Vespertine

by Margaret Rogerson

  He looked directly at me, his face cold and his eyes as green as moonlit glass. His lips formed a word. Artemisia.

  My heart stopped.

  The vision drained from me along with my strength. The world tipped sideways, but I didn’t hit the ground. Disoriented, I struggled to identify the warmth surrounding me until I realized that Jean had caught me in his arms. Marguerite hovered over us, anxious.

  “Did he see us?” I demanded of the revenant, too panicked to care what they would think.

  “No. It was just an imprint—a memory. It happened the night after you escaped from the harrow.”

  The night after I escaped from him. I wondered if my flight had driven him to desperate measures, if the ritual he had carried out that night had been because of me. The army of spirits had gathered outside Bonsaint the next morning. The timing couldn’t be a coincidence.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. The revenant had said it would be able to find the place we had seen in the vision. Concentrating hard, I thought I felt something—a subtle yet insistent pull, like the tug of a ghostly string.

  “We need to go,” I said.

  “You need to rest.”

  “I’ve rested enough.”

  “You said you would listen—”

  “Artemisia.” Marguerite’s tentative voice broke in. I opened my eyes.

  She looked unsettled. Jean was staring at me, but he hadn’t let go. I wondered what all that had looked like from the outside. Probably not as threatening as it could have, since the revenant had obviously been scolding me like an overprotective nanny.

  Marguerite opened her mouth, closed it again. Then hesitantly spoke. “It’s almost sunrise.”

  “Good,” I said. “The streets will be empty.”

  “Nun,” the revenant snapped.

  “No—what I mean is, today’s the first day of the festival. There’s going to be an effigy of the Raven King in the main square. Practically everyone in the city will be there.” She was twisting one of her chestnut curls around her finger, winding it up hard enough to look painful. “Maybe….”

  I had forgotten about the festival of Saint Agnes. Something Leander had said to the sister in the graveyard came back to me. It must be tonight.

  “I need to go,” I said in alarm. “Leander might be planning to do something during the ceremony. Whatever he was looking for tonight could be part of it.”

  “That’s exactly what I thought,” she agreed in a rush, then flushed with embarrassment. She hurried on, “It’s just, it’s the biggest event Bonsaint has all year. If he’s planning on doing something really awful to a lot of people, that would be the best time to do it. And the square is right in the middle of the city, so you’ll probably need to go through there anyway, right?”

  She was watching me anxiously, waiting for my reaction. “I would imagine so,” I offered, trying not to sound too surprised that she had thought of all that on her own.

  She took a fortifying breath, as though she were preparing to plunge into cold water. Then she said, “If you’re going, I’ll go with you.”

  I looked at her in disbelief. “It could be dangerous.”

  “I know,” she said. “That’s why I should go.”

  My first instinct was to say no. But she had traveled all the way from Naimes to Bonsaint on her own. Everything I had witnessed through the harrow’s screen, she had seen too, except closer up and without the protection of armed guards. She might not have known what true danger meant before, but she did now.

  “All right,” I said, ignoring the revenant’s hiss of protest.

  Her eyes shone as Jean helped me upright, setting me on my feet as though I weighed nothing. The moment he let go, I stumbled. Marguerite gave a little cry of surprise and tried to catch me. When we collided, something fell from her pocket to tumble glittering into the straw.

  She gasped and snatched it back up. But not before I saw it, and recognized it. An ancient silver ring set with a tiny moonstone, like countless others in Loraille, except I knew this one—I could see it anywhere and not mistake it. The relic of Saint Beatrice, worn on Mother Katherine’s hand.

  Before she could return it to her pocket, I caught her wrist. She tried to yank herself free, but I didn’t budge.

  “It was just sitting on the altar,” she said hotly. “No one was using it. Let go of me.”

  Instead, I gripped her tighter. “So you stole it?”

  “I only thought of the idea because of you,” she countered. “Before, I couldn’t figure out how to protect myself from possession when I ran away. But then I realized a spirit can’t possess you if you already have another one taking up room inside your body, even if it’s just a shade.”

  “That’s actually quite clever,” the revenant said in surprise.

  “So I’ve kept it summoned ever since I left Naimes,” she continued. Her vehemence faltered. “And it’s—it’s been helping me.”

  I was so startled I let go of her. “It speaks to you?”

  “No. It doesn’t know words. It reminds me of… of a child. When it wants to warn me about something, it’s like a little tug on my cloak.” She looked down, frowning, rubbing her wrist defensively. I remembered the burns on her fingers—they must have been caused by her amulet. “I don’t think the nuns can sense it, or at least they aren’t looking for it, since there are so many shades in the convent already. And it isn’t like they can possess people or anything. Another one doesn’t make a difference.”

  “She’s right.” The revenant briefly shifted my vision, showing me Marguerite’s soul. Caught up in the network of golden veins was the tiniest silver glint, far too subtle to notice if the revenant hadn’t drawn my attention to it. “Even I wasn’t watching for a shade.”

  Swiftly, she went on, “I thought I would hate it, having it inside my head all the time, not knowing how to put it back into its relic. But I don’t. It’s so happy. It just likes having company. And while I was traveling… I nearly ran into a group of thralls. It saved my life by warning me off the road.”

  “The human who wielded the relic before her must have been kind to it.” The revenant sounded distant, its emotions shuttered. “It’s rare for spirits to willingly help their vessels, even ones as simpleminded as shades.”

  “Mother Katherine,” I told it reflexively, and then Marguerite’s earlier words sank in.

  No one was using it.

  Marguerite looked at me with something terrible in her eyes. Grief, pity. I didn’t know which was worse. “Artemisia, I’m sorry.”

  I stumbled away as though she had struck me. Barely thinking, only wanting to get away, I grabbed for the ladder leading to the hayloft and started to climb.

  “I loved her too,” she said, her voice thick.

  I couldn’t turn around. I didn’t want her to see my face.

  I didn’t know why I was so upset. I had known for a long time now that Mother Katherine had died in the attack. I just hadn’t been willing to admit it to myself. But my throat still ached as though I’d swallowed a stone. Heat prickled painfully behind my eyes.

  I wondered if I was going to cry. I hadn’t cried since I was a child, before I had come to the convent, and I didn’t want the first time I did it again to be in front of the revenant. I felt its presence hovering: too close, seeing everything.

  “Go away,” I said, even though there was nowhere else for it to go.

  “Nun.”

  Whatever it wanted to say, I didn’t want to hear it. It would have killed Mother Katherine itself that day if it had gotten the chance. I had no way to articulate the misery of the shed, the light that had come pouring in when she opened the door. I hadn’t been able to see her face, but I had known she was there to save me. Later I had found out how it had happened: that the story of a girl who had thrust her own hands into a fire had reached the convent, and Mother Katherine had left at once, in the middle of morning prayers, to travel to my nameless town and find me. Like I was worth something—like I w
as wanted.

  Leave me alone, I thought to the revenant. To Marguerite, to the thousands of people who needed my help, to the Gray Lady Herself. Leave me alone.

  The revenant seemed as though it wanted to say something else, but I turned my face into the hay, and it was silent.

  * * *

  When I woke, I knew I wasn’t alone. The weight of someone else’s company filled the loft. I cracked open my eyes, sore and swollen from crying, and found Marguerite sitting near the edge with her knees drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped tightly around them. She looked like she hadn’t slept much. I remembered with a twist of dread that I had agreed to go with her to the ceremony today.

  Seeing me stir, she bent to do something out of my line of sight. I heard water dripping as she wrung out a cloth. “Here,” she said, passing over the wet rag. “Put this over your eyes. I promise it helps.”

  You would know, I thought, then felt bad for thinking it. She was right—it did help. Also, it gave me an excuse to cover my face.

  Into my private darkness, she said as though she had heard me, “Crying doesn’t make you weak, you know. It’s just a reaction your body has, and there isn’t anything you can do about it.” She sounded sullen. “I know what you’re probably thinking, and it isn’t like I do it on purpose. I don’t want to go around crying all the time. But usually, I’m not even feeling that emotional when it happens. I just leak more than most people.”

  I wasn’t certain how to answer. If I tried, I knew I would accidentally say something horrific and ruin the moment.

  But Marguerite obviously wanted me to say something. “I told the sisters you had left the infirmary and I would be checking on you to make sure you’re all right.” The silence drew out. “Artemisia,” she said, “I couldn’t stay in Naimes.”

  “Why?” I asked. My voice sounded awful, like a croak throttled from a half-dead raven.

  Fortunately, she was used to that. “I hated it there. I didn’t want to be a nun, and no one gave me a choice. Wearing gray for the rest of my life, being surrounded by dead people, never leaving the grounds… It was a nightmare.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say to that, either.

  “I’m not like you,” she answered anyway. “I didn’t belong in a place like that.” She took a deep breath. The next time she spoke, her voice shook with something almost like anger. “When I ran away, I knew I might die, or worse. But it would have been worth it. Worth it to live for a week, a day, even a minute outside those miserable gray walls. Being stuck there was like dying already, except so slowly that I barely noticed.”

  I risked a glance at her from underneath the rag. She wasn’t looking at me; she was staring out into the stable, seeing someplace else, her jaw set and the color high in her cheeks.

  “I want to go places,” she declared. “To see the world for myself, not just read about it in letters. I want to travel all the way to Chantclere. I’m going to see it. I’m going to see the ocean. Aunt Gisele said it’s blue down there, not gray like it is in Naimes. And I’m going to see it.”

  Those words had the quality of being repeated over and over to herself like a prayer. I wondered again why her aunt had stopped sending her letters. I didn’t know a great deal about her family, only that they had visited her often in the early years of her novitiate, but over time their visits had dwindled. I supposed it would be easy to forget about a daughter locked far away amid the rocky cliffs of Naimes—easy to justify not making the long, dull, treacherous journey to see her.

  “I’m glad you took the relic,” I said.

  I heard a sharp intake of breath. I couldn’t bring myself to look at her again, but I imagined her hesitating, wondering if I was playing some sort of trick. “You’re glad that I stole it, you mean?”

  “The revenant told me that the shade’s been helping you because Mother Katherine was friends with it, and it’s learned to like people.”

  “I didn’t put it that way,” the revenant snapped. “I didn’t say they were friends.” So it was listening after all.

  “Oh,” Marguerite said quietly.

  “If you hadn’t taken it, it would be trapped alone inside its relic right now. Someone else would have gotten it eventually, but they might not have treated it well, and they wouldn’t have kept it summoned for long. It’s better off with you. I think Mother Katherine would like that—knowing it’s gone to someone who cares about it.” Incredibly, crying all night seemed to have left me clearer-headed, which wasn’t a result I had anticipated. “She would want you to have it.”

  A morose sniff came from Marguerite’s direction. “I still stole it.”

  “I’m not sure it counts as stealing,” I said, grim with the certainty that I was inching toward the same kind of heresy that had nearly gotten Josephine of Bissalart burned at the stake. “You can steal a thing. You can’t steal a person.”

  The revenant didn’t say anything. I had the sense that it was crammed into a corner of my mind, nursing some complicated emotions. I risked a look at Marguerite and saw her swipe roughly at her eyes with her sleeve.

  She mumbled, “Saint Eugenia’s reliquary—if you want it back…”

  “Finally!” the revenant exclaimed, at the same time I said, “Keep it.”

  “No!” it hissed.

  “Really?” Marguerite sounded dubious.

  “Nun!”

  “It’s the only way the revenant can be destroyed,” I explained.

  “Don’t tell her that,” it snapped. “Why are you telling her that?”

  “Which means it’s dangerous for me to carry,” I continued doggedly. “There’s no sense in me wearing it, especially in battle. Having someone else keep it safe for me is the best way to protect it.”

  The revenant shuddered, its presence sinking away to sulk. But if it would only stop and think rationally for a moment, it would realize I was right. Also, it still didn’t know the reason why I had wanted to keep Saint Eugenia’s reliquary on hand. Hopefully it would never find out.

  Marguerite gave a damp-sounding laugh. “I was always jealous of you, you know,” she admitted.

  The rag nearly fell off my face. “What?”

  “You were always so sure of yourself. You knew exactly what you wanted to do, and everyone could tell you were going to be good at it. All the sisters liked you. They hated me.”

  “No, they didn’t.”

  “Fine.” Her voice deadened. “They didn’t notice me. That’s worse.”

  I remembered what she had said in the infirmary, They probably haven’t even noticed I’m gone, and how much she had sounded as though she’d believed it.

  “I’m sorry I talked about you behind your back,” she went on. “It was mean, and I shouldn’t have done it. I never meant it. I just wanted the other girls to like me. I wanted to be friends with someone, and you obviously didn’t want—”

  “I wanted to be friends with you,” I interrupted, the terrible words erupting forth without my permission, as though they had been lurking somewhere inside me for years, waiting for the worst possible moment to be spoken.

  Marguerite swiveled around and stared at me in shock while I fervently wished I could obliterate myself on the spot. “You tried to put a spider on me,” she said finally.

  “Just to show you it wouldn’t hurt you.”

  “Oh. I didn’t…” She trailed off, looking away. She gnawed on her lip, then glanced at me sidelong, as though to make sure I was still myself and not an Artemisia-shaped imposter. “I wish you had told me that,” she said.

  Instead of silently trying to make a spider crawl up her arm. In hindsight, I saw where that had gone wrong.

  I had begun to feel cautiously optimistic that we might be finished talking when she confessed in a sudden rush, “I never knew what to say to you! I always felt like I was saying the wrong thing. The way you looked at me sometimes, it was like you wished I would just jump out the window and die.”

  “I wasn’t thinking that,” I proteste
d, surprised. “I was probably trying to figure out how to answer you. I never knew what to say to you, either.”

  “Really?”

  She looked skeptical. This was why I hated trying to have conversations with people. I said in frustration, “You wouldn’t have died if you had jumped out the window. We were only one story above the ground. At worst, you would have broken an arm. And if I had really wanted you to go out the window, I would have pushed you myself.”

  A smile touched her mouth before she forced it away. “You would have,” she admitted.

  “This is nauseating,” the revenant put in. I felt it loitering at the margins of my consciousness, revolted. “Hurry up and get it over with.”

  “Marguerite, I never hated you,” I insisted.

  She looked down. Then the smile crept back onto her face. “You might hate me soon.”

  I tensed. “Why?”

  She climbed down the ladder and came back up with a basket of white flowers. I recognized them. They were called Lady’s tears, the only flowers that bloomed this time of year, sprinkling the barren hillsides with their starry blossoms. It was a tradition to weave them into your hair on Saint Agnes’s holy day.

  I had never participated. My hands couldn’t manage a task as delicate as braiding, and also no one had wanted to touch me, to my profound relief—I hadn’t wanted to touch them, either.

  She said with the same shy smile on her face, “I was thinking, Confessor Leander is probably going to be there, and he knows what you look like.”

  I leaned away slightly. “He knows what you look like, too.”

  “I doubt he remembers me. I was in there for less than a minute, and he barely looked up from the desk. Anyway, this would be a perfect disguise. No one would expect to see you with flowers braided into your hair.”

  With any luck, Leander wouldn’t expect to see me at all. As far as I knew, he still thought I had drowned in the Sevre. But I had the bleak suspicion that this was Marguerite’s equivalent of trying to hand me a spider. I needed to participate in this activity to secure our friendship, which for some reason was something I wanted.