Cait stared at the woman in a misery of disbelief as bitter tears came to her eyes. Through every trial she had persevered, hoping against hope that Thea would be found; she had faced death, destruction, and discomfort of every kind only to be told her sister wished to be alone with God. It was beyond her ability to comprehend.
“If you will not help me,” declared Cait, “I will find her myself!” Turning on her heel, she moved swiftly toward the door.
“Caitríona!” said the abbess sternly. “Stop!”
To her own amazement she halted, her hand on the latch.
“Think what you are doing,” said Annora. “If you ever had any feeling for your sister, then I ask you to honor her wishes. She did not enter into this decision lightly, and she will not thank you for interfering now.”
Cait could feel the icy center of her resolve melting away.
Annora softened. “Alethea is coming to the end of a period of prayer and fasting in preparation for the ceremony which will take place tonight. Tomorrow, when the ritual is finished, you will be together.”
Unable to make herself reply, Cait merely nodded. The abbess took her hand. “Come, it is a splendid day. Why not spend it with us? Share our meal, and then I will show you something of our work here, and you will come to know us better.”
Although Cait no longer felt hungry, she allowed herself to be led back into the refectory where she ate a few bites and then gave up as black melancholy overcame her. When the abbess offered to show her the rest of the abbey, she complained of fatigue and asked instead to be shown where she might lie down and rest. The abbess summoned one of the sisters, a woman of similar age and appearance to Cait. “This is Sister Besa—she will take you to the guest lodge.”
Cait thanked her and followed the sister out across the cobbled yard to one of the cells. “We have few guests,” the nun told her, “but we keep a room ready for anyone the Good Lord sends our way. It is this one on the end.” The sister lifted the wooden latch, pushed the door open, and stepped in. “Oh, it is cold in here, but I will make up the fire and it will soon be warm enough.”
The sister hurried away, leaving Cait to stare at the bleakly simple room: a table large enough to hold a candle, a three-legged stool and neatly stacked logs beside the tiny half-circle hearth, and a straw pallet topped with a rough woollen coverlet. The room’s sole adornment was a wooden cross which had obviously been made by one of the nuns; it was fashioned from two bent pine branches, smoothed and bound together with a strap of braided leather, and hung below the tiny round window.
Cait was still standing in the center of the room when Besa returned with an armful of kindling and some live embers in a small pan. “I suppose Alethea stayed here,” she said absently.
“Why, yes. For a time.” The sister placed the wood beside the hearth and gently shook the embers from the bowl. “She has her own cell now.”
Cait waited for her to say more, but the nun proceeded to arrange the wood around the little heap of glowing coals. After a moment, Cait said, “How long have you been here?”
Besa glanced at her and then quickly away again, as if the question was distracting. “All my life,” she answered after a moment. “Or, very nearly.”
“But you are not from Aragon,” Cait suggested.
The sister lowered her face to the heap of kindling and blew on the embers. “No,” she replied, sitting back on her heels. “I am not from Aragon. I was born on the other side of the mountains.” She leaned forward and blew on the embers once more. Thin threads of smoke were soon curling up from the hearth as a cluster of yellow flames bloomed among the twigs. “But this has been my home so long I do not remember any other.”
“You never visit your family?”
“I did once,” replied Sister Besa, rising to her feet. “But no more.” She smiled wanly, and moved to the door. “I will leave you in peace now, but if you need anything, my room is next to this one.”
She closed the door quickly behind her and was gone. Cait sat on the stool, watching the flames catch and burn more brightly. When the fire appeared hearty enough, she added several larger chunks of wood from the stack, and then retreated to the bed where she stretched herself out. After gazing petulantly at the age-darkened pine roof beams, she eventually drifted into an uneasy sleep.
She dreamed of hoofprints and felt herself once again on horseback, riding through deep-drifted snow. In her dream she seemed to be fleeing someone—although she twisted in the saddle and craned her neck from time to time, she could not see who it might be. Still, she could feel a disturbing presence gaining ground behind her, and the dull malevolence mounted until she grew afraid to look around anymore.
And then, just as she knew she must confront the swiftly approaching evil, there came the slow tolling of a distant bell. Instantly, she felt the unseen wickedness falter in its onrushing flight. She turned in the saddle, lashed her mount, and raced up the steep mountain trail leading to the abbey. Above the wild drumming of her heart she could hear the rhythmic ringing of the bell.
The sound grew, and seemed to take on a more urgent note and she awoke. It took Cait some time to realize that it was a real bell she had been hearing. As the last sonorous stroke faded into the air she rose and stepped to the window. The fire on the hearth had burned out and the short winter day had ended; it was growing dark outside. She crept to the door, opened it, and looked quickly out. There was no one to be seen, but she assumed the bell summoned the sisters to prayer, and so went out—realizing halfway across the yard that she did not know where the chapel might be. She had seen none when coming to the abbey, nor had the abbess mentioned it.
She paused for a moment, looking around. The sky yet held a blush of fading sunset, but the first stars were glowing high overhead. A light wind was blowing down from the surrounding flame-touched peaks, and it made her cold. As she turned to retreat into her cell, she heard the bell again, and decided to follow the sound—which seemed to come from behind the nearby refectory.
She flitted quickly to the end of the building and saw, in the rock curtain rising sheer from the ground, a wide, low entrance cut into the living stone of the mountain. The snow was tracked with dozens of footprints leading into a cave; as Cait followed them to the dark entrance, she heard singing from within.
After the first few paces, the darkness was all but complete. With one hand to the wall beside her, and the other outstretched and waving before her, she edged slowly on, guided by the singing of the nuns. The texture of the wall beneath her fingertips as she felt her way along suggested that the tunnel had been carved into the rock; both the wall and the floor were smooth and fairly even.
The wall ended abruptly and the air suddenly became warmer, and held the slightly musty smell of damp rock. Taking a hesitant step, she entered a larger chamber; a gentle, almost imperceptible breeze blew over her face from left to right. Instinctively, she turned in the direction of the airflow and saw the pale glimmer of candlelight on the rim of another tunnel opening a dozen paces to her left. She reached the tunnel doorway just as the glint of light faded, leaving her in darkness once more.
More confident now, she proceeded down the corridor as before, keeping her hand to the wall beside her. The floor slanted downward; she could feel it tilting away, and the slight cant quickened her step as if in anticipation of what she would find when she reached the end. The singing grew louder.
And then the tunnel opened out wide and she was standing in the high-arched entrance of an enormous chamber. In the near distance Cait saw, as through a gloom-wrapped forest of limbless trees, the shimmering of ghostly lights. The trees, she realized, were the tapering, slightly misshapen shafts of great stone pillars rising from the cavern floor to the unseen roof high above. The light came from candles in the hands of the nuns, whose voices set the vast empty spaces of the chamber reverberating with the rippling music of their song.
Stepping cautiously forward into this peculiar, frozen forest, Cait moved silen
tly from tree to tree, pausing at each trunk to look and listen before moving on again—fearful of being discovered, yet desiring above all else to be allowed to stay and observe.
Closer, she caught a whiff of incense—a cloying sweet vapor that filled her head with the essence of lavender. She felt her empty stomach squirm at the heavy scent, and paused to swallow before moving on.
The singing stopped, and so Cait halted, too. She heard someone speaking, but was too far away to make out the words. Presently the address finished, and there followed a lengthy silence which was broken at last by the ringing of a bell. The nuns began singing again and, flitting from one column to the next, Cait crept carefully, cautiously nearer.
When the music ceased, Cait peered discreetly from her hiding place behind the last rank of pillars, now but a few paces from the first of three low, wide steps which rose from the level floor to make a platform on which the Gray Marys had assembled before an altar adorned with a great golden cross with two lamps burning on either side; in their gently wavering light the ornately patterned gold of the cross seemed to melt and move.
Abbess Annora stood motionless before the altar with hands raised shoulder-high, palms upward, as if expecting to receive a gift. On the floor between the abbess and the waiting sisters, two richly embroidered lengths of cloth were spread; on each a young woman knelt in an attitude of prayer. Dressed in the same drab gray robes as the others, they were set apart only by the long crimson hoods that covered their heads. Both supplicants were bent over their clasped hands, and both were trembling slightly. Although she could not see their faces, Cait easily recognized the slender, willowy form of her sister, Alethea.
At long last…Alethea! Cait’s heart leaped in her breast, and she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth to keep from crying out. Closing her eyes, she slumped against the pillar and felt the cool stone bear her up as relief rolled over her in waves.
I believe, O God of all gods,
that Thou art the eternal Father of Light.
The voice was that of Abbess Annora, and she was immediately joined by a chorus of sisters who repeated the phrase three times with but slight variation.
I believe, O God of all gods,
that Thou art the eternal Father of Life.
I believe, O God of all gods,
that Thou art the eternal Father of All Creation.
The ceremony was in Gaelic. Although the inflection was odd, and some of the words seemed curiously old-fashioned, Cait understood it readily enough, for the chant had the same qualities she had heard since she was old enough to sit upright in church and listen to Abbot Emlyn’s bold, handsome voice declaring the high holiness of the God of Love and Light and his Conquering Son.
Oh, Thea, she thought, that you, of all people, should strike such a bargain. She wondered what her father would make of it, and then remembered that he was dead and would never know. Well, better this, she supposed, than an unsuitable marriage. And where Alethea was concerned that had always been a live possibility; the young woman’s gift for making the most ludicrous and improper alliances had long been a worry to almost all who knew her—save Duncan alone. Now, it appeared that his long-suffering faith was about to be repaid.
When she had better control of herself, Cait once again edged from behind the column. After the recitation, there followed another song, which afforded Cait the opportunity to steal to another pillar for a better view. When the song finished two of the sisters approached the kneeling figures with long, tapering unlit candles. Addressing the novices, the abbess spoke in a low voice to each in turn and was answered, whereupon the candle was offered. The two women rose and approached the altar to light their tapers from the lamps burning there.
Returning to their places, both young women knelt once more, set the lit candles in golden sconces which had been provided, and then stretched themselves full-length face down on the embroidered rugs and extended their arms to either side in emulation of the cross.
The abbess took her place before them, her hands outspread above their heads, and she began to pray. When she finished, the two novices rose and, resuming their kneeling posture, began to pray aloud, saying:
Thanks to Thee, Great of Light, that I have risen today,
to the rising of my life;
May it be to Thy glory, All-Wise Creator,
and to the glory of my own dear soul.
O Great King, aid Thou my soul,
with the aiding of Thy mercy,
with the aiding of Thy love,
with the aiding of Thy compassion;
Even as I clothe my body with this wool,
cover Thou my soul with Thy Swift Sure Hand.
Help me to avoid every sin,
and the source of every sin forsake;
As the mist scatters on the face of the mountains,
may each ill thought and deed vanish from my heart.
There were more prayers, and when these finished the novices rose and one of the sisters came forward bearing a jar of consecrated oil with which she anointed them, dipping her finger and signing them with the cross on their foreheads. Then each of the novices pledged her life to the service of the community, taking a holy vow which the abbess administered with solemn approval.
After the vows, the nuns began singing again. This time, as they sang, they arranged themselves in two concentric rings around the altar holding their candles before them. Cait took advantage of the movement and edged closer for a better look. From behind her pillar she now viewed the hooded figures from the side; Alethea was nearest her, though Cait could not see her face.
Returning to the altar, the abbess picked up a small wooden cross on a leather loop. Stepping before Alethea, the older woman held out the cross for the younger to kiss. Alethea leaned forward slightly, reached out, took hold of the cross, and brought it to her lips. As she did so, Cait felt a pang of yearning pierce her heart. This took her by surprise. She had not thought to be moved by the ceremony in this way. What did it mean?
She had little time to wonder about this, however, for Abbess Annora nodded, and Alethea reached up, pulled back the hood and lowered it to rest on her shoulders. It was then Cait saw that her sister’s head was completely shaved. The sight made Cait’s breath catch in her throat—all that lovely long dark hair…gone. Strangely, the sight of her sister this way, on her knees, denuded head bent in prayer, awakened Cait to the solemn seriousness of her sister’s decision. Oh, Thea, she thought, dear, dear Thea, for once in your life I hope you know what you are doing.
The abbess moved to the other young woman and repeated the conferral of the cross. Then one of the sisters stepped forward, holding two lengths of dove-gray cloth across her outstretched palms. Taking one of the cloths, the abbess draped it around Alethea’s shoulders like a shawl; leaning close she kissed the younger woman lightly on the forehead, then raised her to her feet. The procedure was repeated for the second novice, whereupon the two newest members of the abbey were embraced by the abbess and each of the other sisters in turn; thus were they welcomed into the intimate fellowship of the Order.
Cait thought the ceremony would end now, and the Gray Marys would leave, but as soon as the new sisters had received their welcome, the nuns reformed their circle. The abbess turned once more to the altar. Crossing her hands over her breast, she bent her head, and called out, “In the meeting of our hearts and minds: Thou. In the calling of our souls, dear lord: Thou. In the weaving of life below with life above: Thou, savior lord, and Thou only.”
So saying, she stepped to the altar, pressed her hands together, and then placed her palms flat on either side of the huge golden cross as if she would remove it—an unusual gesture, and unexpected, which drew Cait’s attention. As she watched, the abbess withdrew her hands, and Cait saw that a door had opened in the base of the cross, revealing a hollow place. Reaching in, the abbess brought forth a footed cup.
Cait could not see it clearly from where she stood, but it seemed an ordinary drinki
ng cup of wood, perhaps, or pottery. A glint of candlelight traced the rim as the abbess turned and presented the cup to Alethea, who, gazing steadily at the vessel, extended her neck slightly as the abbess brought the cup to her mouth to drink. No sooner had the cup touched her lips, than the young woman gave out a loud cry. She raised her head and in the candlelight Cait saw her younger sister’s face aglow with a strange light that seemed to dance over her features. Alethea cried out again and swooned, crumpling slowly onto her side.
It was all Cait could do to keep from rushing to her sister’s aid. Instead, she bit the back of her hand and forced herself to stay behind her pillar. The cup was offered to the second novice, who likewise accepted a drink and promptly sank to the floor, a smile of ecstasy on her fresh young face. At the same time, Cait became aware of a sweetening of the air, as if a blossom-scented breeze had suddenly wafted into the cave.
The two young women lay before the altar for a long, silent moment. The sight of them sleeping so peacefully, their features suffused with such rapturous abandon, produced in Cait a longing she had not felt for a very long time. Oh, to know such peace, she thought.
After a while, the abbess returned the cup to its hidden nook, and then stood over the stricken novices; stretching her hands above them, she intoned:
Now art thou the beloved of God.
Receive these gifts from the Gifting Giver:
The grace of form,
The grace of voice,
The grace of good fortune in all things,
The grace of kindness,
The grace of wisdom,
The Mystic Rose Page 40
