But she was not to be cajoled. “Announce it at Chapter,” she said. “Do it tonight, Guy, or I’ll do it myself.”
Well, that was my cue. I should have liked your cooperation, my dear, but I had never really expected it at this late stage. I found Antoine by the well-the spot seems to hold a special place in her heart since Germaine’s hanging-and she reacted quickly to the signal she has been anticipating for the past week. Perhaps she is not as slow-witted as I take her for, for I saw her face light up in real pleasure at the task. In that moment she looked neither dull-witted nor ugly, and I felt a moment’s unease. Still, she follows me without question, which is what counts; she does not have your scruples, and she at least understands revenge.
Oh really, Juliette. You always were a simpleton despite your learning. What do we owe to anyone but ourselves? What do we owe to the Creator, sitting there on his golden throne dispensing judgment? Did we ask to be created? Did we ask to be thrown into this world like dice? Look around you, little sister. What has he dealt you that you should take his side? Besides, you should know better by now than to play against me; in the end, I always win.
I knew she would wait until Chapter. Knowing that, I struck first, or rather, Antoine struck, with the help of Soeur Virginie. It was a rousing performance, so I hear; a vision led them to your cache and to the evidence concealed therein-the tarot cards, the poisons, and the bloodied quichenotte of the Unholy Nun. You would have fought but were no match for Antoine’s brute strength; on the orders of the abbess, you were taken to the cellarium and imprisoned there, awaiting a decision. The rumors took wing at once.
“Is she-”
“Possessed?”
“Accused?”
“No, not Auguste-”
“I always knew she was a-”
It is a sigh almost of satisfaction, the whisper taken up-wishwishwish-with a coyness, a fluttering of eyelash and lowering of lids more at home in a Paris salon. These nuns have more feminine tricks than a battery of society prudes, exercising their false modesty to captivate. Their desire smells of sour lilies.
I made my voice grave. “An accusation has been made,” I announced. “If this is true, then we have-we have nurtured-hell’s catamite in our midst from the very first-”
The phrase enticed them. Hell’s Catamite. A good name for a burlesque or a tragédie-ballet. I saw them squirm in scarce disguised excitement.
“A spy, mocking our rituals, secretly in league with the forces that seek to destroy us!”
“I trusted you,” you said as I led you to the cellar door. And then you spat in my face and would have gone for me with your nails if Soeur Antoine had not pushed you into the room and shut the door.
I wiped my brow with a Cholet handkerchief. Through the slit in the door I could see your eyes. Impossible to tell you at this time why I have betrayed you. Impossible to explain that this is the one measure that may save your life.
49
At first I was disorientated. The room-a storeroom annex to the cellarium, hastily reconverted into a cell for the first time since the black friars-was so like the cellar in Épinal that for a time I wondered whether the past five years had not been a dream, my mind’s attempt to play its fleeting sanity like a fish on a line, reeling it inward and inward until understanding breaks the surface.
Giordano’s cards were enough to confirm their suspicions. I wish now that I had paid more attention to their warning; to the Hermit, with his subtle smile and cloaked lantern; to the Deuce of Cups, love and forgetfulness; to the Tower aflame. It is past noon now, and the storeroom is dark except for half a dozen slices of sunlight against the back wall from the ventilation slats, too high to reach, in any case too small to present any hope of escape.
I have not wept. Perhaps some part of me expected his betrayal. I cannot even say that I feel sorrow-or even fear. Five years have sown a kind of serenity. A coldness. I think of Fleur at noon tomorrow, waiting by the tamarisks.
This was once a cell, I realize. Today it reverts to its original function. The black friars once did penance in such cells, hidden from the daylight, their food pushed through a narrow slot in the door, the air rank with the stink of prayers and guilt.
I will not pray. Besides I do not know to whom I should do so. My Goddess is a blasphemy, my Marie-de-la-mer lost to the sea. I can hear the surf from here, carried across the marshes by the west wind. Will she remember me? Will Fleur grow with my face in her heart, as I kept my own mother’s image close to my own? Or will she be the child of strangers, unwanted or worse-to grow to love them as her own, to be grateful, glad to be rid of me?
The thought is useless. I try to regain my serenity, but her image troubles me too much. My heart aches for her touch. Once more, I ask Marie-de-la-mer. Whatever it costs me, once more. My Fleur. My daughter. It is not any prayer Giordano would understand, but it is a prayer nevertheless.
Time’s black rosary counts the interminable seconds.
50
I think I slept. The darkness and the hush of the surf lulled me, and for a time I dreamed. Bright images pranced by me: Germaine, Clémente, Alfonsine, Antoine…The snakeskin-silvery scar on LeMerle’s shoulder, the smile in his eyes.
Trust me, Juliette.
My daughter’s red dress, the scrape on her knee, the way she laughed and clapped at the players in the dusty sunlight a thousand years ago. I awoke to find the slices of sunlight high up on the wall, reddened as the sun began its descent. Feeling refreshed in spite of everything, I rose to look about me. The room still smelt of the vinegar and preserves that had been kept there; in a clearing space a pickle jar had been broken and a damp patch remained on the earthen floor, redolent of clove and garlic. I searched the floor, thinking perhaps to find a sliver of glass overlooked in their haste, but there was nothing. In any case I do not know what I would have done with it if there had been one; the thought of my blood on the earth, mingling perhaps with the aloes and vinegar of the spilled pickles, revolted me. Tentatively I touched the walls of my cell. These were stone, the good gray granite of the region, which sparkles with mica in sunlight but in shadow looks almost black. There were indentations scratched into the stone, I realized, short, even marks chiseled at intervals in the granite that my fingertips discovered in the semidarkness: five marks, then a neat cross stroke; five marks, then another. Some brother had perhaps tried to mark his time in this way, I realized, covering half the wall with the orderly down-and-cross strokes of his days, his months.
I went to the door. It was locked, of course, the heavy wooden panels banded with iron. A metal hatchway-secured from the outside-might serve as a means to deliver my meals. I listened at the door but could hear nothing to indicate whether or not anyone kept watch over the prisoner. Why should they? I was safe enough.
Daylight waned until it was nothing but a purplish blur. My eyes, accustomed to the dim light, could still make out the shapes of the door, the twilit pallor of the ventilation slats, a heap of flour sacks that had been left in a corner to serve as bedding, a wooden bucket in the opposite corner. Without my wimple-it had been removed when I was led here, as was the cross at the breast of my habit-I felt oddly estranged from myself, a creature from a different time. Yet this l’Ailée was cold, and her quick calculation of time was like that of a mariner measuring the approach of a coming storm, not that of a prisoner awaiting the hours to execution. In spite of everything there was still power to be had, to be used, if only I knew how.