Sister Agathe came to me one evening. “I have asked the Mother Superior if you may be allowed to visit your uncle. She made inquiries and found he is not your uncle.”
I sighed. “I hoped if I said he was my uncle you might allow it. He was the minister of our community. He was kind to me.”
“And so you have lied again? This time about something more serious than eating a carrot, no? You will spend tomorrow on your knees in prayer at the foot of the cross.”
“Yes, Sister.” I tried to contain my glee at facing a day without flax, but found on the morrow this punishment was not so easily ignored as before. The stones at the foot of the crucifix had been strewn with seeds, and I was not allowed to move them or to sit. I did not cry for myself. I laid curses to Sister Agathe on the deaf ears of the plaster man hanging above me.
Another Sunday came, a day warm and misty, the air reeking with moldering flax blown away by a light breeze, so that the whole place seemed lush and fragrant, verdant, full. The sun was high in the sky when prayers and Sunday’s only meal of the day at mid-morning were finished. I walked to the vegetable garden hoping to find it unattended, but three nuns in gray bent there, praying over pease suffering wilt. The day warmed as I ambled the grounds. I came to a glade made by blueberry bushes grown overhead. An elderly nun sitting in an invalid chair slept there. Her blanket had slipped to her feet. I tucked it up over her shoulders. She awoke and smiled at me. “Merci,” she whispered, “petite ange.” She fell asleep again as soon as the words left her mouth. More like “petite sauvage,” I thought. I wished I were an Indian with a tomahawk.
I picked a handful of berries and ate them. On the other side, a gate in the garden wall stood ajar. Beyond it stretched an open field of grain, silver heads waving under the gentle breeze like water in a bay. Bees hovered about a honeysuckle grown upon a discarded stile beckoning over a fence that no longer existed.
I wheeled around to face the convent buildings, aware that I was alone. I could see the upper floors with their open shutters, the spire of the cathedral. In the distance near the stables a man brushed a horse. Chickens pecked around both their feet. On this side of the blueberries, though, as far as I could see, I was alone at a path between fields. Once I stepped through the gate and stood on the far side of the wall, nothing lay before me but grain fields in all directions. Doves sighed and fluttered overhead, a pheasant cried out rising from his hiding place under the stile. I began to run.
As I ran from the convent proper, my face spread with joy. I opened my mouth to gulp in great breaths of free air. No one called me. On and on I dashed, my shadow before me as if a dark image of myself ran along as company, my arms swinging, my back warmed by the sun and the thought of freedom. “Oui!” I called out, with joy. I returned to English, crying, “Yes, oh yes, Ma. I am coming home!”
I ran until my side ached. The ground rolled lower at the end of the field, which stopped at a stand of maple trees. I might have dashed my brains against the colorless wall of stone on the far side of the maple trees, for I ran into it at full tilt, my hands breaking my fall. The wall was higher than the sides of the Saracen ship. I raced along it one way, then turned and went the other. I beat against it with my fists, growling like a wild animal. I jumped at it, trying to find a fingerhold. Here and there, a rock protruded, but putting my toes on it crumbled it from its place. I heard a dog bark on the other side of the fence. I called out, “Ho, there! Help me, gentlefolk!”
“Who calls?” a man’s voice answered.
“Your servant, sir. Help me, please. They torture children, and starve us, and beat us without mercy. I was brought here by Indians. Save me from this, dear sir, and my mother will pay you handsomely. She is the duchess of all Scotland! Only throw me a line, and I will climb over. Take me away from this place and you will be rich!”
The voice laughed! “You will not find a one in this city who will go against the church!” His laughter and the dog’s barking faded away.
I found a downed tree but it was too heavy to move. Another limb placed against the wall proved too thin to balance upon, and it cracked when I got half its length under me. Surely, there would be a gate in this wall. I began to run along it. The pain in my side grew until I slowed to a walk. I would return for Patience; I must make my escape while there was a chance. I went until I came out of the thicket of maple and entered low brush. The sun baked upon my head and I pulled off my cap and used it to wipe my brow.
I found myself but ten paces to a vineyard. I stopped at the first row of vines and ate an entire bunch of grapes, though they were tart and afterward I felt a terrific thirst. Across the vineyard I spotted a square place in the gray wall. It must be a gate! I started through the rows. My side gnawed at me. I tripped and fell, then rolled and sat in the shade of a vine. I would catch my breath. I meant to rest a while, but when I awoke the sun was low, the sky painted with pinks the color of the inside of a conch shell. I ate more grapes. I looked toward the gate but the shadows were so deep I could not see it. It took me until night fell to make my way across the vineyard in the direction I believed the gate to be. Crows fussed at me as if they meant to give away my escape.
Darkness fell without a glimmer of moon. I stopped at the last row. Something moved nearby and I sniffed for the scent of bear. An owl swooped from a tree and called, his wings catching the last of the light that lingered in the air and taking it with him, leaving me in darkness. I jumped at his call and felt a sharp stab. A nail protruded from the framework built to hold the grapevine over the ground in an awkward shape. It caught my left arm just above the wrist. Blood gushed from the ragged wound and I pressed my hand against it. I sank by the vine. The thing’s branches were forced with cords into unnatural bends over the wood frame. Crucified, I thought. The wretched things had all been crucified.
I would wait until moonrise and continue, I decided, so I curled my arms about my knees to wait, pressing the bloody wrist against my skirt. The touch of a leaf upon my cheek brought me awake as if it had been a slap. I heard voices and peeked from my place toward the sound. The moon was so bright! “There! I see her!” I heard a voice from behind my head. It was not the moon but the sun! My heart sank. I lay upon the earth as if I were dead, wishing the ground would cover me there. Sister Joseph and Donatienne followed a priest, their skirts held high, revealing their little feet at my eye level, running so they seemed as puppets. I started toward the gate, trying to escape with them on my heels. Donatienne reached my side, her face red and wet. “Oh, Marie, you are safe!” I sank to the earth in a heap.
The priest raised me to stand. Behind them was Reverend Johansen. My face lit up with joy but he did not seem happy to see me. He turned on his heel, picked up a hoe, and left the three of them to walk me back to the convent. I felt overcome with emotion for myself and sorry for Donatienne, then. “I went for a walk. I got lost,” I said.
Sister Joseph sat on the ground and pulled me toward her, hugging me, hugging Donatienne with me, squeezing us together the way Ma sometimes did with Patey and me. She murmured. She took me by the shoulders and gave me a shake. “You would not lie again, would you, Marie?”
“No. I will never lie again. I was not running away. I was lost. I am sorry,” I said.
“I know you are sick for want of your home.”
“I was lost. Must I be punished?” I asked Sister Joseph.
“Yes. Severely,” she said with a frown. Then she smiled. “I think you must say a hundred prayers. Let us go and eat some breakfast.”
* * *
Two days later, Sister Agathe called me from my work and said I was to go to the sick ward. Patience had been delivered of a baby boy. She added that it was important that I see my sister and kiss her good-bye, for the priest was with her.
I went to Patey’s bedside. “La, Patience, you are so ill,” I said.
She opened her eyes for a moment. “Ressie. Sit by me.”
I pushed myself onto the narrow bed and she moaned. The ot
hers about us gasped as if I had hurt her. “I am sorry,” I said.
“Do not leave me, Ressie. Please stay with me. Hold me. I am so cold.”
I leaned toward her and laid my face against her neck. “Patience. Do not die. I need you so. The baby is well,” I added, to cheer her. “And handsome.”
“It is not my baby. It is Rafe MacAlister’s baby. Tell the nuns to find him and charge him with the child’s keep.”
“How can he have aught to do with your baby?”
Sister Agathe put her hand on my shoulder. “Father is going to give her Extreme Unction. It will forgive her sins.”
“Patience has no sins. I am the one who sins.”
“You would not want her to go to hell. Step back before she dies.”
I looked upon my sister with wariness and fear. Her face was indeed more pale than ever I had known, her eyes sunken and filmed worse than when she had had scurvy on the ship. “No, no,” I whispered. “May I not stay with her?”
Sister Agathe and the priest frowned at me. I stepped away. He put oil on Patey’s forehead and tried to get her to eat a bit of Eucharist. When he finished, I returned to her side and sat on the floor by the bed where I could hold her hand and wait. “Patey will not die,” I chanted over and over again.
Suddenly I stood. I ran. First out the door, then to the chapel. I rang the bell to call a priest to the confessional. “Father? Father! Hear my confession.” A candle came into the little cell with a man’s form. “Tell God to let Patey live. I confess I have told lies. I lied about the carrot. I ate it myself. I lied to my compagne about my family. I lied about my ma driving a coach and my age and I told Violette how the dogs we owned would eat her alive once I get home. There are hundreds more, too. Forgive me, Father. Please do not let my sister die. Please!” The priest was one of the old ones. He could not understand my frantic mixture of English and French, and mumbled something I could barely make out. “You old spider!” I shouted, and ran from the chapel back to the sickroom.
Donatienne appeared carrying a bundle of blankets and two pillows. “I came to wait with you,” she said.
“I am not afraid to wait alone,” I said. Donatienne’s face showed I had hurt her feelings once again. “What I meant to say, Donatienne, is that I did not want to trouble you. I very much wish you to stay.”
She smiled and said, “I will make us a bed here.” She put the pillows side by side. Laid the blankets next to each other. She lay upon them and reached for my hand.
I reached for Patey’s hand and with the other I took Donatienne’s while she talked about her father who was a tailor, and her mother, who bore seven children before Donatienne was eleven years old. All of them, father, mother, three sisters, and four brothers, perished in La fiévre épidémique. Their lives were gentle, she said. Not aristocratic, but pastoral. Earthy. Sleeping with the sun and moving with the seasons. When she finished I told her about playing on the beach and gathering shells. I told her about the taste of sugarcane. The food Lucy used to make us. I told her about Allsy. When I said that she died, Donatienne wept. That stunned me so that I wept, too.
A nun came in carrying a candle and held a mirror to Patey’s mouth and nose to see if her air moved. When they saw she yet breathed, they changed her dressings and I watched in shock at seeing so much blood. One time Patience groaned when they lifted her. I helped change the dressing, steeling myself against the horror I saw, trying to think that what my hands did would save my sister from death and that my hands must not carry their terror to my heart lest I die of it or faint and be useless to her.
The ceiling had been painted a vivid shade of blue such as no sky could ever be. It was hazed of candle smoke. My room at home had had a blue ceiling, too, but peaceful, cerulean, the color of the bay if a storm should approach at sundown and cast unusual lights into the water. The effect was supposed to be that one lying in bed had a sense of being under the sky, and therefore under the caring eye of their Maker. I saw spiderwebs an ell across, clotted with dust, smoked and greasy black. I patted Patience’s arm and ran my hand down it to hers. Everything about her was sticky and moist. I held her hand to my face and kissed it. In the dim candlelight, I saw my hand blackened with her blood, and I rubbed it against my apron. I spat upon it, too, and rubbed more, imagining my face smeared with blood. “I will not accept your death, too, sister,” I cried. “I shall not.”
Once I asked a nun how the babe fared. She shook her head. I did not ask if it had died, for I feared Patience’s words might have cursed the poor thing. I hummed to keep from letting in the thought that Patey had wished it evil and thereby caused its death just as she had brought a storm to the ship at sea. I rose and sat upon Patey’s bed, leaning to press my cheek against hers and put my lips to her ear. “We have to go home, Patience. Get well. We shall escape, you and I. Do not give up, sister. I have seen the wall. I have found the vineyard and the gate. There is a way out of here, a way home.” Patience’s chest rose and fell in terrifying cadence, and my soul felt cold as the darkest day of winter. I drifted off and woke with a start. She yet lived. A greening sky showed in high windows where only black had been before.
After she had lived two weeks, they allowed her to go in an invalid’s chair to the garden and I was sent back to the grange. To my surprise, other girls carded wool in my place. I knew not what I should do. I felt perturbed at them for having my chair.
Sister Joseph met me with a smile and crooked her finger, motioning me into another area. “This, Marie,” she said, “is a spinning wheel.”
CHAPTER 12
August 18, 1730
He was named James and christened Talbot. Patience regained her health but she could not nurse her baby. The wet nurse brought from town spent most of every day and night with James’s care. He rarely cried. He was rather charming, I thought, but I was soon bored with looking at him, though the nurse told me he would learn to smile and play some months away, and might be more dear then.
I sat with Patience in the sick ward each evening before prayers. Rachael seemed always present, listening to us, watching us. Sometimes we included her in our conversations. She was not stubborn and hardened as her mother, and, I thought, not quite as daft. My loathing of her softened. She was not even so ugly as I had claimed, perhaps only plain and doomed to grow thick and stodgy when she aged. Rachael said to Patience once, when she thought I was out of hearing, “How dear you are together.”
I heard Patey say, “We are all we have left of family. She is my very life.” It warmed my heart.
Rachael said, “My sisters never loved me.”
I interrupted their talk with the robe I had been sent for. I said, “Here, Patey.” When she drew her arms into it, I kissed her cheek and sat at her side. Rachael turned her face from us and stared into the room. Tears slid down her cheeks.
* * *
It was mid-August, the flax still lying in the fields, when Master Hasken and Reverend Johansen ran through the gate one night with the help of MacPherson’s lantern. None of us had heard any rumors of their plan, not even Rachael. The escape was on everyone’s lips when we found moments to whisper to each other. For the next week, when I saw Rachael she was on her knees, pleading for her husband’s safety, and in English, for her own escape. The constables from town searched ten days to no avail before they gave up. I learned that because I spent time every day in the sickroom with Patey, and eavesdropped on the sisters’ whispering. They believed the men to be dead, for if not, surely Reverend Johansen would have returned by then for his expectant wife.
Once she had healed enough to work, Patience was sent to the weavers’ barn, too. She sat in the very chair I had used, learning to card wool as I had done. I sat in the circle of spinning wheels, turning out yard after yard of woolen thread, alongside girls all doing the same thing, our feet making a rippling sound, treadling the wheels. I felt the nearness of my sister but so isolated from her at the same time. Now and then Sister Joseph came by to check on my work a
nd told me different things, such as, “Hold the thread closer to your lap, and your arms will be less tired.” Across the room, Patience carded wool in a circle of chairs, her back to me. She spoke not a word to anyone.
As the month of August drew to a close, Sister Joseph came to the dormitory and announced with anticipation in her manner, “The flax is to be gathered in.” She clapped her hands, adding, “Tomorrow everyone will work outside. It will be so festive!” My heart sank. I had barely healed from the last outdoor work in the flax. A noise started outdoors, so that when we had our meal at noon, I went to see what it was. Men worked to set up tables of planks and rows of baskets in preparation for the morrow.
That evening I found Patience sitting in the garden beside the wet nurse who held James. The sun stayed up late now, and the air was pleasant. I kissed the babe and the nurse, too, before kissing Patey. She touched my face. I saw something hollow in her eyes that made me close mine and look away, fixing them upon the flowers about us. “How is my nephew today?” I asked her.
“Fine and bonny,” she said. Her voice belied the emptiness in her eyes. “Come and take a turn about the garden with me, sister.” Patience grasped my arm so that it was as if she led me about rather than having a stroll together. I said nothing, awaiting her words.
“Ressie? Have you the strength to suppress a secret?”
“More than you would suppose. I care not whether I add a thousand more.”
“Look into the vegetable, there, as if we are discussing it.”
I did, and even managed to pantomime and point at certain things for a moment. I asked, “What is your secret?”