A Provençal Mystery (22 page)

She glided quietly away, almost loping, an animal in a habit, and I went back to my chamber. I leafed through the book and found myself staring at a lithograph of a nun’s cell. It held just a small bed, a prie-dieu, and an armoire. Just like this one here and now, I thought. Just like? Excitement came over me in a rush as I realized it was
not
like. Not entirely. In the picture, the cell walls were stone; now they were plaster. The nuns must have arranged for the walls to be plastered sometime between the seventeenth century and now, I thought. And could Rose have hidden an installment of her story in the wall between two stones, and not in the floor?

I could just barely discern cracks and small crevices that marked out the rows of stones beneath the plaster on the walls. Row by row, I examined them, until, a bit below eye level, I found what looked like a plaster sandwich—two bulges with something flattish, about a half-inch thick, between them.

Shutting the door to my cell, I picked at the plaster with the point of my apartment key, trying to be as quiet as possible. The plaster flaked away easily. But the tiny noise brought the sound of footsteps. I doused my light, and lay on the bed in the dark until silence was restored to the sleeping convent.

It wasn’t long before I had exposed the stones’ edges and the packet wrapped in parchment wedged between them. Rose must have dug away at the mortar to create the narrow slot. I wiggled the stones, and they gave just a bit. Using my hands, I worked to separate them. They were rough as sandpaper and scraped my skin, leaving tiny red scratches.

Finally I was able to prize the package from its place. My hands trembled as I peeled back the crackling parchment to reveal a folded sheaf of sepia paper. The rest of the diary. It had to be authentic—if the cells had been plastered in the seventeenth century and not touched since.

I was about to find out how the story ended. The thought filled me with excitement as a historian, and dread, because I had begun to feel such empathy for Rose.

The first page began with the end of the sentence left unfinished in the part of the diary I had read at the archives -- “
And what did Jeanne know about Madame des Moulins that she . . .”

* * * * *

feels she cannot tell us.

22 June, 1659

I gave the first part of this writing to my new friend, Sister Barbe, who has taken over Antoinette's job as pharmacist, to hide for me. She is a converse, too, and unrelated to any of the other nuns. I was afraid that if it was found in my possession, I would be in terrible trouble, but still I must keep writing.

After noon dinner at the refectory, Madame des Moulins approached me. She tapped my shoulder, not timidly, either. In my converse’s habit, I looked down at her in her penitent’s gray. It fitted her badly. Mme. des Moulins says she should get special treatment because she is under the protection of her lover. He is someone important. If he really is protecting her, I ask, why is she here? Why trust an ordinary man when Christ is to be trusted more, more than any mortal? At least He doesn’t make promises that He can’t keep, or so they say.

I would have shaken her off entirely, but I thought to give her this message about Our Lord: that He is our best protection. She tried to slip a few sous into my hand. But I pushed her hand away. How she had managed to keep the money, I don’t know. We take their money away from the fallen women when they come here. They should have nothing of the wealth of this world. Maybe she put it somewhere in her private parts as those women sometimes do. And what else did she have in those private parts? Poison, perhaps?

She: Please, I need your help.

Her face was desperate. Though I was somewhat wanting in sympathy, I could not help but respond to her.

I: Help yourself. Then Heaven will help you.

I spoke more kindly than I had intended. And I doubted the truth of what I said. Heaven didn't help Jeanne.

She: No, for this I need human help. I must escape. My life is in danger here. Someone will kill me.

She reached out her right hand to touch my arm. Is it not odd how the hands of gentlewomen are different from the rest of ours? So thin and delicate, with white skin. Hers was like that, even with that stub where her sixth finger had been.

She: Perhaps you can stop what will happen.

She tightened her grip, and I allowed it.

I: I don’t see how. Tell me why you are so afraid. Look as if you are confessing. And I will nod like a priest.

Was I being sacrilegious? She began to talk, fast. It was as if she was afraid she would never be able to get out all she had to say before it was too late.

She: The Mother Superior wants to kill me.

I: Nonsense.

She: No, it is true. It is she who arranged for the death of the young novice.

I: You may have lost your mind.

She: No, she has lost hers, and her immortal soul.

I:The Reverend Mother lives in the other world a good part of the time. But I wouldn’t say she has lost her mind. Except in the way that all religious women lose themselves when deep in Jesus, when God speaks.

She considered me. I know she was wondering if she had chosen the wrong person to confide in. But it was too late. She had one chance and knew it.

She: Mother Fernande is the guilty one, and she plans further murders. The women here are aware of it. I have told them. But I will be first to die. Perhaps I should be. I have sinned so much. You have noticed the man she speaks with so intently in the parlor?

I: Of course. He has met her in the garden, too.

She: Philippe. He is my lover and her brother. The bishop is close to her family, Through him, Fernande arranged to have me arrested and sent here. I am a widow, therefore a free woman, so it was difficult for them to justify it. After all, I do not commit public acts they might call licentious.

I: Of course she is concerned.

She: No, it is not that. He spends her family’s money on me. The scandal is not our love affair. You are not a woman of the world, like me, but a nun, so you cannot possibly know.

I: I know more than you think.

I remembered André the butcher.

She: As I said, the scandal is not our love affair. Fernande wants me out of the way because I know too much, and I might tell. He has had trouble with gambling. Always he goes to Fernande. He has promised to pay it back when he inherits the seigneurie from their father. But who knows when that will be? I must get away.

I: I do not understand why Fernande wants you here, since you know so much.

She: Better here than outside, where I might find a way to talk to officials. Here all she has to do is say that I am a liar. Or out of my mind. And here she can find a way to get me out of the way forever.

I: What do you know that has made her bring you here? That she killed Jeanne—if she did kill Jeanne?

She: Perhaps Jeanne knew something, something that the Mother Superior wanted never to be revealed. Something that I too know.

I: What would that be?

She: I cannot tell you. You must believe me.

I: Why should I believe you? And why do you give me this information that can only cause me trouble? That I can do nothing about?

She: Why not tell you? Who else?

Her eyes were pleading with me, but I did not trust her.

I: It is against the rules to help anyone escape.

She: You helped Antoinette to get away. Would you rather have my death on your hands? There has been one death already.

I looked her up and down, and she stood her ground.

I: But how can I help you escape? And if you escape, I might be in danger, too.

She: True enough.

She hid her hands in the sleeves of her habit.

I: If I were willing, how could I do it?

She: When you prune the vines on the wall, you use a ladder. Just leave it up against the wall rather than locking it up as is your wont. That’s all. You could say you forgot. What would happen? You’d have to do a little penance. You could say you were called away, and forgot. That’s better. That you were called away.

I: But why should I do this?

I had not thought of the ladder for Antoinette. How artful Des Moulins is!

A bell rang, summoning us to prayer. She melted into the group of women.

I can believe that Mother Fermande became a nun to clear the way for her brother's success. And now that he has become so sinful, she knows she has made the sacrifice for nothing. But I cannot see how that would lead her to murder. She has a vocation, a true one, I think. Or she had one before she committed this horrible crime. If she committed this horrible crime.

Christ forgave sinners, did he not? And Mme. des Moulins, I am sure of it, does need help. So I will probably do as she asks. What if she killed Jeanne? If she is a murderer, is she not better out of the convent, where she cannot kill one of us? God forgive me.

24 June, 1659

Mme. des Moulins has escaped, and she had the grace to knock over the ladder before she went over the wall. I was able to put it away before anyone else found it. I am not yet in trouble though I am being very careful.

25 June, 1659

When she found out that Mme. des Moulins had escaped, Mother Superior Fernande screamed in a fury. She called des Moulins an evil sinner in a loud voice. Her veins swelled, and her face was red with blood, as if she were about to have an apoplectic fit. She had a lay pensioner go into town to tell the police, who arrived and interviewed Mother Fernande in the parlor for a long time. What is going on? This kind of fuss is not usually made about one fallen woman.

Mother Fernande even called Sister Marie Paule into the parlor and accused her of helping Mme. des Moulins escape. I have never before heard her shout so loudly in such an angry voice. I heard her from the garden. Then she apologized for saying it, knowing it could not be true. But she also said that Sister Marie Paule spends too much time talking to the fallen women, including Mme. des Moulins. It would do no good, she said, and besides they all lie. It was not like her to criticize the women. In her voice, I thought I recognized fear. In the convent we live so close together that we often can read the thoughts and voices of our sisters. But then she asked Sister Marie Paule’s pardon. At bottom, they are fond of each other, having come into the convent in the same year.

When I write this, I do not mention as much as I should Mother Superior’s many kindnesses. To give the true picture, it is necessary to mention them. Often I have seen her put a hand on the shoulder of a newly arrived and frightened novice. Or, when she is very tired, listen with care to a troubled woman we have taken in.

Later today, the same man as before came to talk to Mother Superior in the garden. Her mouth was a round dark hole in her face, and for a moment I thought of the grave. He seemed very agitated. Is it all connected? Is he really her brother?

26 June, 1659

Last night, in spite of all my prayers, I fell asleep angry. I was angry that this refuge from the world is being invaded by evil forces. Jeanne came to me in a dream, warning me of trouble. She resembled a shade; the outlines of her body were unclear. Then just as she was about to speak with me, I seemed to come back to my cell, cold and afraid. I think I saw someone slipping away from my door when I sat up. I am so helpless against this.

27 June 1659

My body is a hollow in which something not me is living. It has invaded me. What is it? What is me? Where does it begin and I end?

It speaks to me. In me. I am like a huge drum that resounds with something alien. How has this happened to me? Save me, Jesus, my spouse. Something has entered me. It must be the devil. I turn hot. Then my entrails twist, like a cloth twisted in the hand of a giant. And the pain! Am I being tested? Is it God who is testing me? Who has done this to me?

28 June, 1659

I have told no one, not even my confessor.

The echoes of the nuns’ singing voices speak evil messages in my ears. Did I hear a nun talking in the devil’s tongue? The voices seem to fade into discord. Then they turn sweet again like those of angels. Last night, the ghost of Jeanne came to me again, after prayers. Jeanne said she fears for me and tells me to pray even more. When I pray, something enters my head and tells my tongue to say other things, things I cannot as yet write.

Hold me in your arms, oh Jesus. Protect me from this awful abomination, this dark and bloody creature. Drive him from me, as you drove the disease from the leper. But whose arms are these? Why does my blood turn hot?

Poisoned breath has entered me. It moves in me. Sister Gertrude has seen me when the breath possesses me. It speaks in animal noises, like a dog, she says. Sometimes it forces me to the ground and makes me crawl like a snake. Gertrude has told no one about it. She does not want to tell Mother Fernande, who has been so distraught these days.

It begins by choking me, then it moves to my womb. In a dream Mother Fernande came to the door of my cell. I saw a snake tongue flick out of her mouth. And the poison of her breath—it was not onions, believe me—floated across and entered my nostrils, as if from the grave, as if from hell.

I have mortified myself by putting needles in my tongue, like Mother Superior Fernande. I cannot speak. And if I cannot speak, I cannot tell what I suspect about Mother and the man in the garden. Sometimes, too, I cannot write, for my hand becomes paralyzed.

30 June, 1659

What can I do? The filthy thing is in me, beating at the door of my body. It sucks me into itself. It eats my soul and gives me pleasure. Sweet poison. Feathers fold around me, huge wings, wings of a serpent. Its scaly body writhes on mine. Deliver me! I cannot let it out.

* * * * *

Rose was possessed by the devil. The thought of it shocked me. She seemed to be such a practical person—grounded, we Californians would say. I thought back to a paper I’d written on a possession in Nancy, a northern city. In it, I'd noted that possession has a strong resemblance to hysteria, that nineteenth century disease. Doctors in the Old Regime described a possessed woman's dangerously wandering uterus (and hysteria was named after the uterus) moving around the woman’s body creating havoc wherever it went. And the devil, actually one of his minions like Beelzebub, entered the body of the possessed person and talked through her. Truths came out. Things got said. The cure was exorcism. Though doctors cured Victorian hysteria, not priests, yet again, then things got said. Truths came out. And the victim was not responsible.

Possession by the devil has interesting symbolism—just look at it. An incarnation of evil, as the pregnancy of the Virgin is incarnation of good.

I couldn’t let it go, had to keep thinking about it in this academic way, as if that would erase my fear.

Penetrable inner space, the womb. A perfect place for the devil to disport himself. And women are marginal to society, edge-people. And sometimes only marginal people can tell the dominant society what is wrong. They say what no one else dares to say. They are like little kids—children are marginal, aren’t they?—pointing out a naked emperor.

* * * * *

1 July, 1659

God told me to escape, no matter what may happen to me in the world. He said that I can serve him best that way. Sister Gertrude put a large key in my hand and also told me to escape, but to tell no one who gave it to me. It is the key to the door that leads to a stairway, which leads to the outside. I am taking the fallen women who want to leave with me.

2 July 1659

The devil has gone from me. Why I don’t know. The convent itself has become evil. I do believe Mme. des Moulins, at least partly. It is as if I knew that Mother Superior killed Jeanne. It was too dreadful to admit. But this place once seemed so much God’s. Then, the convent walls circled a safe and pure place. Not now. My body is cold with fear, fear that will never leave me, for if fear is here, then it is everywhere.

What shall I do besides write this story? No important person will believe it. Mother Fernande comes from a family of seigneurs. Even if the brother’s problems with money come to light, the way things are in this world, he will keep his power. He is a seigneur’s son.

We leave this afternoon. I will take this with me. Barbe Hardy, Félicité, who is so pious, and I have already been down in the stairway. It is dark, and it smells of dirt and rat droppings. We went a little way in. We heard what we thought were rat tails swishing. Félicité said it was demons from Hell waiting to carry us off to the devil, but Barbe Hardy told her to hush up. We didn’t need that in our minds.

* * * * *

Rachel broke into my waking dream. Suddenly she was standing in the center of my cell, and Rose was gone. I showed her the manuscript. “I found the rest of the diary,” I whispered.

“Where was it?” she asked. I pointed out the thin, empty space in the wall. “And what are you going to do with it?”

“Put it in my suitcase, take it home, and think about that question. Maybe it belongs at the archive with the rest of the diary. But that's not an official acquisition, is it? What if I give it to Griset and he catalogs it. And what if the killer knows that the diary tells a story that he. . . “

“Or she?” put in Rachel.

“Or she doesn't want known. I think it does tell such a story. Then what? It's better to wait until the killer is arrested.”

“Shouldn't you just leave it here? And what are the nuns going to think when they see that big hole in the wall?”

“If it had not been hidden in the wall, the French Revolutionary government would have confiscated it anyway and it would be in the archive,” I said, knowing that was a weak argument. “As for the hole in the wall, I'll think about that later.”

“So, a better question,” said Rachel. “What was in it?”

“Rose escaped, but not before being possessed by the devil! I'm almost sure that the mother superior killed the little novice and that she was a Chateaublanc. I know there are connections between then and now. Not just theoretical ones. Maybe justice can be done.” I heard myself—so dramatic, saw Rachel's face, and added, “I'm being highfaluting. Who do I think I am—God? This all happened centuries back. There's probably nothing I can do about it now.”

“I'm not so sure of that,” Rachel replied. “I have the same feeling about the reliquary—once we find it, we have the key to what happened to my family. So let's go searching.”

In stocking feet, we walked down the corridor to the chapel. The way was dark except for the tiny night lights, meant for those who had a general idea of the terrain.

Candles still burning in their containers in front of statues made a dim light in the chapel. The altar, a dark hulk, loomed at the front of the room,

“In the diary, the reliquary was next to the statue of Marie Magdeleine, then it went missing. But when your mother came to the convent to be hidden, it came with her. Perhaps it stayed then and the nuns put it in its old place,” I said. We searched the niches, one by one, and found no reliquaries of any kind, nor any hiding places. The altar, too, was bare. Behind it, a door led into the sacristy.

I tried the door and found it open. Inside, vestments hung on hooks and communion vessels stood on shelves. No locked cabinets.

“I don’t see where a reliquary could be hidden here,” Rachel said after looking around
. I heard the disappointment in her flat, matter-of-fact voice.

“There’s still the cellar,” I said.

The cellar stairs were pitch dark, and we felt our way with our feet, holding the iron stair rail. Then, down on the floor, we turned on our flashlight. Its light shone down a long, arched corridor, flanked with alcoves on each side, its end lost in the dark. The cellar seemed to be empty. We walked toward the first alcove. Our footsteps echoed under the arched roof.

"This is where my mother was," said Rachel. "It seems strange." Her voice echoed slightly.

"As if her ghost. . .?" I said.

"No, nothing so occult. Just to stand in the same place."

One alcove held shelves of preserves and homemade canned goods, marked with the date and contents:
Juillet, 1988, haricots; Aout, 1989, confiture des prunes
. Another alcove held cords of firewood.

Then in an larger anteroom off the main corridor, we found shelves bearing boxes. Rachel shone the flashlight on them as I read the neat labels: “
Vêtements
, probably habits,” I said.