A Vow Of Silence

by Veronica Black

  ‘Twice!’ she exclaimed, suddenly remembering. ‘I forgot about the poor creature today too.’ There was a ripple of stifled giggles interrupted by Reverend Mother Ann’s amused voice. ‘Sister, I think you may be excused immediately in order that you may put the fault right.’

  ‘Yes, Reverend Mother.’ Sister Joan crossed herself, bowed to the Community and hurried out. It had not been a deliberate action on her part but now, at least, she had some excuse to linger in the stable though Veronica’s note, now thrust with Sister Magdalen’s Spiritual Notebook deep among the roots of the apple tree until a safer hiding-place could be devised, had asked her to be there after the general confession.

  Going into the stable she was greeted by Lilith’s reproachful snicker.

  ‘I’ll be with you directly, old girl.’ She switched on the solitary overhead bulb that provided the sole illumination and jumped slightly as Veronica’s slight form rose from behind the feed-bag where she had been crouched.

  ‘I slipped away early,’ the girl said. ‘You didn’t tell anyone?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Sister Joan decided that remaining cool and calm in the face of the girl’s obvious agitation was the wisest course of action. ‘Sit down, child, and keep your voice low though I doubt if anyone will hear us. I have the mare to feed.’

  ‘I came early and left a bolster in my bed,’ Veronica said breathlessly, sitting on the bench against the wall. ‘I want to get back before they finish confessions. I was praying you would get out early.’

  ‘More by accident than design,’ Sister Joan told her, fitting on Lilith’s nosebag and deciding to delay the grooming. ‘You had no right to send such a note, you know, and I have no right to be here. I’m assuming that you can’t confide in anyone else?’

  ‘I don’t know whom to trust,’ Veronica said gulpingly. ‘You’re new here like me so you might not realise what’s going on. I don’t understand it myself.’

  ‘What exactly don’t you understand?’

  Sister Joan went over to the bench and sat down at the other end of it.

  ‘I wanted to be a nun for ages,’ Veronica said. ‘My parents have never been keen on the idea but ever since I left school I’ve wanted to enter the religious life. I was quite ready for all the sacrifices and hardships.’

  ‘None of us is really ready you know,’ Sister Joan interjected. ‘We only think we are.’

  ‘But there aren’t any,’ Veronica said. ‘Not really, Sister. Oh, one has to stay in the Novitiate and go everywhere with Sister Hilaria or Mother Emmanuel, but I expected that. I expected to have to pray and meditate a lot and be scolded for small faults. That’s all part of the training. But the other things — Sister, I don’t know how different the Order of the Daughters of Compassion is from other orders but I’d guess very different.’

  ‘In what way?’

  Veronica hesitated, then asked instead,

  ‘Have you heard of a Sister Magdalen?’

  ‘What about her?’ Sister Joan’s voice had sharpened.

  ‘She — oh dear!’ She broke off gaspingly as a shadow loomed in the open doorway.

  ‘Johnny Russell, what are you doing here?’ Sister Joan expelled her breath in mingled relief and exasperation.

  ‘I decided to have a look round,’ he said calmly. ‘The gates were wide open.’

  ‘You had better come in and shut the door, and sit over there.’ Sister Joan nodded primly towards the feed-bag. ‘Sister Veronica was just going to tell me something about Brenda. Veronica, this is Johnny Russell. He’s a friend of Sister Magdalen and he’s anxious about her.’

  ‘Do you know anything about her?’ Johnny lowered himself obediently to the feed-bag and stared at her intently.

  ‘She left the convent back in February,’ Veronica said disappointingly. ‘Mother Emmanuel says she was very beautiful and the order is fortunate to get an equally beautiful replacement in me though I’m smaller. I’m sorry, Sister Joan. I don’t mean to sound conceited but that’s exactly what she said — Mother Emmanuel, I mean.’

  ‘Did she say anything about where Sister Magdalen went?’ Sister Joan asked.

  The other shook her bonneted head.

  ‘She and the Prioress just went on about how pretty she was and how I must accept what God had planned for me as she did.’

  ‘And what has He planned?’ Sister Joan asked.

  ‘I don’t know, Sister, but it has something to do with the fifth Gospel,’ Veronica said.

  ‘There are only four Gospels,’ Sister Joan said.

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ Veronica said earnestly, ‘but the Prioress told me there is a fifth one only just being translated.’

  ‘I thought Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were the Gospels,’ Johnny put in.

  ‘The only ones accepted as authentic by the Church,’ Sister Joan nodded. ‘There is a Gospel of Thomas and a Gospel of Peter but neither has been accepted as authentic. They are among the Apocrypha.’

  ‘This isn’t any of them,’ Veronica said. ‘It’s the Gospel of the Blessed Virgin she says.’

  ‘The Blessed Virgin never wrote a Gospel.’

  ‘Apparently She did,’ Veronica said, ‘and all the doctrines of the Church will have to be revised when the translation is finally published. At the moment it’s a great secret to all but a few of the professed Sisters and to Sister Felicity. Even the other novices haven’t been told.’

  ‘Told what?’ Sister Joan pressed. ‘What have you been told, Veronica?’

  ‘Only that I’ve been chosen,’ Veronica said. ‘Reverend Mother Ann said I was a favoured handmaid of the Lord and that at Solstice the Gabriel will come. I don’t know what she was talking about, Sister, but it bothers me. It bothers me that we none of us had to have our hair cut off. I thought that novices always did.’

  ‘They do,’ Sister Joan muttered.

  She herself was more bothered than she was willing to reveal to the other two.

  ‘I don’t see what all this has to do with Brenda,’ Johnny complained.

  ‘The chosen handmaid of the Lord,’ Sister Joan repeated softly and shivered, scenting heresy.

  ‘It isn’t like I expected it to be,’ Veronica said, ‘but I’ve never been a novice before so perhaps what I expected wasn’t correct either.’

  ‘Your instincts aren’t misleading you,’ Sister Joan said soberly. ‘Something is very wrong, very wrong indeed here. Johnny, let me try briefly to explain. Catholics worship the Holy Trinity but they pay great honour to the Holy Virgin. Not worship but what is technically called hyperdulia. She is first among all the saints and angels but she was never a divine being, though some of the titles we give her were originally given to female goddesses. A lot of Catholic belief and ritual is adapted from the pagan faiths of the past. But it isn’t the same belief and it’s been transformed by the ethics of Christian belief. It’s like — like an old house that’s been pulled down and a better house built on the foundations. We all know the foundations are there but we aren’t forever poking about in the cellars or taking people down there to live. Do you follow me?’

  ‘So far.’ He nodded.

  ‘Devotion to the Blessed Virgin cannot be allowed to supersede worship of God,’ Sister Joan continued. ‘In this convent there is a decided leaning to more primitive and extreme forms of Mariolatry. This idea of a fifth gospel written by the Holy Virgin Herself is — I never heard of such a thing. I don’t know where Brenda’s disappearance fits in with all this, I could perhaps fit it all together if I knew more about this so-called fifth Gospel.’

  She broke off, tapping her thumbnail against her teeth.

  ‘Reverend Mother Ann didn’t show it to me,’ Veronica said.

  ‘I’m not very interested in the theology of it,’ Johnny said impatiently. ‘I want to find Brenda and if she hasn’t turned up by lunchtime on Monday then I’m going to the police.’

  ‘Maybe she got frightened and ran away,’ Veronica said. ‘There is something a bit frightening about
the Prioress. I can’t explain what I mean exactly because she’s always so pleasant but there’s something at the back of her eyes — as if she knew something nobody else knew and it was making her laugh inside.’

  ‘Veronica, do you think you can slip back to the Novitiate and carry on as usual?’ Sister Joan asked.

  ‘I think so.’ Veronica sounded doubtful.

  ‘Solstice isn’t for three weeks yet,’ Sister Joan reminded her. ‘Whatever is going to happen will happen then.’

  ‘What is this Solstice?’ Johnny enquired.

  ‘There are four ancient feasts when the quarters of the year are divided by the changing of one astrological sign into another,’ Sister Joan said. ‘Two solstices and two equinoxes. In pagan times when society was largely agricultural they were important landmarks in the year. There’s a local festival here on that day with a procession and dancing — all very rustic and innocent. What else has been planned by Reverend Mother Ann I don’t know.’

  ‘I do know where the fifth Gospel is kept,’ Veronica said unexpectedly.

  ‘Where?’ Sister Joan looked at her sharply.

  ‘In the base of the statue of Our Lady in the parlour,’ the girl said. ‘I went there for the private talk she wanted and I was a few minutes early. The door was ajar and she was putting some papers in the base. There’s a kind of drawer there. I’m sure it was the Gospel because later on she told me that the translation was quite safe because it was at the feet of the Holy Virgin.’

  ‘Thank you, Veronica.’ Sister Joan reached out to pat the girl’s shoulder. ‘Now hurry back and get into bed and try not to worry too much. You did absolutely right to tell me.’ Veronica nodded, murmured a polite excuse-me to Johnny and flitted out into the darkness.

  ‘Johnny.’ Sister Joan hesitated, then went on. ‘Can you do some research for me in Bodmin? Find out as much as you can about the Tarquin family. Grant Tarquin’s father was the one who sold Cornwall House to the order when the family went broke. Find out everything you can about them, about him in particular. Make a proper report of it and meet me—’

  ‘At the school?’

  ‘Before Monday.’ She bit her lip, thinking. ‘Look, on Sunday afternoons we have free time, when we can write letters or read or go for a walk. At the back of the enclosure, outside the wall there’s a kind of dip with hawthorn bushes all around. I’ll meet you there, sometime between two and four. I can’t be more accurate than that.’

  ‘Sunday then.’ He rose, looking down at her for a moment. When he spoke his voice sounded adult and sad. ‘You think Brenda’s dead, don’t you?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know, Johnny,’ she said honestly. ‘I’d like to believe that she really is on some Welsh Commune because the alternative terrifies me, but I don’t know.’

  ‘I’ll see you on Sunday,’ Johnny said, and left the stable.

  Sister Joan rose, her limbs heavy with reluctance. They would still be at general confession which gave her what might be the only opportunity to get hold of this so-called fifth Gospel. She would have to keep it for a couple of days and pray that Reverend Mother Ann didn’t require it.

  The door of the parlour was unlocked. She switched on the overhead light and crossed to the statue. Isis/Mary stared ahead, remote and perfect. To her relief the drawer in the base, invisible until one knelt on a level with it, slid out easily. The typescript within was obviously Mother Ann’s own translation of the coded transliteration left by her father. She had no idea where the original might be, and not time to speculate. There was time only to slide shut the drawer, turn off the light, and scoot at a speed definitely frowned on in convents up the stairs and into her cell where she laid the typescript under her mattress before returning to the dining-room in time to hear Sister Dorothy accuse herself of finishing the page of an absorbing book after the Meditation bell had rung.

  Slipping into her place, Sister Joan found herself praying fervently that no greater sin remained unconfessed among the other members of the Community.

  FOURTEEN

  Saturday was general cleaning day in accordance with the rules laid down by the Foundress. Every nun, professed or lay, scrubbed down her cell, took her linen to the laundry room, made up her narrow bed with fresh sheets and changed her underwear for the second time in a week. Everything that could be polished was polished twice including shoes and those who needed a hair-trim queued meekly outside one of the bathrooms where Sister Margaret wielded a large pair of scissors. Sister Felicity had driven into Bodmin to collect the weekly groceries taking Sister Lucy with her on a visit to the dentist. Sister Joan had hoped that the Prioress would accompany them but Reverend Mother Ann was everywhere in evidence throughout the long morning, popping in and out of the cells to admonish and praise, calling on Sister Martha who finished her own cleaning first to help her cope with her linoleum.

  ‘The one thing I could never endure was getting the marks off linoleum, Sister. You have done yours so beautifully!’

  Sister Joan, vigorously rubbing her window, thought nostalgically of Reverend Mother Agnes, an apron tied round her gaunt figure, as she silently and painstakingly cleaned and polished without delegating a single task.

  At least Reverend Mother Ann didn’t carry out inspections as carefully as the other. The slim typescript in its transparent plastic cover lay snugly under the mattress.

  In the afternoon there were the weekly diaries to be written up and given to the Prioress. Writing her own bald and censored account Sister Joan wondered what would happen if she were to log exactly what her movements had been during her first week at Cornwall House. Saturday afternoon was also Visitors’ Day when family and friends might call. The novices were, of course, debarred from this privilege and must spend the day cleaning the Novitiate. She wondered if Veronica’s anxieties had been relieved by the confidences she had made. And had Johnny found out anything that would explain Grant Tarquin’s close and protective interest in the Community?

  On Saturday afternoons letters were distributed. There were none for her as yet, but her letter to Reverend Mother Agnes would only just have arrived and in any case she was sure her former prioress would answer with care since Reverend Mother Ann would see the letter first.

  After the diaries were written up and handed in the sisters were required to complete any tasks left undone during the week which gave her the first chance she had had of slipping away to read the typescript. She decided that the place where she was least likely to be disturbed was in one of the storerooms on the same floor as the library, and arming herself with her sketch-pad into which she slipped the typescript she made her way into the chapel and thence up the narrow staircase to the storey above.

  The library itself was deserted. She paced on down the corridor and opened the end door. This was the room into which she had climbed in her desire to find out what was going on in the chapel. Pale sunlight streaked the floorboards and the packing-cases provided more than one niche where she could sit out of sight of anyone who might open the door or, passing below, glance up at the window.

  Tucking her habit underneath her she settled herself comfortably and drew a deep breath to still the sudden trembling of her hands.

  The typescript began with what was clearly part of a longer biographical work on Dr Gillespie.

  My father’s travels which were extensive in his youth centred upon the Near East during the last years of his life and were largely concentrated on the thesis he was planning concerning the survival of mother goddess cults after the advent of Christianity. I travelled with him during that period and was often entrusted with the task of transcribing certain manuscripts that fell into his hands.

  When the manuscript shortly to be considered was given to him, however, I was suffering from an attack of malaria which necessitated my returning to London to undergo an intensive course of treatment. When I returned to the dig he was engaged upon a new project and did not discuss with me any recent findings as he usually did.

  I was at
that time seriously considering entering the religious life and my father’s death some months later though a great grief did release me in a sense from my duty to him. His Will made me outright heir to his estate, a handsome dowry to bring into the order. His private papers and unfinished research were not, however, released for my study for a further fifteen years.

  Accordingly not until five years ago was I given a mass of part translated and coded work, the fruit of the last months of his career. I had previously resolved to complete any unfinished work left by my father and this has occupied what time I have been able to spare from my religious duties in the past five years.

  The manuscript translated from the original Aramaic into his own private code by my father was, according to his own notes, given to him by a member of the Druse community, an elder living on the border between Lebanon and Northern Israel. The man informed my father that he felt the script ought to be given to an accredited scholar who would estimate its value. The manuscript which my father was constrained to smuggle back to Great Britain was, he states in his diary, ‘the most explosive document that ever passed through my hands. If ever made public the consequences to the doctrines of Christianity might be incalculable.’

  For that reason he left the translation in his own private code and my own translation is based upon that code. For the moment I do not intend to make it public. I am of the opinion that to do so might distress those who are bound by the beliefs of conventional Christianity. I am also of the opinion that it was something more than mere chance that placed this document in my hands and thus in the hands of the order. My own fervent belief is that the New Age will find its beginning within the confines of the Order of the Daughters of Compassion.

  Sister Joan paused, read over again what she had just skimmed, and frowned. So far the provenance of the original manuscript seemed straightforward enough. There were, she knew, many ancient parchments in the Near and Middle East, many of them untranslated, containing a wealth of information about post and pre-Christian civilisations. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls had unleashed a flood of antique writings of varying value, many of them still buried in obscure libraries or in private collections.