Ah, yes. An extremely large chapter. I didn't mean for it to be so long, but I've been gone forever, or so it seems Anyway ,this story stretches itself as far from cannon as possible without being it's own world entirely, but seeing as it's like, about Sister Simplice's past, here's very little cannon to go on. I'm mildly proud of this story. Flames will be used to melt this one popular girl's hair so my bestest buddy can take her role in the musical. Well, toodle pip!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The children clamour themselves around me. They are the poor children, dressed in their tatters and rags, pull at my habit. "Tell us a story, Sister! Tell us a story!" I want only to hug them, for a time I might give into their request- what other little joys had they? Poor children, they are left with such a tired nun, who knows so little about them.
I began helping here not very long ago, in the new room added to the hospital. I cannot face the "old" hospital any longer. I cannot even look at the wrought iron fence that stretches around the perimeter- the poor girl Fantine is dead, the pitiable wretch. Such a sad girl, such an awful life… and the way she died, oh, mercy!
The children, sick as they are, are full of energy- maybe a story shall settle them down, it is almost dark out and those who can get out of bed must return there in a short while.
"Tell us a story! Tell us a story!" The chant continues.
I sigh.
"What would you like to hear?" The children, though they were egging me on, seem surprised I have spoken, I speak so little.
"What kind of child was you?" wonders a sandy-haired boy, with a smile spreading in anticipation.
"It's obvious," snarls his taller but equally sandy-headed sister, known by the other children for being horribly bitter. "She was one o' them good girls, with they's pale noses in the stitchin', makin' no trouble for the nanny and all that merde."
The other children don't even flinch at the word, this word I dare not repeat.
"Don't say that," I chide, softly, then laugh. "Would you really like to hear my story?" I suck my breath in, prepared for the longest bit of talking I had ever withstood.
"Oh, yes!" The children cry various words of agreement. I put my finger to my lips, and they fell into a semicircle around the base of the chair in which I sat.
"It is said around here that I have never told a lie- this is only partially true. I have never told a lie in all the time I have known our Lord. I have not known our Lord my entire life."
"So," says the sandy-haired girl "Were you a bad 'un?"
"Yes, I was, Camille. A very 'bad 'un'."
"So if you wuz bad, why'd you become a nun?" asks Camille, interested.
"Would you like to hear that story, my dears?" The children look unhappy, but I continue. I should tell someone, I suppose.
* * *
When I was a girl, I was blessed with one very special friend- my sister. She wasn't a dainty thing- far from it. Dimanche, as she was christened, had not even a graceful name. Being born on a Sunday, my mother had seen fit to call my sister Dimanche in honor of the Lord 's Day. From that we derived her nickname, Lordy.
Lordy had no need for men, she read about them enough in her books she got my father to buy for her- the bookseller on our street was a horrible man, she called him The Old, for her must have been over fifty. Old thought women should not be allowed to read, and would not sell to Lordy. He was a violent man, waving knives at me in the streets and I walked by, holding my mother's hand. I wonder now how he got away with it. Perhaps he was rich.
Lordy persisted through a decade of father bringing home the wrong books. She wanted "Romeo and Juliet" which was written by her favorite author, William Shakespeare. My father had brought home some romantic novel with vaguely the same plot that Lordy burned up in the fireplace. When she finally got her book, was it in French? No, Lordy would not have that. She wanted to read Shakespeare in his own language, and resolutely applied herself to English, driving father up the wall with her request of schoolbook after schoolbook until finally one day, she greeted us with the longest string of gibberish that had ever met my ears.
"Hello, my dear Blanche!" Lordy laughed, eager to show off her new English skills. "You name, it mean in the English, 'white'. What would you like? The coffee?"
I stared at her for a second. I clearly thought Lordy was insane.
"Um…" I said, trying to call to mind the brief amount of German I had learned from talking to the shifty men who hung out around the taverns. "Guten tag." I said, stubbornly. "So, hmph!"
Yes, Lordy was a scholar, she out smarted every boy on our block. She took classes at home, with our father for a teacher, and there was no limit to her knowledge. That was why she lived at home, seventeen and alone.
"What are the four humors?" cried the doctor's son, determined to stump her.
"Black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm." Lordy ticked them off on her bitten down fingernails. "What else would you like to know?"
"What happened to the Americas in recent years?" sneered a smug looking Old, passing Lordy in her garden.
"There was an appalling revolution. The Americans valiantly stood up to those vile English, and they won, too. They signed the treaty two years ago here in Paris, which ended the war and allowed the colonies to form their own nation. They have had a confederacy for the past two years, and I have read that it's going poorly."
I felt increasing less than Lordy that night, and during those hours of darkness as I lay I bed I decided to better myself.
The year was 1785, and I was thirteen years old. Lordy, four years older than me, had so far been unsuccessful in her beaus, seeing as she'd never had one.
I hadn't been successful either, by those long ago standards. However, I thought that men were the one area Lordy had never been, and I found myself drawn to them. Old, young, I wasn't fussy. Ah, but you gasp! You must realize, dears, that we all have pasts.
I hadn't had much luck in bettering myself. I roamed around, trying my hardest, with the city boys, boys whose fathers were beneath my father, boys who were lucky not to become fathers themselves. Then, I suspect, because I felt superior to Lordy- she was everything my parents wanted in a daughter, but she had no man. I had several. She was smart, she was amusing, and if she put her hair up and took off the spectacles she frequently borrowed from father, she was a beauty. I felt prettier; I wore fashionable dresses and spent hours putting my hair in elaborate styles. I felt then as if I was as smart as Lordy, though with different knowledge.
My parents called me loose, but according to Lordy. I was "wanton." By then I had come to hate my sister, and she knew not why- she passed books along to me, which I destroyed. Lordy might have found "Calculus, a Type of Mathematics Invented by Sir Isaac Newton of England" irresistible and a good read, but I thought it was stupid and she was simple to read it.
I lied constantly to my mum and my father, if you can believe it. Where was Blanche going?
"I'm off to buy hair ribbons and stockings," I said before kissing Pépin in the bushes.
Whom is Blanche going to see?
"I think I'll call on Grandmamma," I muttered before giving myself to the baker.
My lies were not enough to keep the near-by busybodies' prying eyes away from me, and as my luck would dictate, the baker's wife was the biggest busybody of all. Soon, I was stuck inside, given the most conservative of dresses to wear, holed up all day with Lordy, who my equally "wanton" friends and I despised and mocked. Lordy was seventeen, had hardly even talked to a man who wasn't Father or a schoolmaster, and dressed unfashionably. She didn't even wear a corset, and to us, this was a crime. You must remember that such a girl did not exist back then, and that had Lordy not been blessed with a liberal, lenient mother and a loving poet for a father, she would be just like the rest of us. We laughed that Lordy would never get married, Lordy would marry my father after my mother passed on- the jokes were vicious and relentless. Poor spinster Lordy.
The times change, my children. The wind blows.
On this particular day, the wind was indeed blowing, and Lordy was laughing herself into a state, looking at the cover of a book.
"Father," Lordy panted, gasping for air. "This isn't 'A History of England to the Present Date,' this is 'Twenty English Foods for Preparing in Your Own Kitchen.'"
"Well," said Father, "I haven't the time to return it."
"When will you?" Lordy pressed. "Tomorrow? Today? You could go after supper! When will you return it?"
"I don't KNOW, Lordy!" Father was at the end of his rope. Lordy wanted everything instantaneously; the history of England just couldn't wait.
Tears sprang to Lordy's eyes. "Very well," she sniffled. "If you feel you need to bellow, you needn't return at this instant."
Father sighed, warned her not to do anything silly, and creaked up the stairs until he came to rest in his den.
"For God's sake, Lordy. Take the book back yourself!" I cried, as soon as Father had left her alone. I had been inside for months it seemed now- it was driving me mad.
I knew Lordy would come back upset, and I relished that knowledge. Lordy would get herself a second yelling-at from Old; he would tell her women were senseless, he would wave her rusty old knife, and sensitive Lordy would cry up and down the street.
Lordy considered the fact that she had been told not to do anything silly, thinking that perhaps Father was right. She voiced this, but I tried to convince her otherwise. I didn't want Father to be right- I wanted Lordy to get herself out of the house. It was awful and malicious, I know, but I blamed all my problems on Lordy. Lordy had made me go around with the Spaniards at the dock, Lordy was the reason I'd become so horrible. I wanted her out, if only for a little while. I could sneak away, if Lordy would just leave!
"Go, Dimanche!" I laughed, watching her face contort as she heard the name she abhorred. "Old isn't there today!"
"Of course he is!" Lordy snapped. "That man is always there, breathing down my neck, asking me questions. He says he'd kill me if only I dared step foot in his shop. Said he'd killed before."
If I could just convince Lordy to leave, then I could sneak out. If only!
"Lordy! Stop being such an infant! Get the book, go to Old's, and return it!" I remembered a trick that might just work on stubborn Lordy. "I was only asking to see if you were brave enough. Apparently, you aren't!"
Lordy made a sound like a hurt kitten, turned on her heel, and departed with the book in her hand.
I never saw Lordy again.
* * *
"Oh," gasps Camille. "You were a bad 'un. But why did you become a nun? You never said.
"Years later," I began, tired from all the speaking. "I traveled to Paris with another boy and heard a choir echoing from an abbey. 'Dona Nobis Pacem', I heard. I knew enough Latin from my lessons with Father to translate loosely as "Give us peace," though I know this may be wrong. God gives us peace children, and after Lordy's…after Lordy, I was desperately looking for peace inside. I knew every day after that windy afternoon that I was responsible for what happened, my lie was what made Lordy go away.
"If God is to give us peace, I thought, perhaps I should start going to church. I went back to my little town in the east and went to our tiny house of worship whenever I thought of Lordy. At first, I was there nearly all the time, but slowly I less consumed by thoughts of Lordy, though never a day passed without her on my mind. I retain one habit from those old days- whenever I am sent a letter, it is the best feeling in the world. I have never lost hope that it might be Lordy, writing to tell me where she's been.
"I felt more peaceful inside, after I attended masses, I finally slept at night. I knew God had given me this harmony, and as I watched the two nuns in my little village aid the sick, I knew that I too needed to do God's work, not only as gratitude to Him, but for Lordy.
"Lordy often said she was going to become a woman doctor, and in aiding the sick, I hoped that I was saving people Lordy would have saved. That, mes enfants, is why I took my vows."
"Oh…" sighs Camille. I know a thought of joining the abbey has crossed through her mind as I tell my story. Bitter Camille, wanting to be a nun! It brought a smile to my heart. She opens her mouth after a second, and continues. "Since it was that lie that did ol' Lordy in, is that why you don't tell any more lies?"
I pat her on the head. "Precisely. Children, lying is the greatest sin there is. Never lie, children, never tell a lie."
I file the children off to bed, my throat aching, and kiss each one of them, aware of the diseases they carry. As I get to Camille, her tiny voice fills my ear.
"What's the Latin words, them ones you said to us?"
"Dona Nobis Pacem. Give us peace." I say softly, unable to reach a higher volume.
"I want to be a nun, Soeur. I want God to give me peace. Dona Nobis Pacem."