She laughed. ‘No. My brain just works differently to most people’s.’
We hiked around the newly opened Borders flagship, several other indie bookshops and even the National Library of Scotland, but nobody had ever heard of T.A. Renner or his peculiar book on soul purification rituals. And the more we were told ‘no’, the more frustrated I got. Because the more I heard Renner’s name, the more and more sure I was sure that I’d heard or read it somewhere before. I just couldn’t for the life of me figure out where.
On the train ride home, we shared some fondant fancies from a little bakery near Waverley station. Hafsah immediately started playing her Game Boy with a dazed expression on her face, and when Alice called her antisocial, she simply said: ‘I like Super Mario more than I like people.’
I nodded. ‘Fair. I like books more than I like people.’
Alice frowned. ‘What does it even mean, to “like” something?’
Hafsah and I both glared at her.
She laughed to herself. ‘Yeah, no, I heard it. Pretentious as hell. My apologies.’
While Hafsah played Super Mario Bros., I showed Alice a chapter inThe Devil and the Divine. It was a pamphlet dated ten years after the one detailing the Loudun exorcisms, printed in seventeenth-century France shortly after the War of Religion. This one was an account of the Louviers possessions, and it had bothered me ever since I read it.
‘Madeleine Bavant was an orphan born in the early 1600s,’ I said, scooping chocolate goop out of the cake with my fingernail. ‘At the age of twelve, she was bound to a linen worker as an apprentice and drugged with atropa belladonna, i.e. deadly nightshade. Did you know, by the way, that atropa means “unturning one” and belladonna means “beautiful woman” in Italian?’
Alice stared at me, strawberry fondant caked around the corners of her mouth. ‘You know, sometimes you’re so cheerful that I forget you’re smart.’
‘Hey, just because I’m sunshiney as fuck doesn’t mean I’m an idiot.’
Hafsah sighed, without looking up from Super Mario. ‘Continue, please. So we have Madeleine what’s-her-face. She’s being drugged. Then what?’
‘So the confessor started having his way with her by the time she was thirteen or fourteen. Then, when she was sixteen, he got her pregnant. So Madeleine decided to tell the authorities that she had been abducted and taken to a witches’ sabbat, where she was married to the Devil and committed sexual acts with him on the altar.’
‘Fucking the devil sounds like a classic trauma response to me,’ Hafsah said, frantically pressing a button on the Game Boy. Then she added, ‘My mum’s a psychologist. Apparently a lot of kids do this when they’ve been abused. Make up elaborate stories to cope with what happened to them. And that’s what Madeleine was, right? An abused kid.’
‘Pretty much. What then?’ Alice asked.
‘Madeleine’s confession encouraged a lot of other nuns to come forward and say the same thing, so they were exorcised in a public spectacle. Then Madeleine was sentenced to the rest of her life in the church dungeon.’
‘What?!’ Alice said, aghast. ‘But she was the victim!’
‘I know.’
Hafsah’s Game Boy bleeped as she ran out of lives, and she finally looked up. ‘And, erm, how is this relevant to our current mindfuckery? I feel like you’re saying a lot of things without actuallysayinganything.’
‘I’m not sure it is relevant,’ I admitted. My fingers went to the rubies in my throat. ‘But right now I may or may not be haunted by the ghost of a malevolent nun, and so I want to understand what she might have been going through. Anyway, it was at this point the French authorities decided to catalogue a list of fifteen signs of demonic possession. They’re included in the pamphlet here.’
I pointed to the page in the book that had troubled me.
To think oneself possessed.
To lead a wicked life.
To live outside the rules of society.
To be persistently ill, falling into heavy sleep.
To utter obscenities and blasphemies.
To be troubled with spirits.
To show a frightening and horrible countenance.
To be tired of living.
To be uncontrollable and violent.