A Vow Of Silence

by Veronica Black

  Her initial homesickness seemed to have worn off rapidly. By the first week in November she was writing,

  ‘Now that the ’flu seems to have run its course we can concentrate on our spiritual duties. I had never realised before the excitement and beauty of the religious life. Reverend Mother Ann has had several private talks with me, and her words are both inspiring and terrifying. She is, of course, a woman of great vision and courage who will take the order forward into the twenty-first century. I only pray that I am worthy of such confidence.’ And that was all. The remaining pages showed that at least a dozen had been carefully torn out, only the loose threads of the inner binding revealing the fact.

  Sister Joan sat back on her heels and decided to stop feeling guilty about being inquisitive. Sister Magdalen nee Brenda Williams had been a starry-eyed, somewhat naive girl who had evidently settled down well in the Novitiate, had helped out cheerfully during the influenza epidemic, had struggled successfully against her very natural homesickness, and had been determined to make a good profession. Everything written in the book merely confirmed the opinions everybody else had given of her, but the missing pages which presumably filled in the weeks between the beginning of November and the sixteenth of February might well take a very different complexion. And her novice’s dress had not been altered for Veronica. That might mean nothing. It was possible there had been a spare outfit nearer to the new novice’s size. The other dress and bonnet might be in some cupboard somewhere, and Sister Katherine had simply forgotten about it. Sister Joan pictured the other’s plain, sensible young face, the neat stitches she had been taking in the costumes for the Solstice’s fete, and thought it unlikely. Sister Katherine, Sister Martha and Sister David were conscientious but not particularly intellectual sisters who kept the rules, worshipped in the simple, unquestioning way of their forebears and never saw what was not pushed under their noses. Whatever was going on beneath the placid routine of conventual life was known only to a selected few of the sisters, she reflected. The Prioress must be the instigator, Mother Emmanuel and Sister Felicity and Sister Lucy were her accomplices — the word entered her mind unbidden and refused to be changed into something less sinister.

  Was it possible that Sister Perpetua was right and that Sister Sophia had been driven to take her own life in the same way that Sister Magdalen had been driven to leave so abruptly? If she had left. Those four words also sprang unwanted into her mind and refused to go away. She hoped fervently that Johnny would have been given confirmation of his friend’s leaving on the train. Then whatever had led her to leave so suddenly might not be as terrible as she was beginning to fear.

  ‘The point is,’ she muttered, ‘that I haven’t the slightest notion what it is I do fear.’

  She had not yet taken a second look at the sketches of the novices. Closing the notebook and resolving to return it as soon as any opportunity arose she slid the drawings out of the cardboard file and examined them more closely.

  ‘One thing you always contrive to do‚’ Jacob had said, ‘is catch the personality of your subject. Your technique is abominable but you manage to show more than you realise, you know, when you’re doing the work.’

  ‘That makes my work glib,’ she had complained.

  ‘Also perceptive.’ He had spoken without envy, secure in the knowledge that his own gifts were superior.

  Sister Teresa had a lively face, a smile lurking at the corners of the full mouth, the grey eyes wide and intelligent. A possible future prioress, Sister Joan thought. She must remember when she came to paint the watercolours that the skin had that thick whiteness that sometimes goes with red hair.

  Sister Rose had a genuine sweetness in her face. In feature she was not dissimilar to Sister Lucy with her heart-shaped bone structure and slanting eyes, but Sister Lucy was like a shy little cat with claws ready to wound. Sister Rose was a kitten.

  Sister Barbara’s face revealed nothing beyond the docility of a girl already resigned to perpetual obedience. Either she was too dull to struggle or too high-minded. Sister Joan wondered if anyone would ever find out which. Probably not even Sister Barbara knew. She had kept the last until last partly because having travelled down with Veronica she felt a certain interest in her and partly because the girl’s altered looks had alarmed her.

  She had not betrayed it in the sketch with its placid eyes and grave expression, but the sketch was no more than a pretty mask for the Prioress to approve.

  From the unused sheets of paper a small piece fluttered down.

  She read its message as she picked it up.

  ‘Dear Sister Joan,

  ‘Can you meet me after general confession in the stable? I think I can make an excuse to slip away. Please do come. Something is worrying me very much and I need your advice.

  ‘Yours sincerely,

  ‘Veronica Stirling.’

  Not Yours in Christ or Sister Veronica. This was a cry for help from a girl with whom she had shared an uneventful journey, a girl whose enthusiasm and excitement had been changed into fear.

  On Fridays the usual recreation in the order was replaced by the general confession in which professed nuns and novices made public confession of their faults. In some orders it was also the practice for the sisters to confess faults they had noticed in others, but the Foundress had been emphatic in her disapproval of that practice.

  ‘Let each Daughter of Compassion seek out her own sins and leave others to do the same’ was written in the Guide to Conduct upon which her first convent had been founded. Sister Joan, contemplating ways in which she could sneak off for an unauthorised meeting with one of the novices, thought wryly that her own list of misdemeanours was now so alarmingly long that she would certainly have had no time to pay heed to the sins of anyone else.

  THIRTEEN

  ‘You had a pleasant rest today, Sister?’

  The Prioress had spoken to her at Recreation with a smiling lilt in her voice.

  ‘Such a pleasant one that I am feeling guilty of sloth,’ Sister Joan had replied. ‘I hope you are not too wearied, Sister David?’

  ‘Oh, I enjoyed being with the children again,’ Sister David assured her. ‘This morning we rehearsed the songs and dances for the Solstice festival. They are the same from year to year but the children forget them. Perhaps we might agree to let me take over from you every Thursday.’

  ‘Certainly, if Reverend Mother—?’

  ‘You have permission to arrange the school rota as you choose,’ the Prioress said, inclining her head slightly. ‘With your skill at drawing, Sister Joan, you might think of painting for cards and calendars. That would be a lucrative sideline for the convent.’

  ‘If I can’t be a great artist I won’t be an artist,’ she had said passionately once to Jacob.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she said now, and was surprised to find herself looking forward to the prospect of holding brushes and canvases again, even if the finished products would not hang in the Tate Gallery. ‘But you have not judged my sketches yet.’

  ‘When are we to see them?’ Mother Emmanuel enquired. ‘The girls were telling me that you work very rapidly and professionally.’

  ‘We shall see the finished watercolours,’ the Prioress said. ‘No work of art should be unveiled until it is complete and perfect. I myself would have collated and published my father’s final notes long since had I not determined to translate them to the best of my ability.’

  ‘Your father didn’t work in English?’ Sister Joan asked.

  ‘He used a code of his own based on the Hittite script,’ the other answered. ‘In the field of archaeology I regret to say there are those who steal the work of others and present it as their own. My father was working on certain Aramaic documents when he died, and some years ago I began the massive task of transliterating them from the code he used into English and then into Latin.’

  ‘It will be a real feather in the order’s cap when the work appears in print,’ Mother Emmanuel said.

  �
�All work is for the glory of God,’ the Prioress said reproachfully, ‘but it is true that the published scripts may well set the name of the order in ecclesiastical history.’ She had nodded smilingly at the other and Mother Emmanuel had smiled back, her eyes raised in one brief, flashing glance of triumph.

  Now, waiting for Johnny Russell to arrive, Sister Joan wondered what had occasioned the nodding and smiling. Thinking of the Community she saw them as a series of concentric circles radiating out from the elegant figure of Reverend Mother Ann.

  The smallest inner circle consisted of Mother Emmanuel, Sister Lucy and Sister Felicity who were clearly part of whatever was going on. Beyond them she placed herself and Sister Perpetua, the shrouded figures of Sister Sophia and Mother Frances and Veronica. It was likely that Sister Magdalen/Brenda belonged there too. She saw them as each holding the solution to a piece of the puzzle but bewildered and separated. In the outermost circle were the other sisters, David, Katherine, Martha, Dorothy, Hilaria, Margaret and the three old ladies in the Infirmary.

  It was difficult to fit in the other three novices since she knew nothing about them. She didn’t even know which ones had been in the Novitiate when Brenda had left or when Sister Sophia had died. Perhaps others apart from Veronica were worried or perhaps they simply accepted everything that happened as she herself had accepted the discipline of the religious training.

  ‘Good morning, Sister.’

  Johnny had put his head in at the door.

  ‘Good morning. Come in, please.’

  His greeting had sounded cheerful enough but a closer look at his face revealed a sombre, brooding expression that sat oddly on his youthful features.

  ‘She never left by train,’ he said abruptly before she could frame a question. ‘She never went on the train.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’ she demanded.

  ‘I asked at the booking office,’ he told her. ‘I know it was back in February but there were fewer tourists then and they’d have remembered her, especially with a nun with her. I asked the clerk and the station master and they neither of them recall anyone from the convent seeing anyone off.’

  ‘That’s hardly proof positive,’ she objected. ‘People do forget things, you know. It’s possible that Sister Felicity didn’t come on to the platform with her. Sister Magdalen — that’s to say Brenda, might have had a return ticket and used that or had her ticket bought for her a couple of days previously. There are all sorts of possibilities.’

  Her voice trailed away as he shook his head.

  ‘I just knew that something was wrong the minute you said she’d left,’ he said. ‘Look, I’ve known Brenda all her life. She didn’t just rush into the convent in the first place. It did seem a bit like that to me but she’d obviously been thinking about it for a long time, and she’s not a quitter, Sister Joan. Even if she was a bit disillusioned with being a novice she’d have stuck it out, and even if she did leave she would have gone home to see her parents. She wouldn’t have run off to a Commune.’

  ‘Her novice’s dress wasn’t handed down,’ Sister Joan said.

  ‘What?’ The young man looked at her.

  ‘The novices wear pale blue dresses with white collars and white poke bonnets. If a novice leaves the order or when she becomes a nun her novice dress is handed down to the next girl who enters. Alterations are made to fit the new girl. Brenda’s dress wasn’t handed in to the Linen Mistress.’

  ‘Could she have run away still wearing it?’

  ‘She didn’t need to run away,’ Sister Joan repeated patiently. ‘All she had to do was give one month’s notice. Even if she dispensed with that and decided to walk out nobody would have compelled her to stay. The religious life is a voluntary one. Otherwise it has no value.’

  ‘Then she never left at all‚’ Johnny said slowly.

  ‘Well, she certainly isn’t still in the — no, that’s not possible.’ The thought was so grotesque that she was able to banish it at once. ‘Nothing has happened to her. For heaven’s sake, this is a respectable convent. Nothing very exciting ever happens in convents.’ Except that one nun had died in a freak accident and an old nun had written a letter that made no sense and a novice had disappeared.

  ‘I think I ought to go to the police‚’ Johnny said.

  ‘That’s ridiculous!’ Her face flushed as her tone sharpened. ‘You seem to forget that she telephoned the Prioress the other evening.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have done that either,’ Johnny said staunchly. ‘She’d have phoned home direct. Sorry, Sister Joan, but I don’t trust your Prioress.’

  In one flashing thought Sister Joan rejected what he had just said. The elegant woman with the polished nails and the amused dark eyes was not ‘her’ prioress. Her prioress was tall and austere with honest eyes.

  ‘You can’t possibly go to the police yet,’ she said aloud. ‘Brenda hasn’t been reported as a missing person.’

  ‘I can do that.’

  ‘You’re not a relative and you’ve no cause to believe any crime has been committed. Look, I’m meeting the new novice tonight, Veronica Stirling. She wishes to speak to me privately, and it may well be that she can throw some light on what’s been happening. Give me the weekend. If you haven’t talked with Brenda by then you can take what action you think is necessary.’

  For a moment she feared he was going to refuse. Then he gave a reluctant nod.

  ‘I’ll be here on Monday,’ he said.

  The words sounded like a threat, she reflected, watching him stride away.

  She was turning to lock up when the sound of a car caused her to pause. The vehicle slowed and stopped and Grant Tarquin wound down the window.

  ‘Good morning, Sister. Is that young man still bothering you?’ He sounded pleasantly concerned but his eyes were sharp.

  ‘Not at all. He seems to be enjoying his holiday,’ she rejoined. ‘Was there something you wanted?’

  ‘From you? No, no, Sister. I was on my way elsewhere.’ He sounded amused now. ‘Did you have a satisfying first week? Teaching?’

  He wasn’t like Jacob at all. Jacob would have scorned innuendo.

  ‘I found my feet,’ she said briskly. ‘The children have been coming regularly which is a hopeful sign. Sister David and I will divide the hours between us in future. If you’ll excuse me—?’

  Turning the key, casting a last glance over the closed windows, she went over to Lilith and mounted up, humming under her breath. Had Jacob been there he would have enquired what was making her nervous.

  ‘Have a pleasant weekend, Sister,’ Grant Tarquin called and drove off.

  Trotting down the track Joan wondered if she would. Usually the weekend was a period towards which she looked forward eagerly throughout the week. The fasting from midday on Saturday until breakfast on Sunday emptied one of the week’s troubles, made one feel lighter in mind and conscience, linked one to the other great religious orders stretching back through the centuries. On Sunday the Low Mass of weekdays was replaced by the longer and more elaborate High Mass with its pure, asexual Gregorian chants. On Sundays letters home could be written, walks taken, the period of recreation doubled, enlivened by songs and the mild jests over which the religious had chuckled for generations.

  Meanwhile she had to find a way of meeting Veronica Stirling in the stable after the general confession.

  That problem occupied her mind during the afternoon while she marked the exercises the children had done during the week, drew up a rough timetable of projects to be done during the week to come and jotted down the faults she intended to confess. The list, she thought wryly, was a lot shorter than it ought to have been.

  After supper and Benediction the nuns filed into the parlour. Even this was an innovation. In her old convent the general confession had been held in the dining-room with each nun rising in her place. Here the faded luxury of the surroundings made the idea of penance an alien thing.

  Sister Hilaria came in, trailing three of the novices behind h
er as if she were in danger of forgetting them. Veronica had not been in her place at supper and Sister Hilaria said now in her vague fashion,

  ‘Sister Veronica has a sick headache, Reverend Mother Ann, so I excused her from the meal and the general confession.’

  ‘Are my services required?’ Sister Perpetua asked.

  ‘She told me that she sleeps off a bad headache‚’ Sister Hilaria said. ‘I understand she hardly ever suffers from them.’

  ‘If the sleep doesn’t relieve it do call me.’ Sister Perpetua looked faintly disappointed at losing a patient.

  ‘One only hopes she is not subject to them,’ Mother Emmanuel said irritably. ‘Some of these girls are apt to expect the novitiate to be one long holiday.’

  ‘Shall we begin, Sisters?’ The Prioress looked round brightly.

  Sister Joan concentrated her attention on her list of faults, trying to follow the advice her own Novice Mistress had given:

  ‘Try to banish from your mind any personal likes or dislikes of the other Sisters you may have. Listen to the fault confessed, mentally bless the speaker, then forget it. When you leave the room leave your memory of faults confessed behind you.’

  It was not always easy advice to follow. She remembered with amusement one nun who had regularly confessed that she craved hamburgers more than anything else so that she had never been able to meet the other later without seeing her gazing soulfully at a large hamburger. The problem was that most of the faults were so predictable and so dull that the mind was apt to wander. This gathering was no exception. The others had all been tempted to stay in bed a couple of minutes longer than was allowed, to take a second helping, to have had the odd uncharitable thought or spoken thoughtlessly. Nobody had ever stood up and declared they had masturbated or worked out ways of slowly killing the Sister who belched after meals. Her own faults sounded like everybody else’s. She had neglected to attend the priest’s confessional which, though attendance was voluntary, betokened less fervour than might be expected and she had forgotten to feed or groom Lilith.