by Tanith Lee
“I don’t know her,” he said.
Struck in the heart, Jehanine stood in silence. For the first time since her escape, she was at a loss. She could see it was true. He did not know her.
“Well, what does she want?” said another of the men. Nearest to her, he caught at her suddenly, squeezing her flank. “We’re not ready for your single talent yet. Try us later.”
All of them burst out laughing, and Pierre’s beautiful laugh rose up again with the rest.
Jehanine shook off her hood in terror. She clutched her hands together at her throat. “Pierre – Pierre –”
“Oh, she’s glue, this one.”
“Go on, you hussy. Clear yourself off.”
“Wait,” said Pierre. Now his voice was low and shaken. He reached suddenly across all of them and caught down one of her hands. “Is it you?”
“Yes –”
“What in Christ’s name – what are you doing here? Am I drunk and dreaming you?” Then, breaking through his guffawing and shoving friends, Pierre came out to her. Ignoring the fresh outcry, he began to drag her away with him, into some darker than dark corner. Vaguely she saw skeins of onions hanging from the roof about them, vaguely she heard all the clamour recede like a rumbling in the earth. “Why are you here, Jehanine? What’s happened?”
All of her seemed to give way at once. She wanted only to weep, and that he would take her instantly to some private gentle spot, and comfort her. But something in him, something new and novel, something old and well-known, warned her not to lean on him or shed her tears.
“I couldn’t stay,” she said. “He raped me.”
Pierre only gazed at her. His eyes were wide. What girl was he seeing here before him?
“Who?” he eventually said, without interest, only bewildered.
“Belnard.”
“Do you say our father –”
“Your father. Yes. He raped me. And later another of them would have – but I –” something stopped the phrases of how she had used a sharp stone. “What could I do but –”
“Oh, Jehanine,” Pierre interrupted her. “What are you saying? As if he’d do such a thing.”
And now it was her turn to gaze in astonishment.
“Oh very well,” said Pierre. He lowered his eyes, put out that such matters must be verbalised between them. “Perhaps you were unwise with some man. I won’t judge you. But to say our father did that to you. That’s disgusting.”
She closed her eyes. It is true, she cried out at him, soundlessly, hitting and clawing at him with her heart as she stood there motionless, defeated once and for all. Ah Pierre. Fair hero, but a man. How could it have been otherwise?
“Well,” he sighed. “I must get you back to the farm.”
A word, despite everything, sprang from her mouth, like the frogs of witch-cursings in tales. “No.”
“Don’t be tiresome, girl. I’ll have to spend time on this. I’m not best pleased, I can tell you. I have other things to do.”
“No – no – let me stay with you. I’ll care for you and –”
Christ’s teeth. You fool, Jehanine. I lodge in a sty. You can’t come there. You must go home.”
And as they stood there, among the grove of onions in the dark, the smothered light burned in his eyes, on his hair, and suddenly touched also a spark under his throat. Having glimpsed it, she could not look away from it, though she had no understanding of what it might be – a fleck of mysterious fire, or the eye of some creature clinging inside his tunic.
“No,” she murmured again, but her purpose was gone. She spoke now on a dying reflex. But he answered in anger: “Yes, by God. Home you’ll go, you damned and stupid sow. Coming here and shaming me like this. Do I want you? Stupid fool, I’d rather hang myself than say you were my sister, flouncing here like some trollop.”
And then she saw what the spark of fire, the eye, really was. It was a jewel, a perfect topaz set square into a small crucifix of gold. It was the fabled gem Belnard had promised his son at his leave-taking. A gift for the boy, an abuse for the girl. As with the rape, these harsh words, this betrayal, oh, what else?
Jehanine whispered, “Forgive me, Pierre. What shall I do?”
Her heart had now died, and she felt nothing at all as he brusquely told her. Nor did she listen. The dead have no necessity to heed or to obey.
“What’s up with you? There now, ssh. Tell? I’ll listen.”
Jehanine struck out feebly, but the bending shadow dodged her blow. The shadow moved a space, and leaned philosophically on a wall. It sang: “Fero, fero, fero.” Then: “I could have told you. Whatever you are, girl or boy, that sort – they use you up then cast you off. No use begging in this blighted world. Stones for bread, poison for milk, kicks and cuts and cuffs and curses for a kiss.”
It was the dwarf, still following her. She supposed he would know about stones and curses. But that did not make her fond of him.
Directed by her brother to sit in a recess at the inn doorway, she had done so, the way a dog follows a command, meaningless in itself, by tone. She could not recall the direction. Other than herself, and a sleeping, toothless crone, the recess was vacant. Beyond, the drinkers came and drank and stayed or went. Pierre had also said he would return and fetch Jehanine, when he was done. Though she had not heard the words, she had assimilated the fury of his irritation.
After a short while, seeing it was ridiculous to remain, she got up again, left the crone and the Cockatrice, and wandered away into the City.
Somewhere – unlit houses, perhaps an open square under an arch – she sank by a wall and began to weep.
She did not know why, and assumed the sobbing would quickly cease, as in the past it always had. It did not. Then the dwarf approached.
“You see,” said the dwarf now, “the world isn’t God’s, it’s the Devil’s. Satan is Lord. You make a grave mistake, calling out to the other one. Think how it hurts him, Prince Lucefiel, the Morning Star, to be passed over.”
This blasphemy was gibberish. Jehanine wept. Rising, weeping, she pushed by the dwarf, and wandered into the open arch, and through, and on, and away.
The rain began much later. The moon had set, hardly a lamp burned anywhere. Only bells sounded across the lakes of the night. Then into these pastures and caves of the City, the rushing water crashed.
A curious thing happened. Though she had almost forgotten it, someone still followed the girl, and now she became aware that by following, he led – he drove her, as the shepherd and the goatherd drive their flocks and herds. She did not understand how this was, yet it had happened. Mindless in her grieving nullity, he had somehow sent her up and down the City, and now she had come through a labyrinth of alleys, in the rain, and so to a long high wall of stone. And then there was a gateway, and thick black doors studded by iron were shut fast in it.
Jehanine entered the gate for shelter and slipped down against the doors.
“Knock,” said the dwarf, “and be answered.”
“Why have you brought me here?” she said.
“I? Brought you?” He smiled. He had rain for teeth and eyes. “Fero, fero. Knock.”
She raised her fist and saw it dimly, like a wet white bone. She knocked on the door.
Presently a grill rustled above. Jehanine did not bother to raise her head or face. She bowed there in the rain. A woman’s voice whispered to her. “Demoiselle, what do you want? Do you wish to come in?
Jehanine thought: It will be a brothel.
The voice spoke so softly.
“You are at the gate of the Nunnery of the Angel. I will open the door at once. Don’t be afraid.”
Jehanine had an urge to drag herself away. She looked about now to try to see the dwarf and to say, He knocked, not I. But the dwarf had disappeared again. Then the door was unlocked and one leaf of it swung inwards. A robed female shape, holding a pale lantern in a staring-pale gorget. A nun.
Jehanine got up slowly, the Bride of Christ helping her, and th
e lantern enfolded them both and drew them in. Another robed, veiled nun locked shut the gate. Beyond the light was darkness, and the faint adrift dagger of a bell-tower. The rain stopped suddenly.
“Come now,” said the lantern-nun. “You’re safe at last. Our Lord has brought you here.”
Jehanine laughed. God was male, Jesus a man.
Black by night, the structure of the nunnery turned white by day.
Jehanine woke to such whiteness, and the scent of lemons, and the distant female notes of a chant. Such things haunted this place.
In a small wood oblong to the north of the gate lay the six cells available to guests and itinerants, and Jehanine in one of them. Her chamber gave on to a cloistered yard with a well, and two lemon trees. Through an arch in the cloistering was visible a paved inner court, dominated by the church door and the implication of the tower. From the height of this, the bell tongued out mutedly over and over, at its three-hourly intervals night and day, and the nun-bees droned, punctual as the bell, their ghostly songs to God.
As Jehanine had travelled to Paradys, she travelled through a light fever, through sleep and time, to an empty amazed awakening. As previously, she had not counted the days. But the same birds fluted, the same bells moaned, and there rose the same eerie singing.
A young nun stood at the foot of the pallet. Her face was flatly suspended in her gorget. Below, subserviently waited her body in the robe of the order, which was fulvous, the autumn-leaf colour of a yellow fox.
The nun asked Jehanine no pertinent questions. She merely said, “You are here. Do you remember where you are?”
Jehanine gazed in silence.
“The Nunnery of the Angel. You may stay or go, as you want.”
“I’ve nowhere to go.”
The nun said, “This is sometimes the case. We ask nothing from you, but you’re strong and healthy, perhaps you will perform some small domestic services for the order, in return for sanctuary. Get up now. I’ll take you to the refectory. You may wish to pray. I’ll show you the chapel. Later the Mother may send for you.”
Jehanine, ignorant and uneasy, said, “If I remain, must I be a nun?”
“That is your choice. The order never asks it.”
While Jehanine garbed herself in the bounty of the nuns – a shift, linen stockings and garters, a plain gown and worn cloth shoes without heels, the nun stood by like an icon, with averted eyes. (The male clothes had vanished, no comment had been made on them.)
The nun conducted Jehanine from the yard and across the court, past the vault of the church door, into the refectory. The morning meal, served at seven o’clock after the office of Prima Hora, was done. But behind an angled wooden screen at one end of the long room, cup, spoon and platter had been laid on the table. Jehanine felt only an unspecified shame, then, seated, only a ravenous hunger, and devoured the warm porridge and black bread fiercely. While she ate, again the nun stood by, hands folded in her sleeves, her eyes concealed. Her forehead was smooth and her little chin firm and rounded. She could not be more than nineteen or twenty years. Yet she seemed old, set in her ways, perhaps wise.
The jug contained water. Jehanine was disappointed, for the priest at home had drunk beer and milk and wine.
“Are you concluded?” said the young-old nun. “You didn’t thank God for the food.” Jehanine, whose tragedies far overbore such a minor omission, still coloured and bit her lip. But the nun said, “It isn’t needful. But come to the church now. I will show you where you may pray.”
The food had made Jehanine drowsy again. She thought that in the church she might conceal herself and sleep once more. Or she might find some crevice in the garden that ran by the refectory and away into an orchard of plums.
Beyond the garden, on the south side of the church, there was a massive cloister, where a fountain was standing dry on the sere sunny grass, but they went quickly through a small door into shadows. Within, the occluded windows of the church were high and narrow, perhaps for purposes of defence. Yet eastwards lay the altar, with metal things burning on it, and above a strange unearthly mirror hung in the dark air. Jehanine had not seen coloured glass before, and it bemused her. She had the impression of movement and force where there was none, only hues glamoured by light – with a wild shaft hammered down out of them, for the sun was now directly behind.
The shaft fell unbroken into the quire, and caught in the slanted pillar of it, a white-robed figure seemed to levitate just above the floor.
Jehanine halted. The figure filled her with awe – she turned instinctively to the nun for guidance. But the nun did not pause, only went gliding on into the nave. Turning back then, Jehanine saw that as the shaft of sunlight shifted and faded, the white image was no longer there.
Nevertheless, on entering the quire, Jehanine stopped.
“What are you looking at?” said the nun. “That is the Great Light.”
“What picture is that?” said Jehanine.
“It is the Angel,” said the nun, and as she spoke, she made a genuflection towards the altar, bowing knee and head, but also touching her hands to her forehead and breast.
The Angel in the window flamed out of a sunburst of molten brass. His sunflower hair was rimmed by a halo like a coin of new gold, and in his white wings every feather was veined with fire. His gaze fixed downwards, and one foot rested on a shining globe. A sword of fire was in his hand. He was beautiful. It made her think of another … of Pierre. Jehanine’s eyes scorched with water. She turned from the Angel in anger and pain.
A small chapel stood north of the altar. Here the non-initiates might essay their orisons.
Jehanine knelt on the stone floor dutifully. She did not notice anything else.
For a long time she made pretence at humble prayer, then she glanced about and the guardian nun had left her.
Jehanine rose. She had forgotten the idea of sleep. Her skin held tight to her bones. She thought of what she had done and what had been done to her, and that here she was in a kind of prison or trap which she could never leave. She found as she thought of these things, that she looked back towards the High Altar, to see if the shaft of light would fall again out of the window, but the moments of the light were past.
Eyelets of saffron glass, merely, dappled the candlesticks and the cloth. Jehanine, seeing them, thought of the topaz crucifix Pierre had been given by Belnard her step-father.
Then, in a sudden flaming thoughtless and inexpressible trance, she fell to her knees again. She offered up, unconsidered and patternless, her agony. It was neither plea nor prayer, it was not an acceptance. She was no saint, certainly no pure virgin, crowned with the snow roses of martyrdom.
The bell, balanced far overhead, and sounding for the office of Tiers, startled her to her feet. She ran from the church like a guilty thing.
Days passed, leaves that fell, birds that took flight.
Jehanine served the Nunnery of the Angel. She swept its yards and scrubbed its flagstones alongside the girls, some younger than she, of the novitiate. The novices did not aspire to a habit but only wore plain gowns like her own, their hair bound up as hers was each in a bleached scarf. Sometimes they innocently giggled, told stories, or sang gentle sad songs as they worked. One was very pious. Her name was Osanne. She kept herself from the others, sweeping and scrubbing alone, muttering prayers, toiling until her knees were raw and her back stiff, for the glory of God.
Sometimes they would work in the garden among the late-blooming bushes, pruning and weeding, picking plums, berrying, and gathering herbs for drying and flower-heads for pressing. They rinsed linen and tawny robes and hung them to sweeten in the sun. They hauled water from the two garden wells, one of which was ancient and brackish, fit only to wash floors or sluice the privies.
Sometimes the novices went away into the House of the Novitiate, to learn from painted books, and left Jehanine alone. They spoke, even in daydreams, of their bridal, and the white Bride’s robe embroidered with gold tears, the marriage once an
d for ever to their Lord, the Son of God. They were like any girls before their wedding. Half afraid, half lost in love-desire.
Jehanine could not adventure with them. She was not to be a nun. Besides, they were of good birth, these girls, surplus daughters sent away. Jehanine was a peasant, from the north outlands. She could not read, and knew no songs. They allowed her their company, for she was couth enough, and in her tall slender blondness there glittered some truth they sensed but would not know.
Jehanine feared and despised, admired and liked them. Osanne’s fanatic hauteur seemed more natural, however, and if anything Jehanine was more comfortable in its presence.
Beyond the thick walls of the nunnery, the City lived and had its being, too. Occasionally some noise came from it, and often the huge stenches of the falling year. Within and without the wall, the weather was the same. Should she wish to re-enter the City, the world, Jehanine had only to say so. But, having done that, self-exiled, she could not return.
Had Pierre ever searched for her? At first it had seemed he might have done, and that he was afraid for her. But swiftly these hopes of love and renewal died. They were simply the pangs of healing. She knew quite soon that she was whole, though now scarred and crippled out of shape.
She was not unhappy. The chores of the nunnery were nothing to the labour of the Belnard farm. The food, though less various and not always so fresh, was sure. And in the house of women, the threat of male wickedness and strength could not intrude.
Now and then, playing their innocent ball or catcher’s games in the south garden or the deserted hostel cloister, the novices elected Jehanine as the Boy. She must give judgement, she must threaten. Once or twice they kissed her. In much the same way one found an infrequent garland on the brow of the stone child, perhaps a boy, who held the bowl of the dry fountain.
The Mother had never, after all, sent for Jehanine. Perhaps such orphans were beneath her notice. Jehanine had briefly believed it was the white figure of this Mother, this queen of the hive, that she had glimpsed light-pierced under the window. But on certain days, the Mother would enter the refectory and herself read passages of scripture as the nuns silently ate. Around the edge of the screen, Jehanine saw her, another fox-robe, a proud full face, and plump hands. The vision of light, therefore, unsolved, remained Jehanine’s property: all she had.
