The late fall began its collapse into winter. Each night the hearthless bedchambers chilled like tombs, and the nuns, to maintain a proper atmosphere of asceticism, permitted only one heavy wool blanket and quilted eiderdown per girl. The conditions only magnified the hardship for Carmel, who half-slept on a low cot, bundled in her clothes and her mistress’s cape. Eugénie had become increasingly distant, moving about as if in a dream, to the extent that she often appeared to forget that her slave girl was even in attendance. On certain nights after lights out, Carmel would hear her slip away, as she had done in Washington, though she always returned before dawn. Once she reappeared with the fragrance of apple wine on her breath; another with her woollen shift’s back blackened with peat. One thing she rarely forgot was to have Carmel artfully pack her bed with a sack of rags and place her bonnet at its head, in case the nuns conducted a room check. She swore the slave girl to silence — she was not to reveal anything, not even in confession, though this was unlikely since Carmel bore on her conscience none of her actions on behalf of Eugénie’s schemes; she was only carrying out her duties as commanded. In any event as far as she knew none of the priests who visited periodically accorded slaves that rite.
Carmel usually spent the immediate half-hour or so after her mistress’s departures at her favorite pursuit. She had completely filled one of the spare handbound diaries that Mrs. Francis had sent her niece, and was now beginning another. The mattress could no longer hold all of her work including the books, so she began concealing them beneath the false floor in her mistress’s trunk. She hid her tin thimble, which served as an inkwell, and the old quills she’d collected from the convent’s scriptorium in the corner behind her pallet. None of the regular, official inspections of Eugénie’s room had uncovered either.
On the last night of October, a severe chill settled in, then a light rain began falling. Eugénie vanished not long after evening prayers. Carmel, who for a week had been feeling alternately restless and easily peeved, had wanted to show her that earlier that day she had finally passed into womanhood. Since Eugenie was gone, however, she readied her mistress’s bed, but noticed that the sack of rags, along with several pieces of Eugénie’s clothing, were missing. She’d put the clean laundry away and balled up two petticoats to fashion a sleeping body. Once she’d tucked it in, she fished out her book, her quill and her drawing book, and returned to a drawing she had been working on, depicting the meadow, spread out like a sheet of lodencloth, behind the convent. Though she had only black ink, she found herself wanting to work in color and envisioning other methods for realizing her fertile imagination, such as embroidery and painting. The nuns would forbid either option unless she were depicting religious scenes. The white rain, rhythmically painting the windowpanes, began to lull her. The room assumed a strange and heavy dampness. As she started to crosshatch a poplar tree, her eyes rolled into the ceiling. On a blank page was drawn a rough map of the region, labeling the convent, the nearby town, the brown scythe of the Tennessee. Halfway through Gethsamane-Hurttstown, a line, but abruptly it broke off. Instead the quill punched in wavy lines, some of which gouged the paper; these stretched from the center of the river all the way across the town itself. Her fingers began moving more and more rapidly, drawing the waves automatically, until she bowed the quill completely back, nearly snapping it. Spent, her forehead veiled with sweat and her eyes still cycling, she trembled, unsure where she was, but out of habit tamped the wick so as not to arouse the nun conducting that night’s inspections. She slid the book, under the bed, and—
Some time later, she felt something tugging at her hand and foot. Carmel momentarily fought back until she realized it was Eugénie, in the darkness, pulling her from under her bed’s wooden slats. Carmel could feel that the white girl’s hair and clothes, what few she wore, were completely soaked. Still partially asleep, she groped around the room for a spare blanket and patted her mistress dry. In utter darkness, she rolled her mistress’s wet garments up, pressing them into a corner, and slid the white girl into her nightgown. She stuffed the cape against the door and lighted a tiny tallow candle, which took a few minutes, since she had to orient herself to find her mistress’s trunk, in which they kept the tinderbox and a few votives. Once the flame spoke, Eugénie told Carmel of her adventure getting back to the convent: out of nowhere the heavens tore open and torrential rains fell. The sky thundered repeatedly, and then lightning struck as she was ascending the half-mile long road between the town and the convent. The path and the little bridge across the creek were swiftly and almost completely washed out behind her. Tree limbs, uprooted bushes and boles lay strewn like chicken bones down the surrounding hillsides. She had had to run as fast as she could to avoid being swept backwards by the downrushing water, which was falling as if a celestial dam had split. After hurdling the gate and crawling through the basement window she always used, she had peeled off her muddy boots, stockings, cloak, and dress in an alcove next to the coal room, bundled and hid them in a secret compartment in order not to leave footprints on the stone floor. She’d made her way to her bedroom in only her petticoat and undergarments. Exhausted, Carmel wanted to pacify her mistress and put her to sleep, so she embraced her and rubbed her back.
At that moment, the ringing of the alarm bell in the front hall broke the girls’ brief, silent spell. Outside the room, bare feet scurried along the stone floors. Then the two girls heard the Mother Superior’s voice shuttling towards them: “Mesdamoiselles, emergency assembly in the front hall!”
Carmel took her book and, as Eugénie searched for her robe, quickly hid it in the trunk. Both girls opened the door just as the Mother Superior’s hand pressed from the other side: “To the front hall, mesdamoiselles, immediately!” Eugénie and Carmel arrived to find all the other girls, the nuns and novices, a few of the workers, and the enslaved young women, in various states of night-dress, milling about.
The Mother Superior clapped her hands, and the girls formed their well-known rows. The head nun took a quick headcount, everyone was accounted for. She ordered the slave Hubert to check the cellar. Because the convent and its acres sat on high ground that drained into the creek and river, flooding in its buildings was unlikely, but she wanted to be sure. Before Hubert could report on the status of the cellar Moor was ordered to prepare cots in the upstairs library just in case. When they had gone, the Mother Superior described what Moor, who had served as sentry that night, had witnessed at the front gate: Clouds as huge as Hispaniola had anchored over the hill and town below, then burst forth with rains the likes of which he’d never seen in his entire life. As the river leapt its banks on the Gethsemane side, he’d rushed in to alert the nuns and the other slaves, so that they could bring the few field animals into the barn and secure the horses in their stables. Turning back in amazement at the ferocity of the unexpected tempest, he’d noticed a ghostly specter hurrying toward the gate, but by the time he’d been able to go back outside, it was gone. You must, the Mother Superior continued, now return to your rooms and stay there until morning prayers, but we shall each appeal to the Heavenly Father and Our Most Blessed Virgin to ensure that little harm is done to our neighbors. Ave Maria, gratiae plena, Dominus tecum. .