The Book of Shadows by James Reese Page B

bode well.
    Finally—and I was crying when I heard this, for I had been utterly reduced by recent events, reduced to tears and abject fear and…Finally I heard the sound of oncoming thunder. But no—the skies had cleared, the storm had passed. This I’d seen.
    If not quick-coming thunder, then what? Instantly I knew: what I heard were the wheels of a carriage. A cry rose up from the house. One voice, then many. The carriage came closer, closer still, rounding out past the kitchen toward the drive down which I’d crept. I could not see it, of course, but through the earth I could feel the horse’s hooves. Two horses. The earth trembled at their approach. The stoneware jugs at my feet chattered like teeth. Only one conveyance at C——harnessed two horses, and that was the barouche kept by the Mother Superior.
    My heart stopped, was mocked by the beating-on of the horses’ hooves. I listened to that carriage, listened to the sound of escape. It faded fast; and there was silence, and nothing to see. I let fall the trap, and I sank into the dark cellar. Earlier tears were nothing to what fell now.
    Surely it was she and Peronette, flying fast from the house at C——.
    I wanted to die, but what would take me? I thought to pray, but who would hear me?
    I was drawn from this dark reverie by the voice of Sister Claire de Sazilly, in argument with Marie-Edith; so heated was their exchange, neither seemed to have heard the running coach. “I’ll wager there’s proof here in this very kitchen of that godly blood!” Marie-Edith spoke to the Head as no one else dared. Now she further challenged her. “I’m no idiot, woman!” (Marie-Edith was a nonbeliever.) “And I’m no longer an impressionable girl,” she added with a great and almost bawdy laugh, “so you’ll not convince me that some devil has sent this sign to us.”
    I could not believe what I heard! To judge by her great exhalation and uttered cries to God, neither could Sister Brigid, no doubt as shocked as I by the arguing party that tumbled then into the kitchen, comprised of the extern, the cellarer, and the Head—or presumptive Mother Superior—who now warned Marie-Edith, hissing, “Scullion, your words will see you shown from this house if you do not—”
    â€œAch!” Marie-Edith dismissed the threat. “You’ve finally spoiled, turned like bad cream, you have. Well, I’m not afraid…. It’s you, you who should be afraid, for you’re not fooling me, and you’re not fooling that God you claim to believe in, that God you torture yourself for.” I heard, heard the tacit shock that came from those present when Marie-Edith spoke thusly.
    â€œMarie-Edith, stop ,” counseled Sister Brigid; for she knew, as did I, that the widowed, red-tempered Marie-Edith, with her dim-witted daughter with child for a second time, was in dire need of work. But the extern ignored her, and I saw her push past Sister Claire to the washbasin. “I knew it…. And so here it is,” and she raised from the cold suds of the large basin a mortar and pestle, the smooth wood of which still showed a deep red stain. Having shown the pestle, she then touched it to her tongue. “Ground cranberry, I suspect,” came the verdict. “Mixed with molasses…. As well-suited to white bread as to the imitation of your Lord’s Passion.” I could see her staring at the Head. Finally, she let the heavy evidence sink back into the tub.
    â€œAh, but the passion at issue here is not passion as you know it,” said Sister Claire, leaning nearer the extern to add in a whispered hiss, “nor as your daughter knows it.”
    â€œFoul woman,” said the extern, shaking her head in scornful disbelief. “It is your evildoing that will see me quit this place, not my words!”
    â€œBut what does that prove?” asked the