‘And the other one? Are you a nun too? Come here to me!’
Louisa approached her. ‘I am called Sister Veronica.’
Again the hands travelled over Louisa’s face, the crinkled fingers transmitting its contents to behind the blindness.
Louisa saw the old woman’s face furrow, felt the fingers retrace, as if the message had been broken.
‘Faith, if she’s one of yours, Ellie, then the Pope’s a nigger,’ Blind Mary declared with her wicked laugh.
Louisa flinched momentarily.
The old woman carried on talking, her head nodding vigorously all the while, but with no particular emphasis. ‘I’m supposin’ too, Ellie – that you never was a widow-woman neither?’
‘No, I wasn’t – and I’m sorry …’ Ellen began.
The woman interrupted her, excitedly shaking her stick. ‘I knew it! I knew it! Too good to be true! Too good to be true! That’s what my Dan said afore he left to jine the cavalry … for the war,’ she explained, still nodding, as if in disagreement with herself … or her Dan. ‘ What was you hiding from, down here, Ellie?’ she then asked.
This time however, Ellen made no answer.
It was a question that resounded time and again in Mary and Louisa’s minds, as they struggled homewards. Out under the arch they went, drawing away from Half Moon Place, the old woman’s cries, like the stench, following them.
‘The Irish is a perishing class that’s what!’ Blind Mary shouted after them. ‘A perishing class … and my poor Dan gone to fight for Lincoln and his niggerology. This war’ll be the death of us all.’
By the time they had reached the door of the convent, Louisa and Mary were in a perfect quandary.
They could not reveal Ellen’s true identity, lest they all be banished. Acceptance into the convent as a novice implied a background and family beyond blemish. There could be no whiff of scandal attached to those who were to be Brides of Christ.
It would be held that they had known all along of their mother’s fallen state and engaged in the concealment of it.
‘It was not a deceit then but it is a deceit now,’ Mary said to Louisa, ‘to continue not to reveal her identity … whatever the consequence.’
‘It is a greater good not to reveal her,’ Louisa argued. ‘Mother is in dire need of corporeal salvation, if not indeed of spiritual salvation!’
‘That is the end justifying wrongful means,’ Mary argued back, torn between her natural instinct to follow Louisa’s reasoning, and the more empirical precepts of religious life.
‘We have been led to her for a purpose,’ Louisa countered. ‘It would not be natural justice to have her now thrown back on the streets. Natural justice supersedes the laws of the Church.’
Mary prayed for guidance. ‘Lord not my will, but Thine be done.’ Having passed the question of justice to that of a higher jurisdiction, Mary was somewhat more at ease with Louisa’s plan.
‘I don’t think “Rise-from-the-Dead” will recognise the likeness between you and Mother.’ Louisa gave voice to Mary’s own fear.
Mary looked at her mother’s sunken state. Sister Lazarus would have seen her only the once … and that many years ago. Still, little passed unnoticed with ‘Rise-from-the-Dead’.
They both impressed upon Ellen the importance of not revealing herself. She was a Penitent, rescued from the streets. Nothing more.
‘That I am,’ she echoed.
Sister Lazarus received them full of concern.
‘Oh, the poor wretch! Divine Providence! Divine Providence that you rescued her, from God knows what fate!’
Mary’s heart beat the easier as the older nun bustled them in without any hint of recognition.
‘A nice hot tub, then put her to bed in the Penitents’ Infirmary,’ Sister Lazarus directed. ‘You, Sisters, take turn to sit with her, lest she take fright at her unfamiliar surroundings.’
They stripped her then, Louisa supporting her in the tub, while Mary sponged from her mother’s body the caked history of Half Moon Place, both of them joyful beyond words at having been her salvation. She, who through famine and pestilence, had long been theirs.
When Louisa spoke, Ellen would turn to look at her, face spread wide in amazement. ‘I know, Mother,’ Louisa said. ‘I was “the silent girl”. All those years when you tried to get me to speak, I would not. Like your story, it is for another day.’
Ellen then turned her head from one to the other of her children, eyes brimming with delight, as if the angels of the Lord had come down from on high and tended her.
Shakily then, she pressed the thumb and forefinger of her right hand to her lips and leaned, first to Mary’s forehead, then to Louisa’s, crossing them in blessing, as she had done, down all the day-long years of childhood.
Ellen slept in the Penitents’ Dormitory. About her were raised the fitful cries of other Penitents rescued from the jaws of death or, as the Sisters saw it, from a fate far worse – the jaws of Hell. For here were common nightwalkers, bedizened with sin; others sorely under the influence of the bewitching cup. Still others snatched from grace by the manifold snares of the world, the flesh and the devil. These, if truly penitent, the Sisters sought to reclaim to a life of devotion. But for now these tortured souls struggled. Redemption was not for everyone.
Penitents, those who desired it, could be regenerated. Eventually, shed of all worldly folly, their former names would be replaced by those of the saints. These restored Penitents would then be released back to secular society.
Some Penitents, drawn either by love of God, or fear of the Devil, remained, took vows, becoming Contemplatives. Continuing to lead lives of prayer and penance within the community of the Sisters.
Her own sleep no less turbulent than those around her, Ellen’s mind roved without bent or boundary. Before her, on a pale and dappled horse, paraded Lavelle. Loyal, handsome Lavelle, all gallant and smiling.
Smiling, as on the day she, with Patrick, Louisa and Mary in tow, had docked at the Long Wharf of Boston. Lavelle, with his golden hair, waiting in the sun, waving to them amid the baubled and bustling hordes on the shore. Patrick, curious about this stranger who would replace his father. Their mother’s ‘fancy man’ in America, as Patrick called Lavelle.
In the dream she saw herself laughing, this time at her doorway, talking with Lavelle. He asking a question, she saying ‘yes’ and then him high-kicking it, whistling through that first Christmas snow, down the street merrily. Then springtime … the wedding … she, taking ‘Lavelle’ for a name, relinquishing her dead husband’s name of O’Malley.
Out of the past then a nemesis – Stephen Joyce – who had delivered her first husband Michael to that early death.
Her dream changed colours then. Gone was the brightness of sun and snow … of music on merry streets. Now appeared a purpled bed. On it Stephen Joyce, book in hand reading to her. She, naked at the window, her body turned away from him. Singing to the darkly-plummed world outside … the night pulping against the window, its purple fruit oozing through the windowpane, over her body … staining her. Abruptly