I never knew such wrath could come from such a small boy. “Nat, please…”
He shakes his head and stomps his foot in a childish tantrum. “I’m going to my room now. I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”
I reach out a hand as Nathaniel whips away from me. “Nat, please…just listen to me.”
He doesn’t even look at me. He slips with ease through the space of the pine trees and dashes away across the cloister yard. I sit there, wetness from melted snow creeping through my overcoat, too stunned to move. Nathaniel has never once been angry with me. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to tell the truth, and even now that I think about it, the truth sounds ridiculous. Mother and Father never once displayed any sign that they were going to come undone, and I was with them ten years longer than Nathaniel.
Maybe it’s I who is coming undone.
Just as I’m about to make my way through the trees, the crunching of multiple pairs of boots freezes me in place. Through the space of trees, I make out black cloaks: the shadows. They block my path, and if I were to try and escape, I’d touch one of them, and that Sash boy’s curiosity of me would be satiated and I’d wind up dead. I scramble to the back of the trees, hide myself in the shadows, and wait.
“We need more,” one of them says, one that is neither Sash nor Asch.
Another one speaks up, this time female. “We’ve already gotten one. Isn’t there another one here, Asch?” More snow crunches, and what sounds like an affectionate kiss meets my ears. “Isn’t there?”
Asch answers with, “There is, Gisbelle.”
“Then where is she?” I hear several shadows bristle at her tone. Several mumble to each other. “We need more!”
Asch sighs. “Patience. I’m not certain, but we’ll find her. We were able to find one. This is our place of mission, after all. Purgatory wouldn’t want us to give up without finding every one in this area. Sash is currently taking care of one thing right now.”
“Sasha is a reckless child.”
“But Sash is a strategic boy.”
They stop speaking and start walking toward the trail. No doubt they are talking about me, but who is the other one? As I stand and wipe snow off me, a horrible revelation occurs that the other one must be Colette because she was with me when they were around. Then again, if they are looking for witches, Colette can’t be who they’re talking about. She is not a witch. She can’t be one.
In any case, I harmed Colette beyond repair, so they would have no use for her. She also can’t see them.
I’m not going to get anywhere with this confusion, so I leave through the trees and head for the infirmary, determined to get answers out of Colette, even if I have to force them from her.
Chapter Eight
Without hesitation, I reach out and touch Colette’s face. I run the pads of my fingers over the roughhewn flesh, and make circles over the scant patches of raw skin. I want to curl inside myself and cry and scream over the fresh truth peeling out in burnt flakes just beneath my fingertips. I did burn Colette. I am a witch. The truth puts my mind in a box that presses in on my scattered thoughts from all sides, until they are crushed to one tiny point and pitched into the chasm of suppressed memories. All that can break through my muddled thoughts is the heartrending present before me.
I pull my hand away, digging my nails in my palm as painful tears try to push themselves out of my eyes. “I-I’m so sorry, Colette.” I wipe my eyes. “Please forgive me. I never meant to hurt you, I hope you know.”
I swallow more burgeoning tears. For whatever reasons I can see the burns no longer matter. My best friend is suffering because of me. She may never be the same, if she ever wakes up. Maybe going home is in my best interest. After all, a witch doesn’t belong at Cathedral Reims. Then I hear Colette’s voice in my head: ‘If you don’t feel like quitting, then you haven’t failed. We will get through this, and we will be the best professed nuns the convent has ever seen.’ And I don’t feel like quitting. Colette wouldn’t want that for me. We cannot be the best professed nuns Cathedral Reims has ever seen, but I still can. Like Nathaniel with his dark secret, I will have to bury mine so deep in my heart, one could cut my heart open and still wouldn’t find it.
I look at the burns, trying to unravel that point in my mind to sort out my thoughts, and one sickening memory climbs out of the chasm. The shadows want me, I’m certain, because Sash was trying to touch me. My being able to see the burns on Colette may have something to do with this. That is the only connection I can draw between them and this. Perhaps it’s a baseless connection, but it is the only way I can make sense of the situation.
I step away from Colette, straighten myself, and with a firm voice, ask, “Colette, can you see the shadows?”
Her eyes move rapidly beneath her lids. She remains silent. I wish there were some way for me to get inside her head and pry the answers from her. I wish--
“Amelia!”
I whirl around, finding Oliver breathless by the doorframe, his bangs drooping even more than usual over panicked, gray eyes.
I hasten over to Oliver and grab his wrist. “Olly, you have to feel Colette’s face. You have to!”
He yanks his wrist away from me. “Amelia, I haven’t any time for this! Your brother--” He looks toward the window and swallows hard. “Your brother is in trouble.”
“What do you mean he’s in trouble? I was just talking to him not long ago, or rather getting in a little spat, but he’ll forgive--”
Oliver sighs. “Dear Deus, come on!” He grabs my wrist, dragging me into the hall of the north transept. “We don’t have any time to stand around. I don’t know what’s going on, but I was just coming back from the greenhouse with some tomatoes for tonight’s dinner when I saw Nathaniel on the roof of the east transept.”
I pry his fingers off my wrist as we cross the nave and make a sharp turn into the east transept. “Are you telling me Nat is up there, and you didn’t bother doing anything while you could?” The reasons for why he could be on the roof turn broken waltzes in my mind, and my stomach knots. It’s bad enough he hates being at Cathedral Reims. What if he had a mental breakdown? The nuns found Marie on the roof of the horse barn when she was coming undone. She threw herself off and broke her leg, smiling as she looked up with crazed defiance in her eyes. “Oh, Olly, you don’t think he’s going to jump, do you?”
Oliver entwines his cool fingers in mine. His hand is so soft. “It’ll be all right, Amelia. It’ll be all right.” We stop at the entrance to the stairwell that leads all the way to the roof. The door is ajar, indicating Nathaniel did come this way, likely after our fight in the cloister. Oliver squeezes my hand and pulls me up into the darkness, our only guidance being his hand that feels our way to the top. “Everything will be all right, Amelia. We’ll talk to him. We’ll find out what’s going on. Don’t blame yourself, all right?”
I give a tight nod, biting my bottom lip and praying Nathaniel hasn’t done anything stupid. Oliver yanks the door open, subdued light from snow clouds pouring into the dark stairwell. Across from us, Nathaniel sits behind the speared finial gate bordering the top of the south transept that overlooks an endless field of white. To the left are the barns, dormitories, green house, bloodletting room, and other buildings all coated in snow. Above us loom two towers that soar hundreds of feet above the nave whose pointed roof I can make out between the space of the towers. I should be grateful Nathaniel didn’t decide to climb on one of those, but he could still break his neck, even though this transept is half the height of the nave.
Oliver and I step out on to the concrete landing, a shudder wracking my body as the late winter chill caresses my skin with sharp, icy fingers. Oliver seems to notice my shivering, for he peels off the outer coat of his white robes and wraps the wool material around me. I smile at him and cross over to Nathaniel. My heels dig into the concrete in an abrupt stop when I see smoke curling in front of Nathaniel. Eyes widening, I stomp over to him and yank the cigarette out of h
is small hand, my little brother coughing in the process.
He looks up at me, his eyes widening. “A-Amelia…”
“Nathaniel Gareth!” I stamp out the cigarette, then throw the nasty beast into the field of endless white. Any sympathy I had mustered to confront him disappears. There is a tin of cigarettes sitting beside him. Who would give a child a tin of cigarettes? “What do you think you’re doing up here? I was worried to death about you when Oliver told me, and here you are smoking, of all the things you could be doing! Why?”
Oliver comes up behind me and rubs my shoulders, his voice a cool whisper in my ear. “Calm down, Amelia. Think about why he’s up here in the first place.”
I pull in a deep breath, letting the wintry air settle in my lungs. Oliver is right. He’s always right. He’s the only person in the world who can bring me back to rationality. “All right.” My eyes turn gentle as they settle on Nathaniel’s eyes. His are rimmed with red. I bend down to his level and put my hands on his shoulders. “Nat, what’s wrong? Why are you up here?”
His eyes water. He covers the cigarette tin, his cheeks burning.
“Give that to me,” I say gently.
He nods, handing the tin to me. I take it from him and put it in Oliver’s coat. “I-I’m sorry,” he says, rubbing his eyes.
“Is this about our fight earlier?” I ask.
He shakes his head.
“Then what is it?”
I’m about to take his hand like an affectionate sister, when I spy a single diamond dangling from a silver bracelet clutched in his fist. I blink a few times to make certain I’m not imaging this piece of expensive jewelry that clearly does not belong to him. Smoking and stealing--not two things I would have expected from my brother. “Nathaniel…” I grab his hand and pry his fingers off the bracelet. “Where did you get this? Be honest with me.”
He shrinks away from me. “No…”
“You know you can tell me anything, Nat, no matter how silly it sounds.”
Oliver bends down beside me, ruffling Nathaniel’s hair. “Go on, Natty. She’s not going to bite your head off, I promise.” He winks, bringing a small smile from Nathaniel.
“You promise you won’t laugh?” Nathaniel asks.
Oliver smiles. “Now why would we?”
Nathaniel starts picking at his cuticles, and to my horror, there is fresh blood in the corners. I want to scold him to break him of this bad habit, but he seems calmer, so I will deal with this later.
“Her name is Isis…” Nathaniel looks away, a soft blush creeping back into his cheeks. He closes his eyes.
Oliver and I raise eyebrows at each other, then smiles overtake our faces, one I try to suppress knowing I could be condoning his stealing this bracelet. “That’s adorable, Nat. You have a little lady!”
“Now if only you could talk your sister into the same thing,” Oliver says.
My eyes widen, and I elbow him, tempted to kick him too.
Nathaniel’s blush deepens. “She isn’t mine.”
I pull Nathaniel’s hands into mine, then run my hands up his sleeves to steal some of the warmth from his arms. “If she isn’t yours, then why did you steal this bracelet?”
He looks down at the concrete with half-lidded eyes. “I know I shouldn’t have taken it from Ann. I just--Isis is really nice, and her parents are rich, and I didn’t want to give her some stupid ark I made out of sticks for arts and crafts. I wanted to give her something I knew she would like.”
I keep rubbing his arm, exposing his forearm to the cold. “This is Ann’s bracelet? Nat--” A dark bruise on his forearm snips off the rest of my sentence. “What happened here?” I prod the injury, bringing a wince from Nathaniel. “You didn’t do this yourself, did you?”
Oliver scoots in closer and inspects the bruise. Nathaniel shakes his head.
“Then what happened?” I ask.
“This is a nasty bruise,” Oliver says. “It looks like the shape of someone’s fingers.”
I grip Nathaniel’s shoulders, steeling my eyes on his bright blue ones. “Nat, tell me what happened. Who did this to you?” Nathaniel just stands there and chews his bottom lip, his posture indicating he does not plan to give me an answer any time soon. I take a safe guess. “It was Ann, wasn’t it?”
Nathaniel says nothing.
“Oliver, we’re going to find Ann,” I say, clutching her bracelet in my angry fist. If diamond were weak, I’d shatter the rock on her skull for hurting my little brother. Now I can’t blame him for taking the bracelet from her. A little bit of sweet revenge if Ann were to walk around the cathedral seeing this little Isis with it.
I grab Oliver’s wrist and turn toward the stairwell. Nathaniel digs his fingers in the back of the coat, his voice coming out panicked. “No, Amelia, please! She’ll hurt me!” Tears choke his voice. “Just let it be. I’ll give the bracelet back to her, I promise.”
Oliver looks over his shoulder and presents Nathaniel with a devious smile. “Oh, she won’t be bothering you, Nathaniel. I’ll make certain of that.”
I have no idea what Oliver has planned, but I do trust him when he says he’ll make certain Ann never harms my little brother again. Oliver has always been like an older brother for Nathaniel, being just as protective toward him as I am. If something were to ever happen to me, I would trust Nathaniel’s life with Oliver. With Nathaniel in tow, we make our way back down the darkened stairwell chilled with the breath of winter.
#
We find Ann and her cohorts outside the dormitories bearing the appearance of refurbished barns. These dormitories, situated outside the north transept, are reserved for those training to be in the priesthood and those who are new arrivals into the sisterhood training to be professed nuns. After one year, sisters get their own rooms, while the boys will always be stuck in the dormitories until they are accepted as priests into the Professed Order.
Ann is sitting on a stone bench, surrounded by three boys, ranging in various heights, who look around her age—older than Nathaniel. I dig the diamond further in my palm to staunch the rage over knowing this much older girl is bullying someone younger, smaller, and weaker than her.
Standing akimbo, I hold out her bracelet. “Ann?”
She turns her round face toward us, dropping a dirty blonde curl she was twirling around a pudgy finger. The only thing pretty on this child is her bright green eyes. Otherwise she looks like a piglet, with her flabby cheeks, wild mane of curly hair, and chubby body. I can see why she’s at a convent.
She leaps from the bench, her eyes trailing the sparkle from the diamond in the scant sunlight. “My bracelet!” She storms over to me and rips the trinket from my hand. She looks behind me at my crouched brother. “I knew you took my bracelet, you little demon! You’ve been eying this thing ever since my father sent it to me!”
Nathaniel shrinks further behind me.
“Not so fast, Ann,” I say. “You gave Nathaniel a little present of his own, a rather nasty present I should say.” I straighten myself to appear taller, even though I think I have six inches over her already. “Would you mind telling me what you did to Nathaniel to grace his forearm with such a nasty bruise?”
Nathaniel groans. “Amelia…”
The three boys move in, closing in behind her. Perhaps it’s just my mood, but they look like little piglets as well, though they do not bear the pudgy figure of Ann.
“You’re quite the sight,” one says, scanning my body with dark eyes while licking his lips. “Although the face could use some work.”
Oliver moves in front of me, making me scoot back. Disgust slithers in my stomach. The boys gasp at Oliver’s presence. I assume they couldn’t see him before. Those white priest robes do blend in well with the snow, as well as his equally pale face. They might not have even recognized him.
“M-Mr. Cromwell,” the shortest of the boys says.
He crosses his arms. “Shouldn’t you boys be in your studies right now? If I recall, I’m giving you a test tomorrow,
and if you fail that, you’ll have to clean the latrines for the next three weeks. I have the Professed Order’s backing on this one, if you so choose to challenge me.”
“He’s right, Ralphie,” the tallest speaks up.
Ralphie bows at Oliver and backs away. “A-all right, Mr. Cromwell. Ann, we’ll be in the dormitories studying.” The three boys back away, keeping their eyes on Oliver for a few paces, then turn and bolt toward the dormitories.
Ann looks ready to make chase after him. “I-imbeciles.”
“Not you, Miss Corsairs,” Oliver says. “Bullying is a punishable offense, one I feel should be reported to the Professed Order.”
She narrows her eyes. “That brat stole my bracelet! He wouldn’t have that bruise if I didn’t suspect him of theft!”
I put a protective arm around Nathaniel. My brother will not win this fight if it is indeed true that he took the bracelet before Ann even did anything to him. The bruise isn’t justified, but that can be deemed an accident, even excused as a young girl not knowing her own strength, while Nathaniel’s sin of theft could get him expelled from Cathedral Reims. The smirk on Oliver’s face, however, tells me he has more blackmail planned.
“Whether or not this is true, Miss Corsairs, you knew that upon entering the convent that you couldn’t bring in such luxurious items as jewelry. You’ve been here for a year as well, so you must certainly know by now that those desiring to be nuns can’t dabble in the luxuries of the outside world.”
I loosen my hold on Nathaniel, his small body beginning to relax against mine.
Oliver continues. “If you tell the Professed Order what Nathaniel did, I will make certain your bracelet is confiscated--and revoke your mail privileges. You won’t be allowed to receive any mail in a year, in any case, not even letters, so I don’t think it would do you too much damage to start implementing that right now. I know how much you dearly love your father. We do read all mail to make certain there is no slander against Cathedral Reims before sending it out. As I recall, we didn’t send out one of your letters because you insulted Sister Allyn, calling her ‘a fat hippo with the brains of a worm.’”
When Stars Die (The Stars Trilogy) Page 7
