Bad Faith (28 page)

Celia took a deep breath. “In some ways, that’s even harder.”

“Yes, I know.”

“But even if I wanted to return, I don’t think I can do that now. I’ve left the monastery without permission.”

“No one else knows you’re gone. For now, let’s get you back. We’ll figure out the rest tomorrow. But I promise I’ll speak to Reverend Mother on your behalf.”

With Celia holding on tight and Pax peeking happily around the windscreen, Sister drove quickly back to the monastery. The rain had stopped, and with luck, she’d still get an hour or so of sleep before having to rise. No one had ever accused her of being perky in the mornings, but on days when she didn’t get enough sleep, she could be decidedly grouchy. Tomorrow she’d have to work hard to avoid giving new meaning to that word.

Before she reached the gates Sister Agatha turned off the engine and they coasted in. She locked the gates behind them, parked the motorcycle, then hurried to the door of the monastery, Celia and Pax beside her. Cautioning Celia with a gesture to remain totally silent, she led the way inside. Maybe, if God smiled, they’d both make it to their cells without waking anyone else.

They’d made their way down the corridor and were just going around the corner when Sister Agatha suddenly noticed Reverend Mother. The abbess had pulled up a chair, and was sitting right outside Celia’s door, a small oil vigil lamp on the floor beside her and a rosary in her hands.

Sister Agatha stood there in muted shock. The Great Silence couldn’t be broken except in dire emergencies, but perhaps Mother would consider finding out where they’d been such an emergency.

Celia stared first at Reverend Mother, then at Sister Agatha, her eyes wide with alarm. But, mercifully, she didn’t break silence either.

Reverend Mother stood then, and with a nod of her head that spoke volumes about what tomorrow would bring, went wordlessly down the corridor. Moments later, they heard her door close softly.

Sister Agatha’s knees almost buckled. Taking a deep breath, she gestured for Celia to go into her cell, and then hurried inside her own, Pax trailing behind her.

Removing her veil and cincture, she lay down.
St. Michael glorious Prince, be mindful of us…
.
St Raphael guide us daily.
Tomorrow, when she faced Reverend Mother, she’d need all the help she could get. It couldn’t hurt to try to get a few angels on her side.

Sister Bernarda woke her a few minutes before the Matins bells. Sister Agatha felt every joint in her body creak and groan as she made her bed and quickly left her cell.

More awake than she’d dreamed she could be at that hour after her exertions of the night before, she hurried to prepare for what would undoubtedly be a very trying day.

As Sister Agatha stepped out of her room, Sister Eugenia appeared at the door, two pills in her hand and a small glass of milk in the other. She refused to budge until Sister Agatha had taken the medication. Then, wordlessly, she hurried back down the darkened hall toward the chapel.

After breakfast Sister Agatha went directly to Reverend Mother’s office. The prioress had a right to an explanation, but all things considered, Sister Agatha would rather have been stomped on by a herd of cattle than have to be the one to explain the events of last night.

Sister Agatha stopped outside Mother’s office, took a deep breath, and knocked.

As expected, she found Mother waiting for her. Visions of a firing squad came to her mind, but she pushed them back quickly.

Without preamble, she recounted everything that had happened the night before. “Mother, you’ve entrusted me with this postulant, and I’ve taken that responsibility very seriously. What she did was misguided, but her intentions were good. I truly believe that Celia has the heart of a nun. She belongs with us. She’ll have to pay a penalty for leaving, of course. Her postulancy will have to be extended now, but I think we should allow her to return to us.”

Reverend Mother nodded. “I tend to agree, but before I say more I’d like to speak to her myself.”

“Yes, Mother. Shall I send for her now?”

“Yes, but before you do, what are
your
plans for today? We still need answers, maybe even more than we did before. Will you be going to town?”

“Mother, I—” She stopped abruptly, uncertain of how much to say.

“Tell me what’s on your mind, child,” Reverend Mother said softly.

“I’m convinced that the answers I need now are here, Mother, not in town.”

“Then you believe, as the sheriff does, that it’s one of us? Whom do you suspect?” Reverend Mother asked.

She hesitated, but gathering her courage, answered. “Sister Mary Lazarus—though her motive still isn’t clear to me,” she said, and explained fully. “But, Mother, what I have is based on conjecture and hearsay—it’s certainly not something I can share with the sheriff. I have no proof.”

“All right Follow your instincts, child. But be careful.”

“Yes, Mother.”

Sister Agatha went directly to the scriptorium and, as she walked inside, saw Frank was there already working at a carrel with Mary Lazarus. Sister Bernarda was watching them. She said nothing, but the look on her face worried Sister Agatha.

“I have bad news, Mother Mistress,” Sister Mary Lazarus said, looking up and seeing her. “I started to use the computer with the library collection when I came in this morning, but it crashed again. I had most of my work on disks so I transferred it all to the other computer, the one that you’ve been using. But then it crashed too. I tried to reload your work into another computer, but it seems your backup disks are all corrupted and won’t reload. All your work …” She couldn’t bring herself to say more.

“The scanning work is lost?” Sister Agatha’s heart dropped to her stomach.

“We won’t know until I get this beast up and running again, but it may be,” Frank said.

Weeks of hard work, gone, just like that. Sister Agatha bit back tears of frustration. “We can’t afford to lose that work— or that computer. Do whatever you have to.”

Sister Bernarda joined her. “I’d like a word with you, Your Charity.”

As they stepped out into the hall leaving the door open so that their visitor would not be within the enclosure unsupervised, Sister Bernarda glanced back inside the room. Satisfied no one would hear them, she continued. “I have a very serious matter to discuss with you.”

“What’s happened?”

“We’d made a great deal of progress last night. This morning when Celia and I came in all the computers were working fine, and everything was in order. Then, when Sister Mary Lazarus joined us a few minutes later, first the computer she was working on crashed—that’s almost normal around here— but we couldn’t get it to boot up again. She wanted to call Frank immediately, but I held back. I wanted to take a look at it myself and see if maybe I could fix it. Then, in order not to lose more time, Sister Mary Lazarus tried to work on the one you’ve been using, but it crashed too.”

“Are you saying that you think she found a way to make them crash on purpose? But why?”

“I think she wanted to see Frank, Sister. And when Frank came—which he did almost right away—he insisted on having her help him.”

“Insisted?”

“Politely, but there it was. He said that he knew I was needed to supervise the postulant’s work and that Mary Lazarus could give him a hand more easily than I could. That was true, of course, but so is the fact that he really wanted to work with her.”

“Do you think they have feelings for each other?”

Sister Bernarda glanced at Pax, who had just come padding down the hall and, finding Sister Agatha, lay down by her feet. “I don’t know. But there’s something going on and, as I was watching them, a thought occurred to me. What if Sister Mary Lazarus has been meeting Frank after hours? We know she wanders about at night. Maybe she hasn’t been sleepwalking every time. And if she’s been leaving the door open when she wanders, almost anyone could have come into our monastery.” Sister Bernarda took a deep breath. “But now that I’ve said it, I feel guilty about having such uncharitable thoughts.”

“Leads are often nothing more than hunches played through. Don’t feel guilty. Just remember that we’re all fighting for the same thing—our monastery.”

When they stepped back into the scriptorium, Sister Agatha sat down across from Frank and Mary Lazarus. She said nothing, she simply watched them. Under her gaze, Frank managed to get one computer going in record time. The second computer followed a short time later. To everyone’s relief, no data had been lost.

“A memory problem,” Frank said as she walked him outside. “Will you make your deadline, Sister?”

“I think so,” she answered, “particularly since you were able to resuscitate the computers.”

“That’s good. I know you’ve all been working very hard and putting in all the time you can. Sister Mary Lazarus mentioned it to me.”

“I’d like to talk to you about Sister Mary Lazarus. This is a very difficult time for her. She is about to make some very important decisions about her future.” She paused then, meeting his gaze, and added, “Do you think she’ll stay with us, Frank? I know you two were close once.” Although she watched him carefully she couldn’t see any reaction to her comment or her question. He hid his thoughts well.

“She’s at a crossroads, as you say. But I think she’ll stay. Don’t you?”

He’d turned it right around on her. “I guess we’ll all just have to wait and see.”

After he’d left, Sister Agatha returned to the scriptorium. The phones wouldn’t be manned this morning. Nor would the monastery door be opened. It wasn’t a free day—one where no one worked—but Reverend Mother had given the externs and their team her blessing to work nonstop in the scriptorium. The money made on the quilt had gone to make the overdue loan payment for work done on the monastery and for a partial payment for work on the Antichrysler, but the fees they’d collect for their scriptorium work were now needed to help them catch up on other bills.

Today they would stop to observe the liturgical hours but for nothing else. Such progress would come at a price to Sister Agatha’s joints, but by the end of the day, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that, barring some fresh disaster, they’d make deadline on all scriptorium projects.

During recreation that evening, Sister Agatha found it hard to keep her eyes open. She was exhausted, but using the discipline she’d learned in more than a decade as a nun, she refused to give in to her weariness. One couldn’t command one’s own body by giving in to it. She sat on one of the benches outside and watched as Mary Lazarus went off on a walk by herself.

Sister Bernarda came up to join her. “I know you’re tired. Feel free to close your eyes. I’ll watch our novice for you.”

“If I close my eyes, I won’t wake up before morning,” she answered with a weary smile. “But there’s no need to keep really close tabs on Mary Lazarus anymore. If I know generally where she’s gone, I can still track her. I made a mark on her shoes,” she said, and explained further.

“Then I’ll talk to you so you can stay alert. There’s something on my mind I need to discuss.”

Sister Bernarda leaned down to stroke Pax’s massive head. “Do you remember last April, when Reverend Mother assigned us all our spring work duties? Sister Mary Lazarus specifically asked that she be allowed to continue caring for the flower beds.”

“Yes, I remember that well. It was a surprise to everyone after that terrible allergic reaction she’d had her first day in the gardens.” She stood, realizing that she’d lost sight of Mary Lazarus, and began walking around casually with Sister Bernarda, hoping to spot her again.

“The thought that occurred to me was this—what if it wasn’t an ordinary allergic reaction at all? What if she’d been handling monkshood? The toxicity of the plant itself might have caused the symptoms we saw.”

“You think she planted the monkshood?”

“Not necessarily. She might have simply found it accidentally, and only decided to take advantage of its properties later.”

Sister Agatha considered that possibility for several moments. “Celia pointed out some time ago that the monkshood on the alb was most likely intended to affect me, not Father Anselm. I just can’t see Sister Mary Lazarus wanting to harm me for any reason, can you?”

“Did she ever get particularly angry with you about something, or resent a task you’d asked her to do?”

Sister Agatha considered it carefully. “Not that I remember. Novice Mistresses can seem exacting, I know, but I really haven’t been hard on either of them.”

They continued walking and searching for the novice while trying to appear uninterested in everything but their own conversation. “There she is,” Sister Bernarda said at last, “on the far side of Sister Clothilde’s vegetable garden, near the wall.”

“What on earth is she doing back there? I better go have a look around there later. For right now, let’s head back. She’s turning this way, and I don’t want her to know she’s being observed.”

As Sister Bernarda fell into step again beside Sister Agatha, her silence spoke of her concerns more effectively than words could have. “What do we do next?” she asked at last. “How can I help?”

“Once recreation is over, take Celia and Mary Lazarus with you to Compline. I’ll stay out here for a bit longer and make use of the daylight that’s left.”

“To do what?”

“I want to check out the route Mary Lazarus walks during recreation. After last night’s rain, the ground should be soft enough to show the marks on the soles of her shoes.”

A half hour later, the bells rang for Compline. Sister Agatha saw Sister Bernarda signal for the novice and postulant to follow her as the nuns headed to chapel.

As arranged, Sister Agatha lagged behind. Then, while the nuns’ voices rose from choir, she made her way around the building to the spot by the wall where they’d seen Mary Lazarus. She searched the ground carefully, but there was no evidence of monkshood, not even any upturned earth that might have indicated someone had uprooted some plants recently.

Frustration and disappointment washed over her. She’d been so sure….

Unwilling to give up, she followed the novice’s tracks on the soft, sandy earth. At one point, from what she could see, the novice had gone around the building and in through the kitchen doors.