Chapter Thirty-Seven
ONCE I HAVE BEEN DISMISSED, I return to my chambers. My conversation with the duchess has stirred up all my simmering anger and frustration, like muck at the bottom of a pond. Alone in the room, my breath comes fast, my fists clenching at my sides. Between Crunard’s insinuations and my own confrontations with the abbess, I am drawing close—so close—to finally understanding what is at the heart of the abbess’s plots and intrigues. Crunard knows more than he is telling. I do not know if this is some strange game being played between him and the abbess or if he knows even more about the convent than she does.
Of course, the simplest answer is the most painful one, that she is lying—has been lying—to me since the beginning.
Frustration bubbles up from deep inside, so hot and urgent I fear I will scream. Instead, I stride over to the clothes chest, lift the lid, and root through my meager belongings there. When my hand closes around the satin-smooth finish of lacquered wood, I pull the black box from the depths of the chest and carry it over to the window. Even in the bright light of the afternoon sun, I can find no seam, no joint, nothing to indicate how it can be opened. Other than by breaking it.
I take the box over to fireplace, place it on the hard stone hearth, and grab an iron poker from where it leans against the wall. I raise it up over my shoulder, then bring it down against the smooth unmarred surface.
It sinks in with a splintering crack. I place my foot on the box to hold it steady, then pull the poker back up and strike again. And again and again, until I am certain the noise will bring someone running. I toss the poker to the floor, then pick up the box and begin yanking the splintered wood away from the hole that I have made.
When there is an opening big enough, I shove my hand inside, ignoring the sting of splinters biting into my flesh. My fingers search, but I feel no parchment or vellum, only a slim rod of some sort. Slowly, I maneuver the thing around until I can extract it from the hole I have made.
It is long and thin, with a piece of chipped stone at one end. An arrow shaft, I realize, with some ancient arrowhead still attached. Not answers, then, but some musty relic. With a growl of frustration, I hurl the arrow onto the bed, then slam the box onto the floor, relishing the cracking sound it makes. It is all I can do to resist grinding the wretched thing under my heel until it is naught but sawdust and ash.
Instead, I take a deep breath and force myself to a state of calm. The abbess refused to see me this afternoon, but she cannot put me off forever. I do not care with whom she is sequestered or what duties she is performing, I will force a meeting with her and find out what rotten core is at the heart of the twisted web she weaves. I am so close to knowing. It is as if I can put my hand out and feel the shape and contours of the lies, but I am unable to discern the whole of it.
I will meet with the abbess tomorrow, and this time, I will not be put off.
I am not able to get in to see her until the afternoon. It is late, and most people have retired to make ready for dinner, but not the abbess. She is still at work in her office. I rap once on the door. “Come in,” she calls out. Her invitation to enter surprises me—I had expected some resistance—but I step into her office, then shut the door firmly behind me.
At the loud click, she looks up, scowling when she sees it is me. “I did not send for you.”
“You also told me to kill Crunard, and I did not, so clearly my desire to follow your every order has waned somewhat.”
“You are making a grave mistake. Do you think I favor you so much that I will not punish you?”
“Do you honestly think that I care any longer? My need for answers—for the truth—has grown far greater than my need to please you. Now tell me,” I demand, “what lies between Crunard and yourself. Tell me why you have not sent me out until now. Tell me why you ordered him killed when he bears no marque at all.”
“You can see marques?” She studies me closely and I consider demanding to know what she put in the Tears that caused me to go blind. Except I am not certain enough that she is behind it to risk sharing that information with her. It would be too easy for her to use it against me.
“No. I cannot. But Ismae can, and once Crunard was here in Rennes, I had her look for me. What happened to Matelaine? Why was she gone so long if she was only to kill Crunard?”
Her mouth pinches in annoyance, but she answers me all the same. “It was a complex assignment. Everyone in Guérande was on edge, and the man was in prison. It took her a while to get into position to make her move.”
“You never saw a vision for her to kill Crunard, did you? She hesitated because she couldn’t see a marque on him either, and yet you ordered her to remain there.”
The abbess’s nostrils flare. At first I think it is in irritation, but then I see how wide her pupils are, how rapidly the pulse in her neck is beating, and I realize it is fear. I take a step toward her. “Why are you so afraid of him?”
She turns and carefully folds the letter she’s been reading. “I am not afraid of him; he has just become a liability to the convent. He has betrayed his country and shamed us by association. I truly believed him to be marqued.”
“Believed? You told me Sister Vereda had Seen it, but if so, Ismae would have seen a marque.”
She whips her gaze up from the letter and narrows her eyes. “And I told you that Vereda was too old, too enfeebled, to be relied on for such things any longer. Do not throw her vision in my face when you are the one who has defied my order to replace her.”
“How can you take His will into your own hands like that? What gives you the right to break the rules that lies at the heart of our service to Him?”
She does not answer, and as she sits there, saying nothing, my frustration continues to simmer until it boils over. “Tell me precisely what is going on and why I should not report it to the others. Then, once you have told me that, you will explain why you sent Matelaine out instead of me.”
“You have been chosen to be the next seer—”
“No! You have chosen me to be the next seeress—not Mortain, not Vereda, you. And for no reason that anyone could determine. There are plenty of other virgin novitiates or nuns beyond childbearing years who could easily, perhaps even happily, step into that role. Sister Claude would welcome an opportunity to come in from the rookery.”
The abbess gives a snort of derision. “You would put such weighty decisions in the hands of a tired old woman who reeks of bird droppings?”