CHAPTER 15

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Sister Kinnie bustled down the chapel aisle, accompanied by a chestnut-haired girl.

The Skylarks’ singing wavered. Celestine tried to keep her gaze fixed on Sister Noyale’s moving hands as they shaped the contours of the musical line and marked the beat. Sensing that Rozenne and Koulmia had lost concentration too, she stared at the visitor…and thus failed to notice the ominous frown wrinkling the choirmistress’s face.

“New girl,” muttered Katell and then, too late, clapped a hand over her mouth.

Sister Noyale’s dark eyes narrowed. Her hands dropped. The singing raggedly petered out. She beckoned to Katell.

Katell hesitated.

“Out here. Now.

Celestine had a sinking feeling. Sister Noyale had an implacable look that all the Skylarks knew well. At one time or another, each girl had transgressed in choir practice and learned to regret it. But impulsive Katell never seemed to remember.

“Did I hear you speak, Katell?” Sister Noyale was deliberately ignoring Sister Kinnie and the new girl.

Katell nodded, eyes lowered.

“Hold out your hands.”

Celestine instinctively clenched her own fists, knowing what must come next.

Katell held out her hands, palms up. The sharp swish of Sister Noyale’s leather strap slapped down once, twice. Celestine winced, as did the other twenty-two Skylarks, feeling the stinging pain in sympathy with Katell.

“Return to your place.” Sister Noyale placed the strap back on her music stand, her face impassive. Then she turned to Sister Kinnie and the new girl. “I will not tolerate any chatter in my rehearsals,” she said crisply, staring at the girl as she spoke. “So you must be Gauzia.”

“Demoiselle Gauzia de Saint-Désirat,” said the newcomer in a clear, cool voice. “Youngest daughter of the Vicomte de Saint-Désirat.” She stared back boldly at the choirmistress, with dark-lashed hazel eyes, more green than gold.

“So you are a vicomte’s daughter?” Sister Noyale repeated in a disparaging tone the Skylarks knew well. Celestine sensed the other girls squirming, partly in embarrassment, partly in anticipation of the put-down to come. “Here we are all equal in the eyes of God, all servants of the Blessed Azilia. And I hope for your sake that you have some semblance of a singing voice, or you’ll soon become very well acquainted with the convent kitchens.”

Gauzia seemed not in the least cowed by Sister Noyale’s chilly welcome. “What would you like me to sing for you?”

Koulmia gasped and several of the older Skylarks nudged each other. Celestine watched Gauzia, impressed in spite of herself by the new girl’s self-confidence.

“I take it that you have prepared something?”

Gauzia cleared her throat, softly hummed a single pitch, and, clasping her hands together at her breast, began to sing. Celestine recognized the melancholy cadences of the old evening hymn “Guard Us Through This Night.” Gauzia’s voice was low but strong and sweet. She had been well trained, Celestine realized with a little pang of envy; she knew exactly when to take a breath as well as how to shape a phrase. And she used her soulful eyes to good effect; Celestine observed Sister Kinnie smiling and nodding her head in time as she listened.

“Your voice is strongest in the lower register,” said Sister Noyale as Gauzia reached the end of the second verse. “Go and stand in the back row. To my right. Make room for her, Katell and Margaud.”

Gauzia stared at her, mouth a little open, as if about to object. She did not look too pleased to be placed on the back row. Then she closed her mouth, pressing her lips together. Celestine, unable to quell her curiosity, turned around to watch her. So did the rest of the front row.

Sister Noyale tapped her music stand briskly with her baton. “Any girl not looking in my direction will stay behind to polish the candlesticks instead of having her supper.”

 

In the dormitory, the Skylarks clustered around the new girl, chirping questions. Celestine found herself on the outside of the circle, unaccountably reluctant to join in.

Am I just a little jealous of her?

“No, I’m not an orphan.” Gauzia seemed so self-assured, answering as she unpacked her few belongings. “But my father made a vow that one of his children should be given to the church. I’m the youngest of six sisters. By the time he’d paid for my sisters’ dowries, there was nothing left for me.” She spoke in such a matter-of-fact tone as she shook out her woollen stockings that it sounded as if she had merely been forgotten when a tray of sweetmeats was being shared around, rather than being confined to a convent for life.

“But that’s so unfair!” cried Katell.

Gauzia shrugged. “My oldest sister died in childbirth last month. My next sister was married off to a vile-tempered colonel who stinks of brandy. My—”

“We understand, we understand,” chorused the girls.

Gauzia ignored them, staring at Celestine, the only one not joining in. “You’re very quiet. What’s your name?” The question was not framed in the friendliest of tones.

“Celestine.”

“Just Celestine?” The bold hazel eyes challenged her. “Don’t you even know your father’s name? Or perhaps you never had a father.” There was barely concealed scorn in Gauzia’s voice now. Celestine opened her mouth to reply, and then remembered. When Maman lay dying Klervie had promised her never to reveal Papa’s name. She closed her mouth again. None of the Skylarks had ever questioned her about her parentage. The Abbess had told them she was an orphan, rescued from the slums of Lutèce.

“Does it matter? We’re all orphans here,” said Rozenne, placing her arms around Celestine’s shoulders protectively. “We leave family ties outside the convent walls.”

Celestine leaned back against Rozenne, grateful beyond words that she had come to her rescue.

Gauzia shrugged and turned back to her unpacking, but not without giving Celestine a long, penetrating look. This matter was not over, Celestine sensed it, even as she nestled against Rozenne.

That night she dreamed of fire again.

The pyre burns so fiercely that she can feel the heat on her skin as she and Maman cower in a doorway. “Don’t make a sound,” warns Maman. But the stench of burning human flesh chokes her and she begins to cough and retch.

Garbed in black, the faceless soldiers seize her and start to drag her toward the flames. “Maman, save me!” she shrieks, but the shadowy crowd surges around her and her mother’s anguished face disappears from sight.

 

At first it was just a malicious glance or a snide little comment. But one rainy morning, as the Skylarks were coming out of chapel after a rehearsal punctuated by coughs and sneezing, Gauzia hurried after Celestine and Rozenne, holding out a little cloth bag.

“You’re on kitchen duty? Sister Noyale gave me these spices to put in the soup today. She says they’re medicinal and will help to cure the sore throats. But only put in three spoonfuls.”

If it was Sister Noyale’s instructions, Celestine reasoned as she stirred the black spices into the soup, it must be all right.

“Are you certain it was three spoonfuls?” Rozenne asked, ladling out the soup at lunchtime.

But when the sisters and the girls started to drink the soup, there were cries of disgust and much coughing and spluttering.

“What is the meaning of this?” Sister Noyale marched up to the two girls. “Are you trying to poison us?” Her eyes were watering. “Have you even tasted this soup?”

Celestine glanced unhappily at Rozenne. She shook her head.

“Try it now,” insisted Sister Noyale.

Reluctantly, Celestine lifted a spoonful to her mouth and swallowed. It burned like fire. “P—pepper,” she wheezed.

“You can pour the soup down the drain; not even the pigs will touch it. Then you can spend the afternoon scrubbing out the washrooms and latrines. Perhaps that will teach you both to take more care with your cooking and not waste good ingredients!”

 

As Celestine straightened up to stretch her aching back, she saw Gauzia watching her and Rozenne from the washroom doorway, a little smile on her lips.

“You set us up!” said Rozenne. “You told us to put three spoonfuls in the soup.”

“Oh, did I say three spoonfuls? How silly of me; I must have got mixed up. I think Sister Noyale said three pinches. You really shouldn’t pay any attention to me, I know nothing about kitchen work. That was all done by the servants…” Gauzia’s knowing expression belied the innocent tone of her voice as she walked off.

“That stuck-up demoiselle Gauzia. Her kind just makes me so—so angry.

Celestine looked in surprise at Rozenne. Her friend was sitting back on her haunches, scrubbing brush in hand, staring into the middle distance. Even-tempered, always ready to greet everyone she met with a smile or a kind word, Rozenne was never angry.

“Her kind?” ventured Celestine.

“She’s a noble’s child. She’s had an easy life. She’s never had to go without food or shoes…or a safe place to sleep at night. She has no cause to mock those less fortunate than herself.”

Celestine nodded, pressing her hand over her stomach. “Hunger hurts.” She would never forget how it felt to go without food from one day’s end to the next, that desperate, gnawing, all-pervading emptiness. She looked up to see Rozenne still lost in memory.

“It hurts all the more when you know your father is living a fine life, while you go without.”

Your father?” Rozenne had not once spoken of her family. “Your father is still alive?”

Rozenne shrugged and dipped her brush in the water, scrubbing a new patch of floor with vigor. “My mother was maid to a great lady in Lutèce. She looked after her fine clothes, dressed her hair. But the lady’s husband fell in love with my mother. When the lady discovered what had been happening, she turned my mother out without a sou. My mother had to go to the Salpêtrière, where I was born. They made her work very hard. When I was five, she died of consumption.”

“Oh, Rozenne.” So they had both lost their mothers to sickness. “But how did you come here?”

“She was always writing letters to my father. She told him that he should look after me, his daughter, if anything ever happened to her. She used to cry whenever she mentioned his name.”

“You know who he is?”

“He’s one of the convent benefactors. So he arranged for me to come here. But on one condition: that I never tell anyone that he’s my father. I’m not supposed to know. Only the Abbess knows.”

Celestine tried to imagine what it must feel like to be in Rozenne’s place. She knew she would not be satisfied with just a name, she would yearn to discover everything about her negligent father. “But have you ever seen him? Has he been here?”

Rozenne nodded. “Once he came here on Saint Azilia’s Day. With his wife and daughters.”

“Your sisters?”

“Half sisters.”

“How can you bear to know that?” cried Celestine. “How can you sing so sweetly, Rozenne, when you know that he wronged you and your mother?”

“I just can.” Rozenne bent over her scrubbing. “Sister Kinnie says we must learn to endure. She says such wise things. I want to be like her, one day.”

“Endure?” Celestine sat back on her heels. The pyre flames from her dream suddenly flared across her mind. “I don’t think I could ever learn to do that. There are things that I’ll never be able to forget—or forgive.”

 

“Dear sisters, I have exciting news.” The Abbess’s voice trembled as she addressed the nuns and novices in the chapel. “We are to entertain a visitor. A very special visitor. Captain de Lanvaux is to celebrate Saint Azilia’s Day with us.”

Katell nudged Celestine sharply in the ribs. “Look, she’s blushing!” Celestine looked and saw that Katell was right. A rosy flush had suffused the Abbess’s skin when she mentioned the captain’s name. “The good captain has just returned from a pilgrimage to Saint Sergius’s Shrine in Azhkendir and he has generously agreed to tell us about his journey. And so, even though it is our blessed Azilia’s Day, Sister Noyale has decided to add an extra choral work to honor our guest. ‘Hymn to Saint Sergius’ by…by…” The Abbess glanced pleadingly at Sister Noyale, obviously having forgotten the significant details.

“By an Allegondan composer, Talfieri. It has a demanding solo part too, so I shall be testing all our strongest singers,” and Sister Noyale’s keen gaze swept across the girls, “to see who is the most suitable.”

“It should be you,” Katell mouthed at Celestine.

Celestine shook her head. She was not sure she was ready for a demanding solo.

The instant the girls came out into the convent courtyard, they all began to chatter at once.

“They say the captain’s very handsome,” said Rozenne, with a yearning sigh. “And courageous too…”

My father thinks the king favors him over Maistre Donatien.” Gauzia’s voice, full of self-importance, carried over the others.

“Has your father been to court?” asked Koulmia, wide-eyed. “Has he met the king?”

“Well, of course he has, he’s a nobleman,” came back Gauzia’s tart reply.

“And you? Have you been to the Palais de Plaisaunces?” Skylarks crowded eagerly around her. “Or Belle Garde?”

“Well, I’ve seen King Gobain and Queen Aliénor.” Gauzia gave a toss of her chestnut curls. “And Crown Prince Aubrey. He’s so good-looking. Dark-haired, like his father, broad-shouldered…” Several Skylarks let out squeals of excitement.

“You should be the one to sing solo, Gauzia,” said Koulmia fervently.

“Koulmia!” Katell tugged her plait hard.

“What was that for?” Koulmia said.

“What about our Celestine? Huh! Call yourself a friend?”

Celestine turned hastily away, but not before she had seen Gauzia fix her with a penetrating stare.


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Ruaud de Lanvaux surveyed the congregation and wondered what he was doing addressing this avid audience of nuns and little girls. For it could not just be an illusion created by the golden shimmer of candleflames; he was certain that all the eyes staring at him shone with an air of almost…adoration. Certainly the atmosphere in the flower-garlanded chapel was uncannily hushed; not even one of the little girls had coughed as they gazed up at him. He recovered himself and murmured a prayer to Saint Azilia before he began his talk.

“Sisters,” he began, and saw them all eagerly lean forward. “I have recently returned from a long journey. A hazardous pilgrimage that took me through a wild and barbaric land to find the last resting place of the bones of the patron saint of my order: the Blessed Sergius.” As he spoke, he soon forgot the adoring eyes, losing himself in vivid memories of his travels: the icy White Sea, the sinister pine forests, the grey desolation of the Arkhel Waste…

 

“Who is your new little songbird, Abbess?” Ruaud asked after the service. “When she sings, that girl has a radiant, luminous quality…almost as if she were not of this world.”

“It is you we have to thank for bringing her to us,” said the Abbess, smiling fondly at him.

Ruaud blinked. “She’s not that poor, half-starved little scrap I found wandering in the slums!” The snow-chilled memories of Azhkendir melted away as he saw again the ragged child wander blindly out in front of Tinidor, clutching her Lives of the Holy Saints. Those matted locks, framing a thin, dirt-streaked face, those blue eyes, dulled with despair and fever…

“The very same.”

“You and the sisters have wrought a miracle.” There was no suggestion of flattery in his words; he was genuinely amazed that in a few years his little foundling had blossomed into this angel-voiced girl. “May I see her?”

 

“Don’t be shy.” The Abbess beamed indulgently at Celestine as she hovered at the entrance to the parlor, uncertain as to why she had been summoned. “Captain de Lanvaux asked to see you.”

Celestine ventured in, keeping her gaze fixed on the painted floor tiles, not daring to raise her head. She saw the captain’s travel-worn leather boots and the long scabbard that hung from his belt. She saw the black jacket of his Guerrier’s uniform—the same uniform worn by the men who had arrested her father. Searing hatred burned through her at the sight as the memories she had tried to suppress flared up, fierce as the flames of her father’s pyre.

“Don’t be afraid,” said the captain gently.

How could anyone wearing that hated uniform speak with such warmth and sincerity?

“You owe Captain de Lanvaux your life,” said the Abbess. “It was he who found you, ill and abandoned, and brought you to us.”

Celestine slowly raised her head. “You rescued me?” She dared to look into his face and saw that he had tempered his steely gaze and was regarding her kindly.

“You don’t remember me, do you, Celestine? Tinidor and I carried you here.” His weather-tanned face crinkled into a smile.

“Tinidor?” She repeated the unfamiliar name mechanically.

“My charger. He’s stabled here today. Would you like to meet him again? You could give him an apple; he loves apples.”

“You saved my life?” Celestine was still trying to come to terms with the fact that one of the men who had destroyed her father had also been her savior.

“And having heard you sing today, I am doubly glad that I did so. You have a real gift, a God-given gift, Celestine. If you continue to work hard at your singing, I’m sure you will be chosen to sing in the royal chapel one day.”

Celestine hardly heard the compliments. She was staring at the golden insignia on the collar, lapels, and cuffs of the uniform jacket.

“What do those mean?” she asked, pointing.

“Celestine!” Abbess Ermengarde said in shocked tones. “You mustn’t speak so rudely to the captain.”

“These?” Captain de Lanvaux beckoned Celestine closer. “This is the badge of the Order of Saint Sergius. Can you see the emblem of his crook? The crook with which he fought the Dragon of Azhkendir?”

Celestine had not been so close to a man since she entered the convent. Now, standing at the captain’s side, examining the gilt buttons on his cuff, she felt overwhelmed. His skin exuded a different scent from the clean, soap-scrubbed smell of the Sisters, strong and rich as leather, salty like a breeze off the bay. She was aware of the slight hint of fair stubble on his tanned face, and remembered the roughness of her father’s cheek when he kissed her good night…

The Guerriers who had arrested her father had worn different insignia on their black jackets.

“Then what do the emerald badges mean?”

“Emerald?” A puzzled look came over his face. “Ah. You must have seen the Guerriers of the Inquisition. But when—”

“The Inquisition,” Celestine repeated slowly so that she should not forget. “What is the Inquisition?”

The Abbess clapped her hands sharply. “That’s quite enough questions, child! Isn’t there something you have to say to Captain de Lanvaux?”

Celestine wrenched her thoughts away from the black-clad shadows that still stalked her nightmares. Now they had a name: the Guerriers of the Inquisition. She was glad that Captain de Lanvaux was not one of their number. She raised her face to his again and, dazzled by the affectionate look he gave her, whispered, “Thank you, Captain de Lanvaux, for saving my life.”

 

Tinidor let out an uneasy whinny and stamped one of his great hooves as Ruaud came into the stables.

“What’s up, old fellow?” Ruaud stroked the charger’s shaggy mane to calm him.

“Good evening, Captain.” A dark-haired man appeared, his features half-illumined by the gilded aura of lamplight. How had he got in past the sentry? “Don’t worry; I’m not an assassin.” He smiled, revealing dazzlingly white teeth.

“If you were an assassin, I’d be dead by now.” Ruaud spoke self-deprecatingly but inwardly he cursed himself for being so careless about his personal security.

“I make it my business to come and go unannounced, unseen. Let me introduce myself; my name is Abrissard. Fabien d’Abrissard.”

Ruaud looked coldly at the stranger. “Should I know you?”

“The reason you’ve never seen me before, Captain, is that my job is to remain invisible. I and my kind deal with matters others would rather not dirty their hands with.”

“You’re a spy?”

“‘Spy’ is such a crude term,” said Abrissard fastidiously. “We prefer to refer to ourselves as agents of the crown. And our royal master asked me to have a little word with you before you take on your new role as Prince Enguerrand’s tutor.”

“So his majesty doesn’t have complete confidence in me?”

“On the contrary. He chose you himself, purposely going against her majesty’s advice.”

“Let me guess; the queen favored Maistre Donatien?”

“It’s no secret that she relies on Maistre Donatien rather too much since her brother’s death.”

“Is Prince Enguerrand in any danger?”

“No. But, as his tutor, you may be. There are dangerous undercurrents, Captain, beneath the smooth-flowing waters of court life. Old allies may come to see you as an unexpected obstacle to their ambitions.”

“I see.” Ruaud heard the warning concealed in Abrissard’s metaphorical language.

“Just take this as a friendly piece of advice.” And with an enigmatic smile, the agent of the crown was gone, slipping into the night as swiftly as he had arrived, leaving Ruaud with more questions than answers.