Free Holy Fools by Joanne Harris

sign. Perhaps they had been taken prisoner like LeMerle; perhaps they had fled.
    I barely acknowledged Le Borgne’s warning. Leaping down onto the road I ran toward the tail of the procession. Half the bearers had already gone; the rest were struggling to balance the Virgin’s platform against the big marble fountain that dominated the square while ensuring the Holy Mother did not fall. I saw bodies on the road, worshipers who had been crushed against buildings or trampled underfoot. LeMerle’s caravan was lying there on its side. Of its occupant, living or dead, there was no sign.
    “Mon père!”
I addressed the priest as calmly as I could. “Did you see what happened? My friend was in that caravan.”
    The priest looked at me in silence. His face was yellow with road dust.
    “Please tell me!” I heard my voice beginning to rise. “He wasn’t doing any harm. He was trying to protect himself!”
    A woman in black-one of the bearers-glanced at me scornfully: “He’ll get what’s coming to him, don’t you worry.”
    “What did you say?”
    “Him and the rest of his brood.” The words were barely intelligible in their thick patois. “We seen you poisoning the wells. We seen the signs.”
    Behind her, the Plague Doctor stepped out of a side alley, his cloak slapping against the wall. The woman in black saw him and I caught the sign again, forked and secretive.
    “Look. All I want is to find my friend. Where have they taken him?”
    The woman gave a humorless laugh. “Where d’you think? The courtroom. He won’t fly away from there. None of you plague-bringers will.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” I must have looked threatening then, because the woman jerked away, poking the sign at me with trembling fingers.
    “
Miséricorde
! God protect me!”
    I took a quick step forward. “Let’s see if he does, shall we?”
    But the Plague Doctor’s hand was already on my shoulder, and I could hear his voice in my ear, muffled by the long-nosed mask. “Be quiet, girl. Listen to me.”
    I tried to pull away, but the grip on my shoulder was unexpectedly strong. “It isn’t safe here,” hissed the doctor. “Judge Rémy burnt four witches in this square last month. You can still see the grease marks on the cobbles.”
    The dry voice seemed oddly familiar. “Do I know you?”
    “Quiet!” He turned away, his whitened mouth barely moving.
    “I’m sure I know you.” There was something about that mouth; the thin, twisted look of it, like an old scar, which I recognized. And the smell; the dusty smell from his robes…“Don’t I?”
    There came an exasperated hissing sound from behind the Plague Doctor’s mask. “Oh for pity’s sake, girl!” There it was again, that familiar voice, the clipped, precise intonation of a man who speaks many languages. He turned to me again and I could see his eyes, old and sad as a caged monkey’s. “They are looking for someone to blame,” he whispered harshly. “Leave now. Don’t even stay the night.”
    He was right, of course. Players, travelers, and gypsies have always been useful scapegoats for any misfortune, be it crop failure, famine, bad weather, or plague. I learned it in Flanders when I was fourteen and in Paris, three years later. Le Borgne knew it-Rico had learned it too late. The plague had pursued us sporadically across France, but by then, the worst of it was over. It had burnt itself out during the last epidemic, and few people died of it now except the old and the sick, but in Épinal this was only the last in a series of disasters. Dry cattle, spoiled harvest, rotten fruit, rabid dogs, unseasonable weather-and now this. Someone had to be held responsible. It didn’t matter that it made no sense; plague takes more than a week to spread its corruption, and we had barely been there an hour. Nor does it spread through water, even if we had tampered with the wells.
    But I already knew that no one here would listen to reason. Witchcraft was what