Sacred Ends

by Lisa Appignanesi

  There seemed to be no way of unbuttoning the secrets held by these smiling, tight-lipped women. She had asked. She had looked for some kind of registry in which births must be recorded. She had drawn a blank.

  For the rest, she had put in her allotted hours with the children in the nursery, had walked in the gardens, had even read her breviary and tried to waken her dormant Latin. At table, she had wished that a prayer could produce a miracle of palatable loaves and fishes in the convent’s kitchens. And that was it. Today, she had determined, would be different. The mother superior had asked to see her. She wouldn’t waste the opportunity. She would put her questions directly, if need be.

  The library in which they were to meet was in the west wing. It occupied a middle-sized room with arched and deeply alcoved windows that had been fitted with reading desks. Two tables took up the centre of the room. The rest of the space was crowded with books. Their spines gleamed with leather and embossed gold lettering.

  The Reverend Mother looked towards her from the central table she occupied. There was a yellowing tome in front of her. Her walking-stick rested by her side. In her hand she held spectacles on a gold wand. She put these down swiftly and closed the volume she had been studying.

  ‘You are early.’

  ‘Am I? I hope not too early.’ Marguerite went towards her. She read the title of the book on the table. ‘Malleus Maleficarum?’ The words spilled from her on the tide of her surprise.

  The prioress stared at her with a cold reptilian eye. ‘You know it? That surprises me, Madame la Comtesse.’

  ‘Does it? A doctor of my acquaintance used to quote from the book at length. “The Hammer of Witches”. He was emphatic that the characteristics attributed by the Benedictine monks to their supposed witches, when they weren’t altogether invented, were in fact signs and symptoms of what today would be diagnosed as nervous illness. Those women were no more possessed of the Devil than you or I. I doubt they had special powers either. Or a wish to do evil. To steal husbands or babies. When the madness wasn’t in their accusers’ eyes, they were just poor, sad and sick women.’

  The mother superior frowned at Marguerite, her haughty face bellowing the disapproval she didn’t speak.

  From one of the alcoves came a sob and the sound of robes stirring.

  Marguerite had talked too much, the result of all these days of silence. She shouldn’t have spoken so critically. If the woman and her nuns believed in witches, so be it. Maybe belief was simply a state of mind and could extend and extend into credulity. Now she would send her away.

  But it was someone else the Reverend Mother addressed. ‘You will leave us, Sister Béatrice. Quickly, now.’

  Marguerite extended a hand in protest as the girl she hadn’t noticed suddenly appeared and brushed past her towards the door. ‘Oh no, no. Please stay. It was in part about Sister Béatrice that I was hoping to speak to you, ma mère. You see her sister is pining for her. She hasn’t known for months where to find her.’

  ‘Sister?’ The woman’s voice cut like a razor.

  ‘Yes, Yes. They need to see each other, ma mère. Her sister is desolate. She had no idea…’

  The older woman’s face was hard with displeasure. It moved between the flared nostrils and the eyes like kindling. At any moment, it might burst into consuming flame.

  ‘Is this true, Béatrice?’

  The girl nodded once. Her eyes looked bruised.

  ‘Does she know?’

  She shrugged. The plea in her eyes extended to Marguerite. She couldn’t determine whether the girl wanted her to stop her persistence or to carry on. She also noticed a scrape across the girl’s upper lip, red and jagged, as if she had grazed against an abrasive surface – or someone had taken a file to her.

  ‘Go now, Béatrice. Quickly. Quickly. We will contend with the meaning of these lies later.’

  As Béatrice pulled the door behind her, the mother superior rose to her full height and turned to Marguerite. The look on the woman’s face sent a cold fear bounding through her. The Reverend Mother’s eyes held a Medusa-like stare, a monomaniac’s singleness of passion and purpose that would annihilate all obstacles.

  ‘Sister Béatrice can neither leave the convent nor entertain visitors. Her devotion and obedience must be total if she is to be accepted into our order. I am sorry she saw you here. Your words will distract her devotions.’

  She ushered Marguerite towards the door, then changed her mind, as if she were suddenly aware that this woman would be less obedient than her novice. She needed to hold her back at least as long as it took Béatrice to vanish.

  ‘I suspect, Madame, that you have come here with an ulterior motive. That is not conducive to a proper retreat. I now see that it would be best if you curtailed your stay. Curtailed it abruptly. I shall arrange a carriage for you. Tomorrow at dawn.’

  ‘But ma mère, surely this is altogether contrary to the charity you…’

  A loud knock at the door cut off Marguerite’s words. It opened on a sister Marguerite didn’t recognise. She was out of breath. ‘Ma mère, ma mère, a messenger has arrived. From Maître Artaud. In Tours. There is a big document. You must come quickly. He is waiting for a response.’

  ‘Our meeting is over, Madame.’ The mother superior brought a watch from the folds of her habit and glanced at it. ‘You will make no further attempt to speak to Sister Béatrice. I have your word?’

  Marguerite said nothing. She watched the woman sweep from the room. Maître Artaud. She knew that name. Napoléon Marchand’s notary. She had seen it on the will Amandine had shown her. Her mind flew, faster than her feet. Of course. The Marchand name figured on the mother superior’s breviary. She hadn’t guessed. And now the will, signalling that here was the missing third party.

  The afternoon still held a little brightness. She walked slowly through the quiet gardens at the back of the convent. High above the walls, clouds raced in a milky blue sky. They invented shadows for the paths.

  An odd, ungainly one slipped out from behind what she thought of as the Virgin’s grotto. It took her a moment to realise that the shape was not shadow but substance. A cassocked man and a woman cloaked in grey were walking swiftly away from her. She only recognised the man from the brown of his habit, its belted waist. By the time he had reached the back door and was through it to the outside, she had recognised the woman, too. Louise. Louise Bertin, now Limbour. So her hunch about the girl’s connection to the convent hadn’t been mistaken.

  Rushing away from the grotto in the opposite direction, she now made out the rolling gait of Sister Constance. She hadn’t seen the gardener for some days. She called out to her.

  The woman looked round, a little furtively. Marguerite caught up.

  ‘So you know Frère Michel?’ Marguerite smiled at her, wishing her into ease. ‘Such a good soul.’

  The woman was nervous about something, her kind, wrinkled face rigid with the effort of holding it in.

  ‘I know him a little,’ the woman stammered.

  ‘Yes. A fine man. And Louise, or at least the young woman I recognise by that name. You’re acquainted with her, too? She worked at my house, you know.’

  ‘Janine?’

  ‘So that was the name she took here. Yes, Janine. She lost her child, did she? Poor girl. I wish she’d come to me.’

  ‘So you knew about it, Madame? She was desolate. Even Sister Béatrice couldn’t console her.’

  Marguerite noticed the woman’s eyes were filled with tears. ‘The two became friends here, did they?’

  ‘Yes, Madame.’

  ‘And Béatrice’s child … the child she had by Napoléon Marchand, what became of that babe?’

  ‘You know him, too?’

  The old sister’s face suddenly collapsed. Tears poured from her eyes. ‘I’ve just learned. Just learned old Napoléon has died. Mère Hélène will…’

  ‘Will what? Of course, I’d forgotten. She’s his sister, isn’t she? Agathe Marchand. Yes, yes. Though it was
all before my time.’

  They had reached the cemetery at the edge of the gardens. Sister Constance nodded through her tears, then slipped behind the gate. Marguerite followed.

  ‘Is that why Sister Béatrice came to her?’

  ‘Ah no, Madame, how could you think that? How could you?’ The woman burbled through her tears.

  ‘Do sit, Sister Constance.’ Marguerite led the old woman to a stone bench at the edge of the cemetery. ‘I understand your sorrow. Has it been long since you saw Napoléon Marchand?’

  ‘Over fifty years, Madame. Over fifty.’ The woman rocked a little then crossed herself. ‘She was quite right. She never let him in here. Even though he sent money. He was not to be forgiven. Never. She had told him that. Even back then, Agathe was a woman of principle.’

  ‘So the rumours were right. She came here to have his child.’

  ‘Stillborn.’ The sob tore out of her, as fresh as if the dead infant lay in her arms now.

  ‘I’m so sorry. How dreadful. And she never forgave him that either?’

  ‘Never. Christian mercy, she said back then, doesn’t extend to the Devil.’

  ‘And so he didn’t send Béatrice to her?’

  ‘No, Madame. She came. Came because she wanted to be one of us. Only later did we discover she was pregnant. She was so thin. Poor little thing.’

  Constance crossed herself again, then rose. She took up a little spade that had been leaning against a tombstone. Like an automaton, she began to dig.

  ‘So the baby Napoléon Marchand fathered lies buried here, too?’

  Sister Constance responded with the heave of aanother spadeful of soil. It hit the earth with the force of a dead body.

  ‘How dreadful. But we should tell Sister Béatrice. About Napoléon Marchand’s death, I mean. It may make a difference to her. The girl doesn’t seem well to me.’

  The woman flung her shovel down and gripped Marguerite’s arm with surprising strength.

  ‘Please, Madame, please. Don’t say anything to her. Don’t say anything to anyone. Certainly not to her.’ The clear blue eyes in the wizened face gripped as strongly as the fingers. ‘It will end up by harming her. Please. It’s better she doesn’t know.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘No, my dear, no. You can’t understand. But everything gets back to her. To Agathe. To Mère Hélène, I mean. Then she takes her vengeance. She doesn’t mean anything bad. But she can’t help it. Can’t. Not where he’s concerned. Please, my dear.’

  The woman seemed to be in the clutch of a terrible fear. ‘She has fits, you know. Every anniversary of the death, she has fits. Awful to behold. They think it’s holy. Our sainted mother. Visions, too. The Virgin comes to her. Pregnant with the saving of the world. But I know. I know it’s to do with the child. The birth. The shock of it. She arches in the same way. Possessed by a ghost. That’s why we couldn’t allow it. Couldn’t allow Sister Béatrice. She sees herself in her. We were afraid.’

  The woman’s eyes darted round the graves. She murmured what must have been a prayer.

  ‘No, Béatrice mustn’t mention his name. No. Not even in confession. It reminds her. Makes her violent. She orders more and greater mortifications. Terrible. To exorcise the demon of Napoléon. And the child doesn’t understand. Doesn’t know. She thinks everyone is good. When she arrived she blurted out everything to her. If only she hadn’t mentioned him to start with.’

  Marguerite stared at the crumpled mouth that had uttered words she couldn’t quite grasp.

  ‘You mean she punishes Béatrice for being like herself? For being with that old reprobate?’

  Sister Constance nodded, then sank down on the bench beside her again. ‘Agathe loved her piety, her sweetness. At first. Then she found out. About Napoléon. The pregnancy. It’s better now that old Père François has gone at last … he was a horror. The penances! The mortifications in the name of purifying the body, ridding it of the devil of the flesh. In the name of our dear Lord. They would egg each other on. The two of them. I don’t understand her anymore. I don’t. Please. You mustn’t say anything to Béatrice.’

  Marguerite patted the old gnarled hand and wondered at the blistering passions Napoléon Marchand had unleashed.

  The sun had slipped from the sky and dusk gathered them in a damp cold. The shadows took over. And still they sat there, the old woman weeping. The ivy on the older graves grew luminous. Somewhere a dog had begun howling.

  ‘And the mortification goes on?’ Marguerite asked at last. ‘Even now that the greatest of punishments has been undergone and the child is dead? It can’t have been very long ago.’

  Sister Constance stared at her. ‘That was it, you see. That’s what so frightened me. Béatrice’s baby was due around the time of the anniversary. The anniversary that induces Mère Hélène’s holy fits.’

  ‘So you worried she would damage the child?’ Marguerite said it because it came into her head. She only saw how right she had been when the old woman gasped and recoiled.

  ‘You understand,’ she murmured. ‘I had to do it.’

  Marguerite held her breath. ‘Do what exactly?’

  The old woman hid her face in her hands. ‘Spirit it away. I had to. Frère Michel helped. I’ve known him for ever. He was a friend. Back then already. He knew them both. Napoléon and Agathe. And me. I looked after her. I always have.’

  She kicked at the earth with the toe of her boot. It was a man’s boot, made for heavy wear. Damp soil gathered on its soles in clumps.

  ‘Béatrice must have been in terrible anguish.’

  ‘She was. When she woke. I had given her a powder to make her sleep, you see. Mother superior, too. But Béatrice accepted the babe’s death. Took it as the just punishment for her sins. I dug a hole and buried an empty coffin, while Frère Michel spirited the mite away. All in the space of one night and morning.’

  Sister Constance’s eyes glimmered a clear, triumphant blue. She had ripped a child away from the certain punishments that would attend its life within the precincts of her superior’s power. They were punishments that would have brought about its early death.

  ‘That was good of you,’ Marguerite murmured. ‘And where did Frère Michel take the child?’

  She asked, although she already knew the answer. She had seen the girl not so very long ago, drifting out of the convent walls with him. Béatrice’s friend. Louise. She and Frère Michel must have come to warn Sister Constance that someone was looking for the infant’s parents. A someone who was herself.

  The hard, bright sliver of a moon had already risen in the sky when they heard the tread on the pebbled path. Sister Constance urged her further into the shadows of the small graveyard. They stopped behind the largest of its tombs, a mausoleum, thick with ivy that obliterated their presence. But they could see clearly enough.

  The person who came through the gate was girlishly slender and wore a glistening white veil. She stopped by the tiny grave Constance had packed with bulbs and knelt, crossing herself, her lips moving in silent prayer. Even in the glimmering starlight, the pure and delicate lines of the profile were easily distinguishable.

  Tears rose in Marguerite’s eyes and spilled over. She had to go and speak to the girl, assuage her with the news that her child wasn’t dead. But Constance held her back, her grip fierce.

  She understood why a moment later. An imposing figure swept into the graveyard, her walking-stick tapping out her hurry. She breathed hard as she looked round. Her face beneath the elaborate wimple was stretched so tight over her prominent bones, it resembled a skull. A birdlike swoop brought her to where the girl knelt.

  She prodded her with her stick, her great cross swinging with her anger.

  ‘I told you. I told you never to come here. I warned you. This is rank disobedience. You must distance yourself from the sewer if you’re to reach the skies. He’s dead. Dead. The bastard’s dead. We will have no more bastards. Dead, I tell you. Both the father and his filthy bastard.’
The words grew into a shriek that flew above the walls of the cemetery to rebound through the evening air.

  Marguerite felt her blood running cold. Béatrice was trembling like a frightened animal hypnotised by her predator.

  She bent towards the ground to accept her punishment as the mother superior’s stick rose high into the air.

  Marguerite lunged towards that gaunt, hooded face and held the arm upright until she had managed to shake the stick from it. Inside her head there was screaming, a loud railing against this infernal abuse of power. She had to remind herself that the prioress was only an old woman, whatever the strength her punitive hatred gave her and the holy aura she found for it.

  ‘Sister Constance.’ Marguerite’s tone was as cold and clear as the night with its icy moon. ‘Take Béatrice to her room, pack her bag and have her meet me by the front doors. Order a carriage to ferry us.’

  The prioress was shaking. Her voice was thunderous when it came. ‘How dare you? What gives you the right?’

  ‘I dare, Mademoiselle Marchand. That’s enough.’

  The use of her family name in front of the girl seemed to rob the woman of some of her power.

  ‘Béatrice, I think, will dare, too, when she hears what Sister Constance will tell her. It will be her choice. Go now.’ She gestured towards the girl and Sister Constance.

  When they were a good distance away, she released the restraining hand she had kept on the prioress’s wrist.

  ‘It’s time to put that old ghost to sleep, Mademoiselle Marchand. Your brother and his dead child have prowled through you and these precincts long enough.’

  There was no carriage to take them that night. They left at dawn instead. Béatrice, who had knelt in the chapel with Sister Constance by her side for the length of the hours, was now once again Mademoiselle Branquart in an old suit of striped serge, her pale, shorn hair peeking like duck’s down from the bounds of her hat.

  Without her nun’s habit the young woman looked even more vulnerable. The veins stood out on her high forehead. Her wrists free of folds to hide in were birdlike. There was a slightly clumsy angularity to her movements. She hadn’t spoken to Marguerite yet. It wasn’t clear whether shock had gripped her after the revelations of her strange kinship with the mother superior and the truth about her child. Or whether she had simply not yet regained the habit of speech.