The Book of Shadows by James Reese Page A

must have been set with deep concern. “ Mais, what is it, ma soeur ?” asked Marie-Edith. “Are the geese still aflutter?” (She referred to the girls thusly.) “All because of that innocent prank of yesterday? C’est fou! ”
    â€œThings turned worse in the night,” said Sister Brigid; and I heard the two take their habitual spots at the table, with their blue and white bowls of coffee, no doubt. “I fear for our friend.”
    â€œHerculine? No! What has happened? Tell me!” And I might have stepped from the pantry then to go among these friends, to solicit their help—surely they would have helped me; but just then I heard the pinched voice of the cellarer, and I retreated deeper into the pantry’s shadows.
    â€œWhatever might these be?” asked the cellarer, referring to I knew not what.
    â€œYou do not know an oyster when you see it?” asked Marie-Edith, rather sourly.
    â€œIndeed I do,” replied the cellarer, hearing no insult in the extern’s words. “But this bushel comes here at what cost? Whose coin has—”
    â€œYou have no memory for kindnesses, Sister,” interrupted Sister Brigid. “Marie-Edith’s brother tends the beds at Cancale, and for months now we have profited from his generosity.”
    â€œHmph!” came the snorted reply; and in the ensuing silence Sister Margarethe took her leave, freeing Sister Brigid to speak:
    â€œI tell you it’s profane and absurd, if innocent. Someone—and we need not wonder who, I think—has graced the stricken Elizaveta with…with signs of the stigmata.”
    â€œMais non! Ce n’est pas possible!”
    â€œWell,” said Sister Brigid, “it may be possible—or so say the Church Fathers—but it is unlikely. Indeed, I’ve seen these ‘signs’ on the child, and they are but a poor imitation of blood; and there is no wound proper.”
    â€œA prank?…Not another, non !”
    Presumably the older woman nodded in assent. “But Sister Claire stokes the hysteria with her fiery talk, and she is intent on putting it to purpose. What started in mischievous innocence will end we know not where…. Oh! that one, I’ve never known the like; and I say she knows nothing of our Lord but his ambition.”
    â€œBut, Mother Marie,” said the extern, “surely she—”
    â€œBlood and water, my dear; blood and water,” said the nun. “She has retreated to her rooms with that niece of hers. I’m afraid the Head’s hour has come, for it seems she has won the girls. Oh, patient as the serpent she’s been, and now she’s arranged these silly circumstances to suit her end! I fear for our friend.”
    â€œThis…this cannot be!” said Marie-Edith. “Where is Elizaveta? The infirmary? And where is Herculine?” When Sister Brigid made no reply, the extern went on: “I must see this…must see this foolishness for myself,” and she quit the kitchen, leaving Sister Brigid to fall into the mumbled reading of her rosary beads. And as the door to the dining hall opened, I could hear the barely bridled hysteria of the girls. No Silence had been declared this morning.
    I dared not risk discovery. I would hide; to stand in the pantry’s shadows would not do.
    And so, with great reluctance, I lifted the rug sewn of rags, which sat on the pantry floor, uncovering the trap that led down to the shallow cellar. There, amid sweaty and cobwebbed jugs of fermented cider and wine, long-forgotten, I settled myself on the cold dirt of the cellar’s bottom step; and discovered that I could, quietly, carefully, lift the trap, just so, and spy a sliver of the kitchen.
    There, in that dank and muddied hole, I waited. And waited. Growing ever more certain that the distant hysteria of the house—surely they were searching for me—and the stillness of the kitchen did not