by Tanith Lee
"Merciful Lord," said the Mother. "One of you run and kindle a lantern. It must be lowered. We must be sure."
Two of the nuns fainted, one setting off the other. Yet another hastened away to a withered bush, into which she vomited. The Mother stood like a statue.
The lantern came, and they lowered it on a rope. And then there was a terrible wailing of lament and disgust.
The Mother drew aside quickly from her scrutiny. She said, "I've seen the drowned before, from the river. This is not drowning. It is not a suicide. I must think. She must be raised."
When the Mother departed, and the nuns fell away into groups, Jehanine went to the well and looked down where the lantern still hung. Beyond the fearful stench and beyond the light, a girl's body was wedged far down in the shaft. The water, and time, had acted on it, but also it seemed to have been subjected to fire, and to some cutting weapon: blasted and partly disembowelled it stuck there, mindlessly looking up with the remains of the face of Osanne.
The body was not to be raised. It fell to bits and its entrails poured out.
The Mother, kerchief pressed to her nose and mouth, instructed that logs be thrown in, then oil, and the whole set on fire. She was of course obeyed. At first, dampness seemed likely to wreck the scheme, but then the wood caught. A merry blaze leapt for a while from the chimney of the well, and a ghastly smoke gouted from it.
"I have written to the Father of the order," said the Mother. "Everything is explained. No suicide. I believe our daughter Osanne was struck by lightning. She bore the marks of it. God has gathered her home. We shall make a marker for her, and place it with the tombs of others who had died here in faith."
When the blaze sank, earth was shovelled into the well, and finally stones.
"Thanks be to Christ," said the Mother. She muttered some other brief prayer. She said, "We will pray for the novice Osanne."
All went to the church and prayed for Osanne.
Late in the afternoon it rained, water after fire. The smoke still hung low in the garden, and the evil of the stench remained in pockets.
Supper was a loathsome meal, for which very few had an appetite. The Mother did not appear. The young nun Marie-Lis lifted the cover of a book, not the Bible, but a theosophical work. She began to read to the silent and mostly motionless assembly.
Behind the screen, Jehanine, hungrily eating her black bread and soup, heard the beauty of the voice of the young nun.
"Why then did God so punish His formerly peerlessly beloved Son, made by Him an angel, a winged being of such power and beauty they are to men as men are to the little worms?
"It was in a rage that God did so, as when a favourite child has gone against the parental edict. What will you do? God had asked him. I will create a universe, I will make men in the image of the angels, replied the errant Son. For this, his Father flings him from the sky.
"For in his enormous wisdom, God knows that a world of men created must suffer, firstly the choice of good and ill, and the guilts and torments that attend upon both, and nextly must learn grief and disease, despair and death. God sought, in His compassion, to spare mankind, to deliver it from its very self. But our Lord said, Let them choose. And so he made the earth and peopled it. Then God said, If that is your wish, you I will exile. Go you into the very pit of that which you have made. And for the rest, let there be darkness on the face of the earth for ever, that they may not be afraid, through seeing what they are, and what they are at. So God made darkness and it hung on the face of earth. But the Lord, our Saviour, said again, Let there be light. He stole then one flame of the seven divine fires of Heaven. And with this he fell, burning, like the morning star. The sun was lit from his flambeau, and all the stars, and the moon, and all the lights of the firmament. And when he had cleaved through the earth and fallen to the deepest depth of it, that pit too became fire, a furnace that warms the earth's heart - a cleansing flame, the light of knowledge - until the world shall end.
"And for this gift of fire, men loved him. And when he saw their love, the love of those he had created, Lucefiel in turn loved them.
"Later, others of his brethren rallied to the banner of this Prince. They too exiled themselves from Paradise, and fell to earth and under it. From these he chose his captains, and on them his aegis lay as sternly as on his own self, and besides that, the furious censure of God. But to men the Lord gave only one commandment: Know what you are. But they forgot."
When the reading was done, and the chores of the evening were done, Jehanine slept until the bell of Matines. Then she was Jehan, and she ran over the plains of the nunnery, got over the wall, and was gone into the rain and darkness.
Day by day the rain nailed heaven to earth. In the wintry night, the rain sighed and rushed and stamped. It was a curtain of disguise and a deflection of all other noises. It cleaned the spillings from the stones of Paradys, whatever they were.
At the Imago now, the dwarf sat sometimes on his table in the upper room. He sorted through the sumptuous trinkets and the coins, and petted the clever thieves, though never Jehan, the cleverest, their leader in his default.
"Jehan is a demon sent to guide us by Prince Lucifer," said Conrad. "Jehan is one of Lucifer's fair knights, a fallen angel. Sulphur hair and cat's eyes. Pretty as a girl, sweet voiced as a girl. And charms the girls, too."
They gave the dwarf all their news, while Jehan sat by, yellow cat-eyes cast down. The dwarf gave them their news back again.
"Three wicked murders at a house near the building Church. An old rich man and his servant in their blood, and the housekeeper poisoned, and every bit of wealth plucked from the place. The little boy can't remember a thing, but he says he thinks a handsome youth knocked on the door and the woman let him in. But the boy's wits are addled since the blow the murderers gave him." Restrained, tense as dogs who have done a cunning trick and wait for bones, the thieves listened and said how bad a matter this was, a shocking state the City must be in when a rich man could be killed for his riches. "And another tale has it, a girl was honey-talked into letting in a young man at her window, but he brings his friends too, and while some have her down, others open the father's coffers. Many drunkards have been waylaid coming from the Snake-Cock or the Blacksmith's Inn, or on the South Bridge. Beaten senseless and their purses, their very boots taken." Oh, a shocking state of affairs, yes, yes.
The nights had been busy. Jehan was full of Mercury and went before them. (Remember how he stabbed the servant in the rich man's house, not faltering?) Oh, they had known him for years, their Jehan. He was one of their own, and theirs, but polished brighter.
Conrad twitched. He had a powerful lust for Jehan. One night Jehan might kill him for it. You may eat the apple but not twine the serpent with the maiden's face.
"Well, Dwarf, you like our antics?"
But the dwarf said, "I'm thinking. Fero, fero. It will be a hard winter. The snow will fall. The river may freeze. Then Yule. And the year's turning. The Janus festival, the Feast of the Ass."
The dwarf stared at Jehan. He had never, plainly, told Jehan's secret. That Jehan had breasts and carried no dagger but the one in her belt, that Jehan lived by day in a nunnery, scrubbing the flags and sweeping the yards. Sometimes she slipped herbs into the drinks of their victims, opium, mandragoras. The thieves did not suspect Jehan of that, only of witchcraft. Jehan was fey, lucky, a shining thing of Hell. They did not ask him where he went away from them, or where he came back from - he put on animal shape, or wings and flew behind the stars as they went out. He sprang from the ground at the sun's setting. Winter, the time of dark day and long night, that was Jehan's country. They expected great events.
There was no more Jehanine in any case. There was only Jehan by night and Jhane by day, which two names were one, only a letter differently set, if he-she had been able to read or write and had known it.
Yet, as Jhane went about her work, always dutiful to the nunnery, modest and hard-working, again and again the young nun might be no
ted, standing observing her, or coming near she might say, "Search your heart, Jhane."
"For what must I search there, sister?" asked Jhane meekly. Jehan smiled and waited. In the interim, absconding, Jhane took care to leave during the offices, when Marie-Lis was in the church.
"Come over the river," said Jehan to the thieves. But of this they were wary.
"The watch is fly-thick there now. Since our first visit."
"Follow me then," said Jehan.
The rain clattered like tin pans.
Some glanced at Fero the dwarf to see what he would do. But the dwarf did nothing save finger the columns of coins, an earring of canary beryl. One voice, an equal share - a fraternity, honour among thieves. While, beyond that cross he had taken and not thrown into the communal pile, and the chain Conrad had hung on him for a garland, Jehan took nothing.
All the robber band followed Jehan into Noah's night.
"We must build an ark, quick," said the fat man.
"Agreed. Let's us wicked be saved this time."
Near the South Bridge they beheld a party of tipsy gallants with torches in the rain.
"What now?" said Conrad.
Jehan singled out a young man, blond as the old man's servant had been. Alone, she approached him, and drew him aside from his friends who, in wine and rain not properly aware of his loss, went on over the bridge.
He seemed to believe, when the gang surrounded him, that he had been in conversation with an importunate girl. They took his money and stripped him to his tunic and drawers, like a Roman, and the rain had stopped. The resin torch still burned on his cringing, their jovial circle - his purse had been full, and the coins beamed too.
"He can dance for us," said Jehan. "Can't you?" She raised the torch and looked intently in the robbed man's face. "Let me bring you light. Aren't you glad to obey Christ's command? Look, you've given all you have to the poor." How the thieves giggled. Then Jehan put the torch down to the young man's garment, and up again into his hair. He was wet enough that there was a great smoulder, but also enough flame to send him hopping and screaming over the bridge, and Jehan pranced after him, clapping her hands and singing in a quire boy's voice, to an Eastern rhythm of the Spice Lands. Conrad and one or two more abetted the macabre fun, picking up the song, which had been born of some hot night's Crossade. The rest of the gang paused uneasily, the lower side of the water, not chancing the bridge. Half-way along it, Jehan pushed the youth into the river. Swollen with rain, it would not be happy swimming. Jehan seemed content, and at once returned along the bridge, with Conrad and the others at his heels.
"What shall I do?" said Conrad. "You want me to go over there? Hang the watch, I will, if you want it. Up the hills. I'll go to Hell with you."
"That door-boy at the rich man's house," said Jehan.
"He's a half-wit now. No need to slaughter every one of them."
But Jehan seemed to wish only deaths stacked methodically in the chest of deeds. Glancing in the river, one noticed the blond young man was not swimming at all, had gone down.
"Let me have you," said Conrad.
"No. Don't try."
"One time you'll let me."
Til kill you first."
Conrad laughed into the face of night. Much bigger and heavier than this boy, he could pin him now to the stone over the tumult of water. But did not dare.
"You love another," jested Conrad.
"A lovely nun," said Jehan.
"A nun? Where could you see such a thing?"
"I have seen. One night you'll get her for me. Skin like cream and eyes like deep thoughts. A young nun. You can take her, I'll let you."
Conrad licked his lips. He was superstitious. Satan protected his own, and so did the other One.
It thundered overhead, and Conrad winced. The rain resumed. It was cold, it was winter.
They went back to the Imago to drink and Jehan to sit watching the dwarf count coins.
Seven o'clock in the frosty morning, not yet light nor yet still dark. The office of Prima Hora was done and Jhane stood at the church door as the nuns stole drifting out, to allow Marie-Lis to witness her there. But Marie-Lis passed by with the sisterhood, not seeming to see her, her countenance remote as ivory.
When the nuns were gone, Jhane went into the church.
A cold iron heaviness hung there. Smudges of light faltered on meagre candles, but nothing was given from the great window, which had become a whorl of leaden quarter-tones. The form of the Angel - Lucefiel - was mostly indistinguishable.
Was it that they worshipped the Devil here, or that Jhane had seen through a mask even they were unaware of?
As she moved along the nave, she saw the pale figure in the quire. It was not Osanne, for the spectral figment - or decoy - that had seemed to be Osanne, had ended its manifestations with the discovery in the well. This apparition was the original, a nun in a pale robe, tall and gracious, her face unseen since lifted in reverence to the blinded window. Jhane walked on, making no sound. The figure did not alter, only the hood or veil slipped back from its head. This nun did not effect either scarf or coif. A lion-like mane of gold hair burst out against the dimness, raying over the shoulders and down the spine.
Was this hair like the hair of Marie-Lis? Was this she? Had she turned into the side passage or the cloister, and re-entered via one of the smaller doors…
Perhaps not. The young nun was not so tall, and much slighter, surely -
Jhane halted. Something made her unable to approach any closer to the vision. Now the glowing quality of the figure seemed to be flowing upwards into the window - it warmed and waxed lambent. Suddenly colour shot into the glass and it came alive. The sun was rising and had pierced abruptly through the cloud. As the window quickened, Jhane saw that the image of white robe and lion hair was gone.
Kneeling before the Great Light, Jhane bowed her head and slowly touched her hands to brow and breast. A peculiar sensation went over her as she did this, an exquisite intimation, both carnal and spiritual. But getting to her feet, she soon turned her back on radiant Lucifer and all his works.
In the black icicle of the night, some young men coming out of the Cockatrice met with a sauntering blond youth. There were exclamations. And a pause.
"Stop! You - '
"What have I done?" said the youth, turning on them two beautiful lynx's eyes.
"No - but you're like - '
"It is, I tell you."
"No, not the height or muscle. But a double, certainly."
"Oh," said the youth, not unnaturally curious, "whose?"
The young men from the studio of Motius looked at one another. One of them said, "Well, he's in the sewers - ' and was commanded to silence.
"Then I'm like someone," said the youth. "Where are you bound?"
"Come with us, where we're bound," they said, and went off into the icicle with him, to a lower tavern behind a stable.
"Look at his hands, so delicate, and his face. What a model he'll make, our Jehan - you did say to us that was your name?"
"Come to the studio tomorrow. Present yourself to the Master. He'll take a fit, seeing how like - well. Do it anyway."
They petted him, far gone in ale.
"Where is his house then?" he said, lolling there sober.
They explained with care the location of the house, and its appearance, and drew maps of the way upon the table in spilled drink.
winter is, the poor birds sing And hide each head beneath a wing. So cruel to me my lady is Like winter snow that gives no ease,
My heart its head beneath its wing, And winter is, my heart must sing.
Winter rode through Paradys on a grey horse, a lord in mail and armour, with a vizored helm, and his train behind him. The sky and the bare trees groaned and the honed winds blew. Branches, slates and birds fell down. The snow began to fall. The City blanched. The river froze for vast stretches, and all the wells. Love-songs listed cold hearts, but in the nunnery the nuns wrapped their feet and hands in
cloth, the hearths were lit in the refectory and the infirmary, and braziers carried into the church, and quantities of blankets lugged to the sleeping cells. Two of the sick nuns perished, and were put underground. The matriarchal Mother took cold and kept to her chamber where a fire roared day and night. The novices slept two by two for warmth, which was not allowed. (On such freezing nights at the farm, even the unloving sisters of Jehanine had clasped her close.) But Jhane lay alone, cold as a stone, and deep within her body she coiled asleep. She did not fear the winter, it had no jurisdiction over her. And now and then Jehan went out across the wall and reviewed the City of Ice, its turrets and points sewing up an enamel moon, on the surface of which there now showed absolutely a Madonna's mournful face. Over the thick glass of the river by night, muffled shapes dragged secret wares on rough sleds. The ships lay dead at anchor.
And the lovely young nun read in the refectory, above the coughs and snuffles of winter. "In the Book of Esrafel it says this: "Thus the man who was sent to the Angel asked him, ".Were it not better that we should not live at all, since we live in wickedness, and suffer, and know not why?" And I, the Angel, answered him; 'Weigh you the height of fire, and measure the tower of the wind, and call here to me yesterday." But the man said, "I cannot." 'Believe then," said the Angel Esrafel, "in this manner also you cannot know the guiding intent of the Creator, cannot weigh or measure it, or call it here before you. Yet it is'." The young nun waited as two or three of her sisters sneezed and wiped their noses sadly. Then she read, " "Hear, my beloved, says the Lord: be not afraid, nor let your sins weigh you down as the briars cover the field, that no man may travel it. Your sins are finished, tear up the thought of them by the roots. For the field choked by briars is put to the fire to be consumed." '
The thieves, wrapped fast, and sometimes snuffling like the nuns, came from their bolt-holes to the Imago to toast and steam. Once in, they did not incline to go out again. Gold burnt the fingers in such a temperature, the dwarf said so. There he sat, slit-eyed and brooding, saying not a syllable now. But Jehan prowled and some followed. Where there were no pickings to be had, Jehan would crack some costly window with a ball of packed snow, or scratch on doors with his dagger obscene symbols of the alleys learnt instead of letters. Jehan would inaugurate sliding games, which slides might break legs in the morning. And sometimes they would find a vacant house to get into.