Three-Cornered Halo Read Online Free Page A

the little black book in her hands.
    â€˜In my youth,’ writes Juanita complacently, opening the first page of her diary with a bang, ‘I was very beautiful. My uncle, the Grand Duke, delighted to load me with jewels and beautiful clothes, I bathed in scented waters and spent all my days in dancing, which was my delight. But from the hour of my Vision, I cared no more for these distractions.’ The first part has, as it happens, been crossed out and altered, but the sentiment remains the same: ‘In my youth I delighted in ornament and beautiful clothes …’ or, as Innocenta’s translation has it, ‘While a young fowl * I was happy for adorning and fine cloths; but from the time of my Arrivalment † I was no more thinking of these excitings.’
    There is a good deal of deletion in these early pages of Juanita’s diaries, executed before the gentle flow of fiction-writing came to her as readily as it did in later year. Innocenta had spent much time in trying to read behind the heavy scorings that blotted out the first, unconsidered outpourings of her saint: success, however, had revealed one or two contradictions so startling that she came at last to a habit of adding further scribblings of her own, lest anyone else should decipher what lay beneath. After all, Juanita knew best. She would undoubtedly have said so herself, reflected Innocenta, a tiny bit ruefully for one so habitually happy to accept and be pleased, thinking back to those old, austere days in the novice-ship of the convenuto, when, from her table, El Margherita had laid about her with implacable self-esteem: would it not be wisest to let her know best to the end? ‘My attachment to Santa Fina dates from the year of my Vision,’ for example. Juanita had scored it out and written instead, ‘from my earliest childhood.’ Very well, then: what business of Innocenta’s if she chose to lay claim to an extra decade of devotion? “Her adhesion to Santa Fina was from first times of childcap,” she said stoutly to the Senorita, pointing it out.
    â€œOr shall we say, rather, ‘from the days when I was a tiny child’?” suggested Winsome: and with the very words there rose in her mind’s eye, an Arrivalment all of her own—a vision of a book, gilt-edged, in a binding, perhaps, of mother-of-pearl, palely iridescent: The Diary of Juanita, Pearl of San Juan. ‘Translation by …’ There would have to be an Acknowledgement, of course, ‘with the assistance of’ or ‘in collaboration with’; but, for the rest, ‘Translation by’—and, in letters of gold, a facsimile perhaps of her signature—her own name: Winsome S. Foley. The Diary, all the Diaries; the slim vols., the books of prayers, the pieties, the (execrable) verse.… Juanita, to be canonised one day, a new star rising in the firmament of the sanctified: and, she, Winsome S. Foley, sole link between the saint and the English-speaking world. The Collected Works of Juanita di Perli, translated by Winsome S. Foley, (with acknowledgements …) One would have to learn Juanese, of course; and there would be Forewords, trips to the British Museum to look up figures and facts, a subscription to the London Library to delve for details of island history. And a Life! Under the aegis of the Grand Duke (who, after all was a friend of her cousin, the Inspector). The Life of El Margherita: by Winsome S. Foley—this time without acknowledgements, unless a gracefully turned compliment to the kindness of Lorenzo, Hereditary Grand Duke of San Juan el Pirata, would look well.…?
    Winsome S. Foley had found her Cause at last.
    * Tour de Force.
    â€  Author’s Note: This is not quite correct: the island has in fact an area of nearly thirty square miles, including the plain of Toscanita or ‘Little Tuscany’ on its Western side.
    * Presumably from the Spanish/Italian, pollo —a