She clasped her hand over her mouth with an audible gasp. “An English word. That is what they call those girls. Sometimes ‘tart’ or ‘whore’ or ‘prostituée.’”
“Christine Hasken told me that her friend Thea was given to the priests for a doxy.” I lay on the cot when I said it. I was still uncertain of the meaning but I knew it was terrible. Something in the image reminded me of being on the ship, and that brought Patience’s and Cora’s nightly disappearances up the ladder to mind. Cake was their payment. I put my hand to my mouth and bit my thumb. Patey had said James was Rafe MacAlister’s baby. “Does it make you have a baby? Having men’s desires, I mean?”
“Yes!”
From across the room a girl’s voice said, “Be quiet over there, you two.”
I lowered my voice. “Christine is lying. Thea is not with child.” Tears formed at the corners of my eyes, thinking Patience was a doxy. “Must they go to hell? Would God forgive a doxy?”
“If confession is made.”
“That is good. Yes,” I said, picturing Patience, “that is very good.”
*
Raking and seeding, combing and scutching, beating flax with wooden bars, this was our festive outdoor work. The whole compound joined in. Baskets of tow and boon joined in long lines that formed a work route. The most experienced men did the hackling, bringing the flax across the board of nails to comb it into a long horse’s tail they called “strick.” The flax that had been spread in the field left a fiber that was a light silvery color. The other that had retted in the marsh by the river’s edge was golden, and I saw what Sister Agathe meant about its value.
I counted every day, looking forward to the day when Patience and I would leave this place. As I imagined our journey home, my hands fumbled more; I dropped things. I mashed my finger in the scutching mangle when Patience walked past me carrying a large basket to the barn and whispered, “Father William has a new candlestick.” I snapped up the next basket of tow from a man loading people’s arms with baskets, and followed her. I had been there enough to see that there was order in the heaps and mounds of wool and flax, whether spun or woven or still in the hanks called “rovings.” I could not suppress a smile when handing our baskets to the men stacking the work. “He has a candlestick?”
She brushed her sleeves and shook off her apron, her eyes downcast. “It will not be lit tonight. Tomorrow night seems likely.” Her eyes moved to someone behind me and she said, “Nary you mind. Now, let us have those empty baskets to return to the field.”
My feet moved as if they did not touch the ground. We were going at last! That night at supper, I asked Sister Joseph if I might have an extra piece of bread, but to my surprise, everyone had two pieces instead of one. I pretended to eat mine, turning the second into my sleeve for our journey. I hoped it would not be long before we would be dining someplace on lovely food. When I folded my clothes for sleep that night, I left my shoes close by.
Donatienne watched me. At length she said, “There is a rumor that two girls are planning to leave the convent. The nuns asked us who are your compagnes to question and to beg of them not to go to a life of great peril.”
A chill swept over me as if winter had come into the room. “I know nothing of such a plan,” I said. “I am so tired. Please let us sleep.”
“Please don’t go, Marie.”
“The only place I am going is to bed,” I said. I was glad the candles had been put out so she could not see my face.
“Sister Agathe said she will be watching for someone to try to leave.”
“Did you tell her it was me?”
“No.”
“Well, she had better watch someone else. Good night.”
Though exhausted to my core, I lay awake for hours. At last, when sleep found me I dreamed of home, of running on the beach, but not with Allsy. I was running from nuns and priests and leering men like Rafe MacAlister who reached for me with clawlike hands. Their low voices called, “Doxy! Doxy!” as if it were my name.
In the morning, Donatienne said, “You cried out last night. You said, ‘Leave me alone! Leave me alone!’ in English.”
“I had dreams. How do you say ‘nightmares’? Cauchemars. Sometimes it happens.” I was aware that today was the day of our leaving. I must not show anything on my face. “Did they catch those girls?”
“We will find out when everyone is seated for breakfast and they call the roll.”
I pictured the roll call tomorrow. Patience and I would be gone. I smiled.
“Are you happy someone left? Don’t you know how terrible their lives will be?”
“No, I am smiling because I think it is not true. I think that someone made up the rumor to make trouble for the nuns so one of them will have to watch all night long.”
For the next three nights, I heard nothing from Patience, even when she had a chance to tell me it was time to leave. When I found her stacking roving and sorting it for color dyeing, I asked her, “Any candlesticks need polishing in here?”