A nun, her wimple damp with sweat, passed us, carrying heavy buckets of milk. Bobby took them from her without asking.
She asked him to leave them with the sister by the stairs and added, “If you’re looking for Sister Raymond, go on up, top floor.”
There was a formal set of stairs and a back way. Pie pushed us to go up the wide staircase. The second floor of the mansion had been given over to the Jesuits, whose building had burned in the quake. In the front rooms, people were kneeling, receiving blessings by a priest. He touched their heads and murmured a prayer softly and moved on to the next, while in a far corner, a curtain had been strung on a rope, behind which confessions were being heard.
A priest asked us, “Are you here to make your confession?”
“Oh, no,” I blurted. “We have nothing to— No,” I said firmly.
Behind me, Bobby chuckled.
“Stop that,” I said, but the way he was looking at me, full of mischief, we were surely guilty, perhaps Bobby and me most of all.
The next two floors were devoted to the sick. There beds had been put in rows, many beds, with only a few nuns to care for the lot. The top floor was devoted to the nuns and orphans.
Pie was keen to find Eugenie. “This way,” she said, and led us to the back and up a narrow set of stairs, to the attic, the final floor, where the sisters had to make do, post-quake, by arranging their thin pallets in neat rows, head to foot, with only a few inches between them.
When Pie spotted Eugenie, surrounded by a flock of children, she squealed with delight and skipped across the pallets to greet her friend.
“There she goes,” I said to no one, but Bobby heard me and said, “It’ll be good for her to get outside herself.” He said it without any edge, just plain, as if Pie were an animal, like the rest of us, and needed someone to show her which way to go.
Sister Raymond was just gathering herself. She adjusted her wimple as she marched toward us, robustly stomping on the pallets in her heavy black boots. At school, she taught us grammar and history, though once Sister Raymond confessed that if she hadn’t been called to God, she would have liked to be a farmer. Here she was in charge of cooking for five hundred souls, two meals a day.
Sister Raymond lit at the sight of Bobby. “Vera, have you brought us an extra pair of hands?”
“Sorry, Sister,” Bobby said, and he explained that we were expected shortly at the Ladies’ Protection—to help with those children.
“Well, good on you, lad,” the sister said. “And Vera? You’re helping there too?” The sister didn’t bother to hide her amazement that I would have molted into a Good Samaritan.
“Yes, Sister, I’ve been attending to the sick and downtrodden,” I said, owing it wasn’t a lie. “We all have to do our part.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear you’re using your smarts for good,” she agreed. “I always hoped you would.”
With that we left Pie and Eugenie in a state of what I can only describe as ecstatic servitude. They were joyously sorting donated clothes—rags, really—making a game out of it to occupy the children: a pile here for socks and another for shirts and another for trousers.
Bobby took my hand and led me down the servants’ stairs of the once-grand house. We raced past the floors of wounded, to a large back room on the second floor that was occupied by the priests. Bobby caught a flash of something and said, “Whoa, horse.” He stopped so suddenly, I nearly flew past him. But Bobby pulled me back, and up several steps, and from there I could see what caught his eye.
The room looked like a dragon’s lair. Bobby pumped my hand, if only to direct me to the next marvel and the next, the piles of gold bars there, jewels over there, paintings and silverware bundled in haste.
“If you’re here to drop your valuables,” a priest said—it took us a moment to realize he was talking to us. He was seated at a small desk not a foot from where we stood. “Sign a card,” he directed, and he placed one on the edge of the desk with a pencil beside it. Then he gathered some papers and walked into the next room.
Leaving us alone with all that loot. There were silver candelabras and pitchers, and cases and clocks, and money wrapped in newspapers or tied with string, and jewelry in velvet bags; there were oil paintings in heavy gilt frames stacked along the walls or leaning haphazardly against the legs of chairs. There were swords of various sizes, bejeweled and plain. Yes, a dragon’s lair, or how I’d imagine the stash might look inside an Egyptian tomb. All within easy reach.
Bobby couldn’t stop squeezing my hand.
“What the hell?” he whispered.
I thought of that first day of the quake and how folks had hauled the valuables from their broken houses and stacked them in piles at the curb. And I remembered Mrs. Sugarman’s tears when someone made off with her silver. With the banks burned, folks who’d lost their houses had naturally turned to the clergy to safeguard their money and valuables.
“Come on, Bobby,” I whispered. “Bobby?” I tugged on his hand.
“Wait,” he said. I understood the orphan in him wanting to feast a little longer on the sight of all those riches. I did too.
“Bobby, please,” I urged, pulling him along.
When at last we reached the buggy, he spoke harshly to me, his face and ears crimson with insult. “Admit it. You didn’t trust me back there, did you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You thought I was
