Luckstones (10 page)

Restraining the urge to say that she
knew,
that she
was not a child, Thea thanked the nun, curtsied, and was halfway down the hall
before Sister Maria Trinidad could reply, her skirts looped up scandalously so
that her ankles showed as she ran down the stairs toward the garden door.

Manuel was waiting for her by the orchard gate. He was a short,
smiling, brown man with bad teeth, who felt himself honored by God to be porter
to the Sisters. He was a little baffled by the little one who was not a Sister
but who wore the habit, who gave orders like an Hidalga but barely came up to
his shoulder. “The Sister said there was a
man,
Señorita?”

“Just past the stand of trees, Manuel. And you must swear,
on the lives of your children, on the Virgin, that you will never tell anyone
about him. We have to hurry.”

Manuel had stopped, hand over his heart. “I would
never do anything to hurt my Sisters,” he began, his tone heavy with
wounded dignity. “You think I cannot be trusted!” He turned and
made as if to return to the village. Frantic, Thea grabbed his arm and turned
him around again.

“How could I doubt you, Manuel? I apologize, but I am so
frightened for this poor man. I know you are as trustworthy as an angel of the
Lord, Manuel. I do! Please, we must hurry!”

Mollified, Manuel set off again, looking at Dorthea slyly from
the corner of his eye. “A man, Señorita?” he asked. “A lover?
If the Sisters found that out. . . .” He clicked his tongue disapprovingly.
Thea controlled the urge to scream at him.

“It’s a stranger, Manuel. I never saw him
before. He is dreadfully sick. Sister Maria Trinidad said it would be ungodly
to deny him help.” She used the Cellarer’s name for effect. Manuel
had a healthy respect for Sister Maria Trinidad’s authority.
“Please, he’s just a poor, sick man who needs our help. Me, what
would I do with a lover here?” She gestured at the convent walls.
“A fine time we’d have of it; can you imagine?” Evidently he
could; after a moment Manuel gave a slow snicker and grinned at her. Thea
pushed him onward. “Just a stranger,” she repeated again.
Just
the most beautiful man I have ever seen in my life,
she added to herself,
though
what that’s to the purpose I don’t know. Probably a villain, too . . .
and then:
I wonder who Adele is?

o0o

It took all of Manuel’s strength and Thea’s
considerable ingenuity to get the man back to the cottage by the gate. Sister
Juan Evangelista and two novices had cleared one of the two tiny rooms out and
settled a fresh straw pallet on the bed. The room smelled dusty and damp; the
earthen floor had been freshly swept: there were bundled rushes by the door,
ready to spread under foot.

Heedless of Thea’s protests, the women left the cabin
while Manuel stripped the man and put him to bed.

“I’m not saying that I should be the one to
help,” she fretted impatiently, “but Manuel is not strong enough to
move the man safely by himself.”

“It is not to be thought of, Señorita,” Sister
Juan admonished. “A young unwedded woman . . . it is not possible. Trust the
Lord. Manuel will do well enough.”

“Mother is asking for you, Señorita,” Sister Maria
Trinidad added quietly. The Cellarer had come up behind them silently, and her
voice made Dorothea jump.

“But the man. . . .”

“Will be attended to. Señorita de Silva wishes to
speak with you.”

Something in the nun’s flat tone disturbed Thea.
“Silvy is all right, isn’t she? Nothing is wrong with Silvy?”

“Wrong? No, child, but go to her. The man will be
attended to: you have my word. There are some things of which we know more than
you. One,” she added dryly, “is obedience, I think. When you have
spoken with Mother and with Señorita de Silva, and have taken time to eat and
to wash and, I think perhaps, have stopped in the chapel for a few minutes to
re-collect yourself, then you may sit with him.”

Thea knew better than to resist. “Yes, Sister. I’ll
be back then.”

Sister Juan smiled. “I don’t doubt it.”

It had been midday when she found the stranger; now, walking
the path through the convent gate and crossing into the courtyard, Thea
realized that hours had passed. It was late afternoon. She entered the guesthouse
attached to the cloister and went down the corridor to the rooms she and Silvy
had occupied since their arrival. In her own cell she hurriedly scrubbed her
feet and hands, relishing the cool water against her dusty skin. It was useless
to worry about her hair, crushed under the wimple and veil, but she tried to shake
out most of the dirt from the hem of her skirts. Then she went next door to
speak with Silvy.

The older woman’s cell was as plain as Thea’s—a
cool, whitewashed room furnished with cot, cupboard and
prie-dieu.
Where
Thea had cheered her small space with objects of her own, Silvy’s room
remained bare, austere. Silvy was seated in the changing light of the afternoon
sun, her long, mournful face oddly gray and pulled. The skin around her lips was
white and ridged, her brows drawn down in a frown of pain kept carefully
controlled. Thea saw it all as if for the first time and swept across the room
to kneel at Silvy’s feet.

“What happened? Silvy? You look terrible. Are you ill again?
Mother. . . .” She turned to the door as the Mother Superior entered the
room. “Tell me what is wrong with her.”

A cold hand took one of Thea’s own in its grasp.

Silvy said, “Nothing is wrong, Dorothea, only I am
tired, a little. Now. Tell me about your stranger.”

Undistracted, Thea turned again to the doorway. “Mother,
will you tell me?
She
won’t.” Silvy’s fingers pressed hers,
and Thea squeezed back, angry and frightened, seeing the look exchanged by her
duenna and the nun. “All right, then, don’t tell me. You’ve
been fretting yourself over me, and I won’t have it, Silvy. I’ll
find out what this is. . . .”

“In the meantime,
hija,
the stranger? Mother
and I are waiting to hear about the man you found.”

Mother Beatriz teased gently, “You must admit it is
not every day that a man appears swooning in our orchard, Dorothea. Unmonastic,
you would say.”

Reluctantly Thea returned Mother Beatriz’s smile and
began her story anew. She kept Silvy’s hand in her own as she spoke. “He’s
a gentleman, Silvy, an Englishman. I would vouch for it on my honor. He was
hurt. He has the most horrid gash across his forehead, and his feet were
bleeding as if he’d walked for miles. He thought I was an angel.”

“When he knows you better he will certainly revise his
opinion,” Silvy murmured. A little of the bluish tint had left her lips,
and her smile was gentle and amused. “Do you wish to play nurse again,
Dorothea? You must recall that you are a
lady,
that you are Ibañez-de
Silva—”

“And Cannowen!” Thea added.

“Yes, and that too, I suppose.” The duenna sighed.
“Now you wish to go back to your patient. I wish we knew more of this
man, but I suppose that, if he lives, he will tell us. Ask permission of Mother
then, child, and eat something, for heaven’s sake.”

“Sister Maria Trinidad left word in the kitchen that
you would come down to fetch bread and milk for your supper, child. Take your
time. Certainly your stranger is not going anywhere for a time. Run along.
Slowly.”
This was said as Thea rose precipitously in her heavy robes.

This time she did not stop to hear what the Superior and
Doña de Silva were saying of her; in a moment she was down the hall, and she
turned the corner so quickly she almost overturned one of the Sisters carrying
a bucket of water. She made a hasty apology and dashed down the stairs toward
the kitchen.

In Doña de Silva’s chamber the Mother Superior and
Silvy were talking about Dorothea, and about the stranger. They reached no
conclusions. “If he is, in truth, English, it may be an omen of sorts,”
Silvy said reluctantly. “Perhaps I should send Dorotea home to England.
If her grandmother saw the child was without
me.
 . . .”

“Perhaps she would not take the girl no matter what,
Clara. First, I think we must learn what sort of man this stranger is and a
little more of how things stand between England and Spain. You will not tell
Dorotea about your heart?”

“Would it make her happier to know that I am ill?
Would it mean that I would grow well again? I think not.”

Mother Beatriz agreed reluctantly. “Thank God she is
still only a child.”

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