JULY 29TH, 1610

A dissolution is taking place among us, the sisterhood broken into pieces as far-flung as the figure of our patron. Cl'emente 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 beginning to take on the coarse and ungrateful look of so many of the island women. M`ere Isabelle has, I think, warned her against me. I can tell from her sharp looks and evasive replies. She is barely seventeen. Rosamonde is a foreign country to her. Her youth calls to the new abbess, whom she copies slavishly.

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 m`ere,” 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 dinner table merely means that she can be allowed a more nutritious diet and more regular meals than the rest of us, at times more agreeable to her age and condition.” She gave me a sly look. “Soeur Auguste, you would not deny our old friend her few privileges? If you live to be her age, I’m sure you’ll be glad of them too.”

Clever, the little minx. LeMerle was teaching her well. Anything I said now would seem like envy. I smiled, conceding a point, even though my heart seethed. “I’m sure we all will, ma m`ere,” I said, and was pleased to see her lips tighten.

Well, that was the end of my attempt at rescue. As it was, I had almost overstepped the mark; M`ere Isabelle looked at me askance throughout the rest of Chapter and I narrowly escaped another penance. Instead I accepted a turn of duty in the bakehouse-a hot, filthy, disagreeable task in this sultry weather-and she seemed satisfied. For the present, anyway.

The bakehouse is a round, squat building on the far side of the cloister. Its windows are glassless slits, most of the light coming from the huge ovens in the center of the single room. We bake in clay ovens as the black monks did, on flat stones heated red by the heaped faggots beneath. The smoke from the ovens escapes through a chimney so wide that the sky is visible through its mouth, and when it rains the droplets of water fall onto the domed ovens and turn to hissing steam. Two young novices were making dough as I arrived, one picking out the weevils from a stone jar of flour, the other mixing yeast in a basin, preparing to make the mixture. The ovens were stoked and ready, and the heat was like a shimmering wall. Behind the wall was Soeur Antoine, sleeves rolled up over her thick red forearms, hair tied into a rag that she had rolled about her head.

“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 M`ere Isabelle finds out, that will be the end of it, whatever P`ere 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 m`ere.” 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 M`ere Isabelle, formerly of the house of Arnault and latterly, Abbess of Sainte Marie-la-M`ere. 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 receive 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.