Vow of Penance

by Veronica Black

  Vow of Penance

  VERONICA BLACK

  Contents

  Title Page

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  By the same author

  Copyright

  One

  ‘February,’ said Sister Joan, scowling at the melted slush in the yard, ‘is the longest month in the year.’

  ‘I know exactly what you mean,’ Sister Teresa said ruefully. ‘You know I’m sure that winters used to be warmer down in Cornwall.’

  ‘It’s all because of the ozone layer.’ Sister Perpetua came briskly into the kitchen. ‘Not to mention the stuff they’re flinging up into the atmosphere!’

  ‘I thought it had to do with the tilt of the earth changing,’ Sister Teresa said.

  ‘Has recreation started already?’ a voice enquired from the doorway. Three white-veiled heads turned towards the purple-habited figure of the prioress. Mother Dorothy, Sister Joan thought, was certainly not a prioress who sat in her parlour and issued orders from a distance. Mother Dorothy was far more likely to be met with as she bustled about the convent, running her fingertips along the polished balustrade of the staircase the better to check for dust, poking about in the pantry to make sure that food wasn’t being wasted, turning up unexpectedly when three of her nuns had relaxed into a strictly unofficial chat.

  ‘I’m afraid I began it,’ Sister Joan said.

  Mother Dorothy’s bespectacled countenance remained entirely unsurprised as she heard the admission. In Mother Dorothy’s opinion Sister Joan seemed to begin most trains of events that ended with the rule being, not actually broken, but certainly bent.

  ‘Our rule provides for our speaking of matters connected with our work or with spiritual matters,’ the prioress said. ‘We have a period of recreation every evening during which we may converse on more varied topics. It sets no very good example to Sister Teresa who must soon draw apart for her final period of preparation for her full entry into the community.’

  Sister Teresa, marked out from her grey-habited companions by a blue habit, said earnestly, ‘Forgive me, Reverend Mother, but the tilting of the earth could be described as a theological problem, don’t you think?’

  ‘Not in this Order,’ Mother Dorothy said quellingly.

  And that, thought Sister Joan, refraining from exchanging glances with Sister Perpetua, was that. Mother Dorothy had spoken. From henceforth discussion of the ozone layer and the part science was playing in creating the greenhouse effect were not subjects to be discussed in the Cornwall House of the Order of Daughters of Compassion. The Order was neither ancient nor large but the authority of each prioress over her sisters during her term of office was undisputed. The rule of the Order was followed by everybody but the way in which it was interpreted varied greatly.

  ‘I have an announcement to make at supper,’ Mother Dorothy said, in the manner of an adult offering a small treat to a scolded child, ‘so it would be appreciated if the meal could be absolutely punctual.’

  She nodded her head and went out; Sister Teresa went to the oven and started taking out the baked potatoes, her cheeks still rather flushed. There would be melted cheese and chopped cabbage to go with the potatoes and an apple tart to follow. The nuns followed a vegetarian regime which certainly did their skins no harm, Sister Joan mused, taking a final unauthorized look through the window before she began piling up the plates. She wondered what the announcement was going to be about. Something out of the common run to judge from Mother’s tone.

  ‘I’ll get my old ladies settled,’ Sister Perpetua said and went out, treading lightly on her large, flat feet.

  The two oldest members of the convent, Sisters Gabrielle and Mary Concepta, were both well into their eighties. Sister Mary Concepta went through her days in a state of gentle bewilderment; Sister Gabrielle was of tougher mettle, sharp tongued, quick witted, endlessly tolerant.

  Sister Teresa banged the gong, as if, Sister Joan thought, anyone needed reminding in the middle of Lent that it was suppertime. During Lent the usual breakfast of coffee, a slice of bread and a piece of fruit was still eaten, but the normal lunch of soup and a salad sandwich was reduced merely to soup. By suppertime even Sister Hilaria, Mistress of Novices, had worked up an appetite.

  Here came Sister Hilaria now, large, slow moving, with the somewhat prominent eyes of the born mystic, shepherding her two charges before her like an absentminded shepherdess with two straying pink sheep. The garments worn by the postulants were designed to knock any foolish vanity right out of their shaven heads. Shapeless pink smocks hung from neck to ankles and large white bonnets cut off their side view. After their two years in the postulancy they moved, like Sister Teresa, into the novitiate, permitted to grow their hair a couple of inches, to wear a blue, belted habit and short white veil. And now Sister Teresa was due to move into the year of silence and soul searching before her final year of initiation. It was small wonder that new vocations were scarce.

  ‘Better one good vocation than half a dozen halfhearted ones,’ Sister Gabrielle had once commented when the subject arose.

  Despite their identical clothes and attitudes, heads bent, hands clasped at waist level, Sister Marie and Sister Elizabeth could never be mistaken for twins. The latter never raised her voice above a respectful whisper, guarded whatever feelings she might have had behind a settled blandness of expression, and not only gave the impression of docility but was, Sister Joan suspected, genuinely so. Sister Marie, on the other hand, had retained a decided twinkle in her eyes and a mobile mouth that seemed always on the verge of laughter.

  The gong clanged again and she hastily picked up the pile of plates, thinking that it would save a lot of fetching and carrying if the refectory had been situated on the ground floor near the kitchen. But the house hadn’t been built originally as a convent but as a handsome home for wealthy landowners. Not all the conventual austerity in the world could alter the sweep of the staircase as it rose out of the wide entrance hall or the delicate moulding of the fanlights and ceilings.

  She carried the tray carefully into the short passage, past the dispensary where Sister Perpetua did amazing things with herbs, past the infirmary where the two old ladies were eating their supper, up the wide stairs into the huge apartment where girls with flowers in their hair had once danced but was now divided into two with the dining area immediately within the double doors and the recreation area beyond.

  The rest of the community with the exception of Sister Gabrielle and Sister Mary Concepta stood behind their backless stools. Sister Joan set the plates down on the serving trolley and stood with Sister Teresa ready to serve the rest. As acting lay sister she and her assistant would eat later. She had been acting lay sister ever since the Authority had closed down the little school on the moor where she had taught local children, and while she appreciated the freedom of being allowed to drive the ancient car into town to do the weekly shopping she had not yet learned to relish chilly, congealed food.

  ‘Sisters, I have only one announcement to make this evening.’ Mother Dorothy broke the silence crisply. ‘Father Malone is to take a sabbatical for a year.’

  Within the veils and bonnets of the assembled company expressions were surprised and disappointed. Father Malone was not the most spiritual or the most learned of clerics, but he was a comfortable and familiar figure in his rusty cassock with a vast muffler wrapped round his neck in winter and a yello
wing panama hat on his head in summer. Unlike Father Stephens with his melodious voice and degree in theology Father Malone was quite unable to indulge in finely tuned philosophical argument. He merely knew right from wrong, praised the former and shook his head over the latter, indulged himself in a spot of innocent flirtation when he came to the convent and kept a supply of wine gums for the smaller members of his congregation.

  ‘Father Malone,’ Mother Dorothy was continuing, ‘is to spend several months in spiritual retreat before undertaking a tour of holy places in Europe and the Middle East. It is a wonderful opportunity for him so, while we must inevitably regret his absence, we can take pleasure in the fact that he will be enjoying a rich and varied experience, and, of course Father Stephens will be remaining here to administer the Holy Sacraments and deal with our spiritual problems.’

  There was slightly less than wholehearted enthusiasm in her voice. Not even Mother Dorothy could convince herself that Father Stephens was an adequate substitute. He looked like a handsome young bishop, towards which eminent position he was doubtless headed, and his sermons were laced with obscure quotations, but he wore his goodness like a top hat instead of like a shabbily comfortable cardigan.

  ‘Let us say Grace,’ Mother Dorothy said, and recited it briskly.

  Usually the sisters took it in turns to read aloud from an improving book during supper but this being Lent the meal was eaten in silence. Not until the rest of the community had filed through to recreation could Sister Joan and Sister Teresa eat their own meal, then clear everything away and take it down to the kitchen to be washed up. They ate quickly and silently, aware of the low murmur of voices behind the double doors. The departure of Father Malone would be the chief topic of conversation as they occupied themselves with the handicrafts that kept hands from being idle while their tongues wagged.

  Not until they were rinsing out the tea towels did Sister Teresa permit herself to say, ‘I’m sure Father Malone will have a wonderful time but he’ll be sorely missed here, don’t you think, Sister Joan?’

  ‘He’ll be going to Jerusalem and Rome,’ Sister Joan said. She would have been less than human if there hadn’t been a tinge of envy in her tone.

  ‘Lourdes, La Salette, Assisi, Padua – all the holy shrines,’ Sister Teresa agreed. He would see the Chagall stained-glass windows in the great synogogue, the work of Michaelangelo, Fra Angelico, Botticelli – Sister Joan checked her train of thought sharply. Father Malone’s taste ran to pink-cheeked plaster Madonnas and nice little souvenirs he could send to his old mother back in Ireland.

  ‘Perhaps someone will come to assist Father Stephens,’ she said aloud. ‘His parish is rather far flung after all.’

  It was spread across the moor, encompassing farm, modern estate sprawl and the Romany camp as well as several small villages and the convent itself. Father Malone was always trying to catch up with himself as he hurtled round in a car almost as ancient as the one the convent owned, part of his problem being that he could never confine himself to a formal visit of twenty minutes but must waste time in talking over problems, listening to strings of complaints, and telling long, rambling stories to the children who came flying from every direction when his horn sounded.

  ‘That would be nice,’ Sister Teresa said, wiping her hands neatly.

  Outside a series of barks announced the arrival of Alice, ready for scraps. The Alsatian puppy, pressed on the community by Detective Sergeant Mill, had never succeeded in learning that scraps in a convent were scarce, the plates being scraped clean at every meal. Sister Joan glanced at her companion.

  ‘Would you like to give Alice her supper?’ she asked.

  ‘Thank you, Sister.’ The other’s face brightened as she went to admit Alice who had started scratching on the door with her feathery paws.

  Alice’s official function was to train as a guard for the community, a precaution that Detective Sergeant Mill had insisted upon after the events of the previous autumn.* Those events were never mentioned but the presence of Alice was a reminder that even amid the rich beauties of the moor danger could lurk. Mother Dorothy had considered the keeping of a dog unsuitable for cloistered women but had agreed to it on condition that Alice was kept in her place. Alice, who clearly believed she owned the entire convent and only permitted human beings there as a favour, spent her days working out how to get the better of Mother Prioress whose position she had instantly recognized even though she wasn’t willing to submit to her authority. Now, let in by one of the lesser humans, she pranced about the black-clad ankles before trotting to her bowl to inspect the contents.

  Sister Joan smiled to herself as she closed the door behind her. As acting lay sister she was not required to attend the evening recreation that was sandwiched between supper and the final benediction of the day. This was not a great deprivation as far as she was concerned since conversation centred on the mundane. Instead she relished the half-hour or so when she was free to follow her own inclinations.

  Usually she put on her cloak and took a brisk walk in the gardens but the darkness of this inhospitable month was creeping over moor and wall, and she went instead through the door at the right of the entrance hall which led past the parlour and the visitors’ parlour into the chapel. Modern innovations had no place here. There were still candles flaring on their spiked sconces and a small organ with no electronic additions. Sister Joan dipped her knee to the altar, reached up to give the statue of the Madonna a friendly pat and went up the stairs that wound up to the library and storerooms above.

  Sister David was in charge of the library and ran it with quiet efficiency, but the storerooms were a glorious jumble of old furniture, discarded ornaments, books, piles of newspapers and magazines going back fifty years. It was to these latter that Sister Joan took herself, switching on the one light bulb and carrying a pile, their edges tattered and their print beginning to fade, over to the table. Though spare time was something of which she, in common with everybody else in the convent, had very little, there were always spare moments which could be filled up with some useful and interesting activity. She had decided a couple of weeks before that a history of the district might well prove of interest to future generations and was now engaged in snipping out items of local news which could eventually be mounted in a scrapbook.

  ‘Sister David generally undertakes the research projects here,’ Mother Dorothy had observed when Sister Joan had applied to her for permission.

  ‘Research into the saints,’ Sister Joan had countered. ‘Her series of stories for children requires a lot of effort on her part, as well as the library to run and her secretarial duties.’

  ‘Very well.’ Having considered the matter Mother Dorothy gave her judgement in her usual brisk fashion. ‘In your spare time, and provided it doesn’t interfere with either your religious life or your secular duties then I see no reason why you should not embark on this task. I am sure it isn’t merely an excuse to have a good browse through all the local scandals.’

  Behind her spectacles her eyes had held a disconcerting twinkle. Mother Dorothy, Sister Joan thought, carefully scissoring out an account of A.R.P. work and clipping it to the 1940 pile, knew her charges very well.

  The fob watch pinned to her belt warned her that recreation would soon be drawing to a close. Sister Hilaria had already returned with her pink-smocked charges to the old dower house at the far side of the abandoned tennis courts which served as the postulancy.

  ‘Trees damaged on local estate’ ran the next headline. Twenty years old, Sister Joan noted, and scanned the item hastily. A large number of trees had been attacked by someone with an axe who had lopped off branches and left deep cuts in the trunks. Mindless vandalism and the only reason for preserving the cutting was that the trees had formed part of the estate on which the convent stood. It had not then become a convent but was still in private hands. Nevertheless it was worth keeping. She cut round it, clipped it to the requisite pile, and rose, switching off the light, making her way
past shrouded packing cases to the tiny washbasin where she could rinse her hands before descending into chapel for the final benediction that heralded the grand silence.

  The community filed in, heads bent, hands candled. Against the walls their shadows made Gothic shapes. At such times their separate personalities were merged into the image of devotion and dedication that marked every religious. Delicate seeming Sister Martha who did the bulk of the gardening singlehanded and still looked as if a breeze might waft her away became, like the large boned Sister Perpetua, merely another facet in the diamond bright virtues of the Order.

  ‘We will pray tonight for Father Malone’s happy and holy sabbatical and his safe return to us,’ Mother Dorothy said, rising. ‘Let us also pray for Father Stephens whose work load will be greatly increased during this coming year.’

  Prayers over there was a brief period of meditation before the recitation of the rosary began. Sister Joan bowed her head, lips tracing the familiar words, thoughts of the great art treasures that Father Malone would have the chance to see firmly banished. Envy had no place in the nature of a Daughter of Compassion. However a touch of wistfulness remained.

  ‘Sisters, go in peace.’ Mother Dorothy’s voice sounded calm and sure amid the shadows cast by the flickering candle flames.

  Did the prioress still harbour worldly desires? Did she, in some corner of her disciplined heart, regret never having seen or done something or other? Kneeling for the blessing, the light sprinkling of holy water, Sister Joan considered it unlikely.

  She waited until the last of the community had filed out, received Mother Dorothy’s final goodnight nod, and began her rounds. Candles to be snuffed, missals to be piled on the shelf, doors and windows to be locked and checked. At her heels Sister Teresa pattered silently. In the kitchen Alice lay curled in her basket by the stove. Night came down gently over the convent.

  The final smiling nod exchanged and the two sisters separated, each entering one of the two lay cells off the kitchen. Long practice had accustomed Sister Joan to undressing, washing hands and face and cleaning her teeth without the aid of a mirror. On the rare occasions when she caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror she was always agreeably surprised to discover that she looked about ten years younger than her actual age, her cheeks rosy and her dark blue eyes marked only by the faintest laughter lines. She slipped the long white nightdress over her head, ran a comb through her short, shining blue-black hair, and got into bed, wishing as her hip bones contacted the thin mattress on its wooden base that she was a little more generously endowed with curves. There remained only her private prayers to mouth silently and a last whimper from Alice, chasing tails in her sleep.