Arms around my daughter, I close my eyes again. But my peace is gone. Five years of peace dispelled like smoke in an instant-and for what? A bird, a memory, a glimpse of something from the corner of my eye? And yet the Reverend Mother died. What of it? She was old. Her life was over. There is no reason to believe that he is in any way linked to this. And yet, Giordano taught me that all life is linked; that all terrestrial things are made from the same elemental clay; man, woman, stone, water, tree, bird. It was heresy. But Giordano believed it. One day he would find it, he told me; the philosopher’s stone, which would prove his theory right; the recipe for all matter, the elixir of the Nine Worlds. Everything is linked; the world is in motion around the sun; everything returns, and every act, however small, has a thousand repercussions. I can feel them now, coming at me like ripples from a stone flung into a lake.

And the Blackbird? We too are linked, he and I; I need no philosophy to tell me that. Well, let him come. If he has a part to play, let him play it soon, and quickly; because if ever I see him again in the flesh, he knows that this time, I will kill him.

We buried her in the herb garden. It was a quiet affair-I planted lavender and rosemary to sweeten her body’s corruption and everyone said a little prayer. We sang the Kyrie Eleison, but badly, for some were overcome with grief. This outpouring surprises me-more than a dozen sisters have died since my arrival here, some of them young, and not one was mourned with such fierce despair-and yet it should not. We have lost more than one of our own. Even the murder of King Henri in Paris, only two months ago, had less impact on our lives.

That being so, it seems wrong to bury her with such little ceremony. She should have had a priest: a proper service. But we could wait no longer; the news from Rennes is slow in coming, and corruption spreads fastest in summer, bringing disease. Most of the sisters have no idea of this, preferring to trust to the power of prayer; but a lifetime on the roads has taught me the value of caution. There may well be demons, my mother used to say, but foul water, bad meat, and tainted air are the real killers, and her wisdom has served me well.

Anyway, I talked them round to my way of thinking in the end. I always do; and besides, this simple burial was what the Reverend Mother would have wanted: no stone vaulting, but a linen sheet already marbled with mold, then the raw white earth, upon which our potatoes thrive so sweetly.

Perhaps I’ll plant potatoes above her grave, their flesh mingling with hers in the soil so that every joint nurtures a tuber, every bone a shoot, the salt of her flesh combining with the salt earth to nurse the roots to pallid life. A pagan thought, strangely lacking in solemnity in this place of mournful secrets. And yet my gods have never been theirs. The master of the world is surely not this stern, stony face, this pointless sacrifice, this life without joy, this endless fixation upon sin…Better to nourish potatoes than fleshless heaven, hopeless hell. But still word does not come.

Nine days. The Creation of the world took less time. Our world remains in limbo, suspended in the clear indifference of these summer days, a rose under glass. And yet the world outside moves on without us; growth, decay, life, death moving on at their usual pace, tide in, tide out, as if God has his own agenda. The scent of the sea blows through the window, already tinted with shades of autumn; the leaves bleached gray by the sun, the grass burnt blond. The land is an anvil for summer’s strike, flat and shimmering.

At least I have my work in the salt field, the wooden ételle in my hands skimming the crust of rime from the mud onto the heap by my side. It is simple work, requiring little thought, and I can watch Fleur and Perette playing nearby, splashing noisily through the warm brown water. These days in the fields-such a burden to the others-are my secret pleasure, with the sun on my back and my daughter at my side. Here I can be myself again, or as much of myself as I care to recall. I can smell the sea, the hot reek of the salt flat, feel the sharp wind coming over from the west, hear the birds. I am not one of these soft sisters, hiding in their darkness for fear of the world. Nor am I an ecstatic like Soeur Alfonsine, driving my poor flesh into a passion of mortification. No, the work pleases me. The long muscles in my thighs tense and stretch, I feel the tautening of my biceps like oiled rope. My arms are bare; my skirt hitched up to the waist, my wimple discarded on the mud bank.

Other than Fleur, my hair is my only extravagance. I cut it when I arrived at the abbey, but it has grown back, thick and red as a fox’s brush and gleaming. It is my only beauty. Otherwise I am too tall, too hard, my skin burnt brown by the sun of many summer roads. If Lazarillo had seen my hair, then he might have remembered me. But one wimple is very like another. Here in the fields, I can discard the coiffe. There is no one to see my unbound hair or my strong bare shoulders. I can be myself; and although I know I can never be l’Ailée again, for a short time I can at least be Juliette.

For six more years I was to remain with the troupe that became the Théâtre des Cieux. After Vitré I moved out of LeMerle’s caravan. I loved him still-there was no escaping that-but my pride forbade me to stay. By then I had a caravan of my own, and when he came to me, as I knew he would, I made him wait to be admitted, like a penitent. It was a small enough vengeance, but it changed the balance between us, and for a time I was satisfied.

We traveled along the coast, targeting markets and fairs where there was money to be had. When business was bad we sold sickness cures and love charms, or LeMerle fleeced the unwary at cards or dice. Most often we performed-snatches of ballets, masquerades, or carnival but with the occasional play growing gradually more frequent as time passed. I developed a rope-dancing act with the dwarves-a child’s game, no more, but it was popular with village audiences-and I taught my fellow dancers the simpler moves. The act grew more ambitious as we developed it, but it was my idea to take it to the high rope, and that was the beginning of our success.

At first we performed over a sheet with a dwarf at each corner, in case of accident. As our daring increased, however, we dispensed with the sheet and took to the air, not content merely to walk the rope, but dancing, tumbling, and finally flying from one rope to another by means of a series of interlinked rings. Thus, l’Ailée was fledged.

I have never been afraid of heights. In fact, I enjoy them. From a certain height, everyone looks the same-men, women, villains, kings-as if rank and fortune were simply an accident of perspective and not something ordained by God. On the ropes I became something more than human; at every performance more people came to watch. My costume was silver and green, my cloak a sweep of colored feathers, and on my head I wore a cockade of plumes that exaggerated my height still further. I have always been tall for a woman-already I overtopped everyone in the Théâtre des Cieux except LeMerle-but in my dancer’s costume I passed six feet, and when I left the gilded cage from which I began my act, children in the crowd would murmur and point, and their parents would wonder aloud that such a creature could even mount the climbing pole, let alone fly.

The rope was stretched thirty feet above their heads; below, cobbles, earth, grass. I risked broken limbs or death if I made a mistake. But l’Ailée made no mistakes. My ankle was fastened to a thin gilt chain-as if without it I might take wing and fly away. Rico and Bazuel held on to the other end, taking care to stay as far away from me as possible. Sometimes I growled and pretended to lash out, making the children scream. Then the dwarves released the chain, and I was free.