Chapter 14
Lina
“Joie and her granddaughter Bela have claimed sanctuary,” Gisa explained as Guillen drove them to the Basilique Cathédrale Sainte-Croix d’Orléans.
The nine o’clock bells had already rung, and the darkened streets were quieter than when Anne and Lina had traversed them earlier that day.
“They have been there for eighteen days.”
“The bishop’s hands are tied—he cannot break the sanctity of sanctuary, nor can he abide having two suspected witches under his roof.
Any day now he could oust them and exile them—which means almost certain death—or find a way to claim they have committed witchcraft within the church, at which point the law has the authority to arrest them. ”
Lina’s mind had been racing ever since Gisa had revealed that there were witches here in Orléans in need of aid. She wanted more time to think, more time to plan, but she was cobbling together a strategy that just might work.
“Will your sight be able to assist us?” Lina asked.
The cathedral was only a few streets away from Gisa’s home on Rue de Bourgogne, and though it had seemed unwise to return to the site of the mystic’s earlier slaughter—let alone the seat of the bishop who had called for her arrest—Lina felt better having Gisa at their backs.
Gisa shook her head. “Not unless someone intends to do me harm. If it helps, I have no reason to believe I will die this day.”
“And what about the rest of us?” Anne muttered, to which she received no response.
Guillen stopped the carriage half a block from the cathedral, as instructed, and Lina turned to face the other two women.
“I would like to go in alone.”
She held up a hand when both Anne and Gisa squawked their protests.
“Gisa, you are too recognizable, even in a disguise.” The mystic hadn’t thought to pack any clothes in her getaway bags, so she was dressed in Lina’s spare habit, her sword hidden by the robes but her ankles bare, as she stood at least six inches taller than Lina.
“You should not enter that church and draw attention to yourself unless there is no alternative.”
“No one here knows my face,” Anne argued. “And your French isn’t nearly as good as mine.”
“Be that as it may, I am the only Catholic among us.” At least, she once had been.
Lina found her relationship with religion harder to navigate with every passing year as men around the world insisted on perverting the teachings of Christ for their own gain.
“There is a chance I can reason with the cathedral’s sexton or caretaker and resolve this without further bloodshed. ”
She gestured to Anne. “Besides, I believe you have the ability to listen to me from afar, should I need help.”
After a beat, the witch gave a begrudging smile. “You have been looking through my spell books.”
It was true. During their magick lessons, Lina had leafed through a number of the tomes in Anne’s room.
Much of it she still didn’t understand, but she had seen a few spells she thought might be useful.
“A listening curse should be simple enough. I will call for aid if I need it, and you and Gisa can use your considerable…abilities. But as you’ll recall, I have rescued someone from one of the most well-guarded prisons in England.
Safely removing two people from a church should be no challenge. ”
Anne sighed, and Lina knew she had won. “I was responsible for some of the rescuing,” Anne countered. Still, the witch pricked her finger and murmured a few of those strange, grating words. She pinched Lina’s earlobe and then her own.
“You can hear me?”
Anne nodded. “Twice over.”
“You’re certain you do not want my help?” Gisa asked. “Lady Anne is right about your French.”
Lina chose to ignore that and opened the carriage door. “Give me one hour. I will return with your friends.”
She stepped outside and took a deep breath, steeling herself. She walked in the shadows, shivering in the February wind, until she stood outside the doors of the cathedral.
The cathedral dominated the square, a blend of Roman and Gothic architecture that left Lina feeling minuscule beside its imposing height.
Flying buttresses arced high above, and the stone walls near the entrance were worn from years of weather and hands pressed against them.
She couldn’t see which scenes were depicted in the stained-glass windows nor which martyrs were carved along the archway as she walked inside, but she hoped this church housed some saint of hope.
She could use all the luck she could find.
“I am in the cathedral,” she whispered for Anne’s benefit.
The interior was cavernous, the stone-paved floor stretching the length of more than a hundred men from the doors to the apse.
Tall columns and wooden ribbing supported the vaulted ceiling, the light of the candles placed along the aisles too dim to lighten the darkest reaches of the building.
Lina thought she heard something rustling overhead—a bird nesting in one of the windows?
—but saw no one else in the nave or sanctuary.
Lina had been to many a cathedral in Spain and in England, and she had a good idea of where she could find whichever member of the clergy was tending the cathedral that evening.
With a silent apology to her ankle, she marched down the long aisle, looking for a door to a smaller chapel.
There—on the right near the choir was a set of doors. Lina knocked, just in case.
“Come in,” said a voice on the other side.
She did, and came face-to-face with the bishop of Orléans.
She knew him by his vestments: the white, tunic-like alb, the red stole draped over his shoulder, the golden cincture at his waist. No common priest would be dressed so finely.
He was an old man, with gray wisps of hair and a paunchy face with heavy jowls and deeper wrinkles.
Lina had not bargained on the bishop himself being present, though now she was exceedingly glad Gisa was not at her side.
“Good evening, Your Excellency,” Lina said, dropping into a curtsy.
As quickly as she could, she took stock of the space: It was a Lady Chapel, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, with a statue of her perched on a dais overlooking three sets of shining wooden pews.
She must have interrupted the bishop at prayer, for no one else was in the room.
The bishop nodded back, a polite enough gesture, though there was an air of impatience to it. “Sister. How may I be of service?”
“Your Excellency, it is I who hopes to be of service to you.” Lina focused on each word, imitating the Parisian accent both Anne and Marguerite favored. “I have come from Paris after hearing you have…unwanted guests inside the cathedral. Two women: a grandmother and a girl.”
The bishop frowned but gestured for Lina to sit in the pew across from him. “And how do you come to know of this, Sister?”
Here was the lie. “My convent in Paris aims to rehabilitate such women, to help them find God. One of our number had traveled to Orléans recently and brought the news back. I have come to offer to take them off your hands.”
Lina had made a few deductions about the bishop of Orléans, even before she had met him.
He was a powerful figure, but not powerful enough to openly contest Gisa d’Arc in a town where her family legacy was stronger than the church itself.
He was duty-bound to offer sanctuary but had already proved with the assassin sent to Gisa that he was willing to work around the system to get what he wanted.
And what he wanted was a town free from witches and prophets and women who gave him trouble.
“They are witches,” the bishop snapped, his tone far from Christlike. “Burning at the stake would be more appropriate than rehabilitation. And anyway, they have desecrated the church. Their sanctuary is at an end.”
The only way to revoke the church’s promise of safety was if the person seeking asylum committed some heinous act: murder, heresy, witchcraft, or other punishable sins.
Lina doubted Joie and Bela had been so foolish as to endanger themselves, which meant the bishop was willing to fabricate charges of his own.
Her stomach dropped, but she pressed forth. “Desecrated?”
The bishop nodded. “The first night they were here, one of the crosses in the cathedral, located just below the north window, fell from the wall, rusted through.”
The fault of a leaky window and winter rain, Lina thought.
“Three days later, one of the sacrament wines was found half drunk.”
The fault of a thirsty deacon.
“Last week, one of my clergy came to me in need of medicine for an ailment of”—the bishop paused, seeming to realize the delicate nature of his audience—“of an area no priest would find ailing. He is certain he was cursed.”
Or your priest doesn’t keep his vows of chastity.
“And just yesterday, I myself saw a black cat walk down the aisle of the church.” The bishop shook his head in disbelief. “I could tolerate it no longer.”
Lina bit her tongue and waited a moment to gather herself. “Where are they now, Your Excellency?”
“We’ve locked them in the crypt overnight. They will be taken before the duke’s provost in the morning.”
Then there was no time to waste. Lina rose. “Thank you, Your Excellency. It seems you are right—these women are beyond rehabilitation. God be with you.”
She moved as quickly as she could, barely catching the bishop’s baffled “And also with you, Sister” as she slipped out the door.
After a moment of thought, she took off one of her stockings and tied the double door handles together, doing her best to lock the bishop inside.
It wouldn’t hold long, but she might need to buy them more time for their rescue.
“I presume you heard all of that,” she whispered to Anne as she made her way to the crypt. “I will need assistance if there are guards.”
Lina had no sooner finished saying the words than she saw two gray-robed shadows slip inside the cathedral. Gisa caught her eye and motioned her over.
“You two were supposed to wait for me,” Lina chided, keeping her voice low. “Your impatience could have gotten us killed.”
“We did wait,” Gisa replied. “Until we didn’t.”
“Well done with the bishop, by the way,” Anne added, looking impressed. “And your French really is becoming more passable.”
Lina wasn’t sure whether to accept the praise or roll her eyes at the insult. That seemed to be the way with Anne Boleyn; teasing barbs were just as much a part of how she expressed affection as were genuine compliments.
Gisa set off down the aisle. “Follow me, I know the way to the crypt.”
Luckily, she led them away from the Lady Chapel to the platform where the clergy performed Mass. The mystic knelt behind the altar, stuck her fingers between two engraved panels of stone, and tugged.
Help, she mouthed.
Anne and Lina stooped beside her and pulled until the stone began to shift, the sound echoing off the walls. Someone was bound to hear it and come looking. They pulled harder until there was an opening wide enough for a person to pass through. A staircase descended into pure darkness below.
Gisa didn’t hesitate, plunging into the gloom.
Anne followed, muttering a curse that lit a small flame in her hand to light the way.
Lina was next, the reek of dust and decay hitting her nose two steps down.
When she reached the bottom, all she could see were the shapeless tombs of the dead reaching in every direction until they bled into the dark.
“Joie! Bela!” Gisa’s whisper sounded like a shout in the eerie quiet of the crypt. “Are you down here?”
Somewhere nearby, footsteps shuffled, causing Lina to start. “Gisa?” a girl’s voice called.
“To me! Hurry!” Gisa moved toward the voice, Anne following with her meager light. Lina wondered how it didn’t manage to burn her hand.
She could make out two more figures now—a short, older woman and a willowy girl who held something in her arms. Lina peered closer and nearly laughed aloud when the cat’s eyes caught the reflection from Anne’s fire.
Lina had always been fond of cats, while Henry had detested them.
Her husband had no time for creatures who valued independence or consent. [*2]
“This way.” Gisa herded Joie and Bela toward the crypt’s entrance. They retraced their path, this time with Lina ascending first.
“What in God’s name is happening here?”
Lina was halfway up the stairs when she heard the bishop’s voice ring out. She should have known her stockings wouldn’t hold him. When she surfaced, he gave her a bewildered look.
“Sister? What is the meaning of this?”
Anne emerged next, and Lina saw the bishop’s eyes go wide at the sight of her magick. Then came Gisa, and Lina thought his jaw might smack the stones below.
“You—you—women! Witches!” He didn’t seem to know which accusation carried more weight. He bore no weapon but reached for Bela when he saw her, singling out the most vulnerable of their group. His hand clamped onto the girl’s shoulder as he wrenched her away from the others.
The cat did not like that. With a yowl, she leaped from Bela’s arms and attached herself to the bishop’s face, tail puffed to thrice its size and claws finding purchase in his sagging flesh.
The bishop’s scream was muffled by the cat’s fur, but loud enough that Lina knew it would bring guards running.
Gisa was one step ahead, her sword out. The cat, sensing her work was done, detached herself, leaving the bishop’s face in bloody ruins, just in time for Gisa to ram the hilt of her sword into his temple.
He dropped, unconscious, nearly falling into the crypt.
Briefly, Lina considered giving him an extra nudge.
“Joie, Bela, meet my friends Anne and Lina,” Gisa said, her chest heaving. She grinned. “Now let’s get you somewhere truly safe.”
Skip Notes
*1 This is what I long to create with the Sisterhood. A way for women and other vulnerable people to stay safe when the wolves are at their doors, to help one another and grow stronger together. Think of what could be done if we were united and supported instead of siloed and divided.
*2 Little wonder witches tend to have cats as their familiars.