fell from heaven, their wings burst into flames.”
“Så,” said the Mother Superior, “it is time to take Ursula in charge.”
Birgit prayed for humility and for strength. She knew she was to be disciplined by having to join in the disciplining of her favorite, and she could say nothing aloud just yet.
“She should be isolated from the other children,” suggested Sister Casilde.
“She should have bread and water for a week,” countered Sister Balbina.
“Bread and water and isolation,” said Sister Saint Bernard, sending up a quiet prayer of thanks that the year’s vintage of elderberry jam and wine had not been threatened.
The nuns discussed this punishment eagerly, piling on mortifications that they themselves might have embraced in a more idealistic, ascetic order. One sister, who had been in the convent so long that she’d gone deaf with the silence, even shouted that Famke should wear a hair shirt.
“Sisters!” Birgit bit her lower lip, shocked at her own forcefulness. What could she, so largely responsible for the disaster, say to them? “Famke is just a child—”
“Her first communion is not far away.” Sister Casilde offered the sacrament as a threat.
“Punishment will do no good,” Birgit said with the authority of the one who knew Famke best. “She is wild, yes, but we must tame her gently. Violent restrictions will only make her rebel—and she only dropped a spoon, after all.”
The other nuns gaped.
“Our order does not advocate violence,” Mother Superior told Birgit on a note of reproof. “No one suggests we cane her, for example.”
“It would not be a bad idea,” Sister Saint Bernard said under her breath.
Birgit pressed her palms against the table. “I am to blame,” she declared loudly. “I should have been watching her. So I will do penance, say extra prayers . . . I will wear a hair shirt, if that is required.”
The nuns stared. They had never seen such passion in Birgit before. Nearly all felt a little ashamed; each asked herself, Would I wear a hair shirt for someone else’s sin?
Mother Superior relented. “And Ursula will pray with you. No hair shirt will be necessary.”
While Birgit prayed, the good sisters plotted a course of action. One after another, they lectured Famke about minding the clock and always, always keeping her eye on a burning fire. Sister Fina instructed her to sleep on a wooden board, Sister Agnes to cross her ankles, never her knees, when seated. Mother Superior had her read stories of the saints’ lives to the younger children—endless tales of patience and suffering, including the story of Famke’s own namesake, Saint Ursula, who had fled pagan England with an army of eleven thousand virgins only to be mown down in Germany.
Sister Saint Bernard swore her to secrecy and gave her five good whacks across the bottom with a cane.
Knowing this was mercy, and feeling very bad over what had happened to Viggo, Famke obeyed them all. She adapted easily to the manners of a good girl—but they suspected she would as naturally have taken on those of a strumpet. So she was forced to bide her time, peeking through the prayerful fan of her fingers with a nun on each side.
“Why do you twitch so?” she whispered, sitting next to Birgit; but the nun said nothing, having resolved, despite Mother Superior’s injunction, to wear the hair shirt in silent mortification for three full months.
At the end of that time, Viggo’s hand had scabbed over nicely and the women hoped he would one day be able to use it again to lift a pitchfork or curry a horse. A bumper crop of elderberries allowed Sister Saint Bernard to forgive both Birgit and Famke, and Famke forgave herself. She began begging to help with tasks that would bring her to the other side of the orphanage.
But, bolstered by her own penance, Birgit held firm. She kept the girl with her during exercise periods, and she herself plastered every chink she could find in the dividing wall.
“You will understand one day,” she said as she brushed Famke’s mass of red curls before bed, “and you will be grateful.”
“But in the outside world,” Famke pointed out, “there will be nothing to save me. Shouldn’t I learn the worst of it now, while I still have you with me?”
Birgit gave a few vigorous strokes to a particularly stubborn tangle. “Perhaps you won’t need to join the outside world. Perhaps you’ll stay here . . .”
“What, with you?” Famke turned and gave her a big hug, slightly frightening to Birgit in its intensity. “I would love to stay with you. But I’ll never be a sister. Instead, maybe I’ll take you with me when I go into service.”
Birgit picked up the brush again, disciplining herself to make firm, even strokes, and then to braid the girl’s hair tight. “What would I do in the outside?” she asked.
Since it was impossible to reach the boys’ side of the building, Famke turned her attention to the part she herself occupied. At night in the dormitory, she lay awake listening to the other girls breathe, feeling the heat radiate from their bodies. She wondered why she had never noticed that Anna had a loud, tickling laugh or that Mathilde’s hair was long and bright. Mathilde also had large and capable hands that nonetheless managed to look graceful as they scrubbed out a pot or picked up a stitch dropped in Famke’s knitting. Mathilde smelled good, like bread and soap. She began to interest Famke very much.
She was thirteen, a year older than Famke and a suitable model for the younger girl’s reformation. The nuns looked on their friendship with relief and, as Famke took on some of Mathilde’s habits, with complacency. They saw that she washed herself frequently, volunteered to help deworm the littlest orphans, and even rose early, with Mathilde, to make breakfast.
Famke’s hair curled in the steam as she stirred the enormous kettle of havremels grød, the oatmeal gruel they ate each morning. Through the dully fragrant cloud of it, her eyes kept seeking Mathilde. She knew no love poetry, except what was found in the Bible, but she thought there must be some nice way to describe the curve of Mathilde’s back as she bent over the bread board, or the graceful undulations of her hands as she kneaded the dough.
“You look like a fish,” Famke blurted out, and Mathilde’s eyes got wide. Then, out of embarrassment, Famke laughed; and Mathilde, with an affronted air, turned wordlessly back to her work.
In the end, won over or perhaps worn down by that persistent blue stare, it was Mathilde who approached Famke over the bubbling pots, who kissed her and set her heart pounding, who held Famke close and hard and gave her a taste of that delicious, elusive shimmering feeling.
“You are my little fish,” Mathilde whispered into the red curls. Famke felt glad all over.
That night she was awakened with a tickle in one tightly curled ear. “Let me in,” Mathilde whispered, tugging at the blankets that the nuns always snugged like winding-sheets around the children’s bodies.
Famke wiggled herself free, emerging from her cocoon warm and white and fragrant. Mathilde slid in beside her and, with little ado, put her supple lips up to Famke’s, her hand on the region Down There.
Famke jumped. “Fanden,” she swore, daring to speak the name of the devil for the first time ever.
“It’s all right,” Mathilde whispered, touching Famke through her nightgown. “You see, there is a little cottage Down There, with a little roof of thatch. A little fire burns on the hearth.”
If there was indeed a fire, it was drawing water to it; but the water did not quench, only made the fire hotter. Famke remembered the day of soap and flames: the smell of ashes and fat, the heat of Viggo’s hand under her lips.
Mathilde’s finger moved.