“Lord, have mercy!”
“You will come in glory with salvation for your people. Lord, have mercy!”
“Lord, have mercy!”
Unable to help myself, I muttered, “Hypocrite.”
My husband looked likely to expire. His face had flushed red again, and a vein throbbed in his throat. The Chasseurs around us either glared or chuckled. Jean Luc’s shoulders shook with silent laughter, but I didn’t find the situation quite as funny as before. Where was my kin’s salvation? Where was our mercy?
“May almighty God have mercy on us, forgive us our sins, and bring us to everlasting life.”
“Amen.”
The congregation immediately began another chant, but I stopped listening. Instead, I watched as the Archbishop lifted his arms to the heavens, closing his eyes and losing himself in the song. As Jean Luc grinned, nudging my husband when they both sang the wrong words. As my husband grudgingly laughed and pushed him away.
“You take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us,” the boy in front of us sang. He clutched his father’s hand, swaying to the cadence of their voices. “You take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. You take away the sins of the world, receive our prayer.”
Have mercy on us.
Receive our prayer.
At the end of my Proverbs torture session, there’d been a verse I hadn’t understood.
As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man.
“What does it mean?”
“It means . . . water is like a mirror,” my husband had explained, frowning slightly. “It reflects our faces back to us. And our lives—the way we live, the things we do—” He’d looked at his hands, suddenly unable to meet my eyes. “They reflect our hearts.”
It’d made perfect sense, explained like that. And yet . . . I looked around at the worshippers once more—the men and women who pleaded for mercy and cried for my blood on the same breath. How could both be in their hearts?
“Lou, I’m—” He’d cleared his throat and forced himself to look at me. Those blue eyes had shone with sincerity. With regret. “I shouldn’t have shouted earlier. In the library. I’m . . . sorry.”
Our lives reflect our hearts.
Yes, it’d made perfect sense, explained like that, but I still didn’t understand. I didn’t understand my husband. I didn’t understand the Archbishop. Or the dancing boy. Or his father. Or Jean Luc or the Chasseurs or the witches or her. I didn’t understand any of them.
Conscious of the Chasseurs’ eyes on me, I forced a smirk and bumped my husband’s hip, pretending that it’d all been a show. A laugh. That I’d just been goading him to get a reaction. That I wasn’t a witch in Mass, standing amongst my enemies and worshiping someone else’s god.
Our lives reflect our hearts.
They might’ve all been hypocrites, but I was the biggest one of all.
Madame Labelle
Reid
The next evening was the first snowfall of the year.
I sat up from the floor, brushing back my sweaty hair, and watched the flakes drift past the window. Only exercise worked the knots from my back. After stumbling upon me on the floor last night, Lou had claimed the bed. She hadn’t invited me to join her.
I didn’t complain. Though my back ached, the exercise kept my irritation in check. I’d quickly learned counting didn’t work with Lou . . . namely, after she’d started counting right along with me.
She slammed the book she was reading down on the desk. “This is absolute drivel.”
“What is it?”
“The only book I could find in that wretched library without the words holy or extermination in the title.” She lifted it up for me to see. Shepherd. I almost chuckled. It’d been one of the first books the Archbishop had allowed me to read—a collection of pastoral poems about God’s artistry in nature.
She flounced to my bed—her bed—with a disgruntled expression. “How anyone can write about grass for twelve pages is beyond me. That’s the real sin.”
I hoisted myself to my feet and approached. She eyed me warily. “What are you doing?”
“Showing you a secret.”
“No, no, no.” She scrambled backward. “I’m not interested in your secret—”
“Please.” Scowling and shaking my head, I walked past her to my headboard. “Stop talking.”
To my surprise, she complied, her narrowed eyes watching me scoot the bed frame from the wall. She leaned forward curiously when I revealed the small, rough-hewn hole behind it. My vault. At sixteen—when Jean Luc and I had shared this room, when we’d been closer than brothers—I’d gouged it into the mortar, desperate for a place of my own. A place to hide the parts of myself I’d rather him not find.