“It might have come into the city possessing a thrall,” I said, listening to the revenant’s suggestion. “The priest—Confessor Leander has enough influence to arrange passage for someone. Maybe he was keeping it in reserve for an emergency.”
“Or it could have been inside Bonsaint already, minding its own business,” the revenant added. “It was old, and very intelligent.”
Intelligent enough to speak. I’d forgotten about that until now. Traitor, it had called the revenant. Scorned One, just like in Josephine’s manuscript. I supposed the vicar had known the revenant was helping me of its own free will. Except—to have earned that title in the first place, had the revenant cooperated with a human before? It hadn’t spoken to its previous vessels, the ones who had been trained. But Saint Eugenia…
Charles placed a hand on the table, interrupting my thoughts. “We should go to the cathedral right now,” he said, starting to stand. “The service starts at fourth bell.”
The hallway outside the kitchen looked more crowded than when we had sat down. There were more people in the house, watching us with eyes as wide as saucers. My presence wasn’t going to remain a secret for long.
I said, “I’ll go, but I need to do it alone.”
“We already talked about this!” Marguerite cried.
“Both of you have been seen with me since then. Marguerite, you’re the only person who knows where Saint Eugenia’s reliquary is hidden. You need to keep it safe in case something happens. And, Charles, you need to stay with Jean.”
They both opened their mouths to object. They were forestalled by a shuffling sound beneath the table, which stilled upon being noticed. Then a small voice demanded from beneath the table, “Do they hurt?”
“Thomas!” someone exclaimed—Elaine.
I knew what he was asking about. I had taken my gloves off to eat. I shook my head to let her know it was fine.
“No,” I answered, watching Thomas emerge from hiding and clamber onto an empty stool beside me. Guessing what he wanted, I held out my bad hand. “You can touch it if you want to.”
He diligently felt my scars, then grew bolder and tried to straighten my curled fingers. A collective indrawn breath filled the hallway, followed by a pause as everyone waited, I assumed, to see if the Lady was going to send a lightning bolt through the window to punish him. When nothing happened, everyone relaxed—except for Thomas, who was too busy inspecting my hand to notice.
Marguerite was watching with an oddly soft expression. “Artemisia,” she said, “you know you don’t need to do everything alone.”
I glanced around at her, Charles, Jean. The people in the hall. I felt the revenant, bristling with impatience. And I realized she was mistaken—I hadn’t been alone, not for some time.
TWENTY-ONE
In the mostly deserted streets, I saw the aftermath of the fire. I had to walk through the main square, and I passed the building that had stood behind the effigy, its shutters charred, a huge black scorch mark cast against its stone edifice like a shadow. Below, the Clerisy’s platform had been reduced to a jumble of brittle burned sticks. The stink of damp charcoal hung in the air, its last resentful smoldering extinguished by the morning dew.
The square was deserted now, clearly being avoided after last night’s events. The few people I came across looked fearful and ducked quickly back inside. Litter had accumulated around the base of Saint Agnes’s statue. I wondered what had become of the beggar—whether he had survived. Whether he had people to care for him, or if he was out there on his own.
I discovered where everyone in the city had gone when I reached the cathedral’s square. It was packed full of people, their numbers barely contained by the shops and counting houses that hemmed the area in. And everywhere, I heard my name.
“A scrap of cloth from Saint Artemisia’s cloak!” shouted a vendor ahead. “As powerful as any relic!”
“Its smell is, at any rate,” the revenant said. “This way.”
I pushed through the vendor’s line, ignoring the protests of the customers who stood waiting. Farther in, other vendors were trying to sell various items that I had supposedly touched, like pieces of Priestbane’s tack, and even in one case, “a lock of hair from the maiden’s own head.” “Blond,” the revenant supplied. “Also, they got it from a horse.”
The crossbow bolt was still the most common ware being hawked, but no one was calling it that any longer. It had become the holy arrow instead. I supposed that sounded nicer. The buyers most likely didn’t know any better, or they were simply eager to believe that the more romantic-sounding version was the truth. Some might remember that the story had begun differently, but perhaps once they heard other people call it the holy arrow enough times, they started to doubt their memory, then started to forget.
And it appeared the strategy was working. The vendors were selling out nearly faster than they could make them. With my head down, I watched a boy working in a stall surreptitiously dip a splinter of wood into a jar of pig’s blood and then stick it in a bowl of sand to let it dry. I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t been looking down and happened to glimpse him working through a tear in the stall’s fabric.
Perhaps this was how history treated saints. It didn’t matter what was real, what had truly happened. Even as they lived, their lives passed into legend.
“Nun?”
I had halted in the middle of the square, the traffic flowing around me as though I’d turned to stone. A sudden impulse had seized me to tear off my glove and look at the cut on my hand. It hadn’t even finished healing yet. I felt as though I needed to prove it still existed as around me a dozen voices shouted my name, desperate to own pieces of me, uncaring of the truth: even if they butchered me like an animal, there wouldn’t be enough blood in my body to anoint their holy arrows. They would martyr me themselves to satisfy their hunger for a saint.
“Nun?” the revenant repeated.
“Nothing,” I said, and put down my hand.
A moment later, a shadow fell over me. I was distracted, so for the first time since entering the square, I made the mistake of looking up. Panic descended on me like the stroke of a gavel. When my wits returned, I found myself crouched in an alley with my heart hammering, feeling like an idiot as the revenant flitted through my body searching for injuries, finding nothing.
“What happened?” it demanded for the fourth or fifth time. “What’s wrong with you?”
A lot, no doubt. I wasn’t certain I should tell the truth, since “the cathedral is big” didn’t seem like something that should send a person careening into an alley in mindless terror. But the cathedral was big, and I couldn’t have come up with a lie even if I’d wanted to.
“The cathedral,” I mumbled finally.
The revenant went quiet. Possibly it was remembering that I had spent a considerable portion of my life locked inside a shed. Then it said, “Keep your eyes on the ground, like you were doing before. Close them, if you want to. I’ll tell you when we’re close.”
The rush of gratitude I felt in response was so potent that I was certain the revenant could sense it. Thankfully, it didn’t say anything as it guided me back into the square.
Now that I had seen it, the cathedral’s presence loomed. I felt the weight of its age-blackened stone towering above, encrusted with carved figures of saints and spirits, its spiny, intricate spires piercing the sky like the points of misericordes. It seemed that it might come crashing down at any moment, too huge and terrible to support its own weight.
It was no less crowded in the cool, dank shadows surrounding the cathedral, but here the voices were hushed, people huddled together as though for safety, waiting to be let inside. I picked through them until I found an empty space on the ground. Many of my neighbors looked like refugees; I wondered what it must feel like to have come to Bonsaint seeking shelter, only to discover that even the city wasn’t safe. To them, the cathedral represented the last bastion of refuge in Roischal, its holiness impenetrable.
&
nbsp; After what I’d seen in Naimes, I knew better.
The first change I noticed in the square was a nervous ripple among the vendors. They started flipping cloths over their wares, hastily laying out different items. A figure was approaching through the crowd.
“The priest,” warned the revenant, right before Leander strode into view.
People stumbled to get out of his way. They would have done so even if he were a stranger, his reputation unknown. He looked immaculate in his full black and silver regalia, his beautiful face as cold as a drawn blade. From the looks he sent the vendors, it was clear he knew what they had been selling. They flinched, their eyes darting to his onyx ring.
I sat still, watching. From this distance, in the shadows, it would be impossible for him to pick me out from the crowd.
He strode the rest of the way across the square and up the cathedral’s steps. As though cowed into obedience by his approach, the great doors hastily swung open to admit him. I caught a flash of the sacristan’s crimson vestments amid a flurry of movement, suggesting Leander had startled a group of clerics inside. It took a moment for the incident to get sorted out and for the sacristan to begin admitting the waiting congregation.
“Pauper’s balcony!” a strident voice cried, directing those of us sitting on the ground toward a different door. I hadn’t noticed it before: it was a grimy side entrance set almost invisibly into the cathedral’s wall. As I joined the others in shuffling toward it, I watched the sacristan methodically turn aside those he deemed too slovenly for the main entrance, gesturing them toward our line instead.
We filed up a dim, sour-smelling stair, our shoes thumping on wood worn black and shiny with the passage of generations of dirty feet. We emerged onto a plain standing-room balcony. A wrought-metal screen separated the balcony from the rest of the cathedral, so the congregation seated in the pews below wouldn’t see us—or smell us, I assumed.
Looking out, I had to lean against the rail for balance. The vaulted ceiling soared upward until its details vanished in a haze of incense smoke. Seven towering stained-glass windows captured the sun and filled the nave with light. I recognized them from my vision in the stable, though I hadn’t been able to make out the details then.
Now I saw that each one depicted an image of a high saint. Saint Agnes occupied the central place of honor: pale and sorrowful, her hands crossed over her breast as though she lay on a funeral bier, surrounded by white lilies. Beside her stood dark-haired Saint Eugenia, wearing a shining suit of armor and clasping a sword. She smiled serenely down at the congregation from her lofty height, engulfed in silver flames.
A chill gripped me. I had never seen an image of Saint Eugenia wielding the revenant’s fire. I was conscious as I hadn’t been for some time that it was her fragile bone I had carried across Roischal’s countryside, that I had held in the palm of my hand.
As though sensing my thoughts, the revenant said in a tone I couldn’t read, “That doesn’t look anything like her.”
It nudged my gaze down to the altar. Beneath the white altar cloth, it was surprisingly crude in appearance, roughly hewn from dark stone. I guessed that it bore some spiritual significance—perhaps it was a saint’s sarcophagus, or it had been chiseled from a sacred place, like the site of a martyrdom. Since this was the Cathedral of Saint Agnes, I could hazard a guess as to whose. I felt the revenant inspecting it too, drawing its own conclusions.
Murmuring voices surrounded me as worshippers continued to pack onto the balcony. Through them, the revenant said, “This is unexpected.”
It didn’t say it in a good way. My mouth went dry. “What?”
“This spell… it’s strange, nun. It’s the same Old Magic I’ve been sensing all along, but it isn’t a new working. It’s hundreds of years old, at a guess.”
“Then Leander didn’t create it.” My voice merged with the balcony’s steady stream of chatter.
“No, but he’s certainly interacted with it in a way that no one else has. Perhaps he found out how to awaken the ritual and harness its power.” It paused, then said, “I can’t tell any more from here. We need to get closer. You’re going to have to touch it.”
Of course I was. At least that wouldn’t be difficult. After the service, it was customary to line up along the nave to touch the altar. Considering yesterday’s events, I predicted that a lot of people were going to want its blessing.
Just then the Divine appeared, heading toward the chancel, the long train of her robes gliding behind her. And as my luck would have it, Leander followed after her like a wolf trailing a lamb. I was so busy wondering how I was going to avoid him that I almost didn’t notice the way some of the clerics were giving him sidelong looks and gossiping behind their hands. I suspected he was aware of it; his back was very straight going up the steps to the sanctuary.
The balcony was packed full now. A hush descended. Everyone watched the Divine the same way they had looked at me in the house, desperate for guidance. Despite myself, I pitied her. I remembered how sorrowful she had looked in Naimes. The knowledge that she had been the second choice for Divine surely weighed on her. She couldn’t afford to fail her people again.
She folded her hands. Her sweet, clear voice filled the nave: “Goddess, Lady of Death, Mother of Mercy, bless us with the stillness of Your regard.”
The Lady rarely sent a sign in response to the traditional invocation. In my seven years at the convent, I had seen it happen only a handful of times. But today the Divine was clearly hoping for one. Everyone could see it. After her voice fell silent, there came a long, waiting pause, the congregation holding perfectly still, suspending its breath, trying not to exhale and disturb the candles.
At first it seemed it might work. The flames were tranquil, betrayed by only a few slight flickers here and there. Then the candles on the altarpiece ruffled in an unmistakable draft. The Divine bent her head. Only then, when it was obvious no sign was forthcoming, did the cathedral rumble with hundreds of voices repeating the refrain.
Beside me, people fearfully gripped each other’s hands.
The Divine had no choice but to continue. She spoke of the soul’s tribulations, of the Lady’s mercy in troubling times. I let her voice wash over me as meaningless noise, using my hidden vantage behind the screen to observe Leander.
He was pretending to listen, but I caught him giving the Divine narrow-eyed looks, as though making calculations. I wondered if she had begun to suspect him, if the clerics had said something to her. Perhaps she was beginning to doubt his advice.
It struck me as darkly ironic that they interacted with Leander daily, spent hours standing around the altar, and had no inkling of the Old Magic’s presence. If any of them had bothered making friends with the spirits bound to their relics, they could have saved themselves a great deal of trouble. Perhaps none of this would have happened in the first place; Leander never would have gotten away with it.
That was when understanding dawned.
They were trained not to listen to me, the revenant had said. They didn’t hear.
Mother Katherine liked to say that our Lady was a merciful goddess, but She wasn’t a nice one. I remembered the sorrow on her face when she passed me the candle in the chapel, and it struck me that she could have sent anyone: one of the sisters, someone who had been trained to wield a relic, someone older and more prepared. But the Lady had spoken to her. She had sent me.
Someone with training wouldn’t have asked the revenant for its help. They wouldn’t have listened to it. They wouldn’t have learned about the Old Magic, and wouldn’t have followed it here.
If you wish to stay in Naimes so badly, perhaps that is the Lady’s will.
Wandering the convent at night, I had sometimes caught glimpses of Sister Iris and Sister Lucinde playing a game of knights and kings through the refectory window, their faces still with concentration as they moved the carved figures across the board. One piece selected over another, its neighbor sacrificed so that it could advance.
I thought of Sister Julienne dead on the crypt’s floor. And I felt the Lady’s shadowed hand behind me, hovering.
I understood what She wanted me to know. She had chosen me for this role, but She wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice me, too, if doing so allowed Her to win the game.
Except it wasn’t a game; the stakes were the lives of everyone in Roischal. I thought of the carved toy abandoned on the mantelpiece, the child in the camp holding out a piece of bread, Thomas touching my scars. If I had to die for them, then so be it. If I had to suffer, then I would. The Lady already knew that. She didn’t need to hear me say it. But still I felt Her presence, waiting in silence, and knew there was nothing She had done to me that I had not accepted first.
I prayed bitterly, Do what You will.
The Divine was still speaking when the Lady answered—when the flames of the candles on the chandeliers, in the sconces around the pillars, in the candelabra on the altarpiece all stopped flickering, filling the cathedral with shining, still light. Gasps and sobs rose from the congregation. The Divine slowly raised her head, tears luminous in her eyes, her face transformed with joy.
A strange sensation filled my chest as everyone around me laughed and cried, embracing one another in celebration. I thought it might be the humorless urge to laugh.
“Was that your doing?” the revenant asked. “On second thought, don’t tell me. I suspect I’m better off not knowing.”
A mood of almost delirious relief suffused the cathedral as the service ended and the congregation began to stand. As I had hoped, people were already queueing up along the aisle, bending one by one to touch or kiss the altar. From the shuffling movements on the balcony around me, it seemed we would join the end of the line.
I silently willed Leander to leave, but he remained in the nave, conversing with a lector. Eventually I had no choice but to merge with the descending crowd. If I waited until I was one of the last to reach the altar as the cathedral emptied, I would risk drawing his attention even more.
I kept an eye on him as the line inched forward. His back was turned to the aisle. Worshippers still sat scattered in the pews, their heads bent in solitary prayer. I watched them gradually depart as I made my halting progress up the aisle.
Vespertine Page 25
