A Vow Of Silence

by Veronica Black

  SIXTEEN

  Sister Joan had known many emotions but this was the first time she knew the colour and shape of sheer terror. Yet nothing had changed. Reverend Mother Ann still smiled, dark eyes amused at some private jest. Outside the window the fine spring rain fell steadily.

  ‘May I sit down?’

  Without waiting for permission she did so, holding the terror at bay by some miracle of will.

  ‘Perhaps I have been misjudging you, Sister,’ the Prioress said. ‘It is natural for you to be concerned since you are not fully acquainted with all the circumstances.’

  ‘No, Reverend Mother.’

  ‘You know that I have been collating and translating my late father’s notes? While he lived I was his amanuensis, always with him, always dedicated to our joint efforts. He often said he could not have managed without me. There was never any question of my ever marrying and leaving him to pursue a life of my own. It was a willing sacrifice, Sister. While he lived I wanted no other companion. The books he published were dedicated to me. It was all the reward I ever wanted. When he died the entire world became a darker, more hopeless place. I resolved to leave it, to enter the religious life. In the religious life there is that same quality of dedication we had both given to the archaeological research.’

  Sister Joan folded her hands together, listening.

  ‘Ten years ago his notes and private papers were released to me under the terms of his Will. A great mass of writings of which I had no knowledge. I had thought we shared almost everything, but he had been pursuing a line of thought that was kept secret from me. It’s possible that he feared it might shock me since I have been devout since childhood. But he had left it for me to translate. It took me almost ten years since my personal time is so limited, and as I worked so the conviction grew in me that this was a sign, a divine mark of favour bestowed upon our order.’

  ‘In what way?’ Sister Joan asked cautiously.

  ‘The Second Coming.’ The Prioress said. ‘The Holy child returning to earth, this time to fulfil His mission and lead us into a golden age. And He would be born again of a virgin. Oh, I saw that most plainly. It only remained to choose the maiden.’

  ‘One of the novices.’

  ‘A young and lovely girl, dedicated to the service of God, waiting for the Gabriel to come.’

  ‘You expected an archangel to arrive?’ Sister Joan asked carefully.

  ‘An angel is merely a divine force, Sister,’ the Prioress said. ‘That force may be channelled through a human personality. I waited for that personality to emerge, for the chosen maiden to be revealed. Of course I was most cautious about admitting others into my confidence. The religious life is not conducive to originality of thought.’

  She paused, still smiling.

  Not evil, Sister Joan thought, but madness. That was what Sister Perpetua had sensed, and who was to say where one left off and the other began?

  ‘Sister Magdalen was the loveliest girl,’ Reverend Mother Ann said softly. ‘I knew that she was the one chosen, and my instincts were right, Sister. By November she had been visited by the Gabriel and carried the seed of holiness within her. That was a wonderful moment when I knew that we had, through her, been favoured by the Great Mother, Her Who was existing before time began.’

  Her eyes were glowing now, her voice as soft as if she spoke of a lover.

  ‘Are you saying Sister Magdalen was pregnant?’ Sister Joan asked in disbelief.

  ‘She was privileged,’ Reverend Mother Ann said. ‘Those of us who knew of it were filled with joy — except for Sister Sophia. I regret to say that Sister Sophia regarded it as a calamity. She brooded upon it. It was only with the greatest difficulty that she was dissuaded from going to the Bishop.’

  Sister Joan felt a pang of sympathy for Sister Sophia as painful as if she had known her. She could imagine only too well the dreadful dilemma in which the other had found herself.

  ‘It was suicide, wasn’t it?’ she said aloud. ‘Sister Sophia killed herself.’

  ‘When the balance of her mind was disturbed,’ the Prioress said. ‘Sister Felicity and I found her, you know, and we decided at once that the circumstances must be concealed for her own sake as well as ours. If she had come to me I would have explained that miracles take no account of conventional morality. Our Blessed Lady had scandal to endure as well.’

  But she had dropped hints to old Mother Frances, Sister Joan thought. She had said enough to rouse the old nun’s suspicions, and then unable to reconcile her oath of obedience with her conscience she had taken her own, lonely solution.

  ‘Perhaps we were wrong to tell the tale that we did,’ the Prioress was continuing, ‘but it seemed to us kinder to her memory. There are those who cannot bear the truth.’

  If it was the truth, Sister Joan thought. A nun was conditioned to obey, to accept the word of her Superiors, but a young nun, just professed, still raw from the training in the Novitiate, not knowing whom to trust or what to think when she saw her own deep beliefs twisted into something else — for such a one despair might well have come.

  ‘Brenda — Sister Magdalen,’ she said.

  ‘So happy, so accepting,’ Reverend Mother Ann said. ‘Knowing herself to be blessed, visited by the Gabriel, oh she accepted everything so sweetly. And then what happened was so sad.’

  ‘What did happen, Reverend Mother?’

  ‘She miscarried,’ the other said. ‘Perhaps she had had moments of doubt and been punished for them. If so she never confided them to me. She died, you see. They say that these days it is most unusual for a girl to miscarry and die, but we could not stop the bleeding.’

  ‘And you didn’t call a doctor? You didn’t even call Sister Perpetua?’

  ‘There was only myself and Sister Felicity,’ the Prioress said. ‘We called Mother Emmanuel, a tower of strength. Devoted to me and so competent. She and Sister Felicity took care of everything. You say she is laid in the cemetery? Yes, they would have done all correctly.’

  And been glimpsed by an old nun who couldn’t sleep, who must have seen something from her window that led her later to make her slow way through the enclosure, to poke with her stick in freshly turned earth. And then she had written the letter that had so puzzled Reverend Mother Agnes.

  ‘We gave out that she had returned home,’ the Prioress was saying. ‘Poor child, in the highest sense that is quite true. But sooner or later her relatives would come to enquire. And you seemed very interested in her, too interested for a newcomer. I judged it wiser to mention a telephone call. We had already removed those pages in her Spiritual Diary that spoke of the Gabriel. There would have been nothing to connect her with us after a year or two. A scandal here would inhibit the work, you see.’

  ‘And Veronica Stirling?’

  ‘The new Madonna,’ Reverend Mother Ann said. ‘Such a lovely girl, though still largely ignorant of what will be expected of her. She has not yet been fully informed, but then Our Blessed Lady was little more than a child on the first occasion.’

  It would happen at Solstice, Sister Joan thought, when an ancient fertility rite would be re-enacted.

  ‘Now that you know,’ the Prioress said, ‘it will be much easier. We could not trust all the sisters with the secret. Of course after the Holy Child is born then slowly, slowly the revelation will dawn upon the whole world. But we must tread cautiously for a long time yet. Father Malone is of the old school, you see. He worships the patriarchal God and does not pay due honour to the Goddess. My late father was inclined that way. He saw the worship of the Female as something primitive, something to be superseded.’

  Not terror but pity, for a brilliant girl growing up motherless in her father’s shadow, permitted no life of her own, turning her resentment into adoration of his qualities, and unable to live in the real world when he was gone.

  ‘You are under obedience to say nothing,’ the Prioress said. ‘Our little circle has many little privileges not given to the other sisters. We are the hand
maids of the Goddess and so set apart.’

  ‘Yes, Reverend Mother.’

  Rise and kneel and recite the traditional blessing, taking care to keep one’s face bland and sweet. Madness must be humoured.

  Outside in the antechamber she drew a long shuddering breath and then walked steadily down the short passage into the empty kitchen. The lay sisters were engaged in other tasks; there was no sign of Sister Perpetua.

  Closing the door, crossing herself, she lifted the receiver and called the police.

  Reverend Mother Agnes did not look out of place in the parlour. The parlour looked out of place around Reverend Mother Agnes. That was Sister’s Joan’s first impression as she went in and knelt for the greeting.

  ‘You may sit down,’ Reverend Mother Agnes said. ‘These last two or three days have been difficult for you.’

  Unbearable, with the police coming, the Prioress breaking down completely to babble of a girlhood wasted and a second Coming, the police photographers and the psychiatrist, and the sisters huddling in small groups to whisper.

  ‘It was indeed fortunate that Mr Russell telephoned me,’ the Prioress was saying now. ‘I am very sorry that his search ended unhappily, but he is young and resilient. I have more concern for Brenda’s parents. This whole affair has been a severe test of their faith.’

  ‘A test for all of us,’ Sister Joan said.

  ‘Yes, it has its attractions, doesn’t it? A new Madonna, a second Holy Child, quite a feather in our caps if the whole thing had not originated in the brain of a very sick woman.’

  ‘Was that all it was, Reverend Mother?’

  ‘You are referring to the so-called fifth Gospel?’ The older woman smiled slightly. ‘The original manuscript was in the library, you know. Reverend Mother Ann kept her father’s unpublished works in one of the filing cabinets there. Everything has been handed over to the Bishop. His Lordship will doubtless make enquiries into its provenance in a few years, or his successor might. My own feeling, which is purely subjective, is that the document dates from no earlier than the fourth century A.D. and probably belongs originally to one of the gnostic sects profiting from the general confusion of that period to try to advance the cause of the Blessed Virgin ahead of that of Her Son.’

  ‘There is no chance it might be genuine?’

  ‘There is always chance,’ Reverend Mother Agnes said, ‘but Holy Mother Church moves very slowly. It may be not until long after our time that any scholar is given the original document to study. It is neither your concern nor mine. We are concerned with the here and now.’

  ‘Yes, Reverend Mother.’ Sister Joan sat up straighter.

  ‘I telephoned the Bishop as soon as I had spoken with the Williamses. As we have no Mother General our final temporal authority must be the Bishop. He agreed that I must come down here personally to see what can be done. Reverend Mother Ann has been taken to the hospital. If she recovers from her present severe breakdown then she will be removed to one of our convalescent homes where some use for her undeniable dedication can possibly be found. She has a very fine and intelligent mind, Sister. It would be sad to have it go completely wasted.’

  She permitted herself a brief sigh for the woman who might under different circumstances have been a great prioress, and spoke again.

  ‘Mother Emmanuel is to go to our mission in West Africa. She has a lot of maternal energy that can be put to better use than humouring the vagaries of an attractive Superior. Sisters Felicity and Lucy will also enter other convents of the order. The police have decided no good would be served by bringing any prosecution and the Williamses agree.’

  ‘Sister Perpetua?’

  ‘Was constrained into obedience and has suffered greatly in her conscience ever since. She is an excellent infirmarian and will remain here. You understand that the other sisters have only received a severely edited version of events? Fortunately the infection (for so I regard it) had affected very few. For that we must give thanks.’

  The police had been discreet, Sister Joan thought, and rather to her surprise Father Malone had proved more able than she had given him credit for, informing the Community that they were, with one or two exceptions, to remain in their cells, breaking up the small whispering groups with all the authority of his cloth.

  ‘The novices?’ she ventured.

  ‘I have granted Veronica three months of absence,’ the Prioress said. ‘The poor child is confused, having entered full of romantic notions, and now she finds herself uncertain. I have advised her to pray and to reconsider her decision. Young Mr Russell has kindly offered to escort her home. A very pleasant if rather pugnacious young man, capable of great devotion to the right girl.’

  Nothing could have been more innocent than her face and tone but Sister Joan’s blue eyes opened wider.

  ‘The death of Sister Sophia will remain in the records as an accident,’ the other went on. ‘When the revealing of a truth serves no purpose then the truth need not be revealed. There will be an election for a new prioress tomorrow. It is none of my business but I hope that Sister Dorothy is elected. She has a lot of common sense under that rather unfortunate manner and it will benefit her to spend more time with the affairs of the Community than buried in the library. There is also a certain abrasiveness in her personality that will benefit the convent.’

  Slightly startled, Sister Joan pondered a moment and then nodded. Under little Sister Dorothy there would be no nonsense like nail polish and goddesses and novices with long flowing hair.

  ‘I shall be travelling back to the convent tomorrow immediately after the election of the new prioress‚’ Reverend Mother Agnes said. ‘Fortunately this nonsense only began a year or so ago after Reverend Mother Ann discovered the manuscript in her late father’s papers. The harm has not run deep, save for poor Sister Sophia and Sister Magdalen.’

  ‘One cannot blame them,’ Sister Joan said. ‘They were both bound by obedience.’

  ‘But not to the exclusion of common sense,’ the Prioress said briskly. ‘Obedience must be allied with intelligence. However, Sister Joan, I doubt if unthinking obedience is one of your weaknesses. You would not have run headlong into heresy at the bidding of your Prioress.’

  ‘I hope not, Reverend Mother,’ she said soberly.

  ‘There remains only the matter of the Gabriel,’ the Prioress said.

  ‘The Gabriel?’

  ‘The man who fathered Sister Magdalen’s child. You had not forgotten him, I trust?’

  ‘What did Reverend Mother Ann say?’

  ‘Oh, she named no names,’ the older nun said wryly. ‘She babbled a great deal of nonsense about the archangelic force entering a mortal frame and I have not questioned the others. I have no jurisdiction over that misguided man since no charges are to be brought. You may wish to do something about it yourself — or not, as you please.’

  Her long rather melancholy features were wiped clean of expression but her eyes under their heavy lids were bright and wise.

  ‘Thank you, Reverend Mother Agnes.’

  Sister Joan rose, knelt, and left the room, her gaze thoughtful.

  She had been given permission to act as she saw fit. It was a measure of her Superior’s confidence in her.

  The school had been closed for the week, notes despatched to the various parents. In the convent a quiet that was still somewhat tense and shocked prevailed. She went out to the stable and saddled up Lilith who greeted her with enthusiasm.

  It was a pity that she had not been given the chance to thank Johnny Russell or to see Veronica again. By now they would be on their way north, though Reverend Mother Agnes could easily have delayed Veronica’s departure and escorted the girl herself. That she had not argued that her perception had seen another kind of future for the erstwhile novice. Sister Joan had intended to ride into Bodmin and seek an interview but the car was outside the school as she approached and Grant Tarquin stepped forward to greet her.

  ‘Good morning, Sister Joan. I was beginning to wo
rry. There are rumours that some upset has occurred at the convent.’

  Darkly debonair, his eyes piercing her, his voice concerned. How could she have fancied he resembled Jacob?

  ‘They found Brenda Williams,’ she said. ‘The novice who left.’

  ‘I heard someone had been taken ill,’ he said.

  ‘The Prioress has been taken to a hospital, a mental hospital.’

  ‘I am very shocked to hear it.’

  ‘No you’re not.’ Looking down at him from Lilith’s broad back she spoke in a cold rage that effectively cancelled out all other emotion. ‘You knew she was unbalanced, didn’t you? You used that for your own purposes, after she confided in you about the document her father had left. She needed a man to confide in because her whole life before she entered the convent was lived in the shadow of a man, and she couldn’t go to the priest because she couldn’t risk finding out that the document was spurious and her father not such a great scholar as she had always believed. She told you and you used that knowledge for your own ends. You became the Gabriel, to seduce a nun, a young novice with a head full of moonshine. Why?’

  For a moment she feared he wasn’t going to reply. Then he shrugged, his eyes amused.

  ‘It pleased me to be the wolf in the sheep-fold,’ he said.

  ‘Why? Why?’ She stared down at him.

  ‘You think that I enjoyed watching my father hand over the family property to the Church practically free of charge? Most of it could have been saved, you know, if the old man had had any sense, but not him, not him. He bought himself a place in heaven with his generosity to your order and I was left to work my way up from scratch again.’

  The smile had vanished and his voice was bitter.

  ‘That wasn’t the only reason, was it?’ Thoughts that had been spinning in her head began to coalesce, words to spill out. ‘There had to be some other reason why you decided to use the confidence Reverend Mother Ann had placed in you, to become the Gabriel. Was it because of your wife?’

  ‘She was the only woman I ever loved,’ he said harshly. ‘We had given up hope of having children when she became pregnant. Can you imagine what that meant to us? I’d lost my family home but my wife was going to have our child. Until some half-baked Sister of Mercy crossed the road against a red light and my wife swerved to avoid her. Swerved to avoid a woman who’d turned her back on a normal life as wife and mother. That nun’s stupidity killed my wife and child. After that I devoted myself to making money, came back here, became the most generous benefactor the Church could boast. Waiting, you see, always waiting.’