Follow My Lead (43 page)

T
HE problems associated with identifying the nunnery, convent, or abbey that had sheltered Maria F. some three hundred years ago were manifold. First, they had to identify the sisterhoods that, some three hundred years ago, would attend services at St. Stephen’s on holy days. This was no easy feat. Luckily, Sir Geoffrey spoke a few well-placed words in a few influential ears, and Winn and Jason were able to hold an audience with the parish priest of St. Stephen’s. Unluckily, the kind and cooperative priest was unable to help, being as he was not alive three hundred years ago, and the records that were kept were fairly general and not studied in their detail. He was, however, able to provide a list of those abbeys that attended services on All Saints’ Day, Christmas, and other feast days, as long as he had been in tenure.

Unfortunately, this list had at least fifty items on it.

“What are we supposed to do?” Jason asked. “Do we just visit every church on this list and cross them off after we spend a few days rummaging around in their belongings?”

“Heavens no,” Winn replied practically as they left St. Stephen’s Cathedral in the center of Vienna and made their way down Stephensplatz. “It’s going to be so much more difficult than that.”

“More difficult?” Jason asked, still reeling from the length of the list.

“Yes. Happily, we can eliminate any church or abbey that wasn’t active in 1500. But then again, there are likely some convents that existed then that don’t anymore. Possibly they were destroyed outright in the Turkish sieges, possibly they were absorbed by larger institutions—either way, we have to track down their remains and add them in.” Winn smiled at him cheerfully. “Also, there’s nothing to say that our Maria F. wasn’t a member of a convent outside of Vienna, and the trip to St. Stephen’s was part of a special pilgrimage or visitation. For all we know, we already passed where she lived, in Linz or Melk or—”

“I get the idea,” Jason said, beleaguered, pinching the bridge of his nose. Then he opened one eye, glancing at Winn’s excited countenance. “Wait a moment. How can you possibly be enjoying this?”

“Because this is how it happens, Jason.” She grinned at him. “There is a tiny piece of information, to be found somewhere, and this is how we find it. We explore, we dig, we look until our eyes are crossed and we can’t look anymore. All in the hope of a moment of discovery. I’m enjoying it because
this
is the fun part.”

Jason held this happy, shining person’s gaze and simply shook his head. He was not going to be able to convince her to stroll through the streets of the city this time, taking in the local sights and people. He was not going to be able to purchase her a little trinket as souvenir in Vienna. No, now that the goal was in sight, the bit was between her teeth, and she would not let go. This was the person Winn was meant to be. And it was a glorious thing to behold.

“Where do we start?” He sighed and gave his arm to her as she directed him briskly to the first church on the list.

As they faded into the distance, they were each too focused on the quest or, alternately, the person behind it, to feel the eyes that were on them. Eyes that had chanced upon them as they had headed into St. Stephen’s Cathedral, and then shocked by the luck, waited patiently for them to emerge. Eyes that followed them now, at a safe distance. Because he would be damned if Winnifred Crane would be let out of his sight ever again.

When one reads books about Vienna, they comment on the gracefulness of the city, the only real choice to be the capital of the Austrian Empire. They talk about the Danube and its meandering beauty. They talk about the music of the city, the opera house, the palaces . . . but rarely do they mention the churches.

Rather, Winn—picking at the edge of a lavender ruffle on her borrowed dress—thought grimly, they do not pontificate adequately on the number of churches, and how they are simply wedged into the city’s corners and alleys, making them hard to locate on a map and even harder to find in person.

Her enthusiasm for the quest had not dwindled, oh no—if anything the past two days of visiting every church on the list provided by the St. Stephen’s priest had whetted her appetite for the moment of truth. But when, oh when, would it come?

This is what you get, gambling your whole life on one instant, she told herself, exhausted after yet another church—their third today, and it was not yet tea. Luckily, Sir Geoffrey’s influence had not only elicited the list of potential orders from the priest at St. Stephen’s, but also a general letter of introduction to those they would need to speak to at various churches, abbeys, nunneries, and convents.

And speak to, they had.

Just that morning, they had visited the Ursulinenkirche, found in a quiet corner of the Innere Stadt, or first district, and were able to reject it almost immediately, as the first thing they learned was it had been built in the 1660s, far too late to house Maria F.

The Dorotheakirche was interesting in that it had converted from Catholicism to Protestantism during the Reformation and stunningly enough,
not
been converted back by the Hapsburgs during the Counter-Reformation. But alas, after several hours in the church’s library with their chaplain yielded no hint that Maria F. had ever been there, in the name of efficiency, they had to move on.

The third church, the one they had just left, was little more than a monastic chapel, and undoubtedly the most disappointing.

“How on earth did that little place end up on the parish priest’s list?” Winn asked aloud, utterly frustrated.

“It wasn’t so bad,” Jason replied. “Except for the decided lack of nuns.”

“Well, one more church,” Winn said, glancing at the list, “and then I am going to desperately need a pint of ale.”

Jason laughed heartily and plucked the list from her hands. “Agreed, but I get to pick the next.”

And Jason picked well. For it was at the next church they visited that they had their first bit of luck.

A small, baroque-style chapel within the Innere Stadt of Vienna, Franziskanerkirche was the Church of the Franciscan Order. They spoke for some hours with the Reverend Mother of the Order of St. Clare at the church, who had tried her best to help them but ultimately could not. At least not there.

“We have a sister abbey, in Döbling, just outside the city,” the straight-mouthed Reverend Mother told them. “It is where our school for young ladies is.” She looked pointedly at Winn, as if perhaps, she would have done well with some Franciscan schooling. “It has been there since the fourteenth century. And I do believe there was a sister from around that time, who had some claim in the world of art . . .”

Winn would be remiss if she did not note the effect that sentence had on the beleaguered spirits of both travelers.

“You have?” Jason asked, sitting up in his chair.

“You do?” Winn asked at the same time, her eyes suddenly very bright.

The Reverend Mother wrote down the information for the abbey in Döbling, and first thing the next morning, off they were. Again.

But this time . . . this time felt different.

“I don’t know how, but I have a good feeling about this place,” Winn said to Jason as they rumbled along in Sir Geoffrey’s carriage. He had generously lent it to them that day . . . on the condition that Gail, Evangeline, and Mr. Ellis be allowed to join them. Gail and Evangeline, because as Sir Geoffrey said, he wanted the girls to “look around the school, see if there was anything to be learned there that they couldn’t manage at home,” and Mr. Ellis because . . . well, simply because.

“Why do you say that, Miss Crane?” Mr. Ellis asked.

Winn simply shook her head. “Because no other place had yielded so much as a rumor or a whiff of hope. And to have this one place out of a thousand, pointed out by the Reverend Mother of the Poor Clares . . . it simply feels right. Like how it felt when Herr Heider first wrote me about the letters in his collection.”

“That’s called instinct, Miss Crane,” Mr. Ellis smiled. “A necessity for any explorer, or seeker of truth.”

“And she has it in spades,” Jason replied.

Winn looked up at Jason and her breath caught. If only they were alone in the carriage! She would have taken his hand. But here, now, she was unable to hold it, as they were in the presence of good people, unable to express . . . something. Gratitude? Friendship?

But Winn knew that Jason had just complimented her—in front of others, no less—for the same reason that over the course of the last few days (when they had not been under the close inspection of two young girls, their father, or a respected historian) Winn had perhaps grasped Jason’s hand tighter than she used to, perhaps took his arm with more enthusiasm.

But she had to stop doing so. Because as the carriage rumbled into the little town of Döbling, they were coming to the end.

And so, she tucked her hands in her lap and bit the inside of her cheek to keep from making any pert comments back to him, and instead focused on what was in front of her. What she was so close to achieving.

The sisters of the Order of St. Clare, sometimes referred to as “Poor Clares” (as their patron was a follower of St. Francis of Assisi and gave all of her money and belongings away), were as accommodating as their namesake. The Döbling school, convent (the dormitory that served as housing for the nuns and the girls who boarded), and church were separate buildings, none of them auspicious in their scale or architecture, but original to the medieval time they were built—with more modern additions here and there to accommodate the growth of the school. Therefore, it had the look of a small castle keep on a hill, with the occasional baroque-style window or late gothic wall. There was a low wall that surrounded their grounds, keeping the nuns removed from the town and godly in their pursuits. There was some scaffolding in and around the modest church, but the visitors were told not to worry—the roof had merely caved in.

“Since we are outside of the city, we were not targeted during the Turkish raids,” the Mother Superior—who went by the name Mother Agnes—told them kindly as she guided them through the school buildings, toward the convent and chapel. She spoke German, naturally, but this time Winn did not have to rely solely on Jason for translation: Miss Gail Alton proved her German to be incredibly accurate. It also seemed that the Alton girls were in charge of their own education and eager to pursue it—Gail fluidly asked all sorts of questions about the school and the curriculum, and translated the answers back to her less linguistically gifted sister, going on about whether they prized the sciences and mathematics, whether or not they taught all dialects of German here along with Latin . . . eventually, Winn, for the sake of expediency, had to interject.

“Mother Agnes—we are looking for the possible author of these letters . . .” Winn began, her speech so rushed and her heart beating so fast with possibilities that Mother Agnes held up her hand with the authority of one who had spent her life teaching overeager girls.

“I have been informed of your quest, my child,” she said kindly. “Interrupting will not get you any closer to your destination.”

Winn felt herself blushing, properly scolded.

“Perhaps, though, it is best if we divide our group?” Mother Agnes asked, and turned to a young novitiate. “Please take the Fräuleins Alton to see the school.” The novitiate, young and deferential, nodded and lead the girls down a different hallway in the school.

Freeing the adults of the party to follow Mother Agnes at her smooth gesture.

“I know of your quest because I have received word from my sister at the Franziskanerkirche. But I am afraid that you will find little help from us here.”

“Why is that?” Jason asked as they crossed the small courtyard from the school to the convent, passing a line of schoolgirls as they did so.