The Madness of Crowds

CHAPTER 16

The party was in full swing when Armand and Reine-Marie walked into the Auberge just before ten o’clock that evening.

A huge spruce, fragrant and festooned with sparkling glass ornaments, candy canes and strings of popcorn, dominated one corner of the living room.

Pine boughs with bright red bows rested on the mantelpiece along with tall columns of flickering candles. Beneath the mantel, a fire crackled in the grate.

Marc Gilbert had hung a sprig of mistletoe on the chandelier in the entrance, and people were hugged and kissed as they arrived.

Armand smiled as he looked around. And felt a wave of relief.

A year ago … a year ago … this had seemed impossible. Gone forever. As the second wave hit and the virus spread, taking with it more shops, more jobs, more freedoms, more lives.

But just as things had fallen apart so quickly, so too did they recover once the vaccine was discovered and shared among nations.

Like a forest after a fire, he thought, as he took their coats to a back room where a bed was heaped high with them. There was loss, but vivid new life had also emerged from the ash.

Stores had reopened. Hotels and restaurants were packed. Employment was higher than ever. It was as though people were awakening after a long nightmare and wanting to make up for lost time. To enjoy a freedom they no longer took for granted.

Returning to the foyer and looking through the living room windows at the far end, he spotted Florence, Zora, and Honoré. They were outside with the other children, roasting marshmallows by the bonfire, supervised by Monsieur Béliveau the grocer.

He then scanned the room and found Reine-Marie chatting with Clara and Ruth. He caught Clara’s eye and recognized the look.

Even though it had been years since Marc and Dominique Gilbert had taken over, Clara couldn’t yet call the place the Auberge, or the Inn and Spa. It would always be the Old Hadley House to her. And to him.

It would always be the horror on the hill, overlooking their pretty little village. The Old Hadley House watched as they went about their lives. Their happiness, their contentment, only seemed to make its shadow longer, darker. Elongating toward them even as the paint peeled, the roof lost shingles, the wood rotted. The happier they were, the fouler it had become.

It was a menace. The villagers held a meeting, and it was decided that they should tear it down. But then one lone voice made another suggestion.

They’d turned in their seats in St. Thomas’s church and stared in astonishment as Ruth Zardo suggested maybe it could be saved.

A vote was taken and the decision reached to give the place another chance. And so, it was rebuilt, refurbed, repainted by the villagers. Cleaned and even cleansed in a ritual led by Myrna, using sage and sweetgrass and holy water.

Then, when they’d done all they could, the Old Hadley House was sold at cost to the young couple and became the Inn and Spa.

Now, when they looked at it, the villagers saw not a horror but a second chance.

And yet Clara could never step into the place without feeling the cold breath of dread. Without seeing it as it had been. And still was, she suspected. Beneath the coat of fresh paint.

Even now the scent of rot seemed to ooze from the walls. The artist in Clara knew that paint didn’t change anything. It just covered what was, and always would be, there.

And she could see that Armand felt exactly the same way. Felt the same thing.

It was unfair, Armand knew, as he ladled punch into glasses. But he still saw, beneath the new plaster, the bones of the place. The snakes in the basement, the rat skeletons curled in corners. The thick spiderwebs waiting to catch and consume some living creature.

He could smell the decomposition beneath the fresh pine and ginger and cinnamon of the season.

“Drink?” he said, handing Clara one of the glasses of spiked punch.

“Merci.”

He gave the other to Reine-Marie.

“What about me?” demanded Ruth.

He looked at the vat of scotch the old poet was gripping. He recognized it. It was actually a flower vase. From their home.

Kids came in from outside and grabbed treats off the long table filled with tourtières and boeuf bourguignon. Assorted cheeses and sliced baguettes. A whole poached and decorated salmon had been provided by Gabri and Olivier, while a separate table was filled with mince tarts and butter tarts, with cookies and cakes, jars of licorice allsorts and jelly beans and chocolate-covered cherries.

A huge gingerbread house, a replica of the Inn and Spa, sat in the middle of the table.

Clara bent down and looked through the gumdrop-encrusted door.

“What’re you looking for?” asked Ruth.

“Your lost youth,” said Clara, straightening up.

“You won’t find it there.” Ruth raised her vat.

Outside, Daniel was comforting Florence, who was staring dejected at the charred and smoldering marshmallow sagging off her stick.

Honoré, following the lead of the older boys, plunged his stick, marshmallow and all, into the heart of the fire, as though slaying a dragon. Embers burst forth and drifted into the night sky.

Zora stood way back. Neither she nor her marshmallow was in danger of getting singed. But neither would they get toasty warm. As Armand watched, Daniel moved over to his youngest daughter and knelt beside her in the snow, whispering, reassuring, coaxing, but not pushing her forward.

Zora took one tentative step. Then a second.

Brave girl, her grandfather thought. Armand knew the terror of that first step. He also knew that the key to a full life was taking it. The trick wasn’t necessarily having less fear, it was finding more courage. Zora had that. She also had a father who knew the difference between carrying and supporting.

“Where’s numbnuts?” asked Ruth.

“At home. He and Idola will be by soon,” said Armand.

They’d long since accepted that that was Ruth’s name for Jean-Guy. And Jean-Guy himself accepted it, or at least had grown numb to it.

“I haven’t seen Idola in two days,” said Ruth. “Is she talking yet?”

“Not yet,” said Reine-Marie. “And for God’s sake, we don’t want a repeat of the Honoré fiasco.”

Ruth chuckled and looked anything but contrite. She’d taught the boy his first, and still his favorite, word.

“Wasn’t me.” Ruth glanced accusingly at the duck in her arms.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” said Rosa in an ineffective defense.

“And Stephen?” Ruth asked, casually. “Is he coming?”

“Are you blushing?” said Reine-Marie.

“She can’t,” said Gabri. “To blush you need blood in your veins.” He nodded toward the scotch. “If ever embarrassed, she’ll turn golden.”

“I think that’s called jaundice,” said Clara.

“Did I hear my name?” Stephen walked slowly across the crowded room, using his cane to clear the way. Just as Ruth had shown him.

“Hello, Jaundice,” said Ruth.

“Hello, Liver Failure,” said Stephen, kissing her on both cheeks. “And fuck, fuck, fuck to you,” he said to Rosa, who looked at him with something close to adoration. Which ducks very rarely did.

As people chatted around him, Armand glanced outside again at the glowing faces and bright eyes staring into the bonfire. It felt like it could be the dawn of time.

Primal and ancient. A new year, a new day dawning.

Armand often went to the little chapel on the hill. More for the silence than the sermons. And he almost always found Ruth already there. Sitting alone and scribbling in her customary seat, and sometimes on it. She sat under the stained-glass window of three of the village boys who’d gone to the Great War and never returned.

On the wall was the polished plaque with the unforgivably long list with names like Tommy and Bobby and Jacques. And below the names was engraved: They Were Our Children.

Then shall forgiven and forgiving meet again. Armand thought of Ruth’s seminal poem as he watched the children around the fire.

Our children, he knew, had much to forgive.

Or will it be, as always was, too late?

“What’re you thinking?” Reine-Marie asked, seeing the faraway look in his eyes.

“Actually, I was thinking about your poem about forgiveness,” he said to Ruth. “Have you ever met Abigail Robinson?”

“The madwoman?” asked Ruth. She turned to Stephen. “If she has her way, we’d both be put down.”

“Maybe not so crazy,” Gabri said to Olivier.

“My God,” said someone in the crowd. “I don’t believe it.”

Armand turned to see what they didn’t believe.

The whole room had grown quiet. Even the kids stopped running and shouting and slowed to a halt, gingerbread men halfway to their mouths. They too were staring toward the wide stairway that swept up from the foyer.

Haniya stopped, halfway down the stairs. And stood there. Perfectly still. Until every eye in the room was on her.

“Is that?”

“Can’t be.”

“But what’s she doing here?”

“My God, she’s magnificent,” Reine-Marie whispered.

And she was. Haniya Daoud, the Hero of the Sudan, was standing on the sweeping stairway, head high, chin up, body enfolded in a rich rose-and-gold abaya and hijab.

She was luminous.

It was Reine-Marie’s first glimpse of Haniya Daoud. After her conversation with Armand and her friends, and their less-than-flattering descriptions of the woman, Reine-Marie had expected someone gloomier. Certainly dimmer.

What she saw was a woman who seemed ageless, timeless. A powerful woman who commanded the room before she’d even entered it.

If this was broken, Reine-Marie thought, what must whole be like?

“I’m going to have to go over there soon,” said Myrna a few minutes later, looking across the room at Haniya, who was holding court next to the Christmas tree.

“Why?” asked Jean-Guy. He and Idola had joined them. She was in a chipmunk onesie, with little ears and a tail.

Olivier took and cradled her, turning away from Gabri’s outstretched arms as he reached for the child. “Mine.”

Parents were shoving their children forward, toward Madame Daoud. So that one day they could tell their own children they’d met a saint.

Photos were taken, while Haniya stared stone-faced into the cameras.

As a little girl walked away, they heard her ask her mother, “Do all saints have scars?”

“I can answer that,” said an older man who’d just joined their group.

“Hello, Vincent,” said Reine-Marie, smiling as they kissed on both cheeks, then turning to Stephen.

“I don’t think you’ve met. This’s Dr. Vincent Gilbert,” she said. “And this is Stephen Horowitz.”

“Ahhh,” said Stephen with a smile. “The Asshole Saint.”

“That’s me,” agreed Gilbert, as the two older men shook hands. “And you’re the failed billionaire.”

“Please, I’m now living off my godson and his family. Can’t call that a failure.”

Gilbert laughed. “Nice crowd.” His eyes scanned the room, looking, Armand thought, for someone.

Myrna took a swig of punch and said, “I think I’ll do the deed now before her mood completely sours. Such a shame she doesn’t drink.”

“What deed?” Vincent Gilbert asked.

“An apology.” She turned to Reine-Marie. “I’ll introduce you. Clara?”

“What?”

“Come on, you know what.”

“Oh, all right.” Clara drained her glass and gave it to Annie. “If we don’t come back, know that I loved you all.”

“Can I have your painting of Ruth?” asked Gabri.

“No, I want that,” said Ruth. “It’s the only one that isn’t crap.”

“So much for love,” said Myrna as they headed across the room.

“That’s the famous Hero of the Sudan,” said Dr. Gilbert, taking Reine-Marie’s place beside Armand. “I heard she might be here.”

The Asshole Saint was staring at Haniya with curiosity and unconcealed resentment.

Having lived for years not only in the forest, but in his spacious ego, Dr. Vincent Gilbert had grown to expect he’d be the center of wonderment and awe at any gathering.

“She’s younger than I thought.”

“She’s twenty-three,” said Armand. “Madame Daoud was kidnapped and sold into slavery when she was eleven.”

“Oui. Terrible story.”

Gamache was reminded why this man was known as the Asshole Saint. He was certainly part saint, but it wasn’t lost on anyone who met him that while his medical research had improved the human condition, he himself did not actually like humans.

“I didn’t expect to see the Hero of the Sudan in the dark hole of Québec,” said Gilbert. “What’s she doing here?”

“She’s visiting Myrna.”

“That doesn’t really answer my question, does it?”

“I thought it did.”

Vincent Gilbert was in his mid-seventies and looked every minute of that age, and then some. Slight, sinewy, his skin lined and leathery from his latter life as a recluse, living in a log cabin in the middle of the forest.

“You’re not normally this vague, Armand. I wonder if that event yesterday took something out of you.”

Despite the words, Vincent Gilbert’s tone was gentle. Inviting Armand to talk about it, if he wanted to. Every now and then, Armand thought, the saint part showed a bit of ankle.

But then something occurred to him. Maybe Vincent Gilbert didn’t want to listen, maybe he wanted to talk about the events at the University.

“Vincent, do you know Abigail Robinson?”

“Only by reputation. I’ve read her study.”

“And?”

“And nothing. I’m a doctor, not a statistician.”

“Then why did you read it?”

“I got tired of reading articles on compost. Interestingly, I did find that her recent research makes good fertilizer. Excusez-moi, Armand. Marc!”

Reine-Marie fought it, but finally had to admit that she found Haniya Daoud difficult.

She tried to look sympathetic as Haniya listened, stone-faced, to Clara’s apology. It didn’t help that Myrna’s apology had been met with silence. And now, into that abyss, Clara poured words that sounded, and probably were, less and less sincere.

As Reine-Marie watched Haniya, and saw the curling lip, all she could think of was the line from Ruth’s poem.

Who hurt you once, so far beyond repair?

Though they knew who’d hurt her. Not just her torturers. They all had, by their silence and inaction.

It was five past eleven. Almost time for the play.

Patting his pockets, Armand realized he’d left his phone in his parka and he wanted to take pictures. Coming out of the cloakroom with his phone, Armand heard one of their hosts, Dominique, talking to some late arrivals.

“You can put your coats in the room, just throw them on the bed, and then make yourselves at home.” But a slight flattening of Dominique’s normally cheerful voice made Armand look down the hall at the newcomers.

As he did, his smile faded.

Facing him, also stopped and staring, was Colette Roberge. And behind her were Abigail Robinson and Debbie Schneider.