Читать книгу The Brightest Day, The Darkest Night - Brendan Graham - Страница 11

By the time they had reached the door of the convent, Louisa and Mary were in a perfect quandary.

They could not reveal Ellen’s true identity, lest they all be banished. Acceptance into the convent as a novice implied a background and family beyond blemish. There could be no whiff of scandal attached to those who were to be Brides of Christ.

It would be held that they had known all along of their mother’s fallen state and engaged in the concealment of it.

‘It was not a deceit then but it is a deceit now,’ Mary said to Louisa, ‘to continue not to reveal her identity … whatever the consequence.’

‘It is a greater good not to reveal her,’ Louisa argued. ‘Mother is in dire need of corporeal salvation, if not indeed of spiritual salvation!’

‘That is the end justifying wrongful means,’ Mary argued back, torn between her natural instinct to follow Louisa’s reasoning, and the more empirical precepts of religious life.

‘We have been led to her for a purpose,’ Louisa countered. ‘It would not be natural justice to have her now thrown back on the streets. Natural justice supersedes the laws of the Church.’

Mary prayed for guidance. ‘Lord not my will, but Thine be done.’ Having passed the question of justice to that of a higher jurisdiction, Mary was somewhat more at ease with Louisa’s plan.

‘I don’t think “Rise-from-the-Dead” will recognise the likeness between you and Mother.’ Louisa gave voice to Mary’s own fear.

Mary looked at her mother’s sunken state. Sister Lazarus would have seen her only the once … and that many years ago. Still, little passed unnoticed with ‘Rise-from-the-Dead’.

They both impressed upon Ellen the importance of not revealing herself. She was a Penitent, rescued from the streets. Nothing more.

‘That I am,’ she echoed.

Sister Lazarus received them full of concern.

‘Oh, the poor wretch! Divine Providence! Divine Providence that you rescued her, from God knows what fate!’

Mary’s heart beat the easier as the older nun bustled them in without any hint of recognition.

‘A nice hot tub, then put her to bed in the Penitents’ Infirmary,’ Sister Lazarus directed. ‘You, Sisters, take turn to sit with her, lest she take fright at her unfamiliar surroundings.’

They stripped her then, Louisa supporting her in the tub, while Mary sponged from her mother’s body the caked history of Half Moon Place, both of them joyful beyond words at having been her salvation. She, who through famine and pestilence, had long been theirs.

When Louisa spoke, Ellen would turn to look at her, face spread wide in amazement. ‘I know, Mother,’ Louisa said. ‘I was “the silent girl”. All those years when you tried to get me to speak, I would not. Like your story, it is for another day.’

Ellen then turned her head from one to the other of her children, eyes brimming with delight, as if the angels of the Lord had come down from on high and tended her.

Shakily then, she pressed the thumb and forefinger of her right hand to her lips and leaned, first to Mary’s forehead, then to Louisa’s, crossing them in blessing, as she had done, down all the day-long years of childhood.