“I should not have told you. I am ashamed I did not keep my promise to him. Do you think if a man wants to be a priest, he cannot love a girl?”
“Oh, they cannot marry, but I think some of them may have loved a girl. Maybe they could not win her heart, and so committed themselves to God instead. It’s not unlike some women do, becoming une bonne soeur. Will you let me watch you write in English?”
“To Lady Talbot, Two Crowns Plantation, Island of Jamaica in Her Majesty’s West Indies.” I pressed the sheets under my waistband and in the dark of night when I was sure everyone was asleep, I climbed out the window by Donatienne’s bed and headed straight for the rectory under a half-moon. I held my missal to the moon and whispered, “Get these to my mother, please, sir. I know God is not the man in the moon, but I hope you watch your servant here with that great eye, and take pity upon her.” I recited Salve Regina and Memorare under my breath. I stopped at the moonlit wall of the rectory. The black box awaited my letters. I kissed the paper before raising the lid and laying it inside. Other sheets of paper were in it, all folded and sealed. I stirred mine amongst them, making sure it was not on top. I tucked the vial of ink into the bayberry.
The moon was as high as it would get here, which was not overhead. The evening had a chill and I shivered. The path I had taken was shadowed by buildings and trees. I could go in the window opposite the one I left, and have more moonlight. I was not so much afraid of being seen, as I was afraid—now that my errand was done—of coming upon a bear. Granted, there were two high walls about the place. No bear had ever been inside them, but I felt overcome with guilt, certain of punishment well deserved, and a bear was a memory as stout as a Saracen pirate.
I passed the older girls’ dortoir. White chrysanthemums ringed the well, glowing like a fairy folk’s lantern. Two yew trees stood between me and my room. The shadows beneath them were blacker than the ink staining my fingers. I felt a prickling in my skin and the hair on my arms rose. Something moved in the blackness there. It might be duppies, I told myself. I took one more step and I was sure something was there. I sniffed. Just as I thought to cry out “Bear!” and run away, a human voice groaned. Another human voice laughed, a light, feminine laugh.
I traipsed around the first yew so the people there would be lighted with my back to the moon. A man sighed. People murmured. Scarcely had I reached my new vantage place than I saw two people, lying one upon the other, their skins bare from shoulder to ankle. They both wore shoes. They both had clothing wrapped at their necks, pushed up. In a tangle of legs and arms, they moved as snakes, churning like rippling water. If I moved or made a sound, my presence would be known. Was that why I did not move? Rapt with curiosity, tortured with both my lack of knowledge and the sure awareness that this was something I ought not to see, I froze in place. I fought a terrible need to make water. They made soft noises. I hiccupped.
Lukas jerked his face toward me. “Christ!” he said. The other person rose beneath him, a person with long, very red hair, so red that the moon’s wan light painted it the color of blood. Patience.
“Resolute,” she scolded, her tone both stern and quiet, “what do you mean by standing there watching? At least be decent enough to leave us our dignity.”
“Dignité?” I said.
Lukas’s voice said, “Convince her,” and for a moment I heard scuffling and the drawing on of clothing. Patience appeared and Lukas’s footfalls went away from us. She was panting as if she had run to my side. She smelled musky, as if he had sweated, skin to skin, and she wore his scent like a garment.
I said, “What was that you were doing?”
“Love. Only love.”
“Ah. You stunk like that on the ships.”
“This time is different. This time I chose it.”
My insides felt heavy and hot; my hands and feet bitterly cold. “Chose it? And before you did not?” Memories came to me. The thought of what I had seen just now mingled with my confusion of thinking she had been dancing on deck. The words Donatienne had spoken, that desire was the missing ingredient in creating babies. Payment with cake. Cake and Cora’s words about what the cake had cost.
Patey said, “Lukas is young. We are both young.”
“Lukas wants to become a priest. He is going to Paris to become a pope.”
She laughed so that even in the soft moonlight I heard the derision in her voice. “He told me nothing of that. It will not suit him for long.”
“He made me promise to tell no one for the favor of giving me paper and ink with which to write a letter.”
“A letter? To whom did you send a letter?”
“To Ma. So she could come get us.”
Patience reached up her hand to slap my face but as she did I whirled out of her way. “Stop saying that, Resolute. When will you wake up and realize you cannot do that. Ma will not come. Ma is not alive.”
“Do not say that. I hate you.”
“It is the truth.”