The Miracle Thief - Softcover

Chapter 1

Juliana

ROCHEMONT ABBEY

Such a wretched way to die.

I watched from my knees beside the abbess's bed, hands clasped before me, as she took a shuddering breath. Squeezing my eyes shut, I raised my hands to my brow, pretending to pray. But I could not do it; I had forgotten the words.

She could not die. I would not let her.

The abbess had been more of a mother than the woman who had raised me. Her heart had been more constant than the man who had once loved me. Was there nothing I could do to ease her pain?

Adjusting her counterpane, I shivered as an especially vicious draft stole in through the chamber's high windows and swirled its icy tendrils about my knees.

I felt the heavy weight of a hand upon my veiled head. "Daughter."

Looking up, I saw the abbess watching me. Grasping her hand, I kissed it. "Do not leave us."

A ghost of a smile curled her thin, cracked lips. "I do not think I have any say in the matter."

"What shall we do without you?" How would we go on? Who would lead us?

"Do not fear. God will provide."

"How?" The word escaped my lips before I could catch it. I had not meant to give voice to my unbelief. Surely now she would regret asking me to attend her. "Without you, I do not know how we will..."

"Take heart." She clasped my hand. "Without me, there will still be you."

"Who am I but the least of all the others?" I had come to this mountain-ringed abbey seeking sanctuary, and even after all the years I had spent here, I felt myself a stranger still.

"Trust God. Seize the chance to serve."

The chance to serve? Was I not already doing that very thing?

She released me from her grip, but left her fever-withered hand resting in mine. "Remember-" Her words left off as a spasm gripped her body.

I leaned closer.

After the seizure had passed, she lay back on her cushions, panting. "Speak truth. Stand for what is right." Her hand twisted in mine as her face contorted with pain.

Looking straight into my eyes, she spoke again. "Lead them."

"What?"

"Lead them. There is no one else." She clutched my hand with a strength that stole my breath. "You must do it."

If she did not relinquish my hand, I feared she might wrench it from my wrist. "I will."

"Promise."

"I promise." If only she would lie down and spare her strength.

"You promised."

"I did."

She searched my face for a moment, and then she smiled. After I had smoothed the counterpane around her shoulders, she closed her eyes, and she did not open them again. As she lay there, her breaths becoming more shallow and labored, I let her expire without doing the very thing she had made me promise. I did not tell her the truth: I did not intend to do as she had asked.

The abbess died along with the sun as the bell was tolling vespers. She went quietly, exhaling her last breath with a lingering sigh.

We mourned her for the required number of days. And then, secretly, I mourned her still. A message was sent to the bishop, informing him of her death. Though we would elect the new abbess, it was he who would induct her. And so we gathered in the chapterhouse one forenoon, after the day's meal, to do that very thing.

As I looked up and down the benches that lined the walls, I did so with a growing unease. I could not see a clear candidate to lead us.

Of the several dozen sisters in the abbey, Sister Rotrude was the oldest and had been at the abbey the longest, but she seemed troubled in her spirit of late. I used to think her full of the joy of the Lord, since she had always been prone to laughter, but she had taken up the habit of laughing during meals at nothing any of us could see or hear. Her warbling, tuneless voice could often be heard singing during prayers, and increasingly, she asked after sisters who had already departed to receive their eternal reward.

Sister Berta should, perhaps, have been the obvious choice. She was sound of mind and body, and none could doubt neither her capacity nor her willingness for hard work. But she lacked a measure of joy. The tips of her mouth pointed toward her chin, and one could not be long in her proximity before being informed of everything that had been done wrong in the past and all that would most certainly be found wanting in the future. Even a dove of peace would soon find himself shooed away for want of a proper place to perch. Were Sister Berta appointed abbess, I feared the abbey would soon become a dull and dreary place.

Sister Amicia? Perhaps not. If Sister Berta dwelt too often on what was wrong, Sister Amicia trusted overmuch in Providence. To hear her speak, God would provide whether the workers tilled our fields or not. If she were to be believed, Providence might be depended upon to cook our food and feed us our meal as well. Although she never lacked a cheerful word, and a smile was constant upon her face, I could not see the abbey long surviving under her leadership, knowing from regrettable experience that great hopes came to nothing if they were not first founded upon practicalities.

Though in generations past, the nuns of Rochemont had been well and truly cloistered, hidden away from the world, we could afford the luxury of quiet contemplation no longer. Even at these perilous heights where we clung to our meager existence, pestilence and famine, cruel winters and wars, had long since thinned the ranks of our tenants. If there was work to be done, we too had to take part in the doing of it. The tasks, which in the abbey's earliest years might have fallen to lay workers, we had taken upon ourselves. And so, I nearly overlooked Sister Sybilla entirely. It was not difficult to do, since she spent her waking hours at the hospice. Rarely speaking, rarely even moving among us, she had never done anything wrong that I had noticed, but I did not know that she could be counted on to encourage any of us toward righteousness either.

Sister Clothild, the abbess's prioress, was kind of heart and beloved by all. A gentler soul I had never met, but for all her generosity of spirit, and despite the winsome way she had with the chaplain, the bailiff, and the household staff, she had never learned to read or write.

Sister Isolda was our librarian. Within her realm and with her long face and sharp features, she had always been quite fearsome. But books did not an abbey make. I had never seen her out among the pilgrims who made their way to Saint Catherine's chapel. I did not think she had ever labored in the hospice or in the kitchens. She knew Latin, both written and spoken, but I could not say she knew anything else.

The other nuns being too young for the position, that left me.

I considered myself as the others might have. There was not very much to note. I had made such a habit of attaching myself to Saint Catherine's relic, to spending my time interceding for the iniquities of my past, that any of the sisters might have taken me for a misanthropist. That I tended to my duties with great care was undeniable. That I greeted each pilgrim with God's peace was, perhaps, commendable. For eighteen years I had been resident at the abbey, and in all that time, to my great shame, I had served no one's interests but my own. Even the tending of the chapel was a selfish pursuit, so I did not think any of the sisters would hold me in greater esteem than Sister Clothild or Sister Isolda. Although I could write and I could read, none sitting here knew that, and it was too late to make it known now.

It was true I had made a promise to the abbess, but had she meant her words?

And if she had, would I not be remiss if I did not let the others know? Should I propose myself as a candidate?

My gaze swept our number again.

Though my sisters' failings be great, was not God greater still? And why could His strength not be evidenced through their weaknesses?

As I had told the abbess, I was least among them. I knew some of my sisters were not virgins, but at least they had the sanction of wedding vows. When they had joined their flesh to another's, they had been given the blessing of the Church. Widowed now, some still had the comfort of their children's love.

Not I.

Not I, who had abandoned a daughter. Not I, who had indulged in the sins of the flesh.

Lead them.

No. How could I do it when my heart still yearned for another, different, more temporal groom? I had pledged myself to Christ, but I had done so as a last resort, with a faithless heart and suspect intentions.

Surely if I were to be the new abbess, then the sisters would come to that decision on their own, prompted by the spirit of God, without my interference. Was that not the way it should be?

If we were to pray to discern the will of God, then I was content to let His will be discerned.

Sister Clothild stood. "Are there any who would recommend a sister to be abbess?"

There was no sound save the cheerless laughter of Sister Rotrude.

Sister Clothild's smile faltered as she looked at each of us in turn. "No one?" As she waited for some response, even Sister Rotrude fell silent.

"Surely someone would like to propose a sister. We must not look to the bishop to do it on our behalf..."

Sister Isolda stirred. "I would propose myself then."

"And I would propose myself." Sister Berta did not look pleased at the prospect, and in truth, neither did anyone else.

"Sister Berta and Sister Isolda. Is there no one else?" Did I detect a plea in her voice?

I put a hand to my mouth, feigning a cough to keep myself from speaking.

"Is there no one?" Her eyes seemed fixed upon me. "We ought all of us, then, to meditate upon these candidates and pray that God would make His will be known." Was it disappointment that had drawn those lines at the sides of her mouth? "We will choose the abbess here, after our meal, on the morrow."

***

I tried not to think about the selection of the new abbess as I greeted pilgrims that forenoon and assisted them at the chapel, but the more I tried to concentrate, the more my vow weighed upon my soul. Surely there is a place in hell reserved for those who made promises they did not intend to keep.

In the ancient cavern that was Saint Catherine's chapel, all was light around me. A radiant, flickering, golden light. The glow reflected off the rocks and from the rise of my cheeks, warming the air about me and causing a halo to encircle everything I saw. After our chaplain took pilgrims' confessions and gave them Holy Communion, they stepped forward, one by one, from the newly built wooden church. As their steps left the smooth, earthen floor for the timeworn stone that sloped toward Saint Catherine's chapel, the light embraced them.

Rich and poor; the young and the aged; both the whole and the sick.

Saint Catherine welcomed them all.

"After receiving the mysteries of eternal salvation, we humbly pray thee, that as the liquor that continually flowed from the limbs of Saint Catherine, virgin and martyr, did heal languishing bodies, so her prayer may expel out of us all iniquities." I murmured the prayer in welcome as a weeping woman dropped an enameled cross that had been edged with gilt-work into a chest piled with pilgrims' gifts. She turned with a wail to cast herself before the altar. As she lifted her face toward the rock-hewn roof, the candles' light shone in starry points from her tears. Extending her hands, she whispered a prayer, and then she placed her hands on the golden casket containing Saint Catherine's relic and leaned forward to kiss it.

After caressing the carnelian cabochons that had been polished by the touch of a thousand hands, she rose and stumbled back toward the church as the next pilgrim came to take her place.

"After receiving the mysteries of eternal salvation, we humbly pray thee, that as the liquor that continually flowed from the limbs of Saint Catherine, virgin and martyr, did heal languishing bodies, so her prayer may expel out of us all iniquities." I spoke those words over and over again. A hundred times a day I might say them in the warmer months. Now, as winter threatened to blow its hoary breath down our backs, only a score of pilgrims still braved the mountains to access the valley in which the abbey had been secreted. The time of silence would soon descend. Once the snow began, we could expect no visitors until the melt came in spring.

I helped an aged man to his knees and waited for his toneless prayers to cease.

The sword that from her neck the head did chop, Milk from the wound, instead of blood, did bring; By angels buried on Mt. Sinai's top; From Virgin Limbs a Sovereign oil did spring.

The rustle of pilgrims' tunics, the chaplain's murmurs in the church, the clap of shoes against the stone floor had almost ceased. The candles' glow had gone hazy from the censers' incense, and the air was heavy with expectation and hopes near extinguished. The hour of vespers was near, and the sun would soon be lost to us. Any pilgrim who had meant to reach our walls this day had already come.

The last of them, a round-eyed matron, approached with trepidation as she clutched a gilded leather girdle to her chest.

I gestured toward the pile of gifts.

She started, and then a flush lit her face as she placed it atop all the others. She watched me, waiting I suppose for some sign. But it was not me to whom she needed to make her appeal. I was not the one who could grant her soul's request.

I nodded toward the altar, while keeping my gaze fixed to the floor.

The pilgrim bowed and then, casting a worried glance at me, she knelt. When she did not pray, I said the prayer for her, and when it was over, I touched her hand and then pointed toward the relic.

It surprised me no longer how many pilgrims, after having journeyed all this way, feared to do what it was they had come for. In hope of persuading Saint Catherine to take up their cause, to heal them, to intercede on their behalf, some of the pilgrims came into the church and kept here a night-long vigil. Others prostrated themselves on the floor as they prayed one prayer for every year of their sin-filled lives.

In all of my thirty-three years, there were only two that I cared to remember. The first was stolen, its pleasure tainted by the fact that I had tasted, devoured, and then savored forbidden fruit. The second was bought and paid for with all of the years, all of the days, all of the hours that had followed after it. I was paying for it yet.

Two years, two people.

The first, beloved and complicit in my great sin. The second, wholly innocent and precious beyond measure. The loss of both, I constantly mourned.

But if Providence decreed I must live my life again from the start, I would make those same choices and love those two people in the very same way without once pausing for regret. I would do everything just as I had done it at first. No matter how many times I examined my actions, no matter the perspective from which I viewed my sins, I could discover no other path than that which I had taken. If I had been wicked, if I had taken pleasure ...