She shakes her head contemptuously, turning back to her cauldron. “Don’t waste your time listening to her idle talk, Catherine. She is nothing but a charlatan. If she could do real magic, why on earth would she be stuck here toiling with the rest of us?”
“Because magic takes time and sacrifice, chère, much like anything worth doing,” Agnesot responds with another shrug, transferring her blithe gaze back to her dipping broach. “And whether you believe or not makes no difference to me.”
I watch her for a long moment as she dips her broach again, mesmerized by the conviction that radiates off her like heat. As if she is powered by an inner furnace of her own belief. “Can you truly grant Eugenie’s wish?” I ask, unable to keep a shade of marvel from my voice.
She favors me with a smile, small and secretive. “I think you already know I can, p’tite. And I can grant yours, too, if you tell me what you want.”
I think on it for a moment, frowning, but I cannot quite imagine what I might wish for, beyond the impossible dream of being away from here.
“To be truly free,” I say finally, because it is true. Freedom is what I crave. To be unfettered, owned by no one but myself.
“True freedom,” Agnesot repeats thoughtfully, drawing out the word. “That is harder than a husband—but not impossible, given enough time and the right tools. But, are you sure that this is what you want? No wish is granted without a price, and true freedom comes only at the dearest cost. Much more than most would choose to pay.”
“All the same,” I say, lifting my chin in an attempt to mimic her enviable steel. “If this is all there is to life, to be forever shackled and in service to some cruel master or another, why even bother to live it?”
In truth, I am nowhere near as bold as I strive to sound, my innards roiling with doubt; what sort of cost might seem high to a brash divineress like her, whose tongue flows so easily with curses? As if she can sense this hidden weakness, Agnesot searches my face for a long, fraught moment, her eyes sliding between mine. The firelight from the brazier licks up her face, flinging her cheekbones and eye sockets into stark relief. For a moment her youth seems to desert her, as if some withered crone peers down at me instead. At once ageless and ancient, delving past my eyes and into my heart.
Then she seems to come to some internal decision, her lips pressing white and thin as she gives me a brisk nod.
“Freedom it shall be, then, for petite Catherine.”
“Cat. I prefer just Cat.”
“Cat,” she echoes, reaching out to tip my chin with a light fingertip. “Un petit chat. You have the feel of a canny little soul, Cat. Tell me, have you found that you sometimes … see things? Perhaps know what might happen even before it does?”
My mouth drops open. How she might know this is beyond me, but she isn’t wrong. Sometimes, when I stare into the creamy runnels of the tallow, it is as if my sight softens and parts, like a curtain sliding open to reveal a glimpse of what lies ahead. A few months ago, I saw a fortnight before it happened that Patrice would lose an arm when her cauldron slipped its chain and overturned. And when shy Mathilde’s belly began to burgeon, swelling with child, it was a surprise to everyone but me.
“Yes,” I whisper, through a throat suddenly full of sand. “But I thought … I thought perhaps I only imagined it.”
“Now you know better than to doubt yourself again,” she says, a touch reprovingly. “Given the chance to come into your own, mon petit chat, you will grow strong. Stronger, even, than I could dream of being. And I mean to make sure you have the opportunity you deserve. Once I’ve slipped loose from here and regained my strength, you can be certain the first Messe Noire I cast will be to set you free.”
Before I can ask her what a Messe Noire might be, Beelzebub appears behind Agnesot, snatching her by the hair like a cat seizing a kitten’s scruff. Her head snaps back so hard her eyes fill with tears, but she doesn’t make a sound.
“Is this what you’re here for, you trull?” he snarls into her ear, his crude face contorted with wrath. There is something base about his features, his massive, ungainly limbs. Bernadette calls him a golem—a lumbering clay monstrosity of Jewish legend, animated by its master’s will and malice. “To fill hardworking girls’ ears with such fanciful rot, instead of seeing to your work?”
Agnesot swallows hard, her lips compressing into a defiant line. When she does not respond, he shakes her by the head so fearsomely that I cringe, afraid for her neck and spine.
“Fine,” he grinds out, turning on his heel and whipping her around with him. “Have it your way, you impudent dolly-mop. If you won’t deign to speak, then I mean to make you weep instead. The rest of you, back to your tasks,” he commands over his shoulder as he drags her to the dim corner beside the candle-drying rack—the alcove reserved for our discipline. “And do not let me see your efforts slacken even a jot, unless you aim to be next.”
I bend over my cauldron, stirring furiously as another dipper steps up to take Agnesot’s place. With each crack of the whip and muted howl, I grit my teeth harder, force myself not to flinch. Her pain is not your pain, I remind myself. This is no place for sympathy.
Still, hours later, when the foreman and his minions come to herd us to the dormitory, I creep over to the corner where Agnesot sprawls in her bloodied shift. As she slings
