The Staircase

by Ann Rinaldi

  She was up to something, but I followed her upstairs to our room. Cleo was still nestled in my bed, sleeping. Elinora went to her side of the room, opened a drawer, and pulled out a ball of yarn. "Watch this," she said. Then she unwound the yarn and waved it over Cleo's face.

  At once Cleo raised a delicate paw and aimed for the end of the yarn. Not only that, she followed its progress back and forth with her eyes, which seemed bright and alert again.

  "I don't believe it! "I gasped.

  "What made you think she was blind?" Elinora asked innocently.

  "Blood ran from her eyes that day."

  "Lizzy, I admit what I did—throwing her out the window—was mean. But don't forget, you'd just run to Mother Magdalena with a note meant for me. I had to do something."

  I picked up Cleo and hugged her. "Take it out on me, then, not on an innocent cat. Anyway, Sister Roberta said she was blind."

  "Well, she isn't right about everything." Elinora sat on the bed, next to me. "You must let me make up to you all the bad things I've done, Lizzy. Please, think of something. When my uncle finds out the cat isn't really blind, he'll feel terrible for switching me. And right now he's so happy I wasn't killed last night, he's forgiven me for everything, anyway. Now is the time to ask for anything you want. I can get it for you."

  I stared at her. "Elinora, you shouldn't use people so," I said.

  She tossed back her hair and gave me a knowing glance. "Oh, but grown-ups do it all the time. It's the way of things, Lizzy. You're still such an innocent. It's time you grew up, isn't it?"

  I did not wish to grow up if it meant being like that. But I just shrugged and nodded yes. "Look at this room. It's a mess. We should get to cleaning it," I said, to give the conversation a new turn.

  In truth, I was so happy about Cleo that I no longer felt any anger toward Elinora. So we set ourselves to the task. "Are you still running away with Abeyta?" I asked her while we were cleaning up.

  "I want to." She sighed. "I know it seems to you as if I'm frivolous, Lizzy, but Abeyta does love me. And I never wanted to be in this place to begin with. You complain about your father, but do you know why mine sent me here?"

  "Because your uncle is the Bishop."

  "No. To get shut of me. Because he wants to marry a young woman back in St. Louis, and she doesn't want me around. He hasn't written to me since I've been here. Likely he's married to her already."

  I said nothing for a moment. For the first time since I knew her, I felt as if she was telling the truth.

  "At least your father has written to you," she said.

  "I may go and live with him in Texas," I told her. I couldn't help it. For once I knew I had something she didn't have, and I just could not help it. I told her about the ranch.

  "I'd give an arm to live on such a place," she said wistfully.

  "My father already has," I told her.

  "Oh, forgive me, Lizzy, do. Oh, you must think me terrible."

  "Yes. But not for that," I told her. And then we both sat down on the floor and laughed, Cleo between us.

  In the silence that followed, she picked up a piece of the Virgin Mary from the floor and held it in her hands. "I was thinking of asking Abeyta's family for help in finding a home for Elena," she said. "They have much influence in this whole territory. What do you think?"

  When what I thought came to me, I could scarce speak. But then I did. "Elinora, I think that if you wish to make up to me for my cat and for other things, I have thought of something," I said.

  "A BABY IS NOT a kitten." The Bishop frowned at us severely, standing behind his desk. I was sorry already that Elinora had allowed me to be dragged into this. I did not have the mettle to go up against that frown, the sternness in those eyes. But apparently Elinora did.

  "Uncle," she said sweetly, "before we discuss the baby, there is something else we must tell you."

  "There is no discussion. You are both dismissed." He sat down and turned his attention to the work on his desk.

  I curtsied and started to leave, but Elinora grabbed my arm and pulled me forward. "Lizzy has something to tell you about the kitten." And she dug her nails into my arm until I thought it might well be bleeding, even through my long-sleeved blouse.

  He did not look up. "I said you are both dismissed. Don't bring me to anger, Elinora."

  The nails dug into my arm harder.

  "Eminence," I said. "We have discovered that the kitten is not blind after all. She sees things. She chases them. We thought you'd wish to know."

  He looked up. His eyes focused on me in a most disconcerting way. If you are lying, they said. Just let me find out you are lying.

  "Uncle, if you will just permit Lizzy to fetch her from our room, we can prove it. You will see."

  He nodded curtly at me. "We will see," he said.

  I ran as quickly as I could, and when I returned, breathless, with Cleo in my hands, Elinora was still standing in front of his desk and he was ignoring her, tending to his work. She had removed a ribbon from her thick yellow hair. "Watch, Uncle," she said.

  He stood up and came around from his desk as I set Cleo down on the Persian carpet. Then Elinora dangled the ribbon in front of her. Immediately Cleo reached up a delicate paw and tried for it.

  "You see, Uncle? I told you."

  The Bishop knelt down to pick up Cleo. He held her in his hands and peered into her eyes, then scratched around her ears and set her down. The mother cat had come from her corner to greet her. The Bishop stood up, scratched his chin, and watched Cleo follow her mother across the room. "You are right," he said.

  "We just had to tell you," Elinora said sweetly, "because I know how badly you felt because you thought I had blinded her."

  He caught himself, frowned again, and went back to sit down. "You mistreated her anyway, Elinora. Only God can forgive that."

  "Yes, Uncle," she said sweetly, "but I was punished."

  He closed his eyes for a minute, as if praying for strength. Then he sighed. "Very well, Elinora," he said. "You have five minutes."

  She plunged right in. "Lizzy's father is getting a job as foreman on one of the biggest ranches in the Southwest. In Texas. Lizzy will someday soon, with your permission, go and live with him. He has asked her. If she could bring the baby there, the child would grow up in an atmosphere of health and love. If she's left anywhere here in New Mexico, Ramon Baca will find her."

  He looked at me. "What ranch is this, Lizzy?"

  "Santa Gertrudis Ranch, Eminence. The last he wrote, he was likely to get the job running it, like he ran his plantation before the war."

  He nodded. "I know Mr. King, who owns the ranch. I was a guest there once."

  At Elinora's exclamation of joy, he held up a hand. "This child is under my jurisdiction," he cautioned us. "I will not even consider the matter until I write to Mr. King and to your father, Lizzy, and find out if this plan is agreeable to them. Do you understand?"

  We both said yes. Meekly.

  "But letters take so long with the mail service," Elinora said. "Perhaps, Uncle, my friend Abeyta can use his father's influence to get a letter immediately to the ranch."

  "Abeyta?" Bishop Lamy said.

  "Yes, Uncle. He will do it if I ask."

  "I have no doubt. Have you seen him lately?"

  "No, Uncle."

  "The truth, Elinora."

  "I haven't, Uncle. I swear. Ask Lizzy. She's seen me in my room every night."

  He looked at me.

  "She hasn't," I said. Of course, I did not say she intended to elope with Abeyta. For one reason, I decided it was one more of Elinora's dramatic announcements, like being a bride of Christ.

  "I will write the letters," the Bishop said, "and send them with Abeyta's father's messenger. And if Mr. King and your father write back and agree, and guarantee me a good home for this child, I will consider it. If you both behave. Now you are dismissed."

  I had to hand it to Bishop Lamy. He had practically guaranteed Elinora's behavi
or for months. And she thought she was using him!

  But then he hadn't united the whole of his Southwest flock, started schools where there were none before, and once been in the forefront of defending his wagon train with blazing six-guns from attacking Comanches, for nothing. Certainly it had given him some training to handle his fourteen-year-old grandniece.

  Then, as we left the room, I heard him murmur to himself. "Imagine those two coming to me together. I'm beginning to think we did have a miracle here this week after all."

  23

  IN THE NEXT WEEK everyone seemed to settle down. All the students were chastened, to say the least, that Saint Joseph had not come. I myself suspected they also felt a little foolish.

  "We have not been worthy of him," Mother Magdalena told the girls almost every morning at breakfast. "Now Christmas is coming. It is the season of Advent. We must make ourselves worthy of the coming of Jesus."

  Thank heavens they didn't really expect Jesus. Even I, a Methodist, knew that.

  From inside the chapel came constant hammering, as José the carpenter worked on the staircase. He worked long hours, beginning at six in the morning, stopping for mass, and then going on until late at night. We were told by Mother Magdalena not to bother him, that he was in a dreadful race against time to have the staircase completed for Christmas.

  I wanted to peek in and say hello, but Mother Magdalena's order was firm, and things were so tenuous because Saint Joseph hadn't come and the carpenter was back that I decided to keep my distance.

  The choir practiced for Christmas in the dining room.

  Decorations started to appear in the schoolrooms and the convent. Bright wild holly berries, possum haw berries, and evergreens. At the Bishop's farm the boys from the academy were allowed to help with the hog killing.

  "Wait until the bonfire on Christmas Eve," one of the day girls told us. "The boys will blow up old hog bladders from last year and throw them on the fire. They explode like cannons."

  Ramona was already planning the Christmas Day feast. In the marketplace it seemed as if the trinkets of the world were on sale. I thought of last Christmas at Uncle William's house, with Mama and Daddy. We'd had a houseful of company. And gifts and a tree.

  I was in another world now. A different time and place. I might as well be on another planet, I told myself. And then I wondered where I'd be next year.

  BISHOP LAMY HAD WRITTEN the letter to my father, and Abeyta had been allowed to come and fetch it so that his father's courier could take it to Texas. Abeyta's appearance in the convent was much whispered about. He came early in the morning, and Elinora was allowed to see him in the Bishop's office, under his watchful eyes.

  Some of the girls crept onto the stairway and came back upstairs, saying they'd actually seen him. It was almost as good as seeing Saint Joseph, for them. Or Jesse James. Afterward, of course, Elinora wouldn't speak of the encounter, though pressed by the other girls. She would say only that the Bishop had agreed to host a dance Christmas week, for the older boys and girls in the two schools.

  Mail service in Santa Fe was always a haphazard business, at best. The only thing that could really be counted on, people said, was the arrival of the army payroll, under escort from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. There were government contracts to carry civilian mail between Santa Fe and the other territories and states. Before the war, mail came but twice a month. Now, at least, it came once a week—when the post wagon wasn't attacked by outriders.

  That week before Christmas a letter came to me from Uncle William.

  He was closing up his house in Independence for a while, to go to Kansas. "With my friend Jim Bridger," he wrote. "You are certainly welcome to come to Kansas when I become established, if you do not wish to live with your father. But I need at least six months to make a proper home for myself—let alone you—there."

  Oh, Uncle William. I could see him already in Kansas with Bridger. I knew Bridger, bewhiskered and half blind by now. He'd had three Indian wives and six half-Indian children, all educated in missionary schools in Missouri. What if I'd had my heart set on being with you, Uncle William? But the very thing I love about you—your independence—is what makes you not there for me now.

  Still, I knew he meant it when he said I could come in six months. He sent me books, writing paper, a silver frame with a photograph of my parents that had been taken in Independence, and an Indian blanket, for Christmas.

  I was still waiting for a letter from Cassie. None came. (Later I was to find out that her letter was on a post wagon that had been attacked by Utes and Apaches in eastern New Mexico, and it ended up scattered with other mail across the Plains.)

  All that week I hunkered down, like everybody else—studying, doing my chores, and missing Elena. We all missed her. A temporary home for her had been found with a good family outside Santa Fe. The Bishop was determined she should be safe and his school not endangered. He himself had visited Ramon Baca in jail, to tell him the child was elsewhere, without disclosing her whereabouts.

  On Friday of that week, we had our first snow. It came quietly at the onset, then steadily, then quickly. An undercurrent of excitement ran through the school. And by the end of the day, the girls were running around squealing in delight. Within two hours there seemed to be three or four inches. I acted disinterested, even bored, as I considered it my duty to do. After all, I was from Missouri and we had our snows, didn't we? The day girls were dismissed early. By supper time there seemed to be seven or eight inches. It clung to everything, tree branches, walls, grillwork, lampposts. The robins flew into the cedar trees. The bluejays screeched and objected.

  It was after supper hour. The choir was practicing in the dining room, where the tables had been pushed aside. There was about the place a general air of enclosed peace, yet an air of anticipation. As if something wonderful was about to happen.

  It was the snow, I decided. These girls so seldom saw it, and from all Sister Roberta said, the sun would make quick work of it, and in a day or so it would be gone.

  I was seated in the parlor next to the crackling fire, knitting a sweater for Elena. Cleo lay in a ball at my feet. I'd been to the barn and fed and seen to Ben. From down the hall came the muted strains of "Silent Night."

  I looked up at the snow falling against the windows, and I felt a sense of peace such as I hadn't felt in months. More than peace, it was a flooding of contentment in my bones. As if I knew everything was going to turn out all right. For a moment I felt almost as if there was a presence in the room with me.

  And then Cleo lifted her head, sniffed, stood up to arch her back, and hissed.

  I am not a spiritual being. For all I had been through in Santa Fe, I still had no faith in uncommon powers of any kind. But at that moment I knew someone was in the room with me, some unseen presence, standing close, giving me assurances. Was it Mama? Mrs. Lacey? It was somebody. Or something. I was sure of it, and I didn't fight the sureness. I didn't scoff. And I didn't doubt. The knowing in itself was enough.

  At that moment the door of the parlor burst open. Elinora stood there. "The staircase! It's finished!"

  I jumped from my reverie and turned to look at her. "What?"

  "It's finished! Ramona went just now to take the carpenter his supper. And found it completed. And he's gone."

  I dropped my knitting from my lap and ran from the room.

  THE OTHER GIRLS WERE already there. So were the nuns. They stood in the back of the church, gazing up at the staircase.

  My mouth fell open. It was finished.

  It rose in a graceful, swirling, polished circular arch, from the ground to the choir loft. The wood fair glowed in the candlelight, rich and burnished and solid. There were thirty-three steps. The girls were counting them. And each one was trimmed to perfection.

  But it had no railing.

  It had no supports. It seemed as if nothing was holding it up.

  Sister Roberta was examining it. "Two complete three-hundred-and-sixty-degree swirls," sh
e said. "It is spliced in seven places on the inside and nine on the outside. It is an incredible and impossible piece of work. No one man could have finished this in so short a space of time."

  "But will it hold us?" Mother Magdalena asked in a near whisper.

  "Well, there is one way to find out. And being the heaviest one here, I shall experiment," Sister Roberta said.

  We all watched then, while she tentatively put one foot on the bottom step, smiled at us, then put a foot on the next step.

  Sister Catherine crossed herself. I saw Sister Hilaria mumbling silent prayers. Sister Roberta mounted the thirty-three steps, one by one, keeping her balance perfect for such a large body, and arrived at the top.

  "Not one creak," she said as she stood up there above us at the entrance to the choir loft, "not one bit of swaying."

  "Praise be," Mother Magdalena said. "We have ourselves a staircase."

  "And from the looks of it," Sister Roberta said, leaning over to examine a step, "he didn't use nails, either. He used wooden pegs."

  "Sister, don't fall," begged Mother Magdalena.

  Sister Roberta straightened up. "Now, how do I get back down?"

  I heard Mother Magdalena gasp, and the others murmur.

  "Why didn't he make a banister?" Winona asked.

  "Faith," said Sister Roberta. "He wanted to show us that we need faith. For now, I will come back down the only way I consider feasible. And afterward we will practice, so we can come down gracefully, showing our faith."

  And with that she turned around and crept down, backward, step-by-step, on her hands and knees. There was even more praying now, then happy sighs when she reached the bottom. She stood up and turned to face us.

  "The wood is beautiful," she said. "It is the most beautiful wood I have ever seen."