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SEVEN

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The following evening Louisa came.

With mounting trepidation, Ellen heard the flap of Louisa’s habit, the whoosh of air that preceded her adopted daughter. Everything but flesh of flesh, Louisa was to her. How frightened the child must have been all those years to have so stoically maintained her silence. That, if she had spoken, she would again have been shunned. Left to the roads and the hungry grass.

Ellen awaited her moment and when Louisa had removed the poultices, caught her by the wrists.

‘Sit for a moment, Louisa!’

Slowly, agonisingly, Ellen fumbled for the words with which to tell Louisa. Almost as soon as she had begun, Louisa stopped her, putting a hand to Ellen’s lips.

‘Mother, dearest Mother, you needn’t suffer this … I already know,’ she said, causing Ellen to startle. ‘I suppose I’ve always known,’ Louisa continued. ‘You almost told me once … in word and look. That last time I played for you … the Bach … the loss of Heaven in your face …’ She paused. ‘… and then, the book.’

‘Oh, my dear Louisa … you never …’ Ellen began.

‘No, I never said anything.’ Louisa answered the unfinished question. She gave a little laugh. ‘In my silent state I didn’t have to!’

‘You never condemned me?’ Ellen asked.

‘Condemn you, Mother? You who saved me from certain death? Who loved me as her own?’ Louisa held her tightly. ‘Condemn you?’ she repeated. ‘I thank God every waking moment that He at last restored you to us.’

The Vespers bell tolled, calling the Sisters to evening prayer. Still embracing, Ellen and Louisa fell silent, each making her own prayer … for the other.

Ellen explained what she still must do regarding Patrick and Lavelle.

‘You must do as conscience directs,’ Louisa answered.

‘It would be my dearest wish to first remain here a while, with you and Mary,’ Ellen replied.

The prayer bell stopped. Louisa waited a moment for Ellen to continue.

‘What restrains me is that by remaining, it may reveal me and so force you and Mary to finish your work here. So, I have decided to take my leave quietly and avoid that possibility.’

‘How will you live, what will sustain you?’ Louisa worried.

‘The Lord will sustain me – as He has up to now.’

Next afternoon Sister Lazarus came to visit Ellen. She could not see how closely the nun studied her, as she complimented Ellen on her wellbeing. ‘Doing nicely, are we? Doing nicely! Thanks be to God and His Holy Mother.’

The following day Sister Lazarus again visited her, this time with Louisa and Mary in tow.

‘Mrs Lavelle, or Mrs O’Malley or whatever it is we are calling ourselves today …’ she began. ‘You and your daughters have practised a great deceit upon the Sisterhood of this house.’

Ellen started to speak, but to no avail.

Sister Lazarus, once risen, was not for lying down again. ‘It came to me at prayer – the occasion when some six years past you called to the door of this holy house. I would have uncovered you sooner but for your dilapidated state. But God is just. As He has restored you, so has He revealed you,’ she said, in the manner of those to whom God regularly reveals things.

She then gave the two younger nuns a dressing down for their concealment. They would first have to go to Reverend Mother, then prostrate themselves before the entire congregation and profess their wickedness.

‘You have betrayed the moral rectitude with which our work amongst the fallen is underpinned. Without moral rectitude we are nothing. Nothing but chaff in the wind.’

Sister Lazarus then ordered the young nuns to ‘fall on your knees in the Oratory.’ She forbade them to attend upon Ellen until ‘Reverend Mother shall make known her decision.’

Reverend Mother, a solemn, no-nonsense nun whose singsong Kerry accent long flattened by years in America, spelled it out clearly and succinctly.

Firstly to Ellen.

‘When your eyes have been given whatever restoration God may decree, you must leave here … and may God grant you forgiveness for in what jeopardy you have placed His holy work.’

A certain sadness creeping into her voice, Reverend Mother then addressed Mary and Louisa; ‘Sister Mary and Sister Veronica, you have broken trust with God and with your Sisterhood. That there can be no scandal attached to the work which we do here is the rock on which we are founded. Therefore, can neither of you remain here.’

She paused, letting the import of the banishment sink in. Then raising her Reverend Mother’s voice, pronounced the full edict of what this would entail.

‘There is now a great calamity upon this, your adopted country – a “Civil” War, they name it. For its duration, whatever length that be, I charge you to bind up the wounds of those fallen in battle. You will carry out your duties without fear or favour to either side. You will at all times remember that those who oppose each other, irrespective of uniform, are God’s creatures and created in His eternal likeness.’

Again she paused before making the final pronouncement.

‘You will be dispatched South to the battlefields and may God bestow upon you both the necessary fortitude for that work – a fortitude which, thus far, you have so inadequately failed to display.’

Ellen was bereft. What ignominy she had now visited on Mary and Louisa. To be banished. Better they had never found her, left her there to die on the dunghill of Half Moon Place. She could not speak.

They, for their part, stood beside her, heads bowed in shame, dutifully accepting their banishment.

‘Not my will but Thine,’ Ellen thought she heard Mary whisper.

The audience brought to a conclusion, Sister Lazarus ushered them out informing the young nuns that, ‘In charity, Reverend Mother has decided that you both may remain here until your mother’s treatment is complete. In the meantime you will be restricted to within convent walls and in waking hours to within the Oratory itself.’

Both Mary and Louisa nodded in silent assent, awaiting what yet further there was to come. Sister Lazarus did not hold them in suspense for long.

‘You will undertake penance and fasting as directed and converse with none other than myself, or Reverend Mother should she require it.’ Reverend Mother did not.

When Dr Thackeray’s ‘month of days’ had run its course, Ellen returned to the oculist, shepherded this time by Sister Lazarus. Little was exchanged by way of conversation between them. Sister Lazarus, Ellen guessed, no doubt praying for a miracle – that the blind might quickly see and be sent forth!

Indeed Sister Lazarus’s rigor mortis-like countenance seemed to considerably soften when Dr Thackeray, upon examination of Ellen, professed himself ‘cautiously pleased’ at her progress. Though her eyes were still impaired, she could now see more and at a greater distance, during each test through which he had put her.

‘These will improve you further,’ he said, producing a pair of spectacles of a more lightly-shaded hue than those previously stolen.

He re-dressed her eyes, advising her to ‘continue the poulticing for a further uninterrupted period of two weeks.’

Behind her, Ellen imagined Sister Lazarus’s lips move in supplication to the Almighty – that a more immediate miracle might occur.

On their homewards journey, Sister Lazarus solicitously guided Ellen, thus avoiding any mishap which might befall her … and longer extend her time at the convent.

‘God is good … God is good,’ Sister Lazarus regularly repeated to no one in particular. Ellen herself was unsure if this acclamation served purely to acknowledge the restorative powers of the Lord, or was a thanksgiving for her own resulting departure from the convent which the healing itself would precipitate.

Two weeks to the day of her visit to Dr Thackeray, Ellen, along with Mary and Louisa were quietly exited from the grounds of the Convent of St Mary Magdalen and led to Boston’s railroad station.

From there the two nuns would travel to Richmond, Virginia, and await further instructions.

At Mary and Louisa’s insistence, Ellen accompanied them, her newly constructed spectacles perched snugly on her nose. All the better with which to see the fatal tides of civil war on which they were now cast.

The Brightest Day, The Darkest Night

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