Sister Michael turned on her heel and fled from the room.
Lib couldn’t pursue her; she was shackled here. She groaned to herself.
But in the morning the nun would have to come back, and Lib would be ready for her.
Anna was awake on and off that night. She turned her head or curled the other way. Six days left till the end of the watch. No, Lib corrected herself, that was only if Anna lasted six more days. How long could a child cling to life on sips of water?
A delightful dying child. It was as well that Lib knew the truth, she told herself; now she could act. But for Anna’s sake, she had to proceed with the greatest care, without displaying arrogance or losing her temper again. Remember, she told herself, you’re a stranger here.
A fast didn’t go fast; it was the slowest thing there was. Fast meant a door shut fast, firmly. A fastness, a fortress. To fast was to hold fast to emptiness, to say no and no and no again.
Anna was staring torpidly at the shadows the lamp projected on the walls.
“Is there anything you want?”
A shake of the head.
Strange children have faded away, and have halted from their paths. Lib sat and watched the girl. Blinked with dry eyes.
When the nun put her head in the door just after five in the morning, Lib leapt up so fast, a muscle in her back twanged. She shut the door almost in the face of Rosaleen O’Donnell. “Listen, Sister.” Barely voicing the words. “We must tell Dr. McBrearty that the child’s killing herself by degrees out of an excess of grief for her brother. It’s time to call off the watch.”
“We did accept this charge,” said the nun faintly, as if each syllable were coming up from a deep hole in the earth.
“But did you ever think we’d reach this point?” Lib gestured at the sleeper in the bed.
“Anna’s a very special girl.”
“Not so special that she can’t die.”
Sister Michael writhed. “I’m under a vow of obedience. Our orders were very clear. ”
“And we’ve been following them to the letter, as torturers do.”
Lib watched the nun’s face register that blow. Suspicion seized her. “Do you have other orders, Sister? From Mr. Thaddeus, perhaps, or your superiors at the convent?”
“What do you mean?”
“Have you been told to see nothing and hear nothing and say nothing, no matter what you really think is going on in this cabin?” Almost snarling. “Told to testify to a miracle?”
“Mrs. Wright!” The nun’s face was livid.
“I beg your pardon if I’m wrong.” Lib’s tone was sullen, but she did believe the woman. “Then why won’t you speak to the doctor with me?”
“Because I’m only a nurse,” said Sister Michael.
“I was taught the full meaning of that word,” Lib raged. “Weren’t you?”
The door opened with a bang. Rosaleen O’Donnell. “May I say good morning to my child, at least?”
“Anna’s still asleep,” said Lib, turning to the bed.
But the girl’s eyes were wide open. How much had she heard?
“Good morning, Anna,” said Lib, her voice uneven.
The girl looked quite insubstantial, a drawing on old parchment. “Good morning, Mrs. Wright. Sister. Mammy.” Her smile radiating weakly in all directions.
At nine—Lib had waited as long as she could, for manners’ sake—she walked to McBrearty’s house.
“The doctor’s out,” said the housekeeper.
“Out where?” Too shaky with fatigue to phrase it more politely.
“Is it the O’Donnell girl, is she not well?”
Lib stared at the woman’s pleasant face under her starched cap. Anna hasn’t had a proper meal since April, she wanted to scream, how can she be well? “I must speak to him on a matter of urgency.”
“He’s been called to the bedside of Sir Otway Blackett.”
“Who’s that?”
“A baronet,” said the woman, clearly shocked that Lib didn’t know, “and a resident magistrate.”
“Where’s his seat?”
The housekeeper stiffened at the notion of the nurse pursuing the doctor there. It was miles out; Mrs. Wright had much better come back later.
Lib let herself sway just enough to hint that she might collapse on the doorstep.
“Or you could wait in my parlour below, I suppose,” said the woman.
Doubtful as to the status of a Nightingale, Lib could tell, unsure whether it might be more suitable to put her in the kitchen.
Lib sat over a cup of cold tea for an hour and a half. If only she had the backing of that wretched nun.
“The doctor’s returned, and he’ll see you now.” That was the housekeeper.
Lib leapt to her feet so fast, she saw black.
Dr. McBrearty was in his study, moving papers about in a desultory way. “Mrs. Wright, how good of you to come.”
Calm was crucial; a strident female voice caused men’s ears to close. She remembered to begin by asking after the baronet.
“An aching head; nothing serious, thank goodness.”
“Doctor, I’m here out of grave concern for Anna’s welfare.”
“Oh, dear.”
“She fainted yesterday. Her pulse is speeding up, yet her circulation’s getting so sluggish she can hardly feel her feet,” said Lib. “Her breath—”
McBrearty held up one hand to stop her. “Mm, I’ve been giving little Anna a great deal of thought and applying myself most diligently to the historical record in search of illumination.”
“The historical record?” repeated Lib, dazed.
“Did you know—well, why would you?—in the Dark Ages, many saints were visited with a complete loss of appetite for years, for decades, even. Inedia prodigiosa, it was called, the prodigious fast.”
So they had a special name for it, this freakish spectacle, as if it were as real a thing as a stone or a shoe. Dark Ages, indeed; they weren’t over. Lib thought of the Fakir of Lahore. Did every country have such tall tales of preternatural survival?
The old man went on with animation. “They aspired to be like Our Lady, you see. In her infancy she was said to have suckled only once a day. Saint Catherine, now—after she forced herself to swallow a bit of food, she’d poke a twig down her throat and sick it back up.”
With a shiver, Lib thought of hair shirts and spiked belts and monks whipping themselves raw in the streets.
“They meant to put down the flesh and raise up the spirit,” he explained.
But why does it have to be one or the other? Lib wondered. Aren’t we both? “Doctor, these are modern times, and Anna O’Donnell is only a child.”
“Granted, granted,” he said. “But might some physiological mystery lie behind those old tales? The persistent chilliness you’ve mentioned, say—I’ve formed a tentative hypothesis about that. Might her metabolism not be altering to one less combustive, more of a reptilian than mammalian nature?”
Reptilian? she wanted to scream.
“Every year, don’t men of science discover apparently inexplicable phenomena in far-flung corners of the globe? Perhaps our young friend represents a rare type that may become common in future times.” McBrearty’s voice shook with excitement. “One that may offer hope for the whole human race.”
Was the man mad? “What hope?”
“Freedom from need, Mrs. Wright! If it were within the bounds of possibility for life to endure without food… why, what cause would there be to fight over bread or land? That could put an end to Chartism, socialism, war.”
How convenient for all the tyrants of the world, Lib thought; whole populations meekly subsisting on nothing.
The doctor’s expression was beatific. “Perhaps nothing is impossible to the Great Physician.”
It took Lib a moment to understand whom he meant. Always God—the real tyrant in this part of the world. She made an effort to answer in the same terms. “Without the food he’s provided for us,” she said, “we die.”
“Until now, we’ve died. Until now.”
And Lib saw it clearly at last, the pitiful nature of an old man’s dream.
“But about Anna.” She had to bring McBrearty back to the point. “She’s failing fast, which means she must have been getting food until we thwarted it. We’re to blame.”