Flashback

ONE

Sister Heloise got up from her place at the back of the nave and made the sign of the cross. It was compline, her favorite of the hours, and normally she stayed till the sweet and bitter end, till most of the other sisters had left and the chapel was dark and hushed. But tonight, with Eve gone, there was the work of two to be finished before bed.

“Your anger has overrun me,” she heard Sister Magdalene read as she turned and headed for the door, “your terrors have broken me.” It was the end of the Eighty-seventh Psalm, the prayer of the gravely ill.

“They have flowed round me like water,

they have besieged me all day long.

You have taken my friends and those close to me:

all I have left is shadows.”

It was a dark prayer, Heloise thought as she stepped out into the cold air, dark and beautiful at the same time. What was it St. Benedict had said? Something about living constantly with death. The door swung closed behind her, muffling the voices of the other sisters. “I cry out to you, Lord, by day and by night. Alleluia.”

It was the first week of Advent, the fifth day of December, and winter had closed in tight. There was a white rime of frost on the grass and on the bare tree branches. A thin shard of moon hung in the crystalline sky. In the time-carved niches of the stone church wall dozens of red votive candles flickered and glowed.

Pressing the flaps of her wool coat up around her bare neck, Heloise started across the icy lawn toward the priory kitchen. There were thirty-five of them, plus some two dozen visitors from a women’s church group in Dijon who’d be arriving in the morning. That made sixty mouths to feed, some twenty-odd loaves of bread she’d need for the day, not to mention the usual breakfast. She’d be up half the night.

From the farm just below the convent came the sound of a dog barking and another answering, both of them urgent and purposeful. Monsieur Tane’s two watchdogs, most likely running off the fox. It was not like Heloise to begrudge any creature a meal, but the sisters had lost three good laying hens in the last week and she found herself hoping the dogs would succeed. She had a soft spot for the guileless birds.

Protectively, she glanced toward the dark shape of the henhouse. Everything was still and quiet. Or was it? Halfway across the yard she stopped walking and stood in the lacy halo of her own cold breath. She had heard something. She was certain of it. A stutter in the pea gravel on the far side of the priory. Was it the fox, chased up the hill and looking for an evening snack? Or just one of the sisters, forgoing compline, out for a late stroll or a cigarette? Heloise sometimes found herself tempted to do the same.

The noise came again, and this time Heloise was certain it was human and not animal, someone walking on the gravel drive. Satisfied, she reached into her coat pocket, pulled out her heavy ring of keys, and continued forward. She’d have to remember to bring some bones down to the Tanes in the morning, a small reward for the dogs. She let her thoughts drift back to her baking. If she was quick in setting everything out to rise, she’d be able to get a few good hours of sleep.

The sound came again, closer this time, and the nun turned her head to see a dark figure coming around the corner of the priory. Heloise squinted, trying to read the person’s features in what little light the building’s windows offered. No, it wasn’t one of the sisters. It was a man, definitely a man. He ducked into the shadows and disappeared.

“Monsieur Tane?” she called, receiving no answer.

Heloise felt suddenly afraid, a little girl alone in the dark. Keep us safe, while we are awake. She whispered the first lines of the canticle to herself and picked up her pace. The keys jangled in her hand.

And then, quick as a fox, he was upon her. Heloise started to scream, but a gloved palm covered her mouth.

“Quiet,” the man whispered. His face was streaked with black greasepaint, his eyes hidden behind strange glasses. Robotic, Heloise thought, inhuman, to see in the dark. He looked like the characters in the American action films Sister Claire liked to watch. He grabbed the nun’s coat, pulling her close to him.

Keep us safe, Lord, she prayed silently. Gripping the keys, she brought her right fist up hard to his face. The metal caught against the glasses, pushing them up, and his head snapped back. When he looked back down at her, she could see his eyes, the pale skin of his lids shining in the darkness. One of the keys had ripped his cheek, and he was bleeding. But she had accomplished little more than to make him angry.

“The American,” he growled, pinning her arms to her sides. “Where is she?” He was foreign, his French slightly accented, though she couldn’t tell how.

Heloise shook her head, trying to understand what he wanted.

He brought his face down toward hers. “Where is she?” he demanded, so forcefully that she thought he would hit her, but he didn’t. Instead, he turned his head and looked toward the church, and Heloise looked with him. On the frosty lawn, heading slowly toward the chapel, were some dozen dim figures. In the hands of each man was a long black rod. Guns, Heloise thought. She tried once more to scream, but the man’s hand tightened over her mouth.

Inside the chapel the sisters were saying an antiphon to Our Lady. Heloise could just make out Magdalene’s call and the louder chorus of responses. The man started forward, dragging Heloise with him. In a single clear instant everything she might have felt was replaced by the knowledge that unless she did something to help herself, she was about to die.

Opening her mouth as wide as she could, she clamped down on the man’s gloved hand and sank her teeth into the leather. He flinched, his arm relaxing instinctively, and Heloise jammed her knee up into the soft flesh of his groin. The man moved backward slightly, the look on his face more astonishment than anything else. Kicking him hard in the shins with her work boot, Heloise wrested herself from his grip and started for the tangle of woods that bordered the convent.

Run! she told herself. She could feel the man behind her, but she didn’t look back. Keep us safe, Lord, she prayed again, her eyes on the dark trees, her arms and legs hammering her forward, her boots slipping on the hoary grass. There was a small explosion on the ground next to her, then another, and the muted sound of gunfire. Then suddenly she was in the dark underbrush, careening downward over roots and rocks.