Mon père…Mon père…
I almost had to carry her back up the steps of the ossuary.
Suddenly she stiffened. “Holy Mother! The silence! The penance!” I shushed her furiously. But it was too late. There were sisters all about us now, unsure whether or not to address us. LeMerle kept his distance. This performance was for his benefit, and he knew it. Mère Isabelle stood next to him, watching us with lips slightly parted. This was more like it, I thought fiercely. This was what she had hoped for.
“Ma mère,” brayed Alfonsine, falling to her knees on the floor of the transept. “Ma mère, I am sorry. Give me another penance, a hundred penances if you must, but please forgive me!”
“What happened?” snapped Isabelle. “What did Soeur Auguste say to make you defy your vow of silence?”
“Mother of God!” Alfonsine was stalling for time. I could hear it in her voice as she became aware of her audience. “I felt in the crypt, ma mère! We both felt it! We felt its icy breath!” Her own skin was icy as if in response. I could almost feel myself growing cold in sympathy.
“What did you feel?”
“It’s nothing.” The last thing I wanted was to draw unwelcome attention to myself, but I could not allow this to pass. “A draft from the undercroft, that was all. Her nerves are disordered. She’s always-”
“Silence!” snapped Isabelle. She turned again to Alfonsine, whispered: “What did you feel?”
“The demon, ma mère. I felt its presence like a cold wind.” Alfonsine looked at me, and I thought I saw satisfaction in her face. “A cold wind.”
Isabelle turned to me, and I shrugged.
“A draft from the undercroft,” I said again. “It blew out my candle.”
“I know what I felt!” Alfonsine was shaking again. “And you felt it too, Auguste! You told me so yourself!” Her face convulsed and she coughed twice. “It blew into me, I tell you, the demon came right into me and-” She was choking now, clawing at her throat. “It’s still here!” I heard her cry. “It’s still here!” Then she sank, convulsing, to the floor.
“Hold her!” cried Mère Isabelle, losing some of her composure.
But Alfonsine would not be held. She bit, spat, shrieked, kicked her legs immodestly, the attack redoubling whenever I came close. It took three of us-Germaine, Marguerite, and a deaf nun called Soeur Clothilde-to hold her, to pry open her mouth to stop her from swallowing her tongue, and even then she continued to scream until finally Père Colombin himself came to bless her, and she lay rigid and still against him.
At that point Isabelle turned on me. “What did she mean, it’s still here?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“What happened in the crypt?”
“My candle blew out. I tripped and fell.”
“What about Soeur Alfonsine?”
“I don’t know.”
“She says you do.”
“I can’t help that,” I said. “She makes things up. She likes the attention. Ask anyone.”
But Isabelle was far from satisfied. “She was trying to tell me something,” she persisted. “You stopped her. Now what was she-”
“For God’s sake, can’t this wait?” I had almost forgotten LeMerle, artfully positioned in a chance shaft of sunlight, with Soeur Alfonsine gasping like a beached fish in his arms. “For the moment we must take this poor woman to the infirmary. I presume I have your authority to lift her penance?” Mère Isabelle hesitated, still looking at me. “Or perhaps you would prefer to discuss the matter in your own good time?”
Isabelle flushed slightly. “The matter must be investigated and dealt with,” she said.
“Of course. When Soeur Alfonsine is in a condition to speak.”
“And Soeur Auguste?”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
“But mon père…”
“By Chapter tomorrow we will know more. I’m sure you agree that it would be unseemly to act in haste.”
There was a long pause. “So be it. Tomorrow, then. At Chapter.”
I looked at him then, to find his eyes on me again, bright and troubling. For a fleeting moment I even wondered whether he had known what was going to happen in the crypt, had arranged it in some way in order to bring me further into his power…I would have believed almost anything of him then. He was uncanny. And he knew me too well.
Well, whether he had planned it or not, this had been a demonstration. LeMerle had shown me that without him I was helpless, my safety as perilous as a frayed rope. Like it or not, I needed his help. And the Blackbird, I knew of old, never sold his favors cheap.
19
Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.“
At last. Confession. How good it feels to hold her captive like this, my wild one, my bird of prey. I can feel her eyes on me from behind the grille, and for a troubling moment I am the one who is caged. It is a curious sensation; I can hear her quickened breathing, sense the enormous effort of will that keeps her voice level as she intones the ritual words. Light from the window above us filters dimly into the confessional, painting her face with a harlequin pattern of rose and black squares.
“Well, if it isn’t my Ailée, giving up her wings for whiter ones in heaven.”
I am unused to such intimacies as this, the casual exposure of the confessional. It makes me impatient-sends my mind wandering down overgrown paths best left forgotten. Perhaps she knows it; her silence is that of a confessor, and not a penitent. I can feel it, drawing out reckless words I did not intend to speak.
“I suppose you still hold that business against me.” Silence. “That business at Épinal.”
She has withdrawn her face from the grille and the darkness speaks for her, blank and unremitting. I can feel her eyes on me, like irons. For thirty seconds I feel their heat. Then she folds, as I knew she would.
“I want my daughter.”
Good. It really is a weakness in her game; she’s lucky we’re not playing for money. “I find myself obliged to stay here for a while,” I tell her. “I can’t risk you leaving.”
“Why not?” There is a savage note in her voice now, and I revel in it. I can deal with her anger. I can use it. Gently I feed the flame.
“You’ll have to trust me. I haven’t betrayed you, have I?”
Silence. I know she is thinking of Épinal.
Stubbornly: “I want Fleur.”
“Is that her name? You could see her every day. Would you like that?” Slyly: “She must be missing her mother. Poor thing.”
She flinches then-and the game is mine. “What do you want, LeMerle?”
“Your silence. Your loyalty.”
That sound was too harsh to be laughter. “Are you mad? I have to get away from here. You’ve seen to that already.”
“Impossible. I can’t have you spoiling things.”
“Spoiling what?” Too fast, LeMerle. Too fast. “There’s no wealth here for you. What’s your game?”
Oh, Juliette. If only I could tell you. I’m sure you’d appreciate it. You’re the only one who would. “Later, little bird. Later. Come to my cottage tonight, after Compline. Can you get out of the dorter without being heard?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Till then, Juliette.”
“What about Fleur?”
“Till then.”
She came to me just after midnight. I was sitting at my desk with my copy of Aristotle’s Politics, when I heard the door open with a soft click. The glow from the single candle caught her shift and the copper-gilt of her cropped hair.
“Juliette.”
She had discarded her habit and wimple. Left them in the dorter, no doubt, to avoid arousing suspicion. With her hair cut short she looked like a beautiful boy. The next time we dance the classics I’ll cast her as Ganymede or Hyacinthus. She neither spoke nor smiled, and the cold draft from the open doorway swept between her ankles unnoticed.