Glass Houses

CHAPTER 11

In the morning it was gone.

Armand stood on the verandah, in his coat and cap and gloves. Henri and little Gracie on leashes. Though from their perspective, Armand was the one on the leash.

All three stared at the empty village green, shrouded in early morning mist.

He looked around. At the homes, the gardens, down the quiet dirt roads that ran into and out of Three Pines like compass points, marking the cardinal directions.

Nothing stirred. Though there was birdsong now, and a few blue jays rested on the back of the bench on the green.

“Off you go,” he said, unclipping the dogs.

Henri and Gracie took off, down the steps, along the path, over the quiet road and onto the green, where they chased each other round and round the three tall pines.

Gracie ran a little like a hare, loping at speed.

She couldn’t be…? Armand wondered, as he watched.

Her back feet were larger than her front, it was true. And her ears were growing longer and longer.

It was still far from clear what Gracie was. But one thing wasn’t in question.

Whatever she was, she was theirs.

A slight movement off to his left caught his attention and he looked over. There, in an upper window, a large robed figure looked down on him.

Armand stared at it, his eyes sharp, his focus absolute. His body tense.

But when the figure took a step back and light fell on it, he saw that it was Myrna.

She waved and a minute later emerged wearing a wool coat, bright pink tuque with pompom, and carrying the largest mug of coffee he’d ever seen. Really, more a pail.

“Our friend has gone,” she said, her feet making a thucking sound as she yanked her rubber boots out of the mud with every step.

“Oui.”

“I guess Paul Marchand scared him off after all.”

“I guess so.”

He was relieved. But he was also curious, and as they walked slowly around the village green, he wondered if they’d ever know why the cobrador had appeared. And why it had disappeared.

The entire village seemed lighter, leavened. The sun was even trying to break through the chilly mist.

They’d grown almost used to the presence on the green, as one grew used to the smell of manure spread on fields. It was necessary. It might even be good. But that didn’t make it pleasant.

And now the cobrador, the Conscience, was gone. The great accusation in the center of their lives had left. And they had their little village back.

Beside him, Myrna took a long, deep breath, and exhaled. A warm puff in the fresh morning air.

Armand smiled. He felt the same way. Relaxed for the first time in days.

“Do you think he got what he came for?” asked Myrna.

“He must have, otherwise why leave? If he was willing to risk a beating from Monsieur Marchand, I can’t imagine what would make him suddenly give up.”

“I wonder what success for the cobrador would look like,” she said.

“I was wondering the same thing,” said Armand. “The modern one, the one with the top hat, knows when the debt has been paid. It’s a financial transaction. This debt is far different.”

Myrna nodded. “Okay, what I really want to know is who he came for, and what that person did. There, I admit it.”

“Well now, that’s not natural at all,” he said with a smile.

“You too?”

“Maybe just a little curiosity.”

They walked quietly for a moment.

“Not just curiosity, Armand. There’s something else. The Conscience is gone.”

“And that leaves someone here without one. Maybe.”

Neither seemed willing to go further. They both wanted to enjoy this moment. This especially fresh November morning, with the woodsmoke from fireplaces in the air. With the soft sun and cool mist infused with the scent of the musky, muddy earth and sweet pine.

“The children in the apple tree,” said Myrna, watching Henri and Gracie play among the pines. “Heard, half-heard, in the stillness.”

“Hmmm,” hummed Armand. Her thucking steps beside him, far from being annoying, were rhythmic. Like a calming metronome. “T. S. Eliot.”

More and more birds were returning to the village green, and now Henri had Gracie on the wet grass, rolling her over as her tail wagged furiously and her little legs pretended to push him away.

“‘Little Gidding,’” said Myrna.

For a moment he thought she said “giddy.” That Gracie was a little giddy, which she was. But then he realized Myrna was talking about the poem she’d just quoted.

“I’ve been there, you know,” he said.

“To Little Gidding?” asked Myrna. “It’s a real place? I thought T. S. Eliot made it up.”

“Non. It’s not far from Cambridge. Huh,” he said, smiling.

“What is it?”

“The population of Little Gidding is about twenty-five. It reminds me a bit of here.”

They took a few more steps through the soft world.

“And all shall be well,” he quoted the poem. “And all manner of thing shall be well.”

“Do you believe it?” asked Myrna.

The poem, she knew, was about finding peace and simplicity.

“I do,” said Armand.

“Julian of Norwich said it first, you know,” said Myrna. “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

Her rubber boots kept the soothing rhythm, so that the words and the world fused.

“I believe it too,” she said. “Hard not to on a day like this.”

“The trick is to believe it in the middle of the storm,” said Armand.

And Myrna remembered that while the poem was about finding peace, it came only after a conflagration. A dreadful cleansing.

“Little Gidding” also spoke of a broken king. She looked at her companion, and remembered their conversation the night before. About conscience.

They had a broken king. In fact, they were all broken.

“I think everyone in this village believes that all shall be well,” Armand was saying. “That’s why we’re here. We all fell down. And then we all came here.”

He made it sound such a simple, reasonable, logical course of magical events.

“Ashes, ashes,” Myrna chanted under her breath, “we all fall down.”

Gamache smiled. “My granddaughters were playing that last time they visited. Right there.”

He pointed to the village green. And the exact spot where the cobrador had stood.

He could see Florence and her sister, Zora, dancing in a circle, holding hands with other village children, chanting the old folk song. There was something innocent but also disturbing about those old rhymes.

He could see the children laughing. And then falling to the ground. Sprawled there. Still.

He’d found it both funny and upsetting. To see those he loved lying, as though dead, on the village green. Reine-Marie said that the folk song was centuries old and originated in the Black Death. The plague.

“What is it?” Myrna asked, watching his face.

“Just thinking about the cobrador.”

But that wasn’t altogether true. He was thinking of the small plastic bag he’d pulled from Marchand’s pocket.

With the cobrador gone, he’d go in to work and call up the lab to see what was in the bag. But he knew the answer.

Fentanyl. The plague.

Ashes, ashes, he thought. We all fall down.

“All shall be well,” Myrna reassured him.

“Well, well,” said a familiar voice behind them, and both turned to see Ruth and Rosa waddling and limping down the hill, from tiny St. Thomas’s Church.

“You’re up early,” said Armand, as the old poet joined them.

“Don’t sleep much.”

Armand and Myrna exchanged glances. Their experience with Ruth was that she slept, or perhaps was passed out, most of the time. Waking up once an hour or so to hurl an insult, then back to sleep. The village cuckoo. Clock.

“Went to St. Thomas’s for some peace and quiet,” said Ruth.

Again, Armand and Myrna exchanged glances, wondering what riot could possibly be going on in her home, or more likely her head, that she needed to seek refuge.

“Was he gone when you came out?” asked Armand.

“Who?”

“Who do you think?” asked Myrna.

“You mean the toreador?”

“Yes,” said Myrna, not bothering to correct her, since she suspected Ruth knew perfectly well that a bullfighter hadn’t descended on the village. Though, God knew, they could use help fighting all the bull.

“He was gone,” said Ruth. “But Michael was hanging around. Making a pest of himself.”

“The archangel?” asked Armand.

“Who else? Man, that angel can talk. God this, God that. So I went to the chapel to get away.”

“From God?” asked Myrna, looking at the rumpled woman. “What did you do there?”

“I prayed.”

“Preyed?” Myrna mouthed at Armand, making a talon gesture with her hands.

Armand flattened his lips to stop from smiling.

“What for?” he asked the old poet.

“Well, I start off praying that anyone who’s pissed me off meets a horrible end. Then I pray for world peace. And then I pray for Lucifer.”

“Did you say Lucifer?” asked Myrna.

“Why so surprised?” asked Ruth, looking from one to the other. “Who needs it more?”

“I can think of a few who deserve it more,” said Myrna.

“And who are you to judge?” asked Ruth, not completely unkindly. Though Myrna was now a little afraid she’d be added to that prayer list. “The greatest sinner. The most lost soul. The angel who not only fell to earth, he fell so hard he broke through.”

“You pray for Satan?” Myrna asked again, still unable to get past that, and beseeching Armand for help. But he only shrugged as though to say, “She’s all yours.”

“Shithead,” muttered Myrna.

Then something occurred to her. “For him? Or to him?”

“For him. For him. For him. Jeez, and they call me demented. He was Michael’s best friend. Until he got into trouble.”

“And by trouble, you mean the war in heaven where Lucifer tried to overthrow God?” asked Myrna.

“Oh, you know the story?”

“Yes, there was a movie of the week.”

“Well, none of us is perfect,” said Ruth. “We all make mistakes.”

“That would seem bigger than most,” said Myrna. “Especially since Lucifer hardly seems repentant.”

“And is that a reason not to forgive?” asked Ruth. She seemed genuinely perplexed by the question. Losing herself for a moment. “Michael says Lucifer was the most beautiful, the brightest of them all. They called him the Son of the Morning. He was luminous.”

Ruth looked around, at the cottages, the gardens, the forest. The fragrant mist, and the struggling sun.

“Stupid, stupid angel,” she muttered, then turned to them. “It’s generally thought that a conscience is a good thing, but let me ask you this. How many terrible things are done in the name of conscience? It’s a great excuse for appalling acts.”

“Did your friend Lucifer tell you that?” asked Myrna.

“No, the Archangel Michael told me that, just before he asked me to pray for the greatest sinner of all.”

“Who had no conscience,” Myrna pointed out.

“Or a warped one. A conscience is not necessarily a good thing. How many gays are beaten, how many abortion clinics bombed, how many blacks lynched, how many Jews murdered, by people just following their conscience?”

“And you think that’s what we had here?” asked Armand. “A conscience gone astray?”

“How should I know? I’m a crazy old woman who prays for Satan and has a duck. It would be nuts to listen to me, wouldn’t it? Come on, Rosa, time for breakfast.”

The two limped and waddled over to the Gamache home.

“A conscience guides us,” Myrna called after her. “To do the right thing. To be brave. To be selfless and courageous. To stand up to tyrants whatever the cost.”

Ruth stopped and turned back to look at them.

“You might almost say it’s luminous,” she said, pausing on the steps up to the porch. Holding their eyes. “Sometimes all is not well.”