saw how the nun’s hands were blistered from the spade she herself had wielded today, how her knuckles were swollen, and her cheekbones cast into a prominence that had nothing to do with the dim lighting in the chapel. “I wanted to know if you still have them.”
“Sometimes,” Leonie said hesitantly. “That was how—I mean, that was why I woke last winter, when Sister Maria was elf-shot—”
“Sister Maria was not elf-shot,” Mother Magdalene said automatically. “Elves could do no harm to one who trusts in God. It was simply something that happens to the very old, now and again, it is a kind of sudden brain-fever. But that isn’t the point. You’re still having the visions—but can you still see things that you want to see?”
“Sometimes,” Leonie said cautiously. “If God and the Blessed Virgin permit.”
“Well, if God is ever going to permit it, I suspect He’d do so during Holy Week,” Mother Magdalene sighed. “Leonie, I am going to ask you a favor. I’d like you to make a vigil tonight.”
“And ask for a vision?” Leonie said, raising her head in sudden interest.
“Precisely.” The nun shook her head, and picked up her beads, telling them through her fingers as she often did when nervous. “There is something wrong with us, with the land, with the kingdom—I want you to see if God will grant you a vision of what.” As Leonie felt a sudden upsurge of pride, Mother Magdalene added hastily, “You aren’t the only one being asked to do this—every order from one end of the kingdom to the other has been asked for visions from their members. I thought long and hard about asking this. But you are the only one in my convent who has ever—had a tendency to visions.”
The Mother Superior had been about to say something else, Leonie was sure, for the practical and pragmatic Mother Magdalene had made her feelings on the subject of mysticism quite clear over the years. But that didn’t matter—what did matter was that she was finally going to be able to release that pent-up power again, to soar on the angels’ wings. Never mind that there were as many devils “out there” as angels; her angels would protect her, for they always had, and always would.