A Vow Of Silence

by Veronica Black

  Outside the sunshine of the day before had given place to a light stinging rain. The air was chilly and as she put on her cloak and left by the side door Sister Joan felt a sense of almost physical relief. Not many of the others were likely to go out which gave her an unusual privacy in which to skirt the grounds and circle round to the narrow dip of high bracken she had directed Johnny to meet her at.

  He was already there, bundled in his anorak, looking blessedly young and tough. Seeing him was like opening a window on to the outside world.

  ‘Have you found anything more?’ he demanded without any greeting.

  ‘You first.’ She trod cautiously down the wet slope, noting with appreciation that he had laid some plastic over a large stone for her to sit on.

  ‘I went back to the Public Library and poked about there for the whole of yesterday afternoon,’ he said, perching on a similar stone. ‘The Tarquins used to be the bees’ knees around here. They owned tin mines and fishing rights and farms and Lord knows what else, but old James Tarquin, the grandfather of the present Grant Tarquin, started drinking too deep and gambling too high and then his son, Grant Senior, got religion and started selling off what was left of the property to various Catholic organisations. There wasn’t much left by the time he died. The present Grant Tarquin went into business and began improving the family fortunes again through his own efforts. He married and then his wife was killed.’

  ‘Yes, I know about that. A great tragedy.’

  ‘He left the district after it happened and went to the States for several years. Then he moved back and built himself a very expensive house on the outskirts of the town. I got that from chatter in the local pub by the bye. The Tarquins are still regarded as squires in the neighbourhood. Grant Tarquin spends a lot of money and time on the convent.’

  ‘And he never remarried,’ Sister Joan said.

  ‘Never even come close, according to what they were saying in the pub,’ Johnny informed her.

  He was looking at her expectantly.

  ‘There is a fifth Gospel,’ she said. ‘At least there is a translation of what purports to be a very brief script either written or dictated by the Holy Virgin.’

  ‘Gosh!’ Johnny said on a long, low whistle.

  ‘Gosh indeed,’ Sister Joan agreed. ‘If such a manuscript were genuine then its worth would be beyond price. Unfortunately it’s more likely to be a fake — not a modern fake. There were certain gnostic sects in the early years of Christianity who placed inordinate importance on the role played by the Blessed Virgin in the Redemption. I imagine similar manuscripts were circulating for years. Even the ancients faked things when they wanted to prove a point.’

  ‘What does it have to do with Brenda?’

  ‘There seems to be an inner circle of nuns,’ she explained, ‘taking their lead from the Prioress and establishing — well, I’m not sure exactly what’s being established, except that it’s almost certainly against canon law. Sister Sophia, the nun who died, was one of those who were in it but it seems she was unwilling. It’s possible that it preyed upon her mind and she committed suicide, God rest her soul.’

  ‘Was Brenda one of them?’ he asked tensely.

  ‘I understand so. She was replaced by Veronica Stirling — the novice you saw the other night.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ Johnny said sombrely. ‘Brenda never left the convent. Nobody took her to the station. You said her dress wasn’t passed on. She has to be dead, Sister.’

  ‘She doesn’t have to be anything of the sort.’

  ‘Then where is she?’ he demanded.

  ‘Johnny, I don’t know.’ She shook her head in exasperation. ‘I don’t know. For your sake I hope that nothing has happened, but I can’t be sure. The truth is that I’m not sure of anything any longer.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it,’ he told her. ‘You know when I look back to last year I can see now that Brenda changed after she went away to college. When she came back the feelings between us had changed. I didn’t want to admit it at the time but there wasn’t the closeness between us any longer. When I came down here to try to get her to change her mind I was annoyed because she’d thrown me over, but I wasn’t in love with her anymore, not really. You wouldn’t understand what I mean.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve an excellent imagination,’ Sister Joan said dryly.

  ‘Which doesn’t mean I want anything to have happened to her,’ he said quickly.

  ‘You know convents aren’t hotbeds of intrigue,’ she informed him. ‘Mostly they’re very peaceful and respectable groups of women living the devotional life. All the sisters are free to come and go as they please—’

  ‘Not if they’d found out something so damaging that they couldn’t be allowed to get out and tell it.’

  ‘That’s melodramatic,’ she said uncomfortably.

  ‘Then where is she?’ He had raised his voice slightly but at a warning glance from her lowered it again. ‘Sister Joan, I’m not interested in old manuscripts and what goes on inside convents. I only want to find out where Brenda is. Can you give me one good reason why I shouldn’t go to the police?’

  ‘I think you ought to ring Brenda’s parents and tell them everything that’s happened,’ she said at last. ‘Then it’s up to them to decide what to do.’

  ‘I’ll ring them this evening. They generally go out on Sundays. Anything else?’

  ‘Can you telephone my old convent? Wait, I’ll give you the number.’ She reached in her pocket for a pencil and a scrap of paper. ‘Tell the sister who answers that you have a message from Sister Joan for Reverend Mother Agnes.’

  ‘What shall I say?’

  ‘Tell her that matters at Cornwall House require investigation. Tell her that I did write but the letter was held back. She’ll know what to do.’

  She hoped as she spoke that she was right. Reverend Mother Agnes would doubtless contact the Bishop but these things took time and meanwhile Brenda was still missing.

  ‘I’ll do all that,’ Johnny said, rising.

  ‘And I must go back to the convent.’ She shook off reluctance as she too rose.

  ‘When shall I see you again?’

  ‘After school tomorrow morning. Thank you for all your help. I appreciate it.’

  ‘I wish we could find out more. Bye, Sister.’

  Watching him go it struck her that there was a new gravity in his bearing as if events were conspiring to thrust him towards maturity.

  The fine needles of rain obscured the landscape. She looked at the moor through a curtain of rain that lifted occasionally to blow little squalls of water in her face.

  The prospect of returning indoors immediately was uninviting. She retraced her footsteps slowly, re-entering the side gate near the tennis court. The windows of the Novitiate were shuttered. The relaxation granted to the professed nuns on Sunday afternoons was not offered to those still in training. Sooner or later she would have to find a way of getting Sister Magdalen’s Spiritual diary back into the Library cupboard. She doubted it there was much haste, however, since the pages that might have provided a clue had been ripped out and it was unlikely that anyone would want to read the rest. For the moment the book could remain tucked among the roots of the apple tree.

  Her thoughts had kept pace with her feet. She was in the enclosure near to the little walled cemetery.

  Without any conscious plan she passed through the archway and stood, looking at the simple headstones. Mother Frances’s grave and that of Sister Sophia were marked still by plain wooden crosses. The rain had soaked through the twin mounds blackening the soil below. In some of the stricter orders the nuns slept in their shrouds and drank from skulls to remind themselves that in life was death. Both customs had always struck her as somewhat exaggerated. Nevertheless there was something attractive about the certainty that one day in what she hoped was the far distant future she would lie here among her sisters.

  The two neat rows were as tranquil as a meditation, their grass borders
neatly clipped, their headstones washed clean by the rain. Sister Josephine, Sister Bernadette, Mother Mary, Sister Brigit, Sister—

  Sister Joan stopped dead, her blue eyes resting on two of the graves, her attitude one of tense remembering.

  The letter that old Mother Frances had sent to Reverend Mother Agnes. She couldn’t have quoted it word for word but some of the sentences had stayed in her mind.

  ‘I think often of the pleasant recreations we used to have under Reverend Mother Mary,’ and, ‘How I wish I had the penmanship of dear Sister Brigit O’Reilly. You remember her, I trust?’

  Two names drawn apparently at random from the old nun’s long life and affixed to comments that had made no sense since Reverend Mother had been a killjoy and Sister Brigit an illiterate.

  It had to be a coincidence, she told herself, staring at the two graves. Mary and Brigit were common enough names in religion. Or had Mother Frances known more than she dared even to hint? Had she on one late night in February when it was impossible to sleep risen and made her shaky way to some door or window for a breath of air and seen—?

  There was a small shed at the corner of the cemetery. She had noticed it on the previous occasion and guessed it contained garden tools.

  Her guess had been accurate. Her hands, seeming to move independent of her conscious will, seized a spade and returned to the level stretch of rain-blackened soil between the mounds where Mother Mary and Sister Brigit lay.

  The soil was thick, clinging to the iron of the spade. Digging as the rain fell faster she told herself she was being an hysterical fool. Jacob had warned her she would end up like this if she insisted on denying her natural instincts. In a moment someone would come running out to ask her if she had gone completely mad. Despite the chill perspiration was running into her eyes mingling with the rain.

  Her spade struck against something. Bending she scraped away the clinging soil, saw the worm-eaten leg, the hem of a dress that had been pale blue but was now faded to grey, soaked by soil and rain. The stomach-heaving odour of putrefaction hit her and she turned aside, retching, her eyes smarting.

  She had neither heart nor courage to uncover the body further. Instead, shivering with nervous haste, she tugged the spade out of the soil and began to fill in the gaps she had made, smoothing over the space as if it were black icing on some spectral wedding cake. There was still soil scattered over the path. As if she stood aside and watched herself in a home movie she walked to the shed, exchanged the spade for a brush, went back and brushed the surplus back over the ground. As long as she continued to watch herself in the home movie she could hold back the terror that bubbled up in her throat.

  Putting the brush back into the shed, casting one brief critical glance over the tidied earth, she walked back to the main house outwardly as calm as if she had just spent a placid hour strolling in the rain.

  She gained the side passage leading to the kitchen and infirmary before her legs began to fail.

  ‘I never faint,’ she muttered through clenched teeth, refusing to admit there could be a first time for everything, as she reached the tiny dispensary where Sister Perpetua was grinding something in pestle and mortar.

  ‘Have you something for dizziness, Sister?’

  The home movie was flickering into darkness and her voice seemed to be coming from a long way off. She wasn’t sure exactly how it happened, but suddenly she was seated on a chair with her head between her knees and a wet cloth on the back of her neck.

  ‘Now swallow this, Sister.’ The infirmarian’s voice was soothing. ‘It’s sal volatile. I always find the old remedies are best. You are exceedingly pale. Have you been fasting?’

  Sister Joan shook her head, relieved that the darkness around her seemed to be clearing.

  ‘You’ve had a hard week of it,’ Sister Perpetua’s voice ran on. ‘Backwards and forwards to the school and having to get accustomed to a new place. Too much to cope with all at once.’

  ‘I need to use the telephone,’ Sister Joan said.

  ‘Why, that’s against the rules, Sister.’ The other looked puzzled. ‘Lay sisters and the Prioress are the only ones permitted to use the telephone. You sit there and I’ll pop into the kitchen and get you a nice cup of tea.’

  Since her legs still felt too weak to take her anywhere Sister Joan sensibly refrained from argument.

  The tea, arriving a couple of minutes later, was scalding and sweet. Sipping it she tried to think calmly and rationally.

  Brenda was dead, as Johnny had began to suspect, buried between two nuns whose names old Mother Frances had chosen to mention in her cryptic letter.

  The police would have to be informed. At the very least someone in the convent was guilty of concealing a death. The thought that something worse might lie on someone’s conscience made her feel ill.

  ‘I think you ought to go and lie down,’ Sister Perpetua said, breaking into her train of thought. ‘I shall make your excuses.’

  ‘Sister Perpetua, you nursed Mother Frances before her death, didn’t you?’ she asked.

  ‘She didn’t require much nursing,’ Sister Perpetua said. ‘She was just old, you know.’

  ‘But she could walk?’

  ‘Walk? Oh, yes.’ Sister Perpetua looked slightly surprised. ‘Very slowly and with a stick, but on her good days she liked to go out for an hour in the enclosure.’

  ‘The cemetery?’

  ‘I told her that it was morbid,’ Sister Perpetua said, ‘but she said as she was due to lie there soon it would do no harm to explore the place. Very dry sense of humour she had.’

  ‘And just before her death she was troubled?’

  ‘Like me,’ Sister Perpetua said. ‘I told you when you came that there was something evil about. People laugh at evil now. They say it doesn’t exist, but that is the final triumph of evil, you see, to convince people that it doesn’t exist. She said to me once, only a few days before she died, “If I were younger I would take action, Sister, but I’m too old. I want to end my days in peace, not stirring my finger in a hornet’s nest.” Funny thing to say, wasn’t it?’

  But easy to understand, Sister Joan thought. No old lady whose life has been cloistered would want her last days ruined by police and questions and the dismembering of the convent where she had spent so many years. In the end her courage had failed her and she had left only obscure clues in a letter to her former novice, to quiet her conscience.

  ‘When conscience and desire war together give conscience the victory,’ Reverend Mother Agnes had said in one of her homilies, ‘but be wary. Desire can often masquerade as duty.’ If she telephoned the police immediately she would be doing what society insisted was the correct thing, but it was what she desired to do. It was a shifting of moral responsibility. What conscience told her to do was to confront Reverend Mother Ann, to find out some part of the truth for herself before she called in the authorities.

  ‘I have to see the Prioress.’ She stood up, relieved to find her legs were no longer shaking.

  ‘You said you wanted to telephone,’ Sister Perpetua said.

  ‘Later.’

  Walking out of the tiny dispensary she straightened her shoulders, aware that her face bore what Jacob had always called her donkey expression.

  The parlour door was ajar and as she entered the antechamber she heard the step of the Prioress on the polished floor within.

  ‘Dominus tecum.’

  The light, pleasant voice in response to her tap on the wooden panel.

  ‘Et cum spiritu tuo.’

  She entered, closing the door softly behind her, kneeling briefly.

  ‘Sister Joan?’

  There was no change in the amused smile as Reverend Mother Ann seated herself at her desk, but she knew. She had read Sister Joan’s letter. Not only read it but was spreading it out on the flat polished surface.

  ‘I assume you have come to tell me about this, Sister?’ Her tone was mild. ‘Mr Tarquin visited me this afternoon and brought it with him.
He is aware of the rule that all mail must be checked by myself, not a task that any prioress particularly relishes, but one strictly adhered to in all our convents. He was disturbed by the evident secrecy with which you had written and intended to post it, and after musing for several days very properly brought it to me. I have read it and I am disappointed. Disappointed and shocked, Sister, that you could behave with such deceit and lack of loyalty.’

  ‘I found Sister Magdalen,’ Sister Joan said.

  There was an infinitesimal pause. Then Reverend Mother Ann said,

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I found Brenda Williams, the novice who was Sister Magdalen.’

  ‘She returned?’

  ‘You know she hasn’t because she never left.’ In the face of the other’s bland, sweet smile, Sister Joan felt her own temper beginning to crack. ‘She’s buried in the convent cemetery, Reverend Mother, so it isn’t likely she’ll be coming back. And you know because you put her there.’

  ‘In the cemetery? Sister Felicity took her to the station.’

  ‘Sister Felicity didn’t take anyone to the station. Brenda never left the convent.’

  ‘I think you must be quite mad, Sister.’ The Prioress was shaking her head. ‘You know one of the reasons that I have relaxed the rules slightly is that I have always felt too much austerity can have a damaging effect upon the mind.’

  ‘And I’ve seen the fifth Gospel,’ Sister Joan said. ‘I took it out of the drawer at the base of the statue. I read it.’

  ‘Then you will understand,’ the Prioress said. ‘I was not sure, not sure at all, but if you were led to the Gospel then you are clearly one of the chosen who will bear witness in due course to the Second Coming. You are one of us, Sister!’