Fleur was waiting for me, as LeMerle had promised, not three miles from the abbey. A salter’s croft, built low to the ground, with a turf roof and walls of whitened daub, screened from view by a row of tamarisk bushes; I could have passed by it a hundred times and not seen it. Behind the croft, a shaggy pony cropped grass; beside it, a wooden hutch housed half a dozen brown rabbits. All around, the ditches of the salt marsh formed a kind of shallow moat, in which a couple of flat-bottomed platts were moored for access to the fields. Herons stood in the reeds at the water’s edge; in the long yellow grass I heard the scree of cicadas.

LeMerle, knowing that I would not abandon Perette, had seen no need to accompany me this time. Instead he sent Antoine as my guard, eyes narrowed in sly complicity beneath the sweat-stained wimple. I wondered if I was hers. The poisoner and the murderer, arm in arm, like inseparable friends. Fleur’s eyes lit up as she saw me, and I clasped her to my heart as if so doing I could merge our flesh into one and so never be parted. Her skin is soft and brown, startlingly dark against her flaxen hair. Her beauty almost alarms me. She was wearing her red dress, now grown a little short for her, and she had a fresh scrape on one knee.

“Sunday,” I whispered in her ear. “If all goes well, I’ll be here on Sunday. At noon, wait for me here by the tamarisk bushes. Don’t tell anyone. Don’t let anyone know I’m coming.”

Of course, LeMerle had tricked me. As soon as I returned from my visit to Fleur I knew from the reek of incense and burning that he had been at work on them once again. There had been another Dancing Mass, said Soeur Piété excitedly, more frenzied even than the first; pressed for explanations she spoke of their raptures, of her own possession by a lustful imp, of howlings and animal noises uttered by the unfortunates driven to their knees by the army of demons unleashed in rage against the Holy Sacrament.

With tears in her eyes she spoke too of Soeur Marguerite, of how in spite of her prayers she was forced to dance until her feet bled, and of Père Colombin, of his purification by fire of the infested air, of his struggle with the forces of evil until he too was brought to his knees in his attempt to wrestle them to the ground.

Mère Isabelle was with him now, revealed Piété. As the evil spell had begun to fall from the congregation, as the nuns, released from their frenzies by the sound of his voice, began to turn toward one another in wonder and bewilderment, Père Colombin had fallen to his knees, swooning, the pages of the Ritus exorcizandi slipping from his fingers. A minute of chaos as the bereft and panic-stricken nuns thronged to his aid, certain he had himself succumbed to the forces of darkness…

But it was merely exhaustion, explained Piété. To the relief of the nuns, Père Colombin managed to raise himself to his feet, held on either side by a member of his faithful flock. Raising a trembling hand, he declared himself in need of rest and allowed himself to be borne off to his cottage, where even now he rests, surrounded by books and holy artifacts, working on a further solution to the ills that plague us.

It must have been a fine show. A rehearsal, I supposed, for Sunday’s opening performance, but why had LeMerle arranged for me to be absent? Could it be, in spite of his bold words, that somehow he fears what I may discover? Is there some part of this performance that LeMerle does not want me to see?

Alfonsine has been officially pronounced possessed. So far the demons of her infestation number fifty-five, though Père Colombin swears there are more. The ritual of exorcism may not be completed until every one of these has been named, and the walls of his cottage are papered with lists to which he is constantly adding more names. Virginie too has acquired a pale and haggard look and has been seen on several occasions walking in tiny circles around the walled garden and muttering to herself. When asked to stop and rest she merely looks up with an air of terrible calm and says “no, no” before reverting to her interminable circling. Rumor has it that it is only a matter of time before she too is declared a victim of the infestation.

Mère Isabelle has still not left her rooms. LeMerle denies that she is possessed, but with so little optimism that few of us are convinced. A brazier of coals has been lit outside the chapel, on which have been scattered sanctuary incense and various powerful herbs. So far, this has served to protect us from renewed attack. Another burner was placed outside the infirmary, and yet another at the abbey gates. The smoke is sweet when fresh but turns sour very quickly, and the air, already stifling, hangs like dusty curtains across the white-hot sky.

As for the Apparitions, the Unholy Nun has been seen twice today and three times yesterday, once in the dorter, twice in the slype and twice more in the gardens. No one has yet commented that the Nun seems oddly grown in stature, or has noticed the large footprints she left in a vegetable patch. Perhaps by now such things are no longer meaningful to us.

We spent the rest of today in idleness not unlike that which followed the death of the old Reverend Mother. Mère Isabelle was unwell, LeMerle was studying, and robbed of our direction we once more fell into the roles to which we were accustomed, our thoughts returning to the events of the last week with increasing fear and anxiety. Our ship drifted rudderless toward the rocks and we were powerless to stop it, turning instead to gossip and unhealthy self-examination.

Soeur Marguerite scrubbed the already spotless floors of the dorter until her knees bled. Then she scrubbed the blood with increasing frenzy until she was returned to the infirmary for examination. Soeur Marie-Madeleine lay upon her bed, whimpering and complaining of itching between her legs that no amount of scratching could assuage. Antoine left the confines of the infirmary-there were now four sufferers there, strapped to their couches, and the noise, she said, was driving her mad-and regaled me with gruesome details, embellished no doubt to considerable effect. In spite of myself I listened.

Soeur Alfonsine, she says, is very ill. The smoke from the brazier, far from cleansing her lungs, seemed to have exacerbated her condition. Soeur Virginie takes this as a sign of possession, for the afflicted woman has been coughing up more blood than ever before, in spite of her cures and LeMerle’s frequent visits.

As for Soeur Clémente, reports Antoine, for three days she has taken no food and hardly any water. So weak that she can barely move, she looks at the ceiling with glazed, unseeing eyes. Her lips move, but senselessly. It will be a merciful release.

“What did she do to you, Antoine?” The question was out of me before I knew it. “What harm did she do to you, that you hate her so much?”

Antoine looked at me. I suddenly recalled the one moment in which I thought her beautiful-the thick sheaf of blue-black hair released from the wimple, the roundness of her rosy shoulders, her soft nape as LeMerle reached for the shears. She has changed beyond recognition since then. Her face was like basalt, remote and pitiless.

“You never did understand, Auguste,” she said with mild contempt. “You tried to be kind to me in your way, but you never understood.” She surveyed me for a moment, hands on hips. “How could you? You always had it easy. Men looked at you and saw something they wanted. Something beautiful.” She smiled, but the smile darkened her face rather than illuminating it. “I was always the dray horse, the fat slut, too stupid to hear their laughter, too good-natured even to hate them in my secret heart. To the men, just meat, just enough warmth for a quick fumble, just a pair of legs, a pair of tits, a mouth and a belly. To the women I was stupid, too stupid to keep a man, too stupid even to-” She broke off abruptly. “I never cared about the father. Never asked myself who he was. My child was all my own. No one even suspected the fat slut was with child at all. My belly was always round. My tits were always heavy. I’d planned to have it in secret, to hide it perhaps, to keep it mine.” Her eyes were suddenly hard. “It was going to be the one thing I really owned. All mine. Needing me, not caring that I was fat or stupid.” She looked at me. “You might have known how to carry it off. Don’t think I ever believed in your tale, Auguste. I may be stupid, but even I know you were no more a rich widow than I was.” She smiled, not unkindly, but without warmth. “You kept your child, fatherless or no. There was no one to tell you what to do, or if there was, you ignored them. Isn’t that so?”