The Miracle Thief

by Iris Anthony

  After the woman left, a clerk stepped forward to make a record of the pilgrims’ gifts. The pile had been built earlier in the day upon a foundation of linens with a length of shining silk wound through the folds. It was buttressed by a few pouches filled with coin and a small jeweled coffer, and it was weighted by a gold chain or two. The clerk clucked with satisfaction as he pushed aside the textiles and pulled several candles from the fabric.

  Turning my back on such luxuries, I wrapped a fold of my sleeve about my hand and then went around to each censer, lifting the perforated lid and adding incense to fortify them against the coming night. Then I went to each of the lamps and used a pair of snips to trim the wicks. Next came the candles. There were a hundred of them. And just when I despaired one would melt into oblivion, a pilgrim always seemed to present a new one. The wax, which puddled on the prickets and cressets, I peeled up and kept for the abbey. They would be remelted and reformed and put to use once more. The smallest of the splatters and drips I collected in a leaf of my Book of Hours, and then emptied into a handkerchief when I retired to my cell after compline.

  Over the course of a year, I could collect enough to make one small candle. I heated the drippings in a small bowl over the top of one of the censers, and once they had melted, I added one precious drop of perfume.

  It was a scent come from the Orient, my lover’s gift. The one thing I had managed to keep when I came into the abbey. I might have felt it deceitful, except that I did not use it for misbegotten purpose. Each night before I left the chapel, I lit the candle and burned it for an instant as I prayed one last prayer to Saint Catherine. If I closed my eyes at that moment and concentrated, I could discern its smell before the thin trail of smoke commingled with the incense and disappeared into the hazy, golden light.

  There were too many memories. Too many things I wished to forget.

  But beyond those, there were an eternity of things I wished to remember.

  The clerk closed his book with a satisfied grunt and placed all of the pilgrims’ gifts into a basket. A second clerk grasped it at the handles and hoisted it to his hip. It would be taken to the treasury to be stored with all of the others. All those lengths of fabric, all the collected jewels, all of the crosses and chains and coins that had been brought to invoke Saint Catherine’s favor.

  The clerk paused in his leaving, and then he too knelt before the altar.

  I tried to find a shadow in which to hide myself. One place where that golden light would not reach me, but I could not. The glow of grace was everywhere and illuminated everything. I feigned indifference and did not move until he left my sacred stone-walled fortress and walked out through the church.

  The chill night air snuck in before he closed the door. It raced down the nave and into the chapel, poking at the candles’ flickering flames. The light faltered for a moment, plunging the altar into relative darkness, but then the flames rallied with a triumphant flare.

  With the wind came a memory, and the sound of a dying breath.

  You promised.

  I did.

  I had.

  The abbess’s words haunted me. Would that I had promised to gouge my own eyes out or stab myself with a hot poker. The abbess could not have known that on my journey to the abbey, I had promised I would never raise myself beyond what God had intended. That I had sworn not to take for myself any position that belonged to another.

  A girl like you has nothing to offer at all. A girl like you can never come to anything. It’s simply not ordained.

  I gnashed my teeth at the memory of the woman who had spoken those words. But had she not been right about me? I pulled my candle from my sleeve and lit it. With my eyes closed, I saw the abbess’s face; I felt the grip of her hand on mine. What if—what if I did propose myself? Surely the others would not elect me. And if I did it, if I put my name forward and the nuns did not choose me, then perhaps I would be released of this great burden.

  “Please, Saint Catherine, show me what to do.”

  ***

  As I crossed the courtyard toward the church the next morning, the door of the hospice opened, spilling the sounds of its children. So many of them there were. The healthy and the ill. Both the sound of mind and the dull of wits. Those no parent wanted, or those they could ill afford to keep. Eventually all of those who were scorned by the world passed through our gates.

  It was the greatest of mercies the abbess had never directed me to care for them. I could not have done it. Not when I still mourned the loss of my own precious child. As it was, I had not asked to tend Saint Catherine’s chapel either. When I had come to the abbey, once I had taken my vows, I had been the youngest of the nuns. Although tending the chapel was a more public task than the other nuns had been given, it was not at all important in this place where the sacred was far more valued than the secular. The other women sought positions that kept them within the walls of the cloister—librarian, scribe, lecturer, teacher, prioress, or sacrist. Although pilgrims may have been the lifeblood of our community, they were a poorly tolerated distraction from prayer, fasting, and contemplation. But it did not matter to me. I reveled in the hours I spent in the chapel-cavern.

  How easily we lie to ourselves. How quick we are to believe our own falsehoods. Those first few years in the abbey, after having spent my grief in a frenzy of novenas, I told myself my wounds were salved. I declared myself beset by grace. I renounced the world and everything in it, and I made myself into the image of the perfect nun. One who never complained, never questioned, never doubted the goodness of God’s great love. What were wars, what were famines, what was pestilence compared to the Almighty’s infinite wisdom and power?

  I think I had managed to convince even the abbess of my great faith when a message arrived that scuttled it all. The king was coming to the abbey that summer. And he was bringing his daughter, our daughter, the princess, with him.

  CHAPTER 2

  How can I describe my feelings? In an instant the lies I had told myself gave way to the torrent of emotions I had buried deep inside. I was not stricken with guilt, so much as I found myself adrift in memories of my life before the abbey. They overwhelmed me; they swept me along in their familiar currents. They lifted me up.

  They possessed me.

  Had I truly contented myself with so little, when once I had had so much?

  I tried to remind myself it had all been an illusion. That everything I once held dear had only been borrowed. That this life I now lived was one I had chosen, one that was more fitting to both my nature and my station.

  But there, I lied to myself once more. A royal abbey like this one, established by one of Charlemagne’s own sisters, would never have accepted the daughter of a simple clerk. Not without the dower the Queen Mother had sent along with me. But the very best and the worst of all was that everything within me longed to be once more at my beloved’s side.

  The raging war within me drove me to Saint Catherine. After the pilgrims had gone, I beseeched her, I pleaded with her, wept before her on my knees. I had given up all of my past, and done so gladly. Why did it have to follow me here?

  Please, you who see and know and care, take this cross from me.

  Why could my mind not cling to the thought of God?

  Why, after all these years, could I not imagine seeing Charles without my heart growing faint within me? And why should the pain still cut like a knife through the cold, dark void that had once been my heart?

  God must have known how hard I strove to be good and to do penance for all of my wickedness. Is this what sin did? It laid an egg in the soul, which hatched and birthed a thousand miseries. I would have given my life not to have to remember any of it…all of it. Except for one thing.

  Except for my daughter.

  At the abbess’s behest, I helped ready the chapel for their visit. And then the abbess appointed me to receive them there. For the first
and only time, I begged to be released from my task.

  The abbess had only looked at me in that wise, still way she had. “Why now?”

  “I will do anything. I will even work in the hospice or the kitchens, if you will only release me from my work in the chapel.”

  “This I have tried to do many times since you first came here. But I must ask you again. Why now?”

  I did not wish to answer.

  She inclined her head as she considered me. “We have novitiates, to be sure, but I feel they are not yet to be trusted with a guest so important. The stuff of the world still clings to their souls. I fear they may develop too much reverence in their earthly king, and so forget their heavenly one.”

  But neither would I be able to resist so great a temptation. If truth be told, I could not even say my spirit was willing, though I could vouch—over and over again—that my flesh was very weak. “Please, Reverend Mother, do not make me welcome them.” My hands were clasped in front of me, my knuckles gone white from the effort of hoping, praying, imploring she would grant my request.

  “Do you remember why you told me you wanted to take your vows?”

  I remembered. How long ago that was. How young I had been then.

  “You told me you had lost your way in the world and that you wished to serve God as best as you could.”

  I had. I was. And still it had not helped. The best I could do was so very little, so very rude and mean. There was nothing I could offer Our Lord that was not already half-spoilt, used, and worn. “I am not worthy of the honor. I do not deserve it.” Indeed, I had forfeited my right to it long ago in lands far away from here.

  “They wish to make a pilgrimage to Saint Catherine. Why should they not be served by the nun who tends the altar?”

  How many years I had spent trying to forget my old life; how many years I had prayed to be delivered from those memories. And now their coming threatened to undo all the work I had done. “If I had wanted to be part of the world, then I would have stayed there. Please do not force me back into it.”

  “I hardly think greeting a pilgrim could be called forcing you back into the world, and the princess has the right to visit the abbey as often as she chooses. It’s part of her dower.”

  I raised my head, heart stuttering in alarm. “Her dower!”

  “Does this distress you?”

  I could not trust myself to speak, only clasped my hands tighter, watching my fingernails grow purple from the strain.

  “Why should this affect you so?”

  “Because she is mine.”

  The abbess shook her head, as if I had delivered some glancing blow. “Yours?” She said it as if unfamiliar with the word.

  “The princess is my daughter.” I had kept that knowledge from everyone in the abbey. But now that I had claimed my past, now that the abbess was looking upon me with such kindness, such compassion, I wondered why I had not said it to her long before. Where there had been panic and shame just a moment before, great relief had come to take its place. And…a ridiculous joy.

  “All the more reason then to see her.”

  “But—”

  “I command it.”

  “What would—how will—whatever will I say to her?” Now, after all of these long, lonely, desolate years?

  “The fact that you have no wish to see her shows me that indeed you must.”

  There, the abbess was mistaken. I had every wish; all of my wishes, in fact, had always been to claim my daughter, to see the princess, if only for the briefest of moments. It was for that very reason I knew I should not.

  But the abbess’s command was as good as God’s. Though His eyes were continually on us, it was the abbess’s gaze we could see. I knew there was no purpose in beseeching her any longer. And so, with fear and trembling, I rose and kissed her hand.

  ***

  And so it was, despite my many prayers, my growing trepidation, and the elation of my shameful heart, that the king and the princess came to visit the abbey.

  The people of the village abandoned themselves to the excitement of the occasion and to the preparations. There were fences to be mended, roofs to be thatched, and the road to be repaired. A ripple of anticipation even filtered into the abbey to diffuse itself among the sisters in the refectory as we ate, and the chapterhouse as we met. There was a notable shifting about during the offices, as well as a flurry of whispered conversations. And finally, the polishing of the bell atop the church and the exceptional gift of new black tunics for us all.

  Surely, I was the only soul who viewed the coming of the royal party with dread. As others counted the days with growing excitement, I marked off the hours as one condemned. And then, at the end, I too gave myself over to pride and vanity, giving the lamps an extra polish and fishing the blackened stubs of cut wicks from the depths of the lamps. Saint Catherine must not suffer a loss in esteem for my sake.

  ***

  In the end, it was just as I expected and exactly as I had feared: I knew her.

  Her honeyed hair; her bright blue eyes and finely arched brows; the chin that tipped so slightly forward: all of her was familiar.

  The moment the girl crossed the threshold of the church, that sharp pain of separation stabbed at my breast, threatening to rend my heart in two. Though I knew her, the best I could say about myself and all of my actions in the years that had followed her birth is that she did not know me.

  I clasped my hands, bowing my head as her maids left her. I stood there at the entrance to the chapel, heart thundering in my ears as she made her confession and partook in Holy Communion. But as she reached my stone-walled haven, I heard her steps falter. And then, they stopped altogether.

  I looked up to find her staring at the chapel as if in wonder, light glancing off her cheeks and reflecting from her eyes. And then, her gaze fell upon me.

  Reminding myself she did not know me, I clenched my jaw in an effort to keep myself from speaking. I hid my hands within the folds of my robe to prevent my reaching for her.

  Her gaze left my face to look around once more, and it came to rest upon the altar. But then her wonderment turned to dismay. She seemed to shrink from Saint Catherine, from that beloved saint I continually implored on her behalf. She took a step backward.

  No—do not leave me!

  I walked toward her, hand outstretched. “You must place your gift there.” I gestured with open palm toward the pile of gifts that had grown throughout that long day.

  Her eyes had blinked wide. “I do not have one.” Her gaze, gone dark and troubled, met mine.

  She did not have a gift? I could assist her in kneeling, I could say for her the prayer, but if she did not have a gift, there was nothing I could do to help.

  Her mouth suddenly bent into a smile. “I know!” She put a hand to her hair, which had been plaited with ribands and bound at the end with gold tips. “Will you help me loose them?”

  I did not deserve for one moment to touch that glorious creature, but how could I resist her plea? As she stood before me, I pulled the tips from her plaits with trembling hands. Such exquisite torture. I gave them to her and then let my hands linger in her silken tresses, pulling my fingers through the length of them, unknotting the ribands and smoothing her hair across her shoulders.

  “Will those do?”

  Oh! How I wanted to press my lips to her forehead and smooth away the care that creased her brow. I only nodded, gesturing toward the pile. Then I clasped my hands together in an entreaty. Please help me, Saint Catherine. I must not reveal myself. Not now. Not after all these years. Just a few more precious, miserable hours. Just the span of one long, sleepless night, and then they would be gone.

  The girl—my girl—had placed her gift in the chest and now, once more, she was looking to me for guidance.

  For one who had just days before despaired of speech, I found of
a sudden that I had much to tell her. Do not do as I have done. Value your virtue above your life. Do not let well-spoken words bewitch you. And yet, if I could have said them, and if I could truly have believed and acted upon them, it would have meant the absence of one whose presence I had longed for my entire life. How our sins do so beset us. And hobble us. And bind us. In the end, I found just one word to say. “Kneel.”

  She knelt.

  And then—bless heaven!—I found more. “Do you know the prayer?”

  She nodded and bent her head to pray it as I added my own silent words to her pleas.

  So big she had grown. Had I truly thought she would remain forever an infant? I reached out my hand. Did I dare? It trembled as I set it upon her head. I could not bless her as a priest would, but would it be too great a sin to bless her as a mother might? “Bless you, child.” May God bless you and bless you and never stop blessing you.

  Keep her. Help her. Guide her. Protect her. Save her. Oh, beloved Saint Catherine, if you would do for her anything at all, please…save her from me. I would have lit a thousand candles or cast a hundred jewels before the altar; I would have given everything I had to ensure my prayers might be answered.

  The girl clutched at my sleeve. “May I?” She was looking at the reliquary. “May I kiss it?”

  “Yes.” My dear, sweet, beloved child.

  She leaned forward and kissed the casket.

  And then I did something I had never done before. Something I ought never to have done at all. But I wanted to give her something: something special, something she could treasure, something that could come from no one but me. After making certain no one was looking, I touched the reliquary myself, placing a steadying hand to its side, and then—God forgive me—I lifted the lid.

  We stood there, both of us, shoulder to shoulder as we looked inside.

  I tipped the golden casket so the glimmering candles’ light could reach the depths of the bottom. But there was nothing inside save a mounded pile of dark, granular dirt.