by James Reese
“Yes,” said the cellarer, very near tears, “but…but…”
“Calm yourself, Marta, and answer me this: are you clear? Do you understand what will happen?”
“I do,” said the cellarer, excitedly. “But…hammer and nail to mock our Lord’s Passion?”
“Tell me,” insisted Sister Claire, “tell me how—if that child learns something of her Savior’s sacrifice and suffering—tell me how she’ll be the worse for it. Tell me! And answer me this: have we not suffered long enough that woman’s lenity? Have the girls themselves not suffered from the laxity of her rule?…That…that Actress!”
“Yes, but the little one…That girl, Elizaveta, will her wounds…?”
“Fool, of course she will recover,” whispered Sister Claire. “I will only tap at the nails, tap them into the top of the hands, not drive them through the thick of the wrists! And with enough of Clothilde’s soothing syrup she’ll hardly feel anything. What good would a dead girl do us, my dear? And what is her passing pain if it brings about the restoration of this House? If it allows me to drive the Actress away, with her niece and her…her amphibious friend. By the way, how many shelves did you request, eh?”
“Six,” said the cellarer.
“Then it’s six you shall have.” And the two stepped from the pantry’s doorway. Sister Margarethe was calmer now, but still she teetered on the brink of tears. Sister Claire further assuaged her, and I heard then the kiss of dry, lifeless lips. “In time, if you wish, I will line this whole kitchen with shelves…. Now go, go stir the girls as we discussed. No one, no one but Elizaveta must be in the infirmary. And avoid the Actress, leave her to me. Seize the accomplice if you see her, detain her if she’s been found. And, Sister,” said the Head, calling after the cellarer, “we shall keep each other’s secrets, no?” The cellarer made no response, and was gone: I heard the closing door.
Too, I heard Sister Claire sit: the scratching of chair legs over the stony kitchen floor. And I heard her set a thing of heft upon the table; this was followed by a sound—a steady grating—the cause of which I could not define. Long, long minutes passed as Sister Claire allowed the cellarer to play her part in the dormitory.
Finally, movement. Sister Claire rose to leave the kitchen. In so doing, she darkened the pantry doorway; she remained but an instant, long enough to toss all but one filed nail into the room, where they sprayed like shot, fell to lie strewn amid chisels and planes and the soft planks of pine. I saw in Sister Claire’s hand a hammer; and my worst fears were confirmed: she would finish Peronette’s prank in a wicked way all her own.
Sister Claire left the kitchen. It was empty. Stunned and scared as I was, I could not move. Not to save Elizaveta. Not to save myself.
It was sometime later—a half hour, two hours?—that the Angelus rang, summoning the girls to chapel, and I knew that I must move. I pushed open the trap, just so, and listened. Sister Brigid had returned: I knew her by her hushed and steady movement. I waited. All was quiet then, quiet save for the murmur of her Rosary, more breath than discernible prayer. She’d settled into her chair. I could see her at table’s end, reading the blue crystals with her gnarled and near-useless fingers, their knuckles large and hard as rocks.
I crawled from the cellar.
Could I slip past Sister Brigid, to the dark twist of a stairway that led up to her rooms, that stairway she could no longer navigate with safety? From there I could take to the second-floor corridor, steal along it to the window at its end; then through that window, onto the terrace above the gallery, and over to the vacated dormitory. Could I…? Ah, but what choice did I have?
And so I slid from the pantry, quiet as air, keeping to the kitchen’s wall, far from the mumbling nun. But I’d need to pass her, for she sat not far from the stairwell, her back flush against her throne-like chair; her head hung low, chin to chest, deep in prayer or sleep. And as I did so, as I slipped beside the nun, she, without looking up, shot her useless hand out at me; with it she seized my hand, and held me fast. But before I could speak, she raised her rheumy eyes to me—tears dampened her sunken and papery cheeks—and from her hands to mine she passed her Rosary; and told me, “Go with God, my child. Go from this place as fast as you can!”
So dark was the stairwell, I had to pull myself up by the rope banister, which threatened to slip from the wall, rusted rings and all, at any moment. I thought of hiding forever in the safe dark. Here was my last chance to change my mind. Did I truly wish to steal along the convent corridors and galleries, risk everything to sneak back into the dormitory? And why? To gather my few possessions? I could wait in the stairwell and later slip back into the night unseen. But what then? Where would I go? What would I do? Curl up under a bush, fight foraging squirrels for nuts and berries?…Yes, I would go on: if for no better reason than I needed that money. And clothes.
And so, slowly, I pushed open the door and spied into Sister Brigid’s room. The door to the corridor was closed. I pushed the stairwell door wide—it gave with a deafening croak—and I slipped sideways into the room, like a cat. The sun came in through the wavy panes of the lone window. No one. Nothing. Just the cell-like white room: the bed with its thin spread, the bowed legs of the nightstand, a bureau with an unpainted porcelain washbasin—I didn’t dare look at myself in the small mirror attached to it—and, of course, the requisite crucifix on the wall above the bed—
“Merde!” I said it aloud, for I realized then that I’d left the cypress cross behind me in the cellar. My only weapon! What to do? I couldn’t retrieve it, not now. But how would I get by without that cross, without its rock-solid cypress arms to hold to? I told myself it would be there when I could get back to the cellar to claim it, if ever I made it back.
I listened through the oak door a long while. Silence in the corridor. I opened the door slowly, so slowly. I heard again Sister Brigid’s admonition: Go! I told myself. Go!
Out into the corridor, to the window at its end. I forced it open, grateful, for once, for my God-given strength. Over the terrace, moving low behind its trellised vines of pale blue morning glories, withered now by the noonday heat, and onto the dormitory. Through a window I saw the well-ordered cots. No one was about; as hoped, they’d proceeded to chapel as a pack. Certainly, with Satan among them, none would stray. It was their fear that allowed me to move among them unseen. It came to me then: Use their fear.
The corridor, and the terrace too, though seemingly empty, felt somehow…alive. Stealing along them, I felt a presence. I kept turning around, looking every which way, expecting to see someone, something. But there was nothing, just that…that presence.
Soon I found myself standing before my cot. My trunk lay empty. Everything had been taken from it. The ragtag trunk—when I’d been given it, it held still the effects of the deceased nun who’d owned it previously—held only Sister Claire de Sazilly’s silver and bloodied crucifix. How angry I was then! That trunk, with its split canvas strapping and busted lock, had held everything in the world that was mine; true, it hadn’t held much, but it had all been mine. Not only what money I’d secreted away, but the books given to me by Mother Marie, a pair of earrings discarded by Peronette, which I had not yet dared to wear, fearing, knowing that any attempt at self-adornment would be ridiculous, and ridiculed. My clothes, shoes, everything was gone. Gone! I took the cross from the trunk and hurled it down the length of the dormitory floor; it clanged off bedposts and skidded along the stone floor till finally it stopped in the center of the aisle, shining and defiant.
The sheets of course were gone. The cold demon seed! I heard again the screams of that morning and I wondered what stoked my anger more, the accusation itself or the absurdity of it. My thin mattress was bare but for branches, twigs cut from the elm and the ash, from sweet briar and thorn. Superstitious bitches! The anger welled within me. Yes, yes! So absurd—to believe in this Darkness, to believe that twigs spread on a bed might stop Satan’s Work! I swept the branches from the bed and sat on its edge. I fell back, crying
tears of anger and frustration and pain. Yes, pain, for the fast-flowing tears stung my cut face! And I discovered that the bed was wet. I knew instantly they’d doused it with holy water.
My pillow, linen-covered, dry, seemed to have escaped their base rituals. Quickly, to take what comfort I could, I pulled it to me. I buried my face in it and yes!…there was the lingering scent of Peronette, departed Peronette, for surely it was she who’d sped away beside her aunt. That lavender scent was overtaken by another smell, much stronger. Iron? The pillow was odorous of iron, or rust. Of course: the iron-frame bed had been splashed with holy water. But as I reached to touch the bed frame I saw that my hand was darkly wet. Looking down, I saw red flecks on the pillow’s white cover; and my hand on its underside moved into…I flipped the pillow over. A crimson stain spread in the center of the pillow. A stain the size of a heart, or fist.
But whose fresh blood was this?
A noise. An inhuman noise nearby. A mewling. Beneath the cot.
I bent over, beckoned out from under my cot with curling fingers a pitch-dark cat, one I’d never seen before at C——. It came to sniff at my bloodied hand. Its ears had been cut, recently and crudely, as though with dull shears or a single blade. I took the cat up in my arms. What had they done to it? I petted the poor mutilated creature, and begged its forgiveness, for I knew I was the reason it had been hurt. (The only way to prevent a cat’s being adopted as a witch’s familiar is to cut off its ears; or so they hold in the North.)
Those bitches, those butchers! So, I’d devolved from devil to witch? Where would this all end? How much more blood would be shed, and whose blood would it be? Not mine; of that I was certain, and newly determined. Their malice, their ignorance, their cruelty, their stupidity, and their superstition were deciding my course.
I hugged the cat close. Poor thing. It passed its forepaws again and again over the stumps, the bloodied tags of fur that had been its ears. It purred and mewled till I grew convinced that it questioned me, asking the how and the why of all that was happening. Of course now I wonder if the cat didn’t somehow direct me.
It rubbed against me, it burrowed into the crook of my arm. A familiar, eh? Here was an idea. I thought then of Prospero, Shakespeare’s deposed Duke, the would-be Conjurer-King, who, speaking of the creature Caliban, says, “This thing of Darkness I acknowledge mine.” But what to call such a dark and damaged thing, my familiar?…The Tempest. Miranda, Prospero’s daughter. Ah, but that name was not dark enough…still, I liked the sound of it. I thought a moment more. Maluenda. Yes, that would do. That would do nicely. Maluenda. Equally magical and mean.
I sat on the edge of the ill-blessed bed, sprigs from the witch-defying trees spread all around me, and I held to my Maluenda. I’d never had a pet, let alone a familiar! It’s likely I laughed out loud at the thought: a familiar! Suddenly I cared not a whit if I were caught, found, discovered on that bed clad as I was, filthy, defying the holy water—which ought to have burned me, of course—tickling my familiar…. Why? I cannot say.
I sat thinking how wonderful it would be if I were what the sorority believed me to be. I wished I was such a thing. Willed it. Would that I had Dark Powers, demons to do my bidding! Would that I knew spells to cast, dark prayers to pray. Only later would I learn that the wishing, the willing was prayer enough. And that those prayers were being heard, and would be answered. But I forge too fast ahead….
So, the sorority of C——had given me my familiar. How kind of them. What other powers did they attribute to me? Wasn’t I as strong as their skewed convictions, as strong as their false faith and superstitions? Use their fear. Cradling the cat, I felt my strength increase, as though somehow I drew it from the animal.
I was still in pain, yes, but I was unafraid! And gaining strength. Indeed, I was stronger than I’d ever been; strong in every sense. And yes, fearless; for, having so little to lose, I had no fear of loss.
Still, I would escape.
7
The Franciscan Way
BUT FIRST I’d bathe. Extraordinary! Here I was—me, who’d never dared expose my body—stealing naked down the dormitory to the washroom, Maluenda tripping lightly at my heel.
In the washroom I found several tubs half-filled, their stagnant cold water dark with…was it the faint light, filtering through the skylights, sliding into the dented copper tubs, that gave the water its leaden cast? Or was it merely the girls’ gathered dirt? Maluenda led me to a tub whose water was by far the cleanest, perhaps even unused; and its cold water was calming. A salve, it was, as I took up a clean cloth and began to wash, hunched over the tub.
Maluenda perched on the tub’s side, pawed at the water and cleaned herself. She seemed to revel in her dark reflection; her orange eyes glimmered on the dim water, the color of old coin. Heartrending, it was, to see her tending to the tattered flesh, the tags of flesh that had been her ears. Had they torn her ears from her? Cleaned, her wounds looked worse.
I walked back to my cot, clad again in that soiled nightshirt; only when I stood before my cot did I remember that I had nothing: all my things were gone from my trunk. Angrily, I began rifling through the trunks within easy reach, but no, this wouldn’t do. Nearly all the girls were much smaller than I: their clothes would not fit. Which cots, which trunks belonged to the older girls? I hurried along, wondering who was it slept here, who was it slept there?
I came to a cold stop at Peronette’s trunk. She certainly had left in a hurry: she’d abandoned her precious dresses. It was then I remembered: days earlier, Peronette had received a package—wrapped in pink paper, with the requisite red bow—that she’d torn into, quite curious as it came from an unknown atelier in Paris. Courtesy of Monsieur Gaudillon, of course. But the untried seamstress had erred, and the dress did not fit. It was much too large. Peronette had verily raged…. Sure enough, here it was, that dress, stuffed deep inside the trunk.
I dressed, not bothering with undergarments, in this confection of pale pink tulle with an underdress of softer pink silk—quite fancy, far too fancy for me with its full sleeves puffed at the shoulders and rows of opalescent buttons sewn from elbow to wrist. It fell a bit short, and was tight across the shoulders, but it would do.
I dug deeper in the trunk. Who knew what I might find? There were dresses Peronette had never worn, some still in their fancy wrappings. The cards from her father were torn in two and piled in a corner of the trunk, as though blown there by the hot wind of her contempt. There were letters from her mother; the thick pile of pale blue envelopes tied with a ribbon of purple silk. I unwrapped this package and read the topmost letter, dated some months earlier. Rather, I would have read it, had it not been perfectly illegible. The scratchings of a quill pen, nothing more; as though a doddering hen with inked talons had skittered across the thin and faintly scented paper. Here and there a word or phrase was discernible; but the letters were nonsensical. So Peronette hadn’t lied about her mother. She was indeed crazy. I shuffled a few of the envelopes and saw that many were unopened; all of them were addressed (clearly not by Madame Gaudillon) to Peronette. Who continued to post these letters to the girl, so cruelly?
Ah, but this was wrong. I knew I ought not to look through Peronette’s things, even if she was already far away. And, though the dormitory was silent, and the girls were assembled at chapel for the Angelus, one or more strays might return at any moment.
As I was about to lower the lid of Peronette’s trunk, I spied something sticking up among the layers of linen and lace. It looked to be the thin snout of an animal; at first, taking it to be just that, I stepped back from the trunk. Ridiculous, I know—did I think Peronette had harbored some species of possum? Then again, it was ridiculous that I’d discovered the mangled cat beneath a cot, ridiculous too that I stood accused of congress with Lucifer and…Alors, it was a cork, pushed deep into the mouth of a blue bottle. I reached into the trunk, reached for the base of the bottle, and pulled it up. It was wine; and surely it was fine wine: only the best for
Peronette. And she had hardly drunk any of it. Strange, that she’d never shared this with me; if not the wine, then the secret: it would have been just like Peronette to boast, slyly, of a bottle of Burgundy secreted in her trunk. I pulled the cork. So rich, so deep it was…a sip. And another.
Bottle in hand, I sought out the trunk of the second tallest girl at C——, a gangly thing known as Spider. Tall as she was, Spider’s boots, well-worn, and of a fine white kid, barely fit me. Lacing them up, I earned for myself another draft of wine.
Quickly I twisted my hair into a tight bun, stuck a pearl-ended pin through it. Around my neck I hung Sister Brigid’s blue crystal rosary. And, as another girl who remained in residence that summer had the sweetest-smelling scent, I…Suffice to say that I was soon damp at the neck, elbows, and knees with gardenia water…. And dressed as I’d never dressed before, still poor as a pauper—indeed, I thought rather ominously of how the poor, the peasantry, wake their dead in fancy dress—dressed, I walked from the dormitory out into the corridor, Maluenda curled in my left arm, the bottle of Burgundy in my right, and fast gained the shuttered gallery that crossed to the chapel.
From there I might slip down the outer stairwell toward the stables, where perhaps I’d saddle a nag—please, I thought, please let there be a beast in the stable besides the dappled dray horse used and abused by the cellarer these long years—and I’d ride away to safety. What was I thinking? Maybe it was the wine; after all, I had little experience of drunkenness, having but tipped Mother Marie’s bottles shyly beside Peronette, and here I was partaking freely. Or was this—my moving blindly on—was this what is meant by the Mystery of Faith? Certainly, I trusted. Trusted in something unseen, something of which I had no proof. Not then. Not yet.
And suddenly, there it was again. That presence. Somewhere in the banded, broken light of the gallery. There and gone. Walking along the gallery on tip-toe, lest the low heels of the pilfered boots betray me, I found myself following…something. Nothing I could see or name, but…No, I was being led. And it was with difficulty that I stopped and settled myself.