“Fine,” I intoned, as though staring into my own grave.
EIGHTEEN
Isn’t it marvelous?” Marguerite asked, her wondering face tipped upward at the colorful banners flapping overhead, while I stared hard at the cobbles and tried not to lose my breakfast.
I had thought Bonsaint’s sights and smells were too much on a normal day. As it turned out, Bonsaint during a festival was a hundredfold worse. I shuffled along behind Marguerite like an invalid, my stomach clenched against the odors of sweat and greasy street pies. The jeering voices of puppet shows vied with the clamor of vendors loudly hawking their trinkets; my head itched from the flower stems poking my scalp. The revenant kept making me pause to look at my reflection—first in a polished tin plate, then a lady’s mirror on display in a stall. It would never admit it, but I strongly suspected that it had enjoyed the hair braiding.
“Don’t worry,” it assured me. “We’re traveling in the right direction. The pull is growing stronger by the moment. In the meantime, at least we’ve escaped from that miserable convent for a few hours.” It was taking in our surroundings with enthusiasm, sounding unnaturally cheerful. “I’m relieved to see that human fashions have improved over the last century. The nuns had me fooled; you’re still wearing the same wretched gray sacks as ever. Look over there,” it added with interest. “Are those hats?”
Marguerite noticed them at the same time. “Hats!” she squealed, rushing over.
“Maybe Marguerite should be your vessel instead,” I muttered into the revenant’s appalled silence.
She was dangling over the sill of a shop, staring wide-eyed into its interior. Funereally, I shuffled over to join her. Inside, a variety of ridiculous-looking floppy objects drooped limply from stands, made from different colors of silk and velvet and decorated with feather plumes. Left to my own devices, I wouldn’t have been able to figure out that they were supposed to go on people’s heads.
Something else caught Marguerite’s eye, and she rushed to the other side of the street as I straggled pallidly behind. Lace handkerchiefs, it turned out. Then buttons carved into the shapes of flowers. I wished Leander would hurry up with his evil plans.
A familiar voice caught my attention, raised in laughter. It was Charles, coming down the street. He looked like he was parting ways with a group of other off-duty soldiers; none of them were wearing swords. To my surprise, they had Jean with them, and looked like they were congratulating him about something, cheering and thumping him on the back.
I grabbed Marguerite’s arm to drag her out of sight, but Charles’s face lit up; he had seen us. “Marguerite!” he called out, hurrying over. “Anne,” he added in surprise. “You look different.”
“I’m having fun,” I said sepulchrally.
He coughed. “I meant your hair. It looks nice.”
“I braided it for her,” Marguerite volunteered, then blushed furiously for no discernible reason. Across the street, Charles’s friends were elbowing one another.
Charles snatched an onion from the stall behind us and lobbed it at them. Once they’d dispersed and Charles had sheepishly paid for the onion, I asked, “What’s Jean doing here?”
He had followed Charles over, blocking out the sun. Incongruously, there was a yellow ribbon pinned to his shirt.
Charles proudly punched him on the arm. “Yearly tradition. He’s won the barrel-throwing contest for the last three years running. We weren’t about to let him break his victory streak. Our whole unit got the day off—the captain authorized it.”
Jean kept gazing in slight wonderment at the ribbon, as though he half expected it to disappear as soon as he looked away. Being treated normally by his friends was good for him, I realized, as long as nothing happened to upset him. It seemed like none of them blamed him for the fate of their friend Roland. They weren’t afraid of him. I wondered what that would be like.
“Are you two going to see the effigy?” Charles went on hopefully. “I can help find you a good place to sit—it’s harder than you’d think—and stop for something to eat on the way. Bonsaint’s festival pastries are famous; you need to try one.”
Marguerite bit her lip. “Anne, what do you think?”
I couldn’t warn Charles not to attend the ceremony. Not without inviting questions that were impossible to answer in the middle of a crowded street. Also, if I claimed to be Artemisia of Naimes, he would probably think I had gone insane. The mere idea of having that conversation made me want to crawl into a hole and die.
The revenant noticed me sizing up an escape route. “You had better not, nun. Ideally the priest won’t be looking for you at all, but he certainly won’t be looking for a version of you that’s voluntarily socializing with a group of humans. Also, I want to try a pastry.” I felt obscurely betrayed.
“All right,” I agreed reluctantly.
Charles wasn’t discouraged by my lack of enthusiasm. He chattered happily the entire walk to the food stall. I found out that he came from a family with five sisters, in a province several days’ journey to the south, and had manifested the Sight at the relatively late age of nine. Knowing no one at the monastery in Roischal, he had become an honorary member of Jean’s family. Jean’s parents had died when he was young, so he’d been raised by an aunt, a tiny, ferocious woman whom Jean lifted over puddles when it rained. She was like a mother to many of the young men in the city guard who didn’t have family nearby.
I found myself listening with a lump in my throat. Some of the girls at my convent had family close by in Naimes, but I had avoided them whenever they’d visited. I hadn’t wanted them to see me and think the sisters abused the girls in their care.
After he bought the pastries, we sat down on a building’s steps to watch a minstrel show set up in the middle of the street. I retreated into my cloak, barely tasting the pastry’s mushroom filling as bare feet thumped across the stage in front of us. The Raven King, traditionally played by a beggar, gamboled over the boards wearing an old cloak of raven feathers and a crown of twisted metal scraps. Every time coins pattered onto the stage, he doffed his crown and grinned with blackened teeth. Jean flinched whenever one of the copper pawns struck him, but seemed to calm down when he saw that the man wasn’t hurt.
I had heard about this festival custom, but seeing it firsthand made me uneasy. I supposed that for most people, mocking their fear made it seem weaker. The more they laughed at it, the less power it held over them. But that had never been my experience with the Dead.
The revenant was watching too, its attention focused on the stage. “Nun, that human has the Sight.”
“The beggar?” I asked in surprise.
Charles leaned over to see if there was someone sitting on my other side. “Who are you talking to?” he asked, puzzled, when he found the space empty. The group of girls sitting next to us—oddly, they had been lurking nearby ever since we had joined up with Charles—all erupted nonsensically into giggles.
“I’m praying,” I lied.
“Oh.” He raised his eyebrows. “That’s, ah—very pious of you.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Marguerite assured him, her eyes sparkling. “Back in Montprestre she used to pray over the goats every morning, wearing a hair shirt, kneeling in the cold.”
Charles nearly choked on his pastry. Gravely, I signed myself.
“Yes, the beggar,” the revenant said, waiting impatiently for us to finish. “In places where the risk of possession is low, it isn’t as uncommon as you might think. Your Clerisy can’t round up everyone with the Sight. The humans who escape their notice typically live like this one, pretending to be mad. That way no one will think twice if they seem to see and hear things that aren’t there.”
I stole a glance at Marguerite. I had never seen her so happy. She reminded me of the healed patients in the infirmary, revived from the brink of death. She was right—she wasn’t suited for the life of a nun. That had been obvious from the moment I’d met her. But then why had the Lady
given her the Sight? Why give it to the man on the stage? And what kind of future awaited her now? These questions troubled me long after we left the stage behind.
I recognized one of the streets we took on our way to the square; it was the narrow, winding avenue where the procession had passed my first day in Bonsaint. Now it was lined with stalls selling festival food. A puppet show occupied the archway that Charles and I had crammed into, the Raven’s King puppet wailing in cowardly despair as the puppeteer pelted him with cloth ravens. Children’s laughter rang in my ears.
Suddenly, the festival’s bright colors seemed garish. The good cheer felt artificial, as though everyone had to keep celebrating, or else the horrors of the countryside would darken their doors. Sister Lucinde had once claimed that nothing bad ever happened on a high holy day. Soon I would find out whether she’d been telling the truth.
“Nun, we’re getting closer to the ritual site. I think the pull is coming from that building in the distance. The one with the spires.”
I followed the tug on my gaze to a collection of spires rising above the rooftops, their shapes nearly lost in the glare of the late-afternoon sun. They were the same spires I had been dizzied by upon my entrance to Bonsaint. Standing still for a moment, I felt it too—the insistent tug of the invisible string urging me in that direction.
Charles noticed me looking. Squinting, he shaded his eyes with his hand. “Have you seen the cathedral yet?”
“The what?” I asked stupidly.
“The Cathedral of Saint Agnes. It’s the second biggest in Loraille, after Saint Theodosia’s in Chantclere. There are seven spires, one for each high saint. Anne?”
The realization had hit me like a bucket of cold water. The cathedral’s sanctuary. The seven tall shapes in the vision had been stained-glass windows; the white plinth below them….
Leander was conducting his rituals at the altar.
I should have realized it earlier, but the idea was so profane I could barely wrap my head around it even now.
“Anne?” Charles repeated, concerned.
“I forgot!” Marguerite exclaimed loudly. “How could I forget? Anne always gets sick when she eats mushrooms.” She grabbed my sleeve and turned me around, mouthing, What’s wrong?
“I’ll tell you later,” I muttered. There wasn’t anything we could do about it now, and Charles was hovering, looking concerned. At least I didn’t have to fake my unhealthy pallor.
I saw the effigy first as we neared the square, a straw figure towering high above the crowd, its face shaped into a rough approximation of human features and the top of its head worked into a crown. The low sun lit it gold against a windy sky torn with clouds. As a representation of the Raven King, it was intended to look sinister, but something about this one’s appearance made my skin crawl. In Naimes, the effigy we used was only about the size of a novice. It had always struck me as looking a little forlorn, as though it knew the fate that awaited it. This one looked like it was waiting to be worshipped.
Charles whistled at the sight of it. “That’s the biggest one yet.”
The ravens had already gathered, numbering in so many hundreds that they looked like a living black cloth draped over the rooftops. They flapped and croaked above the crowd, animated by the excitement in the air.
The buildings’ chilly shadows fell over us as we entered the crowd. Without everyone catching sight of Jean and hastily moving out of our way, I wasn’t sure how we could have gotten through. People were packed into every inch of space, even perched on the statue of Saint Agnes in the center of the square, laughing and eating festival food, pointing at the ravens.
Eventually we found a storefront awning that no one had claimed yet, most likely because they couldn’t reach it. This presented little challenge to Jean, who boosted us up one by one onto the warm slate tiles. From there I could see that the effigy had been raised on a wooden platform, similar to the minstrel show’s stage, but larger and elevated higher above the crowd.
“Look,” Charles said to Jean. “There’s Brother Simon.”
Marguerite and I craned our necks to see the gray-robed figure swinging his censer over the platform. I had never seen a Gray Brother up close. There weren’t as many of them as there were Gray Sisters, since so many Sighted boys went on to become soldiers.
I tried to imagine Leander being raised by monks. Sleeping in a crowded dormitory, laboring away at menial chores. It was almost impossible to picture, even though he couldn’t be far past his boyhood in a monastery—he was only a few years my elder. Where had he gotten his first taste of Old Magic? A locked-away artifact, a forbidden scroll?
“Do you know,” the revenant inserted into my dark ruminations, “it took me nearly a hundred years to figure out that monks existed? All that time, I just assumed they were unusually hairy nuns.”
Any further observations were mercifully cut short by a commotion in the crowd: hooves clattering, cries of excitement. The Divine’s litter had arrived in the square, escorted by a group of clerics, including the hateful black-robed figure riding in a position of honor alongside. He wasn’t on Priestbane, I noticed; he was seated atop the same white horse he had been riding when he had chased me into the forest.
I remembered the rock and worried Priestbane had been lamed, until Charles leaned over to say, grinning, “Did you hear that Artemisia of Naimes rode the confessor’s old horse into battle? Turns out, it was actually his all along—she took it from him on the way to Bonsaint. Apparently he can’t ride it anymore, because people recognize it. He gets mobbed by crowds wanting to touch it for her blessing.”
My mouth twitched with the rare urge to smile.
The revenant said, “I don’t sense anything unusual yet, but I can’t extend my power far with so many clerics nearby. Keep an eye on the priest for any behavior that looks suspicious. Perhaps your pathetic human senses might actually prove useful for once.”
It took some time for the Divine to make her way to the platform. The impressively armored cathedral guard had created a path for her through the crowd, but she stopped frequently as she walked along it, pausing to speak to the festival-goers clamoring for her blessing, stretching out their arms and hoisting up their babies. She spent so long greeting them that the clerics began to look impatient. I watched her bend her head over an old woman’s crippled arm, and it struck me that this wasn’t the behavior of a ruler who would callously bar refugees from the city.
Perhaps the decision hadn’t been hers. Leander was still at her side. To an ignorant observer he probably just looked annoyed by all the babies, but I guessed that his subtle air of discomfort had more to do with his concealed injury. Did he ever leave the Divine alone? I remembered comparing her to a painted doll, but perhaps she was more of a puppet, with Leander tugging her strings.
The group finally reached the platform, dwarfed by the giant straw effigy stretching overhead. I could guess why they’d made it so large this year—the spectacle would come as a much-needed reassurance of the Lady’s goodwill after the devastation that had befallen Roischal.
Based on the crowd’s anticipatory hush, the Divine was going to speak. In Naimes, Mother Katherine had never bothered. She had simply gestured at the dejected-looking effigy, smiling a little sadly, and the Lady had answered in a thunder of wings.
The Divine paused to give Leander a swift, searching look, as though seeking his approval. Then she took a deep breath and wrung her hands before stepping forward. Her sweet, youthful voice spilled across the square.
“People of Bonsaint.” She sounded breathless in her earnestness. “The Lady has delivered us from danger. By Her grace, the Dead have been driven from our fields.” Had Leander convinced her of that? He wasn’t watching her, instead gazing coldly across the crowd. “On this day, we honor her by denouncing the Raven King, bringer of the Sorrow, ruin of the Age of Kings. May his face remain forgotten. May history scorn his name.”
“May history scorn his name,” echoed the crowd.
<
br /> “Lady, we give thanks.” The Divine made the sign of the oculus and bowed her head.
The crowd held its breath. Everyone knew what would happen next: the ravens would descend on the effigy in a great black cloud and tear it apart, straw by straw, just as they had the king’s real body three hundred years ago, when they had been sent by the Lady to destroy him. He had been known only as the Raven King ever since, his true name struck from Loraille’s records in disgrace.
The held breath stretched on. And on, and on, until confused murmurings started to fill the square. Not a single raven had budged. No longer flapping or croaking, they roosted in watchful silence, hundreds of dark eyes gleaming. As the sun sank below the rooftops, the slice of red light illuminating the effigy slipped upward, casting more of it into shadow. Soon only the crown blazed against the darkening sky, like it had been set on fire.
The Divine stood frozen, a pale blot in the shadows. Her hands tightly gripped the platform’s rail. Beside her, Leander spoke. Whatever he said seemed to jar her from her horrified trance, and she quickly bent her head in prayer. Leander joined her, but I could tell he wasn’t truly praying; instead, he was watching the crowd beneath his lashes.
I had never heard of this happening before. The Lady always answered. Beside me Marguerite was gripping her pocket, consulting her shade. “Does the revenant sense anything?” she whispered, her eyes wide and frightened.
“Not yet,” it snapped, preoccupied. I got the impression that it was extending its senses as far as it dared. I shook my head, and almost jumped when Marguerite’s other hand reached out to seize mine, holding it as tightly as Sophia had in the crypt.
The murmurs were growing agitated. “Artemisia!” wailed a voice suddenly. “Artemisia of Naimes!” At once, a confusing outcry filled the square. I couldn’t tell what had prompted it until another voice shouted, “The white raven!”
Vespertine Page 22
