Le Merle followed her to the dorter, the sisters flocking at his back like a clutch of hens. He had always been good at hiding his anger, but I could see it in the way he moved. He did not look at me. Instead, his eyes flicked repeatedly to Clémente, trotting alongside Isabelle with her face modestly averted. Let him draw what conclusions he would, I thought; for myself, I had little doubt as to the identity of the informant. Perhaps she had seen me coming from his cottage last night; perhaps it was simply her instinctive malice. In any case, she followed with deceptive meekness as Mère Isabelle, looking nervous but defiant, led us straight to the loose stone at the back of my cubicle. “It’s there,” she announced.

“Show me.”

She reached for the stone and worked at it with her small, uncertain fingers. The stone held fast. Mentally, I enumerated the contents of my cache. The tarot game; my tinctures and medicines; my journal. That in itself was enough to condemn me-to condemn us both. I wondered if LeMerle knew of it; he seemed calm, but all of his body was tensed and ready. I wondered whether he would try to make a run for it-he had more than a fighting chance-or whether he would risk a bluff. A bluff, I thought, was more his style. Well, two could play at that.

“Are we all to be searched?” I said in a clear voice. “If so, may I suggest that Clémente’s mattress might bear investigation?”

Clémente gave me a dirty look, and a number of the sisters looked uneasy. I knew for a fact that at least half of them were hiding something.

But Isabelle was undeterred. “I will decide who is to be searched,” she said. “For the moment-” She frowned impatiently as she struggled with the loose stone.

“Let me do it,” said LeMerle. “You seem to be having some difficulty.”

The stone came away easily beneath his cardplayer’s fingers, and he pulled it out and laid it aside on the bed. Then he reached into the space. “It’s empty,” he said.

Isabelle and Clémente turned toward him with identical looks of disbelief. “Let me see!” said Isabelle.

The Blackbird stepped aside with an ironic flourish. Isabelle pushed past him, and her little face contorted as she saw the empty cache. Behind her, Clémente was shaking her head. “But it was right there-” she began.

LeMerle looked at her. “So you’re the one who has been spreading rumors.”

Clémente’s eyes widened.

“Malicious, unfounded rumors to breed suspicion and to bring down our fellowship.”

“No,” whispered Clémente.

But LeMerle had already moved away, searching along the rows of cubicles. “What might you be hiding, Soeur Clémente, I wonder? What will I find beneath your mattress?”

“Please,” said Clémente, white to the lips.

But the sisters around her had already begun to take up the bedroll. Clémente began to wail. Mère Isabelle watched, teeth clenched.

Suddenly there came a cry of triumph. “Look!” It was Antoine. She was holding a pencil in her fist. A black grease pencil, of the type that had been used to deface the statues. And there was more: a clutch of red rags, some with the black stitching still visible-the crosses that had been maliciously removed from our clothes as we slept.

There was a heavy silence as every nun who had been obliged to do penance for the damage turned her eyes on Clémente. Then they all started shouting at once. Antoine, who had always been quicker with her hands than with her voice, dealt Clémente a sharp slap, which tumbled her against the side of the cubicle.

“You milksop bitch!” yelled Piété, grabbing a handful of Clémente’s wimple. “Thought it was funny, did you?”

Clémente struggled and squealed, turning instinctively to LeMerle for help. But Antoine was already upon her, knocking her to the ground. There had been tension between them earlier, I recalled, some foolishness in Chapter.

Now Isabelle turned to LeMerle in distress. “Stop them,” she wailed above the noise. “Oh, mon père, please stop them!”

The Blackbird looked at her coldly. “You began this,” he said. “You drove them to this. Didn’t you see I was trying to calm them?”

“But you said there were no demons-”

He hissed at her. “Of course there are demons! But now was not the time to reveal all! If you had only listened-”

“I’m sorry! Please stop them, please!”

But the scuffle was already at an end. Clémente crouched on the ground, her hands over her eyes whilst Antoine stood above her, red-faced and nose bleeding. Both were out of breath; around them, sisters who had not raised a finger to aid either party were panting in sympathy. I ventured a quick glance at LeMerle, but he was at his most cryptic, and his expression betrayed nothing of his thoughts. I knew I had not imagined it, however, that moment of surprise when he saw the empty cache. Someone had cleared it without his knowledge; I was sure of it.

Clémente and Antoine were both taken to the infirmary, on LeMerle’s orders, and I was put to work in the bakehouse for the rest of the day, where, for three hours, my toils afforded me little enough time for thought. During that time, I made the dough in batches, shaped the long loaves on the trays, shoved them into the deep, narrow bays, so like the dark cells in the crypt where the coffins are laid to rest.

I tried not to recall the morning’s events, but my mind returned to them again and again. Alfonsine’s dance, the swaying bodies, the frenzied beginnings of possession. And the moment when LeMerle’s eyes met mine, even then so close to laughter but behind the laughter a kind of fear, like a man on a wild horse who knows he will be thrown but who can still laugh with sheer delight at the chase.

For a time I had been certain he would not speak for me. He had lost control somehow, though I was sure that the madness was part of his plan. It would have been so easy for him to allow the blame to fall upon me, to use it to bring his followers to heel. But he had not. Absurd to feel gratitude. I should hate him for what he has done to me, to all of us. And yet…

I had almost completed the morning’s work. I was alone, I had my back to the door and was cleaning out ash from the last of the ovens with a long wooden slat. I turned at the sound of her footsteps. Somehow I already knew who it was.

She had taken a risk coming to me, but not such a great one; the infirmary lay just alongside the bakehouse, and I guessed she must have climbed the wall. The midday heat was still blinding; most of the sisters would be indoors. “No one saw me,” said Soeur Antoine, as if to confirm my thoughts. “And we need to talk.”

The change I had begun to see in her a week ago was more pronounced now; her face looked leaner, her cheekbones defined, her mouth hard and determined. She would never be a slender woman, but now her fleshiness seemed powerful rather than soft, thick slabs of red muscle sheathed in the fat.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I told her. “If Soeur Virginie finds out you’re here-”

“Clémente will talk,” said Antoine. “I’ve been listening to her in the infirmary all morning. She knows about Fleur. She knows about you.”

“Antoine, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Go back to-”

“Will you listen?” she hissed. “I’m on your side. Who do you think took those things from behind the loose stone?” I stared at her. “What?” said Antoine. “You think I’m too stupid to know about your hiding place? Poor, fat, stupid Soeur Antoine who wouldn’t know an intrigue if she fell over it during the night? I see more than you think, Soeur Auguste.”

“Where did you hide my things? My cards, and-”

Antoine shook a plump finger. “Quite safe, ma soeur, quite hidden. But I’m not ready to give them back just yet. After all, you owe me a favor.”