I didn't ask what happened to the sisters with the nervous complaints. "Does Rowena have enough patients to keep her busy full-time?"
"I doubt it. Word has it that if Olivia becomes abbess, Rowena will be her administrative assistant. The infirmary will be phased out."
"That's interesting," I said. I remembered John Roberta's flurried, frightened whisper, and the panic on her pale
face. Sister Olivia says we have to stick together. And Sister Rowena says if I tell, I'm being disloyal. They might-
"Yes," Maggie said. "From what I hear, Rowena and Olivia make a good team. They think alike."
Chapter Twelve
Wilde Rue is much more vehement both in smell and operation, and therefore the more virulent or pernitious; for sometimes it fumeth out a vapor or aire so hurtfull that it scorcheth the face of him that looketh upon it, raising up blisters, weales [welts], and other accidents…
John Gerard The Herbal, 1633
The infirmary was housed in two small connecting rooms at one end of Hannah's first floor. I thought the place was empty until I heard the thump of a metal pail in the other room.
Maggie went through the connecting door and almost bumped into a heavyset, powerful-looking woman on her hands and knees, energetically scrubbing the floor with a soapy brush. The single bed had been stripped to the bare mattress and pushed against the wall, and the window was flung open. The smell of pine oil disinfectant was heavy on the chilly air.
"Sister Rowena?" Maggie asked. "I'm Margaret Mary, and this is China Bayles. I hope we're not interrupting."
Still on her knees, Sister Rowena straightened. Her face was flushed with exertion, her veil was askew, and the hem of her navy skirt was pinned up with a large safety pin, showing thick calves and navy stockings pulled up past her knees. Her pale thighs bulged out over the tight elastic tops of the stockings.
"Interrupting?" she snapped. "Of course you're interrupting. Thank God. I am sick of scrubbing this floor." She dropped her scrub brush into the bucket with a splash. "Give me a hand, will you? These knees aren't as young as they used to be."
Stepping forward to help her up, I recognized her. Sister Rowena was the woman who had taken charge of Sister Ruth the night before. She was a woman of sixty, perhaps, although it's hard to judge someone's age when you can't see her hair. Hers must have been dark, though. Her intimidating brows, almost a man's brows, were nearly black, and I could see faint traces of dark hair on her upper lip. The hard, square hands she held out, one to Maggie and one to me, were reddened by the hot water and detergent.
We tugged and Rowena clambered heavily to her feet. She unpinned her skirt and adjusted her veil, muttering.
"The next time we have a clothing vote, I'm voting no on the habit, regardless of what Olivia says. Really, in this day and age, we ought to be able to-"
She broke off and looked at me with a scowl. There was a large dark mole to the right of her mouth and another beside her nose. Her shoulders were broad, her arms stout. Standing, she was the shape of a fireplug, with just about as much grace.
"China Bayles, eh?" Her voice was rough, no-nonsense, and she barked her words like a cadet commander. "You're the one Mother Winifred brought in to get to the bottom of the fires."
"That's right," I said. No wonder John Roberta had been in such a tizzy. Rowena's scowl alone was enough to send a nervous person into an immediate fright.
She took a towel from the doorknob. "Well, I can tell you right off that I don't know anything about any fires. Haven't seen anything suspicious, haven't heard anything." She wiped her hands and slapped the towel back on the doorknob with a And-that's-all-there-is-to-it gesture.
"You were at last night's fire."
"I was there at every fire. I live here, like it or not." She glanced down her nose at Maggie. "I understand you're coming back."
Maggie nodded.
"I hope your vocation's stronger than it was last time," she said firmly, as if she were speaking to a young girl. "And I hope you don't expect things to be the way they were before you left."
I cleared my throat. "I'd also like to ask you about Per-petua and John Roberta."
Rowena gave me a dark look. ' 'John Roberta has nothing to do with either the fires or the letters," she snapped. "She doesn't have the imagination to do anything sinful." She glanced at Maggie, then back at me. "Excuse me. I'm going to sit down." She walked heavily through the door, limping, one hand on her hip. ' 'Next time these floors need scrubbing, one of the younger sisters can do it."
There was one bed in this room, two chairs, and a small desk. Above the desk was a built-in cabinet with a lock on the door, and above that, a shelf filled with medical reference books. Maggie sat on the bed, I took one of the chairs, and Sister Rowena sat at the desk, painfully stretching her leg out. She began to massage her right knee through the fabric of her navy serge skirt. After a moment, she looked up at me.
"Maybe I can save us some time if I tell you exactly what I know," she said brusquely. "Number one, I've never received a poison-pen letter. Number two, I've never written one. So you can scratch me off your list." She snapped her mouth shut as if she had said the last word on die subject.
"I'm not suggesting that you have a direct knowledge of the letters, Sister," I said quietly. "I thought perhaps someone else might have spoken about them to you, or in your hearing. John Roberta, for instance. She stopped me yesterday morning, shortly before she fell ill. She was ur-
gent about wanting to see me. We agreed to a time later in the day, but she didn't come."
"She didn't come because she was in the hospital." She began to knead the other leg, working her powerful fingers into the muscle. "John Roberta doesn't have any more idea about those letters than I do." Her fingers stopped moving for an instant. "Of course, she may have convinced herself that she does." She began kneading again. "In my opinion, John Roberta is a very sick woman."
"I'm told she suffers from asthma," I said.
"Her asthma is real enough. But it's her emotional excitability that's making her sick. She's paranoid, to put it bluntly." She straightened. "She's hysterical."
"I see," I said. An alarm was buzzing in my head. It would be very easy for this woman, a registered nurse and the monastery's resident expert on nervous complaints, to brand a sister hysterical. Once that happened, the hysterical sister would be completely discredited. Nobody would believe a thing she said. It was a pernicious strategy.
Sister Rowena folded her heavy arms. "So what was John Roberta's story this time?"
"I don't know," I said. "We didn't get that far."
A look of relief ghosted across Rowena's face, and she turned away. "Well, don't bank on her to solve your mysteries for you. You can't trust a thing she says. She's totally unreliable."
Maggie spoke up. "I heard she might be moving. Is it true?"
Rowena made a clucking noise with her tongue. "Why sisters waste energy gossiping about other sisters, I'll never know."
"Is it true?" I asked, more sharply.
Rowena straightened. "Sister Olivia and I have located a house where John Roberta can get counseling, in a desert climate that will relieve her asthma. If Reverend Mother General would give her permission-" She paused. "But that's another story."
The buzzing was louder. Render the troublemaker untrustworthy, her story unbelievable, and send her away. It was an ancient trick, much used to silence difficult women. Was that what was going on here? Or was John Roberta really a paranoid hysteric suffering delusions of persecution?
Rowena was continuing. "At the moment, John Roberta is on her way to St. Louis to attend her mother's funeral. By the time she returns, I hope Reverend Mother General will have agreed to reassign her." She paused, putting an emphatic period to this part of the conversation. "Now, what else would you like to know?"