Louise Penny - Cruelest Month

‘Get mad or go mad?’ mumbled Myrna. ‘Either way, it isn’t working.’

Over at the sofa Gabri had corralled Jeanne again. ‘So what do witches do?’

‘Gabri, shouldn’t you be passing this round?’ Olivier tried to hand him the pâté again, but Gabri just took a scoop himself and left Olivier holding it.

‘We heal people.’

‘I thought you did, well, the opposite. Aren’t there wicked witches?’

‘Please dear Lord don’t let him welcome us to munchkin land,’ Olivier murmured to Peter. Both men moved away.

‘Some, but not as many as you might think,’ Jeanne smiled. ‘Witches are simply people with heightened intuition.’

‘So it’s not magic,’ said Beauvoir, listening despite himself.

‘We’re not conjuring anything that isn’t already there. We just see things others don’t.’

‘Like dead people?’ asked Gabri.

‘Oh, that’s nothing,’ said Ruth, shoving Myrna aside as she squeezed onto the sofa, bony elbows out. ‘I see them all the time.’

‘You do?’ asked Myrna.

‘I see them now,’ said Ruth and the room grew silent. Even Peter and Olivier drifted back.

‘Here?’ asked Clara. ‘In our house?’

‘Especially here,’ said Ruth.

‘Now?’

‘Right there,’ said Ruth and she raised one certain finger and pointed. At Gamache.

There was an intake of breath and Gamache looked over at Beauvoir.

‘Dead? He’s dead?’ whispered Clara.

‘Dead? I thought you said dull. Never mind,’ said Ruth.

‘How can she be a poet?’ Peter asked Olivier and the two walked away again to examine Peter’s latest jigsaw puzzle.

‘So who did it? Do you know yet who killed Madeleine?’ asked Ruth. ‘Or have you been too busy paying people off and drinking to actually do any work?’

Beauvoir opened his mouth and Gamache held up his hand, reassuring him it was a joke.

‘We don’t know, but we’re getting close.’

This was a surprise to Beauvoir, who tried not to show it.

‘Did you all know she’d had cancer?’ Gamache asked. Everyone looked at each other and nodded.

‘But that was a while ago,’ said Myrna.

Gamache waited for more then decided he had to ask his question clearly.

‘Was she still in remission, as far as you know?’

They looked perplexed and again searched out each other, passing glances in the sort of telepathy good friends have.

‘Never heard otherwise,’ said Peter. No one disagreed. Gamache and Beauvoir exchanged looks. Conversation started up again and Peter ducked into the kitchen to check on dinner.

Gamache followed him and found Peter stirring the lamb stew. Gamache picked up a baguette and a bread knife and gestured to Peter, who smiled his thanks.

The two worked quietly together, listening to the conversation in the next room.

‘Hear tomorrow’s supposed to be nice, finally,’ said Peter. ‘Sunny and warm.’

‘April’s like that, isn’t it?’ said Gamache, cutting the bread and putting it onto a tea towel nestled in a wooden bowl. Gamache lifted the towel and saw the signature burling of the wood. One of Sandon’s bowls.

‘Unpredictable, you mean?’ said Peter. ‘Difficult month.’

‘Sunny and warm one day then snow the next,’ agreed Gamache. ‘Shakespeare called it the uncertain glory of an April day.’

‘I prefer T. S. Eliot. The cruellest month.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘All those spring flowers slaughtered. Happens almost every year. They’re tricked into blooming, into coming out. Opening up. And not just the spring bulbs, but the buds on the trees. The rose bushes, everything. All out and happy. And then boom, a freak snowstorm kills them all.’

Gamache had the feeling they weren’t talking about flowers any more.

‘But what would you have happen?’ he asked Peter. ‘They have to bloom, even if it’s for a short time. And they’ll be back next year.’

‘But not all.’ Peter turned to look at Gamache, the wooden spoon in the air dripping thick gravy. ‘Some never recover. We had the most beautiful rose bush just budding and a hard frost killed it a few years back.’

‘A killing frost,’ quoted Gamache. ‘It nips his root. And then he falls, as I do.’

Peter was trembling.

‘Who’s falling, Peter? Is it Clara?’

‘No one’s falling. I won’t allow it.’

‘Strange in Canada, we talk all the time about the one thing we can’t control. The weather. We can’t stop a killing frost and we can’t stop the flowers from doing what they’re meant to do. Better to bloom even for an instant, if that’s your nature, than live forever in hiding.’

‘I don’t agree.’ Peter turned his back on his guest and practically puréed the stew.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.’

‘You didn’t,’ said Peter to the wall.

Gamache took the bread to the long pine table, set for dinner, then returned to the living room. He reflected on T. S. Eliot and thought the poet had called April the cruellest month not because it killed flowers and buds on the trees, but because sometimes it didn’t. How difficult it was for those who didn’t bloom when all about was new life and hope.

‘So let me get this straight,’ said Olivier.

‘He almost never says that,’ Gabri assured Clara then turned back to the platter of shrimp Olivier was trying to get him to pass round. Gabri took one.

‘Easter isn’t a Christian holiday?’ said Olivier.

‘Well, it is,’ said Jeanne. The little, nondescript woman had somehow managed to dominate the room full of strong personalities. She sat bunched into a corner of the sofa, squeezed between the arm and Myrna, and all eyes were on her. ‘But the early church didn’t know for sure when Christ was crucified so it chose a date, one that would fit into the pagan calendar of rituals as well.’

‘Why would they want to do that?’ asked Clara.

‘The early church needed converts to survive. It was a dangerous and fragile time. In order to win over the pagans it adopted some of their feasts and rituals.’

‘Church incense is like the smudging we do,’ agreed Myrna. ‘When we light dried herbs to cleanse a place.’ She turned to Clara, who nodded. But it was a comforting ritual full of joy, not the somber swinging of the church censer, glum and vaguely threatening. She’d never seen the two as similar and wondered how the priests would feel about the comparison. Or the witches.

‘That’s right,’ said Jeanne. ‘Same with the festivals. We sometimes call Christmas Yuletide.’

‘In some of the carols anyway,’ said Gabri.

‘And we have the Yule log,’ Olivier pointed out.

‘Yule is the ancient word for the winter solstice. The longest night of the year. Around December twenty-first. It’s a pagan festival. So that’s where the early Christian church decided to put Christmas.’

‘So that a bunch of witches would celebrate? Come on,’ said Ruth with a snort. ‘Aren’t you making yourselves out to be more important than you are?’

‘Now, absolutely. The church hasn’t been interested in us for hundreds of years, except maybe as firewood, as you know.’

‘What do you mean? As I know?’

‘You’ve written about the old beliefs. Many times. It runs through your poems.’

‘You’re reading too much into them, Joan of Arc,’ said Ruth.

‘ I was hanged for living alone,

for having blue eyes and a sunburned skin,

and breasts.

Whenever there’s talk of demons

these come in handy. ’

Jeanne quoted the poem, searching Ruth’s face.

‘Are you saying Ruth’s a witch?’ asked Gabri.

Jeanne tore her attention from the wizened old woman sitting bolt upright.