As expected, my affairs proceed according to plan. Mère Isabelle remains docile-for the present. She spends much of her time in prayer, heedless of her increasingly unruly flock.

Access to Clémente is limited, for even I can hardly dose the girl continuously, and her ravings have become increasingly violent.

Instead, I build upon my pupil’s fears with various lore and nonsense culled from a hundred books both sacred and profane. Whilst seeming to lull her terrors I artfully nourish them with anecdotes and fancies. The world is filled with horrors; you name it-burnings, poisonings, bewitchings, and evil enchantments; Père Colombin knows it, and he knows exactly how to bring the horrors to life. A checkered career may provide useful fuel for such deceits; after all, I even met the famous juris-consult Jean Bodin at one of Mme. de Sévigné‘s soirées-and was thoroughly bored by the lengthiness of his discourse-the rest I borrowed from the great fictions of history. Aeschylus, Plutarch, the Bible…Clémente herself is quite unaware that the demoniac names she utters in her frenzies are for the most part merely the secret, forgotten names of God, reborn as blasphemies in her tortured brain.

My pupil has hardly slept for days. Her eyes are sunken and red. Her mouth is pale as a scar. Sometimes I see her watching me, she thinks in secret. I wonder if she suspects. In any case, it is too late for her. A dose of Clémente’s morning glories would be enough to kill her revolt, though I would only administer it in dire emergency. I want it to come to Arnault from a blue sky. The end of his hopes. Irrevocable.

Ironically, my pupil now takes what comfort she can at the prospect of Sunday’s treat, the long-awaited Festival of the Virgin. Now that our abbey has been reclaimed from the apostate saint, Marie-de-la-mer, we should be able to count on a personal intervention from the Holy Mother in our regrettable affairs. So she thinks, anyway, and redoubles her prayers. Meanwhile, I work on our spiritual defenses with many Latin incantations and a great quantity of incense. No demonic force must be allowed to penetrate our abbey on its holiest day.

Juliette came to find me in my rooms early this morning. I knew she might, and I was ready for her, raising my head from a stack of books to face her. She was fiercely prim in her clean, starched linen, not a stray curl softening the line of her pale, set face. This was about Perette, I told myself warily, and I must tread lightly.

“Juliette. Is the sun up already? The room seems brighter than it was a moment ago.”

Her expression told me that now was not the time for flattery. “Please.” Her voice was sharp, but with anxiety, I noticed, rather than anger. “You have to keep Perette out of this. She doesn’t understand the danger. Think of the risk, if she were to be found out!” Then, as I said nothing: “Really, LeMerle, you must see that she’s only a child!”

Ay, that was it. That was the mother in her. I tried misdirection. “Isabelle is feeling unwell,” I said gently. “While she rests in her rooms, I might arrange for you-and Antoine-to slip out for a time. To take a basket of food to-for example-a poor fisherman and his family?”

She looked at me for a second, and I could see the hunger in her eyes. Then she shook her head. “That’s very like you, LeMerle,” she said without heat. “And what would happen with me out of the way? Another Apparition? Another Dancing Mass?” She shook her head again. “I know you,” she said softly. “Nothing is free. You’d want something in return, then something more, then-”

I interrupted her. “My dear, you mistake my intentions. I made the suggestion out of concern for you, nothing more. You’re no danger to me, Juliette; you’re already as guilty as I am.”

She lifted her chin at that. “I?” But there was fear in her eyes.

“Your silence alone is proof of guilt. You recognized the Unholy Nun. And have you forgotten the business with the well? Or the poisoning of Soeur Clémente? And as for your vow of chastity…” I let the phrase hang maliciously.

She was silent, her cheeks flaring.

“Believe me,” I said, “a charge of witchcraft might be leveled upon you for any one of these things. And we have long since passed the point where you could have damaged me. No one alive could turn them against me now.”

She knew it was true.

“I am the rock,” I told her. “The anchor in the storm. To suspect me is unthinkable.”

There was a long pause. “I should have spoken when I had the chance,” said Juliette. I was not mistaken by her angry tone; her eyes were almost admiring.

“You wouldn’t have done it, my dear.”

Her eyes told me she knew that too.

“Perette has been very useful to me during the past weeks,” I said. “She’s quick-almost as quick as you were, Juliette-and she’s clever. She hid in the crypt, you know, the first time you saw the Unholy Nun. All the time you were searching she was there, curled up behind one of the coffins.”

Juliette shivered.

“But if you’re so concerned about her, then maybe-” I pretended to hesitate. “No. I need her still, Juliette. I cannot give her up. Not even to please you.”

She took the bait. “You said there was a way.”

“Impossible.”

“Guy!”

“No, really. I should never have spoken.”

“Please!”

I never could resist her pleading. An exhilarating delicacy, seldom tasted. I pretended reluctance in order to savor the moment. “Well, I suppose you might…”

“What?”

“If you agreed to take her place.”

There. The trap swings shut with an almost audible click. She ponders it for a moment. No fool she. She knows how she has been maneuvered. But there is the child…

“Fleur was never on the mainland,” I told her gently. “I placed her with a family not three miles from here. You could see her within the hour if only-”

“I won’t poison anyone,” said Juliette.

“That won’t be necessary.”

She was beginning to weaken. “If I agree,” she said, “you swear Perette’s involvement will cease?”

“Of course.” I pride myself on my look of honesty. This is the true, open look of a man who never cocked a card or loaded a die in all his life. Amazing that after all these years it still works.

“Three days,” I said, sensing her resistance. “Three days till Sunday. Then it ends. I promise.”

“Three days,” she echoed.

“After that, Fleur can come home for good,” I said. “You can have everything back as it was. Or-if you like-you can come with me.”

Her eyes shone-with scorn or passion, I could not tell-but she said nothing.

“Would it really be so bad?” I said gently. “To take to the road again? To be l’Ailée-to be back where you belong”-I lowered my voice to a whisper-“back where I need you?”

There was silence, but I felt her relax, just a little, just enough. I touched her cheek fleetingly. “Three days,” I repeated. “What can happen in three days?”

Rather a lot, I hope.