The Beekeeper's Secret

by Josephine Moon

  Of course, it wasn’t possible to be around him all the time: he had his own lodgings away from the convent and was not a teacher and therefore didn’t need to be on the grounds throughout the day unless there were circumstances that called for it. It was still an age when priests were in demand. From the outside, for all appearances, he acted like any other priest in his position. He baptised babies on Sundays, cleansing them of original sin. He married young couples in the chapel on Saturdays. He led the community in mass most days of the week. He was invited into the homes of the faithful for dinners. He gave last rites to the dying and then conducted their funerals. He took appointments in his lodgings with the laity, advising them and counselling them.

  There was nothing Maria could do about any of this. But not long after the day when she’d first met Father Peter, she approached Mother Veronica to discuss taking on more work in the school for the coming year.

  ‘I welcome your enthusiasm,’ Veronica said, directing Maria to the chair on the other side of her polished desk. Her office was filled with final assignments, Christmas cards, report cards, and student awards to be presented at a forthcoming mass. ‘But as the dust hasn’t yet settled on this final term of teaching, I’m pressed to ask if there is something specific that has brought this about.’ Veronica sat up straight in her chair, her hands folded neatly in front of her. She was middle-aged now, with a loosening of the skin on her face, sunspots on the backs of her hands, and reading glasses hanging on a chain around her neck.

  Maria paused. Here was a chance to talk about the letter she’d received from Sarah. A chance to warn Veronica. But no faster did the thought cross her mind than she knew with utter certainty that what Sarah had said was true. Even if they spoke the truth and even if they were believed, they would both be excommunicated—because the Vatican had the final word, always. And the final word was silence. Nothing would be solved.

  Instead, she smiled brightly. ‘I know Sister Agatha felt the strain this year, alongside her stomach issues and the tests she went through, and I thought it would be an early Christmas gift to offer her some relief.’

  Veronica nodded and smiled. ‘That’s charitable of you. What were you thinking?’

  ‘I’m wondering if I might take over the coordination of the religious education programs for both junior and senior classes.’

  Maria’s heart beat faster as she spoke. The position of religious education coordinator added a considerable load to a teacher’s work, but it also meant she would have frequent, close contact with Father Peter, who, ultimately, approved the program and assisted in its delivery. Father Peter would be called upon to instruct the young girls in preparation for their sacraments. He would oversee altar boys from the neighbouring boys school. He would hear confession from every student. As much as possible, Maria wanted to be there, watching.

  ‘The position of religious coordinator is a considerable commitment professionally, personally and spiritually,’ Veronica said. ‘The coordinator liaises closely with the families and church community; as Sister Agatha knows only too well, it’s a role that can attract conflict and judgement and requires sensitive, tactful communication.’

  ‘Are you saying . . . Forgive me, Veronica, but what are you saying?’

  Veronica studied Maria for a few moments. ‘I don’t often get people coming to me and asking to take on such an onerous task. But I think you would be a wonderful coordinator.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I will discuss it with Agatha and get back to you. But what about your role in the garden, Maria? We rely on your expertise with the vegetables and the bees for so much of our nourishment. Won’t these extra duties have an impact there?’

  Maria hesitated. Her garden and her bees gave her great sustenance and were her gift to this community. She would hate to lose them. But if that was what it came down to, she would do it. Right now, she was needed elsewhere. She would simply have to find a way.

  ‘Could we just see how I go?’ she said, sadness pulling at her heart at the thought of possibly handing over a role she’d come to think of as her own. But a nun should not become attached to anything other than God and the church. She knew that.

  Veronica stood, signalling the end of their conversation. ‘Leave it with me for now. We’ll talk again once I’ve worked this through with Agatha.’

  ‘Did you get the job?’ Tansy asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you had to work with him every day?’

  ‘Not every day, but I certainly saw him a lot.’

  ‘How did you cope?’

  ‘Some days were excruciating and it was all I could do not to scream at him. Other days, it all felt very normal. He seemed normal, even decent. On those days I doubted myself. I doubted Sarah. I even wondered if I had dreamed the whole letter incident, or if I had simply interpreted it incorrectly or remembered it inaccurately.’

  ‘Did you write back to Sarah and ask her, talk about what was going on at all?’

  ‘Yes. I regret that now, of course, putting her in such a dreadful position, putting her at risk. But she never turned away my letters, never asked me not to write. She must have read them all, and it must have taken quite a toll, though she never spoke of the subject in her letters back to me. I burdened her with silence.’ Maria paused, considering how that time must have been for Sarah, isolated in the bush and disconnected from the events Maria was describing. ‘It must have been very disturbing and lonely and certainly unfair. Peter was the only one who should pay for what he’d done, no one else.

  ‘It weighed heavily on my mind too,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t tell anyone else. And the one person in whom I should have been able to confide with total confidence of secrecy and seek the comfort of advice during the sacrament of confession was the very last person I could turn to.’

  ‘Oh, Maria. There are so many layers to the anguish you must have felt,’ Tansy said. ‘You had to keep going to confession, though, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, at least weekly. It was expected. And I certainly couldn’t stop going if I wanted to keep my role as the religious education coordinator. I had to act as normally as possible.’

  ‘So what did you confess?’

  Maria chuckled and then tut-tutted as if scolding herself for her levity. ‘I couldn’t stand the idea of making a truthful confession to him, so I did the only thing I thought I could do without losing my mind or blowing my cover: I made things up. It was a total farce to expect my soul to be cleansed by the man who was the conduit to God when he was leading the life of the devil. I made the decision at that time that I no longer needed priests. I could communicate directly with God if I wanted to, and God would sort me out.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound too radical.’

  ‘Oh, it was, believe me. That’s precisely the belief that keeps all the men in the church in their jobs. Imagine empowering you to believe you didn’t need them? The whole structure of the church would collapse.’

  ‘Now I’m confused, because you stayed in the church for another twenty years. Why?’

  ‘Ah.’ Maria looked to the sky. ‘That part of the story is still coming.’

  Tansy groaned. ‘You’re killing me with the suspense.’

  ‘I continued going to confession, but I confessed silly things. Nonsense things.’ Maria snorted. ‘I wasn’t going to share a single serious thought or emotion with him. So I told him I dreamed of swimming in a pool of melted chocolate.’

  Tansy laughed.

  ‘Chocolate was a hotly debated item in the convent. Some sisters believed it was a temptation sent by the devil to distract us from our pure thoughts. Many thought it lowered our consciousness to focus too much on earthly pleasure.’

  ‘I eat some form of chocolate every day,’ Tansy admitted.

  ‘I can’t remember the last time I ate chocolate. A homemade apple crumble with honey and yoghurt is my only occasional treat. I’m not sure I can even remember what chocolate tastes like.’

  ‘
Well, we must fix that as soon as possible. I’ll bring you some. Now, what else did you confess?’

  ‘I confessed that I was feeling strung out one day and helped myself to some of Mother Veronica’s medicinal brandy.’

  ‘Ha! You didn’t.’

  ‘I did. That one got him hot under the collar, actually, and had the unfortunate consequence of his making me confess to Veronica for something I didn’t actually do.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘Mm. She was none too pleased, either. Served me right, I suppose, for lying in the confessional. I also told him I left breadcrumbs under the organ to encourage the mice in order to give Sister Celine a sense of purpose in her job of defending the instruments.’

  ‘Was that one true?’

  ‘No. But I did think about it.’

  ‘Celine still worried you.’

  Maria nodded. ‘She was so vulnerable.’

  ‘Did she continue to avoid Father Peter?’

  ‘You know what? She stopped going to confession with him. She outright refused, and nothing Mother Veronica said would make her go. Veronica threatened her, counselled her that her soul was in danger, even tried to bargain with her. But Celine wouldn’t go.’

  ‘She knew,’ Tansy said, definitively.

  ‘Honestly, I’m not sure. If she did, she never said anything to anyone directly that I know of. Then again, with all the secrecy involved, I wouldn’t know. But sometimes I felt she might have had a sixth sense about some things. She certainly disliked him enough to cause tremendous waves in the convent. Her behaviour divided her fellow sisters. Veronica eventually allowed Celine to go to another parish for confession once a month in return for being responsible for serving Peter afternoon tea once a week.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I think she thought that Celine’s irrational dislike of Father Peter would be gradually broken down if she spent a little time with him. So at half past three on Friday afternoons, Celine had to prepare tea and some sort of sweet for him. It also gave Celine an opportunity to practise her baking and develop a few more skills in the kitchen. Veronica was good like that; she wanted to help prepare Celine for a time when, for whatever reason, the other nuns might not be around to look after her. She wanted to give her life skills.’

  ‘Did it work? Did she lose her fear of him?’

  ‘I used to pop my head into the sitting room from time to time, where afternoon tea was served, and try to catch a glimpse of what was going on. And, truly, I was nervous for her, with his reputation, and her history. But I never saw them so much as exchange a sentence. She seemed resigned to presenting him with the tray of food and washing up afterwards in return for not having to go to confession, and that’s the way it stayed.’

  ‘Did you ever think, while you were in confession, that you might somehow let him know that you knew what he’d done?’

  ‘I did consider telling him directly about the letter but, once again, I had Sarah to think of. And there was also the risk that he would have me removed from the position of religious education coordinator for some confected reason, or have me transferred entirely, and then I would lose my opportunity to observe him around the children.’

  ‘That makes sense.’

  ‘But one day I told him that I’d been confided in by a fellow sister on a grave matter involving church leaders and she had then sworn me to secrecy. But, I went on, the problem was that I wanted to share the secret, because I felt it was the right thing to do.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said that I should honour my word to keep the secret. And then he said, “Silence is a virtue.”’

  20

  It was Dougal’s last day, and he was spending it in the office, again. Tansy was so sad that she forgot to eat breakfast and only realised her error when her hands began to shake from lack of food.

  Tomorrow Dougal would leave and she had no idea how long it would be before she saw him again. She’d promised she’d go to Canada. But when? A week, a month, six months? She honestly had no idea.

  Enid and Paula were bustling in the kitchen when Tansy went for a bowl of cereal to stop the shakes. They were covered in flour and chocolate icing and giggling like schoolgirls. They asked Tansy if she had time to help them, but she made a show of taking her bowl and packing up her notebook and laptop and saying she had appointments to go to. Enid sighed audibly, a sign of exasperation with Tansy’s avoidance, she could tell. Paula sniffed and squinted, disapproving.

  Ashamed, Tansy conceded to herself that she should be spending time with her mother. She still hadn’t told her about the pregnancy kerfuffle and the deep fissure it had caused in her otherwise peaceful life and marriage. And she wasn’t about to go into it with Paula hovering around.

  Today, she just wanted to escape. And Honeybee Haven was the place she wanted to be. There, she found Maria in full market-day preparation again, this time hard at work on something fluffy, creamy and yellow. She could see the honey pot, smell garlic powder and freshly squeezed lemon juice, and there was some kind of dark paste in an unlabelled jar.

  ‘What’s that?’ she asked.

  ‘Taste this,’ Maria said, passing over the stainless-steel bowl.

  Tansy dipped in a teaspoon and sucked, then smacked her lips with pleasure. ‘Oh, wow, that’s great.’ She smiled. ‘Sweet and sharp and tangy all at the same time.’

  ‘That’s a relief; I thought I’d put in too much garlic powder,’ Maria said, picking up another spoon and tasting it. ‘It’s honey mustard.’

  Tansy picked up a tub of Greek yoghurt. ‘Is this in it too?’

  ‘Yes, it makes a lighter and healthier version than using cream.’

  ‘Can I buy some from you? I’d love to make a special dinner for Dougal tonight, and I think this would go well with oven-baked chicken breast, stuffed with soft cheese and dressed with prosciutto.’

  ‘That sounds wonderful,’ Maria said, her voice tinged with emotion—longing, perhaps—and Tansy wondered how long it had been since anyone had made dinner for Maria, or cooked her soup when she was sick.

  ‘You’ll have to come down and visit and I’ll make it for you too,’ she said, and meant it.

  Maria passed her some empty jars and motioned with her hand for Tansy to fill them with the mustard dressing. ‘Yes,’ she said, but she still sounded sad.

  Tansy almost asked Maria what was wrong, but stopped herself; she knew she’d been peppering her aunt with a lot of questions in a short period of time, and her regret over being so pushy with Dougal was still fresh in her mind. Maria had been gracious in sharing her stories—the last thing Tansy wanted was to push her too far. Together they filled the jars in silence until they were all done. Tansy was handing over the last when she spoke again. ‘Are you going to see the bees today?’ she asked instead.

  ‘I am. I just need to get these labelled and into the fridge, and then whip up a batch of honey bath bombs.’

  ‘That sounds like fun. Can I help?’

  Maria smiled and passed her a glass measuring cup and a packet of baking soda. ‘I won’t say no. Two cups of that, please.’

  An hour later, Tansy sweated beneath the white protective suiting Maria was making her wear for her first official visit to the bees.

  ‘Why do I have so many more layers than you?’ she asked, zipping the veiled hat onto the outer jacket so that no bees could crawl down her neck and under her clothes. ‘I look like an alien.’

  ‘The last thing I want is for you to get stung, especially since we don’t know if you’re allergic. I’d rather spend more time kitting you out now than resuscitating you later.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Tansy tucked the long cotton legs of the suit deep into her gumboots, and Maria ran masking tape around the tops so bees couldn’t crawl down and sting her feet.

  She struggled with a heavy elbow-length glove. The first one had been okay, but trying to pull on the second one was harder, since the fingers of the first hand were so thickly covered that she
couldn’t actually feel what she was doing.

  Maria, on the other hand, simply wore long pants, ankle boots, a light zip-up jacket, yellow rubber kitchen gloves, and a hat with a net that didn’t even connect to the top of the jacket.

  ‘Don’t you worry about getting stung?’

  ‘My main concern is a happy hive. I keep my girls calm. Bees don’t actually want to sting you; if they do, they die. If you work in with the girls, they’ll respect you.’

  ‘Then why am I so well padded?’

  ‘Because they don’t know you yet.’

  Maria packed a bucket with a J-shaped metal tool, a metal smoking tin with bellows on one side, a barbecue lighter and some dry grass, and three wooden frames, each strung with three strands of wire and a sheet of human-made wax for the bees to build their honeycomb on.

  ‘They can build honeycomb without it, of course,’ Maria explained. ‘They’ll build off a tree limb if it suits them. A premade template just speeds up the process.’

  Tansy offered to carry the bucket for Maria, and followed her aunt up the path to where the hives sat. There were four of them, spaced about a metre apart, fanning in a gentle arc. Each one was composed of a stack of three white boxes.

  ‘I check one hive every few days, so I get all four done in a fortnight and then start again.’

  ‘Why can’t you check all four in one day?’

  ‘I could, but if I’m harvesting honey I’d have to deal with all of it at once, and it’s heavy work. Each frame can hold more than three kilos of honey, and a super—these boxes sitting on top of the brood box at the bottom are called supers—might have ten frames, so just one super could weigh more than thirty kilograms. Harvesting is time-consuming and messy and you don’t want to rush it. This way, I can spend as much time on each hive as it needs.’

  They reached the hive furthest to the right and Tansy put down the bucket of gear, amazed at how hot she was already, and it was autumn. She couldn’t imagine how hot it would be to do this in summer.

  The bees buzzed in a pleasant, busy kind of way. She and Maria had approached from behind the hive, so as not to cross their flight path, and now stood quietly to the side watching them come and go through the small opening at the bottom of the lowest box. A few hovered there at the entrance. Others took off at a great rate, zipping up into the sky and hurtling over the edge of the mountain, out into the dense forest below.