Resting my head in my hands, I took a deep breath and felt my pulse slow. Yes, I thought, the knowledge sudden and inexplicable, they had come for me. And they would be back.
It was beginning to snow when I set out up the dark road to the convent. A thin smattering of flakes whirled landward, settling in a downy film on the asphalt. The Tanes’ retrievers were inside for the night, and the only sound was the almost imagined hush of snow collecting on the dry leaves and deadfall in the dark woods. When I’d passed through the Tanes’ kitchen on my way out, the clock above the stove had read three-fifteen. I could only hope the inspector and the others had left for the night.
The abbey was still floodlit, the gray stone gleaming through the trees as I rounded the road’s last curve. I stopped for a minute, straining against the quiet. Something moved in the woods, something small, an animal turning in its dreams, an owl on the hunt. Up ahead a car door closed, the sound muffled by distance, sharpened by the cold.
I stepped off into the underbrush and continued upward, picking my way through the darkness till I emerged at the edge of the grounds. The crowd that had been there earlier was gone, but there was still one car in the large drive that didn’t belong to the convent. The motor was running, and I could see the orange coals of two cigarettes brightening and dimming through the windshield. An unlucky assignment on a night as cold as this.
Skirting the drive, I headed for the far end of the priory. I ducked through the woods, came around the back side of the building, and crossed the snow-covered yard toward the kitchen door. The chapel loomed behind me, the windows dark, the door slightly ajar. There was a dusting of snow on the threshold, like a sprinkling of confectioner’s sugar, the final delicate touch of the maker.
I had my keys out, but I didn’t need them. The door was unlocked and swung open at my touch. It was warm inside, the air heavy with the smell of yeast, of dough left too long. The lights from the yard shone in through the windows, bringing a sort of eerie false daylight to the inside of the priory. The loaves Heloise had set out the night before for their first rise had overrun their pans and were lying in shapeless mounds on the large wooden baking counter.
I headed through the kitchen, out into the dining room, and down the first-floor hallway to the stairwell and the upstairs quarters. Whoever the killers were, they’d gone through the priory, looking, it seemed, for something. The quarters had been turned inside out, the sisters’ meager possessions scattered roughly about. To me this seemed almost the worst of violations. There had not been much privacy at the abbey, so what little there was had been treated with reverence.
My own room lay at the far end of the hallway, a small but comfortable cell like all the others. The door was open, and the room’s few furnishings had been scoured. The desk drawers were ajar, the contents strewn across the floor: papers and books, old pantry inventories, letters from the U.S. consul, my Bible. My clothes had been dumped from the dresser and lay in a mound on the bed. The mattress lay askew on the narrow frame.
A tattered North Face rain jacket, ripped Levi’s, a black turtleneck sweater from Old Navy, and a muddy pair of Nike running shoes-these were all the possessions with which I arrived in the world. I carried no purse, no wallet, no money or passport. The only clue to the mystery of myself, the only hint at where I’d come from or where I was headed, was a worn slip of paper tucked in an inside pocket of my jacket, a dog-eared receipt for the Tangier-Algeciras ferry. It wasn’t much of a clue, but it was the only one I’d come with, and I’d kept it.
I picked up my Bible from the floor, then moved toward the window and peered down at the yard, the expanse of unblemished snow between the priory and the chapel. The two cops were on the other side of the building. I could chance a light. I flicked on the bedside lamp. Opening the book to the front cover, using the tip of my fingernail, I loosened the glue that held the lining in place and carefully peeled it back. There, taped securely to the inside of the cover, was the ferry ticket.
The ticket was printed in English and Spanish and Arabic. It was a one-way fare, used, the date marked as the thirtieth of October, just two days before I’d been shot and left for dead. Freeing the paper from its hiding place, I set the Bible down and held the ticket closer to the light. In the left-hand margin of the paper, in fading pencil, were five Arabic characters, sketched one above the other.
Sad. A’in. Ya. Ha. Kaf. And following the five letters, the number 21. One of the investigators assigned to my case, a young officer of Algerian descent, had translated for me, shaking his head when I’d asked what the writing meant. They’re just letters, Mademoiselle, he’d said with a shrug, an acronym perhaps. A thorough search of Moroccan companies and organizations had turned up no matches, no possible answers to this strange riddle, this single fragment of my past, and deep down I’d been happy to let it lie, relieved to tuck the ticket, and whatever dubious past it had carried me from, under the faded overleaf of the Bible. Now, though, it seemed that past had come on its own. Wherever I stayed would no longer be safe, for me or for those who sheltered me.
Folding the ticket, I slipped it into my pocket and started next door to Sister Theresa’s room. I needed a backpack, something more practical than the overnight bag I used for my trips to Lyon. On the top of Theresa’s wardrobe I found an old rucksack, the leather aged and worn to a dark patina. Hauling the bag down, I went back to my own room and gathered a couple of changes of clothes and essentials.
Theresa and some of the other sisters had taken a trip to the Holy Land earlier that fall, and there were a few souvenirs still in the pack: postcards of Bethlehem and Jerusalem, a half-used tube of Israeli toothpaste, a ticket stub from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In the sack’s little front pocket was Theresa’s passport. I took it out, along with the mementos, and set everything aside on my bed.
A passport, I thought, stuffing my own clothes into the rucksack. I would need one if I was going to leave the European Union, and a real name, something more official than the one the sisters had given me. I ran through the sisters in my mind. Theresa was too old by several decades to be anything near a match. Heloise was too short, and brown-eyed, as well. Sister Marie was close to me in age and build. Her eyes were blue, and if I dyed my hair blond I might just be able to fake it.
Hooking the rucksack over my shoulders, I turned the light off and headed into the hallway. Marie’s room was on the opposite side of the priory, and I had to search in semidarkness, but I finally found the passport in one of her desk drawers. Tucking it in my bag, I headed down to the kitchen and back out onto the snowy lawn.
It took me a moment to get my bearings. I stood for a second in the glare of the lights and watched my breath rise up and vanish. More than anything, I wanted to go back to the Tanes’ and crawl into bed next to Heloise. I wanted Magda reading the morning prayer while the older sisters slept and the younger of us struggled to keep our eyes open. And the feel of Heloise’s arm touching mine at the breadboard, the smells of flour and proofing yeast. I wanted to take back what had happened, as the snow had already reclaimed the last traces of the sisters’ passages across the yard: heel prints in the mud, grain scattered on the way to feed the chickens. If they had not found me that day, I told myself, they would still be alive.
Conscious of my footsteps in the new snow, I crossed the lawn toward the chapel. I drew a pack of wooden matches from a niche in the stone church wall, lit one of the votives, and said a quick prayer. Keep us safe, Lord. And keep them safe, Heloise and the thirty-four souls who had given me harbor for so long. Then, following what little remained of my own faint trail, I headed for the woods and the road beyond.