The Staircase

by Ann Rinaldi

  "I am not a traitor," I said.

  "You snitched on your roommate!" I thought Consuello would leap out of the chair and attack me. Indeed, Winona had to hold her back.

  "Stop." Winona stood up. She was a tall girl with two black braids that she wore tipped with bright red ribbons. Her spectacles sat on the end of her nose, giving her an air of authority. "We do not wish to upset Elinora any more. She is beset enough, since her uncle-the-Bishop was told of the note and confined her to house arrest."

  "House arrest?" I asked. It had a menacing and legal sound to it.

  "She is not allowed to leave the house at all now," Winona recited. "Besides which, he seriously questioned her intention to become a nun, a fact that has made her distraught. How can she have a calling, he asked, when she is meeting a boy nights?"

  "My thoughts exactly," I said.

  "Not being of the Faith, of course, you cannot understand the ways of Catholics. We do not expect you to," Winona said.

  "Why don't you explain it to me, then?"

  She sighed and commenced in a patient voice. "Tradition has it that the most popular girls become nuns. The girls who have already formed friendships, not only with other girls but with boys their own age. If you were God, would you want a recluse? Someone who stayed to herself and brooded? Or would you want someone lively and fun-loving, like Elinora?"

  Was I expected to answer this question? I was. I sighed. "I can't speak for God," I said, "but I don't think I'd want somebody who sneaked out at night to meet with a boy, no."

  "Oh, you jealous little viper. You Yankee!" Winona hissed.

  "She's not a Yankee," said Consuello. "Her father kept slaves. He beat those poor people. And starved them and worked them to death."

  "You slaver!" Winona said then.

  "I never knew any slaves," I said. "That was all before I was born. But I know my father never beat or starved anybody."

  "Abeyta comes from a family of quality hereabouts. He wishes to marry Elinora." Winona had brushed my thought aside.

  "Then how can she become a nun?" I asked innocently.

  Another thought brushed aside. "Because of your jealousy of Elinora, you have intervened in her friendship with Abeyta. He waited in vain last night under a Comanche moon. Now the success of their union is uncertain."

  I would think so, I thought, after her uncle got through with her.

  "And you have forced her uncle's hand," Winona continued, "so that he has forbidden her from ever speaking of becoming a nun again. Or doing anything to honor her calling."

  Having delivered her speech, she sat down and recommenced eating her breakfast.

  I stood, dazed. "You're right about one thing," I said. "I don't understand Catholics."

  "Then you should have kept out of it," Rosalyn said. "Can't you see how crushed Elinora is that her calling has been so ignored by the Bishop? She suffers the pains of a martyr."

  "I think she suffers the pains of a scolding by her uncle for sneaking out and meeting a boy," I said.

  "How dare you?" Consuello leaped out of her chair this time. And what with the impediment of her weight, which was considerable, this was no mean feat. "Even if Elinora didn't have a calling, how dare you turn on your schoolmates and be such a snitch? Don't you have any loyalty?"

  "Yankees don't have any loyalty," Winona reminded her.

  "Neither do slavers," said Rosalyn.

  I stood in silence while Consuello's face wavered before me. She has a lot of hair on her upper Up, I thought. Someday she'll have a real problem with a mustache. "Please remove yourself," I told her quietly, "so I can sit down and eat."

  Her eyes glared with hatred. "Everybody hates a snitch. You have broken Elinora's heart. And on Monday, when the other girls come back, all will be told of what you did. And you will be shunned."

  "Get out of my way," I said again.

  She went back to her place at the table. Having been branded a Yankee, a slaver, and a traitor all at the same time, I decided I was still hungry and I took my own seat, although I was obliged to get up and help myself to the food, which they'd taken all to their end.

  Elinora spoke then, for the first time. "There is another matter no one has mentioned. I feel it incumbent upon me to bring it up."

  Everyone turned their attention to her.

  "That man has been hammering all morning in the kitchen. I thought he was dismissed by my uncle."

  They all looked then at me for an explanation, so I gave it. I told them about the broken table, the repairs needed in the kitchen, and how Sister Roberta had hired the carpenter to work there this week. While everyone awaited Saint Joseph.

  Elinora raised her eyes to the ceiling. "Does no one understand? Can I not make myself heard? We must have that filthy beggar carpenter out of this place. I don't care whether he's working in the kitchen or the chapel. How can Saint Joseph come here if we have a carpenter working already? It shows Saint Joseph our lack of faith in him."

  There were murmurings, of both agreement and consolation from the other girls.

  "You had something to do with this," Elinora said to me then. "Just as you brought Abeyta's note to Mother Magdalena. You are an unbeliever, a heretic. What you have done is bring God's wrath down upon this place. Since that man has come we've had nothing but trouble here. Delvina died, and now this, with my uncle refusing to recognize my calling. That filthy beggar must have been sent by Satan himself. But I don't care what my uncle says. I have a calling. And I shall continue praying to Saint Joseph. And he will come."

  "We'll pray with you," Consuello said. "We'd be honored to." And the others agreed.

  Emboldened by their heartfelt backing, she gained strength. "But first we must effect the removal of that carpenter. Since I cannot go again to my uncle, we shall institute action. When the other girls come back on Monday, we'll launch a regular fast. We'll fast and pray. We'll only take liquid, but we won't eat a thing until the carpenter is gone. What say you, friends?"

  "Yes, yes," they all agreed. They fair jumped up and down in their seats with glee. Then they lowered their voices and started speaking of it among themselves. They started to make plans.

  I set myself to eating. The fish was excellent. And then I heard Elinora giggle and say, "If my uncle is spoiling for a fight, he'll get one. He doesn't know who he's gone up against when he has me for an adversary. I'm not my mother, you know. She buckled under his authority. Why do you think she ran away with the first man in trousers who asked her? My uncle drove her away with his stupid rules. Well, there is more than one way to skin a cat."

  17

  ON SUNDAY AFTERNOONS, lest idle hands act as the devil's workshop, we were required to do handwork in the front parlor for an hour.

  We could pick from beadwork or embroidery. Consuello, Lucy, Winona, and Rosalyn, who were from wealthy Mexican families, did beadwork. Elinora and I struggled with embroidery. I was doing a sampler in green and red for Uncle William, which I planned on taking when I went back to Independence. It said HOME SWEET HOME.

  The five girls sat a distance away from me, by the window where bright sunshine shone in. At their feet, in the middle of their group of chairs, was the Santa Fe Republican. This morning everyone was talking about the man shot in the leg up at the fort, who was later seen struggling through town.

  The man's name was Ramon Baca. "Long suspected," the newspaper account read, "of the murder of James L. Collins, government official at the U.S. Depository in Santa Fe, who was shot to death in June of 1869, at which time one hundred thousand dollars of government funds, slated to be dispersed to federal office holders and the military in town, was stolen."

  The paper reported that he had disappeared from sight and was still at large and dangerous.

  A thrill of fear ran through me, even as Rosalyn said, "That's Delvina's husband! I heard Mother Magdalena whispering to Sister Catherine this morning that he might come to the convent and demand the baby."

  "My uncle will never give the bab
y to that brigand," Elinora said. Though chastened, she still bragged about her uncle. The girl never gives up, I thought. And she has no loyalties. None whatsoever.

  Well, I decided, that ends the controversy over whether my protector was Jesse James. Even in this cave of a convent, surrounded by plaster saints with glazed eyes and black-robed nuns and the constant talk of an impending miracle, I could not let myself believe that.

  If James had shot him, Baca would be dead, not just wounded in the leg. I knew that with a certainty, even while I fingered the gold piece in my apron pocket that Delvina had left for me, which Mrs. Lacey said was given to her by Jesse James.

  I sat away from the other girls, near the hearth. In my lap, under my embroidery hoop, was Cleo, playfully swiping at my thread with her paws.

  Upon entering the room, the other girls had put their noses in the air and shunned me. Exactly as they had threatened. Now they were supposed to be doing their beadwork, but instead they were whispering. I pretended not to hear. At first it was all about the shooting of Ramon Baca. They were taken with the goriness of it, the drama. Of the fact that Delvina had been wed to such a man.

  "I wonder what he did with all that money he stole," Rosalyn mused.

  "Maybe it's hidden at the fort," Lucy conjectured.

  I looked up. "There is no money buried at the fort. I go there all the time," I said.

  Ramona nudged Consuello. "Did you hear something just now?"

  "It was likely a gnat in your ear," Consuello told her.

  "Maybe we'll get up a party," Lucy suggested, "and go look for the money at the fort."

  "When?" Rosalyn asked. "You know what we have planned for this week. We'll have all we can do with fasting and praying to Saint Joseph."

  "That's right." Elinora spoke. "Fasting and praying come first. And getting our petition signed tomorrow to give to my uncle."

  They started whispering about the petition then.

  "We must write it tonight and have everyone sign it tomorrow," Elinora was saying. "And we must fast tonight. Refuse to take food at supper. If anyone has any treats sent from home, hoard them. We don't have to really starve. Just give the appearance of it."

  "Will your uncle accept a petition?" Lucy asked.

  "He has to," Elinora assured them. "When the other girls stop eating, he'll have a crisis on his hands. Some of these girls are from important families. Their people give money to the school and convent."

  My heart was beating like a drum. Poor Bishop Lamy, I thought. He might have fixed churches that were in disrepair when he first came to Santa Fe, brought in badly needed priests and organized the diocese of Santa Fe, which took in all of New Mexico, Arizona, and parts of west Texas and Colorado, but he did not know what an adversary he had in his grandniece. I felt sorry for him.

  Just then Elinora leaned forward to whisper something in Lucy's ear. Lucy leaned forward, too, and some of the beads fell off her lap and rolled across the floor.

  Immediately Cleo jumped off my lap and pounced on them, racing about and scattering them all over the floor.

  "Oh! She has a kitten in here! Everyone knows that isn't allowed!" Rosalyn was on her feet in an instant. She picked up Cleo by the back of her neck and suspended her in midair.

  "Give her to me!" I stood up.

  "No," Elinora ordered. "Hand her over here."

  Rosalyn handed Cleo over to her.

  "She's mine! The Bishop gave her to me! Give me my cat!"

  "Did you hear something?" Elinora asked the other girls.

  "A gnat in your ear," said Lucy.

  I reached for Cleo but Elinora would not let go. She stood and faced the window, the wriggling, frightened kitten in her arms. I saw her doing something, then I heard Cleo howl. Then in the next minute, while the other girls held me off, Elinora opened the window and threw Cleo out onto the street.

  I could hear Cleo outside, meowing in distress.

  "You mean, stinking ... you, you, hoydens!" I shouted at them. "To take your anger at me out on an innocent kitten!"

  "She's lucky," Elinora said. "The next time we'll drop her in the fireplace. Or see to it that she's drowned in a bucket of water."

  I ran out of the room, into the hall, and out the front door to try to find Cleo.

  I FOUND HER—dirty, frightened, and cold—after a full twenty minutes of searching. She was huddled in an old pipe in the ground. I picked her up.

  Blood ran from her eyes.

  What had Elinora done to her?

  I dabbed at Cleo's eyes and cuddled her and told her how sorry I was. I took her inside and ran with her into the kitchen to find Sister Roberta.

  "I'M REASONABLY SURE she's blind."

  Sister Roberta handed Cleo back to me in the infirmary, where I'd eventually found her working. She'd examined Cleo extensively, cleaned her, and given her something to quiet her. "She's been poked in both eyes by a sharp object."

  I took the shivering kitten and cuddled her close. She nestled into the crook of my neck. "Elinora," I said. "She was doing embroidery and had a needle in her hand. Oh, Sister, how could anybody harm an innocent creature?"

  "There are depths in the human soul that should not be fathomed," she said. "Maybe she'd be best put to sleep. I could do it. It would be painless, poor little thing."

  "And if she lives?" I asked.

  She shrugged. "In the company of an older cat, she could still learn to do cat things."

  "I want to keep her," I said. "May I?"

  "She's your cat. But you should tell the Bishop."

  "How can I, without getting Elinora in trouble?"

  "He will find out. You must find a way to tell him first."

  "Is there any chance she'll get better?

  "There are always miracles."

  Somehow I didn't want to hear that word. I took Cleo back to her mother, who would lick her and feed her and comfort her, even as I wished I could go to my own mother for comfort now.

  Were they all crazy in this place?

  Was there something in the water here in Santa Fe that turned the mind? Why would Saint Joseph come here to make a staircase?

  I settled Cleo back with her mother and decided to go seek out the one person who was halfway sane in this whole place, Mrs. Lacey.

  MRS. LACEY WAS NOT WELL. When I'd brought her breakfast she had been in the chair by the window, but now she was back in bed again. I decided not to tell her about the letter from my father.

  I now brought her afternoon goat's milk. She waved the tray aside.

  "Coffee," she said. "Get me coffee, Lizzy. It helps my neuralgia. More than this pillow they give me. Please, child."

  I said I would, and left her to go to the kitchen. Ramona had the makings of supper cooking. It smelled delicious. I lifted one big pot lid and peered in.

  Hare jardiniere. Ramona's specialty. Everyone's favorite. I saw the carrots and onions floating in their own sauce. Let them try to resist this tonight.

  One of the servants stood over that pot, nurturing the sauce. Ramona was making pastry.

  "Could I have a cup of coffee, please?" I asked Ramona. "I have a headache."

  She was so busy she scarce paid me mind. Just pointed to the pot. I grabbed a cup and filled it, put in plenty of milk and sugar, thanked her, and left the kitchen with my stolen coffee for Mrs. Lacey.

  SHE DRANK IT AS if it were an elixir, something to prolong her life, something that actually gave her strength. She sipped it, she inhaled its fragrance, she smacked her lips. "You saved my life, Lizzy. What would I do without you? My neuralgia is vanishing already."

  "If it heals you, why won't they let you have it?"

  "It's Mother Magdalena's way of punishing me for being Methodist. Sister Roberta allows it, but she sneaks it to me, too. Mother Magdalena says coffee isn't good for me. I'm old, I'm dying, what bad could it do me now?"

  "You're not dying," I said.

  "Oh yes, I am, Lizzy. By degrees. Every day I feel weaker and weaker. I have pains in my
head, my back, my legs. Something is coming at me from all sides. It's all right, dear, I'm old; it's my time to go. And I must endure the pain, I suppose, to pay for my sins."

  "What sins?" I said derisively.

  She smiled. "I have many. Would you like to hear them?"

  "I'm not a priest."

  "Wouldn't tell a priest. Wouldn't tell the Bishop. But I'll tell you, so that maybe you can learn from my miseries. That's the only kind of penance I believe in. Well, do you want to hear?"

  "All right," I said.

  She sighed and leaned her head back on the pillow. "I was not always a good person, Lizzy, if indeed I am good now. I come from the East, you know. From Virginia. Oh, I have long since lost any of the honeyed Virginia tones, but that is where I come from. Richmond. That is where I lived with my first husband and my Robert, when he was a child.

  "My first husband was not a good man. He was many years older than I and thought me wanton, because I enjoyed life. He was very religious and ofttimes raised his hand to me."

  "Like Delvina's husband?" I asked.

  "Yes. Which is why I was so drawn to help Delvina. But in polite society, in Richmond, a proper lady did not run away. And she did not speak of such things. She suffered in silence. Oh, I wanted to leave, but he would not let me take Robert. You see, I had no rights, even to take my child out of such a situation. So I endured it for years and years while I put on a good face and Robert grew up.

  "Well, soon Robert was grown—or, at least, fifteen—and tall and handsome. The war had come. Often Robert tried to interfere when my husband raised a hand to me, and he earned himself beatings for doing so."

  She paused, unwilling, or unable, for a moment to go on. Then she recommenced talking.