Père Colombin who took Fleur away,” I told her. “He may seem very nice, he may give you presents, but, Perette, he’s a bad man, and I need to know what he’s planning!” My voice had risen again, and I was gripping her arm painfully. Her blank expression told me that I had gone too fast, that I had lost her. “Perette, look at me!”

But it was too late. The moment of contact was gone, and Perette had returned her attention to the birds. As I turned away, furious at my own impatience, I saw her sitting in a clucking mound of them, arms outstretched, her lap a mass of white, brown, speckled, golden, green, and red feathers.

And yet I cannot give up. If there is a key to this enigma, it is she. My sweet Perette, my innocent. Whatever he is planning, she knows it. It may be beyond her understanding, but his secret is there, hidden within her as securely as in a Chinese puzzle box. If only I knew what it was. If only I could break your locks, my dear.

I tried to talk
to LeMerle all yesterday, but he avoids me, and I cannot afford to draw attention to myself. Last night his door was locked, the light extinguished. I wondered whether he was in the infirmary but dared not go to see. Clémente is still incapable of rational speech, so Antoine tells me, alternating long periods of lethargy with intervals of wild, wakeful delirium. During those times she has to be secured to the mattress for fear she might injure herself. Often she tears at her clothing, exposing herself, thrusting violently at the air as if ridden by a demon lover. At these times she may scream or moan in terrible pleasure, or claw at her face in an agony of self-loathing. Better to tie her down, though she pleads to be released, thrashing her head from side to side and spitting with uncanny accuracy at anyone who dares approach her.

I am not allowed to visit. Antoine too has been removed from the infirmary, though Virginie remains to care for the possessed woman. Antoine tells me this with sly satisfaction; Clémente seems crazed and may never regain her sanity. So Virginie tells her. Antoine’s eyes are small and mean as she speaks of it. She has volunteered to help in the infirmary, washing blankets and preparing broths for the afflicted woman, into which, no doubt, she slips a regular dose of morning glories.

Lovely Clémente is no longer quite so lovely, she reports in that new, sly voice; her face will be scarred by the repeated assault of her fingernails; her hair is coming out in patches. I would have liked to go to her, to comfort her perhaps or to explain to her ravaged face that it wasn’t my fault…

What good would it do? Antoine’s hand may have given her the dose, but it was I who gave her the means. I would do it again in the same circumstances. LeMerle, wisely keeping his distance, knows it. Again he has opened a gulf inside me, has opened the dark budget of possibility within my entrails.

Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live
.

Giordano used to say that in the original Hebrew the word
witch
meant
poisoner
.

I wonder if Giordano would recognize his pupil now.

As expected,
my affairs proceed according to plan. Mère Isabelle remains docile-for the present. She spends much of her time in prayer, heedless of her increasingly unruly flock.

Access to Clémente is limited, for even I can hardly dose the girl continuously, and her ravings have become increasingly violent.

Instead, I build upon my pupil’s fears with various lore and nonsense culled from a hundred books both sacred and profane. Whilst seeming to lull her terrors I artfully nourish them with anecdotes and fancies. The world is filled with horrors; you name it-burnings, poisonings, bewitchings, and evil enchantments; Père Colombin knows it, and he knows exactly how to bring the horrors to life. A checkered career may provide useful fuel for such deceits; after all, I even met the famous juris-consult Jean Bodin at one of Mme. de Sévigné‘s soirées-and was thoroughly bored by the lengthiness of his discourse-the rest I borrowed from the great fictions of history. Aeschylus, Plutarch, the Bible…Clémente herself is quite unaware that the demoniac names she utters in her frenzies are for the most part merely the secret, forgotten names of God, reborn as blasphemies in her tortured brain.

My pupil has hardly slept for days. Her eyes are sunken and red. Her mouth is pale as a scar. Sometimes I see her watching me, she thinks in secret. I wonder if she suspects. In any case, it is too late for her. A dose of Clémente’s morning glories would be enough to kill her revolt, though I would only administer it in dire emergency. I want it to come to Arnault from a blue sky. The end of his hopes. Irrevocable.

Ironically, my pupil now takes what comfort she can at the prospect of Sunday’s treat, the long-awaited Festival of the Virgin. Now that our abbey has been reclaimed from the apostate saint, Marie-de-la-mer, we should be able to count on a personal intervention from the Holy Mother in our regrettable affairs. So she thinks, anyway, and redoubles her prayers. Meanwhile, I work on our spiritual defenses with many Latin incantations and a great quantity of incense. No demonic force must be allowed to penetrate our abbey on its holiest day.

Juliette came
to find me in my rooms early this morning. I knew she might, and I was ready for her, raising my head from a stack of books to face her. She was fiercely prim in her clean, starched linen, not a stray curl softening the line of her pale, set face. This was about Perette, I told myself warily, and I must tread lightly.

“Juliette. Is the sun up already? The room seems brighter than it was a moment ago.”

Her expression told me that now was not the time for flattery. “Please.” Her voice was sharp, but with anxiety, I noticed, rather than anger. “You have to keep Perette out of this. She doesn’t understand the danger. Think of the risk, if she were to be found out!” Then, as I said nothing: “Really, LeMerle, you must see that she’s only a child!”

Ay, that was it. That was the mother in her. I tried misdirection. “Isabelle is feeling unwell,” I said gently. “While she rests in her rooms, I might arrange for you-and Antoine-to slip out for a time. To take a basket of food to-for example-a poor fisherman and his family?”

She looked at me for a second, and I could see the hunger in her eyes. Then she shook her head. “That’s very like you, LeMerle,” she said without heat. “And what would happen with me out of the way? Another Apparition? Another Dancing Mass?” She shook her head again. “I know you,” she said softly. “Nothing is free. You’d want something in return, then something more, then-”

I interrupted her. “My dear, you mistake my intentions. I made the suggestion out of concern for you, nothing more. You’re no danger to me, Juliette; you’re already as guilty as I am.”

She lifted her chin at that. “I?” But there was fear in her eyes.

“Your silence alone is proof of guilt. You recognized the Unholy Nun. And have you forgotten the business with the well? Or the poisoning of Soeur Clémente? And as for your vow of chastity…” I let the phrase hang maliciously.

She was silent, her cheeks flaring.

“Believe me,” I said, “a charge of witchcraft might be leveled upon you for any one of these things. And we have long since passed the point where you could have damaged me. No one alive could turn them against me now.”

She knew it was true.

“I am the rock,” I told her. “The anchor in the storm. To suspect me is unthinkable.”

There was a long pause. “I should have spoken when I had the chance,” said Juliette. I was not mistaken by her angry tone; her eyes were almost admiring.

“You wouldn’t have done it, my dear.”

Her eyes told me she knew that too.

“Perette has been very useful to me during the past weeks,” I said. “She’s quick-almost as quick as you were, Juliette-and she’s clever. She hid in the crypt, you know, the first time you saw the Unholy Nun. All the time you were searching she was there, curled up behind one of the coffins.”

Juliette shivered.

“But if you’re so concerned about her, then maybe-” I pretended to hesitate. “No. I need her still, Juliette. I cannot give her up. Not even to please you.”

She took the bait. “You said there was a way.”

“Impossible.”

“Guy!”

“No, really. I should never have spoken.”

“Please!”

I never could resist her pleading. An exhilarating delicacy, seldom tasted. I pretended reluctance in order to savor the moment. “Well, I suppose you might…”

“What?”

“If you agreed to take her place.”

There. The trap swings shut with an almost audible click. She ponders it for a moment. No fool she. She knows how she has been maneuvered. But there is the child…

“Fleur was never on the mainland,” I told her gently. “I placed her with a family not three miles from here. You could see her within the hour if only-”

“I won’t poison anyone,” said Juliette.

“That won’t be necessary.”

She was beginning to weaken. “If I agree,” she said, “you swear Perette’s involvement will cease?”

“Of course.” I pride myself on my look of honesty. This is the true, open look of a man who never cocked a card or loaded a die in all his life. Amazing that after all these years it still works.

“Three days,” I said, sensing her resistance. “Three days till Sunday. Then it ends. I promise.”

“Three days,” she echoed.

“After that, Fleur can come home for good,” I said. “You can have everything back as it was. Or-if you like-you can come with me.”

Her eyes shone-with scorn or passion, I could not tell-but she said nothing.

“Would it really be so bad?” I said gently. “To take to the road again? To be l’Ailée-to be back where you belong”-I lowered my voice to a whisper-“back where I need you?”

There was silence, but I felt her relax, just a little, just enough. I touched her cheek fleetingly. “Three days,” I repeated. “What can happen in three days?”

Rather a lot, I hope.