Vespertine

by Margaret Rogerson

  I didn’t need it to tell me that. Its presence felt tremulous and strange, like it had risen from a sickbed too early. If it were a person, I would make it lie down.

  It went on feverishly, “There’s precedent, you see. Occasionally, in the relic, I used to sense things—things that weren’t there…. Nun, we need to get out,” it said suddenly. “Back to the surface.”

  I hesitated, wary. “The Clerisy’s going to be looking for us. Is there anything dangerous down here?”

  It seemed to consider the question. Then it said, “Me,” in a low tone that made the hair stand up all over my body.

  I rolled to my feet and made for the doorway at once, casting around for my marks on the tunnel wall. There. The scratches were illuminated by the wispy light of a lone shade, which fled as we approached, flitting ahead. In its fragile, quivering glow, I made out another scratch farther along the tunnel, then a third, marking a fork in the passageway.

  “There’s a grate not too far from here.”

  “Hurry,” the revenant said, and then a moment later, “Hurry, you wretched nun,” with more force behind the command.

  “I almost thought you were done calling me that,” I said, gripped by the sick certainty that something bad would happen if it stopped speaking. Now it felt less as though the revenant needed to lie down, and more like I needed to keep it awake.

  When it didn’t respond, I went a little faster, stumbling over the uneven ground. I could see the shade ahead of us, but my immediate surroundings were pitch-black. As its light receded, the tunnel grew darker and darker. Soon I would no longer be able to make out the marks. I searched for something to say, anything to break the silence.

  “At least neither of us is afraid of the dark,” I gasped, out of breath.

  Silence emanated from the revenant, and suddenly I remembered the way my hands had begun shaking in the ostler’s room when it had made me light a fire for no reason; how it had made me sleep with the loft’s door open, letting in the light.

  My hands were starting to shake again now, and there was a terrible pressure in my chest like a fist closing around my lungs, slowly squeezing.

  “You are,” I realized aloud.

  “I suppose you find that amusing,” it said in a sinuous, deadly voice, with a suggestion of hysteria bubbling underneath.

  “No,” I said, feeling extremely out of my depth.

  “You’re a nun, after all. You’ll be glad to stuff me back into the reliquary as soon as you’re finished with me—”

  “Revenant.”

  “I know you will. It’s what all of you do, you loathsome nuns. It’s what Eugenia did—even after she promised—”

  “Revenant!”

  “—after she promised she wouldn’t sacrifice herself, and you’re just like her—you would throw your life away in an instant if you thought it would serve your accursed Lady—”

  Its voice had increased in pitch. Dizziness churned through me; my heart was pounding shallowly and too fast. I thought I might pass out. “Revenant, calm down.”

  “Calm down?” it hissed. “Calm down? Do you imagine that you can even begin to comprehend what the reliquary feels like, after a few years in a pathetic little human shed? I was trapped there for centuries in the silence and the dark. I’ll kill all of you before I let you put me back. I’ll kill all of you,” it snarled, and seized me like a dog with a carcass, driving me to my knees.

  In an absurd twist of fate, the grate lay just ahead. I could see it now from my angle on the ground, a square of watery gray light in the tunnel’s ceiling. But I couldn’t get there, because the revenant was trying to possess me.

  Its presence swarmed through me, foul and oily with malice, blotting out my senses. Blood thundered in my ears; the patch of sky showing through the grate pulsed from light to dark. I brought the dagger to my arm and heard my skin sizzle, but the revenant only thrashed harder. I tasted copper.

  Before, in Naimes, I had thought that I’d fought it off at its full strength. Now I wondered if it had been holding back.

  I was at its mercy. I didn’t even have the reliquary. When I had let Marguerite keep it, I had been placing my trust in the revenant as much as in her, because I had known that threatening to destroy the relic was no longer an option. I wouldn’t have been able to go through with it—not after coming to see the revenant as a person. I couldn’t have threatened it that way any more than I could have kicked that scared goat in Naimes to make it obey, or locked my own silent, shivering ten-year-old self back in the shed.

  As it fought me, it kept repeating things like, “I’ll kill you all,” and “I’ll rend your miserable soul to shreds,” except it struck me suddenly that it might not even know what it was saying. I shouldn’t have told it to calm down, because it couldn’t, any more than I had been able to overcome the stink and heat of the effigy’s fire or ignore the people staring at me in Elaine’s house.

  That was when I realized it wasn’t trying to possess me on purpose.

  Not that the revelation helped; I still didn’t know what to do. Grasping, I thought of the goat again, the one that had been kicked and hit and yelled at until all it had known to do was bite. Talking to it had seemed to make a difference, even though it hadn’t understood the words.

  “It’s all right,” I gasped. “You’ll be all right.”

  “I’ll murder you,” it snarled.

  “It’s all right. No one’s going to hurt you.”

  I wasn’t sure where I’d learned those phrases as a child. Someone must have said them to me for me to have repeated them to the goat, though I didn’t have a memory of it. Not my parents, I knew. Possibly it had been Mother Katherine, carting my possessed and burned body all the way back to the convent, stroking my hair because she couldn’t hold my hand.

  I couldn’t tell if the revenant was listening, but I was able to regain enough control to reach out an arm and drag myself across the tunnel’s floor, toward the weak light spilling in from the grate. I wasn’t certain I could get there, but I had to try, one agonizing inch at a time.

  I said, “I’m not going to let anyone hurt you again.”

  It was an absurd thing to say to a creature like the revenant, but it also wasn’t, because I was certain that no one had ever said anything like that to it before in all the long centuries of its existence. And it worked. The revenant stopped speaking in words. It started shrieking instead, howling wordlessly and tearing at me with its claws. It hurt, but it was a familiar pain, the same pain I had inflicted on myself so many times in the shed. I knew then that we really were going to be all right, because I had survived it before, and I would survive it again.

  “We’re almost there,” I told it, and used the final breath of my failing strength to heave myself into the gray pool of light on the tunnel floor.

  The revenant let out a horrible cry and renewed its thrashing, but it felt weaker now, a different kind of struggle—the despair of knowing that after the fight ended, it would have to face what it had done. I recognized that feeling too.

  Me, the goat, the revenant, we weren’t very different from each other in the end. Perhaps deep down inside everyone was just a scared animal afraid of getting hurt, and that explained every confusing and mean and terrible thing we did.

  Leander had been right, earlier. I was the one he had misjudged. The revenant might be a monster, but it was my monster. I wrapped my arms around myself and held on as it screamed and fought and clawed. I held on until, finally, it went limp.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Neither of us wanted to talk about it afterward, to my profound relief. I was sore all over, and I had plenty else to occupy my thoughts. Some of them were ideas I didn’t want to examine too closely, circling beneath the surface of my mind like sharks. Now that we were back aboveground, I knew it wouldn’t be long before I had to face them. The scorch marks on the altar. Saint Eugenia’s fire-blackened finger bone, her body burned to ash.

  But for now I focused on my
current problems. The first thing I had discovered after hoisting myself aboveground was that night had fallen; the gray light trickling through the grate had belonged to the moon, glaring over the city’s rooftops like a bright silver coin. The street outside the alley where I had emerged looked empty, but I still checked to make sure no one was watching before I shoved the grate back into place.

  The revenant’s presence felt like a bruise, a dull and miserable ache. It had barely spoken to me as I’d climbed through; it had only said, “the dagger,” in a listless voice, leaving me to mostly figure out on my own that I was supposed to use the blade as a lever to pry up the grate. And now it said nothing as I tucked the misericorde through my belt, where it would be hidden beneath my cloak, and ventured out onto the street.

  Moonlight starkly etched the cobbles and rooflines in silver. The windows were dark behind their shutters, and silence hardened the air like frost. All seemed unnaturally still—I saw no one, even though I judged the hour too early for everyone in the neighborhood to be asleep. My skin prickled with the same feeling of being watched that I had had in the tunnels. I scanned the sky until I located the points of the cathedral’s spires poking above the rooftops.

  Newly oriented, I drew my cloak tightly around myself and hurried down the street, weighing my options. I couldn’t go back to the convent—that would be the first place Leander looked. Elaine’s house was out of the question.

  Candlelight flickered on a wall ahead, accompanied by low voices. I waited for the light to recede before I cautiously looked around the corner. More light glittered ahead, silhouetting a group of young women carrying candles, their breath white clouds, their faces smeared with ash. Their excited whispers scattered from the alley’s walls like birds taking flight. “This way, hurry…”

  Reaching the intersecting street, I felt as though I had stumbled into a dream. People stood everywhere, holding candles that lit the street with a dancing glow. It took me a moment to recover, disoriented and blinking. When I did, gliding into view was a solemn procession, silk gleaming in the candlelight, banners rearing from the darkness, drawing nearer to the rhythmic chiming of bells.

  I crept forward and peered through the bodies. Impressions came to me in snatches: the liquid glinting of gold candelabra, candles guttering; a painted icon of Saint Agnes sailing past, carried on a swaying platform, her gaze raised beatifically toward the canopy’s fringe. Clerics walked in orderly, hooded ranks, chanting and swinging their censers, their robes sprinkled with ashes to honor the sacrifices of the saints. Once I even caught a glimpse of the sunken face of an ascetic, downcast beneath his cowl. I guessed that the glint of gray agate on his finger belonged to a gaunt relic, whose power allowed him to go for weeks without eating.

  It was clear now that the Divine had ordered a procession, likely in response to the sign in the cathedral. For an event of this magnitude, every able-bodied cleric who didn’t have other essential duties would be expected to attend. I stood very still, waiting. And then, as though I had summoned him, Leander appeared.

  An immediate stir ran through the onlookers. One person said to another, “I heard they found him collapsed beneath the cathedral…. Some trouble with his relic, it sounds like… overpowered him…” Only for a third to join in, “It was worse than that—it nearly possessed him! Clerics sensed it from all over the square….”

  Slowly, it grew apparent that Leander hadn’t told anyone about me. He had lied about what had happened—even covered for my use of the revenant’s power. That was what the clerics had sensed, I was sure, not his penitent. Perhaps he didn’t want anyone else to capture me; he wanted to save me for himself. Or perhaps he had another reason, one I couldn’t begin to guess.

  Feeling suddenly uncertain, I studied him. He hadn’t changed out of his ceremonial vestments, the dust from the catacombs disguised by a sprinkling of holy ashes. Bruises discolored his austere face. His eyes were downcast beneath golden lashes, his expression impossible to read. A silver censer hung at his side—the same one, I realized, that he had given me in the battle with the rivener, before he had spun around to fight at my back. A lost memory resurfaced—the fleeting brush of his hand against mine.

  I shivered, watching the procession swallow him up again.

  What was his plan? What did he want?

  “You didn’t kill him,” the revenant observed, startling me.

  I quickly stepped back into an alley where I wouldn’t be heard, my heart thumping against my ribs. “Are you all right? You said the altar was made to destroy revenants.”

  “Yes, which doesn’t make any sense.” Its voice sounded dull. “As far as I can tell, it wasn’t designed for any other purpose—certainly not for controlling spirits. It could be that the priest is using it as a source of power for a different ritual, but I don’t think…” It trailed off, thought for a moment, and then surprised me by saying, “It’s just as well you didn’t kill him. We may need him. That page he took from the convent—I need to know exactly what he found.”

  “You suspect something,” I realized aloud.

  “A misgiving, not a suspicion. I expect to find evidence that will disprove it.”

  “Can you tell me what it is?”

  “For now, knowing wouldn’t help.” It hesitated. “If it becomes relevant, I’ll let you know.”

  That’s impossible, it had said underground. It might not have a logical explanation, but it had thought of something else, something that didn’t quite make sense. Something it didn’t want to tell me. I swallowed. Whatever it was thinking, it didn’t want to be right.

  “Unless Leander is carrying the page with him, it’s probably in his quarters. The cathedral should be nearly empty right now. If the doors are locked, can you get us inside?”

  “If I’m not using my full power, and I don’t need to hide myself from many clerics… yes, that shouldn’t be difficult, assuming you don’t mind heights. You don’t, do you?”

  Mystified, I shook my head.

  “Good. Once we’re inside, I expect I’ll be able to locate the priest’s chambers by smell. Even if he hasn’t left traces of Old Magic, the stink of priestly repression is impossible to miss. Let’s go.”

  “Not until you answer my question.”

  “What question?” It sounded a little testy. I waited for it to think back over our conversation, and felt its tremor of surprise before it cut itself off, as though slamming the lid on a chest filled with keepsakes it didn’t want me to see. “Of course I’m all right,” it snapped. “Stop dawdling.”

  I didn’t take it personally. I knew why it had reacted that way: it wasn’t used to anyone caring.

  The route to the cathedral twisted confusingly through a maze of shops and houses. I could tell I was growing close when I heard a lonely voice calling out, “Only five pawns! Five pawns for a splinter of the holy arrow!” and then I looked up to see the cathedral’s mullioned windows glowering above me in the night, each pane of glass cut into a diamond, winking dimly as I passed. I gave a wide berth to the cathedral guards stationed around the entrances and squeezed through a filthy alley in the back, relieved not to have faced the full scope of the cathedral. It was easier to look at up close, under the cover of darkness.

  Meanwhile, the revenant searched for a place where we could climb without being spotted. “There,” it said at last, drawing my attention to a panel of false archways carved with a frothing mass of spirits. I guessed the scene was meant to evoke a battle in the War of Martyrs, though it was hard to tell, since most of it was caged behind scaffolding for repairs. No one was standing guard, likely because there weren’t any possible entries: only a windowless wall above and a stinking gutter below.

  I clambered up the scaffolding, and at the revenant’s direction set my boot against one of the lowest outcroppings of masonry at the top. A rush of power propelled me upward, tingling through my limbs and outward into my fingers and toes. I flowed up the wall as though I weighed nothing, the revenant effort
lessly finding handholds in the dark.

  More statues awaited me above, standing in endless carved rows. There were hundreds of minor saints in Loraille, one for every spirit bound; I didn’t know all their names even after seven years as a novice. I sent silent apologies their way as I hoisted my way past, boots scraping on their heads and arms.

  Spirit-shaped grotesques crouched along the nearest roofline, which connected a series of flying buttresses to a higher wall above. I grabbed a downspout shaped like an undine, whose grimacing mouth would spew water from the gutter when it rained, and squirmed over the edge.

  Warmth still radiated from the lead roof, baked into it by the sun. I drew in a deep breath of night air. Even from up here, I could faintly smell the procession’s incense. Stars spread coldly overhead, and far below, the procession looked like a long ribbon of light twisting through the streets, its many candles sparkling.

  “This way,” the revenant said. I clambered along on all fours until I reached a walkway that stretched behind the buttresses. Here I could no longer see the procession, my view obscured by a jumble of rooftop angles. The wind moaned in the dark, passing through the multitude of carved saints and spirits. I felt the revenant shiver, and moved a little faster.

  The door it prodded me toward wasn’t locked. It opened easily, admitting me into a narrow, dusty stair that I guessed was used to access the roof for repairs. My pulse started quickening as soon as I closed the door behind me, shutting out the wind and what little light remained. I was panting by the time I burst out the door at the bottom, into a musty wood-paneled hall illuminated by a single round window. The walls were hung with old paintings of dour-looking clerics, whose shadowed eyes seemed to judge me as I bent over my knees, catching my breath.

  I wanted to ask the revenant how it could be afraid of the dark if its senses allowed it to see straight through walls, but I doubted it would welcome the question. I could tell it felt touchy about me merely knowing its secret in the first place.