to supervise the annual boiling of soap. She had been doing it for some years and had the routine chore mastered: rendering the waste fat saved from stringy Sunday joints, adding lye made from stove ashes, stirring endlessly. The older girls were excused from lessons in order to perform this stirring, for production of a good soap, the nuns argued, was of as valuable practical use as hemming the countless towels and blankets they made to sell—all skills the girls would take with them into service—and perhaps even more necessary than lessons in the use of Danish flowers and herbs, or reading the Bible and other useful books.
That year, Famke was big enough to help. Sister Birgit smiled as her darling took the wooden stirring-stick from the orphan ahead of her and began to draw it through the liquid viscous with long boiling. Famke closed her eyes and breathed in the odor that, to her, meant the belly-fluttering thrill of flirtation and the promise of something she didn’t understand but knew, absolutely knew, would be wonderful. And so when one of the older Viggos, a large-eyed youth now nearing the age of confirmation, approached with wood for the fire, Famke smiled and shimmered at him. And he was lost.
Just then Birgit’s attention was momentarily diverted—and for this the other sisters blamed her—by a cloud of bees threatening to swarm either the soap pot, the heavy-blossomed elder tree near which it rested, or the fair stirrer of soap herself. Birgit took off her apron and flapped it vigorously at them. So she did not see Famke slow down in her stirring, gazing at this Viggo, lost in her own hazy ideas of sin. And then Famke lost the wooden plank, or most of it, in the soap pot. With a cry of dismay, she lunged after it; the boy dropped his wood and lunged, too, to save her hand from scalding—and as a result it was his hands that scalded.
Viggo howled with pain and ran toward the well. Famke ran after him. She nursed his burned hands as she’d been trained to do, with cold water and bandages swiftly torn from her petticoat. And finally, as a much-stung Sister Birgit abandoned the bees and came to the rescue, Famke dropped a tiny illicit kiss on one clumsy knot she’d tied over the boy’s wrist.
In that moment, with no interchange of plank and air to cool it, the unstirred fat reached a crucial temperature. The whole soapy potful burst into flames. The conflagration blew toward the elder tree and, as Mother Superior said in yet another council meeting, “We were an angel’s breath from burning up ourselves.”
Indeed, a spark landed in Famke’s hair and started to melt. With a hurt hand, Viggo smothered it, and Famke collapsed in his arms in gratitude. She never mentioned the singeing of her braids to anyone else, but she was to suffer a fear of fire the rest of her life.
Sitting and tallying up the damage, Mother Superior said, “I believe some punishment is in order. For endangering not just herself and young Viggo but the entire orphanage as well, for being . . . Nå, for . . .” Everyone on the nuns’ council knew what she meant. Famke had been born with a character that had no place inside convent walls, and Sister Birgit had only strengthened it. They were all thinking one word: wild. “This time her transgression itself was slight, but it might have had serious consequences for all of us.”
Sister Saint Bernard said cryptically, “When Lucifer and his angels fell from heaven, their wings burst into flames.”
“Så,” said the Mother Superior, “it is time to take Ursula in charge.”
Birgit prayed for humility and for strength. She knew she was to be disciplined by having to join in the disciplining of her favorite, and she could say nothing aloud just yet.
“She should be isolated from the other children,” suggested Sister Casilde.
“She should have bread and water for a week,” countered Sister Balbina.
“Bread and water and isolation,” said Sister Saint Bernard, sending up a quiet prayer of thanks that the year’s vintage of elderberry jam and wine had not been threatened.
The nuns discussed this punishment eagerly, piling on mortifications that they themselves might have embraced in a more idealistic, ascetic order. One sister, who had been in the convent so long that she’d gone deaf with the silence, even shouted that Famke should wear a hair shirt.
“Sisters!” Birgit bit her lower lip, shocked at her own forcefulness. What could she, so largely responsible for the disaster, say to them? “Famke is just a child—”
“Her first communion is not far away.” Sister Casilde offered the sacrament as a threat.
“Punishment will do no good,” Birgit said with the authority of the one who knew Famke best. “She is wild, yes, but we must tame her gently. Violent restrictions will only make her rebel—and she only dropped a spoon, after all.”
The other nuns gaped.
“Our order does not advocate violence,” Mother Superior told Birgit on a note of reproof. “No one suggests we cane her, for example.”
“It would not be a bad idea,” Sister Saint Bernard said under her breath.
Birgit pressed her palms against the table. “I am to blame,” she declared loudly. “I should have been watching her. So I will do penance, say extra prayers . . . I will wear a hair shirt, if that is required.”
The nuns stared. They had never seen such passion in Birgit before. Nearly all felt a little ashamed; each asked herself, Would I wear a hair shirt for someone else’s sin?
Mother Superior relented. “And Ursula will pray with you. No hair shirt will be necessary.”
While Birgit prayed, the good sisters plotted a course of action. One after another, they lectured Famke about minding the clock and always, always keeping her eye on a burning fire. Sister Fina instructed her to sleep on a wooden board, Sister Agnes to cross her ankles, never her knees, when seated. Mother Superior had her read stories of the saints’ lives to the younger children—endless tales of patience and suffering, including the story of Famke’s own namesake, Saint Ursula, who had fled pagan England with an army of eleven thousand virgins only to be mown down in Germany.
Sister Saint Bernard swore her to secrecy and gave her five good whacks across the bottom with a cane.
Knowing this was mercy, and feeling very bad over what had happened to Viggo, Famke obeyed them all. She adapted easily to the manners of a good girl—but they suspected she would as naturally have taken on those of a strumpet. So she was forced to bide her time, peeking through the prayerful fan of her fingers with a nun on each side.
“Why do you twitch so?” she whispered, sitting next to Birgit; but the nun said nothing, having resolved, despite Mother Superior’s injunction, to wear the hair shirt in silent mortification for three full months.
At the end of that time, Viggo’s hand had scabbed over nicely and the women hoped he would one day be able to use it again to lift a pitchfork or curry a horse. A bumper crop of elderberries allowed Sister Saint Bernard to forgive both Birgit and Famke, and Famke forgave herself. She began begging to help with tasks that would bring her to the other side of the orphanage.
But, bolstered by her own penance, Birgit held firm. She kept the girl with her during exercise periods, and she herself plastered every chink she could find in the dividing wall.
“You will understand one day,” she said as she brushed Famke’s mass of red curls before bed, “and you will be grateful.”
“But in the outside world,” Famke pointed out, “there will be nothing to save me. Shouldn’t
