Her expression did not soften, and instantly I knew she understood the situation for what it was.Delicate women gasped at violence.Women like Sister Marina measured it.
“Bring her in,” she ordered.
I slid one arm beneath the woman’s shoulders and the other beneath her knees.She was colder now.Her hair clung to my wrist, wet with a mixture of rain and blood.
The sisters moved around us quickly, without panic.One held the door open.Another shut it behind me and threw the bolt.A third hurried down the corridor ahead of us, calling for blankets and hot water.
The convent hallway was narrow, lit by wall lamps that threw soft pools of gold over cracked plaster and framed icons.Somewhere deeper in the building, a woman coughed.Somewhere else, a child whimpered in sleep.
Santa Caterina did not advertise what it was.
To the town, it was a convent.
To women with nowhere to run, it was a door that opened when every other door had become a roadblock.
The sisters ran a small medical refuge in the east wing.Not officially, because official things attracted official questions, and official questions too often led frightened people back into the hands they had escaped.The women who came here were abused wives, undocumented migrants, girls who had fled farms and factories and men with locked rooms.The sisters treated wounds, arranged documents, hid names, fed children, and lied to anyone who came looking.
They lied better than most criminals I had known.Perhaps because they did it for the right reasons.
“Here,” Sister Marina said.
She led me into a small infirmary with two iron beds and a locked medicine cabinet.A wooden crucifix was mounted high on the wall between the two beds.
I laid the woman on the nearest bed.Her hand slipped from the blanket and fell limp against the mattress.
Rope marks circled both wrists, something I hadn’t noticed before.
I stared at them.
The skin was torn in places, possibly from struggling against her restraints.It was obvious she had struggled long enough to bleed.
“Father,” Sister Marina said.
I looked up.
Her eyes flicked to my hands.
I had not realised I was still gripping the edge of the bed.I released it.
“Sister Joanne,” Sister Marina called.
A woman in her late fifties entered with a medical bag in one hand and spectacles perched low on her nose.Sister Joanne had been a nurse before taking vows.She still moved like one.
She glanced at me.Then at the woman.
“What happened?”
“She came into the church,” I said.“Men were following her.”
“What men?”
“Coccico.”
The room changed.
Sister Joanne’s mouth tightened.
Sister Marina turned her head slightly, as though hearing a bell only she had expected.