Sister Claire looked as though she had been pulled off a potato field in County Kerry and stuffed into a nun’s habit that very morning. Her forehead, cheeks, and nose were scarlet red and peeling, and her hands were as wrinkled and brown as a worn pair of shoes. She had the patient, ageless air of a woman who has spent her life helping others, without expecting anything in return.
She sat straight-backed in an upright wooden chair, feet crossed at the ankle, the toes of her heavy shoes suspended an inch from the stone floor. She raised her face to the afternoon sun that lit the small space, with its two chairs and long, wooden table.
The girl’s body was laid out on the oak. It was covered from toes to neck by a white sheet, which made her skin look much darker. The removal of her organs and the cool air of the cellar had forestalled corruption of the body, but there was still a distinct smell in the small room. Justy found himself breathing though his mouth.
The sister seemed unaffected. “I thought it might be easier to see her here, rather than down in that terrible place.” Her accent was soft and educated.
“I’m surprised Sister Marie-Therese allowed it.”
“Sometimes it’s better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.”
“Speaking of which, I have a man coming later to sketch a picture of the girl. It may help us identify her. I haven’t told the vestal.”
“What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.” The nun’s blue eyes were bright with mischief.
The girl’s cheeks were gray and slack. They pulled the corners of her mouth so that the purple lips were dragged slightly open over her even teeth. Her eyes were half-open. The nun had tried to smooth them closed, but they seemed fixed in place, and the whites were like two empty slits in her dark skin.
“She has gone to God,” Sister Claire said.
“That’s not what Sister Marie-Therese thinks.”
“Indeed.” The nun smiled faintly.
“She told me you spent some time among Mohammedan people.”
“Ten years in Araby and another seven along the Slave Coast. In that time I came to learn that we are all very much the same. We all share the same essential beliefs.”
“So why the objection to having a Mohammedan in the Almshouse?”
Sister Claire shrugged. “Partly because of partisanship. If someone’s on their side, it means they’re not on ours. And partly because people only see the differences between peoples, not the similarities. Look at us and the Protestants. There is nothing to tell between us, and yet there’s so much hatred.”
Justy looked at the girl. “So what can you tell me about her? Is she Mohammedan?”
“Almost certainly.” The sister hopped off the chair. She barely went as high as Justy’s chest, but she was tall enough to reach over the body and take hold of the top of the sheet. She flicked it back, and Justy felt his stomach lurch. The edges of the cut sagged into the cavity of the girl’s body, making it look as though someone had taken a spade to her torso and dug a long furrow there. The skin was gray, and mottled black and purple along the length of the gash.
The sister took one of the girl’s hands and rotated the arm so that the sunlight fell across it. “Do you see these marks?”
An intricate wreath of markings spread across the back of the girl’s hand. The tattoos were faint, like pencil marks on a gray wall, climbing like tendrils up each finger and past her wrist.
“She has more on her other hand, and her feet. They are not permanent, as you see. But they are not easily washed out. I would say they were done several weeks ago. A month, perhaps.”
“What do they mean?”
“They can mean a number of things, depending on who wears them, and where. In some places women wear these designs all the time. In others, they only decorate themselves so on special occasions. Like a religious festival, or a coming of age. Or a wedding.”
“She seems too young for either.”
“She does. And yet…” Sister Claire leaned over the table, lifting the dead girl’s elbow so that she could rest the girl’s hand on her body, the limp fingers settling just below the cut, on a slight curve in her belly.
Justy felt sweat break out on the back of his neck. “She was pregnant?”
The sister nodded. “I would say three months gone. Perhaps more. Young girls can often hide the signs for longer.”
“My God.” Justy leaned on the table. There was a sharp taste in his mouth.
“You saw this?” The nun pointed at the girl’s lower abdomen. She had pulled the sheet down to the girl’s upper thighs, exposing her pubis. The small, diagonal cut was obvious now, an emphatic, dark gouge under the wisps of hair.
“Yes.”
“I examined the wound. The knife, or whatever it was, was stabbed upwards, at an angle. Like this.” She made a fist, and demonstrated. “The blade went directly into the womb. It would have caused a massive hemorrhage.”
Justy’s mouth was sticky. “So why cut her open?”
“To be sure she didn’t run? The precision of the second cut suggests to me that this is a man familiar with a knife. The apparent lack of hesitation indicates he is accustomed to killing. If so, he would have known that the first wound would likely not have killed her immediately. She might have been able to get to the street first, perhaps to someone’s house. But it’s impossible to crawl too far with one’s entrails exposed.”
“It depends,” Justy murmured. He had the sudden memory of a young English skirmisher, slashed open by a flail of canister fire, dragging himself back across the open ground towards his own gun line. The fight had stopped for a moment, an unaccountable lull, and every man on both sides had watched the trooper hauling himself across the churned grass, his guts draped like white ropes over one red-coated arm. Christ, how the man had screamed. Over and over, foot by foot, for nearly fifty yards, before an Irish marksman hushed him.
He sat back in his chair and rubbed his face. “How is it you are so calm, Sister?”
She smiled. “People think nuns do not live in the real world. That we shut ourselves off and stay remote from life. Many do, of course. But those of us who choose to step out of the cloisters see more of life than most. We live among the poor and the desperate. We are daily witnesses to the depravity of humankind, the way we treat each other, and ourselves.”
“You’re saying you’ve seen worse than this?”
“I’m saying I am no longer surprised by what human beings can do to each other. People commit far worse atrocities than this, every day. And for all sorts of reasons. For money, for country, for independence. For God.”
“So how do you keep doing what you do?”
She smiled, and it was like watching a flower open. Her blue eyes shimmered. “Because just as we are capable of the most depraved acts, we are also capable of the most glorious. I seek to tilt the balance. That is all.”