Was someone trying to cause me distress? Or were the files part of my education? Was my mind being hardened? Was I being prepared for the tasks I would later be performing as an Aunt?
This was what the Aunts did, I was learning. They recorded. They waited. They used their information to achieve goals known only to themselves. Their weapons were powerful but contaminating secrets, as the Marthas had always said. Secrets, lies, cunning, deceit—but the secrets, the lies, the cunning, and the deceit of others as well as their own.
If I remained at Ardua Hall—if I performed my Pearl Girls missionary work and returned as a full Aunt—this is what I would become. All of the secrets I had learned, and doubtless many more, would be mine, to use as I saw fit. All of this power. All of this potential to judge the wicked in silence, and to punish them in ways they would not be able to anticipate. All of this vengeance.
As I have said, there was a vengeful side to me that I had in the past regretted. Regretted but not expunged.
I would not be telling the truth if I said I was not tempted.
XIX
Study
The Ardua Hall Holograph
52
I had a disagreeable jolt last evening, my reader. I was scratching furtively away in the deserted library with my pen and my blue drawing ink, with my door open for air flow, when Aunt Vidala’s head suddenly thrust itself around the corner of my private carrel. I did not startle—I have nerves of curable polymers, like those of plastinated corpses—but I coughed, a nervous reflex, and slid the closed Apologia Pro Vita Sua over the page I’d been writing on.
“Ah, Aunt Lydia,” said Aunt Vidala. “I hope you’re not catching a cold. Shouldn’t you be in bed?” The big sleep, I thought: that’s what you’re wishing for me.
“Just an allergy,” I said. “Many people have them at this time of year.” She could not deny this, being a major sufferer herself.
“I’m sorry for intruding,” she said untruthfully. Her glance moved over Cardinal Newman’s title. “Always researching, I see,” she said. “Such a notorious heretic.”
“Know your enemy,” I said. “How may I help you?”
“I have something crucial to discuss. May I offer you a cup of warm milk at the Schlafly Café?” she said.
“How kind,” I replied. I replaced Cardinal Newman on my shelf, turning my back to her in order to slip my blue-inked page within.
Soon the two of us were sitting at a café table, me with my warm milk, Aunt Vidala with her mint tea. “There was something odd about the Pearl Girls Thanks Giving,” she began.
“And what was that? I thought it all went much as usual.”
“That new girl, Jade. I am not convinced by her,” said Aunt Vidala. “She seems unlikely.”
“They all seem unlikely at first,” I said. “But they want a safe haven, protected from poverty, exploitation, and the depredations of the so-called modern life. They want stability, they want order, they want clear guidelines. It will take her a little time to settle in.”
“Aunt Beatrice told me about that ridiculous tattoo on her arm. I suppose she told you as well. Really! God and Love! As if we could be taken in by such a crude attempt to curry favour! And such heretical theology! It reeks of an attempt to deceive. How do you know she’s not a Mayday infiltrator?”
“We’ve been successful in detecting those in the past,” I said. “As for the bodily mutilation, the youth of Canada are pagans; they have all kinds of barbaric symbols branded on themselves. I believe it shows a good intention; at least it is not a dragonfly or a skull or some such item. But we will keep a close eye on her.”
“We should have that tattoo removed. It’s blasphemous. The word God is holy, it does not belong on an arm.”
“Removal would be too painful for her at the moment. It can wait until later. We don’t want to discourage our young Supplicant.”
“If she is a true one, which I very much doubt. It would be typical of Mayday to attempt a ruse of this kind. I think she should be interrogated.” By herself, was what she meant. She does enjoy those interrogations a little too much.
“The more haste, the less speed,” I said. “I prefer more subtle methods.”
“You didn’t prefer them in the early days,” said Vidala. “You were all for the primary colours. You didn’t used to mind a little