When I realized my mistake, it was already too late. The bird had flown; our trickery had been discovered; Le Borgne was lying under his caravan with a slit throat, and the soldiers of the new Inquisition were waiting for us in the false dawn with crossbows and swords, chains and rope. There was one thing we had all failed to take into account in our planning, one small thing, which made all of our winnings suddenly void.
During the night, Judge Rémy had come home.
11
I have little recollection of that day. Any recollection would be too much, but it comes to me sometimes in still pictures, like a lantern show. The guards’ hands as they dragged us from our beds. Our clothes falling to the ground as they were cut from our bodies. More than anything else, I remember the sounds: the horses; the chink of metal harnesses; the cries of confusion; the shouted orders as we stumbled stupidly from sleep.
It took me too long to understand what had happened. If I had been more alert I might have escaped under cover of dark and the general chaos-Bouffon, especially, fought like a demon, and some of the guards had to leave us to attend to him-but I was still dazed, expecting LeMerle to appear at any moment with some plan for our release, and a moment later, the opportunity was lost.
He had abandoned us. He had saved himself, sensing perhaps the approach of danger and knowing that if we all fled together he would be more likely to be caught. Le Borgne, who might have revealed the trickery, was too dangerous to be left alive. They found the little man under his rig, his throat slit, his features deliberately mutilated. The rest of us-women, gypsies, dwarves, all easily replaceable-he flung to his pursuers like a handful of coins. What it came to, I told myself, was that LeMerle had sold us. Again.
But by the time I realized his betrayal it was too late. We were chained naked in a row with our wrists shackled, mounted guards watching over us on either side. Hermine was weeping noisily, her hair over her face. I walked behind her with my head held high. Bouffon limped along painfully at the back. The guard at my side-a fat swine of a man with mean eyes and a rosebud mouth-muttered a lewd comment, and put out his hand to brush my face. I looked at him in contempt. My eyes felt hot and dry as baking stones.
“Touch me once, even with the shadow of your little finger,” I told him softly, “and I’ll see to it your prick falls off. I know how to do it-a very little cantrip should be enough…”
The man bared his teeth. “You’ll get yours, bitch,” he mumbled. “I can wait.”
“I’m sure you can, pig. But remember that cantrip.”
Foolish to threaten him, I know. But my rage was blistering me from within: I had to say something or I would explode.
The thought went round and round my mind, dogged and stupid as a mule around a well wheel, slowly building as it went. How could he do this to me? To me? To Hermine, perhaps. To Bouffon and Becquot. To the dwarves. But me? Why didn’t he take me with him?
And it was this discovery about myself-the knowledge that if he had asked me to go with him I might have accepted-which fixed my hatred, then and forever. I had assumed I was better than this, better than the others with their weaknesses and their petty deceits. But LeMerle had held a mirror to my soul. Now I too was capable of betrayal. Of cowardice. Of murder. In my heart I saw it as I nursed my rage and dreamed of his blood. It rocked me as I slept. It clothed me as I walked.
The roundhouse cells were full, and they locked us in the cellars below the courtroom. Mine was cold, with a floor of trodden earth, the walls frosted with salty residue. I knew that mixed with a little sulfur and charcoal this white powder would make a satisfying explosion-but in this state, it was useless. There was no window; no way out but the locked door. I sat down on the damp floor and considered my position.
We were guilty. No one would dispute it. Judge Rémy could take his pick of the charges-God knows, LeMerle had given him enough to choose from. Theft, poisoning, impersonation, heresy, vagrancy, witchcraft, murder-any one of these deserved death according to the law. Someone else-a person of faith-might have found comfort in prayer, but I did not know how to pray. There is no God for the likes of us, Le Borgne used to say, for we were not made in his image. We are the holy fools, the half-made ones, the ones who came out broken from the kiln. How could we pray? And even if we could, what would we say to him?
And so I set my back against the stone and my feet on the baked-earth floor, and I stayed there as the dawn approached, cradling the new life in my belly with both hands and listening to the sounds of sobbing from the other side of the wall.
Something woke me abruptly from my daze. The darkness was complete, but there was no mistaking the sound of a bolt being drawn, nor the stealthy approach of footsteps down the cellar steps. I struggled to my feet, keeping my back against the wall.
“Who’s there?” I whispered.
Now I could hear the slow intake of a man’s breath as he moved toward me, the sound of a robe brushing against the wall. I raised my fist in the darkness, my body trembling but my hand steady. I waited for him to come within range.
“Juliette?”
I froze. “Who are you? How did you know my name?”
“Juliette, please. We don’t have time.”
I lowered my fist gently to my side. I knew who it was; it was the Plague Doctor who had tried to warn me, whose voice had seemed so familiar. And I knew that smell too, that dry alchemical smell. In the darkness, with no noise or distractions, it was even more so. In the dark, my eyes widened.
“Giordano?”
There came an impatient hiss in the darkness. “I said there isn’t time, girl. Take this.” Something soft was flung across the cell toward me. A garment. It was a robe of some kind and smelt musty, but it was enough to cover my nakedness. Wondering, I pulled it over my head.
“Good. Now follow me, and quickly. You haven’t got long.”
The trapdoor at the top of the steps was open. The Plague Doctor went through first, and helped me follow him. The light in the passageway seemed blinding to one so long accustomed to darkness but came only from a single sconce. Still dazed, I turned toward my old friend and saw nothing but the long-nosed mask and black robe.
“Giordano?” I said again, putting out my hand to touch the papiermâché vizard.
The Plague Doctor shook his head. “Must you always be asking questions? I put a purgative in the guard’s soup. He’s been rushing to the latrine every ten minutes. And this time he left his key.” He made as if to push me toward the courtroom door.
“What about my friends?” I protested.
“There’s no time. If you escape alone, we both have a chance. Now will you go?”
I hesitated. In that moment I seemed to hear LeMerle’s voice from behind the black mask, and my own whispering its ugly, foolish reply. Take me. Leave the others. But take me.
Not again, I told myself fiercely. If LeMerle had asked me, perhaps I might have gone. But if is a small, uncertain word on which to build a future. I felt my unborn child move inside me and I knew that if I followed my cowardice now, LeMerle would always be there to taint my joy in her.