by James Reese
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.
It was then, finally, that I determined to leave; but as I bent to take up the cat I heard again my name. Spoken by Sister Claire de Sazilly, who stood now just on the other side of the door. “You cannot leave us to that witch’s ways!” said she to the Mayor.
“No,” enjoined her disciples, “you cannot! You cannot leave with her among us!” The Mayor had pronounced upon Mother Marie, which was all well and good, but what about me, what about the witch who walked among them still?
More accusations. I was the devil who’d ridden the girls in frenzied dreams. It was I who’d stirred the storm. I who
’d won Peronette and the Mother Superior to my ways. And so on, till finally I was the witch who’d brought a plague of mice into C——three years prior, who’d blasted the cellarer’s tomato crop, who’d killed off the entire farrow when our prized sow had finally pigged.
I raised the blue bottle high, threw my head back, and drank.
Maluenda stirred at my foot. She sniffed under the door, scratched at it, turned herself around and around in tight circles. I worried that she’d give us away. I took her up into my arms to calm her. No wonder she grew wild at the sound of Sister Claire’s voice, for if she hadn’t shorn the cat’s ears herself, surely she’d been present when the deed had been done. Every time Sister Claire spoke the cat seemed newly crazed. She verily shredded the pink net of tulle I wore; the satin underdress too was torn. It was all I could do to hold onto Maluenda and the wine and listen to the hateful sister speak.
She was going on about how I’d come to her in dreams, how I’d taken different shapes to tease and torment her, to urge her to “impurity of thought and deed.” Two of the older girls, when questioned by Sister Claire, averred I’d done the same to them.
The Mayor, ruffled by the nature of all he’d already heard, would brook no further testimony. Far easier for him to curse the Darkness in certain terms and vow to see the nuns and girls returned to the care of the Prince of Peace. Just how, I wondered, would the old fool accomplish this? When next he spoke, his plan came clear:
“Where then,” he asked, “is this Herculine?” At this the assembled rose to fever pitch:
“We ran her from the hall,” said one, “and we’ve searched for her all afternoon.”
“I watched as she ran, fast as a man, up the drive, on and on.”
“She lay down upon the dirt and had relations with it.”
“Surely she jumped astride the horses pulling her sister-witch Peronette—”
“No,” said Sister Claire. “She remains among us, for the Devil’s work is never done.”
And so on and so on, till all and sundry impossibilities were addressed.
It was the Mayor finally who broke this chain of accusation, which had rendered me still when I ought to have run. “We must find her,” said he, his words all afumble, “and find her we will. She can’t have gone far. She can’t have gone far and we must find her. We will get from her the answers we need. Answers, indeed.” He directed all present to break into smaller groups; by his calculation there were some forty people in the library. Each group, led by a townsman, would search a part of the convent and grounds. Though long minutes were spent debating the plan’s finer points, it was finally adopted by all, and bore the sanction of Sister Claire.
Meanwhile, I stood listening, dumbstruck, Maluenda growing ever wilder in my arms. Still I did not leave. I could not leave. I could not even reason that it was the wisest course of action. My sole thought was, How can this be happening? Here was a drama from the Burning Days! Had I truly seen what I’d seen, heard what I’d heard?
Screams within the library. Louder than any I’d heard earlier. And seemingly directed at the door behind which I stood! I peered between the warped boards but saw nothing, nothing save for the all-obscuring rush toward the door behind which I—
It happened in an instant. Apparently, in my effort to calm the cat, I’d shown myself. Perhaps I’d let my booted foot get too close to the door, and someone, one of the girls, spied it there, no doubt the same girl who shouted: “She’s come! There! There!”
Moving too suddenly back from the door, three things happened in quick succession: I dropped the bottle of burgundy and saw it shatter on the stone floor; Maluenda leapt from my arms; and the back door of the lesser library opened inward and…and there I stood. There. Staring back at the council, at all assembled. Looking foolish—not to say hellish—in that ill-fitting torn pink finery. A blue stone rosary hanging round my neck. My familiar at my side.
All I remember is a panicky dance—as on a listing ship—for the girls and townspeople pushed toward the library’s primary door. Trying to flee. From me! The Mayor and an elderly townsman clung to each other like widowed sisters. Only Sister Claire dared approach me.
“You,” she spat. “You who dare to—” But Sister Claire de Sazilly would never finish that sentence; for, with preternatural speed, the speed and strength of a thousand cats, ten thousand cats, Maluenda sprang at the nun, her claws splayed like sets of knives.
All save the cat and Sister Claire were still, staring down at the scene. Sister Claire had fallen to the floor when struck by the springing cat’s weight. She struggled beneath Maluenda, who’d fast taken hold of the nun’s flesh with her foreclaws. With her hind legs she scratched furiously at the nun’s torso, shredding that rough tunic and the hair shirt she wore beneath it. On the pale plane of Sister Claire’s stomach I saw the scars of her decades-long mortification, the thorns’ work, matched now by the work of the cat’s claws.
Sister Claire’s disciples suffered fits, hopping and stomping and screaming, but not a one came to her aid. “I’m going to be sick!” promised one, who promptly was, distracting no one. And indeed my stomach was unsettled, too; as it had been years back, when I’d witnessed an extern cleave from her hand the tips of two fingers, which lay twitching beside the roast that she’d been working.
When finally Maluenda leapt from Sister Claire, she left the nun a bloodied mass on the stone floor, rigid with shock, staring wide-eyed at nothing at all. Maluenda, seemingly loathe to leave the nun, bounded up easily onto the windowsill and, after turning to look back at me, to purr, to pass a paw over her torn-away ears, she leapt from the window, two tall stories above the ground.
“No!” I shouted, stepping into the room. “Maluenda!” But to cross the room, to go to the sill, I’d have had to step over the seizing body of Sister Claire de Sazilly; and that I found I could not do. I stared down with revulsion. I hated the woman, yes; but had I ever wished for it to come to this? Sister Claire was…unrecognizable. It might have been any woman’s or man’s face there under cover of all that blood. I saw that the cat had torn away the lobe of one ear.
As I stood staring down at the nun, prostrate at my booted feet, as I stood marveling at the wounds my Maluenda had inflicted, I was grabbed by two, perhaps four townsmen. They’d come up behind me at the Mayor’s silent direction. Brave souls, they were. Remember what it was they believed me to be. Surely, if I’d had my wits about me, I might have used their belief against them—Use their fear!—scared them so badly they’d have refused to restrain me. If I’d spun around like a dervish or swung at them or sputtered something in a foreign tongue, perhaps I’d have walked from that room, from C——, that very evening. As it was, I offered no resistance at all.
9
I Am Jailed; or, I Determine to Die
THE MAYOR STEPPED forward to stand between the still-prone Sister Claire and myself. With whispers he directed two boys of the village; they then made their way shyly, hurriedly, through the girl-thick crowd, and disappeared. Shaking from infirmity or fright, and not daring to look directly at me, the Mayor puffed himself up to offer the following by way of pronouncement:
“This child,” said he, grandly, raising his ringed fist at me, that fist from which a gouty finger sprouted, its long nail buffed to a sheen. “This child—”
“Guilty!” rose the cry. The townsman holding fast to my left arm cried out. I tried to break free of his hold; this of course set the assembly off—some among them cried, screamed that I would free myself and in league with Satan whisk them all away to some black rapture.
The Mayor insisted on silence, without result. He asked for silence. He begged for silence. But only when Sister Claire stood, unsteadily, having been revived by Sister Clothilde’s fistful of salts, did silence come. And the Mayor spoke on:
“This child shall be held here, secured overnight. At sunrise this council will reconvene to decide her fate and—”
It was then both Sisters Catherine and Clot
hilde tried to ask again about the bishop. Sister Margarethe stood idly by throughout. Sister Claire wrested her arm from the infirmarian, who stepped warily away from the Head, and said that these were “civil” concerns, to be decided within the House; no need to bother the bishop, who’d surely agree with Monsieur Le Maire. At this the old man demurred, slyly deeming himself unworthy of any alliance with the bishop; but before he could conclude his sentencing—his posture now perfect, his pointed chin protuberant—the girls handed down sentences of their own: I should be burned, banished, pressed beneath boards piled with twice my weight in stones. I stood silent before them, stunned by their savagery. By their anachronistic sentencing—burning? suffocation?
When finally the Mayor was let to speak, it was decided: I would be held overnight and tried at dawn. As for Sister Claire de Sazilly, who stood staring at me, her ruined face still horrid with shock, the same sunrise would greet her as the new Mother Superior of C——.
The assembly cheered. The Mayor, as though he were the bishop, offered a prayer for Sister Claire’s quick recovery, and he blessed her coming rule. With that Sister Claire was led from the library by her lieutenants, with the infirmarian, the cellarer, and an abashed Sister Catherine of the Holy Child following.
Sister Claire had barely passed from sight when I heard behind me the rattle and clank of chains. I turned—as best I could with those townsmen holding tightly to me—and I saw those boys who’d been dispatched by the Mayor. Their mission, having been accomplished, was clear: they’d been sent down the back stairwell to the stables in search of something to restrain me, something to secure me overnight. They had in hand those chains—ancient, thick-linked, crusted with rust and mud—that were used when the horses were bled or otherwise worked upon; at the ends of the chains were the cuffs that were clamped around the horses’ legs, just above the fetlock. Instantly, accurately, I gauged that there’d be no slipping from them in the night.