‘Seventh century – or to be more exact the original church stood on that site. It was of wood, but the Vikings had a nasty habit of invading at regular intervals and in the early ninth century the present stone structure was built and consecrated. Very little has been altered since then. We don’t even have a telephone line here.’
‘But surely in cases of sudden sickness?’
‘Which so far seldom happens, thank God. Should there be such an alarming incident it takes only five minutes to row to the mainland or even to use the stepping stones at certain times. And we have Brother Stephen who is a splendid infirmarian with several first-aid certificates. So we really don’t worry.’
‘How nice to hear someone say that,’ she said softly. ‘There’s so much strain in the world today.’
‘I suspect there always was,’ the abbot said, looking amused again. ‘It cannot have been very pleasant to have to live here knowing that at any time the carved prows of the dragon ships might round the cliffs into the loch. And of course I was referring only to health matters. There are other worries to beset us – a lack of vocations, shortage of funds – upon my word, if we allowed our novices to smoke hashish and have pop concerts we might get more takers.’
‘Gigs,’ said Sister Joan.
‘I beg your pardon, Sister?’ He gave her a puzzled look.
‘Pop concerts are known as gigs these days,’ she explained.
‘Are they really? How very interesting,’ he commented. ‘Not that I am thinking of holding one. A – gig. In my grandfather’s time that referred to a wheeled cart on which dashing young gentlemen escorted their lady friends. More salad?’
Sister Joan shook her head. ‘It’s delicious, but I don’t have a huge appetite,’ she said.
‘We’re largely self-supporting here,’ the abbot told her. ‘The climate can be harsh but the air is remarkably pure as we don’t have to contend with the noxious fumes emitted by cars and lorries, and fortunately one or two of our brothers have green fingers and could make roses grow on a rock. Now we will have a russet apple which is my favourite of all the apples and a cup of coffee. Are you managing in the retreat?’
‘I’m getting used to it,’ Sister Joan said cautiously, biting into a tart russet, ‘but I didn’t really expect to be comfortable. Hermits are supposed to rough it, I think.’
‘I take it you are not a natural hermit, Sister,’ he said, paring skin from the fruit he had selected with a small, silver knife. ‘Fortunately it is now being recognized that nearly everybody requires some form of human contact. Of course there are the exceptions who may be honoured but seldom imitated. Your own convent is in Cornwall, is it not?’
‘High on the moors,’ Sister Joan said. ‘We too are largely self-supporting. I’ve only been there for a year. I went from the mother house in London.’
‘Where Mother Agnes is the prioress at present?’
‘Yes, she is. Do you know her?’ Sister Joan felt a surprise that she always felt when two people living far apart proved to be known to each other.
‘Many years ago,’ the abbot said. There was a slight twinkle in his eyes that made her long to ask under what circumstances they had known each other, but she ate her russet and sipped the rather weak coffee demurely.
‘You have sufficient in the way of literature with which to sharpen your mind while you are here?’ he was continuing.
‘Very little, but I hope to do some painting while I am here,’ she said. ‘It has always been a great interest of mine and my present mother Prioress, Mother Dorothy, suggested that I might spend some of the time painting local scenes. I keep reminding myself that I’m here to renew my spiritual life and not to enjoy myself doing what I like.’
Reaching the end of the sentence she blushed as she realized that she could have phrased it more neatly, but the abbot merely nodded.
‘The two are not incompatible,’ he said. ‘Was it not St John of the Cross who, being discovered playing with a duckling, said he was worshipping God? Have you thought of sketching the church here? It’s very ancient as I said and in certain lights quite breathtakingly atmospheric.’
‘Would you mind my doing that?’ Her face lit up. ‘I wouldn’t want to disturb the community but it would be marvellous to try to capture it with the enclosure stretching around it.’
‘Come over when you choose,’ he said kindly. ‘Arrange it with Brother Cuthbert. He can row you over in the boat on the mornings you wish to paint.’
‘That’s very kind of you.’
Privately she decided that her first task would be to make a sketch of the church as a small return to the abbot for his kindness.
He was beginning to rise, a flattering degree of disappointment on his strongly-marked features.
‘The brothers will have finished their luncheon by now,’ he said, ‘which means that duty calls me again. Except on the rare occasions when there are visitors I take all my meals with them. If you wish to have another look round the inside of the church please do so. Brother Cuthbert will row you back to the mainland when you’re ready.’
‘Thank you for a wonderful luncheon, Father Abbot.’ Shaking hands with him she surprised another flash of humour in his eyes.
‘Don’t go starving yourself while you’re here, Sister Joan,’ he said. ‘I know that even girls in convents these days cannot resist this foolish slimming craze.’
He really was rather an old duck, she decided, as she withdrew. Not many people referred to her as a girl these days though she wasn’t yet thirty-seven. She suspected that in his youth he must have been quite a charmer.
He had held the door open politely for her and she crossed the antechamber to the outside without remembering the peep-hole. The good food had restored her usually commonsense attitude. Now she was apt to think that she had imagined that someone was watching her in the church, spying on her as she waited for the abbot. The trouble with being a nun was that one grew accustomed to living in a community with someone constantly at hand in times of trouble. Probably a little loneliness would do her a great deal of good.
She followed the lines of the covered passage to the front of the church again and went in. The candles were still burning and the sweet, sharp perfume from the copper censor hung on the air. She walked slowly to the altar and stood looking up at the crucifixion window behind, its delicate yellow tones like dying sunlight in the gloom. So many generations had worshipped here; so many prayers were folded into the crevices of stone. It would be almost impossible to paint the interior unless one was a Rembrandt, but she reckoned she could do justice to the exterior.
A faint shuffling sound caused her to turn her head sharply in time to see the sacristy door at the left of the altar softly closing. This was certainly no flight of the imagination. The idea of someone spying on her while she contemplated the sacred symbols struck her as peculiarly unpleasant. Before she had given herself time to think she had stepped over the altar rail and pulled open the side door.
A room with wall cupboards which held, she knew, the various vestments required for the feasts and services of the church met her gaze. There was a tiny modern window fitted at a slight angle into the wall, and a further door at her right. Sister Joan stepped across and opened it, frowning as her eyes fell on stone steps curving down steeply. There was an electric light bulb burning which surprised her for a moment until she saw the battery fixed on the wall.
Second thoughts might have caused her to hesitate. Sister Joan, who nearly always acted on her first thoughts, went swiftly down the steps with her hand sliding down the curving iron rail fixed as banister.
The steps curved round into a tunnel with a rough, concave roof and a floor formed from packed earth and stones melded by the centuries into a rough surface. By contrast the walls looked smooth, the blocks of stone gleaming faintly in the light from a second light bulb set high and jutting out at an angle.
‘Is someone there?’ She raised her voice as she strode forward and her words echoed b
ack to her in a series of diminishing ‘here – here – here’. The air was dry and cold and the tiny stones under her feet crunched as she moved forward.
Within a few yards the tunnel curved to the left. She reached the corner, turned it and was plunged suddenly into darkness.
Some kind of time switch had evidently been rigged up. She paused abruptly, trying to work out where the nearest switch would be. Presumably there was one to enable the light to be switched on from both ends of the tunnel. She took a cautious step sideways and felt along the wall. Her fingers trailed smooth stone and then met empty space. She stumbled slightly to regain her balance and her outstretched hand touched flesh with the unyielding hardness of bone beneath. For an instant fright locked her tongue. Then she snatched her hand away and backed down the tunnel again, feeling along the wall where she had just walked while her voice released itself into a jumble of words.
‘Stop playing stupid games. Who are you? Why are you watching me?’ Her words were cut off abruptly as she banged into the wall. The tunnel had become narrower or perhaps she had backed the wrong way. She stood still, her heart thumping, hearing suddenly a new sound. Footsteps were echoing through the darkness, echoing all round it; the soft padding bounced from wall to wall.
Dim light glowed again as someone pressed a switch. She opened her mouth to call again and was transfixed in a new kind of horror. Inches away from her a leathery brown face grinned sightlessly into her own.
‘Jolly looking chap, isn’t he?’ said Brother Cuthbert, walking into view. ‘He died in the eleventh century, I think. Father Abbot says the dry air has helped preserve them all, almost as if they’d been embalmed.’
‘All?’ Her voice emerged as a slight croak as she hastily moved further out of the shallow niche into which she had stumbled.
There were other niches, each one occupied by a seated, black-robed figure, dry darkened skin stretched over dead bones, rusty habits hanging about them.
‘All former abbots according to the records,’ Brother Cuthbert said. ‘They had new habits a hundred years ago. I think they were supposed to be kept here as an honour, but the custom died out ages ago. In the 1500s. Rather touching to think of them all grouped here together while above them the life of the monastery goes on.’
‘Very touching,’ Sister Joan said dryly. Her breath was still coming in little gasps. ‘Shall we go?’
‘I can turn on the light again if it goes out,’ Brother Cuthbert said helpfully. ‘However – since we’re not really supposed to be here because the air can alter the temperature we’d better leave, I suppose.’
The horrid boy sounded positively regretful, she thought indignantly, as she walked rapidly ahead of him to where the curving steps began.
‘The cloister walk is just above us,’ said Brother Cuthbert, following. ‘That’s the bit that joins the main house to the back of the church and –’
‘How did you find me?’ she interrupted.
‘Father Abbot told me to come over to the church to meet you. When I got here the sacristy door was open –’
‘How did you get here?’ she interposed.
‘Along the cloister walk.’ Brother Cuthbert closed the door to the crypt and gave her a slightly bewildered look. ‘There’s a door at the right of the altar in the old choir stalls where the community sits. Why?’
‘I just wondered,’ she said feebly, remembering to genuflect as they came into the church again and turned briefly to acknowledge the altar. ‘I thought I heard someone in the sacristy.’
‘Brother Jacob is the sacristan but he’s been in the refectory all the time since mass,’ Brother Cuthbert said. ‘Mind you, he’s getting on a bit, so it’s likely he left the door ajar before mass and nobody bothered to close it. Is it important?’
‘No,’ said Sister Joan, wondering if she was speaking the truth. ‘No, of course not. I’m sorry I kept you waiting. Are you ready to row me across?’
‘Any time you’re ready, Sister.’ He sounded gallant. ‘Father Abbot says you are going to do some painting of the outside of the church. It’s really the community’s chapel but it’s been years since there was a Catholic church over on the mainland, so now it serves both functions. On what mornings were you thinking of coming?’
‘Tomorrow and after that it depends on the weather and how fast I’m getting on, but if I could get hold of a small boat I could row myself across.’
‘It’s no trouble,’ he said quickly. ‘Honestly, Sister, I’m not much use in the community except for fetching and carrying and doing a bit of luting, so it makes a nice change to have a regular task.’
‘A bit of luting.’ She shot him an amused glance as they walked down to the shore. ‘Yes, one could describe it as that. Where did you learn to play so well?’
‘Royal College of Music.’ He looked suddenly shy. ‘I got a scholarship. The tutors thought I ought to take it up professionally, but I never wanted to play in public. I mean, can you really see me as a member of an orchestra? It’s daft. Coming to Loch Morag was the best thing I ever did. I came on a hiking trip and stayed on. It’s a grand life.’
They had reached the boat and she stepped down into it cautiously from the slippery wooden wharf.
‘I hope those old abbots didn’t give you a shock.’ He took up the oars. ‘I don’t mind them myself, but they are a mite creepy, I suppose. And you were actually touching one, you know.’
‘Don’t remind me,’ she said. ‘The light went out and I was feeling along the wall for a switch and –’
‘They can’t hurt you, Sister.’ He spoke reassuringly as if he were years older than she was. ‘The dead must be the most harmless creatures on earth.’
‘Yes. I know.’ She spoke sombrely, her eyes on the rippling waters as the oars parted them. The dead were indeed harmless, but the hand she had grasped in the darkness of the crypt had been warm, full-fleshed – and alive.
Four
Mondays were pale blue days, Sister Joan thought, when she woke up the next morning. As a small child she had seen time as great swathes of colour – orange for Tuesdays, honey-brown for Wednesdays, green for Thursdays – and Monday had been the palest of blues, clouds stretched across the sky like crisp linen on a washing-line. In that respect Scotland wasn’t disappointing her. When she stepped outside the retreat the pristine freshness of the air went to her head like wine and she found herself singing her first Ave aloud, a song that broke into laughter when a small, inquisitive bird swooped down from above, peered into her face, and took off again, adding its own cry to the melody.
‘It’s good to be alive!’ she exclaimed.
The fears of the previous day had receded and assumed more sensible proportions. Monks were human, she had reasoned, and the presence of a female, albeit a nun, had roused one to curiosity. Perhaps the one who had watched her disapproved of women on the island and had found a way of frightening her off. At that thought she set her jaw in what her family had come to recognize as ‘Joan’s obstinate look’, and resumed her devotions more circumspectly. It was rather a nasty trick for a religious to play, her thoughts ran on, but on the other hand her own besetting sin was that of impulsiveness. She had had no business to go poking around in the crypt.
Having settled the mystery to her own satisfaction she completed her chores, gathered together her painting materials and made her way cautiously down the stone steps and the scree below to the shore of the loch. There were several boats on it this morning, the boatmen crouched over their fishing lines. Away on the horizon the sun had risen, gilding the dark rocks and making the surface of the water glisten with a million dancing motes.
‘Good morning, Brother Cuthbert!’ She hailed him cheerfully as she spotted him further along, pulling his boat into shallower water, apparently in blissful disregard of the fact that his legs were soaked almost to the knees and the skirt of his habit clung to his shins like a wet dishrag.
‘It’s a day for rejoicing indeed,’ he returned. ‘Sometimes I thi
nk God sends us these days in autumn so that we can remember them when the winter comes. Father Abbot says you may paint what you wish inside or outside the church and you may leave your things in the scriptorium. You won’t want to lug everything over and back again every time you come.’
‘That’s very kind of him.’ She jumped into the boat and sat down, surprising a look of admiring astonishment on Brother Cuthbert’s face.
‘My word, Sister, you’re spry for …’ His voice trailed away.
‘For my age?’ She grinned at him. ‘Strictly between ourselves, Brother Cuthbert, I’m in my mid-thirties, so I do wish you’d stop treating me as if I were a senile old lady.’
‘Sorry, Sister.’ He grinned back companionably.
‘Granted,’ she told him, and chuckled for no reason but that it was a fine morning and he reminded her of one of her own brothers.
When they reached the wharf he carried the painting easel and folding-stool and tucked the case where she stored paints and canvas and palette under his arm, holding them above water level but getting his habit more disreputable as he scrambled through the shallows. Tying up the boat, having made a somewhat neater landing, Sister Joan looked round her with the anticipation of pleasure.
In this clear light the grass was rainbowed and the grey stones of the little church had a warm patina that made her fingers ache to capture it in paint.
‘The scriptorium is at the back of the main house,’ Brother Cuthbert informed her when they had reached the church. ‘It’s sort of stuck on next to the kitchens. Just go in when you feel like it. There won’t be anyone there at this time of day and, of course, you can leave your stuff there when you’re ready for me to row you back.’
Vow of Sanctity Page 5
