The Mistress (27 page)

The girls broke her heart—Laila and Gitte. They’d worshipped their grandmother as much as they worshipped her son. Nora spent all evening with Gitte on her lap and Laila at her side. By nightfall Søren had to pry both unconscious girls off her. They’d fallen asleep after wearing themselves out with tears. Gitte she carried to bed. Laila had gotten so tall only her uncle could lift her. She woke up as he’d started to gather her in his arms.

“I can walk, you know,” she said into his shoulder.

“Are you going to?” he asked when she leaned her head sleepily against his chest.

“No.”

He laughed as he hefted the almost six-foot-tall girl off the sofa and into his arms.

“Want to trade?” Nora asked Søren. “This one’s a little more manageable.” Gitte was getting tall, too, but she still didn’t weigh much.

“Yes. I’ll toss you Laila. You throw me Gitte.”

“Terrible idea,” a half-asleep Laila murmured when they reached her bedroom. “Throw Gitte first.”

Søren tossed Laila onto her bed and ordered her to go to sleep immediately. She shut her eyes and started to feign snores.

“Good girl,” he said, pinching her nose before turning the lights off and shutting her door behind him. Nora watched from the door and smiled at them through her tears. In Gitte’s room, Søren pulled the covers down and left Nora alone with the little girl as she helped her into her pajamas.

“Mormor’s not coming back, is she?” Gitte asked, half in English, half in Danish.

“No, baby, she’s not. She’s in heaven with her
mor
and
far
. You’ll see her again someday.”

Gitte had nodded, taking comfort in the promises of grown-ups even if she didn’t understand them.

“Are you coming back?”

Nora had swallowed hard against the rock in her throat.

“I never left,” she said, kissing the girl good-night and fleeing before more tears could fall.

Alone at last with Søren in the small but elegantly furnished guest room, Nora collapsed into his arms and set her tears free. It should be a simple thing to let go of someone so good. She believed in God, trusted Him...why was it so hard to let Him have Søren’s mother? She wanted Gisela back for her sake, for Søren’s sake. Her own mother didn’t understand her, didn’t trust her judgment, didn’t believe her when she said, despite appearances, Søren was the best man alive and that he would never hurt her, not in the way that mattered. But Søren’s mother had loved them together. From day one when Eleanor Schreiber had first set foot in this house, Gisela had embraced her, called her a daughter, told her she was happy her son had someone who loved him so much.

Every year, sometimes twice a year, she and Søren would sneak away to Denmark for a week. The church knew he had family in Europe and one of the priests at Saint Peter’s loved taking over Søren’s masses at Sacred Heart. No other congregation in the diocese was so devoted, so devout, so respectful of the priesthood as Søren’s. For her twenty-third birthday, Søren had brought her home again. Nowhere else had Nora ever felt such love, such ready acceptance. The family loved not only her and not only him, they loved them, loved her and Søren together. She’d carried Laila on her back and when Gitte was born carried her in her arms. She taught the girls songs she remembered from her own childhood days in Sunday school. She showered them with gifts of books.

Nora remembered standing in the doorway of the nursery and watching in awe as Søren paced back and forth with a colicky six-month-old Gitte on his shoulder, letting her cry it out for an hour until she finally slept. Even then he still held her, worried putting her in her crib would wake her back up again. It had hurt to see that, hurt more than she ever wanted to admit to. Most of the time, having children wasn’t even a blip on her radar. Her heart yearned for other types of creation than motherhood. Søren, though, would have been the best of fathers. Patient, fearless, kind and terrifyingly protective. She’d been afraid to ask him back then if he wanted her to have his children. He wouldn’t have been the first priest with a shadow family, after all. But she hadn’t asked because she feared the answer. A “yes” would have broken her spirit of independence. A “no” would have broken her heart.

This was her family, Søren’s family. They knew she and Søren weren’t allowed to be together. They no more cared what the pope said about their relationship than they cared what the weatherman said about a rainstorm in China. And so on her twenty-third birthday, after Freyja had put Gitte to bed and Søren had left with Laila for a bedtime story, Gisela had given her the white cloth.

Without explanation, Nora had known what the square of linen meant, where Gisela had gotten it.

“I can’t take this,” she said. “This belongs to you.”

“And I am giving it to you,” Gisela said, laying her hand gently on Nora’s face. “I know you and he can never marry. I would have loved to have seen that wedding, watched the church bless you both...but it’s only a dream. I want you to have it. Please do me the honor of letting me give it to the woman who should be my daughter-in-law. Even if the church can’t bless you, I can. This is my blessing.”

She’d taken the linen cloth and held it to her heart. She’d said nothing, could say nothing. There were no words.

* * *

“But what is it?” Marie-Laure interrupted. She held up the square of linen. “Why does it even matter? It’s linen. It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing,” Nora said, anger creeping into her voice. “That’s a maniturgium.”

“Speak English. Not Catholic.”

“When a priest is ordained, his hands are blessed with holy oils. The maniturgium is a linen hand towel that’s used to wipe his hands of those oils. It’s a tradition that the priest...” Nora paused and swallowed. “The priest gives the maniturgium to his mother. She is to be buried with it, holding it in her hands, so that when she goes to heaven the angels will see that she gave birth to a priest. And they will open the gates at once and let her into God’s presence.”

Nora shut her eyes tight. Tears escaped and rolled down her cheeks.

“And Søren’s mother gave it to me. She wanted me to have it because she said that with or without the church’s blessing or understanding or acknowledgment, I was the wife of a priest. I took it with me to her funeral. I’d left Søren, and I didn’t feel right about keeping it. I wanted his mother to be buried with it if that’s what he wanted. But it wasn’t. He wanted me to keep it. He wanted me to be buried with it someday. And I wanted to keep it. Forever.”

Marie-Laure stared at Nora, who sat on the floor tied up and weeping. She’d never felt so helpless, so hopeless, so broken.

“If you kill me,” Nora said between tears, “please let me die holding it. Please.”

Marie-Laure looked at Damon, who sat and simply waited.

“Cut her loose,” she ordered. Damon raised an eyebrow. “Do it.”

He came to Nora and pulled out a knife. He cut the ropes, cut the duct tape and left her sitting with only the handcuffs on her wrists.

“Give me the ring,” Marie-Laure said, “and I’ll give the cloth to you.”

Nora shook her head. “I can’t. It’s not mine to give.”

Marie-Laure reached in her pocket and pulled out a long wooden match. She struck it and brought the flame to the cloth.

The next sound anyone heard was the sound of a ten-carat diamond ring striking the floor at Marie-Laure’s feet. Marie-Laure blew out the match and handed the cloth to Nora, who clutched it to her chest.

“You should thank me, you know,” Marie-Laure said, picking up the diamond ring and placing it on her hand. “You’re one of those people who doesn’t know what she wants until she’s got a gun to her head and a match poised ready to burn her whole world down. The day I realized my husband was in love with my brother was the best day of my life. I learned what mattered that day. Me. Only me.”

“Thank you,” Nora said, grateful that she held the cloth in her hand again. It gave her peace, hope, although she didn’t know why.

“He loves you...my God, he does love you, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, he does.”

“And you left him. Why?”

Nora turned her head and smiled at the last morning she might ever see.

“I was so young...” Nora could barely speak through the tears. “I fell in love with him when I was fifteen. And he loved me, too. Even a palace starts to feel like a prison if you’ve been in it since you were fifteen years old.”

“But it was a palace.”

“It was paradise...” She smiled through her tears. “And paradise had a wall around it.”

“You don’t like walls, do you?”

“This was a big wall. When I was a teenager, Søren made me water a stick in the ground every day for six months. A goddamn fucking dead stick. A test of obedience. Jesuits are into obedience.”

“You didn’t like that?”

Nora glared at her through narrowed eyes.

“Do I seem like the obedient type to you?”

“But you did obey him.”

“As long as I could. As much as I could. Those were the old marriage vows, right? Love, honor, obey? I did all three.”

“Marriage vows? You compare your sick little world of collars to marriage? To a sacrament? No matter what blessing his mother gave you, you aren’t his wife, you never were, not in any way. He married me, not you. And he’s still married to me. I’m the wife. You’re the mistress. But don’t feel bad. I remarried when I was twenty-five to a powerful man. I didn’t love him but I respected him. And I hated that I wasn’t truly his wife because I had married another years before. Your priest—he made a mistress of both of us.”

“I don’t care what I am. I never have. It’s everyone else who cares. Not me. I don’t care if I’m his mistress or his wife. I only wanted Søren. People tell me to get married, settle down, have kids. Fuck them. They don’t know me. You know who never told me how to live my life? Søren. He asked me to obey him, not to change for him. That’s why I could never ask him to leave the priesthood, never let him marry me, because he never asked me to be somebody else so I won’t ask him to be somebody else. And I left Søren the day he asked me to marry him, because that was the one day he asked me to change who I was and that was the one day he tried to change for me. He’ll never make that mistake again. Look, I don’t give a damn about being a wife or a mistress. I am who I am. I don’t need paperwork to prove Søren loves me. I don’t need paperwork to prove anything.”

“Paperwork...good word. It’s the only thing that separates you from me. A wife is nothing but a mistress with paperwork. At least he loved you. He never even gave a damn about me.”

“He did, though. He did. He was in love with Kingsley, but he never wanted anything bad to happen to you. He never wanted to hurt you.”

“But I know what he is now. Him not wanting to hurt me? That’s the final proof he didn’t care about me at all.”

Nora couldn’t argue with that. The two people he loved the most, her and Kingsley, were the two people Søren hurt the most.

“I lost face because of him.” Marie-Laure knelt down in front of Nora. “It’s a fine funny phrase—‘lost face.’ It means to lose honor, to be humiliated. A whole school of boys who worshipped me and the one who should have, my own husband, cared nothing.”

“He tried to care.”

“Only for Kingsley’s sake. And now, thirty years later, I have lost face again. Look at me. Look.” Marie-Laure grabbed Nora by the chin and held her with bruising strength. “I’m old now. I’m not beautiful anymore. My face...I’ve lost it. And he, he’s still so...fucking...beautiful.” With those words Marie-Laure’s face contorted into true ugliness.

“You’ll die,” Nora said, and meant it. “If you kill me, or you kill him, you’ll die. You know it. Kingsley will hunt you down to the ends of the earth if you hurt one of his own.”

“Maybe that’s what I want. Maybe I don’t want to live anymore.”

“Because you’re not as pretty as you were when you were twenty-one? Is that all you have? Is there nothing else to you but your beauty? You lose your beauty and what’s left?”

Marie-Laure let go of Nora’s chin and stood up.

“Only my hate.”

29

THE ROOK

G
race woke at dawn and knew something wasn’t right. Laila slept next to her in the bed. Usually Grace woke up gradually, downing cup after cup of coffee or black tea before coming fully to herself in the mornings. But now she vibrated like a live wire, alert and scared, although she didn’t know why.

She left Laila sleeping in the bed. Footsteps...she’d heard footsteps in the hall lingering outside the half-open door. That’s what had woken her. She entered the hall and followed the sound of the footsteps, her heart gripped in a panic she couldn’t explain, not even to herself.

At the top of the stairs she paused. Søren stood at the front door in his black clerics and white collar. Something about seeing him in his collar... She knew...she knew exactly why she’d woken and she knew exactly where he was going.

“No.” Grace raced down the stairs, her heart in her hands. “No...no, don’t go. Don’t.”

He turned around and came to her at the bottom of the stairway.

“It’s fine. It’s all right, Grace.”

She shook her head. “No, it’s not. You can’t go. Don’t...” And she wrapped her arms around him and held him tight to her, so tight it almost hurt her.

“I’m touched.” He laughed a little in her ear.

“Don’t.” She couldn’t get any other word past her throat. Let him laugh at her. She would hold him and keep him here if it killed her.

“I have to go,” he whispered, returning the embrace much more gently before pulling back and meeting her eyes. “It’s the only thing I can do.”

“But Kingsley...he was—”

“Kingsley went to Elizabeth’s house, and there was no way to get her out without killing his sister. I can’t ask him to do that, not even for me or Eleanor. I love him as much as I do her. I have to help them both now.”

“There has to be another way. I can’t...” She held his face in her hands. Never in her life had she felt such fear, such grief. Irrational, unreasonable...she barely knew the man and yet she felt to lose him would be to lose herself, to lose something priceless. She wouldn’t have begged for her own life this fervently. “Please...”

“I have to go. I have to get my Little One back. No matter the cost.”

“It’s too high. She killed that poor girl, that runaway. She’ll...you know she will.”

“It doesn’t matter. If it’s me she wants, then she’ll have me. She’ll have her vengeance. If there’s any chance at all Eleanor can come out of this alive, I have to take it.”

“There has to be a way, a plan. Something.”

“Grace...” Søren touched her cheek, wiped away a tear. “This was always the plan. I promised Kingsley a day to try. I knew he wouldn’t be able to go through with it. He’s grieved his whole life for the imagined crime of killing his sister. I can’t let him go through that again. Last time all he did was kiss me and he’s blamed himself thirty years for her death. How much will he suffer if he actually pulls the trigger this time?”

“You can’t save everyone. You can save yourself.”

“This is how I save myself.”

Grace shook her head, desperately seeking arguments, answers, anything she could say or do to convince him not to run off on this suicide mission.

“But Nora...she won’t want to live without you.”

“She already has. She left me years ago and made a life for herself. She’ll do it again. I’ve never known anyone as strong as she.”

“And she went back. She loves you. She told me how much she loves you.”

“She loves Wesley, too. They can be together. He can give her everything. She’ll want for nothing.”

“She’ll want for you.”

Grace broke on the last word and the tears poured from her like wine from a broken cask. Søren held her again, held her close.

“Listen to me,” he said into her ear. “I need you to be strong for her. I’m not sure what will have happened to her while they had her. Make her tell you, make her take care of herself. She hates going to the doctor. Take her even if it’s against her will. Promise me you’ll do that for her, for me.”

“I will,” she pledged. How could she ever say no to him?

“Laila’s here for a reason. For Laila, Eleanor will stay strong. She’ll take care of Laila so you have to take care of Eleanor for me.”

Grace nodded, her face buried against his shoulder. Now she knew why Søren had insisted Wesley and Laila and even she should come along with him and Kingsley. Søren had known he would do this, known all along. He wanted Nora to be surrounded by love after Søren had died for her. They were plan B.

“When the time comes, tell her that she and Wesley...they have my blessing. He’s a good man, a good person, and he’ll love her. That’s all that matters...that he loves her.”

Grace clung to Søren’s shoulders, felt the smoothness of the black fabric under her fingers, the muscle in his arms under the fabric. She wanted to tell him something, wanted to tell him that she loved him, too, although it made no sense, none at all. This love went deeper than affection or attraction or romance or family. Something stranger, stronger, wilder... It felt like faith.

“I have to go.”

“I’ll go with you. Let me walk with you, please. At least a little while.”

Søren said nothing at first. He closed his eyes and Grace could do nothing but cling to his hand.

“Would you? I would like that.”

They left the house and stepped out into the newborn morning. They walked along the road and no cars passed them. At first Grace tried not to cry, tried to stay strong for him as he’d asked. But she couldn’t stop the tears.

“I’ve always wondered if it would come to this,” Søren said after twenty or thirty minutes of walking. “When I was in seminary in Rome, I had a friend. She taught me everything I know.”

“Everything?” Grace tried to smile, tried and failed.

“She could kill a fly with the tip of a whip. After a few months under her tutelage, so could I.”

“Who was she?”

“She ran an order of women.”

“A convent?”

He smiled.

“A brothel.”

Grace laughed. It hurt to laugh.

“Her name was Magdalena. That’s what she said it was. I didn’t believe her. I never asked her real name, never told her mine. I would run away to her house of ill repute at least once a week. Can you imagine? A young seminarian, a Jesuit-in-training, spending his evenings surrounded by the most notorious prostitutes in Rome. Her young ladies catered to a very specific clientele. I received quite an education in that house.”

“I’m sure you did.”

“When it was time for me to leave Rome and come to America, Magdalena took me aside. She always claimed to be part-Gypsy. It might have been true, not that it mattered. She got paid to tell lies to men. She said she would miss me, although she would be glad to see me go. Apparently some of her clients were not pleased to have a Jesuit hanging about.”

“Can’t imagine why.”

“But Magdalena, she wanted to tell me my fortune before I left.”

“What did she tell you?” Grace tightened her grip on his hand, knowing the moment she let him go would be the moment she let him go forever.

“She said that I would go to America and I would be sent somewhere I didn’t want to go. But there I would meet a queen in disguise. And it would be a very good disguise, so good only I would recognize her. And she said this queen would be two things to me. She would be my heart. And she would be my penance.”

He stopped walking and Grace knew this was where he would leave her. She wanted to speak, wanted to tell him everything in her heart. But she had no words, none for him. She would have rather seen every stained-glass window in the world shatter into shards, every church, every cathedral, fall into ruin, and see every holy book in the world dissolve into dust, than see any harm come to this man. As long as he lived there would be God in the world even if all the temples burned.

“I left a note for Kingsley in the library,” Søren said as casually as if he’d said he needed his dry cleaning picked up. “Please see that he gets it. Don’t tell them where I’ve gone. I don’t want Laila...” He paused then, as if he couldn’t bring himself to speak the next words.

“I’ll take care of your girl...both of your girls.”

Søren nodded and whispered, “Thank you.”

He started to pull away but Grace couldn’t quite let go yet. She grabbed his hand again and held it to her heart.

“I have to tell you something,” she said, and he met her eyes.

“Last call for confessions.”

“I love my husband more than life itself. And there’s no one in the world other than Zachary who I want to grow old with. I want to have his children and be his wife and stay with him for the rest of my days. But the truth is...” She paused for courage and found it in him. “I would have sold my soul for one night with you.”

She spoke the words and gave him a smile, gave it like a gift. He would die today. At least she could give him that one act of kindness, of letting him see a woman who loved him smiling at him on the last morning of his life.

“Beautiful Grace,” he said, taking her hand and kissing the center of her palm, “I wouldn’t have charged you nearly so much.”

She laughed and the laughter shattered into tears as he let her go and started to walk away into the woods. As he reached the tree line, Grace called out after him.

“She said you were the best man on earth.”

Søren turned around.

“She says that all the time. No one ever believes her.”

He turned again and was gone.

Grace spoke two words that only she and God would ever hear.

“I did.”

Standing in the middle of the road she held her stomach. The pain...she’d never known such pain. She could have screamed so that every devil in hell heard her cry and it wouldn’t relieve the pain, the betrayal, she felt. She would not live in a world where someone thought they had the right to hurt him, to hurt the woman he loved, the woman he would die for. She wouldn’t do it. She wouldn’t stand for it.

So instead she ran for it.