by Paula Guran
In confusion and fright she’d flailed at him. Thinking at first that he was the furious husband.
Then, he’d hurried to open the garage door. Like rumbling thunder above her. Tugging at her, urging her from the death-car. Together staggering outside into the bright cold air of March.
In this bright cold air Elisabeth will run, run. Strength will flow back into her legs, her lungs will swell. Never has Elisabeth run so freely, alone or with another. She is suffused with joy. Light swells inside her, in the region of her heart. In her throat, into her brain. Behind her eyes that swell with tears. It is not too late, the child has not come too late to save her. Running hand in hand away from the shingle board house on Oceanview Avenue. Hand in hand away from the Hendrick family house and along the coarse pebbly shore wet from crashing froth-bearing surf Elisabeth and Stefan run. Giddy with relief for the cold Atlantic wind has blown the poisoned air away as if it had never existed. Rising on all sides now are gray sand dunes beautifully ribbed and rippled into which they can run, run and no one will follow.
JOYCE CAROL OATES is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle’s Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, the PEN/Malmud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, and has been several times nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys; Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award; and the New York Times bestseller The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina. Her most recent novel is Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.
THE PROMISE OF SAINTS
ANGELA SLATTER
In the Church of Mary’s Mercy, which sits upon a hill overlooking the sea, there lies a bejeweled saint, attended by nuns of various vintages. Girls and women come to her to pray or beg (some would say there’s little difference) for one thing or another. Sometimes she hears, sometimes she does not. Or perhaps life simply takes its path without her attention or otherwise.
Back when she died and was laid here—so very long ago—her attendants, the sisters-that-were, dressed her in the richest of robes, a cloak with an ermine collar as if to keep the chill from her bones. There’s no flesh on her, merely a fragile canvas of thin-thin skin, so she’s also been wrapped in fine netting to keep all her component parts together and in roughly the right order and shape. Her organs were purportedly removed by her first curators and kept in jars, but no one’s found them in many a year, so possibly they were carried off by someone with strange tastes, or simply thrown out by a careless sacristan.
Her teeth are fitted with braces made of rubies set in a gold framework; sapphires that might or might not echo the missing eyes sit in the sockets; and her skull is covered in a bonnet that looks like a constellation of diamond daisies. Epaulets made up of a rainbow of gems sit on the shoulders of her cloak, and beneath is a cloth-of-gold vest over her dress that helps keep her ribcage intact. The bony hands protruding from the bottom of the sleeves are encased in items that are a combination of rings and bracelets. Her legs are covered and if anyone’s ever lifted her red woolen skirt (the hem worked with silver embroidery) to see if there’s any adornment there, no one is admitting to it; indeed, no nun has any memory of her being moved for several lifetimes. The skeletal feet have been hung with silver chains dangled with tiny engraved foxes and bells.
She’s been here a long time, the Sainted Maiden, lying on a bier in the tiny alcove to the left of the altar.
Tales are told, as they often are when the truth is lost, and they say she moves around at night. They say she dances across the green and purple marble squares of the nave as if at a wedding. Some say her dance is one of exultation, some say of defiance. But the fact is that no one knows anything about her, what her name was, who her people were (for no one in the town claims kinship), or even how she came to be venerated so.
Unprotected by barriers of any kind, the dust settles freely upon her, but no one’s game to touch her—everyone’s aware that disturbing the holy dead with anything more than entreaties is never a good idea—not even the Sisters who tend to her as the years of their lives march away. Certainly none of the supplicants, and there are many, can bring themselves to offer her the slightest contact. All they bring are demands, generally marital in nature.
The Hallowed Girl, it’s said, was once a bride herself—although no one knows if the marriage was completed and consummated, or aborted, so her titles are varied and perhaps contradictory—and that’s why these others come to beg what she may or may not have had.
Adalene first brought Elspeth to see the Saint when she was five. The child had shown no interest, no gratitude nor enthusiasm for her mother’s hopes, but kept her eyes downcast, stepping deliberately on the cracks in the floor for all she was worth, little bitch. Adalene’s grip on her daughter’s hand was desperate and hard even to her as she pulled Elspeth along. Finally, they halted and Elspeth still didn’t look up.
Not until Adalene said, “That’ll be you, one day.”
The girl raised her eyes then, took in the skeleton caught in its cocoon of tulle and wool and fur and gold. The gems encrusting it sucked in the light of the torches but threw out less than they ate, it seemed. Elspeth looked at the skull with its jaw slightly askew, slightly ajar, no eyes except those gleaming sapphires hard as hearts, and she screamed.
Elspeth thought her mother meant she’d be dead. That someone would stick her with shiny pins and make her into an exhibit, as pretty and useless as a butterfly under glass. She took it for a threat, and it was a long while before she calmed. A long time before her mother could get her to listen that they were there to ask for a blessing: that Elspeth was to beg the Sainted Maiden for a good husband.
Elspeth had no such desire and couldn’t imagine ever wanting a husband. At that very moment all she truly wished and wanted was to never lay eyes on the hallowed, hollowed girl ever again.
It was then that one of the nuns—the youngest of them but already nearing fifty—drawn by Elspeth’s screech, came over from whatever task she’d been attending to in the shadows to place a broad palm against the girl’s cheek. The woman was terribly tall, her face gentle and her smile absent-minded, but there was something about her touch that leeched away much of Elspeth’s fear, or at least enough that she could ask a question.
“What’s her name?”
“She has none, only titles.”
“Everyone should have a name,” said Elspeth.
The nun looked at the girl properly this time, actually focused on her and the smile was different, not simply something she aimed at everyone. “And yet she has none.”
It made Elspeth terribly sad and she wished aloud for the Bride to be named and loved; she wished with the same strength as her mother had wished for her to be well-married. Such very different things, one propelled by a kind of greed, the other by a sort of kindness. And that latter desire removed whatever vestiges of fear might have remained, so that Elspeth did something no one had done in untold years: she touched the Hallowed Girl.
Small fingers to skeletal digits, the most glancing of contacts—soft flesh against dusty bones, a small shudder of shock—but it was a touch nonetheless. The first in so very, very long. Whether it was that or the sort of magic stirred up by wishes no one will ever know. Whatever the cause, something was woken.
That night, the Maiden visited Elspeth for the first time.
It would not be the last.
Perhaps it was in her sleeping or perhaps her late waking—it was so difficult to tell, but Elspeth could have sworn she felt the tender touch of bony hands, felt the shifting of her bedclothes and mattress beneath a weightless weight, felt the breath that was not breath flowing across her face as the Maiden whispered to her. The Hallowed Girl, the Sainted Maiden, the Immac
ulate Bride told Elspeth that she would be her one and only. That Elspeth was her truest love and would tend to the Saint as lovingly as any wife. Elspeth would require no husband for, in return, all of her needs would be met in the Church of Mary’s Mercy. And that the Saint would, on their wedding day, offer her the highest of bride prices.
In the moonlight that flooded the room the Hallowed Girl touched a finger to Elspeth’s, the one that leads straight to the heart, and in her dream or waking she saw a silver ring—tiny foxes chasing each other, nose to tail—form on that finger and glint. It soon sank into her flesh, but the following morning she could still feel it there beneath the skin. A promise and a chain.
Adalene took her daughter to the Saint all those years ago and hasn’t she had reason to regret it ever since?
What she’d hoped would result in a profitable match had seemed to simply have developed into a religious mania. From that time forward Elspeth had spent part of her days (and some of her nights, if Adalene did but know it) in the Church, tending the shrine of the Hallowed Girl.
Frankly, Adalene had despaired. It’s tremendously hard to match-make if one of the parties has a tendency to not appear when they are meant to. Numberless days was Adalene left clutching a damp scone and rapidly cooling cup of tea in the sitting room of some other mother-on-the-make, while Elspeth failed to arrive for a meeting with a potential suitor and his dam. Nothing Adalene said or did made a whit of difference.
But then, ridiculously, one of those potential suitors found her daughter’s lack of interest appealing. Fascinating, apparently. He pursued her in spite of his own mother’s warnings—oh, Adalene knew there’d been warnings, she’d seen the woman’s expression as her son’s questioning about Elspeth became positively fervid.
“Can she weave?”
“Yes.” Barely.
“Can she manage a household?”
“Of course.” An outright lie that would only be discovered too late.
He’d nodded. “She carries herself well, I have seen her around town and her posture is notable. She will wear finery beautifully, that is an important thing for a rich man’s wife.”
“Yes.” A truth at last.
Elspeth’s husband-to-be is prosperous, precisely the sort Adalene would have wished for herself if she’d got another chance, but her combination of ill temper—which renders discontent as her constant companion—and plain face closed that avenue. Had she been sweeter of one or the other, she might well have had suitors lining up at her cottage door. As a widow, she was regarded with pity by the young women of the town; the older ones, knowing better, called her blessed. She views them all with contempt though she smiles politely at them in the market square and when she takes in their mending, or whenever she’d offered her daughter to wife.
But this oncoming son-in-law pleases her for the moment—he will no doubt disappoint in time, but for now he is sufficiently unknown a quantity to furnish a sort of contentment for Adalene. He’ll furnish some financial stability too and that will smooth over a multitude of sins.
Adalene only knows she’ll be as close to happy as she’s likely to get when Elspeth is wed, and that day cannot come too soon, before the girl ruins even that.
* * *
The Saint had promised so many things.
In the silent space between the shadows of the Church, and in the dim twilight of her visits to Elspeth’s bedroom, words had come like covenants on a breath that smelled like nothing from the living. Freedom. Love. Eternity.
Some days, when sunlight brings clarity, Elspeth wonders if she is mad. If that moment all those years ago when fear burned through her like wildfire hadn’t consumed her sanity. Her mother certainly thinks so, what with her refusals to marry, her defiance. Though Adalene can be unpleasant, Elspeth loves her mother. She believes her mother loves her despite the terrible things she says. The girl knows her mother wants to provide for both their futures, but Elspeth’s was mapped out sixteen years ago, wasn’t it? And through Adalene’s own actions did she but know it.
Her mother’s despair was what caused Elspeth’s silence when the suitor appeared at the door, avid and ardent and determined. That and the promises her Saint had made, that there’d be no wedding, no matter what Adalene coaxed or cajoled or threatened. That and the knowledge that skeletal saints are notoriously bad at providing a dowry or portion for a widowed mother’s old age. That and the suspicion that perhaps she was addled, holding onto the promise of a fever dream long stale. So she’d remained silent when the proposal was made and accepted; she behaved like a girl about to be wed to the man who sought her.
But she clung, too, to a thin thread of hope. To the fact that the Saint on one of those long-ago nights of shadows and breaths and caresses, also promised the one thing that no one else has ever had, or at least not in the longest time, so long ago it wasn’t recorded or remembered.
Ultimately Elspeth knew that the vow she’d held most dear was the promise of the Saint’s very own name.
Jasque is a wool merchant, or rather the son of a recently deceased one. His mother still holds the reins of enterprise, but Jasque is free to act as though he makes important decisions. He’s quite happy to live with a heavy purse and light responsibilities.
He could have chosen a better bred, but less beautiful bride—indeed his mother, Ernestine, had urged him in the direction of a girl whose left eye turned but a little, and whose family owned many flocks of sheep. But he decided the lovely Elspeth was for him precisely because it seemed he could not have her.
Ernestine knows how troublesome beautiful girls can be (she was one herself), what with wills of their own and everyone falling over themselves to please in hope of their favors, or even just a glance, kind or indifferent it matters not. But her son’s a fool for a pretty face and all she can do is love him anyway and shrug. Oh and tie up whatever parts of the business she can in legal machinations, and hide profits so it’s hard for her boy to fritter them away on expensive offerings, and harder still for a girl to extract gold from the spinning of wool like some voracious fairy-tale princess.
But this girl, this Elspeth, doesn’t seem to want anything; she makes neither demand nor request; she’s nothing like that grasping parent of hers. She’s polite when given a gift, but there’s seemingly no greed in her; and she’s pious, too, spends part of every day at the Church, helping the last aging nun to tend the shrine. This makes Ernestine, quite naturally, suspicious. She’s never known a girl to look at her very fine son with his very fine robes and very fine face (which, admittedly, will go to fat soon enough just like his father so she’d best get him married off quickly), and the heavy coin purse at his belt and not want something. Therefore there must be, she reasons, something that rides beneath the surface, some need or desire that cannot be seen by daylight.
She doesn’t say this to her son, for her mother’s heart is soft, no matter that her mind is practical and wary. Besides, fewer things drive a man into another woman’s arms than a mother’s displeasure and, though her son’s already made his decision, there’s a tiny hope in her breast that something will happen to make the machinery of this match fall apart. Tomorrow her boy will marry and that will be the end of it, and Ernestine will have plenty of time to discover her daughter-in-law’s faults and flaws.
Jasque, however, has his own concerns though he’d never voice them to his mother.
Tomorrow his bride is to walk barefoot along the path from her home to the Church of Mary’s Mercy. She’ll be dressed in a dress heavy with seed pearls and silver thread (paid for from Jasque’s pocket). Then they’ll stand in front of the altar and say their vows before the priest. Jasque knows that the source of his disquiet will be lying not so many feet away, just out of sight, but there all the same, like some mote in his eye that cannot be removed.
Another thing he’s never mentioned to Ernestine: Elspeth’s acceptance of his proposal was made by her mother. He’d had to propose in front of Adalene for the woman protected he
r daughter’s virtue like a dragon on a mound of gold, and Jasque has no good reason to claim she was wrong to do so. But when he’d offered his suit, it was the older woman who’d said yes. The girl had looked over his shoulder as if there was someone standing behind him, someone else to whom she might answer.
She’d smiled, batted her lashes, and seemed to acquiesce.
But she has ever refused to meet him at night, no matter how he’s pressed her, and she’s also refused to stop her devotions at the Church. She did so gently and politely as she does everything, but her refusal was no less adamant. The last of the Sisters would soon be gone, she’d said, and someone must be there to take her place.
He had been displeased, but was smart enough not to press. Yet, spoiled only child of too-indulgent parents as he was, Jasque was not one to take “no” for an answer.
And Jasque was certain that she could not serve what no longer existed.
Elspeth wears her wedding dress to church the next day, although the Hallowed Girl has promised there is to be no wedding, at least not to Jasque. The gown is beautiful and it seems perfect for the occasion. When will she get a chance to wear it again? Besides, it seems only right to come to the Bride in such finery.
As she walks, barefoot, she notices that there’s no one by the side of the road and a weight lifts from her shoulders. This is good: she takes it to mean the Saint’s promise is true—otherwise there would be crowds, waiting and watching, throwing flower petals and wishes for happiness, fertility and long life. Her steps become much lighter, swifter. But when Elspeth turns into the last windy street, the one that runs up to the hill upon which Mary’s Mercy sits, it is there that she sees a crowd, and the breath in her stops for long seconds.
She continues on, however; she cannot turn tail and run, not now. And as she approaches the congregation she realizes there’s no sense of revelry and no one looks happy; this gives her courage. Townsfolk cluster in the churchyard, gossiping in groups.
