‘You turned over the pages of the illuminated manuscript there.’
‘Did I? Yes, I believe I did. Something to occupy my hands. I wasn’t fully aware of it at the time. Down here, when you first came, then I got scared. You’d poke around, find out something – I wanted to frighten you off then. I reached out and grasped your hand in the darkness – in six years nobody had counted the bodies here or noticed there was one extra. Nobody came down here save on the rarest occasions. Father Abbot discourages visits because the air ought not to be too much disturbed.’
‘Nor the dead,’ she murmured.
‘Do you think I enjoyed moving him?’ The whisper was suddenly savage. ‘I had put on a spare habit I found to make him look like the others. He had the cowl over his head. Nobody could have seen his face and the more time elapsed the more he resembled the others, but you saw the shoes. You saw those. I couldn’t bring myself to remove his shoes, you see. I couldn’t bring myself to do that.’
‘How did he die?’ she asked.
‘A heart attack. No violence. A simple heart attack. I could have passed by, done nothing, left her to face it alone, but I couldn’t do that. Catherine was a nice woman, a good friend. She helped me when I finally made up my mind to leave Dolly.’
‘You didn’t talk to Dolly?’
‘It wouldn’t have done any good. Dolly wouldn’t have understood how I felt. I couldn’t have explained it even to myself. All my life I was seeking something that lay just out of reach. I denied my own faith, married Dolly when she told me she was pregnant – having an affair with her, trying to prove to myself that I too could desire a woman – that wasn’t fair on either of us. She was never a loving wife but then I was never a loving husband. Working away from home was a kind of compromise but it wasn’t enough. I wanted to leave the world. I had what I suppose you could call a late vocation, or perhaps I’d simply denied my vocation all along. I met Catherine Sinclair by chance. My car had broken down and she gave me a lift to the nearest garage. We talked. Sitting in a shoddy little café with rain making tracks on the dirty windows. She had a lover – an English tourist she’d met briefly. He visited the area once or twice a year. That was the only time they managed to meet. His name was Adam – the surname doesn’t matter since he had no relatives, nobody to report him missing – not even a job to leave. He’d a heart condition and he lived on a small legacy he’d inherited from his grandmother. She told me he was gentle, artistic, caring.’
‘And you confided in her.’
‘I’d tried to talk to a couple of priests, to tell them how I felt. They both said the same thing; the consent of both parties is required if the husband wishes to enter the religious life. I could just imagine Dolly’s reaction if I told her that was what I’d wanted to do without realizing it for years. As far as she was concerned I didn’t even practise my faith any longer, and I’d distanced myself from my son. She was the one who got him confirmed and all the rest of it. She was conscientious about that.’
‘Was Catherine Sinclair going away with her lover?’ Sister Joan asked.
‘No. She was meeting him down by the loch. She’d rowed across and they were on the shore at the side where the retreat is. I’d come down there for a bit to walk on the shingle, try to think things over; everything was coming to a head inside me. I knew that I’d have to tell Dolly soon how I felt, how little I cared about her – and then I heard Catherine crying. He’d collapsed on her and died. I never met him when he was alive, but in death he was slight and small. It was providence took me down on to the shore at the very moment that Catherine Sinclair’s lover died. God had opened a doorway which I could vanish through.’
‘How? Why did it need a death?’
‘Someone had to conceal the body. There might have been someone somewhere who came asking questions. In the community I would be safe, anonymous. She helped me get the body into her boat and then we rowed to the island. It was a wild, stormy night – the brothers slept peacefully in their cells. I knew about the crypt. I’d been to mass once years before, just after Rory was born, and got into conversation with the old abbot – not the present one. He told me about the bodies there.’
‘You brought it down into the crypt?’ She imagined the darkness, the burden carried.
‘There were some habits in the sacristy – neatly folded after the laundry was finished, I daresay. I took one and put it on him. But you are right to say “it”; the body of a dead man, even a recently dead man, has lost something essential to humankind. The next morning when the community arose I was seated on the wharf with a tale of having hired a fisherman to row me across. I had a bag with necessities in it and sufficient cash to pay the dower. I gave a false name. Nobody knew me; the old abbot was long dead; it has always been the policy of this particular community to accept novices without question. I have been safe here ever since, until you came. When you arrived something told me that you’d bring trouble in your wake. I decided to talk to you, to rely on your discretion but I couldn’t bring myself to do it, and I couldn’t frighten you away.’
‘You moved the body and rowed out into the loch and sank it beneath the water,’ she whispered.
‘I took the habit from it and wrapped it in a sheet of heavy plastic that someone had left over the wall of the enclosure and waited until I could slip away and row out a little way. It was a risk but a small one. The others were at their prayers and unlikely to emerge. One of the great benefits of the religious life is that one knows what everybody else is doing at any hour of the day. There were plenty of pieces of metal in the workshop at the back of the church. I weighted them down the trouser pockets. In the socks. I didn’t want it – him to be found.’
‘But the freak tide came,’ Sister Joan said. ‘You can’t hide things for ever.’
‘Yes you can!’ The voice had roughened. ‘Catherine Sinclair died – an accidental overdose – I didn’t hear about it for a long time. Then Father Abbot, who occasionally reads a newspaper, mentioned it. I was very shocked though I hope that I concealed my feelings. She was a good friend. And now the man in the loch has been identified as me by my own wife. Dolly seized her chance. She must have known that it wasn’t me even if the face was damaged in the storm. She wants me dead. My coming to life again wouldn’t solve a thing.’
‘But she’s still your wife, and she has the right to know that.’
‘She doesn’t want to know. If she were here this moment she’d tell you to leave well alone. Alasdair McKensie is dead and buried. Let him be.’
‘Doesn’t the other man – the man called Adam – doesn’t he have the right to have his own name on his grave?’ she asked soberly.
‘So you’re going to talk to the authorities? Yes, you’re the type of woman who’d think it her duty to do that. What about my vow here? A life of celibacy, poverty and obedience would all go for nothing.’
‘A life based on a lie,’ she said, low and vehement. ‘You vowed first to your wife. She would probably divorce you for in civil law you must have given her grounds; you might be charged for concealing a death though perhaps they’d not press the matter; the abbot might still allow you to return here. I’ll say nothing.’
‘But you guessed who I was. When?’
‘I didn’t guess,’ she said. ‘Not until you painted out the figure of the monk I’d put in my painting of the church in spring. I painted it without thinking. Afterwards I recalled that almost unconsciously I’d reproduced your face and you obliterated it. You drew my attention to it then. And your wife lent me some oilskins – she said they belonged to you, but your son mentioned later that you’d been tall and powerfully built. I think Dolly wanted to establish firmly in my mind that the man I’d seen in the loch was you – slight and small, but I think the oilskins were her own. They almost fitted me. Anything of yours would have been three times too large.’
‘Dolly wants me to stay dead. Nobody will derive any benefit from my coming forward and revealing my continued existence �
� nobody.’
‘That has to be your decision. We are all the keepers of our own consciences,’ she said softly, and waited, hearing the long-drawn-out sigh that she had heard before from the monks’ stall when she had been kneeling at the altar – the sigh of a man who longs and fears to lift the burden from his soul by sharing it.
The great shadow wavered and shrank against the wall, the door closed silently, and the tiny draught died into stillness again.
After a few moments she rose, took up the candle and went back up into the sacristy. She snuffed the candle, left it on the table where it could be replaced, and went out through the church to where the tall abbot was giving instructions about something or other to one of the monks. He turned as she emerged from the door and gave her his wintry little bow.
‘Your devotions were fruitful, Sister?’
‘I don’t know, Father Abbot. I may never know.’
‘Do you wish to go on working on the pictures today? You would be most welcome.’
The second painting, of the church on a winter’s night, needed a few more touches before it was completed. Both ought to be varnished. Hesitating, she said, ‘Can one of the brothers undertake to varnish them?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Then I’d prefer them to be completed by a member of the community. The second one isn’t finished – the darkness isn’t entire.’
‘My dear child,’ said the abbot. ‘It never is.’
She bowed briefly and formally, wondering how much he had guessed, knowing that he would never say. Just as she would never mention that she was aware of his earning money for his community by the writing of harmless and silly romantic tales. The vow of sanctity included a delicate and mutual discretion.
‘You don’t wish to sign them?’ He gave her an enquiring look.
‘They’re a gift to the community from a nun,’ she said, and bowed her head briefly beneath his blessing before she went to meet Brother Cuthbert.
‘Have you finished the paintings, Sister?’ he enquired as they climbed into the boat.
‘I’ve done everything necessary. Someone else can varnish them. I’ll still be coming over for mass on Sundays, if it’s no inconvenience to pick me up.’
‘No inconvenience at all,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You’ll be sketching other views of the loch?’
‘For my own community, yes.’
‘I’ve enjoyed knowing you, Sister,’ he said. ‘It makes me feel good to know that all over the world there are people who’ve chosen the religious life and nobody thinks they’re peculiar or medieval.’
‘Oh, I can be pretty peculiar in other people’s eyes sometimes,’ she assured him.
As they reached the other shore he suddenly clapped a hand to his head with an exclamation of dismay.
‘Oh dear, I must be getting peculiar myself! I completely forgot to give you this.’
‘What is it?’ She took the envelope he held out to her.
‘When I brought the boat over this morning to take you across to mass, just before you arrived, the minister – Mr Sinclair – galloped up on a big horse and gave me the letter for you. He said to give it to you after the service, but I nearly forgot. The minister seemed an odd kind of person – very grim looking but quite pleasant spoken. Anyway I’ve remembered in time.’
‘Yes you have. Thank you.’ Clutching the letter she landed safely on the driest part of a small sandbank and made her way higher up the shore.
It would have been sensible – even a test of self-discipline to wait until she had climbed up to the retreat before opening the envelope. She hesitated for about three seconds and then flung self-discipline to the autumn breeze and sat down on a large rock to read her letter.
It was fairly short, written in a bold hand with a steady pressure.
Sister Joan,
I am writing to you in the strictest confidence and I trust you to keep what I have to say private to yourself. That imposes a burden upon you for which I apologize, but even a minister of the kirk sometimes feels the need for confession.
I have never been a very sociable man, so perhaps it was a mistake for me to go in for the ministry, but I wished to serve God in the place where my ancestors had once been lairds. What I failed – no, what I refused to see was that my wife was lonely here. I adored Catherine and so I believed that we shared the same tastes. She was a good wife and a good mother, but after Morag went away to school she became increasingly restless. She frequently took shopping trips to Aberdeen and spent the night away, but I was occupied with my ministry and never enquired too closely into her activities. Six years ago she went out one night – for a walk, she said. I was writing a sermon at the time and so took little notice, but when the storm came up I became a little concerned. I had promised to visit a parishioner – an old lady who was sick, so I walked over to the cottages to see her, and was hurrying back when I saw Catherine tying our boat up at the wharf. She seemed distressed, and I helped her into the house, and asked her what was wrong. She told me that she had parted from a lover. A lover? I was her husband; she had no need of lovers. I had trusted her completely and she had betrayed me with another man. I am not a man who easily reveals his feelings, and I listened with apparent calm. She had recently suffered a bad dose of influenza so it was an easy matter to persuade her to take some sleeping tablets in a hot drink before she retired. I dissolved several tablets in the drink and added a splash of whisky and handed her more tablets to take with the drink. She was completely unsuspecting. In the morning I ‘found’ her dead – accidental death was recorded.
I have never tried to find her lover. Men are by nature weak, women are the ones who tempt them. I left him to his conscience and cleansed my own house of betrayal. Since then I have lived with my memories. I have tried to forget, but Morag grows more like her mother every day. One day she will marry and betray her husband in the same way. Rather than let that happen I would kill her with my own hands. Indeed there have been occasions recently when I have found myself devising ways and means of doing it.
I will give this letter to the monk who rows you across to the island. By the time you read it I will have suffered a fatal accident, in my car, I think. I wanted to tell one person before I leave – to make them understand that I am not doing this because I killed Catherine but in order to prevent myself from killing again.
Sincerely,
Alexander Sinclair
When she had read the letter through a second time she sat, her eyes fixed on the loch. Such a tangle of motives and actions, stretching tentacles across the years to twist emotions. She sighed deeply once or twice, then with slow deliberation tore letter and envelope into tiny, undecipherable fragments and sent them like scattered pieces of a prayer into the autumn breeze.
‘So you really are leaving now?’ Brother Cuthbert said, leaning on the oars of the boat. ‘Mind you, with the weather turning so cold it’s not suitable –’
‘For an elderly lady of thirty-six to stay there in the retreat for very much longer?’
‘I was only teasing you, Sister. I wouldn’t have said things like that to a really old lady. I had a sister once – only three years older than me, but she used to look out for me, you know. She died – cancer. I still miss her a bit. And now I’ve talked about my life before I entered the community and that isn’t allowed – I wonder if I’ll ever get the hang of it.’
‘Don’t be too hard on yourself, Brother. You’re doing very nicely,’ she encouraged.
‘Well, I try. Father Abbot would tell you that I’m very trying. Did you know we’ve just sent five hundred pounds to the children in Africa? Can you imagine that – on our small income? Father Abbot works financial miracles.’
‘Doesn’t he though?’ said Sister Joan.
‘It was sad about Mr Sinclair,’ Brother Cuthbert said. ‘Fancy crashing his car off the bridge like that. We were very sorry to hear about it.’
‘Yes, it was a very sad accident. His daughter plans to turn th
e old manse into a small guest house. I think Rory McKensie is to go into partnership with her.’
‘He’ll find her a handful,’ Brother Cuthbert said with a grin. ‘You’ve heard we’re to be one fewer now?’
‘In the community? No, I’m not on gossipping terms with the abbot.’
‘Brother Brendan – you’ll not recall him perhaps – the lay brother who worked in the kitchen? He’s been on an internal retreat for the last couple of weeks. He leaves us tomorrow – some unfinished business in the world. With so few novices entering it’s a pity to lose anyone.’
‘I guess he’ll probably find his way back if it’s where he was meant to be,’ Sister Joan said.
‘Saint Brendan the Voyager,’ Brother Cuthbert said musingly. ‘I often wondered if he chose that name because he’d been to sea, but Brother Jerome told me that he’d been a commercial traveller once. Funny old world, isn’t it?’
‘And sometimes a beautiful one,’ Sister Joan said, and raised her head to smile at the loveliness of the shining loch.
By the Same Author
Echo of Margaret
Pilgrim of Desire
Flame in the Snow
Hoodman Blind
My Pilgrim Love
A Vow of Silence
Last Seen Wearing
Vow of Chastity
My Name is Polly Winter
Copyright
© Veronica Black 1993
First published in Great Britain 1993
This edition 2011
ISBN978 0 7090 9701 3 (epub)
ISBN978 0 7090 9702 0 (mobi)
ISBN978 0 7090 9703 7 (pdf)
ISBN978 0 7090 4954 8 (print)
Robert Hale Limited
Clerkenwell House
Clerkenwell Green
London EC1R 0HT
www.halebooks.com
The right of Veronica Black to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Vow of Sanctity Page 21
