The Book of Shadows (10 page)

I
saw
this! I swear it now as I would have sworn it then.

I stood, fell back from the tapestry against the shuttered wall. What was happening here? Who or what was showing me this, and why? Was it to make known the truth of the Franciscan stigmata, and in so doing mock Sister Claire's dark charade? Or was this the work of the wine? I held the heavy bottle up to the votive's flame and saw that it was nearly full, fuller than when last I'd looked. But of course
that
was impossible, no? I drank again. Perhaps my mind, perhaps my
senses
had been loosed by the beating I'd suffered under Sister Claire. Too, I had never drunk so much wine; and surely I'd never drunk wine as rich and delicious as this.

But I knew that what I saw was real. This was no illusion. No trick of shadow and light.

The flow of blood was steady, yet it did not run from the sewn frame, did not drip. Maluenda wound herself around my ankles. As I bent to her she sprang up into my arms. I cupped her belly in my left hand; her heart beat so strongly it was as though I held it directly, as though I'd slipped my hand inside her, between the fur and flesh.

I stood staring into the Saint's pale face, half-expecting the wide-open eyes to turn toward me, the thin lips to twist with speech…. Yes, the sewn Saint seemed real enough to speak.

It was all I could do to hold the straining, stretching cat from the tapestry. When finally she succeeded in slipping my grip, I let her fall and brought the bottle to my lips.

But I could not avert my eyes. Beautiful St. Francis. And with the strange grace of the somnambulist, slowly, deliberately, I raised my arm. There were my splayed fingers before me. My hand glowed impossibly white in the blue light, as though gloved. Something urged me on. Yes, it was that: an
urge
. Maluenda? That
presence
?

Mine was the long Sistine finger of life, reaching, reaching…. I touched…I touched the tapestry. The Saint's open palm. His wound. His blood.

Nothing. I could
see
the blood, flowing from the wounds, but I could not
feel
it. My finger came away clean. Again, I touched it: the other hand, each foot, the lash marks and spear wounds in his side. I scratched at the threaded wounds with my thumbnail. Nothing.

As though struck, I fell to my knees. Prayer flowed from me, as surely as blood flowed from the Saint. I do not know how long I held that familiar stance; nor can I say definitively that it was prayer I offered. Questions, perhaps. Or did I simply open to the indisputable, strange truth before me? All that's certain is that I would have kept on had it not been for the voices.

Yes, voices.

I rose fast to my feet. My breath was ragged, my heart wild. At first it seemed I'd heard a lone voice. Faraway, yet nearing. “Show yourself!” I said again. But no. There were many voices, speaking as one, a chorus, growing ever louder.

Spinning to scan the shadows, I kicked the votive over. As I moved to right it, I saw that the blue flame shot straight out from the fallen candle, pointed
down
along the floor into the deeper darkness, sure as a finger, when it ought to have reached
up,
as any flame will. It spilled an excess of wax in that same direction, wax that flowed fast, and as sure as the Saint's blood, toward the door of the lesser library.

Maluenda had already moved into the darkness nearer the door. I followed, followed the directives of the candle and cat.

The voices, again…. They were real, quite real; and coming from within the library.

I stole nearer the gallery's end, nearer the voices. There, to my left, was the arched and covered stairwell that gave on to a path leading to the stables. So
that
was how Peronette and Mother Marie escaped. Another door, straight ahead, opened directly into the lesser library. This secondary door was rarely used. I myself had used this door but once, and recently: I'd slipped from it to escape a tutorial on Horace, which seems now to have taken place in another life. As indeed it did.

The voices grew more distinct as I neared the door. A mix of voices, some panicked (the girls, perhaps) and others deeper, demanding (Sister Claire?). I might have run then, down the outer stairwell to the stables. But I did not. Instead, I crept up to the library's thick oak door and listened. And what I heard astounded me:
men!
The voices of men. And then, stranger still, I heard the voice of Mother Marie-des-Anges; and it was my name she spoke!

T
HERE
'
D BEEN SOME
commotion moments earlier; this accounted for the raised voices I'd heard. A man was struggling still to restore order. From his voice, frail but full, self-important, bloated with bombast, I concluded that he was a man of some position. Perhaps a priest of a higher rank, for it seemed everyone quieted when he spoke; but few such men ever came to C——. Who could it be? Nearing, I listened to the words that fell so slowly, so deliberately from his mouth; and I observed that his speech was flabby with tautologies—that is, he said everything twice, thus gaining time for the slow wheels of his mind to grind. I could not clearly hear his questions, for Monsieur Le Maire (it was, of course, the Mayor of C——) stood far across the crowded library.

How many people were crowded into the lesser library? It was not a large room; indeed, it had but one bank of windows, a single large table, several chairs, and not many books besides those unread histories of the Order. I assumed many of those gathered with the girls and nuns had come from the village of C——in the company of Monsieur Le Maire; surely they'd all been summoned in the hours just passed. How had they all descended on C——without my hearing them? Perhaps they'd come up the back path from the village, warned away from the main drive where I'd last been seen. Or perhaps they'd climbed to the lesser library from the chapel while I lay secreted in the cellar, or busied myself in the dormitory, bathing and dressing. I wondered, had the sorority even observed the Angelus, or had the bell I'd heard been a call to assembly?…Regardless, here they were. Men,
men
had come to C——. Their voices, the more familiar female voices too, they all bore tones of excess: hysteria or flat, spiritless inquiry. A council, a jury of sorts; this
proceeding
was a trial.

But who stood accused? Peronette? Was she even present? Mother Marie?
Me?
At that thought I very nearly took to the outer stairwell, but I
had
to hear what was going on, for I suspected—rightly—that whatever happened in that room would decide my fate.

I spied slivers of the room through the door where its wood had warped over time. I could not see much in this way, just the bustling of bodies, many bodies, gathered in groups. I squatted, rose on my toes, bobbed left and right. But I'd learn more from listening.

I was so close to the door I feared detection. Like all the doors at C——, that of the lesser library was constructed of thick boards of oak banded by hammered iron. I practically pressed myself against that door. Maluenda sat at my foot, perfectly still, as intent as I on the words we heard.

A question. I couldn't quite make it out…something about the Prince of This World…something about a pact…. A pause, and then the tremulous response of—

—of Mother Marie! It was
she
who stood accused. How I felt for her! What I wouldn't have done to rescue her, save her.

And then I heard her say my name, again.

By the tone of her response, which I could hear quite clearly, as she was separated from me by the door and fewer than five paces, I knew her to be defeated, and resignedly so.

Mother Marie repeated my name when the Mayor repeated his question, which I heard all too well. “Who is the seducer here?” he asked. “Who has brought all this about?”

I had. So said Mother Marie-des-Anges. It was I who'd set all this in motion. I clasped my hand to my mouth and fell back from the door. Maluenda rose up to pull with bared claws at the lacy hem of the dress.

Absurd,
to think that I was then capable of seduction. I knew nothing of…of
sex
, let alone seduction. I was completely without wiles, guileless. Yes, there'd been the milk of the dreams, but I had never initiated that, not consciously. In waking life I knew
nothing
of my own body, neither its nature nor its ways nor its…its
name
. Had you asked me about mystical theology or Trajan's legacy, had you asked me to decline a noun in any of the languages I'd learned, yes, but I avow it: I knew nothing,
nothing,
of self-satisfaction or sex. Or seduction.

I heard the Mayor ask where Peronette had gone—it
was
she who'd ridden away—but Mother Marie swore she'd known nothing of her niece's plans; Peronette had harnessed the horses and effected her escape alone. At this the sorority dissented as one. And even
I
knew Mother Marie was lying; bedeviled as she was by her niece, there was nothing she would not have done for her. The loudest of the protesters was, of course, Sister Claire de Sazilly:

“Liar!”
said she. “How then do you explain your niece's absence when all the Order searched for her? You hid her away, till such time as she could descend to the stables, to your
fine
carriage and two steeds and—”

“I do not know,” mumbled Mother Marie.

“Answer!”
countered Sister Claire, whose cry overrode some words of the Mayor's. “Do not lie before your Christ!”

“I do not know!”
said Mother Marie; these words she would repeat often in the course of her interrogation. “Surely you, Sister, believe my niece capable of executing her escape from
you
and your scheming ways!”

Sister Claire appealed to the Mayor, for it served her ends to do so. “Can you not silence the accused, Monsieur Le Maire?” she asked.

But Mother Marie spoke on: “Why,” she asked of Sister Claire, “why wouldn't I have gone with her? Why wouldn't I have joined her in the barouche and escaped if I'd known of her plans, for I've long known of
yours
, you godless, usurping—?” Mother Marie hesitated; and then, her voice cracking like thin ice, added, “She has forsaken me.” Here was the painful admission.

“You admit it then,” chimed in the cellarer. “You admit it: the accused
has
escaped. She's escaped.”

“No!” said Mother Marie. “She is gone, yes. It is true. But she had no reason
‘to escape,'
as you say.” Mother Marie appealed then to the Mayor, in whom resided the Law: “I remind you, Monsieur Le Maire, neither my niece nor I stand accused of any crime.”

“Witch!”
came the cry, echoed by others. A townswoman observed that as Satan did not stand on formalities, neither should the Soldiers of Christ. Others assented, roundly.

Above the accusatory din rose Mother Marie's voice: “What am I accused of?
Speak!
If this is a trial there must be a crime as well as a criminal.”

The Mayor averred that this was not a
formal
trial. “My good man,” countered Mother Marie, “formal or no, this
is
a trial. You and all present know it.”

The Mayor somehow quieted the girls. “Mother,” said he, his words at a low simmer, “indeed you are not accused, at present, of any crime.”
At present
.

There came, as though by prearrangement, more crazed accusations from Sister Claire's disciples. Maniacal and nonsensical testimony, every word of it unbidden. “She's loosed devils among us!” This from Sister Claire. “Is that not crime enough among Christians?” Appealing to the Mayor in a more reasoned tone, the Head asked again, “Is
that
not crime enough?”

“You,” seethed the Mother Superior. “You with your tools! Your hammer and nail! You who would
use
Elizaveta, who would have beaten down poor Herculine as though she were your own unchaste desires. You…you
vulgarian
!”

Only then did I recall Sister Claire's plan. I'd forgotten it during my escape from the cellar, forgotten it as I'd so busily determined to escape C——. Such guilt I felt then! I'd left young Elizaveta to that evil, scheming nun, who'd carried out perfectly her horrific plan to take up Peronette's prank and turn it to her advantage, rile the gullible girls, and finally win the House from Mother Marie. And then I wondered how Mother Marie had learned of Sister Claire's unholy charade. Doubtless the same way that Sister Claire had learned of my tutoring of Marie-Edith—through the nuns' quiet and ever-shifting alliances, a spider's web spun of favors and enmity and secret affections.

“Every devil should die!” came Sister Claire's retort. “That beastly child is among us now due to your intervention. See what she's brought down on my Elizaveta!”

The girls moaned in choral hysteria. They screamed of their own safety; one wondered Whose touch she'd receive: that of her Lord or His enemies.

“Stop your theatrics!” said a scornful Sister Catherine. The faux stigmata, the tomfoolery, she was having none of it. Who among the nuns believed? Who doubted? And of the doubters, who would dare challenge Sister Claire?

Sister Claire must have turned on the Mayor then, for I heard her command the man, “Take this House from her! This blessed House that was hers to keep!”

“
Is
mine to keep,” corrected Mother Marie; and to the Mayor, she added, “She has coveted the rule of this House since it was awarded to me…. And I remind you, Monsieur Le Maire, with due respect, you are the possessor of a
secular
authority, and these are matters—”

“Since you
bought
this House with the Devil's Coin!” Sister Claire must then have lunged at the Mother Superior, for I heard chairs overturn and loud and fast came the prayers of those assembled, their voices ragged, fraught with fear.

How had things devolved, so quickly, to this? I was truly frightened, for if the Mother Superior could be thus abused, what would they do to me? It was then I should have fled. But I stayed, for I heard Mother Marie begin to sob. Soon she'd lost all composure, all grace. Only then, weakened, ruined, was she invited to speak in her defense. She couldn't.

I stood by the library door, trails of salt drying on either cheek, listening. I pressed my ear to it. My hand was flat against it, my fingertips reading, absently, the grooves, the grain of the oak. I was careful to stand far enough back from the door: the shuffle of my feet or some slight shadow I'd cast might betray my presence. With the toe of those white boots I had to nudge Maluenda back from the door time and again; she pawed under it, sniffed at the stale air heated by so many bodies gathered together.

After more questions about Peronette and her whereabouts, which Mother Marie did not, perhaps
could
not answer—thankfully, not a word more was said about me; not then—the Mayor was ready to “pronounce sentence.” The
gall
! He would
sentence
the Mother Superior of C——? “Monsieur,” asked Sister Catherine of the Holy Child, “excuse me, Monsieur Le Maire, but is that not for the bishop to—”

“
Proof?
Is it further proof you want?” cried out Sister Claire, silencing young Sister Catherine. “Very well. More proof before the pronouncement! Let us
see
the devilry of this one! Let her tongue betray the touch of her Fallen Lord!”

After a quick conference with Sister Claire, the Mayor said he would hear the Mother Superior recite one Mater Dei and one Pater Nostrum, both in French and Latin. “Let her tongue save her,” said the Mayor, adopting the condemnatory tone of Sister Claire, “or let it speak of her unholiness; of her unholiness and any infernal alliance she's made. Let her—”

“Let her speak, Monsieur Le Maire,” barked Sister Claire. It has long been held that the unholy cannot recite, completely, the Lord's Prayer. The Hail Mary, which is not believed to trouble the Devil's Own, must have been ordered by the Mayor for show; what authority he had was secular in nature: he was easily led by Sister Claire.

Mother Marie—and what choice did she have?—began her recital. The French first; flawless. Everyone knew it was the Latin, the lordly language, over which she'd stumble. Indeed, who, in the heated atmosphere of that room, might have managed the Mater Dei in unblemished Latin?

“
Ave Maria, gratia plena, dominus tecum
…” No sound but her voice, slow and sure. One misstep and…I feared for her, feared she'd not make it through the prayer in one seamless pass. Ah, but how many times had she uttered it in her life? Of course, this was different.

Mother Marie finished. Both prayers, both languages: flawless. And for naught.

Sister Claire protested—doubtless she feared Mother Marie's acquittal—and quieted only when the Mayor announced the sentence he'd already decided on: Mother Marie would leave C——immediately. She would stay, under guard, in the Meeting House of the village until such time as her passage could be arranged.

“Passage where?” came the cry, tens of voices in unison. They were scared, said the girls, that the devil-abiding nun might not be sent far enough away. The Mayor made clear his intent: he would arrange for Mother Marie to take up the long-vacant position at the jail in D——, in La Vendée, where she would serve as a confessor to the criminally insane. “Of course,” he equivocated, “I'll have to speak with the elders of your Order and—”

“Pas du tout!”
stated Sister Claire. “Am I not the Mother Superior in the absence of
that
one?” All present, save Monsieur Le Maire, knew this was not necessarily so: the bishop ought to be consulted; but no one dared challenge Sister Claire de Sazilly, who had already ascended, by force if not by right. “I am, yes,” continued Sister Claire, “and it is on
my
authority that you will send the woman hence.”

Quiet, utter and complete quiet as they stood watching Mother Marie.

With my eye to the door, I saw the crowd part and there, prostrate on the ground, in the center of her circled accusers, lay Mother Marie. She'd fainted. No one dared revive her, and so there she lay, till finally the Mayor directed some of the assembled townsmen to take the nun up to her chambers, stand guard over her till she came to; then they were to gather up a few of her things—“what a woman needs,” said he—and bring her to his home, where they were to secure her in a windowless, second-story room till the Meeting House could be prepared. One of the townsmen demurred; how were they to avoid bewitchment? The Mayor had no response; but Sister Claire de Sazilly did. I saw her undo the hasp of the chain she wore around her thick waist; from it she slid a gold cross and passed it to the townsman. This, apparently, was good enough for that faithful servant; thus protected, he and his fellows turned to their task, each taking hold of one of Mother Marie's limbs. I saw them. It was as though they shared the burden of a sack of potatoes!
“Bastards!”
I breathed aloud. “Let your hour be near!” Maluenda scratched at the base of the door; her claws gouged the oak.