by James Reese
The work was difficult, as it involved heavy planks and chisels and blades of varying thickness. The slow-burning fire of the smithy and the heavy humidity occasioned by the storm made the tiny outbuilding grossly uncomfortable. Yet I remained; I had to. I grew slick with sweat; droplets fell from the tip of my nose onto the pine, as if to mock the rain slanting down in silver cords beyond the open half-door, falling from a leaden sky hanging suffocatingly low.
Those hours I had but two visitors; three, if one counts Sister Claire, who came twice to threaten me with more and varied labor. Marie-Edith came, at great risk, to offer me an apple—unaccountably delicious, it was—and a dry shift. And Mother Marie came, very late in the day; it seemed she’d come to apologize, though of course I did not yet know what for.
“It was unwise,” said she, “to indulge my niece. Did I not warn you?”
“You did,” said I. Where was Peronette? Was she among the girls? Did she too stand accused? Was our ruse known? Had Sister Claire meted out to her punishment such as I…But the Mother Superior answered none of my questions. Finally she raised her hand to still me, saying only, “I fear things may not, cannot be as they were. The balance of the House is upset.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, though I understood her too well.
“Claire is the Head, and it is within her purview to do so…. Sister Claire has declared the Great Silence, and I dare not rescind it.” Mother Marie added, absently, “Perhaps it is wise. Perhaps order and discipline are our only hope.” (Only twice in my years at C——had the Great Silence been declared: once when a group of monks came to us for shelter, and once to quell the hysteria occasioned by three girls suffering the simultaneous onset of their first blood.) “But what scares me,” continued the Mother Superior, “is that she is using the Silence to stir the girls, to rile them and win them to her ways.”
“What are ‘her ways’?” I asked.
Mother Marie looked at me. “You were there, were you not? You heard her: she has long coveted the rule of this House. How did she put it? Oh yes—she is ‘attendant upon my ruin.’”
“But can you not…?”
“I cannot order the girls not to pray; neither can I order Claire to desist from her prayerful talk of Darkness and such.”
“Then they do not know? They do not know that it was Peronette upon the sill, that it was I who—”
Mother Marie fairly shouted at me then: “Did I not tell you,” she asked, “that she was wild, that it was dangerous to indulge her? I did. I did! Silly of me to have thought you might control her. No one can control her. And now, the danger has come. I could lose this House! What then for me? Indeed, mark my words: danger has come.”
Mother Marie then directed me to follow her back to the house proper. “You must not remain apart. Go among them as though nothing has happened,” she advised, or commanded. I said I would—did I not owe her that much?—and the two of us, huddling beneath her umbrella, made our way back to the house with nothing but a cloud-occluded moon to light the muddy way.
It was in the kitchen gardens that my resolve began to break, and by the time I stood inside I wondered how, how would I find the strength to go among the girls in the dining hall beyond?
All was silent, as Sister Claire had decreed. Marie-Edith and, as best she was able, Sister Brigid, had just laid out collation. Mother Marie led me on.
There we stood, in the service doorway. At first unseen, hisses and whispers built within the Silence till all turned; none stood, as they ought to have in the presence of the Mother Superior, but I made nothing of this, so distracted was I by my own discomfort. There I stood before the assembled girls, bedraggled and scared, yet trying to act as though nothing untoward had taken place. What a sight I must have been! Like some creation of the Shelley girl, sister to her sad, sad monster.
“Perhaps this is not a good idea,” said I to Mother Marie, as I tried to circle behind her, back into the kitchen.
Mother Marie held fast behind me. “Go,” said she, shoving me forward. And I’d not taken two steps into the hall when I heard behind me the door’s rusted hinge: Mother Marie had gone, and I was alone. This I had not anticipated.
As I walked between the tables, the girls on their benches spoke curses, and prayers that sounded like curses. Someone invoked the Prince of Peace. Others—much to my astonishment—railed against the Prince of This World. Sister Paulien, wordlessly, with the rapping of a wooden spoon, reminded the girls of the Silence. A group of younger girls sat before their chilling stew, reading their rosaries so fast it seemed the small wooden beads might burst into flame. I moved as though deaf and blind, guided to my seat by something unseen. It was as though I walked through water: every step slow, deliberate, difficult.
A small medallion of hammered gold was thrown; it landed at my feet and skidded across the smooth floor. Of course, this—the sacred thing’s revulsion, its sliding away—was proof of the devils resident within me. At this there were audible gasps; and someone begged Salvation in nearly unintelligible Latin.
Nearing my usual seat, I noticed two things: no one, not even the old mumbling nuns with whom I usually dined—and certainly not Peronette—was seated at the table; and a book—a black leather-bound tome, its pages yellow with age—had been spread open on my seat. The Silence then was deafening! Every eye was upon me. What to do? I swallowed my tears. And then…and then I did something quite…regrettable. Irresolute, confused, I simply sat down at my usual place as though the book weren’t there. Why I did this I have no idea—I might have closed it and set it aside, swept it onto the floor—but no. It was as though Satan Himself had appeared at my side.
One girl—beautiful, quite tall, whose grace I’d always admired—stood on her bench, pointed down at me, and asked of all present what further proof was needed of the pact I’d signed with Satan. Hadn’t I sat upon the sacred text? (It was the writings of an obscure theologian, opened to a passage on tribadism.) And hadn’t every eye seen me shamelessly kiss the sacred text with my nether mouth?
This girl’s witnessing was met with fearsome cries and prayer. The nuns, with pinches and pulled hair and rapping rods, succeeded in restoring a modicum of calm.
I dared not move, dared not slide the book out from under me. Shaking, shivering, I tried to choke back my tears. I even tried to eat the bowl of now-cold stew that was slid before me by…I don’t know who. The stew—rabbit? venison?—was gamey and slick, a heartier collation than usual. I could not eat, even if I’d wanted to: my hands shook too badly to use a spoon.
I did not look up. I stared down into the enameled bowl. Tears fell onto the skin of fat covering the stew like a caul.
I prayed. Prayed for release, for something—god or demon—to deliver me. I would do anything. Sign any blood pact, agree to anything.
Just then the far doors of the hall opened, and a group of older girls nearest the doors stood, with slight hesitation; soon all the girls rose, and I stood too, so great was my relief that Mother Marie had returned to…
…But with a sickening twist deep within, I saw Sister Claire de Sazilly enter the dining hall and scan the room. She was looking for me; I knew it. The others knew it too, and when their quick glances betrayed me I found myself staring across the hall at Sister Claire.
That Sister Claire had come in search of me was bad fortune; that the girls had risen in her presence was something else altogether.
Yes, it was clear, and irrefutable: there stood Sister Claire de Sazilly, ascendant.
After surveying the girls, quite contentedly, and nodding that they should resume their seats, Sister Claire made her way to her seat. From over the trembling rim of my cup, I spied Sister Claire talking to Sister St. Eustace and a group of the older girls. Sister St. Eustace—insipid, rail-thin Sister St. Eustace, who suffered an unnamed disorder of the skin and was ever scabrous, like a half-flayed deer—Sister St. Eustace sat nodding her head. This conference, held in defiance of the Silence, did not bode well.
The girls attended a pronouncement, and finally it came:
Sister St. Eustace rose to announce with tremulous voice a work plan: flooding of the grounds threatened the first-floor rooms of the house. The sandbagging drill was familiar to us all. At the expected groanings, the audible laziness of several of the girls—they were, of course, less than fond of such labor—Sister St. Eustace reminded one and all that the Great Silence was still in effect, would remain in effect until we retired. Silence only descended in full when Sister Claire stood; she bade the girls follow suit and join her in prayer. I stood as well, but knew not to join in the prayer; and indeed it ended with: “…keep us safe, Lord…safe from the Darkness that has come.” By which, of course, she meant me; lest any doubt it, with a nod she led all eyes my way. I was the first to sit.
Order, and silence, reigned, though Chaos threatened: several girls rose and ran from the hall. Others clung to their neighbors as though they were being led sightless through the deepest night. There were the requisite tears and prayers. Most disconcertingly, every girl, as she filed from the hall, passed Sister Claire and was informally “received” with a nod or a word; in this way, pledges of loyalty were sworn and accepted.
Where, I wondered, was Mother Marie-des-Anges? Had she willfully ceded the rule of C——to Sister Claire? If so, why had she not told me? When would she come among us to set things right?
Forbidden to speak through the afternoon, the girls had been unable to calm or comfort one another, had been unable to relieve their fears, unfounded or not, by giving them voice. Sister Claire, the strategist, knew the Silence would only stir the girls, make them more impressionable. They were further agitated by the break in our well-ordered day, the strangeness of the declared Silence; and later by the steady rains that had begun to fall, rains that came now to the accompaniment of thunder and ragged seams of light that showed the girls pressed into service.
We were made to stand at arm’s length from one another and form a loose chain that wended up from the mud-floored basement to the kitchen, where it branched in three, each line ending at an exterior door of the house, under which a sort of primordial slime oozed. The youngest girls worked below-stairs, filling the canvas bags with sand shoveled from several mounds kept for this purpose; older girls tied off the bags and passed them upstairs and along the lines to us, the oldest girls, who secured them around the doors. I was stationed at the kitchen door. We succeeded in stanching the slow flow; and we did so in silence. I was grateful for the quiet, and the distraction of a duty.
Two branches had been disbanded, and I stood at the end of the third line when the youngest girls were dispatched, told to wash and ready for Compline—the seventh and last of the canonical hours—and then, blessedly, sleep. Finally, I was released by Sister Claire: the last to leave the kitchen.
When next I saw Peronette it was in the dormitory, where she waved to me from her cot with red-tinged fingers. As Sister Claire eyed us both, continually, I dared not speak to Peronette; but she, tripping lightly past my cot as she came from the washroom, whispered, wickedly, “Bad girl! See what it is you’ve done?”
In concession to the storm, and to the strange events of the day, the novitiates let the younger girls burn their candles down; this, and a faint moon, lit the dormitory, but still I fell fast asleep. I was exhausted—emotionally, yes, but more plainly from my labor in the smithy and on the work line.
Attendant upon sleep, I listened to the rain fall from the roof into buckets and bowls placed among the disarrayed cots, and I tried not to cry. The storm raged on, and the crash and spark, the great show, gave rise to something akin to the call and response of the mass: one girl would whimper and another would cry out to comfort her, and so on till a high-pitched keening filled the room. Scattered here and there were appeals to the Higher Powers.
My neighbor, a bovine little blot named Constance, whimpered terribly. When she’d woken me a second time, I leaned from my cot and threatened to cuff her if she did not desist. I was terribly tired, and hopeful of sleeping away my fears.
It was later that night—how much later I cannot say—when I was woken by the movement of my cot, and a warmth beside me: Peronette.
Though I’d begun to consider her careless and dangerous, though I had begun to see her as willful and wrong, irresponsible, all she had to do was come near me and I forgave her all and everything. Fool that I was. What’s more, finding her beside me, I opened to her comfort.
Of course, we girls were not to sleep together; this was plain, so plain as to have never been openly stated. Still, it sometimes happened, for myriad reasons. It was a punishable offense, yes, but we slept unpoliced—rarely did the novitiates dare to walk those dark and quiet floors at night, for fear of mice, or worse. And that night—that night of all nights!—I gave not a thought to breaking the rule, gave not a thought to the day’s hysteria and the heightened…feelings to which it had given rise. All I thought about was…In truth, to say that I thought at all is to overstate things; all I would do that night is better described as instinctual.
Peronette was shivering, no doubt from stealing barefoot across the stony floor, amid the scattered cots. I folded back my blanket, slid the single sheet down, and as she slid in beside me the mattress sank, and the thin strips of hammered iron stretched across its frame gave with an eerie song. Her white nightgown was buttoned up to the base of her neck; a thin band of throat showed like a collar beneath her chin. Her loose, dark hair was afloat on the pillow, wavering in the inconstant light.
This memory is muted, like a dream forgotten too fast.
Did Peronette take my hand in hers? Did I drape my arm over her, forming of it the soft harness by which I would bind her to me forever?…Let me say only that I pulled the sheet up over us both that stormy night; and therein contained the world entire.
Her gown of white flannel, worn and soft, smelled like water. She bore too the scent of lavender. Her unbound hair had a scent all its own; pure, clean, and natural, perfumed, it seemed, by herbs or wildflowers or fruit. That is the scent I recall…can verily smell if I close my eyes and put myself there, in that bed, that unquiet night, beside Peronette.
Peronette curled into me, into my arms. Her eyes were shut, but was she asleep? Was I? Was this supreme wakefulness in the guise of sleep?
If only I’d had the good sense to hold Peronette awhile, calm her, steal a kiss or two, and send her back to her cot. If only…But no…. I liken myself, at that moment, to those mathematicians whom I have always envied and never understood; looking upon complicated arithmetic, they see answers where I would see mere symbols, signifying nothing. But that night, I saw the answer; and so set to work upon the equation:
Her forehead at rest in the crook of my neck. I kiss the crown of her head, and then…
…This is difficult. I cannot be sure what was dreamed and what was real that night. I do know that I…I did things for the first time. Did things to myself and to the sleeping Peronette. (Was she asleep? I will never know.)
…At first I kissed her innocently, but then something overtook me. The first of those kisses is the one I remember—the one I placed on Peronette’s head, the one I set there as sweetly as a priest places the Body of Christ on a celebrant’s tongue. As for the others…
Alors, I knew from recent and fevered dreams just where to place the kisses, and so I set to preparing each spot. I caressed, smoothed, and heated the skin with my fingers. I have the faintest recollection of doing this, of feeling the shame yet not being able to stop, of hearing my heartbeat and doing what I did despite that deafening drumming…. I was rushed by lust, perhaps asleep yet never more alive….
First her neck. Then her cheek, and her lips. The lips again, and again…. And then my hands sank to raise her nightshirt and—with my eyes, with my hands?—I saw her, all of her. I cupped her breasts and their supple weight surprised me. I kissed her breasts; their dark tips flared at the touch of my tongue. I slid daringly down the smooth slope of her
stomach to her navel. Another kiss there. Downward still. To the secret of her sex. I heated her thighs with my hands, and kissed her there. She opened to me. I kissed that mouth. I drew her wetness. I took her with my tongue.
I explored. And I discovered again that Peronette was…different from me, very different indeed…. But it was all so confused. Wakefulness and sleep. Desire and dream. And I was so unsure—so very content, yes, but still so unsure of it all.
I lay atop her. That much I know. I know I pulled Peronette up toward me, my hands beneath her buttocks. I know that I pushed down upon her. Drove down. Into her. I know that what I did caused her some measure of pain, but I know this too: she did not resist.
I do not remember the nightsalt coming. But it did. And it, mixed with Peronette’s blood, would be the viscid proof of my devilry.
Only when I woke, suddenly, Peronette asleep beside me, in my arms, only upon waking did I realize that the screams I heard were not my own. My heart blew apart like a bomb, and so rattled was I it seemed my skin might slip from my skeleton! I was not screaming in dreams of my own device, no…These were the real and wakeful screams of others…
The very first came concomitant with a stroke of thunder, and I mistook it for same. But the rest, coming in quick succession, were unmistakable. Screams. Coming ever nearer, in the company of their source:
Agnes, a novitiate, a stolid girl of good faith, from St. Malo, ran from cot to cot, screaming, nonsensically. It seemed the novitiate, for whatever reason, had determined to check on the sleeping Elizaveta. And in the infirmary, by lantern light, Agnes saw upon the girl the “marks of our Lord’s Passion.” The stigmata.
What had been the Great Silence ceded now to far greater Chaos.
My heart raced from the nearness of the screams, but my head…My eyes adjusted slowly to the darkness…. How was it I’d come to be outside, for surely those were stars shining all about me, a ring of bright stars surrounding me? Pale moons too?…But no: the stars were the sizzling wicks of candles and the moons were the faces of the screaming girls who now surrounded my cot. Scream after scream unraveled like black pennants; and Agnes’s voice was overtaken by those so near, speaking of Satan and his dolls and such.