He was alive.
It was some time—days, perhaps—before he was strong enough to ask questions with any persistence.
The answers came not from her, but from another. Shortly after he awoke for the first time, a woman wearing a habit approached his bed. Her manner was composed, her expression kindly but reserved as she spooned broth into his mouth.
“You are recovering well,” she said, her English spoken in a thick Portuguese accent.
Frederick inclined his head slightly. “I am in your debt, madam.”
“You are in God’s care,” she replied. “We are merely His instruments.”
The words drifted through the fog of his mind, half-heard, half-understood.
Frederick tried to respond, but his tongue felt thick, unmanageable. The effort exhausted him, and he slipped back into darkness before he could form the question that pressed upon him.
When next he woke, it was to the now-familiar sensation of cool cloth against his brow.
Not the nun.
The girl.
She did not speak at first, only continued her quiet work, wiping away the sweat that gathered almost as quickly as it was removed. When she noticed his eyes open, she paused, just briefly.
“You should rest,” she said softly.
“Where…” he managed, though the word rasped unpleasantly.
She hesitated.
Then, as though recalling some instruction, she set aside the cloth and rose.
“I will fetch Sister Mary Francis,” she said.
He might have protested, but she was already gone. When he next opened his eyes, it was the older nun looking down on him once more.
“Where… where am I?”
“You are in a mission house in Calcutta,” she replied.
“A mission house?” The words came slowly, as though dragged from him.
“Yes, the only one that remains.”
He frowned faintly. “Remains?”
“From before His Holiness abolished us twenty years ago. The rest are now gone.”
That puzzled him, though his mind struggled to hold the thought.
“You are… Catholic?” he asked, after a moment.
She inclined her head. “I am. Sister Mary Francis, of the Society of Jesus.”
Frederick closed his eyes briefly, considering. “I had thought… between Rome and the Company… all such places—”
“Had been suppressed,” she finished for him.
“Yes.”
