Amandine Read Online Free Page B

dear. Deceit and betrayal are blood rights from our pagan forebears. You will recall the escapades of the gods. And as for we brides of Jesus, though He soothes our souls, our flesh He leaves yearning. Besides, the pressure of virginity is distracting. Better to give it up. All the better to give it up to Fabrice. He’ll be bishop someday. Mark my words.”
    Later still, my desire for you finally spent, I’d come to tell you. “Never again,” I’d said, and how you laughed, wiping the tears with your surplice, saying, “Little boys are my true delight. A lesser divertissement, I took you because you were so solemn about the business. I did it for you, my dear.”
    Even scorned I remained devoted. For all the years since that epoch I have responded to your every call. To every call from His Eminence, each and every request from my old, liverish
bon viveur.
My own Daedalus. How cannily has your great bulbous nose taken on the same violaceous tint as your robes, Excellency. How well you’ve done. The school, the community, legacy of my work for your glory. My reward? A five-year mission to safeguard a damaged, bastard infant
.
    “Ah, Philippe, you startled me. Just on my way downstairs. What are you doing here?” Paul searches for her handkerchief. Philippe,Père Philippe, is the old priest who earlier answered the door to the countess and her entourage.
    “I came to look for you. I’ve been standing here for some time, but you were so far away, your thoughts so far away, that I stayed quiet, waited …,” Philippe tells her.
    Paul nods toward the nursery, says, “Things will want adjusting. I was thinking about all that is bound to change now.”
    “Change for the better, I would think. Maybe even more for you and me than for the rest. Come to walk with me in the garden, Paul.”
    “I can’t right now. I must telephone the bishop and—”
    “He’ll wait. I don’t know why, can’t fathom why this has disturbed you so. You’re pale as death, Paul. The way you were when a new postulant caught Fabrice’s eye. Is it that? Are you envious of the baby?”
    “First fear, now envy. Of what shall I next be accused today? Old fool you are, Philippe. It’s only that having an infant and her nurse in residence is not something that
fits
, that seems at all
fitting
…”
    “You
are
envious. And if I’m an old fool, you’re a fool only three years younger. How much of our lives have we lived together? You and Fabrice and I, the last surviving—”
    “Yes, but he survives far better than you and I, Philippe. He thrives while we wither, while we still tremble and fetch at his bidding.”
    “It’s the way things arranged themselves. It might well have been I who’d been promoted and exalted in his place. I was the academician, after all, yet he won favor with
affability
. What can it matter now that we’re so close to the end? I’m grateful to him that he sent me here to you. To you and the sisters, to live out my time in this place, in this pleasant enough place. He might have packed me off to some decrepit retreat for shabby, venial clerics rather than here. Ah, I tell you, Paul, in his way, he’s done well by both of us. In his way, he’s always done well by us. And what you don’t see now is that his accepting whatever proposal was made to him to take over the care of this infant … What you don’t see is that, by this, he gives us a last chance.”
    “What sort of last chance?”
    “To be
typical
, I suppose that’s the word. To be
ordinary
. I think our calling—”
    “Your
calling, perhaps. I have yet to hear my call, Philippe.”
    “That’s what I wanted to say. Even
with
a calling, celibate life is neither typical nor ordinary, and yet typical and ordinary
are we
. Many of us, most of us Benedicks and Jesuits and vestals. No matter the troop, celibate life makes for a monstrous aberration, a nunnish battle with the flesh, but more with the heart. I think we are meant to love someone other