Vow of Sanctity (10 page)

Rising, she approached the altar, passed within the rail and went into the sacristy. The door was closed but not locked and within all was in order, cassocks and stoles hanging limply along the wall, Prayer Books piled neatly on a shelf. She crossed to the door of the crypt, opened it and switched on the light.

Not a mote of dust moved in the empty stillness. She went down the stone steps, found and lit the half burnt candle and held it high as she went on along the tunnel until she rounded the corner and came into the vaulted chamber where the long dead abbots sat in lonely contemplation.

‘And now to find out,’ she said under her breath.

She walked forward to where the seated figure was – had been. Her hand shook violently and hot wax from the candle dripped hurtingly on to her flesh as she stared at the empty alcove.

A dead body, no matter how well preserved by the dry air, couldn’t just get up and walk away. Her common sense told her that. Which meant that someone had removed it – up the stairs into the church when the rest of the community was occupied elsewhere? Or up the further steps into the enclosure itself? She bent, squatting close to the stone floor, the candle flame picking out the faint scratches as of shoes sliding over the ground. Too faint to constitute proof of anything at all, she thought, and shivered as the electric light went out and her tiny flame became her own defence against the darkness.

She rose, fighting down a sudden, completely irrational terror, that if she looked behind her she would see, shadowless in the flickering light, the figure of the robed man in the modern shoes with empty eyesockets glaring.

She turned to face the emptiness she knew was there, and made her way to the wall where the second light switch was, pressing it down and scolding herself for the relief that flooded her.

‘If you could only talk.’

Even as her lips shaped the wistful thought and her eyes ranged over those other seated figures she felt the last rags of primitive superstition tug at the neat hem of her civilized self.

If one of them were to speak, to point her in a particular direction with skin-shrouded bone fingers – she crossed herself as a barrier against stupid fears and went with slow, measured steps towards the tunnel again. She left the candle on its ledge, blew out the flame, checked that the light from the bulb would last a little while longer by pressing down on the switch again, and then went steadily on up the steps and into the church again.

The body had gone which meant that in practical terms she had nothing to report. There should have been relief in that but she felt inside herself the slow burning of anger. Someone was playing tricks and she suspected that the tricks were directed at her – or possibly employed to drive her away from the island, to discourage her curiosity. She knelt down by the altar rail and buried her face in her hands while thoughts threaded themselves like beads on a rosary along the loom of her mind. The body was that of a man who had died fairly recently – how recently she couldn’t possibly tell since the natural process of decomposition had been arrested; someone had placed the body in the crypt, reckoning on its not being noticed among the others since the vault was so seldom visited; someone had spied on her during mass and later, when she had waited for the abbot to escort her into the parlour; someone had crept into the scriptorium and turned the pages of the illuminated manuscript to the section dealing with the legend of Black Morag; someone had grasped her hand in the darkness of the crypt. Someone, someone. But who?

She crossed herself and rose.

Brother Cuthbert was waiting outside, though waiting which suggested impatience was scarcely applicable to the cheerful and casual manner in which he leaned against the wall, his eyes fixed on the grey sky with as much pleasure as if he beheld a blue one with scudding white clouds.

‘I didn’t like to interrupt your devotions, Sister,’ he said as she emerged from the church. ‘The rain’s easing but it might be wise to wrap the plastic around yourself.’

‘I don’t have it, Brother. I left it over the wall near the beehives,’ she said. ‘I assumed that you had taken it.’

‘I had to rush off to examine my conscience,’ Brother Cuthbert said. ‘It wasn’t on the wall so I thought you’d forgotten it or something.’

‘No, I draped it over the wall,’ she repeated. ‘There wasn’t any wind and it was heavy anyway.’

‘One of the other brothers must have taken it indoors then. Shall I run and find out?’

‘A shower of rain won’t make me melt,’ she protested. ‘Shall we go to the boat?’

‘At your service, Sister.’ He straightened up, took the stalk of grass he had been nibbling out of his mouth and looked at it in some dismay. ‘Now isn’t that just typical of me! Wednesday is always a fast day and there I go, chewing. There are times when I wonder how it is that I can keep the big rules without any problems but the little ones defeat me – not that fasting is unimportant but chewing a bit of grass seems trivial.’

‘No sin,’ said Sister Joan primly, ‘is trivial.’

‘So Father Abbot says,’ Brother Cuthbert mourned, looking less cheerful.

‘And not all of them are capital offences either,’ Sister Joan said briskly. They glanced at each other and grinned wryly.

‘That’s odd.’ They had reached the boat and he frowned at it.

‘What’s odd?’ she enquired.

‘There must have been a wind or something. I tied her up with two knots the way that I always do and now she’s only secured by one. See?’

‘Can wind untie knots?’

‘I wouldn’t have thought so, but you never know. But the wind had dropped by this morning anyway.’

‘Someone took the boat out then.’

‘I’m the only one who generally does and then it always has to be with Father Abbot’s permission.’

‘Then you forgot and only tied one knot.’

‘I’m positive I didn’t – oh well, it’s of no real importance. Let me help you down, Sister.’

Helped into the boat she wound her scarf around her head
to protect her veil from the spray and tried to answer her companion’s occasional remarks sensibly as he rowed her back to the shore. Her thoughts strayed elsewhere.

The body had gone and with it her chance of going to the police – since any tale she told would be regarded as hysterical nonsense. The plastic sheet used to cover corpses until their burial was also gone. Someone had tied up the boat with only one knot instead of two.

‘When the examination of conscience takes place,’ she said cunningly, ‘I always feel so silly confessing before my sisters. I have such mean little faults – inattention during prayers, speaking before I think about it, not having any patience with people who are slower than me.’

‘I think you’re probably being too hard on yourself, Sister,’ he demurred. ‘In our community we don’t have general confession except during Lent, so at least we are spared the embarrassment during the rest of the year of knowing that all our stupidities are known to all the others. Four of us are ordained priests so we can make our confession privately – unless one has done something awful like breaking the grand silence which affects the spirituality of the whole monastery.’

So it would have been possible for any of the brothers to slip away down to the crypt, to wrap the body in the sheet of heavy plastic and lift it or drag it away – where?

‘Do you need some help, Sister?’

She started slightly at his voice, realizing that the boat had scraped against shingle.

‘Oh no, thank you, I’m fine. I – er won’t be coming over to the island tomorrow, by the way. I need to give the paint time to dry and I need even more to catch up on my devotions. Could you ferry me across again on Friday morning?’

‘A pleasure, Sister. Rowing is splendid exercise for me – and Father Abbot tells me that I can take out the boat whenever you need it. Watch your step now. God bless.’

‘Don’t chew any more grass until tomorrow,’ she warned smilingly as she watched her step and disembarked neatly.

There was a fine mist hanging over the loch. When she glanced back she saw the boat with its muscular occupant like the fragment of a dream.

‘God bless,’ she said absently and turned to crunch her way
along the shoreline, thinking sombrely that someone, at least, must be in particular need of blessing.

‘Sister, wait a minute!’

She turned as behind her Morag trotted along the beach. For the other wet weather clearly held no terrors. Her long hair was jewelled with sea mist and she wore only thick sweater and breeches that clung damply to her slender frame. Sister Joan had the sudden bizarre notion that girl and horse had just risen up out of the sea.

‘I saw the monk rowing you ashore,’ Morag said, reining in.

‘Yes.’ Sister Joan paused as Morag dismounted, holding out her hand and adding cordially, ‘And good afternoon. The rain seems to be clearing.’

‘Aye but there was a haar earlier.’ The other hesitated, then shook hands briefly and reluctantly, the colour rising in her face as she went on, ‘Actually I wanted a word. My father thinks I was – off-hand with you the other night. Not welcoming. I promised I’d apologize.’

‘There really isn’t any need.’ Sister Joan, feeling dreadfully embarrassed, felt her own colour rising in sympathy. ‘The meal was delightful. I’m jealous of your culinary skills.’

‘I like cooking.’ Morag looked pleased. ‘It was the only thing that I was good at in school. Sometimes I’ve thought that it might be quite fun to run an hotel but one needs more than a liking for cookery to do that – and it would hardly be the thing, would it? To turn the manse into an hotel?’

‘What does your father think?’ Sister Joan enquired cautiously.

‘My father thinks that I ought to get married.’ Morag made a little grimace of distaste. ‘He isn’t very sociable anyway. His asking you over was a sop to hospitality, that’s all.’

‘And there was I imagining that he looked forward to my sparkling conversation,’ Sister Joan said mildly.

Morag bit her lip and gave an unwilling laugh.

‘Sorry,’ she said wryly. ‘I’m being rude again. No, he does want to lessen local tensions, show that it’s possible to believe different things and still get on with one’s neighbours.’

‘But you don’t agree?’

‘I speak as I find.’ The sulkiness was back in the other’s face. ‘I know it’s childish but there you are.’

Sister Joan wondered where precisely ‘there’ was. Morag Sinclair, unlike her father, seemed to have a rooted prejudice against Catholics. Yet it was she who had met the cowled figure, gone with him into the pine wood, and the torn piece of paper with its overheated words of passion had been found in the same place only the next day.

‘So, if you feel like coming again, do,’ Morag said.

‘That’s very kind of you but this is a spiritual retreat for me, which means cutting down on social activities no matter how tempting,’ Sister Joan said.

‘Well, at least you abide by your own rules,’ Morag said grudgingly.

‘I try. Most people do.’

‘Not everybody.’ Morag spoke stonily, turning to remount.

‘I’m sorry?’ Sister Joan tilted her head.

‘Rory McKensie’s father, for one,’ Morag said, averting her own face. ‘He had no regard for loyalty, did he?’

‘His going off and leaving his wife, you mean? We can’t judge unless we know all the circumstances, and his wife still hopes that he might come back.’

‘Dolly McKensie?’ Mounted now, Morag looked down at her with angry scorn in her face. ‘You weren’t fooled by that, were you? McKensie’s dead and his wife killed him.’

Before the other could answer she had dealt her horse a blow on the rump that sent him forward, pieces of shale flying up from beneath his speeding hooves.

Sister Joan had adored the reissue of
Gone
with
the
Wind
, and though she couldn’t entirely approve of Scarlett O’Hara’s moral standards, she had always thought that thinking about a problem later showed good sense though it wasn’t advice she found easy to take. Now, however, she squared her shoulders, stared after the retreating rider and said firmly, ‘I’ll think about it tomorrow.’

Then she climbed up the slopes to the steps below the cave, fixing her mind firmly on the theme she had chosen to meditate on – the loneliness of sanctity. That dark soul night endured in varying degrees even by those who weren’t saints had always chilled her imagination. To feel oneself entirely alone, deserted by one’s Creator, must be the most exquisite mental torture. She had known only the greyness of feeling her prayers falter and fall back to earth and even those periods were rare. As a novice she had been convinced that she was undergoing the dark night and had been firmly set right by her novice mistress who had said briskly, ‘Probably a touch of constipation, Sister. The change in diet often has that effect. Syrup of figs will settle that problem.’

Suddenly, achingly, she missed the company of her sisters. She had left the mother house in London more than a year before and been transferred to the Cornish house and while she missed her former prioress, Mother Agnes, she had, in the time since, learnt to appreciate the different qualities of Mother Dorothy, to look forward to the advice handed out by the old nuns in the infirmary, even to smile at Sister Martha’s over enthusiastic help at the precise moment it wasn’t needed.

She paused at the top of the steps and turned to look over the loch with the rain lifting like a curtain to reveal the sunlit
water. This was a beautiful place with a canker at its heart – the remnants of ancient prejudice, suspicion of murder, a vanished husband – not to mention a vanished body, she thought wryly.

All these things flung into her lap at the very time when she had looked forward to tranquillity! She heaved an involuntary sigh, scolding God silently for cluttering up her life with matters exceedingly temporal, and went inside, kneeling on the stone before the bare wall of rock, fitting her mind painfully to the theme of her meditation.

The shadows were lengthening when she rose, rubbing her cramped knees, and deciding that aiming at sanctity was hard on the joints. She was also hungry. A tin of soup heated up with a hunk of bread and a couple of apples would be a feast. She moved to open the heavy door and was immediately hailed by Rory McKensie who stopped halfway up the steps, calling out, ‘Sister Joan, my mother has asked me to come over and take you back for supper with us. I hope you’ll come because she doesn’t often have visitors.’

‘Well, I don’t –’ Sister Joan hesitated, then nodded. ‘It’s very kind of your mother to think of me and I’d like very much to come.’

‘I’ll wait at the bottom,’ Rory announced and scrambled down with the agility of a young colt.

She followed more circumspectly, having prudently put the torch in her bag. Stumbling homeward in the dark wasn’t her favourite occupation and it would be foolish to rely on Rory’s being gallant. The way in which he had framed the invitation made it very clear that it came from his mother.

‘You’re quite good on your feet, Sister,’ he said in reluctant compliment when she joined him.

‘For my advanced age, you mean? You and Brother Cuthbert both.’

‘Brother who?’

‘Cuthbert. He also considers me in my dotage.’

‘And you consider me to be a mere child,’ he retorted.

‘At twenty. Hardly. Anyway years have nothing to do with it. One of the nuns in my own convent is in her eighties and has more youth in her than a dozen teenagers.’

‘She sounds OK,’ he said cautiously.

‘She is. How nice of your mother to ask me to supper. I warn you that I have a hearty appetite.’

‘Don’t worry. She’s used to mine.’ He grinned suddenly, the dour lines of his face lifting into boyishness. ‘You went over to the manse last evening.’

‘I am becoming a gadabout, I fear. Why?’

‘You’ll have met Morag.’ He spoke gruffly, averting his gaze.

‘Ah yes,’ Sister Joan said mildly. ‘The ghostly Black Morag who rides into and out of the loch on her trusty steed, and is incidentally an excellent cook.’

‘Oh,’ said Rory, looking somewhat at a loss as if a rebuke he’d been anticipating hadn’t materialized.

They were walking through the gully now where the fading light purpled the rock. Sister Joan gave him a level look.

‘I wondered why you tried to mislead me,’ she said mildly. ‘Trying to frighten me a little bit with tales of hauntings, I daresay.’

‘I just didn’t want to talk about the present day Morag Sinclair,’ he said reluctantly. ‘I can’t stand her. She thinks that she and her father own the loch. She’s as proud as a peacock with nothing to show for it.’

‘And you are very attracted to her,’ Sister Joan said, adding hastily, ‘Not that it’s any of my business, of course.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Rory said.

‘Naturally not.’ Sister Joan prepared to mount the steps of the bridge.

‘We used to be good friends,’ Rory said, promptly
embarking
on the subject he had just eschewed. ‘Morag’s a couple of years older than I am but it never made much difference when we were younger even though I was a Catholic – well, a nominal one and her father was the minister – and then she went off to a boarding-school and it still didn’t matter because we used to get together in the holidays. To tell you the truth, at one time, I had the silly idea that I was in love with her – and it didn’t matter that my father had done a bunk – run off, I mean. I’d have married her when I was old enough and her father could have conducted the service because I’d lost my faith anyway.’

‘So you told me.’ Sister Joan resolved that if he craved disapproval he needn’t fish in her direction.

‘Anyway it made no difference in the end,’ Rory said, evidently deciding to throw caution to the winds and speak frankly. ‘A couple of years ago Morag took against me – told me that she didn’t want to see me again – not in the old way, that is. She wouldn’t tell me why. Said she’d decided it was a mistake; she wanted to meet other people etcetera, etcetera.’

‘Surely lots of people feel like that sometimes,’ Sister Joan said. ‘I mean a person sometimes needs time apart so they can decide if they really want to stay with their partners. You can’t blame Morag for that.’

‘But she didn’t go off to meet other people,’ Rory said. ‘She stayed here, keeping house for her father, riding about on that damn – dratted horse of hers as if she owned the
neighbourhood
. We used to talk about starting a riding stables together one day, perhaps combining it with an hotel – you know treks for tourists and that kind of thing. It would bring more revenue to the loch and the village. She could have gone off and done it by herself or made another career or – she stayed on.’

‘
La
belle
dame
sans
merci
hath me in thrall,’ Sister Joan said quietly.

‘Something like that.’ He was too young to smile at the quotation.

‘Have you ever tried to talk to her about it?’ Sister Joan asked.

He shook his head. ‘I’m not about to go running after someone who thinks I’m just a kid not to be taken seriously,’ he said. ‘Anyway you can see why I don’t want to talk about it. You won’t mention it to my mother? She never had much time for the Sinclairs anyway.’

‘I won’t say a word,’ she promised gravely.

They were walking up the village street between the shops and cottages. Curtains were already drawn and light beamed through the gaps into the street.

‘Hardly the Las Vegas of Scotland, is it?’ Rory said, recovering his cheerful manner.

‘I suppose people go to bed early here or, at any rate, get within doors?’ She glanced at him as they reached the top of the hill.

‘There isn’t much to do except a bit of night fishing. We
won’t have to go through the shop. There’s a side door.’

He was already pushing it open, ushering her down a passage and up a flight of stairs. At the top of them Dolly McKensie, her overall removed to reveal high-necked sweater and a flared skirt waited with a welcoming smile on a face to which she had applied a touch too much make-up in colours that didn’t exactly suit her. The effect was that of a portrait too hastily drawn from which the colours are already beginning to seep.

‘I hope you didn’t think it cheeky of me to ask you over at short notice?’ she said by way of greeting.

‘I was delighted to receive the invitation,’ Sister Joan said.

‘Come in then.’ Dolly held the door wider to allow her guest to pass into a fairly large living-room which evidently stretched over the shop beneath.

The room was comfortably warm with a brightly patterned carpet, a television set which Dolly hurriedly switched off, a three-piece suite piled with cushions and a round table set in formal fashion. The only pictures on view were two Corot prints over the fireplace and, on a small piano in one corner, a large framed photograph of a baby which, Sister Joan guessed, was Rory even before that young man pounced upon it, turning it face down with a reproachful, ‘Honestly, Mum, I told you to get rid of that. It’s embarrassing.’

‘At least you weren’t on a bearskin,’ Sister Joan said with a grin.

‘Take no notice of him, Sister.’ Dolly sounded faintly over hearty in the manner of many people unused to the
conversation
of the religious. ‘Sit down and make yourself comfortable, Sister. I’ve a nice piece of salmon for supper, so you’ll enjoy that.’

‘Indeed I shall,’ Sister Joan said, wondering why everybody offered her salmon, and promptly castigating herself for being ungrateful.

‘Tinned,’ said Dolly. ‘Not that tasteless fresh stuff. And there’s a trifle afterwards – is that all right?’

‘That’s more than all right. It’s sinful luxury,’ Sister Joan said, chuckling.

‘It must be getting very cold up in that cave,’ Dolly
continued
. ‘The place wouldn’t suit me even in the summer and
summer’s past.’

‘Oh, I’m used to roughing it a bit,’ Sister Joan said, easing herself closer to the edge of the overstuffed chair into which she had been guided.

‘It must be terrible,’ Dolly said, adding vaguely, ‘
Sublimation
, you know. Rory, do stop fidgeting about the place and get Sister Joan a glass of sherry. You’ll take a glass of sherry?’

‘A small one, please.’

The sherry was a vintage one. Sister Joan sipped it appreciatively, reminding herself that she hadn’t eaten all day and had best take care lest it went to her head. At the rate she was going she’d be the only nun in history to come back from a retreat as a full blown alcoholic.

‘Take a seat, Sister, and let me have your coat. Rory, you should have taken Sister’s coat,’ Dolly scolded.

‘Sorry.’ Rory hung it at the back of the door and pulled out a chair at the table.

Thankfully it was a hard chair. Sister Joan allowed her hostess to serve her with the bright pink salmon and the inevitable salad and new potatoes. Rory, looking ill at ease, had sat down at her other side and Dolly took her place with a brightly tinkling little laugh.

‘Isn’t this nice!’ she said. ‘Not as grand as the manse, of course, but there –’

‘Mother.’ Rory’s voice was warning. Dolly glanced at him, bit her lip and subsided.

‘I always think that the company matters more than the surroundings,’ Sister Joan said, jumping in with both feet.

‘And the Sinclairs aren’t exactly matey – no, Rory, it’s true. Mr Sinclair has kept himself to himself for as long as I can remember and his daughter thinks she’s better than the rest of us put together –’

‘Have some bread, Sister,’ Rory broke in. ‘Salt?’

‘Just bread, thank you.’ Sister Joan took a piece.

‘So how are you getting on up there then?’ Dolly asked with an air of reluctantly changing the subject.

‘Very well,’ Sister Joan said, ‘and the exercise I’m getting from climbing up and down is doing wonders for my figure.’

‘Oh, do you worry about that sort of thing?’ Dolly looked
surprised. ‘I wouldn’t have thought it mattered, your being a bride of Christ or whatever they call it.’

‘It’s healthier to be slim,’ Sister Joan said, ‘and I’ve never understood why Our Blessed Lord should be saddled with all the fat, plain women.’

Dolly gave her a shocked stare but Rory let out a guffaw, exclaiming, ‘You see, Mum, she’s just like a real person!’

‘Could a real person have another slice of bread?’ Sister Joan enquired. The bread came from a sliced commercial loaf and was tasteless enough to offset the too rich sauce in which the salmon was smothered.

They progressed to the trifle which was unexpectedly good.

‘Well, I’ll be off then.’ Rory was suddenly on his feet.

‘What about Sister?’ his mother asked.

‘I’ll be back in half an hour. I promised to help out with Jimmy’s bike. You don’t have to rush, do you?’ He looked at Sister Joan.

‘As long as I’m not too late – but I have a torch – the one I bought from your shop, as a matter of fact,’ Sister Joan remembered, ‘so I can easily take myself home if you’re delayed.’

‘I’ll try to get back.’ Rory ignored his mother’s frown and went out, taking his anorak from behind the door as he left.

‘Coffee or tea, Sister? I favour a nice cup of tea after salmon, don’t you?’ Dolly said, bustling her visitor back to the armchair.

‘A cup of tea is always welcome.’ Sister Joan hoped she would be able to lever herself up out of the chair when it was time to leave.

‘I just hope Rory hasn’t gone down to the loch.’ Dolly spoke restlessly, bringing in the tea. ‘I know he’s past twenty and shoulders a lot of responsibility for his age but when a boy gets crazy ideas about a girl – woman, I ought to say – that one never was a girl! Born ancient she was – like her mother.’

‘Catherine Sinclair, would that be? I saw her portrait when I was at the manse,’ Sister Joan said mildly. ‘She looked very like her daughter.’