33

Down a Holy Rabbit Hole

La Sierra Madre. The Mother Range. If Grace had had any energy left for irony she would have noted that there was nothing motherly about these jagged peaks and treacherous chasms. She and the women and children followed the steepest, narrowest trails until they reached the altitude where clouds wrapped like shawls around them.

Grace didn’t have to ask Serafina if they were lost. Of course they were lost. None of these women had traveled farther from their villages than the nearest market town. No one had any idea where they were. They could only hope that el gobierno’s assassins didn’t know where they were either.

They had spent the night cupped together for warmth on the bare, wet ground. They had started out again as soon as the gray sky lightened enough to see the rock falls and tree trunks in their path. The relentless rain and rocky terrain were tribulation enough. To make matters worse, the women, without forming a committee, holding a meeting, or calling for a show of hands, had elected Grace their leader.

Maybe they did it because the former dictator, Porfirio Díaz, had convinced even these poorest of the poor that everything foreign was superior. Maybe they did it because they had seen Grace chase those pesky aires away from springs and rivers. Maybe they did it bcause Moses, the only transportation available, trailed after her like a cantankerous, overgrown mutt.

Grace was used to taking charge. She accepted the responsibility without protest, but she saw herself as an imposter. A leader must be strong and Grace felt weaker than any of the women toiling along barefoot behind her, many of them carrying their children and what few belongings they had been able to grab as they fled. True, they were used to walking in mountainous terrain, but Grace had England’s honor to uphold.

Pride alone would not allow her to ride while the others walked, but neither would pity. She led Moses with four small children and one very pregnant woman perched on his back. Grace had bandaged the leg wound on one of the boys, but another bullet had made him an orphan. Grace noticed that he kept looking back, as though to see if his mother were hurrying along to rejoin the group.

Adversity revealed a streak of gallantry in Moses. He placed each hoof as delicately as a cat walking on wet grass, doing his best to make the ride as smooth as possible for his small passengers. That was a courtesy he never had accorded Grace.

As Grace struggled up the steep path she waited for the shock to wear off her companions. She listened for the women to begin sobbing and wailing with grief, but they didn’t. If Grace had had to abandon Lyda’s or Annie’s dead body at the river she would have been inconsolable, yet the women put one foot ahead of the other with stoicism that the ancient Spartans would have envied.

Grace hadn’t seen the sun all day, but a chill in the air signaled that it had gone down behind the mountains. Night would arrive soon and heaven gave no indication that it had finished with weeping.

At least, she thought, we shall not die of thirst.

She shielded her eyes from the rain and scanned the heights for snipers and for a black blotch that might signal the opening to a cave.

Serafina grabbed her arm. “Look!” She pointed up.

“¿El gobierno?” Grace had a sudden surge of panic. Would the sharpshooters open fire again?

“A village,” said Serafina.

“Where?”

“There.”

Several houses clung like lichens to the side of the mountain above them. They were made of the same buff-colored limestone as their surroundings. If Serafina hadn’t pointed them out, Grace would not have seen them. She and Fina found the trail leading to them and started up it. As they approached the outskirts of the village, Grace prayed they wouldn’t find death and devastation.

The stone houses and their thatched roofs remained intact, but not a soul stirred in the muddy streets. Grace, Serafina, and Moses led the procession across the deserted plaza to the small stone church that had a low rambling building attached to the back of it. An ancient sacristan had just locked the church door for the night. He tried to wave them away, but Serafina fell to her knees on the lowest of the stone steps.

In Nahuatl she told him of being ambushed by federales. She reminded him that they were children of God. She pointed out the obvious, that they were cold, hungry, exhausted, and frightened. She implored him, in God’s mercy, to grant them shelter for the night.

He muttered to himself as he fumbled the iron key into the big padlock. Grace tied Moses’s lead line to a tree and helped the children and the mother-to-be dismount. She carried the wounded boy up the church steps and followed the aroma of incense inside. Soaked, shivering, their stomachs growling, they all crowded through the doorway and fanned out across the narthex, the vestibule at the rear of the nave. Such a filthy, bedraggled, hollow-eyed, wretched-looking lot they were. Grace, still holding the boy in her arms, thought her heart would burst with pity for all of them.

One of the children coughed. The sound startled a solitary nun praying at an altar enclosed in the glow of fifty or more candles. When she stood up, the rustle of her long robes echoed in the empty church.

Over her shoulders she wore a scapular, a wide, russet red band of cloth that reached to the hem. A black veil projected like a shawl out over her forehead. A close-fitting white coif framed her face. It covered her chin, forehead, and half of her cheeks. The shadow of the veil hid her eyes and Grace could not see what ever sign of hope or disappointment they might contain.

She stood at least a head-and-a-half shorter than Grace. She had a pert beak of a nose. Her patched and threadbare brown wool tunic increased her resemblance to a sparrow. Her thin, bare toes beneath her robe’s frayed hem looked suitable for gripping a twig.

Serafina recognized the distinctive habit. “She is a Carmelite,” she whispered. “She is enclaustrada.”

Grace didn’t know what enclaustrada meant, but she was about to find out.

The nun glanced toward the small side chapel and Grace feared she would bolt for it and disappear like the white rabbit down his hole in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Instead of fleeing, the woman rose and pulled her veil across the lower half of her face. She stared at them for what seemed an eternity. Grace realized that the nun might think she was a man. She took off her hat and shook out her braid.

The sacristan elbowed his way through the crowd. “Forgive me, Holy Mother,” he stammered. “They are in desperate need. I could not turn them away.”

When the nun realized that the sacristan was the only adult male present she lowered the veil and beckoned.

Serafina leaned close to whisper to Grace, “She is la priora.” Grace looked blank. She had never had occasion to learn the word for prioress.

“La madre superior,” Serafina said. “The mother superior.”

The nun led them through a rear door so low Grace ducked her head to clear the frame. Still carrying the child, she entered a maze of dimly lit, low-ceilinged hallways that resonated with the chime of iron bells. Shadowy portraits of saints lined the walls.

As Grace passed open doorways she glimpsed closet-sized rooms beyond. Each contained a crucifix on the whitewashed wall, a neatly folded blanket with a small clay bowl on it, and a woman kneeling on the dirt floor. They all wore the same black veils, white coifs, brown robes, and rust-colored scapulars as the prioress.

Serafina had called them enclaustrada. Now Grace could guess what it meant. Cloistered. Shut away from the world.

So many rooms and so many women. Grace counted eighteen, and there may have been more in other corridors. With heads bowed and hands clasped they prayed in hushed voices, each separate from the others, yet joining in a single chorus.

The susurrus of prayer filled the hall like a sanctified fog. It clung to Grace’s skin. When she breathed, it flowed into her lungs along with the censed air. She had never seen or experienced anything that remotely resembled the existence of contemplatives. She felt as if, like Alice, she had fallen down a rabbit hole and into an alien world.

The boy Grace was carrying did not complain, but his stomach did. Grace realized that she did not smell any odors of cooking. She whispered to Serafina, “Do you think they have any food to spare?”

“I doubt it,” Serafina murmured. “The Carmelites take a vow of poverty. They trust God to provide for their needs.”

Grace remembered the village’s deserted streets and shuttered houses. She imagined God’s voice echoing, unheard through it, asking for volunteers to feed the nuns.

At the far end of the hallway the prioress ushered them into the convent’s reception room. It had a flagstone floor and straight-backed chairs around a long wooden table the same glossy, red-mahogany color as Grace’s hair. Religious paintings hung on the walls. Best of all, a fire burned in the large adobe hearth in a corner. The women and children rushed to warm themselves at it.

Serafina knelt and clasped her hands in thanks. The nun leaned over to speak to her in whispers, but at the sound of a bell ringing outside she made a sign of the cross that included everyone and hurried to the front door. She slid open a square wooden panel in the door to expose an opening covered outside by an iron grate. She held a murmured conversation, interrupted by sobs from whomever was on the other side.

Serafina listened intently, then whispered to Grace. “The prioress’s name is Mother Merced. She is comforting a woman whose daughter has entered the novitiate. The rest of the family is hiding with the other villagers in the mountains.”

“Is that why so many nuns live here?”

“Yes. People leave their daughters to keep them safe, but when the door closes behind them their relatives can see them only once a year for two hours.”

“Why?”

“The nuns who enter this order leave the world behind. They speak only with God and each other. But these are terrible times and Mother Merced has made an exception. She says we may sleep here. One of the sisters has nursing skills. She will see to the boy’s wound.”

Mother Merced opened the door and retrieved the large pottery bowl the woman had left. She set it on the table and the aroma of warm beans and corn tortillas wafted through the room. Everyone left the fire to gather around the table and stare at the bowl.

As if summoned by the smell three novices arrived. Two of them carried armloads of blankets. The third brought another bowl.

Sister Merced distributed the blankets among the refugees, which meant, Grace assumed, that the sisters would sleep on the bare floors of their cells. Then she divided the food between the two bowls. The nuns left with the smaller one, but Grace could tell that the portions would be very small for everyone. Whoever brought the food to the door didn’t know that Mother Merced had added nineteen more appetites.

Grace and her companions made short work of the food. Then they set out on the nightly challenge of finding somewhere to relieve themselves before settling down for the night. If the convent had a privy it no doubt was reserved for the nuns’ use. The old sacristan guarded the front door while the women and children scattered out into the darkness. Grace’s companions seemed to think nothing of using all of nature as a privy, but Grace could never get used to it.

When everyone returned, they rolled up in their blankets as close to the fire as they could get. Their usual soft conversations were shorter tonight and soon Grace heard the long sighs of their breathing. The rain started again and the thrum of it on the tile roof was a lullabye.

Grace expected to fall asleep immediately, but maybe she had traveled beyond exhaustion. She lay on her back and stared at the hand-hewn beams overhead. She realized that the rebels might never let her leave their company. She had made the mistake of proving herself useful, even indispensible where los aires were concerned. But she could remedy that. If she passed her sham supernatural powers on to Serafina, the band would no longer have to rely on her.

In the morning she would begin teaching her friend the verse from 1 Samuel that she used in her conversations with the supernatural. It seemed as appropriate here as anywhere else in this poor, abused country. “I am a woman of sorrowful spirit.”

Serafina stirred in her blanket. She turned to face Grace and whispered, “I know where we are now.”

“You do?”

“Yes. The Carmelites are famous. This place is not far from Tres Marías. Mother Merced can tell us how to get there. You can go home.”

“But you can’t go to Tres Marías, Fina. The soldiers will shoot you.”

“Macano xitequipacho,” Serafina said.

It was one of the few Nahuatl phrases Grace knew well. She had heard Lieutenant Angel use it often.

It meant, “Don’t worry.”