Chapter 29
XXIX
The sage-femme’s garden was larger than I expected, a perfect circle surrounded by a low stone wall.
The garden beds, positively foaming over with flowers, encircled a clover lawn.
Its centerpiece was a wide, circular pool, ringed with flagstones and marigolds but otherwise unadorned.
At the far end of the garden, a gate led out to a narrow path through the bulrushes, and beyond them no doubt to the river.
A black goat—entirely Mundane as far as I could tell—was secured to a peg in the ground, happily grazing.
Sarmodel flinched as though he had been stung. By the Rift, look at these Wards! What merry devils is she raising in here?
I blinked my way through the Arcane spectrum. Almighty God.
Cecile’s garden was an immaculately configured Circle. We were essentially stepping into her workroom—a frame for her to set her Wards upon.
And set them she had. I counted no less than three Majestic Vaults, along with a dizzying succession of Prevaricating Clauses. There were others, hidden deeper, which I suspected were a Sudden Jaw and perhaps a Flower of Hands. Cecile was not taking any chances with her Arcane guests, it seemed.2
Do not touch anything, I warned Sarmodel.
An old willow cast its shade by the eastern edge of the lawn.
Beneath its canopy, a young woman smoothed a green cloth over a three-legged round table.
The twisted trunk of the willow was set with so many melted candles that it seemed partly made of wax itself.
By night, this is where Cecile would ply her trade as fortune teller, soothsayer and matchmaker.
“Come, Lorette,” said Cecile. “We have important guests, as I expected.”
Lorette!
Suddenly much about Jacques’s strange behavior was explained.
So, this is she . . . “darling” Lorette.
“Do you need the cards, Mama?” called the girl over her shoulder.
Lorette seemed about the same age as Jacques and she was blond like Cecile, though it was a warmer, caramel hue.
Her skin, like the hedge-witch’s, was brushed golden by the sun.
Her dress was simple and fit her poorly, but it was far from shabby.
The pinafore was a dusty shade of pink, crisscrossed around the hem with grass stains.
“No, my sweet. These gentlemen are not here for a reading.”
Lorette turned to greet us and stopped dead. She looked suddenly as though she were standing in a fire.
“I’d like you to keep company with young Lord Ocerne for a time—you are well enough acquainted,” Cecile went on. “I fear the professor is going to scold me.” There was light ridicule in her tone. Sarmodel began to simmer in the back of my mind.
“But—Mama!” Lorette’s face flushed red and her hands twisted in her skirts.
She looked first at me, and then at the dazed Jacques.
Then she adjusted her cloth cap and lowered her eyes to curtsy, though not without a glint of defiance.
“Of course. My lord Ocerne, it has been too long since we saw you in the village,” she said, with painful formality.
Cecile placed the tray on the table and handed Jacques a sticky roll glazed with honey. “Something sweet, as promised. Now go.”
“Thank you,” said Jacques, like a child practicing his manners. “It is nice to see you, Lorette.” The herbalist’s daughter stiffened as he took her by the hand.
“Come, my lord,” said the witch’s daughter. “There’s work enough for us both.”
I approached the table cautiously, still not quite ready to accept Cecile’s hospitality—certainly not here at her oracle’s tripod, standing within her ferociously Warded Circle. Lorette and Jacques crossed the lawn, hand in hand, as Cecile poured the tea.
“Oh, come—sit down,” she said, sweeping her long hair back behind her shoulders.
“I apologize for the charm; I am necessarily careful about visitors. Do you think I’d kill you in my own home—and with him sitting on your shoulders?
Here.” She held out her right hand, the Sigil of Amity glowing golden on her palm.
Oh—now a truce! said Sarmodel. Twenty years too late, I think!
Cecile looked up at him and then back to me, her hand still extended. “Please, Professor. I am not the witless craven I once was. We have things to discuss, and I didn’t make all this food for myself.”
“No. I suppose you didn’t.” Slowly, I reached forward and clasped her hand. The golden fire pulsed between her skin and mine, writing the sigil on my palm.
We sat down. Cecile covered a slice of bread with pale butter and handed it to me. I devoured it in seconds.
Tell me, what happened to your “boon companion,” hedge-witch? asked Sarmodel, with lavish scorn.
Cecile laughed her magnificent, crowing laugh. “He did in fact try to kill me in my sleep, as you predicted. Whether he would have mounted my corpse . . . well.” She shrugged and laughed again.
I could feel Sarmodel’s surprise; if he had expected hostility, he was to be disappointed. Cecile was changed indeed. Well. A near miss, then, and a lesson learned. I am almost glad.
“One of many lessons I’ve learned since you were last in Gévaudan.” She made a circular motion that encompassed her charming cottage and walled garden, along with their formidable Arcane defenses. “I no longer consort with unbound Spirits. Or the pastor, for that matter.”
“Good principles. They have served you well,” I remarked. For all of her tenuous social status, Cecile was certainly living comfortably—far more so than most of her neighbors.
“Saint-Julien has been kind to me,” she replied. “And there are still those with wealth and power who value the humble services of a sage-femme. Along with her discretion.”
“I am pleased for you—and impressed.” Cecile had attracted patronage both otherworldly and Mundane, which was no small accomplishment in this era of religious rule.
We were interrupted by a snatch of song, floating across from where Lorette and Jacques were kneeling by a bed of mullein.
The girl had lost some of her shyness and was singing gently, showing Jacques how to pick the delicate rosettes of leaves.
He followed Lorette’s movements like her shadow and she touched his hand fondly.
Even without her obvious discomfort, that single gesture revealed everything about how “well-acquainted” Jacques and Lorette really were.
Beside them, the fox watched with its white eyes, the fat rat perched on its head.
Darling Lorette. The witch’s daughter.
I might indeed have believed that Lorette was Cecile’s daughter. There was some passing resemblance to the blond herbalist of Saint-Julien.
But Cecile was, among many other things, a midwife. I suspected that at least one child she had brought into the world had not gone home with its mother.
“Lorette is a lovely girl,” I remarked, “and a keen student, it seems. You must be proud of her. Will she follow after you?”
“I hope so. She has natural talent as a midwife. She’s stopped death at the doorway of many a laboring woman,” replied Cecile. “And she has been . . . a great gift to me.”
“One among many,” I remarked, pointing to the hagstone, throbbing on its cord around her neck.
Cecile’s eyes were deep with thought. She wrapped a hand around the stone. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Your business with Lady Dayane—that’s what this is all about.”
Dayane.
My eyes were drawn to the pool in the center of the garden.
I had been avoiding the thought of her. Of all the unfinished business in Gévaudan, my dealings with Dayane troubled me most. It seemed almost like a dream now.
In many ways it had been a dream.
Petrichor. The curious flick of a doe’s ear. White hands, white breasts, a soft white abdomen with no navel. Footsteps on the surface of the pond, and the emerald fronds of mare’s tail beneath, waving, waving . . .
“Will you treat with her again on my behalf?”
Cecile’s eyes narrowed. “Professor, I can guess why you are here—the young lord fair reeks of sickness. But I will not treat with my lady for you. Not this time.”
“Then I have no choice but to go uninvited. I can find the way by myself.”
“I would ask you to reconsider,” she replied, with forced patience. “Professor, you think you know best, but hear me when I say there are things happening in Gévaudan that you cannot possibly understand.”
“Then tell me, please! What is happening here? I have seldom seen such a state of misery—the Beast is certainly not responsible for all of it.”
She heaved a deep breath, looking at the golden sigil on her palm. “I’m not sure how much the young lord has told you, but there’s an easy word for it: ‘trouble.’ So many different sorts, it’s hard to tell where one ill gives way to the next.”
“Go on.” I almost swilled my entire cup of tea. It was a blend of chamomile, rose and licorice, with a touch of honey, and it was absolutely delicious.
“I believe the Red Winter has returned to claim Gévaudan properly. Now, as then, my neighbors are being slaughtered at night, in the forests and byways. I am hunted in my dreams by the wolf with the hands of a man. The beasts of the field and the fold become wilder and more savage with every generation—many have become ungovernable, or worse. It is like a sickness that has begun to spread. I believe it’s bleeding out into the villagers, do you understand?
There is an anger I have never seen before—neighbors suddenly turned into enemies, and violence in so many homes. ”
I began to interrupt, but she raised a hand. “There’s more. The lord of Chateau d’Ocerne—well, I think you’ll find him a changed man. Your young charge did well to hide his face here in Saint-Julien. His father has few friends here now.”
“Antoine? But why?” It was not a surprise to hear that Antoine had changed; Jacques’s account of his father had confirmed as much. But it unsettled me to think the charming young man I had known—and yes, loved—was now so poorly regarded.
“In part, because the people are hungry. They feed the cow and must watch their children starve as the cream goes to the nobles and the meat to the Church. But it’s not just about the price of bread anymore—villagers are being murdered and the baron is doing nothing to stop it.
The people . . .” Cecile stopped, glancing at Lorette and Jacques.
“Oh dear,” I said. I have witnessed the life cycle of oppressive regimes countless times; every one starts and finishes with talk of “the people.” “Go on, please.”
She leaned forward and spoke in softer tones.
“The people are getting desperate, and their rage is aimed squarely at the nobility. There are gatherings in cellars and barns at night, where the young and the loud talk about things like ‘freedom’ and ‘equality.’” Cecile took another sweet roll from the table, her eyes distant.
“It worries me, more than a little. Lorette has been swept up in it—they see in her a leader, and a pretty face to rally hot-blooded young men to their cause. The young lord among them.”
“And here is the scandal, at last!” I said. I almost laughed; there was something deliciously absurd about the prospect. “Jacques Avenel d’Ocerne sneaks out at night to join the local malcontents in airing their grievances against his father.”
“Not openly, not yet. He attends in secret, as many do, with the sense to keep his face covered. I have kept my distance from the whole tinderbox. Secret nighttime meetings seldom bode well for women like me—I’m sure you would agree.”
“‘Trouble’ is the word. You had the right of it.” It seemed Jacques’s di?cult relationship with his father had very deep roots. It would be a great embarrassment to Antoine to have his heir sympathizing with the peasants who furnished their lifestyle.
Cecile poured more tea for me. “Professor, there are no coincidences. You say the Beast is not the cause of Gévaudan’s troubles, but I see his hand everywhere.
The Red Winter was the beginning of it all.
” She looked again at her daughter. “I don’t need the cards to tell me where this is all headed. ”
War, said Sarmodel. Naturally.
“All the more reason for me to take Jacques to Lady Dayane—she may be the only one who can help us. What aren’t you telling me?”
Cecile seemed troubled—scared, even—as she wrapped her hand once again around the hagstone. “I can say no more.”
“Cannot or will not? Please, you know how important it is,” I insisted.
Her brow creased, showing a flash of the embittered young woman she had once been.
“Important for whom? Professor, I am not a fool. You and your companion did not come to save Gévaudan during the Red Winter. You came here to take the Beast’s power for yourselves.
Why should I trust you any more than him? ”
Because we are not—yet—the ones devouring your neighbors, witch, said Sarmodel. And what are you doing, you and your lady? What masterful strategy against the Beast have you concocted in consultation with your patron?
Cecile bit her lip, and I was surprised to see tears in her eyes. “It is time for you to be on your way, I think.”
“Cecile, why? Why won’t you help me?”
Her tears brimmed over, and she wiped them angrily from her face. “Because I cannot! There, you have the truth! My lady no longer answers when I call.”
“Is she . . . ?”
“No, she is not gone. I feel her still, here.” She held up the hagstone.
“But she cannot or will not speak to me, not these past several years. Please, Professor, there are things you don’t know.
Do not seek her out again, I beg you. Do not take the young lord to her.
My lady has not been the same since the Red Winter. ”
“What do you mean? Why?”
“Because you betrayed her, Professor. And I don’t know how, but I fear that is the root of it all—the young lord’s illness, the madness, the misery, all of it. The bargain you struck has been broken, and now we are all paying the price.”
2. I had a similar framing arrangement inlaid in steel in the floor of my basement back in Corvano, though without the entire Arsenal of Tartarus hanging over it.