Quiet as a Nun

by Antonia Fraser

  'Christ!' exclaimed Margaret. It was a strictly unreligious monosyllable. 'Tessa Justin, what the hell are you doing here—'

  A smallish girl, with abnormally long and thick plaits was being hauled out from the sofa. Sister Agnes made one of her rapid darts across the room and pulled the child to her feet, away from the furious grasp of Margaret. She proceeded to dust her down with her handkerchief, with little clicks of disapproval, though the convent floor was so spotless that one could not imagine even a sojourn behind a sofa resulting in much contamination.

  'Tessa Justin! You were supposed to be in bed half an hour ago. I'm afraid Mother Ancilla will have to hear of this in the morning. Come along now.' Sister Agnes swept the child, by now managing a few anguished sobs, out of the sitting room.

  'Those bloody Fourth Formers!' Dodo's language too was degenerating. 'They dare each other to do that sort of thing. She must have heard every word we said.' Margaret said nothing. It was the first time I had seen her look really nonplussed.

  After they had gone, I tried to watch television in the sitting room. Some modern drama or other, in which adultery, offices, and adultery in offices, all featured prominently. It was no good. It failed to grip me. My mind was too closely involved with the dramas here in the convent. And the prospective drama, tonight, outside. Finally I went to my own room, both excited and jangled.

  The Treasury of the Blessed Eleanor was just the thing to set me right, I decided, catching sight of it lying on my desk. I opened it at the marker:

  'Within the Tower of the Church dwell many witnesses to the Word of God,' I read. 'Some of these witnesses lean out from their Tower and cry out: Here be the Tower of God's Church, to all who have ears to listen. Others of these witnesses dwell secretly within the Tower and their words are never heard in the outside world. Nevertheless the prayers of these secret witnesses are their words. These secret witnesses are most acceptable to God.'

  As I finished the passage, I realised that the marker was not of my own making at all, but a typed slip of paper. Exactly similar to the first slip which had suggested the rendezvous with the Black Nun. Even the wording of the message was reminiscent.

  'If you don't believe Sister Miriam made a new will,' it ran, 'why don't you look for the will yourself? And you might ask Blanche Nelligan and Imogen Smith about a certain piece of paper they signed.' And the words 'secret witnesses' at the bottom of the passage were underlined in pencil, in case I had missed the point. But I had not missed the point.

  Secret witnesses ... most acceptable to God in the view of the Blessed Eleanor. Not so acceptable perhaps to Mother Ancilla and the more conservative section of the community. Grimly I wondered who else in the quiet convent might be looking for the will.

  9

  To the Dark Tower

  As I made the preparations for my nocturnal adventure, I wasn't so much full of courage as lacking in fear. I did not believe in ghosts. As a child I had been unaffected by ghost stories. When Rosa loved to entertain me with her ghoulish tales, it was her face I watched, rapt with her own horror: I hardly listened to her words.

  Night-time. I wondered what the Black Nun's interpretation of night-time might be. Eleven o'clock? Ten o'clock?

  Nor was I worried by the prospect of the solitary journey. Darkness of itself had never frightened me: my terrors were all within my own breast, regrets and guilts long buried, potentially more powerful than predatory creatures of the night. Besides, I had lived on my own to all intents and purposes since I was eighteen years old. Solitariness, even loneliness, had become a condition of my life.

  Boots, a thick coat and my new torch were the necessary preparations for my expedition. And the bright little key which I had 'forgotten' to return to Mother Ancilla. Whoever else had acquired the spare key to that padlock, it seemed wise to bring my own. Beside my bed lay a candle and some matches.

  'For emergencies, isn't that now?' said Sister Perpetua on the first day, in her soft Irish voice, arranging the candle and matches with care on the table as though they were sacred objects on the altar.

  'You like candles?'

  'Ah sure candles give comfort where torches never do.' So it was more as a tribute to Sister Perpetua than with any practical intention of using them that I also slipped the candle and matches into my pocket.

  My self-confidence, or perhaps in retrospect arrogance would be the right word, was complete. Like Childe Roland, I would come to the Dark Tower, and sort out at least one of the mysteries which enmeshed the convent. Where Sister Liz had attempted to win converts to Saint William Wordsworth, I had always preferred plain Robert Browning. I could make Browning's melancholy my own, and also his sense of drama. As a poem, 'My last Duchess' was far more to my taste than what I privately considered Wordsworth's holy ramblings. Just as I rated the romantic marriage of Elizabeth Barrett and Browning way above the pious Wordsworth family life - as described by Sister Liz. It was years before I discovered that the relationship with Dorothy was not necessarily all it seemed: and then it was too late, the pattern was set. So now, with Browning's Roland, I murmured to myself: 'Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set and blew...' I might have no slug-horn but there was a strong possibility I would be able to make some sort of report to Mother Ancilla in the morning . . .

  It was therefore in a mood of positive optimism that I padded down the visitors' stairs, ignored the left turn to the chapel and found myself facing the small side door to the gardens. It was a door sometimes used by outsiders to enter the chapel. There were certain neighbours who treated the convent as their parish church and came to mass there regularly on Sundays and feast days. Blessed Eleanor's chapel was not strictly speaking a parish church. The bishop disapproved of the practice, which was also much disliked by the parish priest proper of the diocese. Outsiders at the chapel services were supposed to be confined to parents visiting their daughters.

  Mother Ancilla however turned a resolutely blind eye to both episcopal and parochial disapproval. Blandly, she assumed that it was the most natural thing in the world that everyone round Churne should wish to worship in the chapel of the Blessed Eleanor. Parishioners had been known to receive coffee and convent-baked biscuits at feast days after mass. No such hospitality was available in the chilly parish church of St Gregory.

  Mother Ancilla fended off the attempts of the parish priest, condemned to serve the convent masses as well as his own, to spot errant parishioners among bona fide parents. She was once overheard assuring the caustic Father Aylmer that an old lady of at least seventy, mobled in chiffon over sparse white hair, was 'one of our dear parents'.

  In my day there had been two or three priests attached to St Gregory's. Nowadays, with the universal decline in vocations, the strain of providing a regular mass at the convent must have risen considerably. No doubt the parish priest at St Gregory's, whoever he might be, loved Mother Ancilla's empire-building no better than old Father Aylmer had done. It was understandable under the circumstances that some of these errant worshippers preferred to slip in through a side door.

  I had noted that at night this side door was fastened merely by an inner bolt. Now I drew the bolt back and slipped out into the convent grounds.

  My moon was still shining brightly, no longer quite so high over the chapel. I hoped that its light would see me at least as far as the Dark Tower. Preferably there and back again.

  Apart from the moon, casting its own eerie light, the journey across the fields was remarkable chiefly for the variety of life I saw. In theory I was alone. But I never once felt myself truly alone throughout my journey. In practice every hedgerow, the furrows of the newly ploughed fields, seemed alive with life. Small animals scuttered hither and thither. An owl hooted somewhere. And the occasional bird - were they not supposed to be asleep? - stirred in the hedges. I came to the conclusion that the so-called silence of the night was a poetic misnomer.

  I was quite happy to plod on across the furrows, in my stout boots. The only person I would have b
een happy to have at my side at that moment was Sister Liz. Her great voice, ringing out over the dark fields, would have provided the correct musical accompaniment. I could almost hear her now:

  Great God, I'd rather be

  A pagan suckled in a creed outworn,...

  And hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn . ..

  Another of her favourite poems. Not one, however, which could have pointed the path to Rome. Was there something pagan abroad? Ancient gods and goddesses stirring under the sod. If so, I did not feel it. As a rationalist, I was if anything closer to the God of Mother Ancilla, the authoritarian religious system of the Church of Rome with its own precarious logic, than to whatever earthly creatures were shaking the old soil. I had no beliefs, I told myself, and thus no fears.

  And that sharp, hoarse sound was, I guessed, a fox barking. Somewhere in the distance. Not even the unexpected nature of the noise caused me apprehension. There was the exhilaration in my independence, to which at that moment I was convinced that nothing, not the loneliness of the night, not nature's marauders, not even the human powers of mischief, could shake.

  The owl hooted again and I stumbled over something heavy in the darkness. A log or heavy fallen branch. My boots prevented me from suffering too much damage. I declined to regard the incident as a hubristic reminder of my own mortality.

  By the time I reached the tower, I was confident that nothing and no-one could check me, cause me true affright. The tower loomed up above me, quite dark. The moon was now quite far down behind it.

  On my principle of being forewarned, I decided to pad softly round to the other side of the tower and see if some glimmer showed there out of the solitary window. Glimmer. The west still glimmering with some trace of day. Banquo's murderers, another nasty late night rendezvous. No, that was not the parallel I sought. I would stick to Childe Roland and his Tower. Around the back of the tower there was no glimmering whatsoever, only the darkness was more eerie, with the moonlight stronger and more diffused, reflected against the thick walls.

  I returned with slightly more haste to the tower entrance. I hesitated, and felt for the sharp little key. Then I groped my way for the padlock, and switched on the torch. I had my first surprise. The padlock was still firmly shut. That seemed to suggest that no-one else had yet entered the tower. Even with a duplicate key, it was difficult to see how they could have relocked the padlock from the inside. Unless they were possessed of superhuman powers. Only a ghost would pass successfully through a padlocked door and leave it locked ... That was another nasty thought like the stupid recollection of Banquo's murderers. My impregnable spirits wavered a bit.

  For the first time, I had the impression of being watched, watched by something or someone other than the owls and the foxes. This impression was extremely strong and growing since my visit to the far side of the tower; and yet I had absolutely no rational grounds to support it. Instinct. My journalistic instinct, that famous instinct, at work? Sheer suggestibility, more likely, the culminative effect of the journey and the moonlight on even the toughest spirits. I had overestimated my own hardihood. I jumped sharply at the crackle of a twig near me, and nearly dropped my little torch.

  Prayer would have been nice in a situation like this, I reflected wistfully. A quick crossing of oneself as Sister Liz would have done, or Mother Ancilla. My guardian angel would come in handy at a moment like this, supposing I believed in such a thing. That prayer Rosa taught me, which little Catholic girls muttered at night time, something invoking their guardian angel to sleep not while they slept. My guardian angel, or perhaps some stout saint. Was there a Saint Jemima? Hebrew for dove, one of the daughters of Job, it all seemed a little far back and Old Testament for the saints. Perhaps Job would protect me, a most suitable patron, a man who knew a thing or two about life's rough edges...

  Hesitating still, occupying myself with foolish thoughts, I finally resolved to put an end to my fears and enter the building. Unquestionably, my trip round to the other side of the tower had filled me with a morbid reluctance to go further. As though I was gradually being surrounded by unnamed terrors, a tide of terror lapping round me, rising. Here be monsters ... as they used to write on unknown seas on the edges of antique maps. Here be the Tower of God's Church. That reminded me: secret witnesses. Blessed Eleanor, protect me. Were there indeed secret witnesses all round me, in the darkness? Secret witnesses, friends to the owls and foxes, lurking there beside them?

  Come on, Jemima, I addressed myself aloud, come on, daughter of Job. I had not talked to myself like that since I was a child when I used to rally myself for an unpleasant task by talking aloud. Once again the ground crackled near me. But it was nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  I opened the padlock quickly and competently. I pushed open the thick door into the chasm beyond, remembering the geography carefully from my visit with Sister Elizabeth. I pushed the door hard, and took care to leave it wide open.

  I stepped firmly over the threshold of the tower, and clutching my torch firmly in one hand, picked out in its small precise light the wooden rail of the ladder. The rail supported me.

  'Is there anyone there?' I called, looking upwards, in the most calm and masterful tone I could muster. Complete silence followed my words. The dampness which surrounded me was marked and most unpleasant. We did not seem to have aired the tower at all by our afternoon's foray. 'Is there anyone there?' Why, that was De La Mare's Traveller. 'Tell them I came and no-one answered—'

  Nothing moved.

  I put my hand more firmly on the rail. The next moment there was the most appalling feeling of physical assault. With a hideous noise, all the more ghastly for the contrast of the silence only seconds before, I was being attacked on all sides, beaten, murdered. Screaming, screaming unashamedly I dropped the torch and tried to beat it off, beat them off. In vain. The hideous noise, the whirr and whoosh continued.

  Finally I turned and fled back outside.

  Panting, dishevelled, my hair mussed, half crying, it took me some time to realise that I had been attacked, if that was the right word, by bats.

  I recovered my breath slowly; on the one hand I felt idiotic at my panic, on the other hand the waves of terror had been slightly diminished by the upset.

  Come on, Jemima, indeed. A few bats were not going to put me off, having come so far. The existence of the bats, my temporary breakdown, only confirmed my resolve. No doubt it was the bats, poor blind benighted creatures, who were responsible for my fears of a new hidden presence.

  I stepped over the threshold once more and scrabbled on the ground for my torch. The odd thing was that I could not find it. It must have rolled away. It could hardly have rolled very far on the solid pressed earth floor. It was also odd that it had gone out when I dropped it: perhaps the bulb was broken. In which case, I decided after a moment, there was no point in bothering with it further; leave it to the bats.

  The only problem was: how was I to illumine my ascent of the ladder? As a non-smoker, matches were out of the question. Now if Tom had been with me, forever slapping the pocket of his worn jacket for cigarettes and/or matches and never seeming to have them both together - matches. I dug into my own pocket. But there were matches here, matches and a candle. In my panic I had forgotten. The percipient words of Sister Perpetua came back to me: 'Ah, candles give comfort where torches never do.'

  I found the candle, strangely soft and thin in my fingers. It had broken and bent, but when the first match flared, it was still indubitably a candle. Sister - or Saint - Perpetua, many thanks. I lit the candle, despite its droop, and began rather gingerly to climb up the ladder.

  Then I heard a distinct sound above my head. This was no creature of the night. And it was no familiar sound heard during my evening's travail. Not exactly a human sound either. A scrape on the floor, an irregular jarring on the floor above my head, like something rocking above my head ...

  Rocking.

  Christ, the rocking-chair.

  My cry was every bit as ir
religious as Margaret's had been. It was no wonder. Someone, something, was gently rocking to and fro in the rocking-chair above my head. I still plunged on up the ladder, holding my unsteady candle: at the time, it was sheer instinct not courage; there seemed no other choice but to go on upwards. Unlike my terror of the bats, my urgent instinct was to confront the danger, not to flee it. As I reached the last rung of the ladder, I think I was aware of another different sound behind me. Not the door shutting. Some new movement in the darkness of the tower's windowless ground-floor chamber. But there was no time to analyse it.

  Pushing open the trap-door above my head with one hand, I prepared to make the last of the ascent. My candle flickered and almost died so that I entered the first floor chamber into what seemed like darkness, except for a square grey light - the far window. The chair was still softly, remorselessly, rocking in its corner. The candle flame righted itself. Heart thudding, I held it upwards.

  I saw, unquestionably I saw, a nun sitting there in the chair. A nun waiting for me. Gently rocking to and fro.

  But that was not why my heart stopped in my breast. Equally unquestionably the nun in the rocking-chair had no face. The faceless one. That old nightmare of my childhood, the faceless one who waited for you, whose face you could never recognise, because it had no face. Everything in my world had to have a face, because then it was human and ordinary and you could understand it and control it. But this black shape had no face. Even in the candlelight I could not be mistaken. There were white hands, long bony hands rocking on the edge of the chair. And a black habit stretching to the ground. And a veil and a wimple and a rosary. Even the faint rustle of a nun's skirts joined to the rocking of the chair.