“No, my dear. It’s the truth.” LeMerle was watching the bishop; with a sudden movement he opened his priest’s robe and let it drop to the ground. A cry went up from the sisters; underneath the discarded robe he was dressed for travel, booted and spurred, with a leather vest leaving bare his branded left arm. It was the Blackbird of the old days who stood now smiling before the assembly, and as if to complete the tableau, lightning chose that moment to crack its bright whip across the sky, framing him in a sudden blaze of white.
The moan from the crowd had reached a pitch that I could barely tolerate, dragging at my heels like undertow. For a second I looked directly below me, and the world gave a sudden lurch. I felt the beginning of a tremor in my left leg, a tiny ticking of the calf muscle which, if left unchecked, would jerk the rope from under me into the kicking air.
I understood that this was precisely what LeMerle was waiting for; that the apparent recklessness of this unveiling had been as coolly calculated as the rest of his plan. One against sixty was odds even he might have hesitated to play; but if I were to fall…
Once more I shifted, uncomfortably aware of the slackness of the rope and of their white coiffes below me, waiting like gulls on a sea of eyes.
Ten more seconds and she will fall. Ten seconds more, eyes fixed on the white figure in the air. The diversion should be enough-the moment of flight, the broken shape on the marble-moment enough for me to find my exit. If not that, then to grab a weapon. Any of these sisters might buy my escape, but I would prefer Isabelle as hostage. A sword, a horse, and hotfoot across to the mainland. I’ll maybe leave the chit’s body in a ditch for him to find, or better still keep her with me. I could find uses enough for her where I’m going, and every day I’d fix in her flesh the barbs of my revenge. Not for myself-no, not this time. But for her, for Juliette, my sweet deceiver.
That I should live to see the day when I wished my Ailée to fall! He’ll pay for that too, you’ll see, in full coin. The congregation has become a chorus. The note-the long-drawn-out vowel of their despair-rises, swoops, soars again. Some weep in confusion, some tear their faces. But all eyes are on us both now, I watching her, she watching me. A turn of the friendly card-jack below, queen above-and our roles can be reversed once more. Even the guards remain frozen, swords half-drawn, awaiting an order that never comes.
I know what you’re doing, LeMerle. You’re waiting for me to fall. Buying time. I can feel you willing me, wishing me to slip, to stumble, the rope arcing into empty air without me, the long slice of darkness to the ground. I can feel your thoughts pressing against me. I am drenched with the rain now as water spurts from the gutter into the tower. The bell, barely three feet above me, spatters its note in a thousand droplets of sound. I will not-will not fall. But the gulf beneath draws me, and my cramping muscles scream for respite. I feel as if I have been here motionless for hours.
The rope jerks again in response to some involuntary spasm. The keening of my sisters makes me dizzy. And yet I will not-
– must-
– not-
– fall-
I see it happen with a dreamlike clarity. A series of tableaux, each fixed by the lightning as it strikes nearby-several times, in rapid succession. She slips, kicks out against the swing of the rope, and loses it-for an instant I see her arms flung wide, embracing the dark. Strike. Thunder, louder than ever before, so close overhead that for a moment I almost believe the strike has hit the tower itself…And in the brief interval of darkness that follows, I hear the rope give way.
I know I should run now, while their attention is elsewhere. But I cannot; I have to see for myself. Soeur Antoine is guarding the door; there is a dangerous expression on her face, but she is surely too slow to hinder me. As I glance at her, she begins to move toward me; her face is set in stone, and now I remember the strength in her big red arms, the size of her meaty fists. Nevertheless, she is only a woman. Even if she has turned against me now, what can she do?
The sisters crowd round, no doubt to see the body on the floor. At any moment there will come the cries, the confusion; and in that confusion I will make my escape. Soeur Virginie is looking at me, her small fists clenched; beside her, Soeur Tomasine’s eyes are narrowed into crescents. I step forward once again, and the nuns cluck like frightened hens, too stupid even to move aside. My sudden fear is absurd, I know. Ridiculous, to think that they might try to stop me: you might as well expect barnyard geese to attack the fox.
But something has gone wrong; the eyes that should have been gazing at the body on the floor are turning instead toward me. Even geese, I recall from my abbey days, can be savage when driven. And now they dare to block my way, to peck at me, to surround me with their stink and their reproaches…As I push forward into the space, Soeur Antoine raises a fist, which I could deflect with my arms behind my back, but already I am felled with astonishment, stumbling even before her blow lands. What witchcraft is this? I drop to my knees, my head ringing from a vicious punch to the back of the neck, but all I feel is a remote and silent amazement.
There is no body on the floor.
Strike.
And the tower is empty.
56
SEPTEMBER 7TH, 1611THÉÂTRE AMBULANT DUGROSJEAN CARÊMES
Some memories never fade. Even in the warmth of this good autumn, this good town, some part of me remains there, at the abbey, in the rain. Perhaps some part of me died there-died, or was reborn, I am not sure which. In any case I, who did not believe in miracles, witnessed something that changed me-only a little, but forever. Maybe, in that moment, Sainte Marie-de-la-mer was with us, sitting here now, a twelvemonth later. I can almost believe even that.
I felt the rope go. A muscular spasm, perhaps, or the slackness of the cord, or the rotten wood of the scaffolding as it gave way. I knew a moment of utter calm, frozen in the lightning flash like a fly in amber. Then reaching for nothing in a last gesture of desperation, my mind a blank but for the thought-if only I were a bird-my fingers splayed but finding nothing, nothing.
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.