The loft wobbled around me. I had bolted upright, standing knee-deep in the hay, my legs trembling like a newborn foal’s.
“Now go down the ladder,” the revenant instructed, still using the same cruel tone. Muddle-headed, I hastened to obey. I felt it steadying my shaking hands on the rungs. I blundered through the door, stumbled out into the darkened yard, fell to my knees in the mud beside the well and drank thirstily from the bucket’s ladle.
“You’re in worse shape than I thought, nun,” the revenant mused to itself. It sounded angry, but not at me; I was barely conscious, an afterthought. It paced back and forth in my head as I leaned against the well’s cool stones, soothed by their chill against my brow. “Of all the problems I expected to have managing an untrained human, this wasn’t one of them. My previous vessels at least understood how to take care of their bodies. Here’s what we’ll do,” it said to me, but I was already fading away. The last thing I heard was “Nun? Are you listening to me? Nun!”
TWELVE
Consciousness returned in a flood of white. This alone assured me that I was still alive. Holy texts described the Lady’s afterlife as a place of restful dusk, lit eternally by stars. Here, wherever I was, the air smelled astringently of healing herbs. Murmuring voices surrounded me, echoing faintly as though carried down a corridor; distant footsteps rapped briskly to and fro. Shifting experimentally, I discovered that I was surrounded by linens. I felt weak and oddly light, like the dried-up husk of an insect.
“Are you awake this time, nun? Ah, you are.”
I dragged in a breath, my heartbeat quickening.
“No, don’t try to get up again—you’ve done that before. They might resort to restraining you instead of merely drugging you. As it turns out, you’re a nightmare to deal with even when you’re half-conscious and insensible with fever.”
I recognized the taste of the syrup that coated my mouth; it was the same kind I had been given in Naimes. I cracked open my eyes, only to squeeze them shut again, finding my surroundings painfully bright. I parted my dry, cracked lips.
“Don’t bother trying to speak. I’m sure I can guess what your questions are. Let’s see. No, they haven’t figured out who you are. No, I haven’t been trying to possess you. Tempting though the prospect was, I wouldn’t have been able to do anything with your useless body aside from stumbling it around and smacking it deliriously into walls. Anything else?”
A scratchy, questioning sound escaped my throat.
“Yes, you were very ill. You still are, but you’re through the worst of it now. There’s another human helping you,” it added, an inexplicable darkness creeping into its tone. “She seems to know you. She’s claiming to be your friend.”
That was unsettling. My lack of contacts in Bonsaint aside, I couldn’t think of anyone who would claim me as a friend even under threat of torture. Straining to listen, I made out that two people were conversing in soft voices nearby. They didn’t seem to have noticed that I had awoken.
One of the voices was too quiet for me to hear. The other replied, “Thank you for watching over her so closely. You’ve been such a help to us these past days.”
“That one’s the healer who’s been using a feverling relic on you,” the revenant explained.
No wonder it seemed tense. All this time it had been trapped helplessly in my weakened body, waiting to see if a healer would sense it and alert Mother Dolours.
“Let us know if anything changes,” the healer went on. “Otherwise a few days of strict bed rest should put your friend to rights.”
Strict bed rest. A few days. I didn’t have the time. I waited for the rustle of fabric as the healer moved away, then tried opening my eyes again.
A whitewashed ceiling swam into view. I lay on a pallet with the linens drawn up to my chin. The pallet was on the floor at the end of a hall, below a small window with the shutters cracked open for fresh air. Other patients rested on pallets nearby, the closest appearing deeply asleep. The only other person in the room was a girl standing at the foot of my pallet. She was facing away from me, but her plump figure and chestnut hair were unmistakable. I had slept in a bed opposite them for seven years.
“Marguerite?” I asked in disbelief, my voice a terrible rasp.
She started and whirled around, her blue eyes bright above her flushed cheeks. Frantically, she scrabbled for something beneath the neck of her tunic and thrust it between us. A protective amulet, like the ones the vendors had been selling on the street.
We stared at each other. The last time I had seen Marguerite, she had been collapsed in the chapel, half-dead from blight. Now she wasn’t wearing her novice’s robes; she was dressed like a refugee in a drab, patched tunic. The blight on her hands and face had faded to dull splotches of green and yellow, like week-old bruises.
“What are you doing here?” I asked hollowly.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered back fiercely. Her hand was shaking. “A soldier found you collapsed in the barnyard this morning. He said your name is Anne of Montprestre. Now I’ve had to pretend I’m from Montprestre, too. Do you have any idea how many stories I’ve had to make up about goats?” Her voice trembled. “I don’t even know anything about goats!”
“So you do know this human?” the revenant asked in distaste.
My thoughts moved slowly, thickened by the syrup’s lingering fog. “Why?”
She glanced down the corridor, checking the sleeping patients and the sisters walking back and forth through the intersecting hall farther down. “I had to,” she whispered, “to keep the sisters from seeing your hands.”
An ugly jolt of terror shot straight down my guts into my bowels. I pulled my hands from beneath the covers. My gloves were gone, replaced with ridiculous-looking bandages that encased my hands like mittens.
“I told them I knew you. They still think you’re some Unsighted girl from Montprestre. I said your hands were blighted and wrapped them up before anyone could see them. If you hadn’t tied those gloves on, the sisters would have gotten them off before I could say anything…”
My heart was hammering. Gradually, it occurred to me that my uncharacteristic panic didn’t belong to me alone. It was coming from the revenant.
“She took my reliquary,” it said, while Marguerite kept on babbling.
I shoved back the covers and fumbled with my clothes, clumsily lifting the neck of my chemise, which was all I was wearing; my tunic and cloak had been taken away. And so had the reliquary. I gazed at the naked patch on my chest and then raised my eyes back to Marguerite.
She had fallen silent, watching me. She must have seen something in my eyes, because she said quickly, in a low voice taut with fear, “If you attack me, I’ll scream.”
I wasn’t sure what was worse—losing Saint Eugenia’s relic or having to reason with Marguerite. “You can put down the amulet,” I said in resignation. “I’m not possessed.”
She slowly shook her head. “Everyone saw you after the battle in the chapel. The sisters dragged you away screaming. You bit Sister Lucinde.”
“Ah, sweet memories,” the revenant hissed.