Perette knelt before him, conspicuous in her novice’s habit, her nostrils flaring like a dog’s. She whimpered a little as LeMerle placed the wafer on her tongue. Then he passed her the chalice. Her fingers closed around it and I saw her glance backward at me as if for comfort. Then she drank.
For an instant I thought I had been mistaken. His Amen rang clear in the bright air. He reached out to help Perette to her feet. Then she coughed.
Suddenly I was reminded of the monk of the procession in Épinal. The crowd drew away with just the same low sigh of distress, the fallen monk rolling to the ground, the chalice falling from his grasp.
Perette coughed again, leaned forward, then suddenly, shockingly, vomited between her feet. There was a silence. The wild girl looked up, as if for reassurance, then a new paroxysm of vomiting struck her, and she tried too late to cover her mouth. An appalling blurt of red sprayed from between her lips, spattering her white skirt.
“Blood!” moaned Alfonsine.
Perette clapped her hands to her mouth. She looked terrified, ready to bolt. I tried to reach her but Alfonsine got in my way, crying: “She defiled the Sacrament! The Sacrament!” Then she too doubled up coughing, and I was back in Épinal, watching as the crowd drew away from the stricken brother, hearing the human tide turn, crushing everything in its path. For a minute I could hardly breathe as the nuns in front of me backed me against the wall of the transept.
Then LeMerle stepped forward, and the sisters wavered back into uneasy half-silence. Alfonsine was still coughing, hectic patches of red standing out on her thin cheeks. Then she too bent over and retched, and a terrible wad of blood spattered the marble between her feet.
That ended all hope of rational discourse. In vain I tried to remind the nuns that Soeur Alfonsine had coughed up blood before, that this was the nature of her illness-the crowd heaved back just as it had in Épinal, and the panic began.
“It’s the blood plague!” cried Marguerite.
“It’s a curse!” said Piété.
I struggled against it, but their excitement had reached me too and I was drowning in it. My mother’s cantrip-evil spirit, get thee hence-calmed me a little, although I knew that it was a man, and not spirit, who had set this in motion. All around me faces mooned, eyes rolled. Marguerite had bitten her tongue and there was blood on her lips. One of Clémente’s flailing arms had caught Antoine in the face, and she was cursing, a hand clapped to her bloody nose. I’d seen a painting once, in a church in Paris by a man named Bosch, in which the souls of the damned clawed and clutched at one another in just such an ecstasy of savagery and fear. It was called Pandemonium.
But now LeMerle had raised his voice, and it rolled across the hall like the wrath of God. “For God’s sake, let us have respect for this place!” Silence returned, filled with eddies and small whimperings. “If this is a sign, and the Unholy One has dared to come upon us”-the murmur came again, but he stilled it with a gesture-“I say if the Evil One has dared assail us now in the very sanctity of our church, to desecrate God’s very sacrament-then I am glad of it.” He paused. “As you should all be glad of it! Because if a wolf threatens the farmer’s herd, it’s the farmer’s duty to flush that wolf out! And if a cornered wolf tries to bite, then what does that farmer do?”
We watched him, eyes wide.
“Does that farmer turn and run?”
“No!” It was a thin cheer, like a splash of spray above the rolling wave.
“Does that farmer weep and tear his hair?”
“No!” It was stronger now, more than half the sisters joining in the cry.
“No! That farmer takes what weapons he can-staff, spear, pitchfork-and he takes his friends and neighbors and his brothers and his good strong sons, and he hunts down that wolf, he hunts it down and kills it, and if the devil has made himself a home here, then I say it’s time we hunted him down and sent him back to hell with his tail between his legs!”
They were with him now, whimpering their relief and admiration. The Blackbird basked for an instant in that applause-so long since he had stood like this before a crowded house-then his eyes met mine, and he grinned. “But look to yourselves,” he went on softly. “If the devil has breached your defenses, ask yourselves how you let those defenses drop. With what unshriven sins, what secret vices have you fed him, in what shameful practices has he taken his solace during the unclean years?”
Once more the crowd lifted its voice, touched now with a new note. Tell us, it murmured. Guide us.
“The Unholy One may be anywhere.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “In the very Sacraments of our church. In the air. In the stones. Look to yourselves!” Sixty-five pairs of eyes flicked furtively sideways. “Look to one another.”
On that note LeMerle turned away from the pulpit, and I knew the performance was over. It was his style-opening, development, soliloquy, grand finale, and then, at last, to business. I’d heard that piece-or variations thereon-many times before.
His voice, so haunting and evocative before, changed register and became the brisk, impersonal tone of an officer giving orders. “Leave here now, all of you. There can be no more services until this place has been cleansed. Soeur Anne”-he turned to Perette-“will remain with me. Soeur Alfonsine will return to the infirmary. The rest of you may return to your duties and your prayers. Praise be!”
I had to admire it a little; from the beginning he had held them in the palm of his hand, cleverly guiding them from one extreme of feeling to another-but for what? He had hinted at some grander motive than his usual robberies and deceits, although I could not begin to guess at what profit he might find in a little abbey hidden away off the coast. I shrugged to myself. What could I do? He had my daughter. Let me deal with that first and foremost. The rest was the Church’s business.
24
We devoted that morning to duties, prayer, and speculation. We held public confession at Chapter, during which it was revealed that five other nuns had tasted the tainted blood in their mouths after taking Communion. Mère Isabelle blames this inflammation of the senses on strong meats and excessive drink, and has decreed that nothing red-no red meat, no tomatoes, red wine, apples, or berry fruits-should be used in the kitchen or served at mealtimes, and that our food should henceforth be only of the plainest kind. Now that the new well is almost complete, the ale too has been restricted, to the dismay of Soeur Marguerite, who in spite of her ailments had become almost exuberant under its nourishing influence. Soeur Alfonsine is in the infirmary with Perette. Soeur Virginie watches over them both, with orders to report back anything unusual to Mère Isabelle. I find it impossible to believe that any of my sisters can truly suspect either of them of being possessed. Rumors abound, however. More dragon’s teeth of LeMerle’s sowing.
After dinner today we had half an hour to ourselves before prayer, Confession, and evening duties. I went to my herb garden-mine no longer-and ran my fingers over the neat bushes of rosemary and silver sage, releasing their dim sweetness into the darkening air. Bees droned from the purple spikes of the lavender and the small fragrant blooms of the thyme. A white butterfly paused for a moment on a patch of corn-flowers. Fleur’s absence was suddenly very immediate, very final, the memory of her orphan’s face clear as the turn of an evil card. I felt the grief which I had kept at bay come flooding back. A few seconds stolen in a crowd, a glimpse. It wasn’t enough. And I had paid for it dearly. Four days had passed. And still there was no sign from LeMerle, no hint of a second visit. A cold feeling entered me as I considered the thought that perhaps now that he had Clémente, there would be no more visits to Fleur. I was too old, too familiar for his tastes. LeMerle’s palate was for something younger. I had been too cold, too sure, too wilful. I had lost my chance.