‘My yoke is easy and my burden light,’ the Saviour had said. The Blessed Alicssande, who had founded the order of the nuns at Sant Clara, had written a rule for her holy women that was gentle and simple. They were to work for their sustenance, and never be at any charge on the laity, or on the coffers of the Church. They were forbidden extreme penance or harsh discomfort. They were to withdraw entirely from the world, and their discipline was prayer – an endless holy office, at the canonical hours. They were to love each other, and study books of devotion. The Blessed Alicssande had detected a taint of spiritual pride in the more difficult disciplines ordained in rival houses. She specifically enjoined her daughters to take joy in cleanliness and domestic order; to eat simple food, but be sure it was well cooked and wholesome; to have everything they needed for simple comfort, and everything serviceable and plain. Nothing was to be painted in more than one colour, or be one twitch more elaborate than it needed to be, but everything needful was to be at hand. The sisters served God by living a life of prayer. That was all. That was enough.
Josefa’s cell was painted white. It had a window giving on the prospect of the sea. It had a wooden table, painted ochre, and a dark blue bowl and ewer for her daily washing. The door was painted pale blue, the simple chair light green. No aim at beauty having been intended, the accidental result was beauty, a childlike simplicity and sufficiency in which every need was supplied by a modest object – a model for the modest sanctity the sisters of Sant Clara were to achieve. Of course they were the bishop’s to command, but nothing like this task had ever before been demanded of them.
They set about it with a will. Severo’s party had barely moved out of sight round the first turn of the track when a little bevy of nuns made their way to the hermitage. In the lead was Sor Coloma, and with her Sor Agnete and Sor Blancha and several others, with Josefa bringing up the rear. They opened the lambing-shed door and found the chaos of blood and feathers left by the death of the stolen hen. The snow-child fled to the furthest corner of the room and crouched there, facing them and snarling. The nuns quailed at the sight, but unflinching they advanced on her. When Sor Coloma tried to hold the creature it snarled, a low rumbling warning growl, and then struck out with its nails, leaving a line of parallel scratches down the nun’s arm, with the droplets of blood starting up along it. Bravely, Sor Coloma tried again. This time her hand was bitten severely enough to wring a cry from her, and the creature dashed away to a far corner of the room. Minutes later Sor Agnete was also bleeding, and the child crouched, glaring at them, in the first corner. The three women retreated and conferred together. Sor Blancha, who kept the abbey’s flocks, picked up a panel of wattle that was leaning against a wall – the wattles were used to make pens at lambing time – and the others copied her. A wall of wattles advanced upon the child. Cornered, she cowered, seeming terrified. At the last minute she turned her back, and crouched facing the wall.
Peering over their wattle shields the nuns stared at the blueish, naked back, and huge grey head of a monster.
‘What are we to do with her?’ said Sor Coloma, sucking the gash on her right hand.
‘We must cut her nails,’ said Sor Agnete.
‘We shall need a draught of poppy water,’ said Sor Blancha. ‘I will fetch some.’
Reaching gingerly round the end of the wattle-walls, they placed a dish of poppy water near the creature. But the water was sniffed at and refused.
‘Patience,’ said Sor Blancha. ‘Sooner or later thirst will overcome refusal.’ As she spoke, the creature slunk across to the water dish, and sniffed at it again.
‘It is thirsty,’ said Sor Agnete, ‘poor thing.’
But the child did not drink. Having smelt the water, it retired to its corner and turned its back again. No amount of calling, soft talking and tapping the dish, splashing with a spoon to make the water plash, or anything else the sisters could think of made it take the least notice.
‘We must wait,’ said Sor Blancha. ‘And watch for the moment. We will take turns.’
It was a hot day. But the ground-floor room in the watchtower, with its thick walls and straw-covered floor, was not as hot as the world outside. The sun struck through a broken slat in the ancient wooden shutters across the seawards window, but in too narrow a ray to load the air with warmth. Nevertheless, even in a cool chamber, sooner or later the child would be forced to drink.
It did not happen quickly. All day the snow-child seemed drowsy, spending most of the time curled in the straw, raising her head now and then to glare at her keeper. Josefa came at dusk to take a watch, while the nuns all attended vespers and the common meal was eaten. By then the child seemed more wakeful. She ran round the walls of the room, pawing at the straw, lingering under the windows, sniffing at the outside air. Once she took a running jump at a window, leaping from the ground and hitting the shutter with some force before falling back. At last she abandoned this seeming search for a means of escape, and began a restless, unceasing circuit of the place at a lolloping run, swerving at each turn to avoid Josefa and returning to the bowl of water, sniffing at it, and leaving it untouched.
At moonrise she began to howl, a blood-curdling sound, resounding in the bare cell-like chamber, and after some time answered faintly by some free nocturnal creature on the mountainside above the nunnery. Now it was Josefa’s turn to cower, horrified, in a corner. Through the unglazed windows and broken shutters the ferocious sound reached the peaceful cells of the sisterhood, striking fear and appal into their God-fearing hearts. Sor Coloma came running with a lantern to make sure Josefa was safe, but when she was halfway across the garth between the cloister and the watch-tower the sound stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Finding Josefa unharmed, though trembling, Sor Coloma returned to her duties, but she left the lamp with Josefa.
Josefa retreated halfway up the stair to the upper floor, barring the way below her with a wattle, though she had concluded that the child would not initiate attack, but reserved her ferocity for those whom she took to be attacking her. Josefa hung the lamp on a hook above the stair, and sat down quietly. She could not see clearly what the child was doing – the throw of the lantern was not wide – only hear the dry scuttle of her hands and feet running on the floor, and glimpse now and then a twinned glint of the lantern in her passing eyes.
Towards the end of Josefa’s watch it began to rain, that fierce and sudden downpour with which the mountains were kept green on the western slopes. The sound of it on the tower roof above her and the noisy gushing of the spouts which drained the roof through the battlemented parapet stirred the restless creature below her to frenzy. Josefa heard suddenly a lapping sound. She unhooked the lantern and held it up, leaning over the rail of the stair, and saw the child lapping at a puddle of water that was forming in the hollow of the threshold, fouled as it was by the filth of the floor. Shuddering, but seeing her chance, Josefa pushed her wattle barricade aside, and moving as swiftly as her heavy garments allowed her, she seized the dish of poppy water, and poured it into the puddle. The child went on drinking.
When Sor Agnete came at dawn, she found the snow-creature lying asleep in the straw, and Josefa sleeping where she sat on the stair. The bright incursion of morning light through the open door woke Josefa, but the snow-child remained asleep, making, they saw as they stood over her together, little twitching movements and tiny sounds, like a dog that dreams at its master’s fireside. They picked her up and carried her to the infirmary.
Drawn by pity, horror, and curiosity in equal measure, the nuns of the little community gathered in the infirmary, and watched Sor Blancha, the best of them for knowledge of animals, inspect the creature. The bluish appearance of its skin was only a deeply ingrained filth, and the distorted huge head it seemed to possess was the matted and encrusted mass of verminous hair, which overhung the face. Now that the child was drugged and the face was not screwed into an animal grimace, the human features could be seen to be normal: what was not normal was the child’s posture. They had laid her on her back, and her knees were drawn up to her chest in a foetal position. The knees thus presented for attention were capped with a thick layer of cracked skin – heavy callouses, caused, Sor Blancha supposed, pointing them out to her audience, by wear on the knees caused by running on them. The child’s elbows, when inspected, were similarly calloused. Rolling up her sleeves, Sor Blancha attempted to straighten the child’s crooked legs. Although the child was relaxed in sleep, the legs would not pull straight; they locked in a still crooked position, and the child stirred and whimpered, so that it was evident that the pull caused pain. Sor Blancha shook her head, and moved to inspect the child’s feet. The toes were all bent upwards, and would not pull down in line with the soles. The toenails had grown to an immense length, and were folded back under the feet in the likeness of claws. Sor Blancha next inspected the child’s hands. The fingernails were similarly extended, and curved back towards the palms of the roughened and thickened hands, making a set of dangerous weapons, for they were thick and sharp. Gently Sor Blancha held and moved the child’s thumbs and fingers. They moved freely now, while she was slack with sleep.
‘There is nothing wrong with this creature,’ said Sor Blancha, ‘other than what is caused by running on all fours. But it will take some time to correct that, I think.’ She picked the child up by the armpits, and the dangling legs maintained their crook. ‘A bath of hot water,’ she ordered, ‘and a razor. And a sharp paring knife. Before she wakes, we will disarm her.’
The novices – there were three besides Josefa – ran to fetch water and fill the bath. Immersion in water woke the child to struggle and howl, but doped as she was with poppy water she was easily overcome and scrubbed clean by the combined efforts of a dozen pairs of hands. It took Josefa’s strong grip round her wrists to hold her hands while Sor Blancha, grunting with effort and concentration, pared off the monstrous nails. Then they shaved her head, getting flea-bitten all over their hands as they worked. At last they rubbed her dry in clean towels, and contemplated the results of their labour.
Lying still and denuded, the child was very small. Every bone of the emaciated body showed through the skin, which was covered all over with a myriad scars and scratches in every stage of healing and rawness. Her ears, which seemed large, stood at an odd angle to her head, and her jaw – she was working it in her sleep – seemed to move sideways further than it should.
‘How old is this child, do you think?’ asked Sor Agnete.
‘Nine?’ asked Sor Eulalie. ‘Nine, and starving.’
‘Not so old,’ said Sor Blancha. ‘Seven, at most. And badly malnourished.’
They put a clean shift on her, giving her suddenly the look of a normal waif, an orphan of the poor, obliterating the animal appearance, the nakedness which had effectively concealed her from them. Seeing her clad and human, Josefa began to weep silently for the sufferings of the poor monster. None of the sisters asked her why. In that moment they all looked tenderly and hopefully on the task of training and teaching. It was only a girl, after all.
Quite suddenly the child’s eyes sprang open, and she leapt from the table on which they had laid her, and dashed to the darkest corner of the room. She clawed at her shift with her now harmless fingers, and then gripped the cloth in her teeth, and tore at it frantically. Head lowered, she tried to back out of it, and then catching it between treading foot and gnashing teeth, she tore herself free of it. The moment she was naked again she fouled herself, and then, growling at the detested company, she began prowling along the line of the wall, pacing it backwards and forwards, and eyeing the door as though to escape confinement.
Josefa watched her attentively. She noticed that the child kept picking up its hands and looking at them, missing the claws, as though seeking to observe what had happened to her. That, Josefa thought, showed more perception than an animal might have. She also noticed, when she brought a bucket and rags to clean up the floor, that the child’s ordure did not smell sickeningly human, but had the innocent stench of a byre or a sty.
‘I have seen a wolf’s den,’ said Sor Blancha. ‘When I was a child, I went with my brothers when they tracked a wolf that was stealing our sheep. We killed it, and then saw its cubs at the back of the cave. It was clean, in the cave. Absolutely clean.’
‘What do you mean, Sister?’ asked the abbess. The child had been in the nunnery for a week, and the sisters were in confabulation about her, sitting round the table in order of rank.
‘There was filth from the carcasses it had been eating, all outside the cave, at the entrance,’ said Sor Blancha, ‘but within not a scrap, not a bone nor a morsel lying around. And the cubs’ dung had all been removed – the mother wolf had cleaned it up. It smelt like a well-kept kennel. Quite clean.’
‘But what are you telling us, Sister?’
‘They say this child was reared by a wolf. Well, if so, it must have learned some cleanliness in that regard. We should give it the means to be clean, and see what happens.’
‘A litter tray, do you mean?’
‘And see what happens. Standing upright and wearing clothes and learning words will all be very difficult; but using dug earth . . .’
‘Josefa,’ said Sor Agnete, making Josefa jump out of her skin – she expected to be disregarded, not called upon to speak, being the newest and the least of the company – ‘you have spent most time with the child. What do you think?’ Then, when Josefa coloured and stammered, she added, ‘Give us the benefit of any observations you have made.’
‘She is unhappy,’ said Josefa.
‘Unhappy?’ said Sor Agnete in amazement. ‘That isn’t what I meant to ask at all . . .’
The abbess laid a gentle hand on Sor Agnete’s sleeve. ‘Tell us what you meant, Josefa,’ she said.
‘Not unhappy as one of us might be,’ said Josefa. ‘Not in the mind. But in the body, like a raging thirst. She hates us; she hates confinement; she longs to run free. I think we have no hold on her; only meat. She is hungry all the time, and if we were cruel enough, she would perhaps do things for meat.’
‘If we were cruel?’
‘If we withheld food, unless she did things.’
‘I don’t know how much scope we have for that,’ said Sor Blancha. ‘If she doesn’t give in and get food, she may starve in our keeping. She is nearly starving now.’
‘Have we any other way to try?’ asked the abbess.
Nobody knew of one.
‘Then we will try the litter tray, and we will try withholding food unless she is wearing a shift. One thing is certain – we cannot present a stark naked female to be questioned by a cardinal. She must wear clothes.’
‘Mother,’ said Josefa, greatly daring.
‘Yes, child?’
‘I think we should talk to her more. Whoever is with her, should. Talk. About anything except . . .’
‘What is the point of talking to a thing that understands not a single syllable?’ asked Sor Juana.
‘That is how babes are loved,’ said Josefa. ‘A mother sings and talks ceaselessly to a babe from its first hours. She has no thought of waiting for it to understand her.’
‘Did we undertake to love the creature?’ said the abbess. ‘Perhaps we did. Perhaps when we agreed to teach her, we agreed to that. Well, God will help us. If it is for his greater glory that we should succeed, he will show us the way. Talk to her, then.’