The Gargoyle

allowing your presence to alter my routine-which was exactly what the prioress was trying to prevent. So there it was. The only way to keep you from influencing my life was to sneak a visit to the house where you were staying.

Father Sunder answered the door and nodded to the corner where you were sitting. “This one,” he said, “has spent the week trying not to mention your name.”

There was more color in your cheeks than when I’d last seen you, and when you stood I could see that your upper body swung more freely. Soon you’d be well enough to leave, I thought, and in that instant, my heart almost stopped. I turned to Father Sunder and asked in a panic, “What am I going to do?”

He looked over at Brother Heinrich and something passed between them, a look or a memory, before he turned his attention to me and said with that sweet voice, “Sister Marianne. You’re going to leave Engelthal, of course.”

For as long as I could remember, Father Sunder had railed on about his regrets for the sins of his youth, and now he was advising me to flee the monastery to enter that same sinful world? It was the last thing that I ever would have expected so I whispered, too low for you to hear, “Why?”

“I was with Mother Christina the night you were found at the gates,” Father Sunder answered in a return whisper, “and I argued that your appearance was a sign from God. I believed then that the Lord had special plans for you, and I still do. But I am no longer convinced these plans are meant to be fulfilled at Engelthal.”

It was not enough, and I needed him to explain further.

“When this man arrived, again I was present for the event. I saw his condition, and he should have died-yet he did not. None can doubt you are the reason. I cannot help but think your journey with him is not finished, and that it is a journey upon which the Lord smiles.”

“But to leave my vows is a sin.”

“I do not believe,” whispered Father Sunder, “in any God that considers love to be a sin.”

Those words were exactly the permission I needed, and I didn’t even have the words to thank him. I just threw my arms around him and squeezed, so tightly that he had to plead with me to loosen my grip.

I returned to my cell and gathered my few possessions. A couple of robes, my best footwear, and Paolo’s prayer book: I had nothing else worth taking. It was raining as I started back towards Father Sunder’s, through the garden. As was the custom for every nun walking along the cloister path, I recited the Miserere for the souls of the dead nuns buried below, but my thoughts of the future had me trembling with fear and anticipation. The rain was good, I thought, as if it had been sent to cleanse the monastery from me.

“You appear to have a bag packed, Sister Marianne.” It was the voice of Agletrudis. “Have you at least said goodbye to your champion, the prioress?”

It was an immaculate swipe. It didn’t matter to me what Agletrudis or Gertrud might think, but deep in my heart I felt that I was betraying Mother Christina. But what could I have said to her? I wouldn’t have known how to deal with the hurt in her eyes. She had always believed in me, even when I had not, and she would never have anticipated my disloyalty.

I walked away from Agletrudis without answering, and she called out after me. “Don’t worry about Mother Christina. I’ll ensure that she never forgets you.”

I almost turned around to ask what she meant, but what good would that have done? So I kept walking. I knew that Agletrudis would not raise the alarm on my departure. It was in her best interests to let me go quietly and reassume her position as armarius-in-waiting.

By the time I reached Father Sunder’s house, I had banished Gertrud and Agletrudis from my mind. The face of Mother Christina, however, still lingered. Brother Heinrich packed some food and even though Father Sunder was nearing seventy, he insisted on walking part of the way with us. I protested because of the rain, but he simply pulled on his pluviale and came anyway.

As we walked, Father Sunder in the middle, my thoughts were not upon what lay ahead but what I was leaving behind. Despite Father Sunder’s kind words, there could be no arguing against the simple and damning fact that it was a sin for me to break my holy covenant. I tried to rationalize it and, after great effort, even devised an argument that had some semblance of sense.

Of all the Engelthal nuns, I was the only one who had not made the decision to enter the life. Even if they arrived as young girls, they had known a life outside the monastery walls; they had lived in the secular world and knew what they were forfeiting when they entered the sisterhood. I had never had that opportunity. So if I left Engelthal with you and came back later, the religious life would be worth more. Finally, it would be my choice rather than that of the parents who abandoned me at the gate: to learn if my destiny lay within the monastery, I had to leave it.

After we had walked about a league, I could tell you were becoming fatigued. It was understandable, as your injuries were considerable and you’d had only limited activity since your accident, but you were determined to show as little weakness as possible-whether to convince yourself that you would be fine or to convince me, I was unsure. It was Father Sunder who had to stop first, however, too tired to continue because of his advanced years. He grasped your arm and warned you to love me well, and then he pulled me to the side so that we could speak a moment in private.

He brought out a necklace that he had been carrying inside his pluviale, and pressed it into my hands. Its pendant was the arrowhead that had been removed from the copy of Inferno, and he said, “I have done what you asked, Sister Marianne, and blessed it.”

I started to thank him but he held up his hand. “I have something else for you.” He reached into his pluviale again and pulled out some papers. “Mother Christina is neither blind nor stupid. She didn’t think you’d actually leave, but she saw the possibility. She asked me to hold on to these, just in case.”

He handed me the two notes that my parents had left in my basket at the gates. There, in Latin and German, were the words that had come to Engelthal with me. A destined child, tenth-born of a good family, given as a gift to our Savior Jesus Christ and Engelthal monastery. Do with her as God pleases.

Only then did I break into the tears that I’d been fighting since I’d made my decision. In a fit of doubt, I asked Father Sunder if he truly believed I was making the correct choice.

“Marianne, my dearest child,” he said, “I believe that if you do not listen to your heart in this matter, you will regret it forever.”

XVI.

Given an afternoon of solitude while Marianne Engel was shopping for groceries, I decided to spend it with the Gnaden-vita. I was in the kitchen reading when I heard someone enter through the fortress’ front door, with footsteps that approximated those of a mother rhinoceros looking for its young.

“Marianne?” A woman’s voice fired off the syllables like a gun emptying three shells. When she appeared in the frame of the kitchen door, she pulled back noticeably at my appearance. “You’re him? Sweet Jesus! This is worse than I thought.”

Short, but Napoleon short; the kind of short that’s always pulling itself up by its bootstraps in an attempt to look taller. Fat, but water balloon fat; with flesh not flabby, but round like it’s looking for a place to explode. Age, fifties? Hard to tell, but probably. She didn’t have wrinkles; her face was too spherical. Cropped hair, too much rouge on her cheeks; a dark business suit with a white, broad-lapelled shirt poking out; well-polished shoes; hands on her hips. Her eyes were confrontational, as if she were daring me to pop her one on the chin. She said, “You’re a helluva mess.”

“Who are you?”

“Jack,” she answered. I was finally in the presence of the man I’d feared, only to find that she was a woman. But barely: Jack Meredith was more like the cartoon of a woman who wished that she were a man.

“Marianne’s agent, right?”

“You’re never gonna see one red cent of her money.” She one-handedly helped herself to a cup of coffee,