Maman and Isabella had nothing with them but herbs, linen and a knife.
As it leapt Maman raised her arms instinctively, saving twenty days of her life but wishing afterwards that she had let it RIP out her throat quickly and mercifully. When it fell back, when the blood was streaking down Maman's arm, the wolf looked at Isabella briefly and disappeared into the dark without a sound.
While Maman told her husband and sons about 'it' the wolf with candles in its eyes. Isabella cleaned the bite with water boiled with shepherd's purse and laid cobwebs over it before binding the arm with soft wool.
Maman refused to sit still insisted on picking her plums, working in the kitchen garden, continuing as if she had not seem the truth shining in the wolf's eyes. After a day her forearm had swelled to the same size as her upper arm, and the area around the wound went black. Isabella made an omelette, added rosemary and sage, and mouthed a silent prayer over it. When she brought it to her mother she began to cry. Maman took the bowl from her and ate steadily, her eyes on Isabella, tasting death in the sage, until the omelette was gone.
Fifteen days later she was drinking water when her throat began to contract in spasm, pumping water down the front of her dress. She looked at the black patch spreading on her chest, then sat in the late summer sun on the bench next to the door.
Fever came fast, and furious that Isabella prayed death would come swiftly to relieve her. But Maman fought, sweating and shouting in her delirium, for four days. On the last day, the priest from Le Pont de Montvert arrived to perform the last rites, Isabelle held a broom across the doorway and spat at him until he left.
Only when Monsieur Marcel arrived did she drop the broom and stand by to let him pass. Four days later the twins returned with the second cypress tree.
The crowd gathered in front of the church was not used to victory, nor familiar with conduct of celebration. The priest had finally slipped away three days before. They were sure now that he was gone, the woodcutter Pierre La Forét had seen him miles away, all the possessions he could carry piled on his back.
The early winter snow covered the smooth parts of the ground with a thin gauze, wrecked in place by leaves and rocks. There was more to come, with the sky the color of Peter to the North up beyond the summit of Mont Lozère.
A layer of white lay on the thick granite of the church roof. The building was empty. No mass had been said there since the harvest, the attendance had dropped as Monsieur Marcel and his followers grew more confident.
Isabella stood among her neighbour's listening to Monsieur Marcel, who placed in front of the door, severed in his black clothes and silver hair. Only his red-stained hands undermined his commanding presence, a reminder to them that he was after all simply a cobbler. When he spoke focused on a point over the crowd's head.
" This place of worship has been the scene of corruption. It is in safe hands now. It is in your hands". He gestured before him as if he were sowing seed. A hum rose from the crowd.
"It must be cleansed" he continued. "Cleansed of it's sin, of these idols". He waved a hand at the building behind him. Isabella stared up at the Virgin, the blue behind the statue faded but with a power still to move her. She had already touched her forehead and her chest before she realized what she was doing and managed to stop without completing the cross. She glanced around to see if the gesture had been noticed. But her neighbour's were looking at Monsieur Marcel, calling to him as he strode through them and continued up the hill toward the bank of dark cloud, tawny hands tucked behind him. He did not look back.
When he was gone the crowd grew louder, more agitated. Someone shouted, "The window!" The cry was taken up. Above the door, a small circular window held only piece of glass they had ever seen. The Duc de I'Aigle had installed it beneath the niche three summers ago, just before he was touched with the Truth by Calvin. From the outside the window was dull brown but from the inside it was green, yellow and blue, with a tiny dot of red in Eve's hand. The SIN.
Isabella had not been inside the church for a long time, but she remembered the scene well, Eve's look of desire, the serpent's smile, Adam's shame.
If they could have seen it once more, the sun lighting up the colors like a field dense with summer flower, its beauty might have saved it. But there was no sun, and no entering the church, the priest had slipped a large padlock through the bolt across the door.
They had not seen one before, several men examined it, pulled it, in certain of its mechanism. An axe would have to be taken to it, carefully, to keep it intact.
Only the knowledge of the window's value held them back. It belong to the Duc, to whom they owned a quarter of their crops, in turn receiving protection, the assurance of whisper in the ear of the King. The window and the statue were gifts from him. He might still value them.
No one knew for certain who threw the stone, though afterwards several people claimed they had. It struck the centre of the window and shattered it immediately. It was a sound so strange that the crowd hushed. The had not heard glass break before.
In the lull a boy ran over and picked up a shard of the glass, then howled and threw it down.
"It bit me!" He cried, holding up a bloody finger.
The shooting began again. The boy's mother snatched him and pressed him to her.
"The devil!" She screamed. "It was the devil!".
Etienne Tournier, hair like burnt hay, stepped forward with a long rake. He glanced back to his older brother, Jacques, who nodded. Etienne looked up at the statue and called loudly "La Rose!".
The crowd shifted, steps sideways that left Isabella standing alone. Etienne turned round with a smirk on his face, pale blue eye resting on her like hands pressing into her. He slid his hand down the handle and hoisted the rake up, letting the metal teeth descend and hover in front of her. They stared at each other.