Vespertine (Vespertine #1)(71)
“Don’t worry,” it assured me. “We’re traveling in the right direction. The pull is growing stronger by the moment. In the meantime, at least we’ve escaped from that miserable convent for a few hours.” It was taking in our surroundings with enthusiasm, sounding unnaturally cheerful. “I’m relieved to see that human fashions have improved over the last century. The nuns had me fooled; you’re still wearing the same wretched gray sacks as ever. Look over there,” it added with interest. “Are those hats?”
Marguerite noticed them at the same time. “Hats!” she squealed, rushing over.
“Maybe Marguerite should be your vessel instead,” I muttered into the revenant’s appalled silence.
She was dangling over the sill of a shop, staring wide-eyed into its interior. Funereally, I shuffled over to join her. Inside, a variety of ridiculous-looking floppy objects drooped limply from stands, made from different colors of silk and velvet and decorated with feather plumes. Left to my own devices, I wouldn’t have been able to figure out that they were supposed to go on people’s heads.
Something else caught Marguerite’s eye, and she rushed to the other side of the street as I straggled pallidly behind. Lace handkerchiefs, it turned out. Then buttons carved into the shapes of flowers. I wished Leander would hurry up with his evil plans.
A familiar voice caught my attention, raised in laughter. It was Charles, coming down the street. He looked like he was parting ways with a group of other off-duty soldiers; none of them were wearing swords. To my surprise, they had Jean with them, and looked like they were congratulating him about something, cheering and thumping him on the back.
I grabbed Marguerite’s arm to drag her out of sight, but Charles’s face lit up; he had seen us. “Marguerite!” he called out, hurrying over. “Anne,” he added in surprise. “You look different.”
“I’m having fun,” I said sepulchrally.
He coughed. “I meant your hair. It looks nice.”
“I braided it for her,” Marguerite volunteered, then blushed furiously for no discernible reason. Across the street, Charles’s friends were elbowing one another.
Charles snatched an onion from the stall behind us and lobbed it at them. Once they’d dispersed and Charles had sheepishly paid for the onion, I asked, “What’s Jean doing here?”
He had followed Charles over, blocking out the sun. Incongruously, there was a yellow ribbon pinned to his shirt.
Charles proudly punched him on the arm. “Yearly tradition. He’s won the barrel-throwing contest for the last three years running. We weren’t about to let him break his victory streak. Our whole unit got the day off—the captain authorized it.”
Jean kept gazing in slight wonderment at the ribbon, as though he half expected it to disappear as soon as he looked away. Being treated normally by his friends was good for him, I realized, as long as nothing happened to upset him. It seemed like none of them blamed him for the fate of their friend Roland. They weren’t afraid of him. I wondered what that would be like.
“Are you two going to see the effigy?” Charles went on hopefully. “I can help find you a good place to sit—it’s harder than you’d think—and stop for something to eat on the way. Bonsaint’s festival pastries are famous; you need to try one.”
Marguerite bit her lip. “Anne, what do you think?”
I couldn’t warn Charles not to attend the ceremony. Not without inviting questions that were impossible to answer in the middle of a crowded street. Also, if I claimed to be Artemisia of Naimes, he would probably think I had gone insane. The mere idea of having that conversation made me want to crawl into a hole and die.
The revenant noticed me sizing up an escape route. “You had better not, nun. Ideally the priest won’t be looking for you at all, but he certainly won’t be looking for a version of you that’s voluntarily socializing with a group of humans. Also, I want to try a pastry.” I felt obscurely betrayed.
“All right,” I agreed reluctantly.
Charles wasn’t discouraged by my lack of enthusiasm. He chattered happily the entire walk to the food stall. I found out that he came from a family with five sisters, in a province several days’ journey to the south, and had manifested the Sight at the relatively late age of nine. Knowing no one at the monastery in Roischal, he had become an honorary member of Jean’s family. Jean’s parents had died when he was young, so he’d been raised by an aunt, a tiny, ferocious woman whom Jean lifted over puddles when it rained. She was like a mother to many of the young men in the city guard who didn’t have family nearby.
I found myself listening with a lump in my throat. Some of the girls at my convent had family close by in Naimes, but I had avoided them whenever they’d visited. I hadn’t wanted them to see me and think the sisters abused the girls in their care.
After he bought the pastries, we sat down on a building’s steps to watch a minstrel show set up in the middle of the street. I retreated into my cloak, barely tasting the pastry’s mushroom filling as bare feet thumped across the stage in front of us. The Raven King, traditionally played by a beggar, gamboled over the boards wearing an old cloak of raven feathers and a crown of twisted metal scraps. Every time coins pattered onto the stage, he doffed his crown and grinned with blackened teeth. Jean flinched whenever one of the copper pawns struck him, but seemed to calm down when he saw that the man wasn’t hurt.