Archive of Our Own

Theresa doesn’t remember a lot from her childhood, but she remembers her mother. They say that the last memory to go is the feeling of a mother’s tender embrace. Theresa’s mother gave the best hugs in the whole world. They were long and smothering, soft, scented like stewed apples and home. Theresa’s a long way from home.

One of the older nuns that had worked in the Vatican when Theresa was first starting out was French. She said there was a word for it — the duality of feeling both thrilled and terrified to be away from home — dépaysement. Theresa doesn’t remember that nun’s name, nor voice or face, but she remembers that word, dépaysement. It’s funny the things she remembers.

Her short-term memory isn’t the best either, but Theresa remembers the beginning of the conclave. The night before the cardinals arrived, Theresa had been in ten places at once trying to get their rooms set up. Feet blistering in her smart new leather shoes, she must have walked the length of the Casa Santa Marta twenty times as she inspected the rooms the other nuns were setting up. She returns to her rooms just before midnight, stumbling into the bathroom to divest herself of her habit. She lays her crucifix down next to the sink and steps into the shower, letting the lukewarm water run over her body. It’s not anywhere near hot; that is an indulgence not often provided to the nuns. It keeps her humble, she supposes.

In the morning, the cardinals sweep into the Vatican in a wave of crimson, like blood spreading from a wound. As they split up into smaller groups, chuckling and shaking hands and lighting each other’s cigarettes, a small stream of nuns criss-crosses through the courtyard to take their bags. Most of the cardinals barely look at them.

Theresa sniffs, grasping her crucifix with one hand and rubbing a thumb along it to soothe herself. It is disappointing to see most of the men ignore their helpers, but not surprising. Nuns are expected to be silent and dutiful, a step behind but ready to come to heel if called; seen but not heard, like children. Theresa recalls church in her youth, when her thready voice was lost in the noise of her younger brothers singing the hymns far louder than her; it had been gauche for the women to sing any louder than the men. They flipped to the right page in their husbands’ bibles before their own, they played the piano to accompany the hymns, they supervised Sunday school; all thankless work. But after all, wasn’t the most pure work thankless? Wasn’t it more deferential to the Lord to complete one’s work silently and without gratitude, taking pleasure in the labour foremost before thinking of how others would see it? Wasn’t that the lesson they were all taught? After all, Theresa’s current work goes ignored by most. She and Agnes shoulder the burden of managing the Vatican’s daily affairs and the legion of nuns within it, and they luxuriate in the satisfaction of completing for the Lord the toil required to keep spreading his holy word. They don’t doubt their place within the Vatican. Theresa doesn’t doubt her place. She worked so hard to get where she is now, she can’t give it up by turning her back on the people that need her here. Theresa doesn’t… she can’t doubt.

She spins on her heel, striding away from her window and down the corridor. Her smart leather shoes click quietly on the polished floor; not loudly, never loudly. Through the halls of the Vatican she walks, her habit swishing around her ankles, until she reaches her office.

It’s small, modest — as it should be — a nondescript room with old furniture covered in paperwork. In the corner, there is a small cabinet; she crosses over to it, and brings out an electric kettle and an old, chipped mug. Into the mug she drops a plain black tea bag. She has no fridge in her office, thus no milk, and sugar is an indulgence; she brews it black and bitter.

Theresa and her mother drank tea together all the time. They sat in the kitchen that was always filled with the smell of cinnamon and jam and they drank cups of black tea with more milk and sugar than actual tea. It was their secret time away from her father and brothers — a stolen moment of peace in the bustling household — and it was her favourite time in the whole world, even more than climbing the trees outside or studying poems after school with Esther and Rachel. It was a performance, though, just as everything in Theresa’s life was a performance. She played the role of a perfect daughter, the kind, dutiful girl who wasn’t exhausting to be around, so that her mother could breathe easier for a few seconds, and though it was exhausting she relished Mama’s smile more than she hated the exhaustion dragging the corners of her lips out of their rehearsed smile. They would embroider together, needles dipping in and out of their fabric in sync as Theresa practiced her needlework on spare scraps. The needle would stab into her thumb every few seconds; Mama said it was lazy to use a thimble. Her mother would recite the scripture, and Theresa would stare down at the blood welling out of her finger, nodding like she understood and humming an ‘amen’ whenever it felt appropriate. It was far from relaxing, but it made her mother happy, and it was not painful enough to stop.

The scraps of fabric would be blotted with tiny droplets of blood that her mother tutted at as she inspected Theresa’s work, but almost everything is purified with blood; she would let it be.

Theresa blinks, tearing her gaze away from the tea and sighing heavily. She picks up the mug and brings it to her desk, where she sits down heavily in her chair. Rooting through the pile of papers in front of her, she pulls a pen out of her desk drawer and gets to work.

Hours later, her eyes are aching from the strain. She grinds her knuckles into her eye sockets. Her vision has been getting worse for a while and her glasses are no longer strong enough, but she’s too busy to go to the eye doctor for a new prescription. She can’t slack off for a single moment; it would be a betrayal of all that she’s sacrificed to be here. Theresa remembers late nights studying theology textbooks by the light of the moon because her father didn’t want to send her to university unless she proved herself good enough for his support. She has powered through in the past, and she will continue to power through.

There’s a knock at the door of her office. She looks up, sighing heavily.

Her secretary — an anxious young nun by the name of Sister Althea — pokes her head in, eyes wide. “Sister Theresa?”

“Yes, Althea?” she asks long-sufferingly. Althea’s eyes dart between her face and the floor as she shifts her weight from foot to foot.

“You’re needed in Civil Administration,” she says, “Sister Agnes said that there was some confusion about a new hire?”

“A new… hire?” Theresa repeats, narrowing her eyes. “What?”

“That’s all I was told!” squeaks Althea. At Theresa’s sigh, she drops her eyes down to the floor.

“That’s alright, Sister Althea,” Theresa murmurs, waving her hand in a dismissive gesture, “You may go. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.”

“N-no problem, Sister Theresa,” Althea stammers again, before closing the door in a hurry. Her habit swishes around her ankles as she darts back to her desk, shoes tip-tapping against the floor.

Theresa sighs again, pushing herself out of her chair. This is her job, her duty. She is a manager. She will manage this

The civil administration building is a good distance away, enough that she feels herself losing breath towards the end despite the relatively flat incline. She has to stray outside, where it is luckily warm but not scaldingly hot with the early autumn wind blowing away the heat of the late summer sun. Inside the building, she climbs a few flights of stairs until she spots Agnes standing outside one of the rooms. It’s one of the ones with one-way glass; the type used for hostiles. Her stomach curdles with the thought of danger.

“Good morning, Agnes,” she greets softly, 

Agnes nods, eyes darting over to look at her for a second before turning back to the window. “Theresa.”

“What’s wrong?” she questions. “Althea said there was trouble with a new hire?”

“That’s who’s in there,” Agnes explains, nodding towards the room. Theresa turns, peering through the tinted glass.

There’s a woman lying on the bench in a way that makes Theresa wince, hands bunched underneath her head in a makeshift pillow. She’s wearing a clean black habit and plain white socks; her shoes are next to her, meaning she must have had to remove them to get through the security checks at the gate. Around her neck is a plain black string from which hangs a small wooden crucifix. Soft wrinkles furrow her face, crow’s feet and stress lines alike, not enough to signify any great age yet enough to show a life lived with emotion. She could be in her late 40s or early 50s, but no older.

“Not even a pillow, Agnes?” she hisses, “Have shame! This is a fellow sister, and not a young one at that.”

Agnes raises an eyebrow. “Perhaps not.”

“What do you mean?–” Theresa stops, coming to a sudden realisation. “You think she’s not a nun?”

The other sister turns back to the window, where the unnamed woman still sleeps. “Perhaps. You know what reporters do during a conclave; I wouldn’t put it past one of them to try something like this.”

Theresa squints through the window as well. “... I suppose.”

“You suppose?”

“Have you run her papers through the system?” she asks. Agnes purses her lips.

“You know as well as I do that we don’t accept new hires in the period without a Holy Father, and we were all caught up to date on employee paperwork two days before,” she says slowly, “Is it impossible? No, but I would like to be sure just in case.”

“Could she have been a late transfer?” Theresa questions. “Maybe her papers were lost in the confusion of the late Holy Father’s death.”

“Perhaps?” the other sister shrugs.

Theresa nods once, brow furrowed. “Well, no matter how she arrived, we can’t leave her here.”

“I suppose not,” repeats Agnes. “I am… hesitant, though.”

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding,” Theresa says wisely. Agnes scoffs.

“The faithful have been swept from the land,” she retorts.

“Be patient, and kind, Agnes,” frowns Theresa. “I propose we allow her inside. If she doesn’t know her scripture or how to put her hands to work, we shall find out her duplicity soon enough. And besides, what harm could one reporter do, if she was working all day away from the Cardinals? We barely know anything of the voting as it is; what could she discover?”

“Good points, all of them,” acknowledges Agnes. “Shall we think on it?”

Theresa’s frown deepens as she stares at the resting woman. “No, she must be uncomfortable in there.”

“Alright,” sighs Agnes heavily, going for the door, “I’ll tell her our decision.”

“See that you are gentle,” Theresa reminds her, “she looks tired.”

Agnes shoots her a look.

“Yes, mother,” she deadpans.

“Go, wench,” teases Theresa in return. Agnes sighs and twists the door handle, entering the room. Theresa can’t make out what she says, but it stirs the woman on the bench. She sits up, rubbing at her face in languid, exhausted motions, and Theresa blinks.

The woman is pretty. No, pretty doesn’t really capture it; she’s gorgeous, beautiful as Tirzah, lovely as Jerusalem. Her chocolate-brown hair is bouncy and thick in a way Theresa envies, her face not marred by her wrinkles but instead improved by them. Her eyes are innocently pretty like those of a doe’s, though the way she holds herself implies confidence and wisdom. Her hands are callused, her hair swept up into a sensible ponytail, her skin sunburnt in places and pallid with fatigue underneath; these things do not detract from her beauty, but add a sense of worldliness, a silent humble humanity. Theresa is well acquainted with gorgeous things — she lives in the Vatican City of all places — but there are few that still manage to take her breath away. This new woman is one of them.

She comes back to herself as the woman stands. Agnes is directing her over to the door, and Theresa takes a few steps away from the window so as to not appear like she was watching. The two other sisters come out of the room, and Theresa plasters a welcoming smile onto her face. No use paying attention to the tumbling sensation of butterflies in her gut when she has a role to perform.

“Here, Sister Valentina, this is Sister Theresa Lawrence,” Agnes says politely, “Between us, she and I run the daily affairs of the Vatican and the nuns within it; she vouched for your admittance.”

“Thank you, Sister,” the woman says, and oh God even her voice is pretty, deeper than expected and smooth as honey, “And it is a happy occasion to make your acquaintance.”

Sister Valentina smiles at her warmly, sweeping a bouncy brown curl out of her eyes with a gentle hand, and Theresa’s heart drops out of her chest. She takes a fumbling step back and off to the side.

“I’m sorry, Sisters, I must return to my office,” she says hurriedly, “It was lovely to meet you, Sister Valentina; I trust that Sister Agnes will be able to get you acquainted with your new position?”

Agnes shoots her a confused, warning look, but smoothly takes over, steering Sister Valentina out of the room and down the hall. The younger nun looks back over her shoulder with a bright, grateful smile, and Theresa can barely breathe at the sight.

All of a sudden, Theresa feels all of twelve years old, a child still in Sunday school. There’d been separate classes for boys and girls at their little church, and so every Sunday Theresa sat in a little circle on the porch of the church with the other girls and learned her scripture. Her best friend was called Esther, and she was pretty, like Princess Aurora. Esther had long blonde hair that stayed tidy all day and eyes as blue as the sky and she didn’t get freckles no matter how long she stayed out in the sun; not like Theresa, who was a little too skinny in a way that made her look bony instead of graceful, and whose plain brown hair went wavy no matter how much she brushed it. Esther was really, really pretty. Theresa wanted to kiss her milky pale cheeks to see if that left marks like freckles, spent endless Sundays staring at her eyes and thighs and the way her mouth moved when she recited Psalms.

For years, Theresa thought that those things were normal to do. She didn’t often think about the other girls at church the same way, but she thought about Esther so much because Esther was perfect. Esther remembered her scripture and braided her hair all by herself and didn’t complain about the splinters they all got from sitting on the porch for too long. For years, Theresa thought that she just wanted to be Esther. After all, Theresa was never as good as her; why wouldn’t she want to be as faithful, as kind, as perfectly quiet and gentle with the younger children and polite to everyone and skilled with her needlework and good?

One morning in Sunday school, the oldest girl was reading out a passage from Romans for everyone to listen to; Theresa was doing her best to listen dutifully. 

“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen,” the girl said, and all of the other girls murmured “Amen” quietly; not loudly enough to be heard from inside, of course. Theresa repeated it along with everyone else, trying her best not to slouch or tap her fingers against her Bible.

The oldest girl cleared her throat and continued. “For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another–”

“–What?” Theresa blurted out.

The other girl stuttered in her reading, looking up at Theresa with narrowed eyes. A dozen heads swivelled towards her as everyone else looked up at the interruption.

“I’m sorry, Elizabeth, I– I was distracted by a bug on my dress,” Theresa apologised, cheeks burning. “I’m sorry for interrupting you.”

“It’s alright, Theresa,” the other girl shrugged — an improper gesture, Theresa’s mother would have her kneeling on rice for hours if she did the same — and trailed her finger down the page to find her spot again. “As I was saying, God gave them up to a debased mind and to things that should not be done. They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice…”

The reading continued for another hour, though Theresa heard none of it. When the congregation inside concluded, she stayed silent all throughout the drive back to the family cottage, staring at a single page in her Bible and reading none of it.

She scrambled out of the car as soon as her father parked, smoothing down her nice powder blue dress with her hands in anxiety. As her brothers tumbled inside, followed by her shouting father, it was just Theresa and her mother alone next to the car.

“Mama, I’d like to walk around the garden a little, please,” she said quietly, eyes downcast. There was silence; Theresa studied the dirt at her feet as she waited.

After a second, her mother hummed non-committally, already turning towards the house. “Don’t get your dress dirty, dear, and be back in time for morning tea. You know I can’t stop your brothers from eating your biscuits if you don’t come back in time.”

“Yes, Mama!” Theresa said politely, and her mother nodded sharply. Theresa, taking that as the dismissal it was, turned and hurried away as fast was polite.

The “garden” was less of a garden and more of a number of fields interspersed with old-growth trees and the occasional patch of flowers. They were rarely mowed except for when her father wanted to discipline her brothers with a hard day’s work, and so the grass grew long and spindly up to her knees, bending under the weight of the morning dew.

As the cottage grew further away, she felt as if a string pulling her heart down had been released; like a balloon it floated higher in her chest, unladen. It was quiet out here, almost lonely in its peacefulness. Her father’s work meant he was too busy to work the fields, and due to her health her mother rarely strayed further than the vegetable patch; it was her brothers that played out in the fields, and with them inside gobbling up all of her biscuits she was left alone outside.

At the end of the fields, there was a gnarled old willow tree. It was maybe her oldest friend, besides Esther. Toeing off her nice church sandals and setting them at the roots of the tree, Theresa picked her way up through the branches into her normal spot. Here, she could just see the cottage through the curtains of leaves; it was a tiny white dot through the sea of green. Here, the worn old branches held her like in their arms like her mother, comfortingly cool against her skin. Normally, this was where she went to forget the world. Today, she had realised her wickedness; she needed to pray.

Swivelling herself around until she could press her forehead against the trunk, Theresa leaned in and sighed.

“I beseech thee, O Lord,” she whispered to the bark, “Make me dutiful, make me gentle, make me kind, make me quiet. Weave my unruly threads into a blanket for the weary and shape my hands into tools that gladly work. Make me good, Lord, so that I may serve you, please.”

A thousand other words didn’t reach her lips, locked in her mind where they festered. She stared at her gangly legs and knobbly knees and prayed for God to make her prettier, and prayed for forgiveness for her vanity. She prayed that she could be smarter, then prayed for forgiveness for not studying hard enough. Theresa prayed that He would take her in His arms and deliver her from all her worries, and with frustrated tears in her eyes, she begged Him not to look at her. If He did, He’d see this wretched, rotten heart inside her that sings with rage and sin, and He would be disgusted with her impurity. The Lord loves all His children, but He probably loved Theresa a little less, That’s alright; she was used to that.

The willow tree gathered all of her prayers in its softly swishing leaves and sent them skyward on the nearest breeze. The puffy white clouds above should’ve posted them onwards to heaven.

Theresa didn’t pray for her strange, impure thoughts about Esther to abate; even acknowledging them was too much of a sin.

She’s too old now to obfuscate around her sins in her prayers. The first night of the conclave, Theresa spends an hour on her knees next to her bed praying for forgiveness. A carpet would be too indulgent; she kneels on the hardwood and lets the cold seep into her bones.

In the morning, she wakes up before the sun comes up. Slipping into a clean habit, she wipes her face with a damp cloth, sighing when she sees her dark circles. Conclaves are tiring times.

She meets Agnes in the other woman’s office to discuss accommodations and meals for the cardinals. She barely talks during the meeting, just as always. The other woman pats her shoulder, brow furrowed, but she doesn’t ask if Theresa is alright. It would be superfluous. Right now, no one is alright, just… getting by. They needn’t waste breath on it. They have jobs to do.

She remembers Agnes thirty years younger, her roommate when they were both new nuns still wide-eyed in the face of the majesty of the Vatican City. Agnes was a few years older with a few months more experience, but she’d still been so young. They’d both had long hair and they braided it for each other every morning, and they saved each other the nice pieces of fruit and good bits of bread, and Agnes had held her when she cried after her mother’s death. Theresa’s hair became too thin to braid after her chemotherapy treatments; she keeps the grey-white curls in a small bun at the back of her head hidden under her veil. Agnes’s hair is shorter now, a grey-streaked black bob. Theresa runs a hand through her hair self-consciously. The inner self is supposed to be the part that is prioritised for beauty — the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit — but the tiny sinful part of her mind still mourns her smooth skin and soft hands. She’s grown old here, hasn’t she?

After their meeting concludes, Theresa lets herself out a side door into the gardens. They’re pretty this time of year; soon, it will be May, and the flowers that are tentatively blossoming throughout the city will come into full bloom. She walks through them, breath misting in the cool morning air, as the first pinks and oranges of the sunrise fade into view on the horizon. There’s an hour until breakfast; she could go help, but she doesn’t really want to. When Theresa was a lot younger, she worked in the kitchens preparing meals for the Pope and his advisors, but she doesn’t work in the kitchens anymore, not when her hands shake so much daily. As it is, her only role is supervision, and with Agnes there she can afford to spend a little more time outside right now. Her feet tread the paths through the gardens through pure muscle memory. She stops by a babbling water feature for fifteen minutes and does her morning prayer, hand clutching at the rosary in her pocket. It is her grandmother’s rosary, a baptism gift she’s had since a baby. The hand-painted beads are worn away by decades of use.

As she tucks the rosary away and turns back towards the Basilica, she notices a nun hunched over by the nearby turtle pond nearby. She approaches slowly, shoes tapping against the stone path.

“Hello, Sister Valentina,” she greets neutrally.

The other woman’s head snaps up, wide eyes turning to a friendly smile when she spots Theresa approaching. It’s disarmingly pretty, crinkly eyes and little dimples that Theresa has to tear her eyes away from. “Hello, Sister Theresa.”

“You have met the turtles, I see,” she observes.

“Yes, I have. They are gorgeous creatures,” replies Valentina, a smile audible in her voice. Theresa smiles as well.

“Yes, they are.”

Ten or so years ago, when the late Holy Father was newly elected and still getting acquainted with living in the Vatican, he had taken a liking to the turtles. Theresa, who had never really liked them, was confused by the sentiment. They were too scaly to pet, and they splashed water all over the hem of her habit when she leaned down to look at them. Their little enclosure was pretty, yes, all babbling water and neat water lilies with pretty pink flowers, but she wasn’t a huge fan.

One morning, the Holy Father summoned her to his office. He offered her tea; she took it black without milk or sugar, and he laughed like it was funny. She didn’t really know what to expect from him. At that point in time, the late Holy Father was only elected a few months before, and she’d only worked with him in an official capacity.

“Sister Theresa,” he asked, staring hard at her with those eyes that seemed to contain all the wisdom in the world, “Do you like turtles?”

Theresa blinked. “Not particularly, Your Holiness.”

He hummed lowly, closing his eyes in the picture of contemplation. For a moment, they just sat there.

“Would you help build a new enclosure for the turtles?” he asked.

“If that’s what you desire of me, then of course, Your Holiness,” Theresa said carefully. The Holy Father smiled again.

“I won’t force you to work on it if you don’t want to. There are other people I can assign the project to, but you were top of Aldo’s list of “people who can get things done,” he explained lightly.

She raised an eyebrow. “I’ll be perfectly alright so long as I don’t have to touch them.”

“Alright, Sister Theresa,” laughed the Holy Father, “I will have Aldo email you the specifications. I trust that you will do your best.”

“Of course, Your Holiness.”

As she left the room, she couldn’t help a smile creeping onto her face.

It felt like validation, in a way, to be selected for a personal project of the Holy Father’s. At that point in time, she hadn’t been as bright-eyed and young as she had once been; she was closer to fifty than forty, a decade into her position managing the Vatican’s daily affairs, and her days were long and difficult but not particularly interesting. It wasn’t really her job to organise new construction, more to manage around the obstacles it created in people’s lives, but she wanted to make it perfect.

Theresa spent hours, days even, making that turtle pond the most beautiful thing she could manage. They say that beauty should not come from outward adornment, but then again they did live in the actual Vatican City, so Theresa took some liberties. Three-tiered waterfalls, elegant marble sculptures that sat within flower gardens bursting with multicoloured blossoms.

When the spring was in full bloom and the turtles had been placed in their new home, the Holy Father came to see the finished project. He surveyed it with those old eyes that held the wisdom of an ancient king, and he smiled like he was surveying a kingdom rather than a turtle pond.

“It’s lovely, Sister Theresa,” he said warmly. “You have done an excellent job.”

“Thank you, Your Holiness,” said Theresa, a bright satisfaction blooming in her chest. The Holy Father smiled at her, sitting down slowly on a nearby bench. She was aware of time passing but not how much of it as the Pope admired the pools. It was warm, and flowers were blossoming, and she had done well, she had been good enough. She was good.

A turtle knocked over a sculpture as it hauled itself through one of the flower gardens. It tipped over and shattered against the dirt, white marble chips spilling across the petals of a nearby rosebush.

“Oh, Your Holiness, I’m so sorry,” Theresa apologised, already moving to go over to the broken sculpture.

“Please, Sister, leave it,” he laughed, “Come sit with me. Let us appreciate the beauty that you have given to the world, the effort you have put into making these turtles a comfortable, pretty home. Sit with me, Sister Theresa; sit, and pray with me.”

Theresa furrowed her brow. “O-of course, Your Holiness.”

She rose slowly, smoothing her habit down with hands still trembling from shock and embarrassment, and sat on the bench next to the Holy Father. He looked over at her with a smile.

“What is your favourite verse?” he asked genially.

“Um…” she hesitated, scrounging around for something acceptable. She couldn’t embarrass herself with an ill-thought-out choice. “Hebrews 13:8: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.””

“Why?”

Theresa resisted the urge to shrug. “It comforts me, I suppose, to know that even when all of us are gone, faith in the kindness and wisdom of the Lord will live on. It makes me remember not to take things overly seriously, because Christ will live on in all the world’s minds no matter what I do. I may allow myself grace, then.”

“Well said, Sister,” the Holy Father said warmly, “A good choice.”

“Thank you, Your Holiness.”

“You needn't be so formal with me,” he laughed, “Do you think that the Lord’s angels address him as a king, or as a friend?”

“I am no angel,” Theresa blurted out.

“Oh,” the Holy Father says, “But you are as good as one, Sister Theresa.”

“Thank you, Your– Thank you.” she says, staring at the broken statue.

Coming back to herself, Theresa realises she’s been silent for several minutes. Luckily, the silence seems comfortable; Valentina is still crouched by the edge of the pond, laughing as one of the turtles swims up to her in search of food.

She checks her watch, sighing at what she sees there. “My apologies, Sister, I must go. I am needed at breakfast.”

“Oh, so am I!” the other woman says brightly. Theresa raises an eyebrow, and she flushes pink. “I– ah– I am assigned to kitchen duty today, but I do not know where the kitchen is. Would you… show me, Sister Theresa?”

Theresa nods too quickly. “Yes, of course. Of course. Follow me?”

Valentina hops to her feet, smiling, and Theresa can’t help but return the smile.

As the Cardinals begin to fill the dining room, Theresa gets Valentina situated at one of the serving stations with a reliable older nun who she knows will show her the ropes and goes out to the tables to make sure all of the Cardinals have water and silverware. More time must have passed than she thought, because it seems like no time at all before a few sisters are rolling out large trolleys covered in steaming plates of food.

There’s a great clattering crash from the other end of the room. Theresa jolts upright, eyes wide as a deer’s in headlights, to see one of the Cardinals on his feet yelling at a nun. She’s tall, dark-skinned, face not entirely familiar; it takes Theresa a moment to place her as Shanumi, one of the newer sisters, who had only transferred here a few weeks ago. They haven’t really talked, but Theresa’s impression of the other woman had been that she was dutiful, quiet, though with a penchant for gossiping with the other sisters if given the chance. Perhaps she’s spilled something on the Cardinal — who she now recognises as Adayemi — but she can’t fathom why such a simple accident would provoke such a fiery reaction. She hurries across the room, but Agnes is already taking Shanumi by the shoulders and steering her out of the room, eyes flinty as if asking to be challenged. Theresa nods at her, then makes eye contact with the rest of the nuns in the room, who are all standing frozen. They follow her back down the corridor towards the kitchen like ducklings. Already, they are beginning to whisper amongst themselves, wondering, contemplating, forming theories that grow in both volume and outlandishness as they continue to walk.

Theresa steers them into the kitchen, directing them back to their work. “Sisters, I’m sure this is a simple accident. I shall meet with Sisters Agnes and Shanumi. Please, continue to prepare breakfast.”

One of the younger nuns puts up her hand like a grade-schooler. Theresa nods at her, and she stutters for words. “Should we keep serving breakfast?”

“Yes, don’t stand around,” Theresa declares, sweeping from the room. “Focus, ladies. Idle hands are the devil’s playground. Shanumi will be fine.”

She leaves them there in the kitchen and hurries up the hall towards Agnes’ office. As she’s reaching for the door, it opens into her; Sister Shanumi hurries out, teary-eyed, and brushes past her down the hall. Theresa, mouth set in a thin line of confusion, closes the door behind herself and turns to Agnes.

“What happened?” she hisses, looking over her shoulder to check if anyone is outside listening. The hallway is empty. Agnes sighs heavily, gesturing to a seat; Theresa sits.

“Sister Shanumi is formerly… acquainted with Cardinal Adayemi,” she says carefully, staring down at her crucifix.

Theresa’s gaze sharpens with understanding. “How so?”

“Their… meeting resulted in a child that was given up for adoption. Shortly afterwards, Adayemi was nominated to bishop and Shanumi entered a nunnery. They have not met since.”

“Until today,” Theresa guesses.

“Yes,” sighs Agnes, “Until today.”

“Sister Shanumi was only transferred here a few weeks ago,” she points out, brow furrowed, “What are the chances that this is some kind of… hoax? Perhaps someone is attempting to derail his campaign.”

“That would explain her arrival, but not the Cardinal’s reaction,” Agnes counters.

“Do you think he really committed such a sin?” says Theresa. “A holy man such as him?”

“More powerful men have done worse,” the other nun sighs, “The evidence is… strong.”

Theresa hums in acknowledgement, dropping her gaze to the floor. With one hand, she rubs the exhaustion out of her eyes, then crosses herself gently.

Agnes does the same, looking weary. “I wonder whether we should say something.”

“We are bound not to say anything,” Theresa says softly, “But rumours only grow, Agnes. We don’t have to say anything.”

“A gossip betrays trust, but a trustworthy person keeps a secret,” says Agnes under her breath.

“The sin of rumour is not cardinal,” she advises. “Would it not be worse to let Adayemi continue his campaign, knowing of his disgraceful actions?”

“I don’t know,” Agnes sighs. For a moment, they just sit there.

“We needn’t say anything, Sister,” Theresa declares, “The rumours will spread regardless. Adayemi’s bid is spoiled.”

“Your theory that someone is trying to force him out of the race is not incompatible with the evidence,” points out Agnes.

“Yes, who transferred her here?”

“Who benefits?” asks Theresa, “Or rather, who is cruel enough to plan something like this?”

Her mind flashes to a few options, but the only one that seems remotely possible is Cardinal Tremblay; he’s conniving enough for it. She locks eyes with Agnes, who she knows must be thinking the same thing.

“We should start preparing lunch,” the other woman says eventually.

“I won’t say anything,” Theresa promises.

“I’ll look at Shanumi’s transfer records after lunch,” nods Agnes, and they leave the office together. Agnes turns left and proceeds to the kitchen; Theresa turns right and heads back to her office. She can barely focus on her work, thoughts of treachery and sin still swirling in her mind. She watches out the window as the smoke comes out of the chimney in the Sistine, and for the first time so far she’s relieved that it’s grey. Something wicked is afoot, and everyone is suspicious. Theresa does not want a wicked pope.

At lunchtime, she drags herself out of her chair, eyes smarting, and hurries down to the cafeteria to help serve lunch. She doesn’t do much work in the kitchen anymore — her shaky hands and worsening eyes don’t allow it — but she likes to help during big events. If she could make it just a little easier for someone, a little less stressful, if she could do just a little good, she’s doing her job, and that is beautiful. She stacks plates and fills water jugs and stirs a giant pot of soup, and she is useful.

As she’s ferrying some plates over from the dishwasher to the serving station, out of the corner of her eye, Theresa sees a nun slipping out of the room through a little-used side door that she knows leads to a small terrace. She narrows her eyes. The scuffed shoes, the curls slipping out of the sides of the veil… it looked like Sister Valentina.

Immediately, she thinks the worst. She can’t help it; Theresa has been blessed with an immutable sense of paranoia regarding situations that may damage her reputation. A nun getting overwhelmed and ducking out for some air will not reflect back negatively on Theresa herself, but a reporter slipping away to contact an outside source when Theresa was the one who vouched for her to stay would ruin her. Does she think Valentina is some nosy journalist fooling them all with a convincing nun costume and an excellent grasp of the scripture? No, but it never hurts to check.

“Excuse me a moment,” Theresa says to no one in particular, setting down the stack of plates. She walks quickly to the door she saw Valentina leave through. It’s open just a sliver; she peeks through the door suspiciously.

Valentina is alone outside. Her back is to Theresa as she leans against the railing separating the terrace from the short drop down to a flowerbed below, staring out across the Vatican towards the horizon; the sun is at its peak, and the clouds in the sky above have parted to show a brilliant blue. Her hands hold no phone but instead a small bowl of sliced fruit which she is snacking on idly. The image, innocent as it is, brings a smile to Theresa’s face. She pushes the door open,

The creaking sound seems to startle Valentina out of her peace. She spins, eyes wide. “Oh, Sister, I’m sorry!–”

“–What for?” she asks, “You are allowed to rest for a moment if you think it necessary.

The other nun nods blankly, then looks down at her fruit bowl. “I am sorry for… snacking while working?”

“A terrible crime indeed," nods Theresa solemnly. Valentina’s face breaks into a bright, amused grin. Silently, she offers out the bowl; Theresa plucks from it a thin slice of apple. Nibbling on it satisfies a hunger she didn’t even realise was growing inside her, evidence that she’d forgotten to find a breakfast again. Valentina steps back, smile becoming distinctly satisfied. For a few moments, they just stand there leaning against the railing.

“It’s beautiful,” Valentina says after a while, gaze once again fixed on the horizon.

“What is?”

The other woman shrugs — Theresa flinches — and waves a hand outwards. “This place, this city, the world… take your pick.”

“Oh?” Theresa hums neutrally. “I suppose.”

Valentina frowns, turning bodily towards her. “What do you mean? You do not think that it’s beautiful?”

“No, it is! I’m sure it is!” she rushes to assure her. “It’s just… very normal to me. I’ve been here for 35 years now; no marvel that the Vatican holds could ever really awe me anymore.”

“Hmm.”

“Is that wrong?”

“No, no,” Valentina shakes her head. “It is simply a view I have never considered before.”

“I suppose I simply don’t have much of an eye for beauty,” Theresa says airily.

“Well, Sister Theresa,” the other woman shrugs again. “I suppose you must learn to appreciate beautiful things more.”

Theresa stares at Valentina’s side profile — sharp with hunger, soft with age, warm with the morning sunlight and kindness — and bites her tongue to keep from saying anything particularly sappy. Oh, she appreciates beautiful things plenty, even though it’s not her place to. Theresa’s job is not to spend all day taking in the loveliness of her surroundings and the people in them. It is to stay silent and observant, fixing things from the shadows before they are even noticed to be broken. Valentina, fair as the moon and clear as the sun, doesn’t sound like she’s broken, and that means she’s none of Theresa’s business.

“I’ll try my best,” Theresa finds herself promising anyway. Valentina hums again, a smile dancing across her face. Theresa brings a hand to her own mouth, wiping the sweet apple juice from her lips, and the sticky sensation clings to her fingertips.

“When I was young, I lived in a slum,” Valentina says, sounding very far away. Theresa is faintly surprised by the non-sequitor, but she stays silent and the other nun continues. “It was a dirty, sad place, and all my family had was our home and our faith. I saw the Lord in everything, no matter how ugly; because even ugly things are loved by the Lord, yes? If you are good, he loves you, and that is all that matters. He does not care how poor you are, what squalor you live in, whether you will ever have anything to your name but your faith. This place… this decadence… it overwhelms me with its luxury, but it awes me too. I saw natural beauty as a child, but I have never seen manmade beauty like this.”

“I was much the same when I first arrived,” Theresa confesses, cracking a small grin, “Well, my childhood home was far from a slum, but it was from a city as well. I was well accustomed to farmland and trees and the general unkemptness of nature… when I moved here, I was nearly in shock. The gardens were so neat and tidy, and the buildings were taller than any I’d ever seen before.”

“Where did you grow up?” asks Valentina curiously.

She shakes her head. “Nowhere notable. A small town of less than 1000 people; a village, really. We had lived in London when I was very small, but my mother grew very sick after my youngest brother was born and we moved out to the countryside when I was seven. I don’t remember any of the city.”

“You have brothers?”

“Four of them,” Theresa sighs. “All younger. No sisters.”

“That sounds… loud,” jokes Valentina.

“They were loud,” she says simply, “I was not.”

“Ah, now it sounds stifling.”

Theresa suppresses a shrug, though it seems the most appropriate colloquial way to express the strange mix of confusion-discomfort-besmusement curdling in her gut. “I learned to deal with it.”

“I was a loud child,” Valentina says offhandedly.

“Oh?”

“My mother always told me that growing up would take many things from me, but I could not let it take my voice. To be silent is to give up your presence in others’ minds, and with it, your power,” the other woman explains, and Theresa is caught off guard once again by just how casually Valentina seems to say the wisest things. “So I was a loud child, and I have stayed a talkative woman.”

Theresa frowns in confusion. “Are you very talkative?”

“I have successfully tempted you into a ten-minute conversation,” Valentina points out, and she laughs when Theresa squints down at her watch in panic.

“That doesn’t mean you’re talkative, though,” Theresa says accusingly, “Just… easy to talk to!”

“Am I?” Valentina says, eyes wide in innocence but lips curled up into a cheeky smile. Theresa likes that look a little too much; she takes a stuttering step off to the side, hand going to her watch again, and Valentina’s smile fades. “I should go. They will need help bringing dishes back to the kitchen soon.”

And with that she disappears back through the door. A brief second of sound escapes as it swings open before the terrace is plunged back into silence once more. Theresa is left standing there reeling. The burrowing termites that are her sinful feelings are eating away at the roots she's grown into this land, and now she's teetering, wood snapping and cracking, unstable. She doesn’t know quite what to do.

She turns back to the railing and leans against it, sleeves falling up her arms to reveal forearms marked with pink lines by the pressure. Staring out at the Vatican laid bare before her, she gives herself a minute to be in awe of it. The sheer size of it astounds, the luxury of every tiny detail too; from here, she can see the neatly planted flowers in the gardens below her, and beyond them, glimmering white buildings inlaid with all sorts of precious metals and painted with fine murals by the greatest artists history has to offer. It’s a strange thing to suddenly have her numbness brought to the front of her mind, like when someone mentions breathing and suddenly you have to think about doing it. All this luxury, and Theresa feels nothing.

Her childhood church was nothing like this. It was a small building, white walls and a wooden roof, only one stained glass window above the altar, a cracking porch and rafters that seemed to bow like servants under the weight of the wisdom they held up. It was cosy too; it seemed to exude warmth out of every timber. It wasn’t majestic, but there are cathedrals everywhere for those with eyes to see. The priest there was a kind man with wrinkles carved deep into his face like furrows from a plow. His name was John, or maybe Jeremiah; something old and heavy-sounding. He spoke to the kids like they mattered, and perhaps they really did; he had baptised nearly every child in the town. Theresa looked up to him a lot. In the end, when she was seventeen and silently chafing under her father’s increasingly pointed attempts to dissuade her from university, he had written her recommendation letter to study theology in Oxford. He’d died in 1990, a few months before she got her job in the Vatican; she wishes he could have known. As it is, Theresa barely remembers him. He’s a faded silhouette, a collection of assorted scents and sounds and flashes of nostalgia, like many of the people she once knew. It’s funny what she remembers. Like impressions in the sand, her memories are washed away by the natural ebb and flow of time. She remembers that he was kind, though, and that’s what matters.

Theresa can’t stand the idea of an unkind Pope being elected. She has known a few throughout her tenure; fat, thin, liberal, conservative, all flavours of man. She has known goodness, and she has known mediocrity. Tremblay, Tedesco, Adayemi… they do not exemplify goodness, hope, the kindness and perseverance of humanity. They are unkind men. They, too, are the sort of men who would transfer another candidate’s youthful love affair partner into the Vatican during the conclave in hope of a confrontation that has now occurred.

After lunch, Agnes pulls her into her office and silently shows her Shanumi’s transfer records. There is a letter from her four years ago applying for a job at the Vatican; there is a memo two months ago citing “exemplary performance combined with extenuating circumstances” as a reason for the sudden reversal of their previous rejection. There is a letter to Shanumi telling her that her application has been accepted, and that her flight to Rome — three weeks before the start of the conclave — will be fully paid for by the church. That is standard procedure. What is not procedure is the lack of signatures on the papers. Every memo is signed in the requisite places by low-level clerks and assistants, but in the space where a Cardinal would sign on the contract of an employee they were sponsoring out of normal hiring season, there is nothing. It is blank.

Agnes and Theresa trade resigned glances. There is a traitor in the Vatican, and they don’t know who it is.

Theresa has a plan, though. She is a manager. She will manage this.

On the second day, as the soft dusk in the sky above solidifies into a dark midnight blue, Theresa walks into the Casa Santa Marta with purpose. The pockets of her habit are laden with instruments of sin; her rosary clicks in her pocket against metal. The stream of cardinals leaving to go to dinner has slowed to a trickle.

She comes across Cardinal Jamnadas in the elevator. He is nearly 100 years old, bent over his cane; he smells like whiskey and mothballs. She helps to direct him towards the dining room, stiff with the weight of eyes on her. He walks with silent footsteps; it is a harrowing reminder that she might not hear someone coming, and that Cardinals still roam the halls. She must be careful.

Climbing to the second floor, she looks around the empty hall. There should be no one left here, but she can’t be sure. A single witness… she’d probably be excommunicated, or at least fired and exiled to some remote mountain nunnery in Siberia where it is cold and silent and they eat fish all the time. That’s probably worse than excommunication.

She continues down the hall to the door covered by a crimson ribbon, and roots around in her habit. From within her pocket, she tightens her fingers around the handle of a pair of heavy silver scissors. Carefully, with a surreptitious look over her shoulder, Theresa brings the sharp blades of the scissors to the thick velvet. The snip echoes down the corridor, which luckily remains empty; despite this, Theresa feels her breath begin to come quicker. She has transgressed a holy boundary, committed an unforgivable sin; like cutting a flower’s stem, she has now condemned something so pure as to be sacred for her own gain.

Theresa stares down at the cut ribbon, hands shaking, and slowly slides the scissors back into her pocket. With a deep, shuddering breath, she pushes open the door to the late Pope’s private rooms.

The air inside is heavy, stale with age and suffocating with its implications. Francis, who had prayed with her by the turtle pond, who had called her an angel; his private quarters had been intruded upon by her, stained by the sin of her presence. For a good minute, Theresa stands trembling in the doorway, trying to convince herself to leave. Unfortunately, she’s very bad at listening to herself. She steps inside, letting the door close behind her with a firm, definitive click.

The papers inside the late Pope’s desk are not of any interest to her; they are too public, too easy to remove should someone go searching. Similarly, the spaces under his mattress and in the stuffing of his armchair are too obvious, and he was too frail from sickness towards the end of his life to hide anything particularly high or low. In short, it must be somewhere concealed but easily accessible if needed.

Twenty minutes pass before she finds a thrice-folded packet of papers stuffed into a crack in the simple wooden headboard. She pulls them out, careful not to rip them against the splintered wood. She unfolds them carefully, squinting her eyes and bringing the papers closer to her face; she’s forgotten her glasses. Brow furrowed, she exhales heavily at what she sees. There on the page, written in size eleven calibiri font and detached language, is Tremblay’s undoing.

She pokes her head out the door, half-expecting a dramatic gasp or cry as she is spotted, but Theresa is alone. She heaves a sigh, stepping out of the late Pope’s quarters into the corridor. From her habit, she draws out a small piece of fabric in which a sharp, tapered embroidery needle is sequestered. It is already threaded with scarlet thread; at her age, it is perhaps easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for her shaky, liver-spotted hands to finesse a thread through that same hole. With short, well-practiced dips and pulls of her needle, Theresa sews the ribbon together again. A few times, she stabs into her thumb with the tip — it’s muscle memory, after all, tugging her fingers into the right position — and the vibrant blood seeps into the fabric of the ribbon. The colour matches, she notices. All in all, the embroidery is invisible.

Theresa steps away from the door, crumpled papers burning a hole in her pocket. The stale, dusty air clings to her clothes as she leaves the Casa Santa Marta.

No one looks at the nuns as they move through the Vatican, black habits like shadows; Theresa walks as quietly as ever, head down in humility, and no one looks at her, just like always. She simply slips into Dean Sabbadin’s office while he’s still at dinner and leaves behind a sheaf of papers, and people put it up to her doing housekeeping, or leaving notes she took for him in the last meeting, or some other reasonably sane thing; no one thinks it’s her that left that exposé on his desk. She sees him putting copies of the papers on the tables before breakfast the next day, and turns away. He doesn’t see her; she pretends not to see him. It is not her place.

There is yelling from the breakfast hall as she walks away from it. Theresa does not turn back.

The cardinals depart for the Sistine Chapel soon after breakfast concludes, all still looking rather shellshocked in the aftermath of the reveal about Tremblay. Theresa returns to her office. She sits heavily in her chair, head in her hands, and prays.

“I beseech thee, O Lord,” she whispers into her callused palms, “Forgive me these sins. Forgive me my sins, please. I was not good, Lord, and I sinned against You, and I beg for Your forgiveness. I broke the seal, I gossiped, I was unkind and I overstepped my station. I took power that was not mine to covet, and I used it to go against Your sacred plan. I beseech thee for forgiveness, O Lord, and I pray that I do not taint my eternal soul with these transgressions. Soothe my unquiet mind, take me into Your arms and forgive me like an unruly child, Lord. I beseech thee.”

She roots through her desk for her Bible then leafs through its well-worn, dog-eared pages. She squints, almost unable to read the words, and fumbles with her glasses, shoving them onto her nose. Annotations line the sides in her mother’s sloping handwriting, her grandmother’s too, Theresa’s; she hasn’t annotated it since she was young.

“Philippians,” Theresa says aloud, sighing, ““I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”–” she sets the book down, massaging her temple –“Please, Lord, Christ almighty who guides his flock with all grace and wisdom, forgive me–”

There’s a knock at the door. She drops her Bible; it hits the desk with a thump. “Yes?”

Althea pops her head in, face twisted in the awkward, close-mouthed smile that means she knows she’s interrupting Theresa’s prayer. “Sister Shanumi is refusing to come out of her room.”

“Is Sister Agnes not–”

“–she’s coordinating lunch right now,” Althea says apologetically.

“Thank you, Sister Althea,” sighs Theresa, “I will attend to her.”

She tucks her Bible back into her desk, stilling her foot before it could start tapping with annoyance. It takes a few minutes to walk over to the nun accommodations, where to true Althea’s words, one of the doors is shut tight. A label on the door in Agnes’ careful handwriting identifies it as the room of Sisters Magali Lenoir and Shanumi Chukwuka. Raising a hand, Theresa knocks twice sharply.

“Sister Shanumi?” she says, soft enough that it seems warm and understanding, but loud enough to be heard through the thick door. “It’s Theresa. Could you let me in, please?”

There’s a shuffling sound behind the door, but it doesn’t open.

“Please?” she tries again, “I won’t make you come out, but I need to know that you’re going to be alright in there.”

The door cracks open a little, just enough for Theresa to see Shanumi’s face on the other side. Her eyes are swollen and pink, and she’s sniffling. It’s a pitiful sight, and Theresa feels her heart pang in sympathy.

“Can I come in?” Theresa asks. Shanumi sniffs, wiping a hand across her face, and opens the door. Theresa slips inside, and Shanumi locks it behind her. “Are you alright?”

Shanumi shrugs faux-casually. “Ee, I’m fine.”

“Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong?” Theresa asks tenderly, and that seems to break the dam. Shanumi sits back down on her bed, burying her face in her hands, and her shoulders begin to shake.

“I thought I’d love it here,” weeps the other sister, “I thought it would be perfect.”

Theresa blinks, not knowing quite what to do or say. She’s not usually the one comforting homesick new nuns; if all else fails, they usually go to Agnes. She has no practice at consoling.

“I miss my home,” Shanumi continues, tears streaming down her cheeks, “The ceilings are so high, and the food tastes different, and I don’t know any Latin, and it’s only been three weeks. I can’t believe I thought I was ready for this job. I shouldn’t have come here, and this thing–” she spits it like it burns –“with Joshua– Cardinal Adyamei– it’s just another sign that I’m not meant for this.”

“Oh,” Theresa says softly, “Oh, Sister, I’m sorry.”

She sits down gingerly on the bed next to Shanumi, extending an arm to wrap comfortingly around her shoulders. The other sister sags against her, eyes coming up to rub away her tears. For a few moments, they just sit there as Shanumi’s body is wracked with tremors. Theresa clears her throat.

“When I arrived here,” she says quietly, “I felt much the same. I grew up in the countryside, with rolling fields and a little church, in a town where everyone knew each other. When I first got my job at the Vatican, I was so scared. Just as you said, the ceilings were high and the food was different and I couldn’t memorise Latin for the life of me. I was terrified that I’d mess up and everything would fall apart, that they’d send me away and all of my hard work would be for nothing. But do you want to know what I learned?”

Shanumi nods, voice croaky. “What?”

“Everyone feels like that,” Theresa confesses.

“That’s cheesy,” Shanumi sighs, a laugh in the back of her throat. Theresa cracks a smile.

“I knew an older nun,” she explains, “French, very no-nonsense, hair like spun silver. She saw me crying one day, and she brought me to the kitchen, and when the Mother Superior tried to get me to help out with the cooking, that nun yelled at her to leave me alone.”

“She did?”

“Mmm.” Theresa smiles. “I’ve never seen someone scarier. But she stayed there next to me and she gave me biscuits, and she counselled me. There’s a word for it, that strange feeling of being in a place that’s not your home, different than you’re used to. Dépaysement.”

“I don’t speak French,” sniffles Shanumi, rubbing harshly at her eyes again. Theresa reaches up and slowly pulls her hand down.

“Neither do I, so I might not explain it as well as she did,” Theresa says not unkindly, eyes flickering to her own hands. She feels as though she should be trembling; her hands are steady. That means something, probably; she doesn’t have time to worry about it now. “Dépaysement. It’s not positive nor negative, just… an indescribable emotion. It resonated with me.”

“That’s… quite pretty.”

Theresa hums. “Yes, I thought so too.”

Shanumi sniffs again, a watery sound. “Thank you, Sister Theresa.”

“It’s– you’re welcome. I hope you feel better soon, Shanumi,” Theresa says kindly, and the other sister smiles wobblily.

“I’ll try.”

Theresa leaves Shanumi there in her room, closing the door softly behind herself. She presses her forehead to the doorframe for a second, breathing deeply, then turns back down the hallway. As she walks, she makes the sign of the cross, then reaches into her pocket to thumb over the cross on her rosary. As she walks, she prays the Apostle’s Creed, then the Lord’s prayer, muttering them under her breath. She nods to the other sister as she passes. Her feet take her past her office and back towards the cafeteria, a winding walk that is more a vehicle for calming herself down than arriving at any particular place. She stops outside the kitchen door as she begins her Hail Marys.

“Hail, Mary, full of grace,” Theresa begins, letting out a shaky breath, “the Lord is with thee.”

She fiddles with the fabric of her habit with the hand not holding the rosary, rubbing the wool between two fingers. She tries her best not to, but it’s a nervous tic developed over years. When she was younger, her mother ordered all of her dresses in pretty colours and stiff fabrics, and Theresa would have gotten rapped on the knuckles if she dared fiddle with the fabric. A memory floats past her mind’s eye: sitting at her mother’s feet on a Sunday morning, knees tucked beneath her, as Mama plaited her hair into a tight braid. She remembers staring down at the rosary, praying aloud, practicing, and the way that her mother would tug on the braid if she got the words wrong. She forced her hands to stay still on the rosary, not making a sound of complaint. The fabric of her nice Sunday dress was scratchy and thin, a pastel green that stuck to her eyes like the afterimage left behind after staring at the sun for too long; she didn’t dare wiggle around for relief on her knees. She would repeat the words of the Hail Mary over and over as her hair was plaited, staring down at the rosary. Theresa could do a whole decade all alone by the age of ten, the first in the entire church. Mama had been so proud of her, that little girl in the green dress with the wide eyes and the neat plait, who could say ten Hail Marys without getting a single word wrong. Theresa doesn’t feel much like that little girl anymore; she hasn’t for a long time. 

“Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”

She helped Esther learn the Hail Holy Queen too, held her pale fingers and guided them along the beads of the rosary. She pressed their palms together, the little silver cross between their hands leaving impressions on their skin when Theresa let go. She dreams, sometimes, of that cross, and of Esther. She thinks of her mother as she prays along the beads, and she thinks of Esther when she holds the cross at the bottom. She doesn’t remember the sound of Esther’s voice when she prayed, but she does remember the design carved into her friend’s little silver cross. It’s funny the things she remembers.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death,” Theresa breathes in again, and out, and she banishes the memory of Esther from her mind. “Amen.”

All at once, there is a great cracking, booming sound from her left. It seems to thrum through her very bones, skittering up and down her spine so that the hair on the back of her neck stands up. It is like the very sky has cracked open; time seems to stand still. There are screams, Theresa knows, but her heartbeat is so loud in her ears that she can’t hear them. There is no smoke, no rubble; like sunflowers to the dawn, all that they can do is turn and face the sound.

Someone drops a plate behind her. That is enough to kick Theresa’s head back into gear. Stumbling over the hem of her habit, she shoves her rosary back into her pocket and begins to run in the direction of the Sistine Chapel. A trickle of other people do the same, some sprinting while others walk like zombies mindlessly following the mob, looking shell-shocked. The Swiss Guard congregates at the entrance and though Theresa tries to push past, they form an immovable barrier.

“Ma’am!” one of them says, “Ma’am, you can’t go in there. We don’t know if there are more bombs yet. Please, step back.”

“It was a bomb?” she gasps. “Really?”

“Really,” the guard confirms.

“Oh.” Theresa says faintly.

There is a tap at her shoulder; already on edge, she jolts around to see Sister Valentina there, pale, jaw clenched. “Oh, Sister, please, we must step back–”

“–I can help!” the other woman says breathlessly, “My last mission was in Kabul. I know how to treat these people who have been hurt with bombs or are in shock. I can help, please! Sister, you must let me help.”

Theresa locks eyes with the Swiss Guard, who nods; she turns back to Sister Valentina.

“Please, Valentina,” she says, voice cracking, “Be safe.”

How strange that she can’t seem to bring any other words past her lips, but those four alone seem to suffice.

Valentina nods like she understands anyway. In an instant she turns, face solemn, and is swallowed by the mass of guards. Theresa’s hand grasps empty air.

Her heart still pounding, Theresa turns. Behind her, a crowd of nuns churns, all murmuring to each other. The whispers sound wild, hysterical; most of all, they sound scared. She takes a deep breath. She must do her duty. Theresa is a manager; thus, now, she will manage.

Agnes arrives ten minutes later. She stares at Theresa, who is trying to order everyone out of the hallway, and whistles sharply. Theresa winces at the volume, but gives her a grateful nod when everyone finally clears out.

“Where were you?” she asks.

“Santa Marta,” Agnes responds, guiding an older nun along. “Sister Noemie dropped a whole bucket of boiling water when she heard the noise, so I had to get her to the infirmary first to make sure the scalding wasn’t too bad. Where were you?”

Theresa makes a face. “Kitchen. I got here quickly.”

“Hmm,” sighs Agnes, rubbing a hand across her face.

She clears her throat. “It was a bomb, and–”

“–what?!?–” the other woman gasps, mouth dropping open. “I– couldn’t it have been an earthquake, or some kind of building collapse?”

Theresa winces. “A suicide bomb, Islamic. It hit the outer wall and blew a hole in some of the ceiling, getting debris everywhere, but the Swiss Guards say no one was seriously injured. Just some temporary hearing loss, and shell shock. Cardinal Jamnadas apparently had difficulty breathing and the medics feared a heart attack, but he was lucid and gave his proxy vote already, so we shouldn’t have to send anything to the hospital.”

“We should send a gift basket anyways,” says Agnes, “Lord almighty, a suicide bomb?”

“They won’t let us in until they’ve cleared the premises of any other danger,” she confirms.

“A bomb," repeats Agnes tiredly.

“Yes.”

“I’ll take the other sisters back to the Casa Santa Marta, give them something to do,” says the other sister, reaching out to grasp Theresa’s hand, “Do you want to come with me?”

Theresa shakes her head. “Val– Sister Valentina went in to help; I’ll wait for her.”

Agnes’ gaze sharpens, but she nods and leaves it there, sweeping away to direct the gathered nuns. Theresa leans against the wall outside the door, closing her eyes. No prayers come to mind; she is quiet, head fuzzy.

Twenty minutes later, the door opens — she cracks her eyes open — and Valentina pushes through the crowd of Swiss Guards. Immediately, Theresa notices her newly pale face, her trembling hands, the strange way she’s hunching her shoulders like she’s trying to gather warmth. She pushes off the wall and hurries over.

“Sister Valentina?” she says worriedly. Valentina spins around to look at her, eyes wide and unfocused, and nearly falls over from the momentum; Theresa grabs her arm to stabilise her.

“Theresa?” the other sister quavers, blinking hard. She looks completely out of it.

Mouth set with displeasure, Theresa looks around. This place is too loud, too full of people, too close to the bomb sight; they have to get out of here if Theresa has even the slightest chance of getting Valentina calm again.

“Come, Sister,” she soothes, “Let’s go somewhere quiet.”

Valentina nods silently, and Theresa clenches her jaw. Tightening her grip on the other’s arm, she directs her fellow nun down the hall. Through the corridors they walk, up a flight of stairs, past Althea’s empty desk, and into Theresa’s office. There, she sets Valentina down on one of the two plush chairs in front of her desk, then heads over to the cabinet in the corner, from which she brings forth an electric kettle. Althea makes sure it’s full of water from the nearby water fountain every few hours; she must have dropped by just to fill it up before she went to help in the Casa Santa Marta. Theresa smiles softly at the thought.

As the water boils, she tears open a packet of lemon custard biscuits as quietly as she can, then takes out two mugs. The kettle shrieks; she turns it off immediately. Dropping a plain tea bag into each mug, she lets them steep for a few minutes. Already, she can hear Valentina’s breath slowing. Theresa pulls the tea bags out and turns around to the woman on her couch.

“Do you like sugar in your tea?” she asks, and Valentina shrugs. “Alright, I’m giving you some.”

“You don’t take yours with sugar?” the other woman asks, speaking for the first time in as many minutes. Theresa blinks, concealing her surprise and relief behind a shake of her head.

“No, it’s too indulgent for me,” she sighs. Valentina smiles, though it seems shaky. Theresa hands the cup to her and she wraps her fingers around it, seeking the warmth. Theresa considers sitting in her normal office chair, but discards that option in favour of sitting in the second plush chair next to Valentina. She sighs at the feeling; perhaps she really should let herself get a cushioned chair.

She takes a long sip of her tea. It is bitter, but flavourful. Valentina, looking over at her, does the same. For a moment, the room is silent.

“Do you ever… panic?” Valentina asks quietly. Theresa nods, and the other woman’s shoulders loosen, as if she was simply waiting to be told she was alone. She is not alone; Theresa will not allow it.

“Not as much anymore,” she replies, reaching into her pocket to thumb at the rosary there for comfort. “But in the past, yes. I was diagnosed with cancer eight years ago just after my 51st birthday. I used to panic every day, wondering whether I’d done something wrong, whether the Lord had cursed me for my sins and given me an illness I would not recover from. Sometimes, I would return from chemotherapy, and sit in my office and just cry.”

“Oh.”

They sit there for a minute, drinking their tea. Valentina picks up a biscuit and bites into it; a drop of lemon custard oozes out, staining her lip, and her tongue darts out to taste it. Theresa conceals a smile behind her mug.

“I panicked when I heard the bomb,” the other sister admits, looking down at the biscuit in her hands. “I was too used to Kabul. There, if you heard a bomb, it meant that there were always a dozen more to follow. My church would have people walk into it for hours after every explosion, bleeding and sobbing… sometimes they were holding bodies and insisting we heal them. We did our best, but we were nuns, not doctors. Many of the victims we could not save. I heard the bomb, and I thought that we would have to leave, that my new home was–” she breaks off with a sob.

“Oh, dear,” Theresa says tenderly, “I’m so sorry.”

Valentina nods, sniffling, “The Cardinals… none of them were bleeding or unconscious, but I remember all the times one of our patients would just fall and never get up… I could not breathe. I could not think, I just tried to help everyone.”

Theresa winces.

“You did your best,” she promises. Valentina shrugs.

“You were not there,” she says, “You did not see. I could have done badly.”

“I trust that you did your best,” Theresa says definitively.

“Alright.”

Valentina finishes her tea, and Theresa sets her own mug down. Her mother always said it was rude to keep eating after a guest finished. Theresa clears her throat.

“Are you feeling better?” she asks. Valentina shrugs again.

“Yes, thank you.”

“I think you should return to your room and rest, Sister,” Theresa counsels, “You have been through a lot.”

Valentina nods, smiling without emotion. “Yes, you are right.”

She stands, and Theresa stands as well; reaching down over to the table, she picks up the packet of biscuits before pressing it into Valentina’s hands. The other woman looks down at them in surprise.

“Be safe, Sister,” she says, and almost like she’s possessed, she leans forward and kisses Valentina on the cheek. The other woman stiffens in shock, and Theresa takes a jolting step back, plastering a serene expression onto her face to conceal her horror. Seconds pass; they remain frozen in each other’s paths. Just as Theresa clears her throat awkwardly, about to bid her farewell again, Valentina moves.

Degree by degree, she leans in as well. She veers away from the safe, well-worn area of the cheek, instead drifting more towards her mouth. Delicately, as tenderly as a lover, Valentina places a featherlight kiss against the corner of her mouth. Her eyes flutter closed, then she blinks them open once more and pulls back, an almost nervous smile pulling at her mouth.

“I will go to rest now, Sister Theresa,” she murmurs, the words caught in the air between them like flies in a glistening gossamer web. She doesn’t move. “Thank you for your kindness.”

Theresa swallows almost convulsively; she feels as though she shouldn’t be smiling, but she can’t help but return it. “Of course, Sister. I hope you rest well.”

The other nun’s smile warms. She reaches up to touch her crucifix, as though by habit. “You remind me, Sister, of the old women who worked as nurses in Kabul. The bombs, the gunfire… they would brave anything to help people. You remind me of them. You have the same kindness, the same love. I admire that greatly.”

““Let us love one another, for love is from God“,” Theresa says by way of explanation, ““Let all that you do be done with love.” I am simply following the Lord’s word, not acting in a truly miraculous manner. I am just… just a nun.”

Valentina laughs like that means nothing. “Oh, many people say that they act out of love when they really act out of fear or pride or self-importance. You truly act out of love; you are not just a nun, you are an angel.”

“I don’t agree,” Theresa blurts out. The other woman blinks in surprise, probably at her vehement tone. “My faith is flimsy and impermanent at best. I doubt frequently and recurrently, and my thoughts stray every day to what a life without Christ may mean for me. I am no angel.”

“Must an angel not doubt?” Valentina says carefully after a moment, as if picking her words carefully, “Is it not more angelic to doubt, and yet renew one’s love for the lord? I think that’s beautiful.”

Theresa sighs, her fallen smile once again tugging at her lips. “You seem to think a lot of things are beautiful, Sister Valentina.”

“Yes, I do,” she whispers, tone strange.

That’s all she can say. This conversation — the undertones running beneath every word in doublespeak — is dangerous. “Unnatural passions”, “degrading”... women are not allowed to be loud with their desires; in fact, it is better for them not to have desires at all. Nuns — chaste and pure for all eternity, wives only to the Lord — even less so. Whatever this is, it cannot continue to be anything.

Theresa finds herself wanting regardless.

“I shall go now,” the other sister says, smiling again and turning towards the door. “Goodbye, Sister Theresa.”

“Goodbye, Sister Valentina,” whispers Theresa, balling her hands at her sides. Valentina slips out the door; it slips closed behind her with a soft click.

Theresa sits heavily down on her chair, foot tapping restlessly. Hand reaching for her rosary, she swallows thickly to get some moisture back into her dry mouth. She should probably have some tea to calm her heart, to rehydrate her after a long day without much time to sit around, but she can’t bring herself to stand up. Nail tapping against the beads of her rosary, she prays another Hail Mary. Time passes. She prays the remaining eight Hail Marys, and probably a few more past that. Slowly, she gets her breathing under control, the adrenaline of the bombing and the subsequent conversation with Valentina seeping out of her frame until she’s hunched over her desk with her head in her hands.

Her thoughts weigh heavy in her mind. Sister Valentina’s presence has a funny way of dredging up old memories — Esther, the old Holy Father and her turtles, the cancer scare — that she doesn’t always want to unpack. Theresa is an old woman, set in her ways.

She sets aside the rosary prayer for a minute to stare up at the ceiling, attempting to remember a particular verse. It’s Isaiah 48:3, or perhaps 46:4; it’s written in the late Holy Father’s careful handwriting inside the ‘get well soon’ card he gave her when he first heard of her diagnosis. She remembers repeating it during chemotherapy, even when her throat went dry and her lips chapped.

“Even to your old age and gray hairs,” she whispers, “I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.”

Maybe that’s the beautiful thing about faith; no matter how much you hurt, no matter how much you doubt, you hope that things will get better, and you put your heart into the Lord’s hands for him to do with as he pleases, clay in his potter’s hands. Maybe that’s enough. Maybe angels really do doubt.

“Lord,” Theresa says simply, looking back up at the ceiling, “Give me a sign.”

It’s the shortest, simplest prayer she’s said in years. She hopes He understands.

The cross on her rosary bites into her palm, and Theresa sighs, standing. She should stretch her legs; it’s not good for her health to sit for too long. On top of that, she has a rosary to finish praying.

In the short time it takes to walk down to the dining room, she prays the Glory Be and the Fatima Prayer under her breath. The hallways are deserted; most of the nuns are in the Casa Santa Marta preparing for the Cardinals’ return after this afternoon’s voting session. Agnes is no doubt managing that. Theresa is, for now, not needed.

She reaches the dining room. It too is empty. Almost by instinct, she pushes in a chair that was left out; once she begins, she can’t stop. She rounds every table in the room twice, pushing the chairs with single-minded focus. The remainder of the rosary still dangles in her hand, clinking against the chairs when she reaches out to them. When she’s sure that all of the chairs are pushed in, Theresa stares around the room for something else to do. There!; a tablecloth that has been snagged on someone’s clothes and so is uneven.

Remembering her prayer, Theresa clears her throat. Her thumb presses down each bead, counting her prayers, until she reaches the final one; the Salve Regina.

“Hail, holy Queen, mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope,” Theresa says evenly, tugging at the corner of the tablecloth to straighten it. It is already crisp on the corners, unwrinkled, but now it’s a little bit more perfect. She adjusts a napkin, setting it in alignment with the placemat next to it. It is parallel, just as it should be. There is a singular crumb on the side. She brushes it away with a trembling hand. She doesn’t know why she’s trembling. “To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve; to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.”

When she has checked all the tablecloths, she looks at the silverware. She hunches over a set of cutlery for a full ten minutes, staring at an imperfection on the side of the fork. The silver has been worn just the tiniest bit by repeated use, rubbed until the sheen on top has dulled a little. Normally the kitchen staff would be on top of that.

Eventually, her back begins to ache, and Theresa straightens up with a sigh. It’s a persistent symptom of her cancer recovery working in tandem with her advancing age; bones that she didn’t know could hurt now smart at the slightest stillness, muscles twinge that she could have relied on before. Her hands shake; that is perhaps the most daunting of her ailments. She used to be able to rely on her hands.

Her mother’s hands used to tremble all the time. It was one of those things that illness did to her; it made her weak, tired all the time, reticent. She would sit in the kitchen all day on a high stool her father had brought all the way from London for her, and she would stare out the window. When Theresa asked what she was looking for, she would say all sorts of things; watching birds, looking for pictures in the sky, talking to the flies that died against the windowsill and laid there, bleached by the sun. It was always Theresa’s job to clean the windowsills.

“Turn then,” Theresa continues. The words sound small inside the vastness of the hall; they do not echo, they do not fill the space. “Most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us.”

Mama didn’t like to talk about her illness. It made her look grey in a way that Theresa never saw her. She was better when Theresa was younger, or maybe that was just the rose-tinted glasses of childhood talking. By the time Theresa was seventeen and leaving home, she seemed smaller than ever, or maybe that was just because Theresa had grown up past her. Mama begged, one morning in the kitchen, for Theresa to go, find somewhere far away from the willow and the little church and the sun-bleached flies and the illness. She said Theresa would be a good nun, dutiful and gentle, kind and quiet. She said that she didn’t want her daughter to feel like she did.

“And, after this, our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary..”

Theresa used to not understand that. Her Mama had been the greatest person in the world, even when she was quiet and mean, and she gave the best hugs ever, even when she was sad and ill. She had been the most devout in the family, even more than Papa, but she had never talked about nuns. She didn’t know why her mother wanted her to leave their little village and find somewhere else in the world. It felt like abandonment, for a while. Theresa thinks she might understand now. She has a duty, a job; she is a manager for the whole Vatican City. Thus, she manages not just a little cottage in a big garden that no one ever goes into, but a whole village of her own. She does not have four loud boys and one quiet girl, or a window to sit by; her skin is wrinkled and liver-spotted but it is not grey.

Sometimes she wonders if she inherited her cancer from her mother. It would be just another thing passed down through a long line of women who took their husbands’ names — Margaret Thomas, Ethel Lawrence, Theresa never to Marry — like the Bible in her desk drawer and the rosary in her hand. Theresa will never have a child to pass it down to, only a legion of younger nuns who would someday forget her name like she’s forgotten the French nun who counselled her of dépaysement. Who will she leave her bible to, her rosary, her name? Maybe no one. But Theresa Lawrence manages the daily affairs of the entire Vatican City, and she does not sit by her windowsill every day pretending to watch the birds fly by. Perhaps it’s better this way. Perhaps this is her place.

“Pray for us, O holy mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.”

Someone clears their throat behind her. “I believe they’ll be completing the afternoon vote soon.”

“Will they?” Theresa asks, turning to look at Agnes. The other sister nods, falling into step beside her as Theresa sets the cutlery down and walks towards the centre of the room.

“Would you like to watch the smoke together?”

Theresa smiles. “Always, Sister.”

They walk over to the other side of the dining room, which has the best view of the smokestack from which the announcing smoke should appear. Agnes checks her watch. Theresa bounces on her feet slightly.

Her fellow Sister looks over at her with a smile, reaching up to hold her crucifix in her hand. Theresa does the same. They wait.

A long puff of white smoke issues from the pipe. It’s nothing like the bomb, no deep, earth-rending explosion of noise all at once; it simply changes their world without any fanfare. Theresa’s breath catches in her throat; almost unbidden, tears spring to her eyes. Beside her, Agnes gasps in joy. Already, the roar of crowds is building far away in the square as the masses catch sight of the smoke. It continues for nearly a full minute, pale smoke flying away into the clouds.

Theresa clears her throat thickly, breaking the silence. It’s a harsh, dramatic sound like the croak of a bird; Agnes laughs.

“I wonder who it is,” she says, eyes still fixed on the smokestack.

“I hope…” Theresa swallows, “I hope it’s someone kind.”

“So do I.”

Theresa doesn’t know how close the election was; she doesn’t get to. She doesn’t know who the new Pope is yet. She has no say in who is elected and who goes home bitter, no say in her own future, but… but isn’t that the best way to live? Isn’t it beautiful to give up one’s fate to the hands of the Lord and his chosen servant? She can hope that the new Holy Father is a kind man, a priest rather than a politician, someone that she could admire rather than just work with. As it is, Theresa doesn’t know who that man will be. She just knows that she prayed for a sign, and the smoke turned white.

Isn’t it pretty to think that this is all a sign?

“Find me when it’s time for his speech?” Theresa asks. Agnes nods.

“I’ll see you then, sister,” she promises. With smiles and nods to each other, they both leave the dining room in different directions. Theresa hums quietly as she walks down the corridor, a simple hymn. She wasn’t allowed to hum when she was younger. This is not the time to care.

She steps back into her office. Sunlight is streaming through the window, warming the room and illuminating the dust in the air. Theresa’s feet bring her to the windowsill. Outside, the afternoon sun is illuminating the world, bathing the small courtyard outside in golden light.

She hears laughter, and looks down. In the courtyard sit four sisters. The sun is shining down around them like a spotlight of golden light. They sit on the steps, stretching their legs out in front of them, feet rocking back and forth and knocking into each other. One of them is holding a small packet of biscuits and offering them around to the others. With a start, Theresa realises that that nun is Valentina.

Valentina looks up, hand shielding her eyes from the sun, and near instantly she sees Theresa in the window. Her features are a little blurry from this distance, but Theresa can see a smile spreading across her features, big and beaming like a ray of sunshine. She lifts a hand to her lips — for a second, Theresa thinks that she’s wiping crumbs away — but then she turns her palm outwards, tilting it up. She’s blowing a kiss, Theresa realises. Unbidden, a smile slips onto her face. How juvenile. Theresa grew past blowing kisses by the time she was seventeen waving out the back of a car towards her mother on the porch as her father drove her away to the train station.

Theresa lifts her hand as if catching the kiss, curling her fingers. Slowly, she brings her hand to her own lips. Valentina’s smile turns small and tender, almost invisible from this distance away. Theresa takes a step back away from the window, and Valentina’s head ducks back down as another nun offers her a biscuit.

Theresa reaches up to rub at her eyes, which are aching from the strain. She supposes it’s long since past the time to get her glasses prescription updated. She wants to be able to sit by the windowsill and watch the outside world in crystal-clear high definition. Maybe she’ll see a bird, or a pretty cloud, or a fly. Maybe she’ll see Valentina.