Is she inebriated?
The laughter died with a sigh, and the novice turned and walked up the far aisle. Her gait was light and animated and she turned this way and that, walking sideways at times as her attention was drawn to the nave’s architecture and not where her feet fell. The silhouette of her veil swelled out behind her head as if she were hiding a satchel there, and the odd thought made it impossible for him to look away.
When she reached the transept, she turned and walked to the center, her head bowed, her hands rising to her veil. She pulled off the head cover and flung it toward a bench as if it meant nothing. Then she raised her hands again to her wimple.
Gaspar wrenched his head to the side, refusing to look upon her, refusing to feed his own curiosity. He turned bodily toward the small door at his back, no longer content to stand behind the rood screen and wait for others to go along their ways. If someone noticed him, so be it. His observations were complete. There was no true need for secrecy. Besides, for her irreverence, the young woman would answer to God, not to him. He had a vow to keep, after all.
“Damn you!”
The curse struck Gaspar as if he’d taken a blow to the stomach, and he turned back to the screen, his reaction no longer his to control. Avoiding the woman was no longer possible. He could not walk away and leave her free to further desecrate God’s house. But he hoped a brief bit of instruction would be enough to put an end to her thoughtlessness.
He stomped to the screen and raised his hands to the gate, but they stilled in the air before reaching the latch, his attention caught on the sight unfolding in a glorious stream of late afternoon sunshine. And he the only witness.
A thick, decadent mane of red hair poured around the woman’s shoulders while she struggled to remove the wimple from her face. The dark red hair looked far too familiar, though it could not belong to one of the ghosts from his sinful youth. How could it be anything other than a test from the Almighty Himself?
Chaos galloped and kicked in his breast like a mad horse in a confined space. He could not bring order to his thoughts, though in the back of his mind, he suspected he was being punished for believing himself above temptation. He immediately prayed for forgiveness, his mouth shaping the words easily and silently, but he should have closed his eyes to do it, for the prayer was forgotten as he watched the woman struggle with the wimple. Along copper strand wrapped itself around the white cloth like a living vine.
Perhaps God means to strangle her.
A preposterous thought, considering that, in all Gaspar’s years engaged in the patriarch’s business, he had yet to see such direct intervention from Heaven.
The woman took a firm hold on the cloth with both hands and braced her feet apart as if preparing to rip the hair from her very head. Gaspar’s gasp betrayed him and the woman stilled. For a long moment, neither of them moved. But the large doors opened again and the silence was broken. The woman released the worrisome wimple and glanced in his direction before turning to the back of the church.
The manly-sized abbess glided into the nave with six nuns behind her. All seven faces were lit with a combination of determination and excitement, all hands tucked modestly inside their sleeves. They moved in such uniformity, they might have been a company of soldiers.
The woman in the transept pushed aside her wayward hair to watch the newcomers, but still Gaspar could not see her face clearly. He was pleased she hadn’t damaged her head, then chided himself for wasting his concern. Was he not prepared to reprimand the woman for defiling the chapel only a moment ago?
That hair. It was all the fault of that hair. A mane of red, marking her for the devil, some would say. So perhaps it was the devil who had sent her to tempt God’s Dragon and not God reminding him of the weakness of his past. But if so, the devil had underestimated him. A simple head of red hair was not enough to erase twelve years of discipline.
“Young woman,” the abbess hissed in Italian. “You will be silent in God’s house. God’s Dragon may still be lurking about, and I won’t have him bothered by the likes of you.”
Ah. So. Someone had noticed him after all, but no one cast a glance at the screen.
“I doona understand ye,” came the woman’s muffled voice. “I’d be much obliged if ye’d help me. I tried to tell them it wouldna fit over my hair. Now it’s tryin’ to strangle me, aye?”
Scottish!
Gaspar exhaled carefully, wishing he could expel the woman from his sight so easily. And so silently. The chaos increased in his chest, but with stark fear added, Gaspar felt true pain and clutched his tunic. The face and form of a different red-haired Scotswoman tried to rise from his memory, but he forbade it. At any moment, he might be forced to cry out just to keep all his old demons at bay. He only hoped the nuns would take their charge and depart before that happened.
Leaving one hand clutched over his heart, he released his tunic with the other and clamped it firmly over his mouth, just in case.
“You speak no Italian?” the abbess asked in English while she untangled the red lock of hair, then placed her hands on her hips. “Any Latin?”
“Latin?” The young woman straightened. Her hair fell away from her face and Gaspar’s breath grew cold in his chest.
Perhaps it was he who had underestimated the devil, for she was a beauty. As beautiful as he’d once been himself, he admitted, before he’d removed that curse.
“Some Latin,” she said. “My brother is a Highland Chieftain. We were educated—or more like, he was educated and my sister and I spied in most days.”
“So. You are not Sophia Pedrotti,” the abbess said, though she could never have believed the woman to be Italian once she’d opened her mouth.
The redhead gave a wide smile. “Alas. I am not.” She reached for the rope at her waist and began picking at the knot.
The abbess gave a dainty shrug of her shoulders. “Pity. But you’ll do.”
The Scotswoman stilled. “I’ll do what?”
The abbess shook her head and smiled. “You’ll do in her stead. You intended to take her place, certainly, if you donned her habit and allowed our order to remove you from the ship without a word of protest.” She nodded at the nuns behind her. “Gag her and bring her along. We’ve got to get her hidden before that dragon pokes his head in the church.”
