Love Letters

by Madeleine L'engle

  “But I thought the danger was all over,” Peregrina cried. “I’m tired of praying for you.”

  “But I count on your prayers,” Baltazar said. “And yours, Mariana.”

  “You will both have my prayers.”

  The Frenchman: Noël, Noël Bouton Saint-Leger, Count of Saint-Leger; now she knew all of his name. He met her eyes, smiled. “Then we are invulnerable.”

  “My own prayers mean very little.” Mariana’s eyes were properly downcast, as a sister’s should be when talking with a secular. “But all of us will pray for you. For all of you.”

  Again his eyes tried to meet hers. “And perhaps when you stand out on your balcony you will think of us riding by?”

  She did not look up. “I will think of you.”

  “When we come back we’ll be riding by again. Will you be watching?”

  She turned away so that he could not see even the curve of cheek within her coif and pretended to smooth Peregrina’s curls. “It may not be possible.”

  “But you’ve watched before—”

  Her voice was light, impersonal, hardly her own voice at all. “Father Duarte thinks, and quite rightly, that we’ve spent too much time on the balcony in the past days.”

  And Baltazar’s voice, somehow pompous, as unlike Baltazar as she was for the moment unlike Mariana, “Sometimes it is hard for us to remember that the sisters have spiritual duties, just as we have military ones.” And then, down to earth, back to Baltazar again, he was wanting to show Noël the convent, “To show that not all Portuguese convents are the same.”

  The Frenchman said lightly, “But you’re too sensitive.”

  Baltazar shrugged. “Perhaps. But it’s no secret that Rome sides with Spain because of the Inquisition, and that there’s only one bona-fide bishop in Portugal at the moment. And you’ve made it quite clear to me that our convents don’t have the most delicate of reputations.”

  “Royal whorehouses.” Peregrina’s voice came clear.

  Mariana turned swiftly. “Peregrina!”

  Peregrina had the grace to redden.

  Mariana, trying to erase the words, turned back to her brother. “Only one bishop?”

  “I forget how isolated you are. Doesn’t Aunt Brites tell you anything?”

  Mariana’s face still showed shock. “Yes, of course. But not about—”

  Peregrina, trying to make amends, chanted as though reciting a lesson: “When John of Braganza claimed the throne it put Rome in an awkward position, so they appointed a lot of Spanish bishops to the Portuguese sees, and of course we weren’t going to be very happy about that, so John of Braganza has been appointing his own bishops who aren’t recognized by Rome, and ecclesiastically speaking the situation is confused. I quote.”

  “Accurately, I hope,” Mariana said. “In any case I accept it as my history lesson for today.”

  They had turned the distasteful and embarrassing subject so that it could be dropped, but Baltazar clung to it. “Accurately enough. I want Noël to know that there, are places in Portugal where religion is neither a matter of politics nor of lewd laughter.”

  “My dear fellow,” Noël assured him, “I don’t believe all I hear.” There was more than a hint of amusement in his voice.

  Baltazar’s frown deepened. “I haven’t liked some of the talk. Particularly when it includes my sister.”

  Peregrina, recovered, made a face, directed at Noël. “Bal talks like a priest. I want to hear more about the war.”

  Baltazar, still scowling, said, “Noël and I came here this afternoon to forget war for a few hours.” Then he relaxed and smiled. “Come on, imp. You’re supposed to take us to Aunt. And we all know better than to flout an order from on high.”

  Noël turned to Baltazar in mock terror. “Must I go? She doesn’t want to see me, I’m not her nephew. I’ll talk with Sister Mariana here. I’m frightened enough of her. Don’t make me go beard an abbess in her den. I’m no Daniel.”

  Both Baltazar and Peregrina burst out laughing, and Baltazar said, “All right, all right. We won’t be long. Aunt has little time for visitors, even those just returned from the wars.”

  “I’ll stay here, too,” Peregrina said.

  “You will not. You know no man is allowed to go unaccompanied to the lion’s lair,” Baltazar said.

  “Let Mariana go, then. She’s a proper nun.”

  Noël Saint-Leger said lightly, “You’re a naughty child. It will do you good to see the lion. I hope she eats you up. Run now. Military orders.”

  “All this obedience,” Peregrina muttered. “It’s as bad as a convent.” But she said to Baltazar, “All right. I’ll meet you in the hall.”

  Mariana watched after them, holding her breath as though waiting, as though poised for flight. Noël reached up and held with both hands on to the bars of the grille, looking at her intently. He did not speak, and the silence seemed to grow louder and louder, until Mariana turned slowly from the empty doorway to the grille, asking in a low voice, “Why did you say you were afraid of me?”

  For a moment Noël seemed surprised. He looked at her, a half smile on his lips, his brown eyes lit with curiosity. She waited, and he said, his smile fading, “You know, Sister, I’ve thought each day as I’ve ridden by the convent and seen you on the balcony that our lives must be alike, yours and mine.”

  “Alike?” Mariana indicated her dark robes, his bright garments. “It’s night and day.”

  “But night and day both obey the rule of the sun. And you and I both live our lives in obedience to a rule. We’re both responsible to a law higher than ourselves. You submit to the orders of your abbess, your convent, and I to my commanding officer and my king.”

  “I never thought about it that way. You seem to be from—from a different world. One that my world can see only from a distance and never know. Your world is so large and mine is so very small.… I didn’t even know about—about the bishops.”

  “Perhaps you were better off not knowing. I don’t know anything about bishops either, and I don’t want to. What I want is to know something more about you.”

  At last Mariana raised her eyes to him. “About me? But why?”

  The lightness drained from his voice, the smile from his lips. There was a tenderness in the velvet brown of his eyes. He stretched both hands through the grille, bending towards her. “I don’t know. Dear God, I don’t know. I say casually that our lives are alike because we must both submit to authority. And yet, as I come by and look at you and your Sisters, standing on your balcony, moving about the garden, perhaps even calling to each other, your voices so light and peaceful in contrast to the rough voices of the men surrounding me or the shrillness of the women we see—this is what attracts me, makes me go out of my way to take the convent road. It reminds me—”

  “Of what?”

  “I think of something I’ve lost. Or maybe it’s something I’ve never had.”

  … “Stop looking for something you’ve never had,” Violet said crossly. “Settle for what you have. You’ve been married for six years. You are twenty-seven. God knows that’s young; nevertheless you’re a woman now and it’s time you stopped this schoolgirl sentimentalizing.”

  “I don’t—” Charlotte protested.

  Violet picked up the book of letters. “Stop reading this junk. It’s not going to get you anywhere.”

  It was difficult to try to look dignified lying down in that enormous bed; nevertheless Charlotte tried. “I find the letters interesting.”

  “Of course they’re interesting.” Violet slapped the book down on the bed table. “They wouldn’t be still in print if they weren’t. Or if they weren’t controversial. But they aren’t going to tell you anything.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because it’s time you stopped looking for answers outside yourself. You are really the most superstitious human being I’ve ever known.”

  “I fail to see where superstition—”

  “This nun is not goin
g to tell you anything. She was a dull, self-pitying creature. The Frenchman thought it would be amusing to seduce a nun and she evidently found it amusing to be seduced by him. That is all. Half the nuns in Portugal in the seventeenth century never even thought about God. They simply transferred their worldiness with them when they took the veil. They had luxurious bedrooms, not austere cells, and it is well known that they entertained men. As for the French soldier, Mariana was probably the first and most available nun he could find.”

  “You’re being vile.”

  “You might also be interested,” Violet continued, unperturbed, “that in the army manual for the time there was a rather mild penalty for having an affair with a nun.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  “All I want you to do is see things as they are, not as you would like them to be.”

  “Do you know how things are?” Charlotte demanded.

  “I am not going to get into one of your abstract, theological discussions. I am trying to get down to some kind of facts.”

  “So am I,” Charlotte said. She would have liked to have asked Violet, “What is a fact?” but she kept her mouth closed.

  “You are silly and young,” Violet said. “It is not entirely your fault. But it is time you grew up.”

  “I know!” Charlotte cried. “I’m trying!” She lay weakly back on the pillows. Her throat hurt again. She wanted to see Dr. Ferreira. She wanted to get out of Violet’s bed and run out into the rain so that it would cool her cheeks so that she would be cleansed …

  … She ran. To the chapel. To Father Duarte. To help.

  But he was, as she should have known he would be, hearing confessions. She saw Sister Michaela enter the confessional. She could not burst in …

  She stumbled down the aisle to the altar and fell on her knees. Tears rushed to her eyes and she looked blindly through them at the crucifix. She whispered, “I have seen him. Oh, God, God. I have seen him. Help me. Help me.”

  During recreation it was Beatriz, not Joaquina, who asked, “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. Of course. Why?”

  “You didn’t eat.”

  Mariana shrugged in apology. “It’s the heat. I wasn’t hungry,”

  Beatriz looked at her with grave concern. “You don’t usually let the heat bother you. You let it roll off you, like water off a duck.”

  Mariana forced a smile. “An odd duck.”

  Mother Escolastica hobbled rheumatically across the room and touched Mariana lightly on the shoulder. “Her Reverence wishes to see you in her office after recreation.”

  Mariana nodded and Mother Escolastica, waiting a moment for a further response that did not come, hobbled out.

  Beatriz again directed her level gaze at Mariana. “You look as nervous as when her Grace used to send for us when we were students and we’d done something wrong—as usual.”

  Again Mariana forced a smile. “That doesn’t seem to change as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Doing something wrong? Or being nervous?”

  “Both.”

  “What have you done now?”

  “Dear Sister Beatriz,” Mariana said. “I made my confession to Father Duarte—” and stopped short.

  So did Beatriz. She gave Mariana a sharp look as Joaquina said, “Why worry? We all know you can do or say anything.”

  Mariana’s voice betrayed her by climbing a notch, though it remained steady. “I have no special privileges. There are none in this convent. You know that.”

  Beatriz came between them, saying to Joaquina, “I do admire your sewing. You can make the tiniest stitches of anybody in the convent, barring not even Sister Isabella before her eyes went back on her. Is that a new habit?”

  “Yes.” Joaquina refused to look pleased. “For Mother Escolastica.”

  “Her poor hands,” Beatriz said. “She used to do such beautiful lettering. And she needs a new habit.”

  “She doesn’t think so,” Joaquina said. “Nor do I. But her Grace says it is time and we must obey.”

  Beatriz smiled at Mariana and frowned when the smile was not returned. She spoke quietly to Joaquina. “Can’t we have a happy medium between wearing habits that are in shreds and dressing as though we were going to be presented at court? Her Grace is trying to teach us moderation in this convent.”

  “That’s true, isn’t it, Mariana?” Michaela asked eagerly. But Mariana, not having heard, did not reply. She left the chapter room and went to the abbess’s study.

  But the abbess was concerned only with a general loosening of discipline. “It’s time we got back to normal. I don’t like this continual buzzing in the convent. And there has been too much breaking of Silence. Among the sisters as well as the children. I look to you to be an example.”

  “Yes, your Reverence. I’ll try.”

  There were two days of chill wind and driving rain during which the soldiers were away. Then the skies cleared and the sun burned high and hot again. The nuns knew when the troops returned to Mertola by the noise in the streets of Beja, by the shouting and singing that continued again through the small hours, although the presence of the soldiers was beginning to be taken for granted and neither children nor sisters ran to the balcony at the sound of bugle or hoofbeat.

  Mariana held closely to her work, playing with the little children, teaching French to the older ones, copying manuscripts in the library, spending her fragments of free time praying in her cell or remaining on her knees in chapel after singing an office. As the temperature rose, chapel and cell held and contained the stifling heat of the noonday sun, barbaric in its intensity, and she was driven out to the lily pond at the bottom of the convent grounds where a heavy, humid breeze stirred the leaves of the eucalyptus trees. She lay down on the browning grass, her fingers touching tepid water, and looked at the bullfrog on his lily pad. “I’m trying. Why don’t you help me? Saint Michael, can’t you hear me? I can’t do it alone. I try not to think about him. I try not to see him. I try not to see him when I pray to you. But your face is his. I cannot tell any more who he is or who you are—”

  She broke off as a shadow, deeper than those cast by the eucalyptus branches, moved across her. She turned onto her side and looked up.

  He was there.

  He was standing above her. The buttons on his coat flashed in the sun. He took off his hat with the waving plume. He smiled, his smile that flashed even more brightly than the sun on the buttons …

  She sprang to her feet, feeling the blood drain from her face. “Excuse me, monsieur le—excuse me—it is not allowed—” She fled down the path, through the arch to the cloister, past the brilliance of the fountain, into the stifling heat of the chapel.

  There was no meaning to time while she was in the chapel. There was only a darkness that was outside time, and a light seeming to strike against her so that she kept shaking her head against it. She did not know whether she stayed on her knees for a minute or an hour, except that when she rose and stumbled out her knees were stiff, her habit damp with perspiration. Sofia was waiting outside for her.

  “Sister—”

  She was still in darkness, though she had to close her eyes against the sun, and her voice groped towards the child.

  “Sofia—”

  “Sister Isabella asked me to wait until you got out of chapel to tell you that you have visitors.”

  “Visitors. Yes. Thank you.”

  “Sister said to tell you that she would have waited herself, but—oh, you know how blind she is and she’d already mistaken Sister Joaquina for you and told her that she had visitors and then of course when poor Sister got to the locutario there was nobody there for her. So Sister Isabella didn’t want to make a mistake again so she sent me to find you.”

  “I see,” Mariana said. “Thank you, Sofia.” She left the covered cloister walk and went into the tiled main hall, moving rapidly down the corridor, robes and girdle swinging. She entered the nuns’ section of the locutario. Peregrina was there already, an
d in the visitors’ parlor were Baltazar and—who were they? So many people …

  Yes, he was there. Noël. She was being introduced to the Englishman, Rollo Boundys, and to another Frenchman, Mathieu de Berenger.

  She joined in the laughter, the gaiety, but she did not know what was being said, and after the men had left, with Peregrina running after them to see them out, she remained in the parlor, holding on to the bars of the grille as though she could not stand in any other way. The door on the visitors’ side reopened. Noël Saint-Leger looked in, a half smile on his face.

  “I believe I left my hat,” he said formally. Then, as he approached Mariana and could see that there was no one else on the nuns’ side of the locutario, he said, softly, “Sister—”

  “No—” Mariana protested.

  “No, what?” Again he gave her the brilliance of his smile. She only shook her head. His smile disappeared and he looked at her soberly, his whole face seeming to darken. “Sister. I have been in the army long enough to know that sometimes the best way to keep a rule in the long run is to break it in the short.”

  “Please,” Mariana said. “I must not.”

  “In a few days we leave again. We will be going down into the Algarve, and this time there will be danger. I want to see you, to have your prayers before I go.”

  Mariana’s lips were so cold and stiff that she could scarcely form the words, although the heat of the afternoon pressed heavily on the parlor. “You know that you have them.”

  “But I want to see you. Is that asking more than you can give?”

  “It is not allowed.”

  “If I come to the locutario tomorrow—but without the others—would that be allowed?”

  “I—don’t know.”

  “I have a splendid idea.” His smile flashed again. “Baltazar tells me that you teach French to the older students—”

  “Yes.”

  “So I could help you with your French—” again the smile, “—so that your accent will be better for your students.”

  “Is this—is this what you want?”

  “It will have to do, won’t it?” He turned on his heel abruptly, and left. Brusquely, not looking back, he left.