Half an hour later Le Coadic found himself sitting on the left hand side of Marie-Job, talking to her about songs. Aubry and Z had strapped her right forearm to a heavy wooden block. The claw-hand refused to flatten, so they had allowed the fingers to curl over the end of the block in such a way as to allow the base of the index to be pushed down firmly against the wood. The knives were laid out ready and there were clean white cotton squares and boiling water to hand. Proulx positioned himself behind her, ready to hold her still if need be.
‘Shall we sing something now?’ suggested Le Coadic with panic in his voice. ‘A cantique? Something to the Virgin?’
‘Gwerz Sant Yann,’ she rasped.
‘Of course. Come on then.’ And he began, in his low soft tenor, to intone the dirge-like hymn to St John traditionally sung during the procession of the banners. Mari-Jobig’s hoarse voice joined in. Le Coadic was trying so hard not to look at the doctors moving towards the knives that he was well into his second stanza before he realised that the voice next to him was singing a different song. Without quite stopping his own, but dropping it to a compliant murmur, he started listening to the words, getting clearer now as she found her rhythm. As the two men in front of him exchanged low monosyllables a slow revelation dawned; his heart fluttered and he began searching his pockets for his notebook and pencil. He put a hand on her near arm.
‘Please, Mari-Jobig, begin it again.’
She began it again, rocking slightly as she sang and, wisely he felt, keeping her eyes closed, while he deftly jotted down the slow couplets and memorised the tune, joining her on the repeated second line, nodding and nodding his head in quiet delight. The song unrolled gradually in his notebook; a unicorn of a song, a beauty: the legend of the holy finger of Sant Yann distilled into Breton couplets.
The brave young soldier weeps; he is fighting the English in Normandy. He weeps for his native parish, Traon Meriadek.
The doctors continued to exchange comments in a low undertone, but the rasping voice now filled the room.
He only stops weeping when he kneels to pray in the local church, before the holy relic: the finger of St John the Baptist. Rescued from the infidel by the martyred Saint Tecla, the relic fills him with a curious joy. Gradually his longing for home is subsumed into a longing for the presence of the sacred finger.
Le Coadic gently unrolls the song on the white page, and sings with her, head down, he cannot see the knives.
But now the wicked English are vanquished. The soldier can go home. He goes one last time to the church, and weeps again; now he does not want to leave. He prays himself senseless. When he revives, he gets to his feet and turns himself west.
‘The trees,’ croaks Mari-Jobig, ‘even the tallest ashes, they bow down to him on the road.’
The doctors have clustered around the hand; she stares blankly ahead. She sees the brave young Breton reach the top of his village, walking full of joy like a man in seven-league boots, the little birds singing him in and the sun sparkling on the sea.
‘Where he rests,’ she rasps, ‘where he rests, a spring bursts out from the ground.’
There is an awful noise. Z reaches for the cotton squares.
And when he arrives at the chapel the candles all light of their own accord and the bell rings and the people come running.
Z turns to them both with triumphant eyes and an expansive smile, but before he can speak Le Coadic has hushed him with a fierce gesture.
‘Wait. Give me two more minutes. Please, go away.’
The eyebrows raise, the doctor bows, and backs off.
And when they come running, the people, they find the young man kneeling at the altar, his arms outstretched, radiant with joy.
Z leaves the room; Aubry adjusts the dressing and unbuckles the arm.
And holy Sant Yann has permitted the miracle to happen. His finger leaps from the soldier’s flesh, onto the altar. Hidden in his wrist, between flesh and bone. It leaps like a salmon to its new home. Holy Sant Yann be praised.
‘Amen,’ says Le Coadic. ‘Amen.’
Then he stands abruptly, scraping his chair, and rushes outside to the evening sun.
They had sent her back to her mother’s for the night, and arranged to have a meal taken round for them both. Proulx had gone home and now Z, Aubry and Le Coadic sat outside under a plane tree at a pleasant restaurant in one of the squares. Swifts dipped around them; pigeons cooed in the higher branches of the tree.
‘No,’ said Aubry very firmly.
‘But she wants it.’
‘So do we.’
‘But it’s hers.’ Le Coadic looked rather shaken.
Z put his fingertips together and closed his eyes.
‘Why does she want it?’ he said diplomatically.
‘For Sant Yann. To dedicate it or something ghastly. It’s important.’
‘And why do we want it?’ he looked fondly at Aubry.
‘For Paris. Proof. It is more important.’
‘Perhaps.’
Le Coadic began to get agitated.
‘You can’t…’ he began, but Z cut him short.
‘We can, mon ami; we could. I suspect it really will make a difference to those fools in the Salpêtrière. I can’t let you just walk off with it after all the trouble we’ve been to. But I should think we can reach an agreement, a compromise.’
Le Coadic shrugged and reached for his wine.‘We will come with you tomorrow, as planned. I am curious to see this festival before I go, in any case. She can have it – under extremely strict conditions – to dedicate to her gods or whatever tomorrow evening, and the following day I carry on to Paris – as planned. Et voilà – science and religion are satisfied. What do you say to that?’
He raised his glass and smiled at them both. They raised theirs.