Chapter 6 #2
The nymph nodded knowingly, the whistle dipping in unison with his nods, and he beckoned a hand to bid them follow. He heaved his barrow and proceeded up the path.
“Your message said the convent is going down, Todd,” Mrs. Chrysler said. “Is this what you meant? The convent is actually sinking?”
The whistle rose, then drooped again.
“Yes? It is sinking? But that’s not all?”
An affirmative loopity-loop.
The path was comfortably wide for only the chatting pair, so Katherine and Ruben walked behind. The cats trotted merrily at Todd’s heels.
“That lad’s a tree nymph, isn’t he?” Ruben asked quietly, out of earshot. He was walking quite close to her, and his hand brushed hers.
“Yes,” she whispered back.
“How do you know him?”
“He used to bounce at a tavern we frequented. Quite a while ago now.”
“Really? Around here?”
“No. Back… home.”
Ruben nodded. He twiddled the sleeves of his robe and twitched his scarf into a more flattering position. “I’ve never met a tree nymph before,” he said. “I wish I were better dressed for the occasion.”
Katherine nodded slowly.
“Do you think he would have let me in?” he asked hopefully.
“Where?”
“The tavern, where he bounced.”
Katherine regarded him a beat. “Yes, I think he’s probably seen a lot worse than you.”
Ruben grinned happily and nudged her. Katherine smiled.
After a while, they reached the towering front door of the convent, but it was blocked by a small pile of sandbags. Todd led them to a more modest side entrance, which, although smaller, was at least dry, poised at the top of a set of stone steps. It looked as if it used to be a window.
“Are they now?” Mrs. Chrysler was saying, still engaged in conversation with Todd.
“What’s that?” Ruben asked, just as he and Katherine arrived beside them.
“Apparently the building has stopped sinking for now,” she reported, “but evidently that could change any day, and no one’s taking any chances with water getting in under the door.”
“Aha. Those steps’ll be a problem, though.” Ruben indicated the tall staircase to the second-story entrance. Todd’s whistle bobbed encouragingly as he pointed nearby. “Oh, a ramp? Yes, I see it now. That is helpful. Thank you, sir.”
A makeshift bell pull had been rigged beside the staircase, and Todd set down his wheelbarrow to ring it.
Mrs. Chrysler cleared her throat and gave Katherine a reassuring nod, while at the same time not-so-subtly shuffling just slightly behind her.
Ember sat respectfully next to Tilly, while Mr. Scruffles ambled boldly up the steps.
Ruben fidgeted with his scarf at Katherine’s elbow.
The sound of the door/window bell resonated in the still air, followed by a chiming from companion bells resounding in the depths of the large building. The group waited nervously until the last tone had died away, then waited some more. They began to exchange glances.
“The nuns are at home, aren’t they, Todd?” Mrs. Chrysler said.
His slide indicated, “Oh, yes.”
“Is anyone we would have known forty years ago still around, Todd?” Katherine asked.
This time, he merely nodded and sprouted a couple of blossoms from his fingertips, which he then gave solemnly to his friends, in a gesture Katherine wasn’t sure how to interpret.
Mr. Scruffles ambled over to the bell pull and began to swat it. His game was abruptly ended by the explosive unshuttering of the window. Fully framed in the dark entrance was a figure dressed in dazzling white, her brilliance nearly blinding.
Mrs. Chrysler, Katherine, and Ruben shielded their eyes. Mr. Scruffles dove off the staircase.
“So,” the figure finally said, her voice sharp and thrumming like the slam of a sepulcher door. “You’ve returned.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Katherine tried to let her eyes adjust, drawing her hand slowly away from her face. When she finally saw the woman clearly, her jaw nearly hit the ground. Good gods… It was her.
“May I ask… why?” Sister Agatha’s resonant voice echoed across the marsh.
This time Mrs. Chrysler answered, her eyes locked with the nun’s, but her head bowed respectfully. “Todd sent us a message that the convent was in trouble, ma’am. And we’ve come, because we feel bad about the way we left things.”
“A mess?” the nun supplied archly.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“We have suffered a considerable amount of flooding and subsidence,” Sister Agatha said, as if that fact hadn’t been obvious. “And have had to adapt. At considerable expense.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And we can no longer accommodate all of the people who have been in our care.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Eagle Heights is an abomination.”
“Yes, ma’am. We’ve seen it.”
“Have you?” Sister Agatha leaned forward slightly. She didn’t look a day over a hundred and two. But that’s how old she’d looked when they met her. How old was this woman? “And?” the nun was asking now, having received no response to her last comment.
Katherine wasn’t sure what to say. “And what?” was certainly out of the question.
“And it was very disheartening to see,” Mrs. Chrysler finally managed.
“Hmph.” Sister Agatha straightened.
“We want to help,” Katherine said. “We know it’s been… a long time since we were last here. But we’re back now, and we want to help.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. We’ve seen a number of old folks get shafted lately, and it isn’t right.”
“No, it isn’t,” Ruben said dolefully. The group turned to him now, and he seemed shocked that anyone had heard him. As the scorching gaze of Sister Agatha landed on him, he visibly shrank back.
“Who is this person?”
Katherine coughed, but there was no lying to Sister Agatha. “This is Ruben Hoode, ma’am.”
Soft whisperings of dried leaves, rustling in the breeze, filled the agonizing pause that followed. She stared at him, hard. “Never heard of you.”
Although his knees shook, and the light wind fluttered his wispy garments, Ruben was visibly sweating.
He suddenly began to speak, his features contorted in wretched agony: “I’m-the-one-who-blew-up-the-safe-and-made-all-the-noise-and-it’s-all-my-fault-but-I-didn’t-know-and-I’d-swear-it-was-the-Great-Burnt-Umberland-Heist-Off-but-they’ve-told-me-now-it-wasn’t-and-I’m-really-sorry-and-there’s-a-big-bald-spot-on-the-back-of-my-head,” he blurted miserably.
Sister Agatha continued to stare. Mrs. Chrysler, Katherine, and Ruben looked at each other, in various states of apparent shock.
“Well…” the nun finally said. “You look awful.” She turned on her heel and disappeared inside, her wimple flowing along behind her. From farther within, her voice carried out to them: “You’d better come in.”
Tin-Whistle Todd gave them all an encouraging whistle and another flower, and Mrs. Chrysler and Katherine bid him goodbye. He trundled away down the side of the building with his wheelbarrow.
Well, that was interesting, Ember said.
’Bout to get even more so, I’d say, said Mr. Scruffles. He bounded back up the mountainous steps and his companions moved to follow.
“I’m taking the ramp, if it’s all the same to you,” Ruben said weakly. Mrs. Chrysler slowed her advance and doubled back.
“Well, just to make sure you don’t feel lonely on it,” she said.
Katherine looked for a handrail on the staircase but found none. “I’ll make sure you two get up all right,” she added, gripping the ramp’s sturdy banister and following them up.
Ember leapt up the stairs after Mr. Scruffles and met the humans at the top, while Tilly trailed behind Katherine’s skirt.
When they’d all arrived at the entrance to the convent, they stepped lightly over the threshold/windowsill and closed the door behind them.
It was cool and airy inside, and what at first had seemed to be a dark interior was revealed as a large, gently lit hall illuminated by stained-glass skylights.
Away to their left, rows of comfortable-looking benches encircled a life-sized marble statue of a meditative Saint Percival, who seemed to glow softly in the colored light from the stained glass.
But alongside the entrance, in an orderly line, sat a mismatched set of large, unlatched trunks.
“What are these?” Ruben asked, looking them over.
Sister Agatha was already several paces ahead.
She stopped and pointed at their feet. “Shoes,” she directed, and they obediently removed their footwear and left it all there on the mat by the door.
She also sharply eyed the cats, who wiped their paws.
Sister Agatha nodded approvingly, then looked up at Ruben to answer his question: “They are our guests’ most treasured keepsakes, in case of the need for an evacuation. ”
“Oh dear, is it really that bad?” Mrs. Chrysler regarded the trunks with a frown.
Sister Agatha stared at Mrs. Chrysler a beat, then swept on.
The small group followed in her wake. The flagstone floor was flawlessly smooth, spotlessly clean, and oddly warm.
They shambled in stockinged feet after her, and the nun seemed to glide as she strode purposefully across the large hall and led them down a wide passage.
“Much has changed since we saw you last,” she was saying now.
Her crisply starched robe was cinched at the waist by a string of dark wooden beads, which bobbed as she walked.
Mr. Scruffles darted forward with his ears back and prepared to swat.
The nun’s hand blurred in one deft movement, and his paw stopped mid-bat. Mr. Scruffles sat rubbing his nose.
Golly, he muttered.
“Saint Percival’s Home for Moribund Old People has tried to carry on its ministry,” she continued. “Although we have beds for far fewer guests now. And growing fewer by the year.”
“‘Home for Moribund Old People’?” Ruben repeated.
“They are moribund when they arrive,” Sister Agatha replied levelly, without turning around, “but not thereafter.”
“Seems to be much the same over at the ‘Active Adult Community,’” Mrs. Chrysler said. “Active maybe when you get there, but not so much once you get in the door.”
“I have heard,” Sister Agatha said, “Eagle Heights does things… differently than we do.”