Holy Fools

by Joanne Harris

  A stern countenance, a sign of the cross. Père Colombin.

  A bigger sign of the cross. A quick, amusing mime of horse riding, one hand holding a miter that threatened to be blown off by the wind. The bishop.

  “Yes. The bishop. Père Colombin. What then?”

  She clenched her fists and hooted in frustration.

  A fat woman, rolling as she walked. Antoine. Père Colombin again. Then a mime of Soeur Marguerite, twitching and dancing. Then a complicated mime, as if repeatedly touching something hot. Then a gesture I did not understand, arms outstretched as if in readiness to fly.

  Perette repeated it with greater insistence. Still I did not understand.

  “What, Perette?”

  The flying gesture again. Then a silent grimace, miming the torments of hell beneath the fluttering movements. Then, once again, the “hot” gesture as Perette sniffed the air and wrinkled her nose, as if at a stench.

  Almost I began to understand. “Fire, Perette?” I asked her hesitantly but with growing comprehension. Perette beamed at me, showing me her clenched fists. “He’s going to light another fire?”

  Perette shook her head and pointed at herself. Then she motioned at the roof, a circular gesture that encompassed the abbey, herself, everyone in it. Then the flying gesture again. Then she took out the pendant of Christina Mirabilis from her garment and showed me, insistently, the miraculous virgin, ringed with fire.

  I stared at her, beginning at last to understand.

  She smiled.

  52

  MATINS

  You see now why I cannot leave.

  LeMerle’s plan was more vicious, more implacable than anything I could have imagined—even of him. With the help of gestures, hootings, mimes, and scratchings in the dirt, Perette explained it, occasionally laughing, occasionally losing interest like the innocent she was, distracted by a piece of mica shining against the granite, or the cry of a night bird beyond the walls. She was wholly innocent, my sweet Perette, my wise fool, quite unaware of the sinister implications of the favor LeMerle had asked of her.

  That had been his only mistake. He had underestimated my Perette, believing her to be under his control. But the wild girl is no one’s creature, not even mine. She is like some birds, which can be trained but not tamed; let the glove slip, for even an instant, and she will bite.

  For now, at least, I have her attention. I may lose it at any time; but she is my only weapon now as I try to devise a plan of my own. I do not know whether my wit is a match for the Blackbird. What I do know is that I must try. For myself, for Fleur. For Clémente and Marguerite. For all those he has damaged and deceived and crippled and mocked. For all those to whom he has fed the pieces of his bitter heart and poisoned thereby.

  This may mean my death. I have faced that. If I succeed it may certainly mean his, and I have faced that too.

  53

  LAUDS

  Perette has locked me back in the cell. Anything else is simply too dangerous. I hope Fleur will understand if my plan goes awry—and I hope Perette remembers her part. I hope—I hope. Everything seems to be built upon those two words, those two fragile syllables like the cry of some forlorn seabird: I—hope.

  Birds are singing outside. In the far distance, though not as loud as last night, I hear the sounds of the surf on the island’s western shore. Somewhere in the breakers, the statue of Marie-de-la-mer rolls endlessly against the fine sand, polishing, dwindling, scoured by the shoreline into slow oblivion. Never have I been so conscious of time—of that which remains to us, of its passing, its tides.

  Some minutes ago someone tried the door and, finding it locked, went away. I shiver to think what might have happened if Perette had left it unlocked. My breakfast, a piece of bread and a cup of water, was pushed through the hatchway, the trap slamming shut as soon as I collected it, as if I were infected with the plague. The water smelt sharp, as if someone had fouled it, and though I am thirsty, I did not drink. The next hour will tell whether or not my hopes are founded.

  If she remembers. If LeMerle suspects nothing. If my skill holds. If my one shaft hits true.

  If.

  Perette, do not fail me.

  54

  MATINS

  Since last night, the sisters have been busy preparing for this morning’s festival. Flowers cover every surface; hundreds of tall, white candles have been lit in the chapel; and the altar is decked with an embroidered banner, which I am told dates back to before the black monks, and which is used only for this ceremony. The chapel’s holy relic—a finger bone of the Virgin, in a gold reliquary—is on display, along with a selection of the Virgin’s ceremonial robes and dresses. The new Sainte-Marie has been draped in blue and white, with lilies—what else?—at her feet. I can smell the flowers from twenty yards away, even over that of the extra braziers, which have been installed at every entrance in spite of the heat, burning frankincense and sandalwood to dispel evil thoughts. There are torches too, hanging against the walls, and votives on every surface. The air is more than half smoke; against it, the light from the stained-glass window looks almost solid, as if it might be possible to pluck gems from the air.

  I watched in secret from the opposite side of the causeway as the bishop’s retinue approached. I could tell his colors even at that distance—pitiful, that he should still need so much pomp and ceremony. It speaks of a pride that has even now not been mastered, doubly inappropriate in a man of the cloth. Liveried soldiers, gilded harness glinting in the sun…I’ll make a fine blaze of all his trumpery soon enough, but first we’ll dance our little measure, he and I. I have looked forward to it for so long.

  Of course, he missed the tide. I meant him to; my observation of the comings and goings at the causeway has not been in vain. He expected to reach us last night, before Vespers, but on this coast, the tide takes eleven hours to turn. There is an inn on the other side, however, conveniently placed for such occasions, and he must have stayed the night there—no doubt angrily berating the fool who misinformed him—until this morning. Low tide was at seven. I’ll give him two hours more to reach the abbey, and all is set; with luck—and a little judicious planning—he should arrive just in time for my little comedy to begin.

  A Blackbird’s song may haply be silenced, indeed. But not by such a gilded scarecrow as yourself, Monseigneur. You’ll not walk out of this performance, I promise. A pity that my Ailée cannot be among us at the finale, but that I suppose was inevitable. A pity nevertheless: she would surely have appreciated it.

  55

  PRIME

  It was time; all were gathered in the chapel as I made my entrance. Even my poor afflicted ones had been brought to the service—though they had been given seats throughout the long service, and were not obliged to stand or kneel. Perette was missing, of course, but no one paid much attention; her comings and goings had always been erratic, and she would not be missed. Good. I hoped she would remember her part. A small role, but a pretty one; I would be very disappointed if she failed to carry it off.

  “My children.” I had coached them well; glassy-eyed with the burning incense, they watched me as if I were their only salvation. Mère Isabelle was standing at my right side, close to the brazier; through the smoke, her face was ash. “Today we celebrate the most sacred and most dear to us of our holy days. The festival of the Holy Mother.”

  A rumor ran through the congregation, an ahhh of satisfaction and release. Above it, I could just hear the sound of drops beginning to fall on the roof slates; at last, it had begun to rain. I couldn’t have planned it better; come to think of it, a little strategic thunder would not come amiss. Perhaps the Lord would provide some when the time came, thereby proving that he does have a sense of irony. But I digress. Back to the Virgin, then, before she loses her freshness. Where was I? “The Mother, who watches down upon us in the presence of evil. The Virgin, who comforts us in our times of need; whose purity is that of the dove and the white lily”—nice touch, LeMerle—“whose forgiv
eness and compassion know no bounds.”

  Ahhh. Not for nothing do we use the language of love to seduce these foolish virgins; pulpit rhetoric is indecently close to that of the bedroom, just as some of the more interesting sections of the Bible echo the pornographies of the ancients. I played now on this kinship in words they knew well, promising raptures beyond the realms of human endurance, ecstasies without limit in the arms of the Lord. Earthly suffering is less than nothing, I told them, in the face of the pleasures to come, the fruits of Paradise—I could see Antoine beginning to drool—the joys of unending service in the House of God.

  It was a promising start; already I could see Soeur Tomasine grinning alarmingly; beside her, Marguerite’s face was a mass of twitches. Good. “But today is not simply a time of rejoicing. It is also our day of battle. Today we throw down the final challenge to the evil that has plagued us and plagues us still.”

  Ahhh. Wrested from their pleasant thoughts, the sisters flinched and pranced like nervous mares.

  “I do not doubt that today we shall defeat the forces of darkness—but if the worst happens, and we are once more tested to the limits of our faith, be of stout heart. There is always an escape for those of true faith, and with the courage to embrace it.”

  Isabelle’s face was set in a grimace of determination. Saint or martyr, that look told me; this time, she was not to be thwarted. Angélique Saint-Hervé Désirée Arnault always gets her way.

  Now, outside, I could hear a distant sound of horses’ hooves on the road, and I knew that my enemy was near; and just in time too. Timing is the greatest tool of an artist in my trade; good timing is a precision instrument, coaxing comedy or tragedy to one climax after another; bad timing is a bludgeon that kills all suspense and ruins both drama and punch line. By my reckoning I had maybe eight or ten minutes until Arnault’s grand entrance; time enough, anyway, to whip up the welcome he deserved.

  “Courage, my children, courage. Satan knows we await him. We have faced him together, and we stand now united in our faith and our conviction, ready to go to war. The devil comes in a thousand guises, fair-faced or foul; he may be a man or a woman, a child or a beast, he may take the features of a loved one, of a man of power, even, on occasion, of a bishop or a king. The next countenance you see will be his, my children; already the Dark One approaches. I can hear the sound of his infernal carriage as it thunders toward us. Satan, we are here. Show us your face!”

  Seldom has any audience—at Court or in the provinces—ever been so entranced by a single performer. Already, they were watching me as if their souls depended upon it. The braziers lit my face like the fires of purgatory; above us, the rain was cathartic; after so many days of heat and drought it exalted them, turned their faces toward the heavens, sent them staring toward the rafters as their feet began to move independently of their minds and my dea ex machina prepared to take the stage…

  My hiding place was high in the bell tower, not far from the bell itself, which hangs from an iron crosspiece in the narrowest part of the spire. My eyrie was perilous, accessible only from the rough scaffolding erected by the workmen repairing the roof, but it was the only place from which I could work; and besides, Ailée has no fear of heights. Even so I could be certain of nothing; this performance could have no rehearsal, no second showing.

  Even now I could see the bishop’s retinue, half a mile or less along the road; I could hear the outriders’ horses and the sound of the carriage wheels in the rain. It was a large group; as they approached I could see two banners, and I understood that the bishop had brought along a colleague, perhaps a superior, to share in his family’s triumph. I looked down into the chapel and I saw that Perette, with the swiftness that served her so well in her role as the Unholy Nun, had slipped once again into the shadows. I could only trust that she remembered all the instructions I had given her. Her eyes were bright with birdy intelligence, but I knew that the smallest distraction—a flight of gulls at a window, the lowing of cows on the marshes, the colors of the stained glass reflected upon the flagstones—might mean our undoing.

  Inside the church the light was poor; from a cloudy sky only a little murky daylight filtered through the broken slates, and from below, the candlelight looked hazy beneath the pall of incense, a necklace of fireflies in the greater dark. In my habit I was the color of smoke; over my head I wore a hood so that the pale blur of my face did not attract attention. The rope—I hoped it was long enough—was looped three times around my waist, the end weighted with a piece of lead. My breathing seemed to fill the whole abbey as silence fell and LeMerle began his performance.

  Oh, he was very good. He knew it too; and although I could not see his face from my position, I could tell from his voice that he was enjoying himself. The acoustics of the chapel were ideal for his purpose; they picked up every word to fling them unerringly to the back of the hall. The scenery was all in place: braziers, candles, flowers, a promise of heaven or hell. Much may be achieved, as LeMerle taught me in our Paris days, by the artful positioning of a few simple props; a lily in the hair or a pearl rosary in the hand suggests purity—even of the most debauched of whores—a flashy sword hilt carried ostentatiously at the belt will discourage attackers—even when there is no sword attached. People see what they expect to see. That’s why he wins at cards, and it’s why the sisters failed to identify the Unholy Nun. That’s his style—art and misdirection, and though I could see the bales placed all around the hall, although I could smell the oil with which he had saturated the straw, and guess at the oil-soaked rags that ran beneath every bench and pew, the sisters were blind to them for the moment, smelling only smoke and incense, seeing nothing but the stage and the performance into which they had been so carefully drawn.

  But I—I could see it all now from my privileged position. Giordano had taught me something about engines and fuses; the rest needed only a little guesswork. A spark, correctly placed—from the pulpitum, for example—might be enough to set it off. And then, as Antoine had said, we light a flame.

  I must be careful, I told myself. Timing was essential. I thought I knew his mind; now I prayed that I was right. He would not act until he had revealed himself; the temptation to gloat a little was too much for him to pass by. Vanity is his weakness; above everything else, he is a performer, and he needs his audience. That, I was hoping, would be his downfall. I waited, then, biting my lips as a murmur went through the congregation and the bishop made his long-awaited entrance.

  Here he was; right on cue. Time for some music, I thought. Music is a great enhancer of moods, lending extra pathos and drama to a dull performance. Not that this one was likely to be dull; but I find a little Latin always does the trick; besides, it would buy us more time, allowing Arnault to enter freely. Psalm 30, then; I gave the sign and the congregation shuffled to its feet.

  “In te, Domine, speravi, non confundar in aeternum: in justitia tua libera me.” I could see Marguerite flinch at the Latin words; Clémente’s head lolled and she grinned even more widely.

  “Inclina ad me aurem tuam, accelera ut eruas me.” Of course, she was never an apt scholar in that tongue; perhaps she had begun to associate it in her mind with our nightly sessions, stimulated in turn with Juliette’s decoctions and with the sly workings of my hidden needle. In either case she began to rock nervously, her movement accelerating in tempo as the psalm continued. Behind her, Tomasine echoed her movements, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other.

  “Esto mihi in Deum protectorem, et in domum refugii: ut salvum me facias.”

  The unease had already spread to Virginie who, face upturned, was staring into the air with idiot intensity. At the name of God she gave a tiny shriek and clutched at her breasts. Piété giggled. I awaited the inevitable with a smile of satisfaction as Arnault and his little retinue made their way to the main doors.

  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 h
ave 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, In Domino 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.