THE DEFENSE


Characters tend to be either for or against the quest. If they assist it, they are idealized as simply gallant or pure; if they obstruct it, they are characterized as simply villainous or cowardly. Hence every typical character . . . tends to have his moral opposite confronting him, like black and white pieces in a chess game.
--Anatomy of Criticism, Northrop Frye



Montglane Abbey, France
Spring 1790

A FLOCK OF NUNS CROSSED THE ROAD, THEIR CRISP WIMPLES
fluttering about their heads like the wings of large sea birds.
As they floated through the large stone gates of the town,
chickens and geese scurried out of their path, flapping and
splashing through the mud puddles. The nuns moved through
the darkening mist that enveloped the valley each morning
and, in silent pairs, headed toward the sound of the deep bell
that rang out from the hills above them.

They called that spring le Printemps Sanglant, the Bloody
Spring. The cherry trees had bloomed early that year, long
before the snows had melted from the high mountain peaks.
Their fragile branches bent down to earth with the weight
of the wet red blossoms. Some said it was a good omen that
they had bloomed so soon, a symbol of rebirth after the long
and brutal winter. But then the cold rains had come and
frozen the blossoms on the bough, leaving the valley buried
thick in red blossoms stained with brown streaks of frost.
Like a wound congealed with dried blood. And this was said
to be another kind of sign.

High above the valley, the Abbey of Montglane rose
like an enormous outcropping of rock from the crest of
the mountain. The fortresslike structure had remained un-
touched by the outside world for nearly a thousand years. It
was constructed of six or seven layers of wall built one on
top of the other. As the original stones eroded over the centuries,
new walls were laid outside of old ones, with flying
buttresses. The result was a brooding architectural melange
whose very appearance fed the rumors about the place. The
abbey was the oldest church structure standing intact in
France, and it bore an ancient curse that was soon to be
reawakened.

As the dark-throated bell rang out across the valley, the remaining
nuns looked up from their labors one by one, put
aside their rakes and hoes, and passed down through the
long, symmetrical rows of cherry trees to climb the precipitous
road to the abbey.

At the end of the long procession, the two young novices
Valentine and Mireille trailed arm in arm, picking their way
with muddy boots. They made an odd complement to the orderly
line of nuns. The tall red-haired Mireille with her long
legs and broad shoulders looked more like a healthy farm
girl than a nun. She wore a heavy butcher's apron over her
habit, and red curls strayed from beneath her wimple. Beside
her Valentine seemed fragile, though she was nearly as tall.
Her pale skin seemed translucent, its fairness accentuated by
the cascade of white-blond hair that tumbled about her
shoulders. She had stuffed her wimple into the pocket of her
habit, and she walked reluctantly beside Mireille, kicking
her boots in the mud.

The two young women, the youngest nuns at the abbey,
were cousins on their mothers' side, both orphaned at an
early age by a dreadful plague that had ravaged France. The
aging Count de Remy, Valentine's grandfather, had commended
them into the hands of the Church, upon his death
leaving the sizable balance of his estate to ensure their care.

The circumstance of their...

 

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The Eight by Katherine Neville
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