Holy Fools Read online

  It was at this moment that Perette found me, creeping to my bed so quietly that for a time I was not aware of her presence. If it had been anyone other than the wild girl, I would have lashed out like an animal in a trap. But Perette’s little face was so simple and woebegone in the dim light of the cresset that I could not focus my anger.

  In the last few days I know I have neglected my friend. More pressing things concerned me, things the wild girl could not understand. But I wonder whether I do not often underestimate Perette. Her birdlike voice speaks no tongue that I can understand, but there is intelligence in her bright gold-ringed eyes, and a deep, unquestioning devotion. She tried a smile, indicating her eyes with a speaking gesture.

  I wiped my face with the back of my hand. “It’s all right, Perette. Go to Vigils.” But Perette was already taking her place on the mattress beside me, her bare feet curling beneath her, for shoes are the only clothing she continues to refuse. Her small hand crept into mine. For a second she reminded me of a sad puppy, offering comfort in humble, loving silence, and I was ashamed at the twist of contempt in the thought.

  With an effort I returned the smile. “Don’t worry, Perette. I’m tired, that’s all.”

  It was true; it had taken me hours to get to sleep. Perette lifted her head and indicated the absence at the side of my bed where Fleur’s cot used to be. When I did not reply she pinched my arm gently and pointed again.

  “I know.” I did not want to talk about it. But she looked so woeful and concerned that I had not the heart to rebuff her. “It won’t be for long. I promise.”

  The wild girl looked at me. Her head was cocked to one side and she looked more like a bird than ever. Then she put both hands to the side of her face, changing her expression as she did so to mimic the new abbess with an accuracy that might in other circumstances have been comic.

  I gave a wan smile. “That’s right. Mère Isabelle sent her away. But we’ll get her back, you’ll see. We’ll get her back soon.”

  I wondered whether I was speaking to myself, or whether Perette knew what I was saying. Even as I spoke, her attention had already passed on to other things, and she was playing with a pendant around her neck. There was an image of Saint Christina Mirabilis on the pendant, enameled in orange and red and blue and white. She probably wore it because she liked the colors. The saint was floating unharmed in her ring of holy fire, and Perette held the image in front of her eyes, crooning happily. She was still doing it when we finally arrived in the chapel and took our places in the crowd.

  Vigils lasted longer than I had expected. The new abbess kept the light to a minimum, passing occasionally with the cresset so that she could ensure no one was asleep. Twice she snapped a sharp rebuke at a lazy sister—Soeur Antoine was one, I think, and Soeur Piété the other—for the chanting was soft and almost soothing, and the night, warmed by eighteen hours of daylight, was not yet cold enough for discomfort. Almost two hours passed before the bell rang again for Matins, and I realized that the customary period of rest between the two services had been missed. I was shivering now in spite of my woollen stockings, though I could see the dawn piercing through the loose slates. The bell rang twice again for Lauds and a murmur went through the assembly as, once again, LeMerle made his entrance.

  In a second, all drowsiness had dropped from the air. Around me I could feel the small barely perceptible movements of the sisters as they turned their sunflower faces toward him. I think I was the only one who did not look up. Eyes fixed firmly on my clasped hands, I heard him approach, heard the soft familiar sounds of his footsteps on the marble flags, sensed him standing at the lectern, motionless in his dark robe, one hand touching the silver crucifix he always wears.

  “My children. I am lucis orto sidere. The star of the morning has risen. Raise your voices now to greet it.”

  I sang the hymn with my face still lowered, the words resonating strangely in my skull. I am lucis orto sidere…But Lucifer was the Morning Star before his fall, brightest of all angels, I thought, and at that I could not help but glance once at LeMerle as I sang.

  Too late, I averted my gaze. I am lucis orto sidere…He was looking directly at me and smiling, as if I had revealed my thoughts. I wished I had not looked.

  The hymn ended. The sermon began. I vaguely heard some reference to fasting, to penance, but I was alone in my circle of misery; nothing could reach me. Words droned past me like bees—contrition—vanity—adornment—humility—penance. But they meant nothing to me. All I could think of was Fleur, all alone without even Mouche to comfort her, and how I had not even had time to wipe her nose or tie a ribbon in her hair before they took her away.

  Tsk-tsk, begone! I made the sign with my fingers. No more of that bad-luck thinking. Whatever his intentions, LeMerle wasn’t planning to stay in the abbey forever. The moment he was gone, I would find my daughter. Meanwhile I’d play his game, I’d use every cantrip I knew to keep her from harm, and if by his fault anything happened to her, I would kill him. He knew I would; and he’d keep her safe. For now, anyway.

  I was roused from my thoughts by a movement close by me and looked up. I had been standing near the back of the chapel; for a time I believed it was to receive a sacrament that we came forward one by one, heads bent in submission. A nun was kneeling at the altar, head bowed, her wimple in her hand. A line of sisters waited behind her, removing their wimples as they came, and I followed with the rest, as it seemed to be expected of me. As I came closer still, I passed the sisters who had already been to the pulpit as they returned. Shivering like lambs, they moved in a kind of dream, not meeting my eyes, their faces crumpled with indecision. Then I saw the shears in LeMerle’s hand, and I understood everything. The Reform had begun.

  In front of me I saw Alfonsine take her place before the pulpit, accepting the shears with a thrill of submission. Then it was Antoine’s turn. I had never seen her without her wimple before, and the sudden beauty of her thick black hair was a startling revelation. Then came the shears and she was Antoine again, pale as a beached jellyfish, mouth working helplessly as LeMerle uttered the benediction. “I hereby renounce all worldly vanities, in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.”

  Poor Antoine. What vanities had she known in her sad, fearful time but those of the table and the cellarium? The moment of beauty, so fleetingly glimpsed, was gone. She looked terrified, her hair standing out in uneven clumps, her eyes rolling and her fat hands kneading at each other as if in longing for the comforting routine of the bread pan.

  Then it was Clémente, her flaxen hair catching at the light as she bowed her head. Oddly enough it was dour Germaine who cried out as the shears did their work; Clémente simply tilted her face at LeMerle, looking even younger than she had before the shearing; a wanton with the face of a little boy.

  But hair was not the only vanity we were to relinquish; I saw old Rosamonde, her half-bald crown bared, reluctantly give up the gold cross that she wore about her neck. Her mouth moved, but her words did not reach me. She joined me a few moments later, her weak eyes roaming the chapel as if in search of someone who was absent. Then it was Perette, whose hair was already cropped, sullenly emptying her pockets of treasures. Magpie treasures, that’s all they were; a scrap of ribbon, a polished stone, a piece of rag—those small and harmless vanities that only a child could cherish. She was most reluctant to part with her enameled pendant and had almost succeeded in palming it when Soeur Marguerite pointed it out, and it was swept up with the rest. Perette bared her vicious little teeth at Marguerite, who piously looked the other way. From the corner of my eye I could see LeMerle trying hard to keep himself from laughing.

  Then it was my turn. I watched the ground dispassionately as my hair fell, curl by bright curl, among the mounting trophies. I expected to feel something—anger maybe, or shame—instead I felt nothing but the burn of his fingers at the nape of my neck as he stretched out and drew aside the tangle of hair, cutting with a deftness and precision that drew the eye from
the more intimate gestures—a thumb pressed against the earlobe, a lingering touch in the throat’s hollow—which he performed upon me in secret, without anyone noticing.

  He spoke to me in two registers, the public one in which he intoned the Benedictus, and a thin, rapid whisper during which his mouth barely moved.

  “Dominus vobiscum. You’ve been avoiding me, Juliette. Agnus Dei, very unwise, qui tollis peccata mundi, we need to talk, miserere nobis. I can help you.”

  I shot him a glance of loathing.

  “O felix culpa, you look wonderful when you’re angry. Quae talem ac tanctum, see me in the confessional, meruit habere Redemptorem—after Vespers tomorrow.”

  And then it was over, and I went back to my place feeling dizzy and strange, with my heart pounding and the ghosts of his fingers still fluttering like burning moths against my neck.

  At the end of the session, all sixty-five of us were sitting in our places, newly cropped and demure. My face still felt flushed and my heart was beating wildly, but I hid it as best I could and kept my eyes downcast. Rosamonde and some of the older nuns had been forced to exchange their old quichenotte for the crisp wimple favored by the new abbess, and they looked like a flock of seagulls in the semidarkness. Every cheap trinket, ring, necklace, every harmless scrap of braid or ribbon our old Reverend Mother had tolerated, was gone. Vanity, LeMerle told us in his grave voice, was the jewel of gold in the pig’s snout, and we had fallen to its lure. The Bernardine cross on our habits should be adornment enough, he said—while all the time the light played on his silver crucifix like a small malicious eye.

  Then, after the communal blessing and act of contrition, which I mouthed with the rest, our new abbess stood up and began to speak. “This is the first of many changes I intend to make,” she began. “Today will be a day of fasting and prayer in preparation for the task we will undergo tomorrow.” She paused, perhaps to feel the impact of so many pairs of eyes. “The interment of my predecessor,” she continued, “where it best befits her, in our own crypt.”

  “But we—” The protest was out before I could stop it.

  “Soeur Auguste?” Her gaze was scornful. “Did you say something?”

  “I’m sorry, ma mère. I should not have spoken. But the Reverend Mother was—a simple creature, who disliked the—the fanfare of church ceremony. We did what we thought best when we buried her. Surely it would be kinder now to leave her in peace?”

  Mère Isabelle’s small hands clenched. “Are you telling me that it’s kinder to leave that woman’s body in some abandoned piece of ground?” she demanded. “Why, I believe the place was actually a vegetable garden, or something! What can have possessed you?”

  There was nothing to be gained in confrontation. “We did what we thought was right at the time,” I said humbly. “I see now that it was a mistake.”

  For a second Mère Isabelle continued to look at me with suspicion. Then she turned away. “I must remember,” she said, “that in such a remote area of the country old customs and beliefs still persist. There is not necessarily any sin attached to such a misunderstanding.”

  Fine words. But the suspicion remained in her voice, and I knew I was not forgiven. The safety of the abbey was eroding every minute I remained. Twice already I had attracted the critical attention of the new abbess. My daughter had been taken from me. And now LeMerle held me between his careless, clever fingers, knowing perhaps that one more accusation—a hint of heresy, a casual reference to matters I had thought forgotten—would bring the weight of the Church’s investigation to bear upon me. It had to be soon. I had to leave soon. But not without Fleur.

  And so I waited. We repaired to the warming room for a time. Then Prime and Terce, interminable chanting and prayers and hymns with LeMerle watching me all the time with that look of mocking benevolence in his eyes. Then to Chapter. In the hour that followed, duties were allocated, hours of prayer, days of fasting, rules governing decorum, dress, deportment laid down with military precision. The Great Reform was under way.

  The church would be renovated, we were told. Lay builders would do much of the work on the roof, though the interior would be our own responsibility. The lay people who had until now done most of our menial duties were to be dismissed; it was unseemly for us to have servants to do our work whilst we spent our time in idleness. The rebuilding of the abbey must now be our main concern, and everyone was expected to take additional duties until the time of its completion.

  I learned with dismay that our free time was to be curtailed to half an hour after Compline, to be spent in prayer and reflection, and that our excursions to the town and to the harbor were to cease at once. My Latin lessons to the novices too were to be discontinued. Mère Isabelle did not feel that it was appropriate for novices to learn Latin. To obey the Scripture was enough, she said; anything more was dangerous and unnecessary. A duty rota was established that reversed all our accustomed routines; without surprise I noted that Antoine no longer governed the kitchens or the cellars and that henceforth my herb garden would be tended by strangers, but I accepted this too with indifference, knowing that my time at the abbey was coming to an end.

  Then came the penances. Confession had never taken more than a few minutes in Mère Marie’s day; this time it took over an hour, in public, with Alfonsine setting the tone.

  “I had impious thoughts about the new Reverend Mother,” she murmured, with a sidelong glance at LeMerle. “I spoke out of turn in the church, when Soeur Auguste came in.” It was typical of her, I thought, to draw attention to my lateness.

  “What kind of thoughts?” said LeMerle, with a gleam in his eye.

  Alfonsine shifted beneath his gaze. “It’s what Soeur Auguste said. She’s too young. She’s only a child. She won’t know what to do.”

  “Soeur Auguste seems rather free with her opinions,” said LeMerle.

  I stared into my lap and would not look up.

  “I shouldn’t have listened,” said Alfonsine.

  LeMerle said nothing, but I knew he was smiling.

  The rest soon followed Alfonsine’s lead, initial hesitation giving way to a kind of eagerness. Yes, we were confessing our sins, and sin was shameful; but it was also the first time many of us had ever received such undivided attention. It was painfully compelling, like scratching at a nettle rash, and it was contagious.

  “I went to sleep during Vigils,” said Soeur Piété, a colorless nun who rarely spoke to anyone. “I said a bad word when I bit my tongue.”

  Soeur Clémente: “I looked at myself when I was washing. I looked at myself and I had a wicked thought.”

  “I stole a p-pasty from the winter cellar.” That was Antoine, red-faced and stammering. “It was p-pork and onion, with water crust p-pastry. I ate it in secret behind the gatehouse wall, and it gave me a b-bellyache.”

  Germaine was next, intoning her list—Gluttony. Lust. Covetousness—apparently at random. She, at least, had not been dazzled by LeMerle—her face wore a careful, colorless expression I recognized as scorn. Then came Soeur Bénédicte, with a tearful tale of shirked duties, and Soeur Pierre, with a stolen orange. At each new confession there came an increased murmur from the crowd, as if to urge the speaker onward. Soeur Tomasine wept as she confessed lewd thoughts; several other nuns wept in sympathy, and Soeur Alfonsine eyed LeMerle while Mère Isabelle looked sullen and increasingly bored. Clearly she had expected more of us. Obediently, we gave it.

  As the hour passed, the confessions grew more elaborate, more detailed. Every scrap of material was brought out for the occasion; tattered remnants of past transgressions, filched piecrusts, erotic dreams. The ones who had been first to make their confessions now found their performance overshadowed; resentful looks were exchanged; the murmuring grew to a low roar.

  Now it was Marguerite’s turn to step forward; she exchanged glances with Alfonsine as she passed, and I knew then that there would be trouble. I forked the sign against evil into my palm; around me, the anticipation was so thick t
hat I could barely breathe. Marguerite looked fearfully into LeMerle’s face, twitching like a snared rabbit.

  “Well?” said Isabelle impatiently.

  Marguerite opened her mouth and closed it again without speaking. Alfonsine looked at her with barely concealed hostility. Then, haltingly, and without taking her eyes away from LeMerle’s face, she began.

  “I dream of demons,” she said in a low voice. “They infest my dreams. They speak to me when I lie in bed. They touch me with their fiery fingers. Soeur Auguste gives me medicines to make me sleep, but still the demons come!”

  “Medicines?” There was a pause, during which I felt Isabelle’s eyes flick sharply at my averted face.

  “A sleeping draught, that’s all,” I said as the other sisters turned toward me. “Lavender, and valerian, to calm her nerves. That’s all it is.” Too late, I heard the edge in my voice.

  Mère Isabelle put her hand on Marguerite’s forehead and gave a small, chilly smile. “Well, I don’t think you’ll be needing any of Soeur Auguste’s potions anymore. Père Colombin and I are here to take care of you now. In penance and humility we will expel all trace of the evil that plagues you.”

  Then at last, turning to me, she said: “So, Soeur Auguste. You seem to have something to say on almost every other subject. Have you no testimony to make here?”

  I could see the danger but was at a loss at how to avoid it. “I—I don’t think so, ma mère.”

  “What? Not one? Not a transgression, not a weakness, an act of unkindness, a wicked thought? Not even a dream?”

  I suppose I should have made something up, like the rest of them. But LeMerle’s eyes were still on me, and I felt my face grow hot in revolt. “I—forgive me, ma mère. I don’t remember. I—I’m not used to public confession.”

  Mère Isabelle gave a smile of singularly adult unpleasantness. “I see,” she said. “Soeur Auguste has a right to her privacy. Public testimony is beneath her. Her sins are between herself and the Almighty. Soeur Auguste speaks directly to God.”