In spite of myself I spoke out. “But ma mère-”
“This object-is not the Holy Mother,” said Isabelle. “And there is no such saint as Marie-de-la-mer. There never was.” Her nasal voice rose a little. “How can you bear it here? This thing in our church! Pilgrims coming to touch it! Women-pregnant women-scraping dust from it to brew their charms!”
I began to understand. Not the saint herself, but the use to which she had been put; the touch of fertility in the barren house of God.
Isabelle took a breath. Now she had begun to speak it seemed she could not stop herself. “I knew it the moment I set foot here. The unconsecrated burials. The secret excesses! The curse of blood!” It was almost hysteria, but she was cold for all that. Angélique Saint-Hervé Désirée Arnault had her own formula and would stick to it no matter what.
“And now,” she said. “It dares to attack me. Me! Taunts me with blood! My confessor locates the source and purifies it. But the evil remains. The evil remains.”
She stayed for a minute in silence, contemplating the evil. Then, with a crisp Praise be!, she turned and was gone.
The bell for Nones went soon afterward, and there was little time for discussion. Not that I would have dared voice my doubts in any case, for the fear of losing contact with Fleur kept me from speaking my mind. Throughout Nones I found my mind straying to Mère Isabelle’s words on the church steps, words of which she herself seemed barely conscious.
The curse of blood. The evil remains.
The new well is close to complete now, its water as sweet and clear as she could have wished. LeMerle has exorcised the church itself, the font, the sacristy, and all the holy vessels, declaring them free from taint. He has intimated the same of Perette and Alfonsine too, to my relief, although there are still rumors. Alfonsine seems quite disappointed that she has been given this clean bill of spiritual health, and her visible chagrin causes Marguerite to speak slightingly of actresses and attention-seekers.
And yet the evil remains.
I tried to keep my eyes from wandering, but time and again found myself staring at the giant emptiness that had once held Marie-de-la-mer. A small sacrifice, I told myself, compared with the return of my daughter, for what was a statue to a living child, a frightened child?
LeMerle was behind it, of course. What he wanted with the statue I could not guess, but its removal-that of the one symbol of our unity and our faith-had brought us one step closer to surrender. He must become our symbol now, I realized; he was to be our only salvation. During the service he spoke of female martyrs, of Sainte Perpetua and Sainte Catherine and Christina Mirabilis, of the mystery of death and the purity of fire, and he held us in his palm.
25
Abbaye de Sainte-Marie-MèreÎle-des-Noirs-MoustiersJuly 26th, 1610
Monseigneur,
It is with the Greatest Pleasure that I am able to inform Monseigneur that Everything He has so wisely foreseen is proceeding according to Plan. My Charge shows the most Commendable Zeal in all the Reforms she has instigated, and the Abbey is almost Restored to Former Glory. The Church Roof still requires some Labor, and I regret to say that much of the South Transept has been grievously Damaged by Weathering, however we entertain Great Hopes of seeing the Whole Complete by the Beginning of Winter.
The Original Name of our Abbey, as Monseigneur will have Noticed, has also been Restored and all Signs and Intimations of the Vernacular Name erased in favor of the Above. I add my most earnest Entreaties to those of Your Niece, Monseigneur, that if Your busy Schedule enables You to Grace us with a Visit in the Coming Months, we should be most Honored and Gratified to receive Your August Presence.
I remain your most obedient servant,
Blah, blah, blah.
I have to admit I’ve a neat turn of phrase. Your August Presence. I like that.
I’ll have it sent in the morning by special envoy. Or maybe I could ride out to Pornic myself and send it from there-anything to get out of the stink of this place for a few hours. How Juliette can bear it, I can’t imagine. I only bear it because I have to; and because I know I won’t be here for long. These cloistered ones, these toadstools, have a very special rankness, and the scent of their hypocrisy turns my stomach. Imprisoned here I can hardly breathe, hardly sleep; I must ask Juliette to make me a soothing draught.
Sweet Juliette. The fair girl-what’s her name? Clémente?-is well enough for my needs, and touchingly eager to please too, but she’s no worthy quarry. For a start, her eyes are too large. Their color, that of a flawless summer sky, lacks that discordant note of slate and embers. Her hair too, fair as foam, is hopelessly wrong. Her skin too white, her legs too smooth, her face unmarred by sun and grime. Call me ungrateful if you like. A honey-fall like that, and I must hanker after that stiff-necked maypole with her flinty eyes. Perhaps it’s her hatred of me that gives it spice.
There’s no heat in Clémente. Her pallor freezes my bones. She whispers constantly in my ears tales of romance, dreams of Bele Yolande, Tristan and Iseult, Abelard and Héloïse…In any case, there’s no danger of her talking. The little fool’s in love. I subject her to more and more prolonged miseries, but she seems to revel in each indignity. For myself, I enhance my pleasure how I can with dreams of red-haired harpies.
There’s no escaping her. The other night she came to me-in a vision, or so I thought. I saw her for an instant only, her face pressed to the pane of my window, her eyes reflecting the soft glow of the firelight so that for a moment she looked almost tender.
Clémente moved beneath me with the little bleating cries that masquerade as passion with her. Her eyes were closed and I saw her hair and flanks illuminated in fire. I felt a hot sudden surge of joy in my loins, as if the woman at the window and the one in my arms had unexpectedly become one and the same, then the face at the window vanished and I was left with nothing more than Clémente gasping like a landed fish in my hands. My pleasure-no great delight in any case-was marred by the growing certainty that Juliette’s face at the window had been no phantasm. She had seen us together. The look on her face-shock, disgust, and something that might have been chagrin or even rage-haunted me. For a second I could almost have run after her, ruinous though that would have been to all my careful plans. Wild thoughts fired me. I stood up and went naked to the window in spite of Clémente’s protests. Was that a pale figure half hidden in the shadows of the gatehouse? I could not be sure.
“Colombin, please.” I looked over my shoulder to see Clémente crouching by the hearth, her hair still deceptively brazen in the light of the dying embers. A sudden wave of fury washed over me and in two strides I was upon her.
“I gave you no leave to use my name.” I yanked her to her feet by a fistful of hair and she gave a stifled scream. I slapped her then, twice, not as hard as I should have liked, but enough to bring brief roses to her cheeks. “Who do you think you are, some Paris courtesan in her salon? Who do you think I am?”
She was weeping now, in braying sobs. For some reason this enraged me still more and I dragged her to the couch, still squealing.
I didn’t really hurt her. A red handprint or two on a white shoulder, a white thigh. Juliette would have killed me for far less. But Clémente watched me from her couch, her eyes reproachful but nevertheless bright with a strange satisfaction, as if this were how she expected things to be.