And then there was something in front of my face-a cobweb, a figment, a rope. I did not question its miraculous presence; falling, it was almost out of my hands before I had the wit to catch it. I missed it altogether with the right hand, but my reflexes were still good and I caught fast with the left, dangling for a second in midair with nothing in my mind but stupid disbelief-then I saw a pale face, twisted now in an urgent grimace as she mouthed at me from the hole in the roof, and I understood.
Perette had not failed me. She must have climbed up the scaffolding left by the workmen and watched everything through the gaps in the slate. I hoisted myself up-the ability to climb a rope, like that of balancing upon a line, is not easily lost-and dragged myself like a wet fish onto the slippery roof.
I lay there for a while, exhausted, whilst Perette embraced me, hooting with joy. Below us I could hear a surge of sound, incomprehensible as the tides. I think I lost consciousness; for a moment I drifted, washed by the rain, the smell of the sea in my nostrils. I would never fly again. I knew it; this had been l’Ailée’s final appearance.
But now Perette put out her small hand and shook me urgently. I opened my eyes; saw her sketch one of her quick hand-mimes. A horse; the sign for “haste”; the gesture she had always used to indicate Fleur. And again Fleur; riding; haste. I sat up, my head swimming. The wild girl was right; whatever the outcome of LeMerle’s drama, it would not be wise to remain. Soeur Auguste too had given her final performance, and I found that, after all, I did not regret it.
Perette took my hand, guiding me deftly toward the ladder, still in place some fifteen feet down the steep slope below us. She seemed quite unafraid of the danger but climbed with catlike ease, balancing delicately upon a ridge of broken guttering as she moved to let me pass. Rain stung our faces and hammered on our heads; thunder rolled over us like rocks; a lightning-struck tree was ablaze a hundred yards away, touching everything with a dim, apocalyptic light. And in the middle of it all we laughed, Perette and I, like mad things; laughed with the sheer joy of the rain and the storm; at the relief of my escape, and most of all, at the look on his face, the look on LeMerle’s face as he prepared to receive the pounding of his life from a gaggle of angry nuns…
I heard later that he went without a fight and with only a token protestation of innocence, still gazing in puzzlement at the place where I had been. It was as if the ground had been cut from under him, I heard, his words losing their witchcraft in the face of this new, greater sorcery. Certainly it must have seemed to them as if I disappeared into thin air. A miracle, came the cry, a miracle, and surely this floating lady was indeed Sainte Marie-de-la-mer, come to rescue her own, as in the old legends.
The discovery of a lightning-struck tree not a hundred yards from the church also sparked rumors of miraculous delivery. I hear that today there is a small shrine to the Holy Mother of the Sea, that the new Marie has returned to the mainland, and that a new Mermaid, so like the old one as to be almost identical, has reappeared in the abbey church. Already she is said to have healing powers, and pilgrims come from as far as Paris to see the place where she appeared to more than sixty witnesses.
The Bishop of Évreux was quick to corroborate the Apparition’s tale, revealing LeMerle as an impostor in a catalog of deceit and corruption. The miraculous appearance of the fleur-de-lis, emblem of the Holy Virgin, on the arm of the accused man was interpreted as definitive proof of the Apparition’s authenticity and of his own alliance with dark powers, and he was taken, dazed and unprotesting, into the custody of the secular court.
I cannot help but grieve a little. I have hated him in the past, but since then I think I came to know him better, and if not to forgive, at least to understand. He was taken to the mainland, I heard, to be examined by the judge in Rennes. I was in Rennes myself for a time, and saw the roundhouse in which he was being kept, and read the notices upon its doors telling of his arrest. These announced his forthcoming execution-I thought I detected the vindictive hand of the bishop in some of the details, which rivaled the execution of Ravillac, the king’s murderer, in their ingeniousness and brutality.
The bishop and his niece returned to Montauban, the ancestral home of the Arnaults. Apparently Isabelle had expressed the wish for a simpler life, far from the coast, and had joined a reflective order-this time as an ordinary sister, where, I hope, she learned to live in peace and forgetfulness.
The bishop himself fared less well. Though he protested that his false confession in our chapel had been extracted by fear, he never quite recovered from its effects. Rumors of his cowardice spread insidiously; open doors were softly closed; friendships withdrawn, ambitions quashed. I have heard reports that he too is planning to retire-ostensibly on the grounds of ill health-to the same monastery of which his late brother was abbot.
As for myself, I left the abbey that day. I could not stay and risk arrest-besides, too much had passed in that place for it to be a home for me again. So I left, taking with me LeMerle’s fine horse as well as the money and provisions I found in its saddlebags.
I found Fleur waiting for me in our agreed place, the orphan look gone from her face-had it ever even been there?-and we fled across the causeway, chased all the way by the tide, arriving at Pornic three hours later.
I do not imagine they looked for me very far. The bishop already had his man, and it would not have benefited him to blazon his Isabelle’s disgrace any further. I think he let me lose myself rather than face the story I might tell, and in any case I had the tide between us and the island, with an eleven-hour wait for the next safe passage across the strand.
Traveling with LeMerle had taught me to value caution. I sold his horse as I had Giordano’s mule so long ago, and with the proceeds bought myself a caravan and a mule to pull it. We lived well from our gold, Fleur and I, stopping for supplies in market towns but keeping to the smaller roads at other times for fear of the bishop’s men. Close by Perpignan we fell in with a group of gypsies who, when they heard my tale, welcomed us as their own. We had been traveling with them for almost three months until we met an Italian theater troupe who agreed to take us both.
Since then, we have toured provincial towns all over the district. The commedia dell‘ arte begins to gain in popularity as the Italianate fashions return, and masked, I need have no fear of being recognized as the Winged One of old. We are happy, Fleur and I, with our new friends: Fiorillo who plays Scaramouche, and Domenico, who plays Arlequin. Fleur plays the drum and dances, and I play piety once more with Isabelle. That I should be given that part-that name-always fills me with a kind of laughter so close to tears that sometimes I can hardly tell them apart. The mask hides my smiles-and the rest-and Beltrame, who leads the troupe, tells me he has never seen such a spirited Isabelle.
And yet there are times-many times this past winter-when I ask myself whether it is not time to have done with it all. A floor of boards is not so sturdy as one of earth, and the thought of a piece of earth of my own returns to haunt me even in my present happiness. Fleur needs a safe place, a home. A cottage by a village, a hearth, some ducks and a goat, a vegetable garden…Maybe my life at the abbey has lost me my taste for the wandering life, or maybe I begin to feel the approach of winter. I count my gold with more than greed in my heart and promise myself that before the winter comes I will have my cottage, my hearth…Fleur bangs her drum, laughing.
Over a year has passed since I left the abbey. I still dream of it sometimes, of the friends I left there, of my sweet Perette-how I wish I could have taken her with us! In some ways I miss the abbey life; I miss my herb garden, the companionship of the chapter house, the library, the Latin lessons, the long walks across the flats to the sea. But we are free here. Fleur’s nightmares have long since stopped, and this year has seen her grow taller, her hair darkened to russet but still bleached at the ends by the island’s sun, and though the knowledge sometimes saddens me that minute by minute she grows away from me into the young girl-the adult-she will one day become, she is still the same sweet Fleur, wilful yet trusting and filled with open wonder at the world.