In the courtyard, the abbot was waiting for me, with the brothers and the nuns standing around him in a circle. At his side, the priest, his silver cross gleaming in the pale light, his hands folded. Among the nuns I caught sight of my little novice, but her face was averted, and remained so. Others bore expressions of pity, dismay, or vague excitement; there was an atmosphere of breathless expectancy.

Then the abbot stood aside and I saw what he had been concealing. A brazier, heated to buttercup yellow under the banked embers, and a brother, with heavy gloves to protect his hands and arms from the heat, now hauling the iron from beneath the coals.

A sigh rose from the ranks, almost of pleasure. Ahhhh.

Then the newcomer spoke. I don’t remember much of what he said; I was too preoccupied with the scene before me. My eyes returned again to the brazier in disbelief; to the small square iron heated to the color of your hair. Dimly I began to understand; I struggled, but was held; a brother pulled up my sleeve to expose bare flesh.

It was at this point that I recanted. There’s pride, and there’s stupidity, after all. But it was too late. The abbot looked away, grimacing; his brother took a step closer to me and whispered something in my ear, just as the iron made its dreadful contact.

I have occasionally prided myself on a certain turn of phrase. Some things, however, can never be adequately described. Suffice it to say that I feel it still, and the words he spoke to me in that moment lit a spark that still endures.

Perhaps, Monseigneur, I owe you something; after all, you spared my life. But a cloistered life is no life at all, as Juliette could no doubt tell you, and to be expelled from mine was probably the best thing that could have happened to me. Not that you acted out of any concern for me. In fact, you doubted I’d survive. What skills did I have? Latin; reading; a certain natural perverseness. That served me well, if nothing else; you wanted me dead, so I decided to live. Even then, you see, I was shameless. So was born the Blackbird, strident and indomitable, flinging his idiot song in the faces of those who despised him, raiding their orchards beneath their very noses.

As Guy LeMerle I returned to Court. My enemy was a bishop now, the Bishop of Évreux. I should have known a simple parish would not have contained him long. Monseigneur wanted more. He wanted the Court; more than that, he wanted the ear of the king. There were too many Huguenots around Henri for his liking; it offended his exquisite sensibilities. And what glory to the house of Arnault-in heaven and on earth-if he were to bring a royal lamb back to the fold!

Once burned, twice shy. Not in my case. I escaped the second time, but narrowly. I could almost smell the reek of burning feathers. Well, this time it’s my turn. They say Nero fiddled whilst Rome burned. Paltry fellow that he must have been with his one fiddle. When my time comes I’ll greet Monseigneur d‘Évreux with a whole damned orchestra.

I was sweating. My hand was unsteady on her breast. My pain was scented with flowers. It colored my tale with truth, Juliette. I saw her eyes widen with pity and understanding. The rest was easy. Revenge, after all, is something we can both understand.

“Revenge?”

“I want to humiliate him.” Answer with care, LeMerle. Answer so that she believes you. “I want him to be implicated in a scandal that even his influence cannot suppress. I want him ruined.”

She gave me a sharp look. “But why now? Why now, after all this time?”

“I saw an opportunity.” This, like the rest of my tale, is close to the truth. “But a wise man makes his own opportunities, just as a good cardplayer makes his own luck. And I am a very good player, Juliette.”

“There’s still time to change your mind,” she said. “Only harm can come of such a plan. Harm to yourself, to Isabelle, to the abbey. Can you not leave things as they are and free yourself from the past?” She lowered her eyes. “I might come with you,” she said. “If you decided to go.”

A tempting offer. But I had invested too much in this to turn back. I shook my head in genuine regret. “A week,” I said softly. “Give me a week.”

“What about Clémente? You can’t drug her forever.”

“You need not fear Clémente.”

Juliette looked at me suspiciously. “I won’t let you harm her. Or anyone else.”

“I won’t. Trust me.”

“I mean it, Guy. If anyone else is harmed-by you, or on your orders-”

“Trust me.”

Almost inconceivable, that I should be forgiven. Yet her smile tells me that haply all might be as it was. Guy LeMerle-if I were only he-might have taken that offer. Next week will be too late; by then there will be more blood on my hands than even she could absolve.

The air was cool, and there were livid smears of false dawn on the night’s palette. Soon the bell would chime for Vigils. But my head was too full for sleep, still ringing as it was with LeMerle’s words.

What was this? Some witchcraft, some drug slipped to me as I slept? Could it be that I believed him now, that in some way he could have regained my trust? Silently I berated myself. What I had said-what I had done-was said and done for Fleur. Whatever I had promised was for both of us. As for the rest-I shook aside visions of myself and LeMerle on the road again, friends again, maybe lovers…That would never happen. Never.

I wished I had my cards with me, but Antoine had hidden them well; my search of her bedroll and of her place in the bakehouse had revealed nothing. Instead I thought of Giordano and tried to hear his voice over the pounding of my heart. More than ever I need your logic now, old friend. Nothing discomposed your ordered, geometric world. Loss, death, famine, love…The wheels that turn the universe left you unmoved. In your numbers and calibrations you glimpsed the secret names of God.

Tsk-tsk, begone! But my cantrips are useless in the face of this greater magic. Tomorrow night at moonrise I will pick rosemary and lavender for protection and clear thinking. I will make a charm of rose leaves and sea salt and tie it with a red ribbon and carry it in my pocket. I will think of Fleur. And I will not meet his eyes.

Clémente was not at Matins this morning, nor at Lauds. Her absence was not mentioned, but I noticed that Soeur Virginie was also excused from prayers, and drew my own conclusions. The drug was working, then. The question was, for how long?

Such was the speculation about Soeur Clémente that it was some hours before I noticed that Alfonsine, too, was absent. At the time I did not give it much thought; Alfonsine had recently become very friendly with Soeur Virginie and had offered to help her on a number of occasions. Besides, LeMerle was so often in the infirmary block that Alfonsine needed no other reason to haunt it.

But at Prime, Virginie came alone, and with news. Clémente was very sick, she said; she had fallen into a deep lethargy from which nothing was able to rouse her, and had been running a high fever since dawn. Piété shook her head and swore she had suspected the cholera all along; Antoine smiled serenely. Marguerite declared that we were all bewitched, and suggested a harsher system of penances.

But there was more unwelcome news. Alfonsine too was ill once more. In her case there was no fever, but she was unusually pale and had been coughing fitfully for most of the night. Bleeding had seemed to quiet her a little, but she was still very listless and would not eat. Mère Isabelle had been to visit her and had declared her unfit for duties, although Alfonsine had tried to persuade her she was quite well. But any fool could see it was the cameras de sangre, declared Soeur Virginie; and unless the bad blood was drained away, the patient would surely die within the week.