“It is not. She is alive.”
“Do you not remember that night? Do you not remember the men who came through the wall?”
“You are so wicked. I wish you were never my sister. You do not want Ma to find us because you have turned into a doxy.”
“It is near midnight, Ressie. Your bed is that way, mine is this. We should both go to them before I beat you for saying that.”
“When I leave you will go and do that again with him.” Words I barely knew flitted through my imagination. Whore. Slut. Doxy. Tart.
She laid her arm around my shoulders and gave me a squeeze. I twisted away from her and brushed her touch from my shoulder. She said, “Not tonight. You’ve rather interrupted the moment. And he’ll be yours to command now, seeing you know a secret.”
“Are you a doxy?”
She whirled me to face her, hands clenching my shoulders, and before I could move away again, she had slapped my face. “You best keep your judgment until you have had to tread the road upon which I have walked.”
I felt tears going down my throat, but I did not cry before her. I said, “As you say. Is he the reason we did not leave? You wanted to be here with him to do that wiggling? Will we be leaving at the full moon this month?”
“I might leave with Lukas. I might not take you.”
I shoved her with all my strength, wishing I could pummel her into the dirt. I turned and ran toward the wall of my dormitory. As I reached the closest window, I found the shutter latched from the inside. I went to the next, and Patience caught me and turned me around.
She said, “Please, Ressie, please forgive me. I spoke out of passion and not my love for you. Please, Ressie.” The tears flowing from her eyes rained upon my face as she crushed me to her bosom. I cringed at the smell of her. But how could I not hold Patience? How could I reject her?
“Ho. You, there!” said a voice. It was Sister Agathe in nightgown, holding a lantern high. “You girls, there. What are you about?”
Her sight of us, I imagined later, we two clinging together and weeping, was all the explanation Patience or I had to provide for Sister Agathe. We were sisters and met sometimes just to kiss each other and reassure each of our fidelity, I promised her. Sister Agathe wept sympathetic tears, patted both our shoulders, sent Patey home, and hugged me before leading me with the lantern to my bed.
Patience’s handprint—in the morning a crimson stain on my face—was enough to convince Sister Joseph that I had a fever. She left me to bed the whole day. Alone in the dormitory, I wept. “Ma is not dead,” I chanted. I tried to make sense of all the shocking things I had seen mixed with the wrenching fear that Patience would leave me here.
Donatienne brought me broth and bread at noon. “Are you worse?” she asked.
“I do not know,” I said, for I did not. “I am sick unto my soul, friend.”
“I will go to the chapel and pray you a Rosary.”
“A whole Rosary? That is too much. Will you say a Salve Regina right here, so that I may fall asleep hearing it?” I said that, not because the prayers meant much to me; the meaning was in hearing a loving voice say them. I closed my eyes and pretended the voice I heard was Ma. Ma reading me to sleep. Ma singing her old Gaelic poems or her olden charms and prayers. I held Donatienne’s hand and imagined Ma getting my letter, perhaps as soon as next month. Ma was not dead and I might be home by Christ-tide.
CHAPTER 13
November 30, 1730
November came in with All Saints’ Day and went out with gales that lasted a fortnight. We could not have run away had there been a moon, for the winds brought sleet and hail, icing over parts of the fleuve Saint-Laurent as well as the animal troughs on the convent grounds. The wind brought a new plague amongst us, too, that needed no vermin to spread itself among all the children of the convent. La rougeole, the red sickness. We called it measles. I had had it before, but others had not. As I helped tend the many sick children, I realized that I had been away from my home for more than a year and I felt so much more than a single year older.