“God,” Mariana said. “God.”
In the tight circle of her sister’s arms Peregrina began to shudder. Her mewling stopped. She pulled back so that she could see Mariana’s face, opened her mouth to try to speak, opened it again, again. Finally: “Mariana—”
“Yes, my darling?”
“Mariana, it was papa—”
“Yes.”
“You know?”
“I can guess.”
“I don’t have to tell you?”
“No.”
“I screamed. Pinto came in. He jumped on papa and pulled at him. And papa killed him. He flung him across the room and Pinto hit the prie-dieu and I think it broke his neck—”
“Hush,” Mariana said. “Hush. It will be all right.”
“I wanted God,” Peregrina said, “and he didn’t come.”
“He has come,” Mariana said. “He is here. Give me the monkey.”
“Where are you going? What are you going to do?”
“We will bury him in the garden. But first we must go to the chapel.” She rose from her knees and took the dead animal. She held him in one arm. With the other she still protected Peregrina. The shuddering had stopped now, and Peregrina’s voice once again came steady, the voice of an Alcoforado.
“He was drunk, of course,” she said. “He didn’t know what he was doing or who I was. When he threw Pinto I got away. I picked Pinto up and ran upstairs to my room and locked myself in. I was afraid in the dark. I didn’t dare leave until daylight. Then I slipped out of the house. No one saw me. And then I ran. And ran.”
“All this way?” Mariana asked gently. “All this way by yourself?”
“I needed you,” Peregrina said. And then, in a surprised voice, “You’re back.”
Mariana spoke through a great wave of pain. “Yes. I’m back.”
The abbess had wanted her to suffer.
Peregrina asked, “Are you praising God again?”
The question did not seem strange. Mariana answered, “Yes. I am praising God.”
“I never have,” Peregrina said. “But if you can, perhaps one day I will be able to, too.”
Outside the chapel they wrapped the monkey in Peregrina’s cloak and placed him gently on a marble bench. Then they went in, to the scarlet and the gold, and the stone floor beneath their knees.
In the afternoon, when Father Duarte came, Mariana was waiting for him.
“Her Reverence would like to see you, if you please, Father. But she has given me permission to ask you first if you will hear my confession.”
“Gladly, my child,” Father Duarte said.
They walked in silence from the gatehouse through, the cloister and went into the chapel. The priest went quickly to the sacristy and returned, wearing his stole, then went into his side of the confessional. Mariana genuflected towards the altar, then entered the confession box, knelt, and made the sign of the cross. She held her face up and the light struck against the gold flecks in her eyes.
“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Pray, Father, give me your blessing, for I have sinned.” Then, “I confess to Almighty God, to blessed Mary, ever Virgin, to blessed Michael the Archangel, to blessed John the Baptist, to the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, to all the saints, and to you, Father, that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word and deed, through my fault, through my most grievous fault …”
In his place behind the grille the priest bowed his great, shaggy head. Tears filled his eyes. The spring sun streamed into the chapel. Now there was no darkness in Mariana’s face, only light.
… “Mariana was, I suppose, a saint,” Charlotte said. “Or at least she may have become one. I am only Charlotte and I am called neither to suffer nor to rejoice as she must have done.”
The doctor said nothing. The warm sun flowed over them. Julia stalked out to the garden and took away their bouillon cups.
Charlotte said, “Mariana had to turn away from Noël and back to God. To her Spouse. I think that all that is wanted of me is to turn away from myself and back to Patrick. To my husband. If he will have me, God. If he will have me.”
She left the doctor and moved through the sunlight to the house.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The Letters of a Portuguese Nun do, of course, exist, and the quotations from them’ are not inventions of the author, nor are the members of Mariana’s family. However, the text of the novel indicates how little is known, how much is problematic, about Mariana. The letters, then, have been used only as a springboard for a work of the imagination, and that part of the narrative which speaks of Mariana is in no sense an attempt at biographical or historical reconstruction.
M. L’E.
A Biography of Madeleine L’Engle
Madeleine L’Engle was the award-winning author of more than sixty books encompassing children’s and adult fiction, poetry, plays, memoirs, and books on prayer. Her best-known work is the classic children’s novel A Wrinkle in Time, which won the Newbery Medal for distinguished children’s literature and has sold fourteen million copies worldwide. The Washington Post called the science fantasy tale of an adolescent girl and her telepathic brother’s journey through space and time “one of the most enigmatic works of fiction ever created.”
L’Engle was born on November 29, 1918, in New York City, where both of her parents were artists—her mother a pianist and her father a novelist, journalist, and music and drama critic for the New York Sun. Although she wrote her first story at the age of five and devoted her time to her journals, short stories, and poetry, L’Engle struggled in school and often felt disliked by her teachers and peers. She recalled one of her elementary school teachers calling her stupid and another accusing her of plagiarism when she won a writing contest.
At twelve, L’Engle and her family moved to France for her father’s health (he had been a soldier during World War I and suffered lung damage), and she was sent to boarding school in the Swiss Alps. Two of her novels, A Winter’s Love and The Small Rain, drew on her experiences in Europe. She returned to the United States three years later to attend another boarding school in Charleston, South Carolina. L’Engle flourished during these years and went on to graduate from Smith College with honors in English.
After college, she moved back to New York City and started work as a stage actress while devoting her free time to writing. During this time, she published her first two novels, The Small Rain and Ilsa, and wrote many plays that were produced in regional theaters. While touring in a production of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard as an understudy, she met actor Hugh Franklin, and they married in 1946. After the birth of their daughter Josephine the following year, they bought an old farmhouse, which they called Crosswicks, in Goshen, a small town in rural Connecticut, planning on weekends in the country. When she became pregnant with their second child, Bion, they moved to Crosswicks permanently and ran the local general store. Their family grew with an adopted daughter, Maria. After nearly a decade in Connecticut, they moved back to New York so her husband, who would go on to star in All My Children, could focus on his acting career. She was happy to return and hoped that she would find success as an author again. Indeed, A Wrinkle in Time was published in 1962.
The family often returned to Crosswicks over the years and these visits inspired L’Engle’s Crosswicks Journals, including Two-Part Invention, which tells the story of her marriage, and A Circle of Quiet, in which she explores her role as a woman, mother, wife, and writer.
Back in Manhattan, L’Engle worked as a librarian and writer-in-residence at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, a position she held for more than three decades. Her lifelong fascination with theology and philosophy, and her personal faith, largely influenced her work. A Wrinkle in Time hints at many Christian themes, yet religious conservative groups have spoken out against the book, accusing L’Engle of misrepresenting God in a dangerous world of witchcraft, myth, and fantasy. It has been one of the most banned books in the United States. Apart fr
om her religious influences, she said that Einstein’s theory of relativity and other theories in physics also served as inspiration. The novel’s combined use of both science fiction and philosophy established it as a sophisticated work of fiction, proving L’Engle’s belief that children’s literature deserves a place in the literary canon.
However, L’Engle initially struggled to achieve success and recognition for her work, and she almost quit writing at forty. She finally broke out onto the literary scene in 1960 with Meet the Austins, the first in her popular young adult series about the Austin family, which includes Newbery Honor Book A Ring of Endless Light. Even A Wrinkle in Time was rejected by twenty-six publishers before being accepted by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Although it was an instant commercial and critical sensation and has never gone out of print, the book’s strong female protagonist and intellectual themes were unusual in children’s fiction at the time.
L’Engle’s long literary career expanded far beyond the publication of A Wrinkle in Time. Among her many books are adult novels dealing with relationships, faith, and identity, including Certain Women, A Live Coal in the Sea, and A Severed Wasp; several books of poetry; and more overtly religious works like her Genesis Trilogy of biblical reflections. She won countless accolades, including the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, the National Religious Book Award, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention. In 2004, President Bush awarded her a National Humanities Medal. L’Engle lived out her final years in Litchfield, Connecticut, and passed away at the age of eighty-eight on September 6, 2007.
A portrait of L’Engle in her first years of life.*
L’Engle ice-skating in Brittany, France, circa 1926.*
L’Engle with her dog, Sputzi, circa 1934.*
From July to September 1943, the Repertory Players at Straight Wharf Theatre produced two of L’Engle’s plays, The Christmas Tree and Phelia. She acted in both plays, among others.
L’Engle with her husband, actor Hugh Franklin, in 1946.*
L’Engle and her husband renovated and ran a general store in the late 1940s.
L’Engle always illustrated her family’s Christmas cards, including this one from 1952.
L’Engle with her granddaughters Charlotte Jones Voiklis and Lena Roy at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, Cathedral Library, circa 1975.
L’Engle in the library of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, circa 1977.
L’Engle at a Manhattanville College commencement ceremony, where she received an honorary degree in 1989.*
L’Engle with her granddaughter Charlotte Jones Voiklis the night before the young woman’s wedding on August 30, 1996.
L’Engle speaking at a church in 1997.
L’Engle at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, circa 1997.*
*Photograph courtesy of the Madeleine L’Engle Papers (SC-3), Special Collections, Buswell Library, Wheaton, Illinois.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1966, 1983 by Crosswicks, Ltd.
Cover design by Connie Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4158-4
This edition published in 2017 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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New York, NY 10038
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MADELEINE L’ENGLE
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