Sisters of Sorrow (4 page)

With her ear to the hole, Anna recognized Abbess McCain’s voice at once. “Are your sure?”

“No, not entirely,” said the second voice, one Anna did not know, “but her story lacks credibility.”

“Yes, it does, and so does her
telling
of her story. Sister Dolores does not strike me as either strong-willed or incorrigible.”

The other voice laughed. “I can’t even call her devious, though she is trying to be such.”

“Has she given any indication of her true purpose?” Abbess McCain asked.

“No, but I would speculate that she intends to smuggle someone off the island… Or, perhaps she is trying to make a name for herself as a reformer, a crusader against child labor.”

“Hmmm…” McCain paused. Anna pictured her pacing the room, deep in thought. “Has she indicated special interest in any of the children, or any of the newer sisters who have been sent to us?”

The other voice didn’t respond immediately, and in the pause, a new noise put Anna’s heart in her throat. Sister Elizabeth’s keys jangled outside the drainage room door.

Abbess McCain and the other voice may have continued speaking, but Anna heard none of it. Her muscles went as rigid and cold as icicles. She slapped the cover closed on her lamp. Thoughts blew through her mind like flakes in a blizzard.

Will she notice the iron plate is lowered?

No. I only moved it a few inches, and she is a dunce. All of my tools are at the bottom of the pipe. She will assume I’m there as well.

What if she calls to me? Will the echoes fool her?

Probably not.

Anna heard the key turn and the lock click.

If she calls to me, if I have to speak to her, she will know where I am.

And then what?

Only one answer came.
And then she will kill me. That is all.

I could lie. I could tell her I finished cleaning the pipe and decided to clean in here…

But, that wouldn’t work.
And then she will kill me.

There would not be time for a single word of explanation, not with Sister Elizabeth.

The moment she sees that I am not where she put me, she’ll beat me senseless and then drown me, right here in this room. She’ll hold my head under water until my eyes roll up and my lips turn blue
.

Anna knew exactly what a drowned child looked like. She had seen it before.

She thought of the echoes in the pipe, the ghosts of voices wandering through the dark, lost in the lightless catacombs forever. In the deep pool, she saw – with dreadful clarity – Sister Elizabeth thrusting her head under that black water. She felt the sister’s sinewy fingers clutching her hair so she couldn’t get away.

Will my ghost be trapped like those echoes?

What a lonely place to haunt.

The drainage chamber door screeched open.

Unless you kill her.

This new thought electrified Anna.
I can’t…
But she knew she could. She saw it as clearly as she had seen Sister Elizabeth drowning her. The sister would call for her. Anna would not answer. Sister Elizabeth would shout down the pipe at her, probably throw a pebble down as well. While she was thus engaged, Anna would slip out of the cistern and fully release the ratchet lever. The iron plate would drop to the floor, thousands of gallons of rain would crash into the drainage chamber. Sister Elizabeth, with her head already in the pipe, would be washed away in the deluge, crammed and contorted down the length of the pipe and finally crushed against the grate.

Anna trembled all over with the vision. Adrenaline spiked as her terror gave way to a wild excitement she had never known. The welts on her face and forearms and thigh flared. The knuckle where her pinky should have been throbbed. The black void of grief inside her swelled, swallowing her heart and lungs and guts.

Part of her brain still screamed
I can’t kill her.
But that was the little girl part, and Anna was done being a little girl.
I won’t die like that. I can’t stay here anymore.
It occurred to her that she might also be swept away, but that didn’t seem to be of much consequence just now.

She crept to the edge of the gap, staying just out of view. Sister Elizabeth’s shoes clacked across the wet floor. Anna waited.

And what will you do once you really are a murderer?
The little girl voice asked.

She thought of the warehouse, the dock, and the boat. She thought of the Pacific.

You don’t know how to drive a boat.
But that didn’t seem to be of much consequence, either.

“Anna!” Sister Elizabeth finally called, “Anna, haven’t you finished yet?”

Anna poised at the gap.

Please don’t
, the little girl voice begged.

She visualized the sister bending down to peer into the pipe. The next sound would be the sister calling her name
. I will be swift as an adder.
She hoped the noise of her echoing name would cover any sound of her movement.

“Sister Elizabeth?” A child’s voice called out of the drainage pipe. Anna gasped. The voice from the pipe continued, “Sister Elizabeth, I’m nearly finished.”

“What is taking so long?” the sister called. “You ought to have been done an hour ago!”

Anna gaped around the inside of the cistern. She held a hand in front of her face and stared at it
.

I am here. I am not in the pipe.
She clapped the hand over her mouth and thought.
I am not speaking,
as the voice continued.

“There is a branch stuck in the grate, Sister Elizabeth. It’s stuck real good, but I almost got it.”

That’s a boy’s voice,
Anna realized,
that’s a boy’s voice, but Sister Elizabeth is too dense to notice.

“Well, I am much too busy to come checking up on you every ten minutes. If you want to miss dinner, that’s just fine by me. I’m sending a troop of boys down to haul this mess out of here. If you are not finished by the time they arrive, you will spend the night in this hole.”

“Oh, I’m quite sure I’ll be done by then.”

“Humph,” Sister Elizabeth’s shoes clacked away. The door screeched, and the bolts clicked into their holes.

Curiosity had driven Anna through the gap to eavesdrop on Abbess McCain. Curiosity had often overpowered her better judgment, and she wore the scars to prove it. But now, with her nerves as tight as piano wire, her wits as frayed as her old shawl, and every ounce of adrenaline spent, curiosity held no power over her.

None at all.

She had no interest in discovering whose voice had answered Sister Elizabeth from the pipe. If she went to her grave without ever knowing, that would be fine with her – so long as it wasn’t today.

“I wouldn’t really have done it,” she said to her reflection in the dark water. Her face peered out of the pool at her. It seemed to float below the surface. In the sallow glow of her miner’s lamp, her skin was sickly yellow, it alternately distended and shrunk with the slow ripples.

That’s what you would have looked like after she drowned you,
her mind replied.
Just like little Ephraim.

Anna didn’t say anything to that. She didn’t think anymore, either. She reverted to the quasi-catatonic state that typified the little ones in her care. No questions, no forethought, no introspection, just do the next thing that must be done.

The next thing that must be done was simple. She slid through the gap into the drainage chamber, surprised to see that nothing had changed. Every aspect of the room stood exactly as she had left it. Though she had been in the cistern for mere minutes, Anna felt as if she hadn’t been here, in the drainage chamber, for a very long time. Not since she was a little girl.

Memory came to her one bit at a time.

What must I do, now?

Retrieve the trowel and gunnysack.

Where are they?

At the end of the drainage pipe.

Is there a boy in the pipe?

I don’t think so.

She bent to the pipe and crawled inside. The echoes and whispers and mist danced around her, but she didn’t notice. Over and over in her mind, she saw Sister Elizabeth being crushed and dismembered by the torrent of water, saw her being propelled in a crumpled ball through the narrow pipe. It horrified her now. She was weak and sick with the dread of what she had nearly done. Her body ached in every joint, worse than she could remember ever aching. Her head pounded and her knees bled.

By the time she reached the grate, she was too spent to be startled. The blockage was gone. Her sack, which had been half-full, now lay flat and neatly folded beside her trowel. Anna tried to make sense of what she was seeing. Someone else had to be in the pipe. That was the only possible explanation, a young boy. How was it that neither she nor Sister Elizabeth had seen him?

“He must have come through the grate.” Echoes of her whisper hissed through the pipe. “It must not be secure.” A glimmer of hope re-ignited the life in her eyes. The mist had condensed heavy around her, and her lamp grew dim. She peered through the fog at the iron bars.

Can I open it and slip away? Could it be that easy?

Wrapping her fingers around the center bar, Anna heaved it forward. It didn’t budge. She pulled it toward her with all her remaining strength, but only succeeded in dragging her body forward until her face pressed against the bars.

She coughed a short laugh, then dissolved in sobs, slumping flat against the curved and slimy bottom of the pipe. She lay there crying, weakly thumping the bars with one fist. The echoes rose and fell as the mist thickened.

Then, she heard the whisper.

“Stop that.”

Anna snapped her head up so fast she dented her tin helmet on the top of the pipe.

“Stop crying.” This whisper was not an echo, and it did not echo. It was crisp and close. Anna could almost feel the breath in her ear.

“Who is there?” she asked.

There was no response for so long Anna began to wonder if she had imagined it.

Then it came again. “You are Anna Dufrense, the little girl with the finger around her neck?”

The whisper was so close, but Anna could get no sense of the speaker, boy? girl? child or adult? She couldn’t tell. “Yes…”

“Clever in your thoughts and stupid in your actions.”

“Who are you? Where are you?” she asked.

“I’m where you want to be,” it said, “outside.”

Anna pressed her face against the grate, peering into the swirling fog.

“My name is Joseph, Anna, and I can help you, but you must listen carefully.” The whisper now softened, sounding like the boy who had answered Sister Elizabeth. “If you come to me, I will keep you. I promise. Abbess McCain will never find you.”

“How?” Anna pleaded, “How can I get out?”

“I left you something, Anna, under the trowel. Hide it in your shoe. Meet me in the factory, five nights hence, behind the main boiler, at ten o’clock.”

Anna lifted the trowel. Beneath it lay a long black key. She reached for it gingerly, terrified that it would prove to be as insubstantial as the swirling mist. But when her fingers closed around it, it was cold, and heavy. She stared at it as if it were an enormous diamond or an ingot of gold rather than a simple iron key.

“And Anna,” this was the clear, sweet boy voice she had heard earlier, no longer whispering, but further away, “be sure to bring your finger.”

Anna looked up from the key. The glow of her dimming lamp seeped into the haze. Beyond the grate, something twinkled.
Eyeshin
e. Two large yellow disks pierced the fog, floating in mid-air. Anna’s breath caught in her throat. A second later, the eyes turned away and vanished.

The rest of the evening concluded without further incident. A herd of boys hauled two cartloads of sea junk from the drainage chamber and dumped them on the beach. Normally, Anna would have jealously envied the boys for being allowed outside, even for just a few minutes. This evening, her thoughts were too cluttered to even notice.

Once the boys had left the warehouse, Sister Elizabeth filled a large laundry vat with tepid water and ordered Anna to bathe before going to dinner. “You are filthy!” she exclaimed. “You smell like sewage and seaweed.”

Anna tossed her sodden, soiled work dress and under garments into the potato sack. She bathed as quickly as possible and dressed in a clean but equally threadbare uniform.

At dinner, fish stew and toast, Jane teased her about the bright red welt on her cheek and the blood in her hair. She said it served Anna right for playing hooky at the factory. Anna wondered, absently, how she had gotten blood in her hair, but for the most part, she didn’t hear much of what Jane said. Jane prattled on between bites of toast, goading her about her missing finger, taunting her about being Abbess McCain’s favorite.

“The trowel,” Anna interrupted.

“What?” Jane asked, happy to finally get some response from her.

“Sister Elizabeth threw a trowel at my head,” Anna said. “That must be where the blood came from.”

“I guess that would do it,” Jane mused, “but I would have used a brick, considering the thickness of your skull.”

Anna smiled, “Yes, you probably would have.” She almost added,
I’m going to miss you
, but thought better of it. Jane continued heckling, and Anna, whose toes restlessly curled and uncurled around the key in her shoe, continued ignoring her.

After dinner, Anna walked down the back stairs and into the Great Round Room, struggling not to limp on the lump in her shoe. Her girls followed her through an oak door into the dormitory wing. A corridor stretched out before them, lined with doors on either side. Between the doors, ragged tapestries hung, depicting unicorns and dragons, martyrs in gruesome passion, saints with crooked heads, witches burning at stakes. A single bookcase stood lonely and forgotten half way up the hall.

The bookcase once held secret treasure, back when Anna was a little girl, back when Rebecca had been the head girl and both of them had ten fingers each. Now, only encyclopedias and massive theology tomes burdened its shelves, including several well-worn copies of
Malleus Maleficarum.
Rebecca had told Anna that
Malleus Maleficarum
was German for The Witch Hammer. She said it was pretty funny, but Anna refused to touch any of the proper books, just on general principle.

Anna looked back over her shoulder. Two long tapestries hung on either side of the door through which they had just walked. These tapestries covered the wall from the floor to the vaulted ceiling of the twenty-five foot high corridor. Between them, near the ceiling, a circular window opened into Abbess McCain’s private office. The Abbess’s silhouette darkened the stained glass, her arms folded, her keen eyes peering through the small bit of clear glass at the window’s center.

One of the girls bumped into Anna. She realized she had stopped in the middle of the hall. Mary One and Mary Two each took one of Anna’s elbows and pulled her into their dormitory. Behind her, Lizzy whispered to Jane, “What’s the matter with her, do you think?”

“That trowel must have knocked the sense out of her,” Jane said, adding loudly, “not that she had much to begin with.”

All the girls stared at Anna. She thought back over dinner, Jane’s rhetorical onslaught had been much more intense than usual, and the girls had been staring at her then as well.

“What?” she asked, after Sister Eustace had counted the girls and locked the arched door behind them. “What is it? Have I grown a tail?”

The little ones giggled.

Jane said, “A tail would suit you, to go along with your pitchfork and horns.”

More laughter mixed with gasps.

“Anna!” Lizzy said, “You haven’t asked us about the quota!”

Anna looked around the room. The piles of gray blankets were gone. Her cot was bare, no blanket, no pillow, not even the waffle-thin mattress remained.
Laundry day
, she remembered.
Is it
still
laundry day?

“Well,” she asked, “did you make it?”

“We made it!” Lizzy threw her arms in the air. “We did have to, ‘call out the reserves.’” She added, with a ridiculously overt wink. “But we made it, with two pairs to spare.” She held two fingers out to Anna.

“Sister Eustace promised to run our radiators tonight,” Jane said. “We’ll see if it does any good.”

The girls heaped all the straw into great nests around the two radiators. Anna put her smallest girls closest to the heat, then snuggled all the rest up to them.
We really do look like a litter of rats
, she thought as she curled around Lizzy.

The radiator banged, as if someone had hit it with a mallet. It hummed, then banged again. It hissed, then vibrated, then rattled. It banged five or six more times in quick succession, before settling in to a routine of random clanks and hisses.
That’s going to keep me up all night. I just hope Mary Two doesn’t pee herself again.

Anna still wore her shoes, hoping they would keep her feet warm and fearing she would lose the key if she took them off. Her toes prodded and caressed the iron. She sank deeper into the straw as the girls nestled together. Her mind flashed the images of the day. Sister Elizabeth dashed to pieces in the pipe, swept away like the refuse in one of those new flushing toilets. Her own drowned face floating lifeless below the surface of the water. The face of her baby brother who drowned all those years ago. The black iron key lying on the burlap sack, hard and heavy and real. And the eyes. Those disembodied yellow disks hovering in the mist and darkness. Those eyes promising to take her away from here, promising to rescue her and protect her and care for her. Those eyes following her down into dreamless sleep, undisturbed by the radiator’s racket or the squirming nest of rats.