World of Curiosities

CHAPTER 17

“So what’s a grim…,” Clara began. “A grimmmm—” she continued in the hopes it would come to her.

“Grimoire.” Reine-Marie turned to Myrna. “Do you know it?”

“Never heard of it.”

While Olivier had had to go back down to the bistro for the lunch service, and Fiona had left to meet Sam, the rest had returned to Myrna’s living room.

No one really wanted to move far from the newly discovered room and its collection of increasingly odd oddities.

Reine-Marie clasped the book on her lap, reluctant to give up this long-searched-for treasure.

Ruth hadn’t taken her eyes off the book since it was found. It was difficult to tell if the elderly woman was looking at it or watching it.

“You know what it is,” said Reine-Marie.

Ruth nodded, but remained uncharacteristically quiet, her eyes fixed on the leather cover. It was plain, simple, without design or writing, though it was scorched.

There was no title. Nothing to identify it. And for good reason.

The book dated from the 1600s, and anyone found to be in possession of a grimoire then would almost certainly have been burned at the stake. In fact, it looked like an effort had been made to do just that.

“It’s a book of spells,” explained Reine-Marie. “Incantations. Recipes for elixirs. Instructions on how to call up spirits.”

“Demons?” asked Harriet.

Gabri made a hissing sound, to shut her up. In case the very word would summon them.

Reine-Marie was about to answer when Ruth cut in: “No. Well, not necessarily.” She lifted her eyes from the book to Reine-Marie. “Have you looked inside?”

“Just to make sure it’s the real thing.”

“And?”

“It is.”

Ruth exhaled and shook her head. “So, it’s true then.”

As much as Armand wanted to stay and listen, there were other questions he had.

He took Billy aside and said, “Can we talk?”

“Oui. Where?”

A few minutes later they were in the Gamaches’ kitchen. Armand had cut slices from a fresh miche from Sarah’s Boulangerie, and made egg salad and tomato sandwiches, while Billy poured them each a glass of lemonade.

“Pink?” he asked, raising it.

It was a shade unknown in nature.

“The girls,” said Armand.

“Your granddaughters haven’t been down for a while,” said Billy, accepting the sandwich and sitting at the old pine table.

“Okay,” said Armand. “I can’t lie. Reine-Marie likes it.”

It was so clear that it was actually Armand who liked the pink lemonade that Billy laughed.

He took a large bite of the sandwich, the bread soft and chewy and the crust crisp. The egg salad had an unexpected hint of curry.

“What do you know about that room?” Armand asked.

Billy raised his brows. “Nothing. Why do you think I would?”

“Because of the letter.”

“Pierre Stone knew about the room,” said Billy. “But I didn’t. You think if I did I wouldn’t have broken through years ago? And certainly when Myrna and I started living together?”

Armand believed him. He saw no reason for Billy Williams to lie.

Though the room had been bricked up for a hundred and sixty years, the items hadn’t been there for that long. That was obvious.

Someone had gone through a great deal of trouble to place those items there. And that same someone, Armand was sure, wanted them to be found.

“How long ago did you say you got that letter?”

“Must be five weeks. I have the envelope at home. I can show you.”

“Yes, I’d like to see it.”

“What’re you thinking, Armand?”

“I’m more feeling than thinking.”

Billy smiled. “And what are you feeling?”

“That this isn’t just a joke. Someone who goes through this much trouble has been planning it for a while. That painting must’ve taken a long time to do. That book, the grimoire? Reine-Marie has been looking for it for years, but it shows up here?”

Was it placed there specifically for her? He hoped not. He thought not.

“I want to know why.”

“And who,” said Billy.

“And how. If the room was bricked up, how could those things have gotten up there?”

Billy heaved a sigh and put down his sandwich. “I don’t know. I do know those bricks sealing up the opening haven’t been moved since they were laid.”

“So there must be another way in. Through the roof, or the floor.”

“Oui.” Billy got up.

“Where’re you going?”

“To look.”

“That’ll wait. I want to talk to you about the letter.” Billy sat down again. “What do you really think of it?”

“I can’t see that the letter is the strangest thing about today.”

Armand smiled. “Agreed, but it is where all this started. With Pierre Stone.” He looked down at the paper, now sitting on the table. “I wonder if whoever sent it to you, or to your old house, wanted you to go looking for the hidden room.”

“But we didn’t. I showed it to Ruth, but we just dismissed it. It wasn’t until Fiona mentioned the room yesterday that we thought to look. But there is something strange about the letter.”

“What?”

“I don’t think Pierre Stone wrote it.”

“Go on.”

“Pierre was a skilled craftsman, but I doubt he got beyond third grade, if that. He’d have been literate enough to be able to read plans, but this—” Billy tapped the old paper and shook his head. “This was written by an educated person.”

Billy had hit on something that had niggled at Armand since reading the letter, but he hadn’t quite put it together. It didn’t seem like the sort of letter a stonemason a century and a half ago, living in the countryside, would write.

“He might’ve had someone else write it,” said Armand, wanting to explore all the corners. “Though it seems unlikely. This is a very personal letter, describing something clearly meant to be private, even secret. Why did you show it to Ruth?”

“She knows the history of Three Pines better than anyone. I thought if there was a hidden room, she might know about it. Might know the story. The room might’ve already been found and it was all in the past. Behind us.”

But it was not. Something was in front of them. Approaching. Or already there.

“I can’t believe we found a grimoire,” said Reine-Marie, still clutching it. “The only one I’ve heard of belonged to a woman in Montréal three hundred years ago. But it was lost, probably destroyed by the church.”

“Anne Lamarque,” said Ruth.

“You know her?” Very little about Ruth surprised Reine-Marie, but this did.

“We never met,” said Ruth.

Harriet laughed. Then, seeing the serious look on Ruth’s face, she stopped. And looked at Gabri, who did not seem surprised.

“She’d be very old,” he whispered to Harriet. “Pickled.”

“Who’s this Anne Lamarque?” asked Myrna.

“A witch,” said Ruth.

“Oh, God,” moaned Gabri. “Of course she is.”

“You think it belonged to her?” asked Myrna. “Is that possible? What’s it doing here?”

Reine-Marie opened the grimoire and carefully, carefully turned the first few pages. There were notations in the margins. Drawings of plants. What looked like recipes.

“No name,” she said. “But that can’t be a surprise. A grimoire would be proof of witchcraft. The Catholic Church in New France frowned on that.”

It was an intentional and monumental understatement. Bishop Laval, a Jesuit and head of the church in the New World, had hunted down and punished anyone even suspected of witchery.

No. No one would be foolish enough to put their name on a grimoire.

“Can you get me a knife?” Reine-Marie asked.

When Myrna did, Reine-Marie used it to carefully pry up the lining of the inside cover. And there it was, as clear as the day it was written three hundred and fifty years earlier, unfaded by light and time. Unseen. Until now.

Anne Lamarque, 1672.

About the same time The Paston Treasure, the real one, had been painted.

Fiona popped her head back up into the loft and invited Harriet to have lunch with them.

“Sam really wants you to come. I haven’t told him about what we found. I’m waiting for you. We’re in the bistro. Come on, it’ll be fun.”

Harriet was torn, though in truth it was not much of a tear. While she wanted to find out more about a book that had belonged to a witch, of all things, the fact was, that was history. And Harriet was looking to the future. Her future. If the immediate days ahead included Sam, well, history could wait. It wasn’t going anywhere. But she was.

“Sounds good.”

The rain was coming down heavier now and had brought with it a chill. It was only early June, and it was possible, rare but possible, to still get snow. The day had the sort of damp chill that settled even into young bones.

After ordering cheeseburgers with melted brie and fries, Harriet and Fiona told Sam about the discovery.

“Are you kidding?”

“No, it’s true.”

“So someone put that painting up there and made it look like the old painting? Then bricked it up with other stuff, including a book on witchcraft? Well, that’s just weird. This’s all your fault,” he said to Harriet.

“Mine?”

“You started it, with the talk of the hidden room.” He was clearly teasing her, and she responded. Laughing. Teasing back.

Sam playfully nudged her, then grabbed a spicy fry off her plate.

“Oh,” said Sam. “Sorry. Better be careful or the big tough cop’ll throw me in jail for stealing. Wouldn’t put it past him. Though that asshole seems to prefer picking on children.”

“Monsieur Gamache?” asked Harriet, surprised.

“You don’t know him like we do,” said Sam, looking at his sister.

“But you’re staying with him, them, aren’t you?” Harriet said to Fiona. She knew in broad strokes, as did everyone else, about Fiona’s past. But she also knew that the Gamaches had all but adopted her. “They’re friends of yours.”

“Of hers, yes,” said Sam. “But not me. He thinks I killed my mother and framed my own sister for it.”

“Sam!” said Fiona.

“Well, he does. He’s obsessed with me. He even told Fiona I wasn’t allowed in their house. How crazy is that? That scar he has? I think he walked into a tree and it’s made him soft in the head.”

He made a circular motion with his finger around his temple.

There was the scraping of a chair behind them and the clearing of a throat.

“I’m sorry.” The minister, Robert Mongeau, was standing by their table. “But what you’re saying is not only unkind, it’s untrue.”

His voice was soft, but his eyes were shrewd as he looked at Sam.

“Armand Gamache is a good man,” Mongeau continued. “A decent man. You could do worse than learn from him.”

“Oh, I’ve learned from him,” said Sam. “You want to know what? I learned not to trust anyone. I learned that cops are cruel. I learned to swallow my feelings, to hide my thoughts. To not tell the truth because it’ll bite you in the ass. I learned that the world is filled with terrible people, and the worst, the very worst, are the ones who should protect us. Who we turn to for help. That’s what I learned from Armand fucking Gamache.”

Sam took a few deep breaths to steady himself.

“He saved you from terrible abuse,” said Mongeau, gently.

“Saved us? We’d already saved ourselves. He ruined our lives.” Sam softened his voice. “We were children, and he made us the guilty ones, for trying to survive. Do you know what that does to a kid? To be made to feel all the abuse was our fault?”

“I can’t imagine what you’ve been through,” said Mongeau. “But I do know that holding on to resentments only binds you to the person you hate. You need to let go of it. For your own sake, not Monsieur Gamache’s. Not anyone else’s. For yourself.”

He paused and studied Sam for so long it was just on the verge of awkward when the minister finally spoke again.

“There’s goodness in you. I see it.” Then Mongeau turned to Fiona. As he looked at her, his brows dropped very slightly, then he looked away.

“You have no idea what we’ve been through.” Sam’s voice was small, shaky, and he seemed unable to look up from the table.

“Robert?” said Sylvie, from the next table.

He stepped away then paused. “I’m sorry to have interfered. It’s none of my business. But please, I’m at the church most days if you want to talk. No lecturing. No judgment. I promise. Though I do want to just say that the scar you mentioned”—Robert brought his finger up to trace where the scar was, deep and jagged, by Gamache’s temple—“was made by a bullet. Armand was shot while trying to save a young man, about your age.”

“Did he?” asked Sam.

“Save him?” said Robert. “No.”

Sam snorted. “Of course not.”

“At least he tried,” said Robert. He looked at his wife, then spoke softly, softly to the immortal young people. “Now here’s a good one: You’re lying on your deathbed. You have one hour to live. Who is it, exactly, you have needed all these years to forgive?”

The minister stared at Sam for a beat. Two. Then turned and returned to his wife.

“Well,” said Sam. “That was weird.”

“That was from one of Ruth’s poems,” said Harriet.

“That crazy old woman? She’s a poet?” said Sam.

“Won the Governor General’s Award.”

Fiona was watching Mongeau, then turned to her brother. It was a good question.

Who is it, exactly, you have needed all these years to forgive?

“After lunch I’d like to go over to your old house,” said Armand. “Is that all right with you?”

“Yes, but why?” asked Billy. “I don’t know what they can tell us. This’s all strange, but it’s not criminal.”

“I think it’s a little more than strange.”

“Okay, I agree. But no crime has been committed. Nothing’s been stolen. In fact, we have more than we started with. I know you said you don’t think it’s a joke, Armand, but what else could it be?”

“What happened to her?” asked Gabri, waving at the grimoire as though it was the woman.

“Anne Lamarque?” said Ruth. “She was accused of witchcraft.”

“Why? Did they find the book?” asked Clara.

“They heard about it,” said Ruth. “But never found it. If they had, it wouldn’t be sitting here now. They didn’t need the grimoire. They didn’t need proof. All a woman had to be was alive. Just being a woman was, in the church’s eyes, evil.”

“But there must’ve been a reason,” said Gabri.

“Is there a reason gay, lesbian, and transgender people are attacked?” asked Ruth. “Is there a reason Black men are shot? Is there a reason women are raped, abused, refused abortions, groomed and sold as sex slaves?”

“Murdered,” said Myrna, looking at the bouquet of white roses on the kitchen island.

“I was hanged for living alone,” said Ruth. It was rare, almost unheard of, that she quoted her own poem, but they heard it now. “For having a weedy farm in my own name / And a surefire cure for warts.”

The old woman looked at the book on Reine-Marie’s lap, in which, they were certain, was a surefire cure for warts.

“Oh yes,” she continued, “and breasts / And a sweet pear hidden in my body. / Whenever there’s talk of demons, those come in handy.”

It was the poem Ruth had written for the women murdered in the Polytechnique.

They were silent for a moment, before Reine-Marie spoke.

“Anne Lamarque was one of the Filles du roi. One of the women recruited by the King to help colonize New France. But rather than be subservient, as expected, she stood out.”

“How?” asked Clara.

“Well, among other things, she wore glasses and could read,” said Reine-Marie.

“You’d have been screwed,” Ruth said to Reine-Marie. “All of you. All of us. We’d be witches.”

Myrna laughed. Then grew serious, realizing Ruth was right. They’d have been screwed. They’d have been witches.

“It went beyond the fact she could read,” said Reine-Marie.

“True,” said Ruth. “She pissed off the authorities by owning and running a business. A successful inn in the seedier part of town, back when Montréal was little more than a puddle of shit and broken promises.”

“The church wanted to exert control, so they imposed a curfew,” said Reine-Marie. “And banned alcohol.”

“When the priests showed up to close her down, Anne told them to fuck off,” said Ruth, as though she’d been there. “Then chased them down the street shouting abuse. That pretty much sealed her fate. Bishop Laval and the Jesuits hated her for defying them.”

“For proving it was possible to defy them,” said Clara.

“Oui,” said Reine-Marie, nodding. “She was a brave woman. By all accounts a robust, generous, and brilliant woman who loved to sing and dance and laugh. A bit undisciplined, perhaps. She might not have seriously considered the consequences. But she meant no harm. New France was a pretty joyless place. She and her inn were bright spots.”

All four women in the room knew they too would have been targeted. For dancing and reading and having breasts and wombs and minds of their own. For laughing.

And God only knew what would have happened to Gabri, to all the Gabris.

They were quiet for a moment, imagining Anne. Her inn. The dirt floor, the homemade booze. The dancing. The singing. The laughter. The respite from the wilderness. From fear and despair.

And then they saw the black-robed figures, the joyless Jesuits arriving.

Myrna, Clara, Ruth, Reine-Marie, and Gabri watched as Anne kicked the clerics out, into the filth that was Montréal in the 1670s. They could hear the riotous, the dangerous, the lethal laughter that followed the humiliated men as they ran away.

And then … And then …

Reine-Marie looked down at the book. And then what? How did it get here? In Three Pines.

Sam looked out the window, then said, “Let’s get some fresh air.”

“It’s raining,” said Fiona. “I’m staying here.”

“Fine.” Sam got up and looked at Harriet. “How about you? You won’t melt in the rain, will you?”

Harriet smiled. “Like the Wicked Witch? I don’t think so.”

Fiona watched Sam. She hadn’t seen much of him, not since she was put in prison and he wasn’t. She hadn’t seen him grow up. Into a man. And yet, she still thought of him as a child.

Were they ever children?

The talk of forgiveness had shaken her. Could everything really be forgiven? Even what she’d done? Even what she was about to do?

She remembered what the minister had said to Sam. About goodness. And what he had not said to her.

After standing on the front porch and putting their coats on, Armand and Billy ran through the rain just as Sam and Harriet emerged from the bistro. Gamache made it to the car, then looked over at the two young people standing in the pouring rain.

Sam was staring directly at him.

As he watched, Sam slowly put his arm around Harriet’s waist. It was an act not so much of affection as possession.

Then he raised his other hand to his face and lifted his index finger up and down. It was the movement of someone taking a photograph. Sam was all but admitting he’d been in their home and had not just moved items but had taken pictures. Of his home. His family.

“Coming?” Billy called from inside the car.

Armand had never, as an adult, raised his middle finger to anyone, but it was all he could do not to do it now, then stride over and have it out. To demand to know why Sam was there. Why he’d been in their home.

Handling family photos. Taking photos.

But he knew that was exactly what Sam Arsenault wanted him to do. He was trying to provoke so that Harriet and anyone else watching would see him, a senior Sûreté officer, pick a fight for no apparent reason. So that Sam would appear the maligned innocent, facing police harassment.

It was close. So close. Too close. Armand felt that spike of fear. Not of Sam, but of himself and what he might actually do. Might be manipulated into doing.

Instead, Armand smiled at Sam, shook his head, then got in the car.

Grasping the steering wheel tight, he drove out of Three Pines.