By Claudia Ricci
Editor's note: This is a key chapter in the Sister Mysteries novel. (The book is now complete, and I am in the process of printing it out from the blog.) In this chapter, Sister Renata reveals that she and Señora found Antonie awash in his own blood after he took a razor to his throat. The chapter appears in the blog that contains the novel.
Renata's Diary
September 9, 1883 The time
has come. That last chapter, and the one before, they unlocked the floodgates.
There is blood on the floor, more blood than I have ever seen before. And there
is more to come because, words,
words are
like blood now, that dream, that last chapter, seems to have turned on a
faucet, the truth comes pouring out of me. I see the words I have written, I
read them here, and like magic, like magic the words make it all come back. IT
CANNOT BE STOPPED, THE WARM FLOOD, THE BLOOD, I am a flood and THE BLOOD is all
around me.
Here we
are, Señora and me, kneeling, screaming, crying, our knees sliding in gore, our
aprons soaked scarlet red. And poor Antonie, he lies here limp on the floor.
Flooded in his own blood.
His face
is drained almost as white as this piece of paper. His head drapes back at
the horrific gash, Dear Mother of God, my cousin's throat is ripped one side to
the other! His lips are bloody, his eyes wide and black and bugged out. He
is gone. Gone. What have we done here? What have we done?
I wrote
this chapter so many years ago I honestly can’t remember when. It’s been years
-- 128 years since Antonie died, and a dozen or more years since I wrote this
chapter. I know how it all happened. I know AS GOD IS MY WITNESS THAT I'M not
to blame. I know THERE WAS NO CRIME. NO CRIME. None at all. I know how
desperately we, Señora and me, tried to save him. I know too that I’m trapped
here, inside this prison, chained at the ankle. Drained of energy. Staring out
of that tiny barred window into the courtyard at the gallows where they plan to
hang me in exactly 33 days.
Teresa
visited me again last night, begged me once again to hand over to her this
diary entry I hold in a pouch at my waist, right beside my rosary. It is the
only diary entry that has never come to light.
The only
one I refused to give up.
“Please,
Renata,” she begged. “It’s your only hope. Just give it to me. She wants you
to. Señora sent me here directly, she told me, just the way she told you, it’s
time, it’s time. She cannot stand by, and let you hang for a crime that you
didn’t commit.”
I sat
here staring at Teresa. I felt the hard cold stone of this bench. I bit into my
cracked lip. I tipped my head – no veil, no veil, no more nun's veil, I have
just a brush of hair -- hacked short, cut away by that whiskey-drenched,
toothless old jailer the other day – I tipped my head back to the clammy wall.
“All you
need to do is give it to me, my dear dear heart,” Teresa whispered. She was
standing now, now reaching her fingers through the bars, just the way my mother
used to when I was a child, so many years ago, when I had pneumonia, and I was
feverish and dreaming MACHINE DREAMS in the crib. “I will go immediately to see
your lawyer, Deluria, I will bring him the diary. I KNOW that he will help you
Renata. I know he will bring it to the court, he will file a last-minute
appeal. I will stay until he does. But first you must give it to me. You must!
Because if you don't Renata, you will..." Shaking her head slowly, she
whispers.
"Just
give it to me, please.”
I stared
at Teresa through the bars.
“If I do
what you ask," I whispered, "what then will happen, what then will be
my dear Señora's fate?"
“She is
prepared,” Teresa said, stamping her foot.
“She has
her faith in God and in Mary. She is not going to stand by to see you hang.”
I stared
at Teresa through the bars. I shook my head.
I could not yield up the
diary entry that might save me. If I did, I would have my freedom, but I would
spend the rest of my days regretting my decision.
