She flashed him a quick smile, a dimple appearing on her cheek, before she turned back to me. “So the Clerisy isn’t officially searching for you yet, but there’s too much confusion to know for sure. They could be looking in secret.”
“They won’t want to arrest her during a holy festival. People would riot. I mean, they would anyway,” he added, shooting me a meaningful glance, “but having it happen around Saint Agnes’s day would make it worse.”
“You’re right—I hadn’t thought of that.”
“What about Captain Enguerrand? Did you hear anything?”
“Oh!” She gave him a sympathetic look, her heart in her eyes. “He’s been detained. They put him in the garrison’s dungeon. Someone else is leading the guard.”
Jean hadn’t given any indication of listening before. Now his hand clenched around his knife. Charles asked quickly, “Did you hear the name of the acting captain?”
“I think it was something like Henry. Hubert?”
“Halbert.” Charles swore. “He’s a bootlicker,” he explained. “He’ll do anything he’s told to do. What are the charges against the captain?”
Marguerite didn’t know. “Defying the will of the Clerisy,” I guessed. It was the first time I had spoken. The sound of my voice inspired a renewed flurry of whispers from the hallway outside, though I doubted they could hear what I was saying. “After Leander’s plan failed, I saw him trying to find me in the crowd. Captain Enguerrand stopped him. Leander probably claimed he was there to fight the white vicar, but Enguerrand knew the truth.”
Quiet fell around the table. Then Charles said, “Wait. Leander’s plan? The confessor?” and we had to explain about Leander and the Old Magic, watching him grow progressively more shocked.
“The altar?” he asked loudly once I’d finished, and Marguerite quickly hushed him. He lowered his voice, leaning over the table. “Then you think Confessor Leander was the one who summoned the white vicar?”
Marguerite glanced at me. “It follows the pattern,” I said carefully. So far, we’d managed to skirt around the revenant’s role in uncovering the Old Magic.
“We think he might have been planning to do something during the ceremony,” Marguerite added, “but when he realized Artemisia was there, he had to change tactics.”
“Or the vicar was his plan all along,” I said. “We don’t know.”
“But where did it come from?”
“It might have come into the city possessing a thrall,” I said, listening to the revenant’s suggestion. “The priest—Confessor Leander has enough influence to arrange passage for someone. Maybe he was keeping it in reserve for an emergency.”
“Or it could have been inside Bonsaint already, minding its own business,” the revenant added. “It was old, and very intelligent.”
Intelligent enough to speak. I’d forgotten about that until now. Traitor, it had called the revenant. Scorned One, just like in Josephine’s manuscript. I supposed the vicar had known the revenant was helping me of its own free will. Except—to have earned that title in the first place, had the revenant cooperated with a human before? It hadn’t spoken to its previous vessels, the ones who had been trained. But Saint Eugenia…
Charles placed a hand on the table, interrupting my thoughts. “We should go to the cathedral right now,” he said, starting to stand. “The service starts at fourth bell.”
The hallway outside the kitchen looked more crowded than when we had sat down. There were more people in the house, watching us with eyes as wide as saucers. My presence wasn’t going to remain a secret for long.
I said, “I’ll go, but I need to do it alone.”
“We already talked about this!” Marguerite cried.
“Both of you have been seen with me since then. Marguerite, you’re the only person who knows where Saint Eugenia’s reliquary is hidden. You need to keep it safe in case something happens. And, Charles, you need to stay with Jean.”
They both opened their mouths to object. They were forestalled by a shuffling sound beneath the table, which stilled upon being noticed. Then a small voice demanded from beneath the table, “Do they hurt?”
“Thomas!” someone exclaimed—Elaine.
I knew what he was asking about. I had taken my gloves off to eat. I shook my head to let her know it was fine.
“No,” I answered, watching Thomas emerge from hiding and clamber onto an empty stool beside me. Guessing what he wanted, I held out my bad hand. “You can touch it if you want to.”
He diligently felt my scars, then grew bolder and tried to straighten my curled fingers. A collective indrawn breath filled the hallway, followed by a pause as everyone waited, I assumed, to see if the Lady was going to send a lightning bolt through the window to punish him. When nothing happened, everyone relaxed—except for Thomas, who was too busy inspecting my hand to notice.
Marguerite was watching with an oddly soft expression. “Artemisia,” she said, “you know you don’t need to do everything alone.”
I glanced around at her, Charles, Jean. The people in the hall. I felt the revenant, bristling with impatience. And I realized she was mistaken—I hadn’t been alone, not for some time.
TWENTY-ONE
In the mostly deserted streets, I saw the aftermath of the fire. I had to walk through the main square, and I passed the building that had stood behind the effigy, its shutters charred, a huge black scorch mark cast against its stone edifice like a shadow. Below, the Clerisy’s platform had been reduced to a jumble of brittle burned sticks. The stink of damp charcoal hung in the air, its last resentful smoldering extinguished by the morning dew.
The square was deserted now, clearly being avoided after last night’s events. The few people I came across looked fearful and ducked quickly back inside. Litter had accumulated around the base of Saint Agnes’s statue. I wondered what had become of the beggar—whether he had survived. Whether he had people to care for him, or if he was out there on his own.
I discovered where everyone in the city had gone when I reached the cathedral’s square. It was packed full of people, their numbers barely contained by the shops and counting houses that hemmed the area in. And everywhere, I heard my name.
“A scrap of cloth from Saint Artemisia’s cloak!” shouted a vendor ahead. “As powerful as any relic!”
“Its smell is, at any rate,” the revenant said. “This way.”
I pushed through the vendor’s line, ignoring the protests of the customers who stood waiting. Farther in, other vendors were trying to sell various items that I had supposedly touched, like pieces of Priestbane’s tack, and even in one case, “a lock of hair from the maiden’s own head.” “Blond,” the revenant supplied. “Also, they got it from a horse.”
The crossbow bolt was still the most common ware being hawked, but no one was calling it that any longer. It had become the holy arrow instead. I supposed that sounded nicer. The buyers most likely didn’t know any better, or they were simply eager to believe that the more romantic-sounding version was the truth. Some might remember that the story had begun differently, but perhaps once they heard other people call it the holy arrow enough times, they started to doubt their memory, then started to forget.