Vespertine (Vespertine #1)(54)
“Good girl.” And she moved on to the patient beside me.
By the time Mother Dolours left, the wing was full of dazed-looking patients sitting up and wolfing down bowls of porridge. The first man she had healed fearfully signed himself every time her voice thundered in from an adjoining hall. All seemed to be well until a young novice skidded around the corner, panting.
“Curists are being sent from the cathedral,” she announced. “Her Holiness is investigating the reports of plague!”
The sisters, who had all sat down in exhausted relief, leaped up and rapidly began tidying. Marguerite joined them in bundling away armfuls of linens. She kept giving me pointed looks that I eventually realized were intended to communicate something to me, but I had no idea what, and the stare I sent back attempting to convey this made her blanch and flee to the other end of the hall.
“Next time, you need to do that into a mirror so I can see what it looks like,” the revenant remarked, sounding slightly impressed.
I wondered if she had been trying to warn me that the convent’s sanctuary law might not hold up against the threat of plague. The Divine might be able to use the fear of an outbreak, even a rumored one, as an excuse to search the refugees. The remainder of the evening became a race for Mother Dolours to finish healing the other halls before the curists arrived.
“There are too many,” one sister whispered. “She’ll do it,” another insisted. Even the revenant was invested. “Once I saw a curist try to heal a third this many humans, only to get partway through and keel over dead into a chamber pot.”
The chapel’s bells rang the fifth hour; lamps were lit to stave off the dark. Meanwhile the novice ran in and out, thrilled to be the bearer of important news. “She’s in the north wing!” she reported. “The east wing! There’s only half the wing left!”
Sighs of relief filled the hall.
Moments later, the curists arrived. I received my first glimpse of them when they paused in the adjoining corridor, resplendent in their cream-colored robes and half-capes trimmed in gold. I guessed which one was the head curist by the number of rings on her fingers: a diminutive woman with elegant Sarantian features, a hawklike nose, and black hair streaked dramatically with gray.
“Where is the abbess?” she asked, casting a keen glance around our hall.
“Dead, most likely. And good riddance—”
It choked on its words as Mother Dolours came striding into view. “As you can see, Curist Sibylle,” she said in her resonating voice, “there is no sickness here.”
“I do see that, Mother,” the head curist said dryly, still surveying our hall. “How curious, that out of hundreds of patients, not one of them appears to be ill.”
A lay sister squeezed out a shrill, nervous giggle before the others managed to hush her. The head curist raised her eyebrows but didn’t comment. She turned back to Mother Dolours. In a softer voice, she said, “We will cause the least disruption that we can, Dolours, but Her Holiness demands a thorough report.”
I didn’t think I imagined the note of disapproval in her voice as she spoke of the Divine, and was certain of it when Mother Dolours laid a grateful hand on her arm.
Once she had gone, the sisters rushed over to guide Mother Dolours toward a stool, hastily shoving it beneath her when she tottered dangerously on her feet. She collapsed onto it with a great whoosh of air and over the next few minutes, to the awed astonishment of everyone in the hall, proceeded to drink her way through several mugs of ale, passed along to her by a chain of sisters with practiced efficiency. Then, ruddy-faced and restored to full vigor, she charged off to resume her duties. I felt the revenant wince as she went by.
“She could exorcise you, couldn’t she?” I asked, and knew I was right when it sourly refused to answer.
* * *
Full dark had fallen by the time the curists left. They passed my pallet on their way to the door at the end of the hall, speaking to each other in low voices. I was doing my best not to look suspicious in any way—and failing miserably, according to the revenant—when amid their low-voiced conversation I caught a familiar name. Leander.
As soon as I lurched out of bed, Marguerite appeared as though my disobedience had summoned her. “What are you doing?” she demanded. “You need to get back in bed.”
“I can’t believe I agree with this human,” the revenant said. “Though I still think we should kill her. We could always stuff her body down a latrine.”
“I need to follow them,” I said.
“Why?”
“I need to hear what they’re saying about Confessor Leander.”
Her mouth fell open. “That horrible priest who gave us our evaluations?”
I hesitated. My legs were already wobbling. I couldn’t follow the curists without her help, and I doubted she would cooperate unless I gave her a good reason.
“He’s involved in the spirit attacks.” I hesitated again, then added, “I found out he’s been practicing Old Magic.”
Her eyes went round. As I had hoped, there was only one force stronger than Marguerite’s terror of me: her insatiable hunger for gossip. “I knew it,” she said with conviction. “I knew there was something evil about him. Come on.”
Our differences momentarily forgotten, she shrugged out of her cloak and tossed it over my chemise. Then she glanced left and right and bundled me out the door.