Holy Fools

by Joanne Harris

  I was seventeen.” Imagine that. “The son of a local girl and some passing seigneur; unwanted; unacknowledged. It was understood that as such I belonged to the Church. No one asked me if I understood it. I was born a few miles away, near Montauban, and I was sent away to the abbey at five years old—that was where I learned my Latin and Greek. The abbot was a weak but kindly man who had left Society twenty years before to join the Cistercians. His connections remained good, however; and although he had renounced his name, it was reputed to have once been a powerful one. Certainly, the abbey was wealthy enough under his direction, and it was large; I grew up in a mixed environment, with monks on one side and nuns on the other.”

  The tale is almost true—the name of the other protagonist eludes me but I recall her face beneath the novice’s veil, the fine spray of freckles across the bridge of her nose, her eyes, the color of burnt umber flecked with gold.

  “She was fourteen. I worked in the gardens, too young even to have earned my tonsure. She was a minx; she would glance over the wall at me as I worked, laughing with her eyes.”

  As I said, almost true. There was more, my Ailée, darker, uglier currents and crosscurrents you would not so easily understand. In the reading room I would linger over the Song of Songs and try not to think of her whilst my masters watched me closely for signs of rapture.

  I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.

  I never could bear the sight or the smell of those flowers, afterward. A summer garden is filled with bitter memories.

  “For a time it was an idyll.”

  This is what she wants to hear, a tale of innocence corrupted, of vanquished love. She is more troubadour than buccaneer, my Winged One, in spite of her sharp claws. You’d understand that, Juliette, with your sweet and sheltered childhood among the painted tigers.

  For myself the idyll was a darker thing, the scents of that summer’s flowers colored with those of my solitude, my jealousy, my imprisonment. I neglected my lessons; I did penance for what sins they could discover, and on the rest I brooded in growing resentment and longing. I could hear the sound of running water beyond the abbey walls and wondered where the river led.

  “It was summer.” I’ll let you believe it was love. Why not? I almost convinced myself. I was drunk on moonlight, on sensations; a curl of her hair, cut in secret and passed to me in a missal, the imprint of her feet on the grass, the imagined scent of her as I lay on my pallet, looking up at that tiny square of stars…

  A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up; a fountain sealed.

  We met in secret in the walled gardens, exchanged shy kisses and tokens like lovers long versed in the arts of intrigue. We were innocents…Even I, in my way.

  “It could not last.” This, my Ailée, is where our tales diverge. “They found us together, grown careless perhaps, giddy with delight at our forbidden pleasures…”

  She screamed, the little fool. They called it rape.

  “I tried to explain—” I had pulled down her uncut hair; it hung in ringlets to her waist. Beneath her robe I could feel her small breasts. Solomon said it most sweetly—Thy breasts are like unto two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies.

  How could I have known she’d be such a little prude? She screamed and I silenced her, pinning her arms to her sides and my hand over her mouth.

  “Too late.” They dragged me off, protesting. It was no fault of mine, I swore; if any was to blame, let it be Solomon, with his twin roes. My convent passionflower pleaded innocence; the fault was all mine; she hardly knew me, had not encouraged my advances. I was locked in my cell; my scribbled note to her was returned unopened. Too late I realized we had misunderstood each other. My reluctant sweetheart dreamed of Abelard, not Pan.

  “I was imprisoned for three days, awaiting judgment. For all that time, no one spoke a word to me. The brother who brought me my meals did so with his face turned away. But to my surprise, I was not starved or beaten. My disgrace was too profound for any ordinary penance.”

  I have always hated being enclosed, however, and my imprisonment was all the more painful for the scent of the garden outside my window, and the sounds of summer beyond the walls. They might have let me out if I had repented, but my stubborn lack of shame cut me from them. I would not recant my story. I would not submit to their judgment. Who were they to judge me, anyway?

  On the fourth day a friend managed to pass me a note, informing me that the abbot had sought the advice of a visiting clergyman—a well-regarded man of noble house—concerning the matter of my punishment. I was not greatly troubled by the prospect. I could take a whipping if I needed to, although the kind abbot had always been lenient toward me and rarely used such measures.

  It was late that afternoon when I was finally brought from my cell. Restless, sullen, and desperately bored, I blinked in the sudden sunlight as the abbot led me from the dark passageway into his study, where a tall, distinguished man of about thirty-five was awaiting me.

  He was dressed in the black town habit and cloak of an ordinary priest, with a silver cross around his neck. His hair was black to the abbot’s gray, but they had the same high cheekbones and light, almost silvery eyes; seeing them there, side by side, there could be no doubt that the two men were brothers.

  The newcomer studied me expressionlessly for a moment. “So this is the boy. What’s your name, boy?”

  “Guy, if it pleases you, mon père.”

  His mouth thinned as if it did not please him at all. “You’ve indulged him, Michel,” he said to the abbot. “I should have known you would.”

  The abbot said nothing, though it cost him an effort.

  “A man’s nature cannot be altered,” continued the stranger. “But it can—it must—be subdued. By your negligence, an innocent girl has been corrupted, and the reputation of our house—”

  “I didn’t corrupt her,” I protested. It was true; if anything, she had corrupted me.

  The newcomer looked at me as if I were carrion. I gave him back his look, and his cold eyes grew colder. “He persists, then,” he said.

  “He’s young,” said the abbot.

  “That’s no excuse.”

  Refusing once more to acknowledge my crime, I was taken back to my cell. I rebelled at being locked up again; fought the brothers who had been sent to fetch me; blasphemed; flung abuse. The abbot came to reason with me, and I might have listened to him if he had been alone, but his guest was with him, and something in me revolted at the thought of giving in to this man who had apparently judged and detested me on sight. Exhausted and angry, I slept; was awoken at dawn—for Matins, I thought—and led outside by two brothers who refused to meet my eye.

  In the courtyard, the abbot was waiting for me, with the brothers and the nuns standing around him in a circle. At his side, the priest, his silver cross gleaming in the pale light, his hands folded. Among the nuns I caught sight of my little novice, but her face was averted, and remained so. Others bore expressions of pity, dismay, or vague excitement; there was an atmosphere of breathless expectancy.

  Then the abbot stood aside and I saw what he had been concealing. A brazier, heated to buttercup yellow under the banked embers, and a brother, with heavy gloves to protect his hands and arms from the heat, now hauling the iron from beneath the coals.

  A sigh rose from the ranks, almost of pleasure. Ahhhh.

  Then the newcomer spoke. I don’t remember much of what he said; I was too preoccupied with the scene before me. My eyes returned again to the brazier in disbelief; to the small square iron heated to the color of your hair. Dimly I began to understand; I struggled, but was held; a brother pulled up my sleeve to expose bare flesh.

  It was at this point that I recanted. There’s pride, and there’s stupidity, after all. But it was too late. The abbot looked away, grimacing; his brother took a step closer to me and whispered something in my ear, just as the iron made its dreadful contact.

  I have occasionally prided m
yself on a certain turn of phrase. Some things, however, can never be adequately described. Suffice it to say that I feel it still, and the words he spoke to me in that moment lit a spark that still endures.

  Perhaps, Monseigneur, I owe you something; after all, you spared my life. But a cloistered life is no life at all, as Juliette could no doubt tell you, and to be expelled from mine was probably the best thing that could have happened to me. Not that you acted out of any concern for me. In fact, you doubted I’d survive. What skills did I have? Latin; reading; a certain natural perverseness. That served me well, if nothing else; you wanted me dead, so I decided to live. Even then, you see, I was shameless. So was born the Blackbird, strident and indomitable, flinging his idiot song in the faces of those who despised him, raiding their orchards beneath their very noses.

  As Guy LeMerle I returned to Court. My enemy was a bishop now, the Bishop of Évreux. I should have known a simple parish would not have contained him long. Monseigneur wanted more. He wanted the Court; more than that, he wanted the ear of the king. There were too many Huguenots around Henri for his liking; it offended his exquisite sensibilities. And what glory to the house of Arnault—in heaven and on earth—if he were to bring a royal lamb back to the fold!

  Once burned, twice shy. Not in my case. I escaped the second time, but narrowly. I could almost smell the reek of burning feathers. Well, this time it’s my turn. They say Nero fiddled whilst Rome burned. Paltry fellow that he must have been with his one fiddle. When my time comes I’ll greet Monseigneur d’Évreux with a whole damned orchestra.

  I was sweating. My hand was unsteady on her breast. My pain was scented with flowers. It colored my tale with truth, Juliette. I saw her eyes widen with pity and understanding. The rest was easy. Revenge, after all, is something we can both understand.

  “Revenge?”

  “I want to humiliate him.” Answer with care, LeMerle. Answer so that she believes you. “I want him to be implicated in a scandal that even his influence cannot suppress. I want him ruined.”

  She gave me a sharp look. “But why now? Why now, after all this time?”

  “I saw an opportunity.” This, like the rest of my tale, is close to the truth. “But a wise man makes his own opportunities, just as a good cardplayer makes his own luck. And I am a very good player, Juliette.”

  “There’s still time to change your mind,” she said. “Only harm can come of such a plan. Harm to yourself, to Isabelle, to the abbey. Can you not leave things as they are and free yourself from the past?” She lowered her eyes. “I might come with you,” she said. “If you decided to go.”

  A tempting offer. But I had invested too much in this to turn back. I shook my head in genuine regret. “A week,” I said softly. “Give me a week.”

  “What about Clémente? You can’t drug her forever.”

  “You need not fear Clémente.”

  Juliette looked at me suspiciously. “I won’t let you harm her. Or anyone else.”

  “I won’t. Trust me.”

  “I mean it, Guy. If anyone else is harmed—by you, or on your orders—”

  “Trust me.”

  Almost inconceivable, that I should be forgiven. Yet her smile tells me that haply all might be as it was. Guy LeMerle—if I were only he—might have taken that offer. Next week will be too late; by then there will be more blood on my hands than even she could absolve.

  40

  AUGUST 9TH, 1610

  The air was cool, and there were livid smears of false dawn on the night’s palette. Soon the bell would chime for Vigils. But my head was too full for sleep, still ringing as it was with LeMerle’s words.

  What was this? Some witchcraft, some drug slipped to me as I slept? Could it be that I believed him now, that in some way he could have regained my trust? Silently I berated myself. What I had said—what I had done—was said and done for Fleur. Whatever I had promised was for both of us. As for the rest—I shook aside visions of myself and LeMerle on the road again, friends again, maybe lovers…That would never happen. Never.

  I wished I had my cards with me, but Antoine had hidden them well; my search of her bedroll and of her place in the bakehouse had revealed nothing. Instead I thought of Giordano and tried to hear his voice over the pounding of my heart. More than ever I need your logic now, old friend. Nothing discomposed your ordered, geometric world. Loss, death, famine, love…The wheels that turn the universe left you unmoved. In your numbers and calibrations you glimpsed the secret names of God.

  Tsk-tsk, begone! But my cantrips are useless in the face of this greater magic. Tomorrow night at moonrise I will pick rosemary and lavender for protection and clear thinking. I will make a charm of rose leaves and sea salt and tie it with a red ribbon and carry it in my pocket. I will think of Fleur. And I will not meet his eyes.

  Clémente was not at Matins this morning, nor at Lauds. Her absence was not mentioned, but I noticed that Soeur Virginie was also excused from prayers, and drew my own conclusions. The drug was working, then. The question was, for how long?

  Such was the speculation about Soeur Clémente that it was some hours before I noticed that Alfonsine, too, was absent. At the time I did not give it much thought; Alfonsine had recently become very friendly with Soeur Virginie and had offered to help her on a number of occasions. Besides, LeMerle was so often in the infirmary block that Alfonsine needed no other reason to haunt it.

  But at Prime, Virginie came alone, and with news. Clémente was very sick, she said; she had fallen into a deep lethargy from which nothing was able to rouse her, and had been running a high fever since dawn. Piété shook her head and swore she had suspected the cholera all along; Antoine smiled serenely. Marguerite declared that we were all bewitched, and suggested a harsher system of penances.

  But there was more unwelcome news. Alfonsine too was ill once more. In her case there was no fever, but she was unusually pale and had been coughing fitfully for most of the night. Bleeding had seemed to quiet her a little, but she was still very listless and would not eat. Mère Isabelle had been to visit her and had declared her unfit for duties, although Alfonsine had tried to persuade her she was quite well. But any fool could see it was the cameras de sangre, declared Soeur Virginie; and unless the bad blood was drained away, the patient would surely die within the week.

  That troubled me far more than the news about Clémente. Alfonsine was already weak from overexcitement and self-inflicted penances. Bleeding and fasting would kill her with far greater efficiency than disease. I said as much to Soeur Virginie.

  “I’ll thank you not to interfere,” she said. “My method worked perfectly well for Soeur Marguerite.”

  “Soeur Marguerite had a narrow escape; besides, she’s stronger than Alfonsine. Her lungs are not compromised.”

  Virginie looked at me in open disdain. “If we’re to speak of being compromised, ma soeur, you should look to yourself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that although you may have got away with it last time, there are some of us who think that your—enthusiasm—for potions and powders might not be as innocent as Père Colombin thinks.”

  I dared not make any comment after that, either to help Alfonsine or to advise on the treatment of Clémente. It was too close to the truth, and although LeMerle might speak lightly of the possible danger, I was only too aware of the precarious line I was now treading. Virginie had the abbess’s ear; they were alike in some ways, as well as being closer to each other in age than the rest of us; and she had never liked me. It would take only a little thing—words spoken by Clémente, perhaps, in delirium or otherwise—to ensure that I was once more accused.

  I would have spoken of it to LeMerle, but he made no appearance today, remaining in the infirmary or in his study, surrounded by books. Very soon, if I knew my plant lore correctly, Clémente’s fever would break and she would regain consciousness. What happened then was up to LeMerle. He could control Clémente, he had said; I did not share his optimism. He
had chosen me publicly over her; that was something no woman would forgive.

  I slept badly and dreamed too well. My own voice awoke me, and after that I was afraid to close my eyes in case I spoke again and betrayed myself as I slept. In LeMerle’s cottage, a little light burned. I had almost made up my mind to go to him when Antoine got up to use the latrines in the reredorter, and I had to lie back, eyes closed, feigning sleep. She got up twice more during the night—our diet of black bread and soup evidently disagreed with her—and so we were both alert to the sound of the alarm across the courtyard from the infirmary.

  Finally, Clémente was awake.

  41

  AUGUST 9TH, 1610

  Antoine and I were the first to reach the infirmary. We did not look at each other as we raced along the slype toward the walled garden, but we could already hear Clémente’s feverish cries as we approached. There was a light at one of the windows and we followed the light, with Tomasine, Piété, Bénédicte, and Marie-Madeleine arriving soon after.

  The infirmary consists of a single large and rather stuffy room. There are beds lined up against the wall—six of them, although there is provision for more. No cubicle wall separates the beds, so that sleep is almost impossible here among the sighs and coughs and whimperings of the sufferers. Soeur Virginie had made some effort to isolate Clémente; her bed was at the far end of the room, and she had placed a curtain screen to one side of it, cutting off some of the lamplight and giving the afflicted girl some privacy. Alfonsine was positioned by the door, as far from Clémente as possible, and I caught sight of her open eyes as I passed; two points of brightness in the dark.

  The abbess was already there. Virginie and Marguerite, who must have given the alarm at her command, were beside her, looking fearful and excited. LeMerle stood at her other side, grave in his black robe with his silver crucifix held in one hand. On the bed, her ankles fastened into place by two straps fixed to the wooden frame, sprawled Clémente. A pitcher of water had been spilt across a small bedside table; a reeking basin was pushed beneath the bed itself. Her face was white; her pupils were dilated so much that the blue of her irises was almost invisible.