Twenty-Five: Of Delphine, and of the Scarecrow

Delphine watches the sleeping Thomas and decides she cannot keep risking others for her sake. Resolving to reach Avignon without him, she leaves their cave by the Rhône, weighed by guilt over deaths tied to her, and questions whether she tempts God or serves Him.

She travels south through drier country, sells the goat with Thomas earlier, then alone seeks water and shelter. At an abandoned farmhouse she finds a rancid well containing a man and child’s remains and flees. She scavenges grapes for strength, witnesses two men quarreling at an occupied house, steals a sip from a pig’s trough, and finally reaches the Rhône to drink and wash.

By nightfall she shelters in a small grotto convent whose nuns lie arranged dead in the garden. In the dark chapel, a voice calling itself Sister Broom engages her, coaxing her to surrender the case around her neck. It displays trinkets—a silver bracelet, a coin said to be Judas’s—and a saw used by the Mother Superior, hinting at a creation that gained life.

When the voice turns threatening, Delphine realizes it cannot simply take the relic and asserts her will. She opens the case, draws the spearhead, and forbids the entity to touch her. The scarecrow rages, smashing about the chapel, then follows her outside as she climbs a tree, cursing her through the night but unable to harm her.

At dawn, Delphine finds a crude scarecrow—broom, crossed sticks, stolen arms from the dead nuns, and a skull with reddish-gray hair—wrapped in her blanket. She dismantles it, returns the human remains to the garden with a prayer, sweeps the chapel, reclaims her blanket, and sets out on the road toward Orange and Avignon.