Holy Fools

Isabelle cut me short. “Oh, but they do.” The little voice was hard. “My uncle, the bishop, dealt with a similar case in Aquitaine years ago.”

“What case?” Impossible for me to keep the scorn from my voice. She looked at me, no doubt concocting some penance to inflict upon me at a later time.

“A case of witchcraft,” she said.

I stared at her. “I don’t understand,” I said at last. “Mère Marie was the kindest, most gentle woman alive. How could you possibly believe-”

“The devil may take a pleasing countenance if he chooses.” Her tone was cold and final. “The signs-the curse of blood, my dreams, and now this damnable visitation…How can anyone doubt it? What other explanation can there be?”

I had to stop this. “A person given to fanciful imaginings may see things which are not,” I told her. “If anyone else had seen this-apparition…”

“But they did.” The small voice was triumphant. “We all did. All of us.”

Her pronouncement was not strictly true. When Marguerite screamed, maybe half a dozen nuns were within earshot, Mère Isabelle among them. Ru

LeMerle looked concerned and insisted upon going to inspect the scene of the incident at once. I returned to my duties. It was clear Mère Isabelle was a

It seems too much of a coincidence. Last week I went to Barbâtre and Perette vanished for three days. This week, Marguerite saw visions, once more in my absence. Both times I was with LeMerle. Had he engineered this purposely to have me out of the way? Certainly I would have tried to intervene in both cases if I had been there. But what reason can he have for such action? A practical joke, he told me when he gave me the tablets of dye for the well. And a fake vision of a hooded nun might as easily be another. I can easily envisage Clémente accepting to take part. But what reason can he have for such a cruel succession of practical jokes? Surely the last thing he wants is to attract notice to the abbey or to himself. And yet LeMerle is subtle, cu

28

A dissolution is taking place among us, the sisterhood broken into pieces as far-flung as the figure of our patron. Clémente seems distant, banished to dig latrine trenches for a week as penance for idleness. I find myself wondering whether it is the stench of her work that has given LeMerle a distaste for her, or whether this cruel caprice is merely his nature. A blackbird may decimate the fruit on a tree, pecking hither and thither at random, spoiling but never finishing. Does she love him? Her dreamy abstraction, the look in her eyes when he does not notice her, suggests she does. The more fool she. Germaine’s company she will no longer tolerate, though the other woman has volunteered to help her with the latrines as a desperate measure to be close to her.

First thing this morning I eventually spoke to Perette, but she was restless and abstracted, and I could make no sense of her. Perhaps she is angry; with Perette it is always so difficult to tell. I would like to tell her about LeMerle and Fleur and the contaminated well, but my silence keeps Fleur safe. I must believe that, or lose my mind. And so I deceive my friend, and try not to mind if she holds me in contempt. I miss her, but I miss Fleur so much more. Perhaps there can be room only for one in my hard heart.

Rosamonde is no longer with us. Two days ago she was moved to the infirmary, where the sick and dying are kept. Soeur Virginie, the young novice entrusted with her care, has taken vows at last and has taken over the duty of hospitaller. A plain girl, as I recall from our Latin classes, with little spirit and less imagination, her angular features even now begi

I saw Rosamonde yesterday over the wall of the infirmary garden. Seated on a small bench, huddled into herself, as if by doing so she could somehow present the world with a smaller target for its cruelties, she looked more bewildered than ever. She looked up at me, but without recognition. Robbed of her routine, the thin skein that bound her to reality, she drifts in aimless anxiety, her only contact with the rest of us the sister who brings her meals and the bland-faced, unsmiling child appointed her keeper.

I was enraged enough at the pitiful sight to bring up Rosamonde’s case at Chapter this morning. LeMerle is not normally present at Chapter, and I hoped to be able to sway the abbess out of his presence.

“Soeur Rosamonde is not ill, ma mère,” I explained in a humble voice. “It is not kind to keep her from what small pleasures she can still enjoy. Her duties, her friends…”

The abbess looked at me from the distant continent of her twelve years. “Soeur Rosamonde is seventy-two,” she said. Sure enough, that must have seemed an eternity to her. “She barely recalls what day it is. She recognizes no one.” Ay, I thought. That was more like it. The old woman had not recognized her. “And she is feeble,” continued Isabelle. “Even the simplest duties are too much for her now. Surely it’s kinder to let her rest than to set her to work in her condition? Surely, Soeur Auguste,” she said, her eyes glinting slyly, “you do not begrudge her this well-earned respite?”

“I grudge her nothing,” I said, stung. “But to be shut up in the infirmary, just because she’s old and sometimes slops at her food-”

I had said too much. The abbess put up her chin. “Shut up?” she echoed. “Are you inferring that our poor Soeur Rosamonde is a prisoner?”

“Of course not.”

“Well then…” She let her voice trail for a moment. “Anyone who wishes to visit our ailing sister may do so, of course, provided Soeur Virginie feels she is strong enough to receive visitors. Her absence from the di