Chapter Nine The Nun Margaret Roberta Saty stood facing the massive oak door. Her back was to the old lady who sat hunched over the roll top oak desk. Margaret studied the intricate carvings that adorned the door. She could hear the old woman wheezing. Margaret was still shocked that she had been accepted, chosen actually. Chosen to attend school at the most prestigious convent in America. Why her? As she studied the carvings on the door she tried to understand why she had been chosen above all the others. Walden, New York, eighteen forty-eight. A very small gathering of ragged swiftly thrown together shacks on the western bank of the Wallkill River. A nothing town in the mid Hudson valley, a spillover of people from the throngs of New York City. Farming kept the small town going. Walden, only three miles from the major railhead at MayBrook, and a million miles from mainstream America. The farms that surrounded Walden sent their year’s production to the MayBrook railhead for shipment to the markets of New York and Poughkeepsie, through Walden. This one insignificant detail caused the birth and slow growth of this nothing burg. The Saty family farmed the bottom land that butted up to the ridge line that formed the western wall of the Wallkill valley. Thaddeus Saty had been awarded the land by the Governor of the Hudson valley right after the defeat of Cornwall and the shift in military momentum. Saty had been instrumental in the Battle of Charleston. He had been the man who carried the battle plans from Washington to his line commanders and had been the only courier to penetrate British lines and survive. A grateful General Washington had decreed Saty a hero and had directed the Hudson Valley governor to make the gift. The Saty family had been raising apples and corn on the gentle rolling hills along the Wallkill ever since. Thaddeus Saty had met Jennifer Forbes in Walden, while en route to MayBrook to deliver his apples. She was the only female who had ever spoken kindly to the small rather homely Saty. She had been the serving wench at Walden’s only roadside inn. Poor Jennifer was not a very handsome woman. Her suitors had been few and not of the gentile manner. When Thaddeus Saty came through the door of the inn, she had decided he would be the only one capable of taking her away from the drudgery of the inn. They seemed made for one another: Thaddeus Saty, a small quiet man of huge ambition; Jennifer Forbes, tall and thin and ready to be anything other than poor. A perfect match. There had been no courting, no romance, just the introduction and the marriage. The mayor of Walden had presided over the wedding of Thaddeus Saty to Jennifer Forbes. No frills, no fuss, just a quiet ceremony in the mayor’s kitchen on a Saturday in June 1819. The honeymoon was the trip to the railhead at MayBrook and the unloading of new apple crates from Albany. Their family grew in leaps and bounds, one child for every year from 1820 to 1830. Eleven children in all, ten boys and one girl. Ten strong homely boys and the beautiful dark-haired girl. The neighbors joked behind the Saty’s backs that their daughter must have been found under a tree, because she was not as unbecoming as all of her relatives. The boys found their father’s love of the land and prospered in the acres of apple orchards and fields of corn, while their sister found her love in the books that had been given to the family as gifts. She found time before and after her duties on the farm to study and to practice her writing. There was always something to write. She had approached the parish priest and had begged him to tutor her in all the disciplines. He had found the lovely young Saty girl like a sponge; she devoured all the math his training had given him. She read like a scholar from the Vatican and she wrote as if she was telling a story or making up the facts as she went along. Even the most mundane topic sang when she had finished. The land had no hold on Margaret Roberta Saty. From the age of six, Margaret studied everything she could get someone to instruct her in. She learned the art of surveying, the discipline of map making, the skill of apple genetics, but most of all, she learned the pain and the glory of religion. The story of the Christian God’s only son and his sacrifice to mankind held her spellbound. The calling was obvious to all who knew her. It took Margaret a little longer to understand the call. She studied as she worked. She completely absorbed Emerson while she helped prepare the trees for winter. She spent the winter months until she was seventeen studying the nuances of Greek mythology. All her summer months until she left for the convent were spent studying the classic music masters. Beethoven was her favorite. The bold and stirring crescendos of all his pieces had caused her to cry each and every time. Margaret’s training was crude and incomplete, but she was better educated than the local school headmaster. He refused to allow her into his institution; she made him uncomfortable. It had been the parish priest who recommended her to the Mother Superior of the Sisters of the Presentation at Mount Saint Joseph’s, the foremost training institution for Catholic nuns in America. Margaret found among the carvings on the door Christ’s last walk up the hill at Calvary. It was while studying Jesus’ struggle to get his cross up to the mountain top that she had been accepted as a novice in training. Margaret had thrived in training at the convent. She had spent many evenings along the western bank of the mighty Hudson River, trying to find meaning in the chapters of the Holy Bible. She could apply to the struggle for purity and perfection, the virtues she felt would better aid her in service to her fellow man. As she neared the completion of her training, Margaret received a letter from the parish priest of Walden. Her father had died and her mother was requesting her presence. Margaret burned the letter. She had learned one must never forego training, least others will reap what you sow. She wanted the post at Saint Patrick’s in New York City, home to the powerful and influential. A return to bury her father would have cost her that posting. It was the first in what would prove to be many sacrifices. Purity and perfection had lost meaning; ambition had become her new master. Five years after starting, Margaret lay before the Mother Superior on the floor of the chapel at Mount Saint Joseph and accepted her name, Sister Kathryn of the Sisters of the Presentation, New Windsor, New York. She was posted to the Archives at Saint Patrick’s in New York City the very next day. Sister Kathryn took to duty at the most prestigious Catholic institution in America with a zeal that most missionaries feel. The catacombs of stored Church history became her own. She could cite volume and page, even paragraph and sentence, of some of the lesser known doctrine. In the twelve years she worked at Saint Patrick’s, she became a resident expert in Church history. Her influence on policy was felt and appreciated by two archbishops. At thirty-five, in the spring of 1865, Sister Kathryn, of the Sisters of the Presentation, fell from grace. Sister Kathryn had often spoken of the horror of war and had often admonished those in power. On the day of her fall, the war ended. She sold the list of refugee slaves to the New York Times for a little over three thousand dollars. The list would give away the resident status of hundreds of prominent New York people of color. She had been against the war and the killing of whites; slaves and people of color was another story. The list was published along with the article demanding the return of all slaves to their proper owners on April the 15, 1865. It took the Catholic Church’s senior officials less than twenty-four hours to point the finger at the brash young archivist and demand her dismissal. Forty-eight hours after her dismissal, she was headed to Independence, Missouri. The Catholic Church had decided the west would be the perfect place to retrain a lost soul like Sister Kathryn. Salem, Oregon would be the best place for her to learn humility and compassion, and it was literally at the other end of the world. Sister Kathryn would do well in the wilds of the new frontier. All those rough-hewn settlers could use a taste of Sister Kathryn. The wagon with Sister Kathryn on it left Independence just as Rhys and his two friends met Jedidiah Smith. Her wagon boss never got the message about the ambushes at Chimney Rock. The entire complement had been massacred at three in the morning. Sister Kathryn had been out at the base of a cliff on her knees praying to her God for forgiveness and had been missed in the attack. When she returned, what she found drove her into the wilds of Nebraska. She had been wandering for three weeks when she had spotted the wagons led by Jedidiah Smith turning north and west away from the Chimney Rock trail. She had followed them for three days before Rhys had found her watching them from the rocks. Sally Herschberger heard the name. Before answering, she moved in close and put her right arm around the woman’s shoulders, “Let’s get that shirt off you, Sister, so I can tend to those wounds.” With her left hand she began undoing the buttons that remained on Sister Kathryn’s shirt. As she helped the nun remove her shirt, Sally saw the tears streaming silently down Kathryn’s face. Rhys watched the big horse’s feet strike the hard-packed sand. He was daydreaming, dreaming about living free from all life’s hardships. He had no idea not only was nature about to create more hardship, but one among them was going to cause more grief than any of them could abide.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Mar 2014 01:06:04 +0000
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