The scent of incense was thick and muskily sexual-I hope it offended his priggish nostrils!-mingling as it did with the scent of female flesh. If I have taught them nothing more, I thought, at least I have wrought that change in them, that now they sweat-ooze-reek-their fear, their appetites. I have opened something in them, a secret garden if you like (see how Solomon continues to inspire me!), rank with avidness and life. I hoped he could smell it too, most rank of all on his niece, his precious niece, the family’s pride. I hoped it would choke him.
Ah. Just in time. The stink caused him to frown a little, his delicate nostrils flaring. He raised a scented handkerchief to his face as if to reassert his expression of benevolence. At my gesture-which was also a sign to Perette-the choir began a sweet but ragged rendition of Psalm 10, InDomino confido, and his smile returned, a professional smile, like mine, but not nearly as trustworthy. Behind the words of the psalm I could still hear their voices, their one voice, the voice of their affirmation, the voice of the demons I had awoken in them.
I had taken a step backward; thanks to the shadows and the smoke from the braziers, my face was partially obscured. In any case, Arnault did not recognize me but moved forward into the chapel, the archbishop at his side. He was visibly displeased with the situation but could not interrupt the psalm. His gilded eyes flicked self-consciously toward the archbishop, whose face was now a mask of disapproval.
Below me I could feel the sisters becoming restless; tiny, almost imperceptible movements rippled across them like dead leaves on a breeze. I had made sure to seat Tomasine, Virginie, Marguerite, and the other more susceptible ones in the front rows; their faces were slack, observing the visitors with glazed, frightened eyes as they moved slowly through the crowd toward the altar.
I needed only to speak one word, and the trap was sprung.
“Welcome.”
I saw it begin. One upturned face, then another-for a second I was certain this meant discovery, but the eyes were blanks. Another face turned upward, the arms outflung in sudden rapture, then the ripple ran through the entire congregation as, like fire, it leaped from one sister to the other. The psalm faltered, stopped as the cries began, pleas, incantations, obscenities. The Dancing Mass had refined itself since I last attended; Pandaemonium unfurled new petals in the face of this newcomer, strutting, prancing, falling to its knees or lifting its skirts in daring lewdness…In a few seconds it would be impossible to stop it. Arms flailed the smoky air. Faces surfaced only to submerge once more among hopeless cries. Clothes were rent and cast off. Virginie, always eager to take the lead, began to revolve madly, skirts wheeling out around her.
The bishop was taken completely by surprise. This was so far from what he was expecting that he was dazed, still looking among the cries and the scenes of chaos for the triumphant tableau he had been expecting to see. Isabelle was watching him from her place by the brazier, her face scarlet in the flames, but she made no move to greet him. Instead her small fists clenched against the side of the pulpit and her mouth dropped open as the noise redoubled and LeMerle stepped out into the light.
“Welcome.”
Such a moment was meant to be savored. Imagine this if you can: the greatest scion of the house of Arnault, a half-naked nun on one side, a grinning ecstatic on the other, and all the wild beasts of this hellish circus grunting and squealing and bellowing about him like the lowest and most debauched of sideshows!
For a second I was afraid that he had not recognized me, but it was rage that silenced him, not incomprehension. His eyes widened as if they might devour me; his mouth opened, but no sound emerged. Outrage swelled him from within like the frog in the fable, so that his voice, when it finally came, was a ridiculous croak: “You here! You here?”
Even now he did not completely understand. Père Colombin Saint-Amand, the man with whom he had corresponded, could not be this man. This interloper had somehow taken the place of the holy man, and the nuns, the nuns…But the nuns seemed to recognize him. Hands outstretched, pleading, praying. Even Isabelle-poor child, grown so wan in the past months, her face ravaged by sickness and disquiet-even she looked to him as to a savior, tears silvering her small pinched face as her hand reached out toward some object hidden behind the pulpitum…
Stupid disbelief slowed all his faculties. I couldn’t have that. I signaled to Isabelle to hold back, and to Perette, who must still be lurking out of sight, to take her place.
Meanwhile Arnault stared at me as if one or the other of us must be mad. “You here. How dare you? How dare you?”
“Oh, I’ll dare anything. You said so yourself, on one or another of our meetings.” I addressed the sisters, who had forsaken their raptures in curiosity and now stared at us open-mouthed: “Did I not warn you of how a fair face may conceal a foul one? The man before you is not what he appears.” I controlled my audience with a gesture as the crowd surged forward. Already, the liveried guards of the retinue had been separated from their masters; the archbishop was cut off-though I was glad to see he was well positioned to witness everything-and only the Bishop stood between me and the congregation.
Don’t let anyone tell you it isn’t worth it. The longer you have to wait, the more exquisite it is. I could see fear in him now-only a little, for he still believed this to be some kind of dream, but it would grow. Behind him, someone wailed and collapsed. They were beginning to move again, restlessly: a ripple that would soon once more become a wave. I took off my cross by the leather thong that bound it, and raised it in front of me. Then I laid it-negligently, or so it seemed-by the side of the pulpitum, and waited for the finale to begin.
This must be the moment, I thought, when Perette was due to appear. I sensed a drop in the voices below me, a slight hesitation in his delivery that no one perceived but myself. I could appreciate his timing: the lull during which the Unholy Nun was to make her last and most dramatic appearance. Unlike myself, however, he had not placed all his trust in Perette. She was not fundamental to his plans but an artistic touch without which he could manage quite well if he needed to. He would be disappointed, certainly; but I hoped her absence would arouse no suspicion in him. He knew Perette was too volatile to trust; I was about to gamble my life on the hope that she was not.
The bishop advanced, too angry for caution or curiosity. He was a tall man, taller even than LeMerle, and from my perch he looked more like a bird, a black crane perhaps, or a heron, as he marched up the steps toward the pulpitum with his robes flapping behind him. The smoke from the brazier stung my eyes, and there was rain dripping on my neck, but I had to see this confrontation. I had to be sure-I had to know that there was no other way than the one I had chosen-before I made my move.
I heard their voices below me, only slightly distorted by the shape of the bell tower. LeMerle’s clear tones, and those of the bishop, hoarse with disbelief and righteous anger, calling out instructions to his guards, which they could not obey without cutting a swath through a crowd of ecstatic nuns.
I could not yet make my move. LeMerle was still too close to the brazier, and if cornered, he might light the fuse and set the terrible sequence into motion. Had I left it too late? Was I to watch helpless as LeMerle carried out his revenge?
Then, as if in answer to my prayer, the bishop mounted the pulpitum and in the same moment, miraculously, LeMerle stepped away from the brazier. Now was the time, I thought, now-and, with a quick cantrip to ensure my safe footing and a whispered prayer to Saint Francis of the Birds, I took the rope in both hands and flung it out into the smoky air.