A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #12) - Louise Penny Page 0,148
her grandfather’s legs, knocking herself to the soft grass. And looked up at him, in amazement.
He gave his plate to Jean-Guy and scooped her up, kissing her cheek, and the tears that were moments away turned to laughter, and she was off again.
The bar had been set up on Ruth’s porch, where the old poet sat in a rocking chair, Rosa on her lap and her cane across the arms like a shotgun. The four cadets got their beers and were deep in conversation.
“What’re you talking about?” Clara asked, pouring herself a gin and tonic.
“Ruth says she wants a name for her cottage,” said Nathaniel. “She asked me to choose one.”
“Really?” asked Myrna. “She asked you?”
“Well, more told me to find one,” he admitted. “And told me not to fuck it up.”
“So what’ve you come up with?” asked Clara.
“We’ve narrowed it down,” said Huifen. “It’s between Rose Cottage”—she pointed to the sweetbriar roses around Ruth’s porch—“and Pit of Despair.”
“I dare you,” said Clara, laughing, as she and Myrna crossed the dirt road and joined Reine-Marie and Annie, who was holding Honoré and chatting with Gabri.
“A beautiful ceremony, mon beau,” Annie said, kissing his cheeks.
“Merci. I was thrown a little when everyone stood up,” he admitted.
“But you covered it nicely by breaking into ‘Hakuna Matata.’ The King James version, if I’m not mistaken.”
Gabri leaned down and spoke to Honoré. “One must always have a song in the heart.”
“And an éclair in the hand,” said Myrna, lifting hers.
“Sage words,” said Annie.
She looked across the village green and noticed her husband and her father walking back to the chapel.
They followed and found the two men standing once again in front of the stained-glass boys.
Reine-Marie slipped her hand into Armand’s, then pulled it away.
“You’re all sticky.”
“That was Zora,” he said.
“Of course it was,” said Reine-Marie. “What’re you looking at?”
Armand was staring at the window, but not at the one boy who always drew their attention. He was looking at one of the other young men.
“He’s pointing at something,” said Armand.
“Huh,” said Jean-Guy, leaning closer. “You’re right.”
“But what?” asked Reine-Marie. “That, maybe?”
She followed the direction of the finger and saw a bird in the sky above the battlefield.
“Or maybe the tree,” said Annie. A single charred evergreen stood askew in the mud.
“I noticed the gesture a while ago, but thought it must be just an artistic touch,” said Armand. “But when I was at the front of the church during the baptism, I realized what the soldier wanted us to see. He’s not pointing into his world. He’s pointing into ours.”
He turned, and they turned with him.
“At that.”
He didn’t tell them that shortly before his death, Michel Brébeuf had made a similar gesture. Pointing above the doorway of his room in the academy, to the frame that could be mistaken for a rose, but was not.
Armand put his hand in his pocket and felt the linen and traced the letters with his finger while the others stared above the door of the church at a stylized stained-glass rose they’d seen hundreds of times before.
They looked and they looked.
And finally—
“My God,” whispered Reine-Marie. “It’s not just a rose window. It’s a compass rose.” She turned back to the soldier. “He’s pointing at a compass.”
They walked closer to it, until Armand told them, “It’s really best seen from the front. That’s one of the reasons no one noticed before. We were all too close. I only noticed during the baptism, when I stood here.”
He stepped onto the dais and they joined him.
The bright June sun was streaming in through the hundreds of tiny panes of glass, stained shades of red and pink and green. It hit the old pine floor of the chapel right in the center of the aisle, creating the cheerful, intricate design of a multipetaled rose. With almost unnoticeable spikes.
The four directions.
“But it’s tilted,” said Annie.
“It’s not tilted,” said Jean-Guy. “It’s pointed.”
“It’s indicating a direction,” said Reine-Marie. She looked at Armand. “We should follow.”
“We should. But not today,” said Armand, taking little Honoré in his arms.
* * *
The next morning a group set out cross-country. Jacques held the old map, the original, while Armand oriented a compass salvaged from the box of items brought home from the war.
The four cadets were there, as were Clara, Myrna, Olivier, and Gabri. Ruth had decided to stay home.
“I think she’s embroidering the name on a pillow,” Nathaniel explained to Clara.
“What did you go with? Rose Cottage or Pit of Despair?”
“Another FINE Mess,” said Amelia, and Clara laughed.