Holy Fools

by Joanne Harris

  Clémente and Antoine were both taken to the infirmary, on LeMerle’s orders, and I was put to work in the bakehouse for the rest of the day, where, for three hours, my toils afforded me little enough time for thought. During that time, I made the dough in batches, shaped the long loaves on the trays, shoved them into the deep, narrow bays, so like the dark cells in the crypt where the coffins are laid to rest.

  I tried not to recall the morning’s events, but my mind returned to them again and again. Alfonsine’s dance, the swaying bodies, the frenzied beginnings of possession. And the moment when LeMerle’s eyes met mine, even then so close to laughter but behind the laughter a kind of fear, like a man on a wild horse who knows he will be thrown but who can still laugh with sheer delight at the chase.

  For a time I had been certain he would not speak for me. He had lost control somehow, though I was sure that the madness was part of his plan. It would have been so easy for him to allow the blame to fall upon me, to use it to bring his followers to heel. But he had not. Absurd to feel gratitude. I should hate him for what he has done to me, to all of us. And yet…

  I had almost completed the morning’s work. I was alone, I had my back to the door and was cleaning out ash from the last of the ovens with a long wooden slat. I turned at the sound of her footsteps. Somehow I already knew who it was.

  She had taken a risk coming to me, but not such a great one; the infirmary lay just alongside the bakehouse, and I guessed she must have climbed the wall. The midday heat was still blinding; most of the sisters would be indoors. “No one saw me,” said Soeur Antoine, as if to confirm my thoughts. “And we need to talk.”

  The change I had begun to see in her a week ago was more pronounced now; her face looked leaner, her cheekbones defined, her mouth hard and determined. She would never be a slender woman, but now her fleshiness seemed powerful rather than soft, thick slabs of red muscle sheathed in the fat.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” I told her. “If Soeur Virginie finds out you’re here—”

  “Clémente will talk,” said Antoine. “I’ve been listening to her in the infirmary all morning. She knows about Fleur. She knows about you.”

  “Antoine, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Go back to—”

  “Will you listen?” she hissed. “I’m on your side. Who do you think took those things from behind the loose stone?” I stared at her. “What?” said Antoine. “You think I’m too stupid to know about your hiding place? Poor, fat, stupid Soeur Antoine who wouldn’t know an intrigue if she fell over it during the night? I see more than you think, Soeur Auguste.”

  “Where did you hide my things? My cards, and—”

  Antoine shook a plump finger. “Quite safe, ma soeur, quite hidden. But I’m not ready to give them back just yet. After all, you owe me a favor.”

  I nodded. I had not expected her to forget it.

  “Clémente will talk, Auguste,” she said. “Not now, perhaps. She may be in disgrace today, but Mère Isabelle believes in her. Sooner or later, she will accuse us. And when she realizes that Père Colombin will not defend her, then she will bring him down.”

  She paused for a moment to make sure I understood. My head was spinning. “Antoine,” I said. “How did you—”

  “That isn’t important,” said Antoine in a harsh voice. “The little girl will believe her. I know little girls. I was one myself, after all. And I know”—at this her red face twisted in a painful smile—“I know that even the sweetest and most docile little girl will one day rise up to defy her father.”

  There was a long silence. “What do you want?” I said at last.

  “You know about herbs.” Now Antoine’s voice was soft, persuasive. “You know what to do with them. I could—I could slip her a dose while she’s safe in the infirmary. No one would know.”

  I stared at her, incredulous. “Poison her?”

  “No one would know. You could tell me what to do.” She sensed my disgust and gripped my arm tighter. “It’s for all of us, Auguste! If she speaks against you, you’ll lose Fleur. If she speaks against me—”

  “What?”

  There was a long silence. “Germaine,” she said at last. “She knew about Clémente and Père Colombin. She was going to tell.”

  I tried to understand. But it was hot; I was tired; Antoine’s words sounded like meaningless noise. “I couldn’t let her,” she went on. “I couldn’t let her accuse him. I’m strong—stronger than she was, anyway. It was very quick.” And Antoine gave a tiny smile.

  It was almost too much for me to take in. And yet it made a kind of sense. I told you: the Blackbird’s skill was in making people see what they most wanted in him. Poor Antoine. Robbed of her child at fourteen, her only remaining passions those of the table, at last she had found another outlet for her maternal nature.

  A sudden thought struck me, and I turned to her in dismay. “Antoine. Did he tell you to do it?”

  I don’t know why the thought appalled me. He’s killed before, and for less reason. But Antoine shook her head. “He knows nothing about it. He’s a good man. Oh, he’s no saint,” she added, dismissing the seduction of Clémente with a gesture. “He’s a man, with a man’s nature. But if that little girl turns against him—” She gave me a sharp look. “You see why it has to be done, don’t you, Auguste? A painless dose—”

  I had to stop this. “Antoine. Listen.” She looked at me like a good dog, with her head to one side. “It would be a mortal sin. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?” Admittedly it meant little enough to me, but I had always thought her a true believer.

  “I don’t care!” Her face was flushed, her voice rising dangerously. It occurred to me that her very presence here could be a danger to me.

  I motioned her to be silent. “Listen to me, Antoine. Even if I knew the plants to use, whom would they suspect? All poisons take time, you know, and any fool can recognize the symptoms.”

  “But we can’t let her tell!” said Antoine stubbornly. “If you won’t help me, I’ll have to take action.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I hid your treasures, Auguste,” she said. “I can always find them again. You’ll be watched all the time, now you’ve been accused. Do you think he’d speak for you again? And if you were examined, what do you think would happen to Fleur?”

  In Aquitaine all the witch’s household follows her onto the pyre. Pigs, sheep, housecats, chickens…I saw an engraving once of a burning in Lorraine; the witch above the pyre, and below her, cages in which smaller crudely drawn stiff figures crouched, hands outstretched. I wondered what the custom was in the islands.

  Antoine watched me with a look of terrible patience. “You have no choice,” she said. Nodding, I had to agree.

  37

  AUGUST 7TH, 1610

  So the abbess is mine again, if only for the moment. As she mouthed her Act of Contrition, on her knees, head bowed beneath my accusations, she wept; but they were thin tears, tears of resentment rather than of true repentance. She has defied me once already; never forget she may do so again.

  “This fiasco is of your doing!” My voice was harsh against the stones of the cell. The silver crucifix gleamed in the candlelight. A tiny silver encensoir diffused frankincense into the dim air. “Your refusal to ask for assistance has jeopardized God knows how many innocent souls!”

  Her mutter was almost defiant behind the Latin. “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima—”

  “It cost Soeur Germaine her life!” I continued mercilessly. “It may well cost Soeur Clémente her soul!”

  I lowered my voice a little. Cruelty is a precision instrument, better used to flay than to bludgeon. “And as for your own—” She gave me a sharp look of fear then, and I knew I was close to reaching her. “Only you know the depth of your sin and of your soul’s defilement. The greatest demon of all has violated you. Lucifer, the demon of Pride.”

  Isabelle flinched and seemed ready to speak but instead put down her head and would not meet my
eyes. “Is it not true?” I insisted in a cold, soft voice. “Did you not think you could solve all our troubles yourself, alone and unaided? Did you not imagine the triumph of victory, the homage the Catholic world would pay to the twelve-year-old girl who, single-handed, defeated the armies of hell?” I drew close to her ear and whispered in it. The hot scent of her tears was exhilarating. “What did the Foul One put into your mind, Angélique?” I murmured. “With what lures did he blind your eyes? Did you hope for fame? Power? Canonization, perhaps?”

  “I thought—” Her whimper was small, childish. “I thought…”

  “What did you think?” Coaxingly now, not unlike the seductive voice of Satan as imagined by these foolish virgins. “What did you think, Angélique?” She did not seem to notice that I had reverted to her childhood name. “Did you want to be a saint? To make of this place a shrine for the worldly? To have them bruise their knees before you in awe and adoration?”

  She cringed. I knew her too well, you see. I saw these ambitions in her before she did herself, and I nurtured them for just such a moment. “I didn’t—” She was sobbing now, the hot, heartbroken tears of the child she was. “I didn’t think—I didn’t know—”

  I held her then, letting her weep against my shoulder. I felt no compassion for such as her, believe me, but it was expedient. Necessary. This might be the last time I was able to wield such power over her. Tomorrow might bring a new wave of self-declaration, a new revolt. Already I fancied I could see in her small colorless eyes a measuring look, a look almost of awareness…But for the present I was still the good Father, the warm, the forgiving, the rebuking Father…

  “What must I do?” Her eyes were watery and, for the moment, trusting.

  I struck at once.

  38

  AUGUST 8TH, 1610

  I ground the morning glory seeds with some oil taken from the kitchen supplies, to which Antoine still has a key. The result was a paste that, when mixed with food, is difficult to detect. I flavored it with a little sweet almond to mask the bitter taste, and gave it to Antoine camouflaged in a loaf of bread. She would administer the dose to Clémente, she told me, at supper.

  She seemed to have no doubt as to my mixture’s efficiency, nor any suspicion concerning my change of heart; I could only pray that her trust would last long enough for me to set my own defenses into place. The morning glory seed, though dangerous in use, is far from lethal. I hoped that, having realized that, Antoine would hold her tongue. For a while, at least.

  My deceit was simple enough. The dose of ground seeds, even administered twelve hours in advance, would ensure Clémente was unfit to be examined next day at Chapter. The symptoms are severe, ranging from vomiting to visions to complete unconsciousness over a period of twenty-four hours. That, then, was the time I had left.

  That night the dorter was slow to settle. Perette lingered close to my cubicle, watching me—waiting, I thought, her bright birdlike eyes glittering—until at last I motioned her to go to bed. She seemed inclined to persist, her small face pinched with anxiety or impatience, and I sensed she wanted to signal something to me. But now was not the time. I repeated the gesture of dismissal and turned away, pretending to sleep. But for a long time after the lights were extinguished I could still hear the small sounds of wakefulness—sighs, turnings, the click-click of Marguerite’s rosary—in the darkness so that I wondered whether I dared risk leaving at all. The small oblong of sky above my bed glowed purplish blue—in August here the sky is never quite dark—and I could see a dim scatter of stars in the distance and hear the soft sigh of the surf across the marshes. Close by, Alfonsine moaned, and I wondered whether she was observing me. Her moanings might be genuine sleep sounds or a fakery of sleep to lull me into unwary action; the thought kept me in my bed for almost an hour longer until desperation drove me out. After all, I could not wait forever, I told myself, and by morning I might have lost my only chance of escape.

  Forcing myself to breathe silently, I rose and crossed the dorter barefoot. No one moved. I ran softly down the steps and across the courtyard, expecting at any moment to hear cries at my back, but the courtyard remained cool and dark, but for a shard of moon cutting across an angle of brickwork, the windows unlit.

  LeMerle’s cottage too was unlit, but I could see a dim glow from his fire reflected onto the ceiling, and I knew he was awake. I tapped at the door; a few seconds later he opened it cautiously, and his eyes widened. He was in his shirt, with breeches replacing his priest’s robes. From his coat, carelessly discarded on a nearby chair, and his muddied boots, I guessed that he too had been on the prowl about the abbey, but he gave no indication of his business there.

  “What the hell are you playing at?” he hissed as he pulled me in and latched the door behind me. “Isn’t it enough that I risked my neck for you this morning?”

  “Things have changed, Guy. If I stay I may be accused.”

  I explained my meeting with Antoine and her murderous request. I told him of my compromise, of the morning glories, the twenty-four hours. “Do you see now?” I asked him. “Do you see why I have to collect Fleur and leave?”

  LeMerle frowned and shook his head.

  “But you have to help me!” I sounded shrill to myself, afraid. “Don’t think I’ll stay silent if I’m accused! I owe you nothing, LeMerle. Nothing at all.”

  He sat down, one booted foot flung casually over the chair arm. His anger was gone and now he looked tired and—genuinely, I thought—rather hurt. “What’s this?” he said. “Don’t you trust me yet? Do you think I would stand and let you be accused?”

  “You did it before, remember?”

  “All in the past, Juliette. I suffered for it, believe me.”

  Not half enough, I thought, and said as much.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t let you go.” His voice was final.

  “I wouldn’t betray you.”

  Silence.

  “I wouldn’t, Guy.”

  He stood up, putting his hands on my shoulders. I was suddenly aware of his scent, a dark aroma of sweat and damp leather, of the fact that in spite of my height he dwarfed me.

  “Please,” I said in a low voice. “You don’t need me.”

  The touch of his hand was like a breath from the ovens, crisping the hairs at the nape of my neck. “Trust me,” he said. “I do.”

  Ten years ago I would have given anything to hear those words. It alarmed me a little that a part of me might still want them, and I closed my eyes to evade his. It was a trap. Didn’t I know him by now? His skin was smooth, smooth as my dreams.

  “As what? A pawn in your game of bishops?” I pushed him away with my hands, but somehow my body drew him closer so that we stood entwined, his fingers clasped at the nape of my neck, tracing letters of fire on my raised hackles.

  “No.” His voice was very gentle.

  “Then why?”

  He shrugged and said nothing.

  “Why, LeMerle?” I cried in angry desperation. “Why this charade? Will you risk both our lives for your revenge? Because a man once had you exiled from Paris? Because of a ballet?”

  “No, Juliette. Not for those things.”

  “Then why?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  It must have been witchcraft. Or madness, perhaps. I fought against it, scarring his wrists with my fingernails even as I clung to him, sealing his mouth with mine as if by so doing I might consume him whole. We shed our clothes in ferocious silence, he and I, and I saw that his body was still hard and strong, as I remembered it, and I was startled to realize just how tenderly I recalled every mark, every scar, as if they were my own. The ancient brand on his arm shone silver-snakeskin-pale in the moonlight, and though some part of me protested that I was making an irrevocable mistake, I could hardly make it out above the roaring in my mind. For a time I was more than flesh; I was sulfur, I was a pillar of fire that raged and fed and thirsted. It was what Giordano had always warned me about
; the hidden savagery in my nature that he had always taken such care to subdue—and with so little success. It occurred to me then that although Giordano may have been learned in the properties of elemental substances, there were far more powerful alchemies in the world than his, alchemies that melded flesh and burned away the past and changed hatred back into love with a simple cantrip.

  After a time the fire slipped from us and we lay gently, like lovers. My anger had left me, and a new languor possessed my limbs, as if the past five years had been a dream, nothing more, grim shadow play on a wall that reveals itself to be nothing more than the movement of a boy’s hand in the sunlight.

  “Tell me, LeMerle,” I said at last. “I want to understand.”

  In a sickle of moonlight I saw him smile. “It’s a long tale,” he warned me. “If I tell you, will you stay?”

  “Tell me,” I repeated.

  Still smiling, he did.

  39

  AUGUST 8TH, 1610

  Well, I had to tell her something, and she would have worked it out in the end. A pity she’s a woman; if she’d been born a man I might almost have thought her my equal. As it was, I still had a weapon to wield, and the battle was sweet for a time. Her hair smelt of burnt sugar, the scents of baking and lavender warm on her skin. I swear this time I meant to keep my promise; my mouth on hers, I could almost believe it was true. We could take to the road again, I promised; together we could take to the air. L’Ailée might fly again—in fact, I never doubted she would. Sweet fantasy, my Winged One. Sweet lies.

  She wanted the tale, so I told it in words that would please her. More than I intended, perhaps, lulled by her sly caresses. More, perhaps, than was entirely safe. But my l’Ailée is a romantic at heart, wanting to believe the best in everything. Even this. Even me.