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Father Marcus Keane had been inhabited by such a light that she had found herself basking in his presence, which illuminated her little nook in the stone walls of the Abbey, and had sought out his warmth, emboldened by his attentions. But he hadn't been there for her. He had been called to save Miriam, who dwelled in a deeper darkness, and needed him more than she did. She only wanted him more, which was different.
She wanted to believe, to find such strength in her faith as he did. Instead of fumbling about in the dark, to be guided by the Grace of God.
She took to sneaking into the basement. To see the demon within the possessed woman. To see if she could catch a glimpse of what Father Marcus had seen that had gifted him such a radiating certainty. When the demon taunted her, she saw nothing.
So she got closer.
***
There is a story of a mouse whose hunger lured it through a hole into a basket of corn, from which it couldn't get out again after it had had its full.
She had been trapped for months, inside that basket, while the demon toyed with her, chewed her up, dangled her in front of Father Marcus as bait and snatched her back up in its maw, closing her off from the light.
Until Marcus had left, and another priest had taken over, and the demon had lost interest enough to loosen its grip.
By then she had wasted away enough to slip out, not so much freed as caught-and-released as too small a catch to be worth gutting and butchering.
Father Robert reminded her of the weasel in that story.
***
No, Mouse didn't see the light that Marcus did.
She felt less like God's bride than Bluebeard's.
She had trespassed, she had sinned by curiosity and greed for knowledge and unlocked a door to a forbidden room and seen the bodies on the hooks in the antechambers of Hell. She had bit into the prohibited fruit and it had tasted of the flesh of her sisters, led to slaughter. She had nearly, very nearly, lost her soul and her life as one of them herself.
There, but for the Grace of God, might she have gone. And yet, escape hadn't availed her of a place in the sun. She'd still been left scrounging for crumbs by the Church, and, sick of famine, had discarded her habits, broken off her engagement to Christ, and become her own woman.
She carried intimate, carnal knowledge of the dark.
And that was almost as good as being a vessel for God.
It was another kind of power.