A Habit Laid Aside

The chapel bell rang at eleven, an hour when the children were usually at their lessons. Celia counted the strokes from the foot of the stairs. Two. A summons, not a service.

Inside, the long table had been cleared of slates. Sister Ilse sat at one end with the Unclaimed Register beneath both hands. Across from her, two church elders had set a sheet of paper beside the inkstand. Its ruled lines were too narrow for the names it asked for.

“Miss Marrow,” said the elder nearest the door. “This concerns the chapel.”

Celia stayed beside the empty benches. “Then I can wait.”

“Outside.”

Ilse lifted her hand from the register. “I asked her here.”

The elder looked at the second man. Neither moved to close the door. Through it came the scrape of small shoes on stone, then a woman’s low voice urging the children toward the yard.

The elder tapped the paper. “Sister Ilse, we have discussed the terms. The register belongs in church custody. You will also provide the names of the children whose accounts were shared with persons outside the chapel.”

“I shared no child’s account without care,” Ilse said.

“That is not the question.”

“It is mine.”

Celia had seen some of those entries. A name, an address no city officer would accept, a dream written down on waking. Some pages carried dates of visits from parents who had been told their children were better left at the chapel for a time. The register held evidence of what the church had concealed, but it held children, too. Handing it over was not a simple matter of changing its shelf.

The second elder spoke gently. “We can protect them from inquiry if we know precisely who has been involved.”

“Then ask the parents what protection they want,” Ilse said.

“We cannot approach the parents until we know which parents.”

The first elder pushed the paper a little closer. “The register will answer that.”

Ilse drew it back. The leather cover rasped against the table. “You intend to use it before you have asked them.”

“We intend to bring this matter under proper authority.”

“The entries concerning the children were made while they lived under my care.” Ilse’s voice remained soft. “Their names are not an answer to every question put by an officer.”

The elder’s jaw tightened. “Your care has become the subject of this meeting.”

Celia watched Ilse’s thumb press the worn corner of the cover. All morning she had expected an argument about records, a narrow dispute that might be settled by allowing copies or sealing pages. The elders had brought only one sheet. They wanted names, and they wanted Ilse to supply them.

“May I speak?” Celia asked.

“No,” said the first elder.

Ilse glanced up at her. Not a warning. Only a look that held long enough for Celia to sit down.

The second elder turned to Ilse. “We can still resolve this without a public removal. Surrender the book and give us the children’s names. You have served here faithfully for many years.”

On the wall behind him hung the cupboard key, tied to a faded strip of cloth. Ilse had once used it to open the stores for a boy who had missed supper after a dream kept him in bed. Celia remembered the cold pear she had eaten at that table while Ilse made him toast. Faithful service, apparently, could be lifted from a person with a single sentence.

“I will not give you the register,” Ilse said. “Nor will I name the children for you.”

The first elder took up his pen. “Then you are removed as matron, effective today. You must leave the chapel before evening.”

He wrote while he spoke. Ilse waited until the nib stopped.

“I resign the post,” she said. “Please put that down as well.”

“It makes no difference to the order.”

“It makes a difference to me.”

The pen hovered, then returned to the page. Celia could not read what he wrote from her seat.

Ilse stood and lifted the register. For a moment her hand went to the plain band of cloth at her throat, straightening it out of habit. Then she let it lie crooked.

In the yard, two parents waited near the water barrel with a former ward who had grown broad enough to block the gate by standing in it. The children were inside the schoolroom, away from the meeting. Celia was grateful for the closed door until a child began singing in there, very quietly, to fill the wait.

The father by the barrel stepped forward. “Well?”

“I no longer have the charge of them,” Ilse said.

He glanced toward the chapel door. “But they can come with us?”

“If they wish to. I have spoken to each of the households that offered. You should speak to the children yourselves.”

The woman beside him held a folded coat against her chest. “Our two know where home is. We’ll ask them.”

The former ward waited while the parents went in. She had come for a boy who had no parent at the gate, and she asked Ilse whether he had been told whose house had offered him a bed. Ilse gave the name. The woman nodded, then went to tell him herself.

Celia went up to Ilse’s room to carry what she could. There was less than she expected: a comb, two books, a mended blanket, a tin of buttons. On the sill stood a chipped cup with a spoon inside. Ilse packed the spoon and left the cup.

“Is it theirs?” Celia asked.

“No. It leaks.”

“An excellent reason to keep it.”

Ilse almost smiled. “I have spent years placing it where the water would do the least harm. Let someone else solve it.”

Downstairs, the schoolroom door had opened. The children came out in uneven groups, each with a bundle. A small girl held a pair of boots rather than wearing them. When Ilse asked why, she said they pinched on the left foot. Ilse knelt, worked a finger into the heel, and found the folded edge of a sock. The girl pulled the boots on again and stamped twice.

The father took both his children by the hand. The former ward walked beside the boy she had come to fetch, listening as he told her what he had left in the schoolroom. She turned back with him for it. More adults arrived as the noon bell rang, parents and people Celia had seen returning to the chapel for visits long after they had grown too old for its beds. They carried spare coats and baskets for the children’s things. Each waited for an answer before taking a bundle or a hand.

Celia held the door while they left. There were addresses she knew from the register and offers she had heard Ilse discuss over the past week. She took out her notebook once, meaning to mark who had gone where, then shut it again. Ilse was at the gate speaking with each adult. The children had been told where they were going. The notes could wait until there was a safe place to keep them, and someone who wanted them made.

By late afternoon, the beds upstairs were stripped. A boy came back for a wooden top under his pillow. Ilse fetched it and put it straight into his palm. He asked if she would visit.

“Yes,” she said. “I must ask the people at your house when a visit suits them.”

“Tomorrow?”

“I shall ask about tomorrow.”

He studied the top. “You always come here.”

“I did.” Ilse bent to straighten his collar, then stopped and asked, “May I?”

He nodded. When she was done, he ran to the woman waiting at the gate.

The walk to Mira’s sail loft took longer with the register. Ilse carried it against her chest and refused twice when Celia offered to take it. At the quay, the lighthouse lamps burned pale in the afternoon mist. The light fell across the book’s scuffed cover. It would have been easy to call it a burden Ilse had saved. It was also a book that had kept names hidden for years while the chapel accepted payment for its silence.

Mira opened the loft door before they reached it. She cleared a place on the table beside Celia’s dry impressions, moving a bowl of sail needles and a stack of clean paper.

“Here?” she asked.

Ilse looked at the open window and the damp coming off the harbor. “Farther from the air, if you please.”

Mira moved the paper to a shelf. Ilse set down the register, then drew her hands away. Without it, they hung for a moment at her sides.

“I’ve put water on,” Mira said. “And there’s bread.”

“Thank you.” Ilse looked back toward the stairs. “The children know where to find me?”

“The households do,” Celia said. “We can send word of this address to the others.”

Ilse nodded. She took off the cloth band at her throat, folded it once, and placed it beside the register. Then she sat at Mira’s table and asked for a sheet of paper on which to begin the visits.