Holy Fools

by Joanne Harris

  “Ma soeur.” Antoine looked different somehow, her usually kind, vacuous look replaced by something harder and more purposeful. She looked almost dangerous in the red light, the muscles of her wide shoulders rolling beneath her fat as she kneaded the dough.

  I set to work, kneading the bread in the huge pans and placing the loaves on the oven shelves to bake. It is a tricky business; the stones need to be heated perfectly even, for too high a heat will scorch the dough whilst leaving the inside raw, and too low a heat will bake flat, sad loaves as dense as stones. We worked in silence for a time. The wood in the oven crackled and snickered; someone had stoked it with green wood, and the smoke was acrid and foul. Twice I burned my hands on the heated bake stones and cursed under my breath. Antoine pretended not to notice, but I’m sure she was smiling.

  We finished the first batch of loaves and began the second. An abbey needs to do at least three batches of baking a day, each batch making twenty-five white or thirty black loaves. Plus the hard biscuit for winter when fuel is less abundant, and cakes for storing and special occasions. The smell from the loaves was good and rich in spite of the smoke that made my eyes sting, and I felt my stomach growl. I realized that since Fleur’s disappearance I had hardly eaten. Sweat trickled through my hair, soaking the rags that bound it. My face was bearded with sweat. My vision doubled momentarily; I put out my hand to steady myself and touched the hot bread pan instead. The metal was cooling but still hot enough to sear the tender webbing between my finger and thumb, and I gave a sharp cry of pain. Antoine looked at me again. This time there could be no doubt about it; she was smiling.

  “It’s hard at first.” She spoke softly enough for me to hear her: no more. The young novices were sitting near the open door, too far to catch her words. “But you get used to it eventually.” Her mouth was very red, too ripe for a nun’s, and her eyes reflected the fire. “You get used to anything eventually.”

  I shook my burned hand to cool it and said nothing.

  “It would be a pity if someone found out about you,” Antoine went on. “You’d probably be here for good then. Like me.”

  “Found out about what?”

  Antoine’s lips curled wolfishly, and I wondered how I could ever have thought her stupid. There was mean intelligence behind the small, bright eyes, and in that moment I almost feared her. “Your secret visits to Fleur, of course. Or did you think I hadn’t noticed?” Now there was bitterness in her voice too. “No one expects fat Soeur Antoine to notice anything. Fat Soeur Antoine thinks of nothing but her belly. I had a child once, but I wasn’t allowed to keep it,” she said. “Why should you keep yours? What makes you any different to the rest of us?” She lowered her voice, the little red light still dancing in her eyes from the oven. “If Mère Isabelle finds out, that will be the end of it, whatever Père Saint-Amand says. You’ll never see Fleur again.”

  I looked at her. She seemed a thousand leagues away from the fat soft woman of last month who wept when I pinched her arm. It was as if some of the saint’s black stone had entered her. “Don’t tell, Antoine,” I whispered. “I’ll give you—”

  “Syrups? Sweetmeats?” Her voice was harsh and the young novices looked up curiously to see what was happening. Antoine snapped a sharp command at them and they dropped their heads at once. “You owe me, Auguste,” she said in a low voice. “Just remember that. You owe me a favor.”

  Then, turning, she went back to check her loaves as if nothing had passed between us, and I saw nothing but the stolid curve of her back for the rest of that long morning.

  Perhaps I should have felt reassured. It was clear Antoine did not intend to disclose my secret. And yet her unwillingness to be bought was unnerving; more so was the phrase she had used—you owe me a favor— the Blackbird’s habitual coin.

  This evening I went to the well after Compline to collect a jug of washing water. The sun had set and the sky was a dark and brooding violet, striated with red. The courtyard was deserted, as most of the nuns had already retired to the warming room or the dorter in preparation for sleep, and I could see the warm yellow lights shining from the unprotected windows of the cloister. The well is still incomplete, awaiting a stone finish to its rough earthen walls and a protective wall around; today it is almost invisible in the shadows, a primitive wooden fence erected in haste around the hole to prevent anyone from falling in by accident. A crossbar, furnished with a bucket, rope, and pulley, looks like a thin figure standing against the purple ground. Twelve paces. Six. Four. The thin figure detached itself from the well side with a sudden start. I saw a small, pale face made violet in the reflected sky, eyes wide with surprise and—I could have sworn—guilt.

  “What are you doing here?” Her voice was suspicious. “You should be with the others. Why are you following me?”

  There was something in her hands, a bundle like wet rags. My eyes fell to it and she tried to hide the bundle in the folds of her skirt. In the shadows I thought I saw staining on the linen, dark blotches that in the poor light looked black. I held out my jug.

  “I needed some water, ma mère.” I made my voice toneless. “I didn’t see you.” Now I could see the bucket of water at her feet, its contents slopping over to form a puddle on the trodden earth of the courtyard. The bucket also seemed to contain rags or clothing. Isabelle saw the direction of my gaze and seized the rags. They slapped against her skirt, but she made no attempt even to wring them dry.

  “Get your water, then,” she said curtly, pushing the bucket with a clumsy foot. It overturned, spreading a dark stain on the darker ground.

  I would have done as she asked, but I could feel the tension coming from her. Her eyes were huge and strangely brilliant, and in a stray sliver of light I noticed her face was sheened with moisture. There was a smell too, a bland and sweetish scent I recognized.

  Blood.

  “Is anything wrong?”

  For a second she stared me out, her face rigid with the effort of maintaining her dignity. Her chest hitched once. The front of her skirt was dark with water from the dripping rags.

  Then she began to sob, the raking, pitiful tears of a confused child, a child who has wept so bitterly and for so long that she no longer cares who hears her. For an instant I forgot with whom I was dealing. This was no longer Mère Isabelle, formerly of the house of Arnault and latterly, Abbess of Sainte Marie-la-Mère. As I stepped forward she clung to me and for a second it might have been Fleur in my arms, or Perette, in despair over some real or imagined sorrow such as only children endure. I stroked her hair. “There, little one. It’s all right. Don’t be afraid.”

  Against the breast of my habit she spoke, but her words were muffled. I could feel water from the stained rags—which she still held tightly in her hand—trickling down my back. “What happened? What’s wrong?” The swampy scent of fever was sharp on her, like that of the marshes after rain. Her brow was so hot that I wondered whether she were trulyill. I asked her the question.

  “Cramps,” said Isabelle with an effort. “Belly cramps. And blood. Blood!”

  There had been so much talk of blood in the past few days that for an instant I did not understand. Then it came to me. Her words—the curse of blood— the stained rags that she had tried to hide. The cramps. Of course. I held her closer.

  “Am I going to die?” The flat voice quavered. “Am I going to go to hell?”

  No one had ever told her. I was lucky; my own mother had no false delicacy. The blood was neither wicked nor unclean, she told me. It was a gift from God. Janette told me more as she taught me how to fold the pad and tie it into place; it was wise blood, she whispered mysteriously. Magical blood. Her quick hands fingered the cards, the new game of tarot, which Giordano had brought with him from Italy. Her eyes were pale with cataracts, yet she had the most piercing eyes I knew. See this card? The Moon. Giordano says the tides follow the moon’s cycle, in, out, high, low. So are a woman’s tides, dry at the wane, and full at the waxing of the moon. The pain will pass. To r
eceive the gift, it may be necessary to suffer a little, a very little. But this is the magical gem of which Le Philosophe speaks. The fountain of life.

  Of course, I could say nothing of this to Isabelle. But I explained as well as I could until her sobs lessened and her limp body grew rigid next to mine, and she finally pulled away. “Your own mother should have told you,” I said patiently. “It’s certain to be a shock to you otherwise. But it happens to all girls when they become women. It’s no shame.”

  She looked at me, already hardening. Her face was contorted with disgust and rage.

  “There’s nothing bad about it.” For the child’s sake, I had to make her understand. “It isn’t the devil, you see.” I tried to smile at her but her gaze was accusing, hateful. “It only happens once a month, for a few days. You fold the pad like this…” I demonstrated with a panel of my habit, but Isabelle seemed barely to be listening.

  “Oh, you liar!” She pulled away from me, kicking the water jug aside with such violence that it flew through the fence pickets and into the well. “You liar!”

  I tried to protest, but Isabelle struck out at me wildly with her fists. “It isn’t true! It isn’t! It isn’t!”

  I knew then that I had committed the unforgivable sin. I had seen her without defenses. I had offered compassion. Worse, I knew a secret now, a secret she considered shameful enough for her to wash her soiled rags at night to ensure privacy…

  I read all this in her last look at me as she turned momentarily to face me. “You liar! You filthy witch! You’re the one! You’re the devil’s whore and I can prove it!”

  I tried to call her back.

  “I won’t listen!” Even then I could feel pity for her: her youth, her frailty, her terrible loneliness…“I won’t listen! You’ve always hated me! I see you watching me with your insolence! Comparing me!” She gave an angry sob. “Well, I won’t be deceived! I know what you’re trying to do and I won’t—I won’t!”

  Then she was gone.

  Part Three

  Isabelle

  29

  AUGUST 1ST, 1610

  Three days have passed with the slick certainty of nightmare. Since the incident at the well, Mère Isabelle speaks to me rarely and without reference to what has passed between us, but I sense her mistrust and dislike. Her words on that occasion, the accusations and threats, have not been repeated, in private or otherwise. Indeed, she treats me with something like tolerance, which was not her manner from the first.

  But she looks unwell; her face is mottled with angry-looking blemishes, her eyes purplish and heavy. LeMerle has twice more invited me to his cottage. He hints at favors to be won, but I am afraid of what he may ask me to abet this time. Already, Marguerite’s Apparition has been seen in various parts of the abbey, each sighting growing more detailed in the telling, so that now the ghostly nun sports hideous features, red eyes, and all the trappings of popular romance.

  Unsurprisingly, Alfonsine has seen her too, in far greater detail, and I wonder to what extent the ghostly nun is not an invention of their mutual rivalry. Alfonsine, who looks paler and more ecstatic as the days pass, even swears now that she recognized Mère Marie’s kindly face beneath that sinister coiffe, now distorted with hate and demonic glee. It will not be long before Marguerite finds something even more distressing to report, and thereby steals Alfonsine’s thunder once again: meanwhile, she spends her free time in cleaning and prayer, while her rival fasts and prays—and coughs with increasing frequency.

  What is becoming of us? We talk of little else but of blood and Visitations. Normal relations among us have been suspended. Penances have reached a level hitherto undreamed of, with Soeur Marie-Madeleine keeping vigil in the church for two nights without sleep for having dared to query some novice’s tale. Our diet now consists of nothing but black bread and soup, Mère Isabelle having decreed that rich foods inflame the baser appetites. She says this with such ferocity that the bawdy jokes to which such a pronouncement might once have given rise in the days of Mère Marie stick in the throat.

  We thrive on gossip and whispered scandal. Clémente has revealed herself to be a zealous informant at Chapter. Few escape her innocent, wide-eyed spite. If Soeur Antoine gobbles her bread before grace, Clémente sees it. If Tomasine closes her eyes during Vigils, if Piété shows ill-temper when disturbed at prayer, if Germaine speaks slightingly of the Visitations…This last is especially cruel. Words spoken in confidence are revealed in public with bland complacency. Mère Isabelle commends Clémente on her sense of duty. LeMerle seems not to notice.

  Germaine accepted her penance with cold indifference. She looks stony now, her damaged face rough and hard-looking as the effigy of Marie-de-la-mer, the saint who never was. And yet it is easier for us to believe, in our abbey buffeted by the bitter west winds, in a Goddess of the Sea, a watchful, dangerous Goddess with stony, gouged-out eyes. Easier in any case than in the Mother of God, that Virgin claiming still to be the mother of us all.

  Three days ago a fine marble statue of the Holy Mother arrived by cart from the mainland, in replacement for our loss. A gift, said Mère Isabelle, from her favorite uncle, for whom we will say forty masses in thanks for his generosity. She is all white, this new Marie, smooth and bland as a peeled potato. She sits in the corner of the church where the old Marie used to be, her lips curved in a tiny, meaningless smile, one hand outstretched in a limp gesture of benediction.

  The morning after her arrival, however, the new Marie was found defaced, obscene words scrawled across her features in black grease pencil. Germaine—who had been doing penance in the church on the night of the outrage—claimed to have seen nothing during her vigil, though her mouth curled as she said it. Perhaps a mysterious robed nun did it, she suggested insolently, or a monkey from the Far East, or a manifestation of the Holy Ghost. She began to laugh then, softly at first. We watched her, embarrassed and anxious. Patches of scarlet marbled her cheeks. For an instant she turned to Clémente with an expression of entreaty on her scarred face. Then she fell backward, stiffly onto the flagstones, hands clutching at air.

  Germaine went to the infirmary after that. Soeur Virginie declared that she was suffering from the cameras de sangre, and spoke of a possible recovery with noisy confidence whilst in private she shook her head and whispered that the patient was unlikely to live out the month. Soeur Rosamonde, too, is causing concern. During the past week her decline has been dramatic; now she remains in the infirmary all day, barely moving and refusing to eat. Of course she is very old—almost as old as poor Mère Marie—but until the removal of the saint she had been a cheery soul, sound in body if not in mind, and enjoying what small pleasures she could with enviable simplicity.

  I feel oddly responsible and would try to intercede on her behalf, but I know that to do so would accomplish nothing. In fact, at this point, Mère Isabelle is far more likely to show sympathy to Rosamonde if I seem unaware of her condition.

  It is a part of his trap, of course. Every day I spend here deepens the pit into which I have dug myself. LeMerle knows it; doubtless he meant it so. He despises my loyalty to the sisters but understands that I will not leave them while Fleur is safe and they are not. I have become my own jailer, and although every instinct tells me with increasing urgency that I must escape, I am afraid of what may happen if my vigilance is withdrawn. Every night I tell the cards, but they show me nothing but what I already know; the Tower in flames, with the woman falling, arms outstretched, from the top; the hooded Hermit, the cruel Six of Swords. Disaster, poised like a crushing rock above our heads, with nothing I can do to prevent its fall.

  30

  AUGUST 1ST, 1610

  At last, a reply to my letters. Monseigneur takes his time, it seems, and sees no reason to thank me for all my hard work. I am privileged to be given the chance to devote my life to the noble house of Arnault. However, the generous gift, the marble statue that accompanied his letter, shows his unspoken approval. Monseigneur is most gratified to hear of hi
s niece’s reforms. As well he might—a pretty picture I drew of the young abbess, radiant in her innocence and unearthly beauty; of adoring nuns; of birds flocking to hear her speak. I hinted at marvels; showers of rose leaves; spontaneous healings. Soeur Alfonsine will be pleased to hear that she has been restored to health from a fatal illness. Soeur Rosamonde too has regained the use of her withered arm. One must not speak too hastily of miraculous cures, but one must always hope, and if God wills it…

  The lure is cast. I have little doubt that he will fail to take it. I have suggested the fifteenth of August as a favorable date. It seems appropriate, it being the day of the Virgin, to celebrate thus our reclamation of the abbey.

  Meanwhile, I must work day and night to make things ready in time. Fortunately I have my helpers: Antoine, strong, slow, and undemanding; Alfonsine, my visionary and spreader of rumors; Marguerite, my catalyst. Not to mention Piété, who runs errands, my little Soeur Anne, and Clémente…

  Well, maybe that was a miscalculation. Despite her meek appearance she is by far the most demanding of my disciples, and I find it hard to keep up with her changes of mood. Purring like a housecat one day, the next perversely cold, she seems to take pleasure in goading me into violence, only to indulge in extravagant protestations of love and repentance afterward. I believe I am expected to find this appealing. Many would, I am sure. But I’m no seventeen-year-old anymore, to be ensnared by a pretty face and some girlish simpering. Besides, I have so little time to give her: my hours have become at least as long and as wearisome as those of the nuns. My nights are divided among various clandestine pursuits; my days are filled with blessings, exorcisms, public confessions, and other everyday blasphemies.