Though her stomach was still growling Sister Joan turned not in the direction of the kitchen, but in the direction of her cell. Perhaps it was time to have a look at the book she had borrowed.
Isis In Palestine was, as she had surmised, an analysis of the Mother Goddess cult in the Holy Land, written in a fluent but scholarly style that was pleasant to read. Professor Gillespie clearly knew his subject and took a faintly mischievous delight in tracing connections between the worship of Astarte/Isis and the Catholic devotion shown to the Virgin Mary. There were several photographs of many-breasted Dianas and of the professor himself at the sites of various digs. What she failed to find as she skimmed through it was any spark of truly original research. Professor Gillespie leaned fairly heavily on the work of previous investigators, and seldom bothered to credit them with having done the research first. The impression she gleaned was of a man whose undoubted intelligence was derivative rather than initiative and whose personality was a mixture of charm and egotism. She suspected that he had bequeathed those qualities to his daughter. Which did nothing to solve the mysteries of the death of Sister Sophia or the abrupt departure of Sister Magdalen. She would have to find out more about the former. There would be the official notice of her death which was sent round to all the convents. It had been sent to her own mother House but she clearly hadn’t been paying attention when it was read out. There would be a copy of it in the library and time to read it before she had to go in to supper. She put the book on the shelf next to her Bible and Missal and went swiftly along the corridor and down the stairs.
The wing containing the guest parlour and chapel with the library and storerooms above was deserted, only the Perpetual Lamp dissipating the twilight. She switched on the overhead light on the narrow stairs and went briskly up them.
The death notices were in a series of books, one for each decade since the founding of the Order. Five large closely written volumes detailing the blameless ends of the various Daughters of Compassion who had died in the several Houses. They were in chronological order which made her task easy. Within a few minutes she was reading with close attention.
‘The death is announced of Sister Sophia, born Sophia Brentwood, 5th April, 1963 in Reading. Sister Sophia was an only child, orphaned at the age of nine and reared by an aunt, Miss Mary Brentwood, died 1982. Sister Sophia was educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in her home town where she was described as a popular and hard-working pupil, with a definite leaning towards the religious life from an early age. In 1980 she took a two-year course in Primary Schooling at Reading Technical Training College and gained a Diploma with Honours. She taught in the Infants’ Section of the Sacred Heart Convent from September 1982 until July 1984 and in September of that year entered the Order as a novice. During her novitiate she impressed her superiors by her dedication, her energy and her devotion to duty. In September 1986 she took her temporary vows and thereafter combined her religious duties with teaching in the Moor School. In September 1987 she took her final vows and was fully professed in the presence of His Lordship the Bishop and the rest of the Community. On the 6th December of that year, having volunteered to test the fire-escape apparatus at Cornwall House, she slipped and fell, the underarm strap tightening about her neck. Both the Prioress, Reverend Mother Ann, and Sister Felicity, Lay Sister, were witnesses of this tragic accident. Despite their attempts and those of Sister Perpetua, Infirmarian, to revive her and the ministrations of the local doctor who was immediately summoned Sister Sophia was pronounced dead. Father Malone in his eulogy after the funeral stressed that though Sister Sophia had died without the consolation of Last Rites her character was such that he believed her already at peace. Her cheerfulness and good humour coupled with a deeply serious attitude to spiritual matters rendered her beloved by her sisters in Christ and by the children she taught, many of whom sent floral tributes. Sister Sophia was in the twenty-sixth year of her age and the third month of her profession.’
On the other side of the page was the standard photograph taken at the time of her final profession. From beneath a wreath of white roses the square, glowing young face smiled out. A plain, healthy, sensible girl who was clearly delighted to consecrate her life to God, Sister Joan thought, and wondered what could have possibly happened to drive her to suicide – if it had been suicide, and for that she had only Sister Perpetua’s word. Sister Joan replaced the book and looked further along the shelves for the Register of Novices. Under the rules of the Order a full account of each intending Daughter of Compassion had to be kept on view in the convent where she was training so that other sisters could consult it. On her making her full profession the file was then placed in the archives, her previous life being considered irrelevant.
She was rather afraid that the item relating to Sister Magdalen might have been removed already but it was still there, a neatly typed sheet of paper slipped into a cellophane folder and clipped inside the larger file.
‘Brenda Williams entered the Order as a novice on 2nd September, 1987. She has taken the name of Magdalen. Born and bred in Matlock, Derbyshire, eldest of three children. Born on 8th June, 1968. Sister Magdalen is a lively, yet deeply serious girl, somewhat idealistic. She has a fervent devotion to Our Blessed Lady. She has been helping out during the recent epidemic of influenza and has made herself very well liked by the infirmary nuns.’
At the bottom someone had typed tersely,
‘Sister Magdalen left the Order on the 6th of March, 1988.’
Three months after Sister Sophia had died. Was it possible that the girl had known the death was actually a suicide and, disillusioned at the official cover-up, decided to leave? It seemed unlikely. She would have to remember to ask Sister Perpetua if she had mentioned the matter.
A footfall in the corridor alerted her. She slid the cellophane folder back into the file and put it on the shelf, rising as Sister Lucy came in.
‘I saw the light on the staircase,’ the other said by way of explanation. ‘Did you enjoy your sandwich, Sister?’
‘She knows I haven’t been anywhere near the kitchen,’ Sister Joan thought, irritated.
‘I decided that if I gave in to my stomach it would go on dominating me,’ she answered calmly. ‘That’s something else I shall have to remember for general confession. First lack of care for a dumb beast and now disobedience in matters of diet. It isn’t a very auspicious beginning.’
‘Oh, I won’t tell,’ Sister Lucy said, as she had said before. ‘I always come out a few minutes ahead of the others to light the candles for Benediction and get the incense burning properly. The charcoal can be tricky. The religious instruction today was very interesting, didn’t you think so?’
‘Unusual certainly,’ Sister Joan said cautiously.
‘It was a pity you had to leave so soon. Reverend Mother Ann explained everything so beautifully. We cannot neglect the female aspect of God.’
‘But Our Blessed Lady was not a goddess,’ Sister Joan said, forgetting caution. ‘She was a human being, Sister, and the fact that many of the titles given to her were originally bestowed upon Astarte and Isis doesn’t alter the fact.’
‘She was in the line of succession, like her mother Saint Anne,’ Sister Lucy said. Her voice had the patient note of one explaining something to a rather backward child. ‘Now that we are in the Aquarian age it is time for the Messiah to come again. Who will be privileged to bear Him a second time? Eh, Sister Joan?’
She gave a curious little skip, half mischief, half expectation, and went away, padding softly over the carpet into the corridor.
‘But He will return as a king in glory,’ Sister Joan said in bewilderment, staring after her. ‘He won’t be born all over again.’
The cloistered silence of the library pressed her round. She waited a few moments and then went down quietly into the now candlelit chapel. The others sisters were filing in and the put-put-putting of an ancient car outside announced the arrival of Father Malone. Did Father Malone know that Reverend Mother Ann was filling the heads of her nuns with a heady mixture of gnostic heresy and exaggerated mariolatry? She rather doubted it, having summed up the little priest as the pure-hearted not over-intelligent product of a rural Seminary. Certainly she could hardly ask him. Loyalty to one’s Prioress was important. She would have to weigh it against her greater loyalty to the doctrine of the Faith. Certainly discussion within the Church was freer and more unconventional now. All of this might be no more than intellectual juggling with ideas designed to impress the sisters with the brilliance of their Superior. She would have to wait and see. Meanwhile she bowed her head, beginning the Five Glorious Mysteries in unison with her sisters, feeling as the beads slid through her fingers the usual lessening of tension. It was only half way through the service that she realised that the Benediction had preceded supper which was a reversal of the normal convent routine.
Filing out with the others she took the opportunity to whisper to Sister Katherine,
‘Benediction was early tonight?’
‘No.’ Sister Katherine looked blank for a moment, then smiled. ‘Ah, you came on Saturday, didn’t you? You won’t know the timetable yet. On Saturdays and Sundays supper is before Benediction but on weekdays it is afterwards when we have had our recreation. Father Malone has quite a large area to cover and this makes things easier for him to get round.’
An innocuous reason but in practice it meant that the sisters would have two and a half hours of solid religious instruction and worship with no break to lift their energies, and it also meant that the benediction after which the nuns retired to their cells for the night had been replaced by a late meal which struck her as an untidy way in which to end the day.
The trouble with me, she thought wryly, is that I am too accustomed to the routine at my mother House. The Prioress has the right to set her own timetable to suit her particular convent.
In the recreation room she took a square of canvas from the table and some lengths of tapestry wool. She would begin on a set of cushion-covers, she decided. The old longing to have a paintbrush in her hand still surfaced now and then, but could generally be sublimated into other work.
The Prioress was not there which was something of a relief. Those amused dark eyes above the high cheekbones and the sweetly smiling mouth made her uneasy.
‘How did you get on at the school this morning, Sister?’
The delicate-looking Sister Martha had taken a seat next to her. This was the nun in charge of the garden, she remembered, and thought again how unsuited the other seemed to heavy manual work.
‘It was exhausting but enjoyable,’ she answered. ‘It’s five years since I stood in front of a class and I was quite nervous that I’d mess it up, but it went off without anything dreadful happening. I’m even hoping a few of the pupils will return tomorrow morning.’
Sister Martha laughed.
‘I could never teach in a school,’ she confided. ‘I was one of eight children and when I entered the religious life the only thing I could think was “Thank heavens, I won’t have to toilet-train any more little sisters and brothers”.’
‘Plants are more docile,’ Sister Joan said.
‘Don’t believe it.’ Sister Martha laughed again. ‘Some plants are exceedingly difficult to get along with. Have you ever tried to make friends with a very thorny rose bush or tried to persuade an ivy bush not to reach out and cling to the nearest wall?’
‘Don’t you have help in the garden?’ Sister Joan said. ‘The grounds here are very large.’
‘Well, each sister is supposed to lend a hand when she can spare time from her other duties, but too often that makes for a real muddle. Sister Sophia drew up a work plan that was very practical but we didn’t stick to it unfortunately.’
‘That was a sad accident.’ Sister Joan glanced at her companion but the other said only,
‘Very sad. In my opinion the apparatus ought to have been tested during the day with all the sisters present. However my opinion was not sought.’
‘Did you know Sister Magdalen?’ She risked asking the question since the other nuns were still drifting into the room and for a moment she and Sister Martha were side by side with nobody next to them in the semicircle of chairs.
‘I saw her occasionally. Why?’
‘It always interests me when a novice decides to leave. I recall my own doubts and fears.’
‘Do you? I never had any,’ Sister Martha said, looking faintly surprised. ‘No, I saw her once or twice, that’s all. She always looked very happy.’
Outward appearances seldom told the full story but as far as Sister Joan could make out the novice had genuinely enjoyed her life, had given nobody the slightest reason to suspect that she was planning to leave.
‘I brought you a piece of pie.’ Sister Perpetua came up, holding the triangular wedge wrapped in a paper napkin. ‘Sister Lucy mentioned that you never went to get anything from Sister Margaret.’
So much for not telling. Thanking her, Sister Joan took the pie and bit into it with relish. It was apple pie, faintly flavoured with cinnamon, and tasting even more delicious because she was starving.
‘Sister Joan was saying that she was interested in the reasons for novices deciding to leave the religious life,’ Sister Martha said. ‘We were speaking of Sister Magdalen.’
‘Oh, that was a great surprise,’ Sister Perpetua said promptly, sitting down. ‘She was always smiling. I was very surprised when she left.’
‘Did she say goodbye?’
‘Why, no. Those who leave the Order never do.’
‘I only thought – she was helping out during the influenza epidemic, not as isolated as novices usually are.’
‘Those were exceptional circumstances,’ Sister Martha said primly. ‘When the illness had run its course the novices naturally returned to the Novitiate.’
Clearly there was nothing to be gained by more questioning. The only ones who might know something were the three novices with whom Sister Magdalen had been in training, and there was no way of contacting them with Mother Emmanuel standing guard. It would be necessary to tell the pugnacious Johnny Russell that she had failed dismally. She finished off the slice of apple pie, wishing it were more, and reminding herself that now she must add greed to her general confession.
A word amid the conversations going on broke through her distraction. She raised her head sharply. Solstice. That word again, spoken casually by Sister Katherine who was embroidering smocking on what looked like a baby’s dress.
‘What did you say, Sister?’
Sister Katherine was young, in her mid-twenties, with an anonymous face. She answered at once in her calm low voice that matched the placid eyes.
‘I was just saying, Sister, that when I’ve finished this I must start on the Solstice costumes.’
‘Solstice is a pagan festival surely?’
‘To mark the longest day in the year,’ Sister Katherine nodded. ‘Oh, we don’t keep it as they did in the old days. Of course not. The local farmers keep up the tradition of having a picnic on that day and choosing a solstice queen. We hold a bazaar and help out with the costumes. The Catholic population in this area is small and scattered. This gives them a chance to get together and some of the Protestants join in, which is good for ecumenical relations.’
Sister Joan wanted to argue that Christmas and Easter were surely the obvious festivals on which people could get together, but the Church had always made use of pagan feasts, building the new upon the old, turning local gods into obscure saints. There was nothing here to worry her save the feeling that, in her passion for the past, this Prioress was not merely looking back with nostalgia but actually regressing.
‘Evil is an absolute only in heaven,’ her own Novice Mistress had said. ‘Those people who sacrificed their children to Moloch were not evil. They were worshipping in the manner they believed would please their gods. The world has evolved since then. For us to turn back the clock would be evil because we would be closing our eyes to the deeper wisdom we have attained over the centuries. Evil is a turning back on the road to perfection.’
‘I’m sorry to come so late to Recreation.’
Reverend Mother Ann had glided in, bringing with her the elegance and charm that made Sister Joan feel uncomfortable as if her Superior were playing the role of a model nun in some play or other.
‘We were talking about Solstice,’ Sister Perpetua said, adding defiantly, ‘Not that I agree it should still be encouraged.’
‘Sister Perpetua is the Puritan among us,’ Reverend Mother Ann said lightly. ‘She will be reminding us next that holly and mistletoe derive from the ancient Druid faith and were merely grafted on to Christmas. I was called away to the telephone.’
‘Not bad news, Reverend Mother?’ Sister Martha looked anxious.
‘No, no.’ The Prioress seated herself, the folds of her purple habit falling gracefully from her narrow waist. ‘It was from Sister Magdalen – Brenda Williams, I ought to say.’
‘She telephoned you?’ Sister Joan couldn’t repress the startled question.
‘Sister Felicity actually answered the phone. We were going over the supplies of aspirin and indigestion tablets she needs when she stocks up on her first-aid cupboard. How nuns can possibly suffer from indigestion! Where was I? Oh, yes. The child rang me up from some Commune somewhere or other. She wanted me to inform her parents that she has joined some cult or other, one of those free-love places where children and everything else are held in common. Quite shocking, but also unfortunately attractive to young people.’
‘Where is this commune?’
Sister Joan was glad that Sister Perpetua had asked the question.
‘She wouldn’t be specific,’ Reverend Mother Ann said. ‘Somewhere in Wales, I believe. I felt very strongly that she ought to telephone them herself but she refused. She is probably afraid that they will persuade her to go home.’
‘Are you going to telephone them?’ Sister Perpetua asked.
‘To set their minds at rest,’ the other said. ‘Of course they have been imagining her still in the Novitiate and I was under the impression that she had returned home to Derbyshire. Our responsibility for her ended when Sister Felicity drove her to the station. The problem is that I still feel responsible though there’s no reason for it.’
‘You are too kind-hearted, Reverend Mother Ann,’ Sister Dorothy put in.
‘Is that a fault? I plead guilty then.’ The Prioress laughed softly, hand to her mouth.
‘I read once that when any virtue is carried to excess it becomes a vice,’ Sister Lucy said.
‘And what’s your virtue run to vice?’ Sister David asked her teasingly.
‘Arranging flowers,’ Sister Lucy said promptly. ‘I am apt to spend hours and hours on the flowers in the chapel until sometimes I forget to come to supper.’
‘I spend too much time writing up my spiritual diary,’ Sister David said. ‘I am always trying to express what I mean to say in the most perfect language possible, forgetting that it isn’t meant to be a masterpiece.’
The talk, light and inconsequential, went on. Sister Joan, a vague pattern forming on the piece of canvas, thought of spiritual diaries. Every nun kept a private record of her spiritual struggles and progress or lack of it. When she died the diary was kept in the convent files for one never knew when evidence might be required in the event of a possible enquiry into the cause for canonisation of someone or other. She suspected that some diaries were written with an eye towards that possibility. Sister Sophia would have written such a diary. It would be in the private files, accessible only to the Prioress and to any Church officials who might later request it.
‘What of you, Sister Joan?’ Reverend Mother Ann spoke gaily. ‘What is your besetting virtue?’
‘Too much enjoyment of good food,’ Sister Joan said, neatly sidestepping what she sensed was a challenge.
‘One would never guess it from your figure.’
‘That’s because none of my virtues is excessive,’ she parried.
‘I don’t follow this at all. It’s far too clever for me,’ Sister Martha said humbly. The dark, smiling eyes flicked towards her.
‘Of course not, dear,’ the Prioress said with viperish gentleness. ‘Sister Perpetua, you have not told us your virtue yet.’
‘Truth,’ said Sister Perpetua. Her reddish brows were knitted and the crumples in her white skin sharp as pleats in linen. ‘I am never satisfied with less, Reverend Mother.’ Now why didn’t I have the courage to say that instead of evading the issue with clever talk? Sister Joan felt a pang of shame.
‘What is truth? said jesting Pilate,’ the Prioress said, rising. ‘Come, it is supper time which will give Sister Joan a chance to indulge her virtue to excess.’