Page 33 of The Autumn Wife
The captain swept Marie to his side, and Cecile was left alone with Sister Martha, the very person she’d come here to see. Yet now, somehow, the meeting with Theo had wiped away every word she’d intended to say.
“Come,” Sister Martha said, gentleness in her voice. “Help me pick a copper kettle.”
Cecile stumbled after her while the colors of the world twisted in her sight and wondered how onearthshe was going to manage this situation in the brain-battered state she was in.
“There seems to be a good selection here.” Sister Martha stopped at a merchant’s table filled with gleaming pots and iron nails and other metallurgy. “Now that we’re out of earshot of any acquaintances, tell me what is troubling your mind, Cecile.”
Theo.
“T-troubling me?”
“My dear girl, you look as if a stone has just fallen on your head.”
She felt that way, too. Stunned and unsteady and aching. Would every encounter with Theo until he departed make her feel fragile and leave her reeling? Regret surged up her throat and twisted around in dying hope. She remembered that Theo had had a letter from his hometown poking out of his pocket. Perhaps he had been preoccupied with his coming freedom, and his journey back to France.
“Tell me the truth, Sister Martha.” This wasn’t what she’d planned to say but the words rose fast to her lips. “You’re never going to make me a nun, are you?”
“‘Never’ is a harsh word, my dear.” The nun’s brow rippled as she examined a gleaming copper kettle. “Surely you know that I would welcome a sister as talented as you into our congregation. But only after all the complicating mattersare settled. Talon’s investigators are already here, I’m told. Have you heard something? Is that why you’re so addled?”
“No.” She shuddered from scalp to toes. “I’ve heard nothing.”
“Nor have I.” Sister Martha spun the kettle around to check the seams. “But Talon is unlikely to say anything to me until the investigation is complete.”
“Perhaps we don’t have to wait that long—to make me a nun, that is.” Her prepared arguments returned with new urgency. “After all, you could say that I’m already a pre…a pre…” She struggled to remember the word Sister Anne had used. “A pre…novitiate. Because I’ve been living at the convent, and learning about the order. If the community, all the other nuns, and yourself deem me acceptable—”
“But I don’t believe you are, my dear.” The nun set the kettle down with a gentle clank and turned to face Cecile. “Because there is a larger issue beyond the question of your widowhood. An issue that we have yet to discuss.”
Cecile’s stomach sank. She couldn’t fathom what the nun was referring to.
“I have been waiting these last weeks to see if you would bring up this matter yourself.” The nun tilted her head. “But in all your efforts to convince me to take you in—not once did you ever admit to a calling.”
Cecile slipped a hand to her throat, as if to grasp the painted wooden cross that had once lain there, before one of her husband’s creditors had ripped it from her neck for the peridot pasted at its center.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t considered the issue of a calling. When Etienne had paddled her to the congregation months ago, she’d spent some time in the canoe fabricating a story about having nightly visions of the Virgin Mary. But, despite her crimes and piling-up lies, she hadn’t been able to lie so viciously. As a wailing child during her first year at the orphanage, she’d fallen asleep too many times on the plump, incense-fragrant lap of a softly singing novice. To lie to one about a godly calling bordered on blasphemy.
One sin too many.
Sister Martha nodded, as if she saw the answer on Cecile’s face. “I make no judgment.” She placed a cool, smooth hand on Cecile’s knotted ones. “Few women are called by our Blessed Lord to the religious life, but a calling is a vital requirement to living among us. In all our discussions, you haven’t mentioned Him at all.”
Cecile opened her mouth, but no explanation came out, no defiance, nothing but a loosening of breath.
“Let me guess why you came to my convent,” the nun said more gently. “You need a place to hide from the world.”
Cecile’s stomach flipped.
“You’re not the first to come to me for that kind of protection, you know.” The nun sighed. “It’s a common misconception that a convent is a place to shut women away. But even in cloistered convents, the nuns are not really hiding. The world comes tous—to be healed, or taught, or prayed for. And inthiscongregation, I’m determined that we are not to be cloistered at all, but sent out into the wilderness to ease whatever poverty and suffering we come upon.”
“That’s why I chose your congregation,” Cecile admitted, “so I could live safely on consecrated ground and yet have a chance to see Etienne in a monastery nearby.”
“You are a loving mother. But those areworldlyconcerns. Not spiritual ones. So, even if Talon’s investigation proves you a widow, I cannot take you in as a nun, my dear.”
Cecile reeled back a fraction. So, Mother Superior had known from the beginning that she was an unlikely candidate. She’d fooled herself into thinking sanctuary was possible, but Marie had been right. This plan had been doomed from the beginning
That left Cecile with only one choice.
“Sister Martha, I have a request.”
“Speak, child.” The nun gripped the cross hanging from her neck. “You know I will do the best I can for you.”
