Vow of Sanctity

by Veronica Black

  ‘Sister, pay attention,’ she admonished herself aloud, and heard her voice echo round the cave with a soft, sighing sound that made her wish that she hadn’t closed out the sunlight.

  Three

  Sunday mornings were the loveliest time of the week. On Sundays one had more leisure to spend in church or in the enclosed garden of the convent, and the pupils who came more or less willingly to the little school on the moor were not around to be disciplined, taught, fretted over. Peace arched its rainbow over the Sunday sky. It was a time for renewing one’s sometimes tenuous spiritual contacts, for dipping into books there was no space for in the week, for seeing the little faults and failings of the other sisters as endearing quirks.

  Halfway up the steep cliffs with its iron-railed steps and the door of the retreat hospitably open, Sister Joan stood and breathed in the air. The Cornish air was sweet, but this air was like wine. It made her want to cry out a greeting to the rocks and the pine trees and the loch, shimmering blue-green far below. She had been awake since dawn, scrubbing herself thoroughly with cold, soapy water that made every goosebump stand out, saying her morning prayers with the energy brought by a sound sleep, and now, munching an oat cake she stood, watching the light change and strengthen as the sun rose.

  ‘And that foolish boy lost his faith,’ she said aloud, and laughed, hearing her own voice as a sweet ripple on the air.

  Faith, she thought, wasn’t something kept in the pocket that could fall through a hole. It was a burning chain about the heart. Sometimes the only way to endure it was to deny it was there at all.

  Her mood continued as she swept out the cave and replaced the burnt out candles with tall Sabbath ones she had brought with her. Far below the faint sound of bells danced up to her. The monastery signalled the approach of mass.

  She was becoming accustomed to the climb up and down to the cave. Quite apart from the benefit of the exercise she liked the feeling of being high above the world. In the retreat, problems that seemed serious became insignificant.

  The shores of the loch weren’t deserted this morning. She could see a few soberly clad people pushing out small boats. No more than a dozen including three small children, she calculated. A few Catholics still practising their faith in an environment that merely tolerated them at best. She walked with a springing step, enjoying the breeze on her face.

  ‘Good morning, Sister Joan.’

  Brother Cuthbert was loping along the shore towards her, the ginger hair about his tonsure fairly crackling with energy. Just to look at him made one feel slightly weary.

  ‘Good morning, Brother Cuthbert.’ She stopped as he skidded to a halt, seeming to use his large, sandalled feet as brakes in his headlong progress.

  ‘I brought the boat over this morning and decided to offer my services as boatman in case you needed help.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you. It’s years since I was in a rowing-boat,’ she said gratefully.

  ‘One or two of the parishioners might offer you passage across but as you can see their boats are small,’ Brother Cuthbert said, guiding her to where a rowing-boat swayed gently at anchor.

  ‘There’s only a tiny congregation here too,’ Sister Joan remarked.

  ‘I understand there used to be many more,’ Brother Cuthbert said, ‘but the old ones died out and most of the young ones moved to Glasgow or Edinburgh or even down into England.’

  ‘Among the Sassenachs,’ Sister Joan said gravely, gathering the skirt of her habit and making a neat landing in the boat.

  ‘Sometimes it’s necessary if they’re to earn a living wage.’ Stepping in after her he seized both oars and began to flail the water.

  ‘You haven’t pulled up the anchor,’ Sister Joan murmured.

  ‘Sometimes I despair of ever getting my head on straight.’ Brother Cuthbert struck the offender a sharp blow and hauled up the dripping anchor.

  ‘The old crofters have largely gone now.’ He resumed the conversation as he pulled away from the shore. ‘It’s my belief the Highland clearances started it all, and there’s no use in turning the clock back. Yet it’s a good, healthy life. Here’s the island now – except that it’s only an island at certain times. The tides are queer just beyond the loch. If you were thinking of taking a swim then I’d advise against it – not that nuns generally do, but since Vatican Two the rules have all been changed round, so one can’t be sure. I heard of one convent where the sisters are allowed to smoke.’

  ‘Not,’ said Sister Joan firmly, ‘in the Order of the Daughters of Compassion.’ They were approaching the reed-fringed shore with its wooden wharf upon which the other members of the congregation were stepping, tying their boats to the sea girdled posts along it. One or two glanced her way and nodded with shy, courteous dignity.

  ‘Watch your shoes, Sister.’ Brother Cuthbert extended a large hand. ‘The wood can get quite slippery when the water’s high. If you’ll excuse me I have to be running ahead of you. If you follow the path you’ll come to the church and after the mass I’ll row you back again. Or find someone who can handle the boat.’

  He strode off into a tangle of trees and bushes that grew down to the wharf. There was an unpaved track ahead with stone walls hiding the view at each side, and the bells sounded louder now.

  Sister Joan paused to clean her shoes on a tuft of grass and walked on, following the others who looked, she couldn’t help thinking, as if they would be more at ease in jeans and sweaters than print dresses and Sunday black.

  The church had a low, square tower at one end, and the rounded arches that had preceded the soaring Gothic. The wall dipped down at each side and she saw neat rows of vegetables and beyond a cluster of beehive-shaped huts built of the same grey stone as church and wall. A larger structure with smoke issuing from several chimneys stood a little way off with what looked like a covered passage joining it to the back of the church. As she entered the latter the smell of antiquity was in her nostrils.

  The interior was dim until her eyes became accustomed to the candlelight that mellowed the outlines of harsh stone. The altar in the east had a narrow window behind it on which, in stained glass, was depicted a pale, yellow-tinged crucifixion. She wondered how it had escaped the ravages of the Reformation. In accordance with modern practice a simple wooden table stood before it so the priest could celebrate mass facing the congregation. The congregation sat on equally simple wooden benches and a final touch of oldworldliness was provided by the straw scattered on the floor. It linked her with the people who must once have worshipped here – people in rough tunics, knowing only the Gaelic and a little dog-Latin, their ears pricked for any sounds of dragon ships swinging into the loch from the open sea.

  Genuflecting, she took her place at the end of a bench and prayed briefly for her sisters in the convent and for the people with whom she would be, albeit briefly, connected during her month at the retreat. The tinkling of the bell brought her to her feet with everybody else as the Father Abbot, as she guessed, entered from the sacristy door, followed by two brothers who were obviously to serve as his acolytes. At the same moment she became aware that benches at the side partly hidden by a wooden grille had filled with cowled figures.

  For an instant the scene of which she was a part had the quality of a medieval dream and then, with a little shock, she heard the rich tones of the celebrant intone the Asperges in modern English that jarred upon her for a moment. There were times such as this when she regretted the Latin. Mother Dorothy had occasionally chided her for the opinion.

  ‘It is the meaning behind the words that matters, Sister, not the tongue in which they are uttered. Using the vernacular enables the congregation to participate and brings the mysteries closer to the people.’

  ‘Yes, Mother Prioress,’ Sister Joan had murmured, blue eyes downcast. Perhaps, she had thought and still thought, the words themselves had vibrations that created power to join heaven and earth. It wasn’t a view that would be popular so she kept quiet about it, but occasionally s
he said an Ave in Latin and wished she had been reared in the traditional rituals.

  The mass progressed at a brisk but not breakneck pace. The Father Abbot was tall and thin with a halo of silvery hair and a face that reminded her of the paintings she had once seen in Madrid of fine-boned Spanish grandees, with their fingers hovering near the hilts of their swords. It was probably very snobbish of her, she reflected with a glint of humour, but she did like her father abbots to look like abbots and not like anyone you might run into at the local supermarket.

  The Kyrie had begun. She had wondered idly if there would be music since there was no sign of any organ loft and then one of the brothers rose and, still standing in shadow, struck the first notes on a lute. Even the first notes sent a ripple down her back. Whoever was playing was a master of the instrument, each phrase exact, delicate, exquisite. It was music to stir the soul, never once descending to banality. Monks and congregation chanted the ancient Gregorian chant as the notes of the lute threaded the words as neatly as pearls on a thin chain of gold.

  As the Kyrie ended she risked a glance sideways and caught a glimpse of large sandalled feet and a flash of red hair in the candlelight as Brother Cuthbert sat down again heavily and pulled back his fallen cowl. Now she no longer puzzled over the presence here of that clumsy, good-natured young man.

  The sermon was the kind she enjoyed – not too long, not couched in abstract theological terms but nevertheless with depths beneath its simplicity. His voice resonated through the candlelit space.

  Somebody was watching her. The first faint prickle of unease ran up the back of her neck. She folded her hands tightly together, forcing her mind into the correct state for the reception of Holy Communion, but the conviction that eyes were fixed unwaveringly and thoughtfully on her back persisted. The stalls where the monks sat were at her left, in such gloom that it was impossible to see if the seats were all occupied, and impossible to pick out individual faces.

  ‘Discipline of the eyes,’ her novice mistress had impressed upon her, ‘is one of the most important rules to be learnt. Wandering eyes betoken a wandering mind. Keep custody of your glances especially in church. Make it second nature to yourself.’

  And that meant, Sister Joan thought, resisting the temptation to raise her eyes briefly from her folded hands on her way back from the altar rail in order to see who stood just within the door and stared at her so intently.

  Head bowed and fingers candle-pointed she moved forward with the rest of the small congregation. The monks remained kneeling in their places and the abbot stepped across, moving behind the screen to give them Communion in virtual privacy. Eyes on the straw-strewn floor, Sister Joan returned to her seat and as the feeling of being watched receded gave herself up thankfully to prayer.

  The final blessing having been announced she left at the tail of the short procession. Outside the abbot was greeting parishioners, shaking hands, his silver haloed head bent.

  Sister Joan moved past on to the track again. The sun was high and hot overhead. It was truly a St Martin’s summer. The three children, released from piety, ran on ahead, scampering like mice between the dipping stone walls.

  ‘Sister Joan?’ Brother Cuthbert had emerged and was striding after her.

  ‘The music,’ she said, pausing for him to draw level, ‘was truly sublime.’

  ‘It’s the one thing I can do without messing everything up,’ Brother Cuthbert said with a cheerful grin.

  She liked the calm and modest way in which he accepted his talent and her compliment upon it without any false protestations. There was true humility there, she thought, and recalled with a little prick of guiltiness her own longing to see her work signed and praised on the walls of picture galleries.

  ‘Father Abbot wishes to know if you would be kind enough to take lunch with him,’ Brother Cuthbert was continuing. ‘On Sundays he often has guests to lunch in the parlour. One has to keep a certain amount of contact with the outside world even in a monastery.’

  ‘Yes, of course. And I’d be pleased to have lunch with Father Abbot,’ Sister Joan assured him.

  ‘As long as it doesn’t interfere with any private vows you might have made, of course?’ he said anxiously.

  ‘It’s hard enough for me to keep the general rules without thinking up any extra vows,’ she said, with a chuckle.

  ‘I’ll bet you’re better at it than I am.’ Brother Cuthbert said, pushing open a gate and standing aside to let her through. ‘I seem to be a catalogue of fearful mistakes. We can go this way past the beehives.’

  ‘So they’re really beehives!’ she exclaimed, looking towards the cluster of domed huts.

  ‘Oh no, those are our cells,’ Brother Cuthbert told her. ‘The original monks here lived in them before the main building was built behind the church. We still occupy them. The kitchens and the refectory and the infirmary are in the main house and Father Abbot and Father Denis – he’s the novice master, though we haven’t got any at the moment – they have rooms in the main house too. These are the beehives proper. We get lots of honey from them but it’s pretty hard to get it potted and labelled and sold these days – not a viable undertaking.’

  He was sweeping her onward past bushes whose fragrance made her think of spice jars and Victorian pot-pourri and butterflies with the sunlight turning their wings to gold.

  Behind the church the main building which was attached to the older edifice, as she had guessed, stretched back, its roof low and tiled with chimneys at odd angles. They looked as if they had been stuck on as an afterthought, and when she commented as much to her escort he nodded.

  ‘The fireplaces were put in later on, about the middle of the last century – there was quite a little religious revival going on then. We only have fires in the kitchen and the infirmary, of course. Oh, and in Father Abbot’s parlour if he has Sunday guests. Here we are.’

  He opened a door and ushered her into a long, stone antechamber with nothing in it except a bench.

  ‘Father Abbot will be along in a minute, Sister. I’ll go and get my own lunch and row you back afterwards when I’m called.’

  He indicated the bench and hurried out, almost catching the hem of his habit in the closing door.

  Sister Joan sat neatly on the bench, feeling rather like a schoolgirl waiting to be scolded by the headmistress – or in this case, master. The antechamber was fiercely cold, the chill soaking through her garments and freezing her marrow. She concentrated on controlling her shivering as well as she could. Something else was making her shiver. She looked up sharply and her eyes fastened on a peep-hole high in the opposite wall. A leper’s squint? Or a means whereby some long dead abbot had kept close watch on his community. The peep-hole was a lighter square in the darkness of the surrounding stone but she had the impression that someone had just stepped back noiselessly from the small aperture.

  An inner door opened and she rose politely as the tall figure of the abbot who had removed his vestments and wore the plain habit of one of the brothers came in, his hand outstretched.

  ‘Sister Joan? Welcome to the community,’ he said pleasantly. ‘I appreciate your accepting my invitation. As Brother Cuthbert will have told you I do have the occasional visitor for Sunday luncheon, but those occasions are becoming few and far between. In the season a handful of tourists stop over at the hotel on the mainland for a day or two and then move on.’

  ‘I hope they buy your honey,’ Sister Joan said.

  ‘It’s wonderful honey,’ he assured her, ‘but we make such tiny profits on the sales that it’s hardly worthwhile. However one likes to keep up the old traditions though it isn’t a very efficient way of obtaining an income. This is the parlour. It is rather unusual for a parlour to be built in a monastery, but a century ago the laird’s lady, who contributed most generously to the expenses here, insisted on incorporating a parlour so that she could visit without disturbing the rest of the community – not that she was boisterous, you understand, but she was rather good-looki
ng, so they say, and might have provided too much of a distraction.’

  The room into which they had stepped was of moderate size, the original stone of the walls covered with panelling, the floor covered with a decidedly shabby red carpet but with a bright fire crackling in the fireplace and with variously hued cushions cheering up the dark furniture.

  ‘Only a simple repast, but one must avoid gluttony,’ the abbot said, with a humorous little sigh. ‘One of my greatest trials in the religious life has been my love of good food beautifully cooked. My father, God rest his soul, was by way of being a master chef and I was brought up on nouvelle cuisine before the word had even been invented. Fortunately Brother James has a fine hand with the fish fryer – fresh trout, Sister, and new potatoes and salad, and in honour of my guest a glass of white wine. It is some considerable time since we had anyone in the retreat.’

  ‘Brother Cuthbert was very kind to me when I arrived,’ Sister Joan said, taking the chair he had pulled back from the gate-legged table.

  ‘An excellent young man,’ the Abbot said. ‘I wish more like him were attracted to the monastic life, but that seems to be the main problem in most communities these days.’

  ‘We have the same problem in our order.’

  ‘The world is too much with us, I suspect. Let me help you to the fish, Sister. I had the heads removed.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ she said frankly. ‘I hate to see my lunch looking back at me.’ The abbot shot her an amused glance and passed her the butter sauce. Monks, she reflected, still kept the old hospitable customs that made their cuisine far more varied and exciting than the dishes served up in her own convent. The wine he poured was an Alsatian, not too sweet. The glass was thin and delicate with a faint tracery of lead at its base.

  ‘To more vocations.’ He raised his own glass in a ceremonial little gesture.

  He was a man, she thought, raising her glass in reply, who still craved the small luxuries of politeness. She wondered if he had been brought up in an hotel, had watched the guests coming and going, seen them off guard as they chatted and commented on the dish his father had just sent up from the kitchens. It was none of her business, however, she reminded herself sternly and setting down the glass, said brightly, ‘I was most interested in your church, Father Abbot. It must be very old.’