“I wasn’t aware we had a date.” With an open hand, he motioned toward a bench at his elbow, in the last row.
While she wanted to flee, she also felt drawn to him. The story of their relationship. Mother Magdalen went over to the bench and sat down. As he lowered himself onto the stone, she shuffled to the other end of the pew.
“You seem uneasy, Mother.” He brought his fingers to his throat. “Does my collar not comfort you?”
“I suppose that’s why they let you through the gates.”
“Told them I’d been sent to deliver Sacrament of the Sick to one of their sisters. Old women make up such a large percentage of convents, I knew that would get me inside.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Since last night. Even got to say mass while I was waiting for you.”
“I thought you’d abandoned us.”
“I would never leave my daughters.” He paused. “Our daughters.”
“We don’t need you anymore,” she said, and started to stand.
His fist locked over her wrist. “You need me today more than ever.”
She tugged back. “You’re hurting me.”
“I would never harm the mother of my children.”
She felt the warmth leave her body, and she lowered herself back onto the bench. “What?” she stumbled. “What did you say?”
“Our daughters.”
She rubbed her wrist. “What?”
“Read the inside of your ring.”
“I know what it says and so do you. ‘Ego te sponsabo.’ Latin for I will wed thee. You repeated it back to me.”
“How did I know it?”
She shook her head. “I don’t...”
“I took if off of you and never gave it back.”
She held up her left hand and stared at the gold band. “What’re you saying? Here it is. It’s my order’s ring. I’ve worn it since...”
“Not since you left this monastery have you worn your order’s ring.”
Hands trembling, she removed the band from her left ring finger.
“Read,” he said.
Tipping the band, she found the inscription: Facilis descensus Averno
“The descent to hell is easy,” she said numbly.
“Is it all coming back to you?”
Upper lip curling with disgust, Mother Magdalen flung the ring on the ground.
“That’s no way to treat your lover’s gift,” he said.
“I am a bride of Christ.”
“You’re my bride, Mother.”
He raised her hand to his mouth. As he sucked on each of her fingers, she felt the heat course through her body. Not a pleasant warmth, it was a burn. She tipped her head back to the sky and the green canopy turned red. Closing her eyes, she fell back against the bench and surrendered to his touch and to the images it brought back.
Two glistening bodies tangled in white sheets...Then a woman’s body alone on a bed, her abdomen round and tight and swollen with child...Knees up and spread wide...Red against the white, not from her lost virginity but from...
Childbirth.
“Why didn’t I remember until now? How did I block it out?”
“The mind can perform amazing tricks – under the right tutelage and with the right drugs.”
“My family. My friends. They would have seen me in that...condition.”
“You have no friends and you’re dead to your family.”
“When did it happen? During my sabbatical?”
He barked a laugh. “If you want to call it that.”
More images flipped through her mind.
White, windowless walls. A white door, locked. Straps across slender white arms. Her arms. Intravenous lines and needles. Coming to her at night, her lover – dressed in a white lab coat. The name embroidered on the pocket: Dr. Jehu Levite.
“Someone institutionalized me?”
“You committed yourself, after leaving this monastery.”
“Why?”
“The pressures of running the place, the solitude and rigors of the cloistered life - it all got to you. Repressed childhood memories were bubbling to the surface. It was all your parents’ fault, really. They should have nurtured your...artistic abilities, instead of sending you away.”
“What abilities?”
“Think, Mother. Remember. The dead kitten. The crayon drawing on the barn wall.”
She blinked. In her mind’s eye, she saw something small and furry in tiny hands. Her own hands. So much blood. It had been crushed by the livestock. Then it was alive, running across the hay-covered floor.
And her mother, screaming.
“How did you know?” she asked.
“The parish priest had a big mouth, and we have ears and eyes everywhere.”
She nodded, but said nothing. Let him continue with his story.
“At the convent school, they kept you away from the tools you needed. We suspected the gift had died from lack of use, and lack of belief. It takes a child to believe. We hoped your child could have it. How fortunate for us that we got three of them. It required a little work on my part, but...”
“You raped me while I was in the hospital, while I was drugged and restrained.”
“You wanted it.” He wrapped his arms around her narrow shoulders and put his lips over hers.
She pushed him away. “You kept them and put them on the doorstep.”
“After you were installed in your new convent, with the help of our contacts.”
“You let me think they were abandoned, and let me adopt them out.”
“They needed a normal upbringing and you, Mother, are anything but that.”
He pulled her close. Instead of fighting him, she opened her mouth and took in his tongue. It felt like a hot ember, and the scorching pain traveled from the tender insides of her mouth, down her throat and into her belly and bowels. When she was sure her insides were going to erupt with fire, he pulled his mouth off of her.
Something rustled in the woods beyond the fence. She slid away from him and stood up. Surveyed the trees behind the grotto and to her right. “Someone’s watching us.”
“You’re adding paranoia to your list of mental problems.” Grabbing her wrist, he started to pull her back down.
“Listen.”
He grabbed her other wrist. “It’s the wind.”
“Stop,” she said.
“I’m not through with you.”
Suddenly his eyes went beyond her, to the statue of the Virgin Mary. She saw discomfort in his face and maybe something more. Fear? He let go of her and stood up. “I’ll be in the visiting priests’ cottage, if you change your mind tonight.”
“I won’t.”
“You can have the rest of the day with the girls, but tomorrow I take them.”
“They’re my...”
“They were never yours to keep. You were merely a vessel. They belong to us, to use as we please. As we planned.”
“They’re babies. You can’t.”
“We can and we will.” He started to walk away, but spun around for one last salvo. “And don’t even think of running. We’ll find you and hurt you in ways you can’t even imagine.”
“My place in the organization...”
“You never had one.” He turned his back and left her, his cassock fighting the wind. The black sails of a hellish ship.
The abbess ran to the statue of the Virgin Mary and fell to her knees. Meshing her fingers together, she began to pray: “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb...”
A bolt of pain shot through her abdomen.
Her womb. It had carried three children, and she’d delivered them in a mental institution. How could she have forgotten? Had she been that ill? That medicated?
Mother Regina’s words came back to her:
“That’s not my understanding. That’s not what we heard.”
And Sister Rose’s last words to her:
“You’ve lost your mind a second time.”
“Help me,” she whispered to the statue. “Can’t you help me?”
In lieu of an answer, fluid seeped from the corners of the stone eyes and froze partway down the unmoving cheeks.
With a gasp, Mother Magdalen scrambled to her feet and stumbled backwards. She pivoted around and ran down the path. As if it was remembering and reliving the delivery, spasms of pain shot through her abdomen. More madness, or a punishment from God?
Rossi’s phone rang and she examined the screen.
“Want me to take it?” asked MacLeod, reaching a hand toward the front.
“What else could go wrong?” She opened it and put the cell to her ear. Glancing through the windshield at the highway signs, she told Camp where they were and gave him an ETA. She asked about the television blackout and the candidate for ag secretary. No news on either front. Then she listened for a long time, interrupting to insert brief exclamations of astonishment. “Bizarre!...No way!...I don’t believe that!”
“Uh oh,” said Khoury
“Don’t keep us in suspense, sweetheart,” the Scot muttered.
She ended it by putting her hand to her forehead and giving her boss orders. “Tell our guys to back off...I don’t give a damn. I don’t want any more casualties...I don’t know. Away from the fence. Fifty...a hundred yards...I don’t care. If that woman heard them, she could sic those girls on them!”
“Let’s hear it,’ said MacLeod as she closed her cell.
“Our guys saw Xavier outside - sucking face with a priest.”
MacLeod slapped his knee. “Well blow me over!”
“There should be no men on those grounds,” Khoury said.
“Perhaps he was there to say mass,” MacLeod offered.
“He wasn’t a real priest.” Rossi told them everything Camp had heard or deduced through the monitored conversation.
“Mother Magdalen is their mother?” Khoury sputtered in the middle of the retelling.
By the time Rossi was finished, both men were speechless. Finally MacLeod said: “Thank the saints that woman can no longer wield a crayon.”
“Let’s hope that’s the case,” said Rossi.
“Who was that pretend priest?” asked Khoury.
“We got a first name and some good photos. We’re running the info through the system. Regardless, he’s not going anywhere now that he’s in our cross-hairs.”
“He must be one of the violent few,” said Khoury.
“We’ve gotta come up with a new name for those blokes,” said MacLeod.
“I’ll put it on our to-do list.” Rossi took a breath and let it out. “I haven’t even gotten to the weird part.”
“God help us,” said MacLeod.
“After this fake priest left, Xavier went over to a statue of Mary. You know. Mother of God.”
“I’m familiar,” Khoury said.
“Xavier got down on her knees in front of the statue and...”
“And what?” asked MacLeod.
“The statue cried, except the tears were red.”
“Blood,” said MacLeod.
“The tears solidified, like dripping candle wax.”
“No,” said Khoury. “Melted crayons.”
After a long silence, Khoury added: “You asked where my God was in all this, Samantha. I think he’s just fired a warning shot.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Bent in half from the pain and shaking from the shock of remembering, the mother superior dropped her keys twice before she managed to open the dormitory’s front door. She hobbled up the flights of stairs, threw open the door to her room and ran to the opposite wall. Struggling through the agony, she wrestled the window open. No screen. Good.
Leaning on the sill, she looked down. She didn’t have the courage to do it. She took her hands off the ledge and folded on the floor. Laughed hysterically, and then began sobbing.
Crawling to the side of her bed, she put her hands on the edge of her mattress and began to pray. The spasms and the memories overcame her, and she fainted in a heap of black fabric on the floor.
When she regained consciousness, her habit was drenched in sweat.
Someone knocked. A messenger for Mother Regina, summoning her to a meeting.
“I’m sick,” she croaked to the door, sounding as wretched as she felt.
“The children and the man...”
“Let them sleep. We’re...we’re all sick.” She tried to think of an illness that would keep everyone away from them. “The flu.”
It did the trick.
“We’ll leave you alone, then.”
She climbed up on the bed and passed out again.
Babette hadn’t yet passed out, but her sisters had and the girl was glad. Sitting cross-legged on the bed, the child reached into her shoe and pulled out four waxy knobs. Red. Yellow. Green. Blue. Kneeling on the mattress, she began drawing on the wall over her bed. The heads first – two large circles – followed by the hair.
She started to nod off in the middle of her art project, her head tipping down and resting against the wall. Her sisters stirred in their sleep, and their rustling roused her. With envy, she looked across the room at them. If only they had let her up on the bed with them. If only they hadn’t called her names.
Fueled by a fresh dose of resentment, she resumed her scribbling.
By the time Mother Magdalen opened her eyes, the pain had disappeared and so had the sun. The chilly night air coming from the open window invigorated her, and she rested her arms on the sill. Lampposts and yard lights dotted the grounds. Through the soft, yellow glow, she eyed one building in particular. It was never locked, and there’d be no one inside this time of night.
From the bottom of her suitcase, she fished out her old habit, the one she’d worn as head of the cloistered convent. The purity of the white seemed appropriate for the task she was about to complete. After dressing, she checked her watch. She and Petit and the girls had missed dinner and vespers. Soon, the entire monastery would be asleep.
From the pocket of her old habit, she retrieved two things: Her rosary and the scissors.
Pleading exhaustion, Khoury asked Rossi to take the wheel. In reality, he thought driving would help distract his partner. She’d put on a brave face, but he could tell her insides were in turmoil.
The closer they got to the monastery, the more difficult it was for him to rein in his own feelings. Night had settled in, and so had the truth. He could dress it up and color it any way he wished, but the fact of the matter was he might be forced to kill a nun to save the three little girls. How would he do it? He knew how to handle a gun – he’d learned for self-protection in Lebanon – and the plan they’d talked about would put Rossi’s weapon in his hands.
Could he pull the trigger?
He pulled his rosary out of his pocket and Rossi took notice. “Worried?”
“Of course. Taking a life, especially that of another religious...”
“If you can’t do it...”
“I can.”
“If you can’t, I will. In a heartbeat, I’ll do it.”
In the darkness of the car, he rolled the first bead between his thumb and index finger and found comfort in the smoothness. The solidness. “You said you couldn’t kill a nun.”
“That was before that witch had them murder Tommy. I know it was her doing.”
“This cannot be done for revenge.”
From the back seat, the Scot questioned his statement. “Why not? Tis as good a motivator as any.”
“Turning this into something personal would be wrong. This isn’t about us, about our losses.” An image flashed into his mind: The hideous fetus Babette had shown him, meant to mock his dead infant. He erased the picture and moved his fingers to the next bead. “This is about saving humanity. Our love for humanity.”
“What difference does it make why we do it, man?”
Rossi threaded around a clot of slow-moving cars. “Bec
ause if we do it for the wrong reasons, then we’re going to hell along with her.” Rossi shot Khoury a sideways glance, as if seeking approval.
“And God will not be on our side,” said Khoury.
“So we must kill her with love, even as we put a pistol to her skull?”
“Patrick,” said Rossi. “That’s enough.”
“Apologies: Even as Father here puts a pistol to her skull?”
“You finally called me Father,” he said lightly. “I’m honored.”
“Why are you tormenting him, Patrick?”
Khoury looked over his shoulder, to the man in the back seat. “He wants to make sure I know how ugly it’s going to be.”
“Aye.”
I’m prepared. My whole life has prepared me for this. The ugliness I’ve already seen...”
“Will be nothing compared to this, mate. You won’t be comforting the wounded and the dead after someone else’s rampage. You’ll be the bloke doing the filthy work.” MacLeod put his hands atop the back of his partners’ seats and leaned forward. His breathing was quick. Labored. “Admit it: You’re nervous. We’re all nervous – and it isn’t just about killing the nun, is it?”
Neither one of his partners answered.
“No one wants to say it out loud. What if Xavier turns the girls on us? How far are we willing to go to save our own arses, to keep ourselves from getting killed by way of crayon?”
The priest’s hands curled over his rosary. “I won’t kill a child.”
“What about you, sweetheart?”
“Why are you trying to ramp up the panic, Patrick?” Rossi asked angrily. “What good would that do?”
“Answer the question.”
“Why should I?” she snapped.
“We’ve got to get real about this. It’s a possibility, it is. We may have to kill the girls.”
“Not if we stick to the plan,” said Rossi.
“Bloody plan.”
The Scot was bouncing off the car ceiling. Khoury could hear him breathing hard in the back seat. The priest wanted MacLeod to get a grip on his emotions. “Let’s go over it again.”
“Yeah, right.” Wheezing, MacLeod fell back against his seat. “I’m not the one who needs to get a grip.”
“Patrick,” said Rossi. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m fine.”
The Devil's Own Crayons Page 34