Fragrant Flower (21 page)

“She is expecting you,” the Nun answered in broken English.

Azalea wondered for one moment if she should run away now, but before she could make up her mind the heavy door had closed behind them and they were proceeding down a long, flagged passage with the Nun leading the way.

She was a very old woman, and judging by her appearance and the sound of her voice, Azalea guessed she must be Portuguese. They walked a long way, their feet seeming to echo in the cool quietness of the passage.

They passed a courtyard that was full of green plants, then on again along passages whitewashed and empty of all furniture.

At last the Nun stopped before a high door and knocked. A voice bade her in Portuguese to enter and the door was opened.

In a square room furnished only with several high-backed chairs, a plain oak table and a huge crucifix on the wall, was an elderly Nun dressed all in white with a rosary hanging from her waist.

“You are the Mother Superior?” Lady Osmund asked in English.

“I am, Lady Osmund,” the Nun answered in the same language. “Will Your Ladyship sit down?”

Lady Osmund sat down in front of the table.

The Nun made a little gesture with her hand towards Azalea who sat on another chair.

“You received General Sir Frederick Osmund’s letter?” Lady Osmund asked.

“The message arrived after midnight,” the Mother Superior replied, “and as the Sister on duty gathered it was urgent, she brought it straight to me.”

“It was in fact very urgent,” Lady Osmund said. “I think Sir Frederick made it very clear what we require.”

“I understood from his letter,” the Mother Superior said, “that you wish your niece, after instruction, to take the final vows.”

“That is our wish,” Lady Osmund said firmly.

“No!” Azalea cried. “If that is what you have planned for me, Aunt Emily, I will not agree! I will not become a Nun!”

It was frightening that neither the Mother Superior nor Lady Osmund even looked at her – they just ignored her outburst.

“As Sir Frederick will have explained,” Lady Osmund said, “there is no other course where this girl is concerned. He has, I am sure, spoken of her misdemeanours and the fact that she is beyond our control?”

“Sir Frederick wrote very fully,” the Mother Superior answered.

“Then I feel I can leave her in your hands,” Lady Osmund said. “You have a reputation, I believe, for dealing with young women who are in need of correction?”

“We have been successful in many instances,” the Mother Superior agreed.

“Then may I say that my husband and I are deeply grateful to you for taking this girl in your charge. We feel sure she will be brought to a better state of mind than we have succeeded in creating.”

“And we are grateful,” the Mother Superior said, “for the dowry which Sir Frederick enclosed, and which will be used for the good of our Order.”

“You understand,” Lady Osmund said, “that we have no wish ever to hear of this girl again. It is, I believe, unnecessary for her to keep her own name, nor will it be recorded in your Register.”

“That is correct,” the Mother Superior answered. “We are an enclosed Order. Your niece will be baptised into the Catholic faith with a name we will choose for her. Her surname will cease to exist from that moment. She will thereafter be addressed only as she has been newly christened.”

Azalea looked from one to the other.

She could not believe that what she was hearing was true. It was impossible that they should be planning her whole life, her whole future in these few sentences!

She rose to her feet, and as she would have run towards the door, the Mother Superior said in a tone of authority,

“If you try to run away you will be forcibly restrained.”

Azalea paused and turned back, her face very pale, her eyes enormous.

“I cannot stay here,” she said. “I do not wish to become a Nun, and I will not be a Catholic!”

“God and your Guardians know what is best for you.”

“But it is not best,” Azalea said. “I have no desire to be confined here.”

Lady Osmund rose to her feet.

“This is very distressing and unnecessary,” she said. “My husband and I have done our duty. We can do no more. I leave this girl and her wickedness entirely in your hands.”

“I understand,” the Mother Superior said, “and I promise you that we shall pray for her and for you also, my Lady.”

“Thank you,” Lady Osmund replied with dignity.

She walked towards the door, passing Azalea as she did so, but she did not even look at her.

The door was opened before she could touch it, and Azalea knew that the Nun outside had been waiting for her to leave.

She turned towards the Mother Superior.

“Please listen to me,” she pleaded, “please let me – explain what has happened and why I have been – brought here.”

“There will be plenty of time later for me to hear all you have to say,” the Mother Superior answered. “Now I want you to come with me.”

She walked from the room, and because there was nothing else she could do, Azalea followed her.

There were several Nuns waiting outside in the passage and she had the feeling that they were there to prevent her from running away and to force her, if necessary, to behave as they wished.

Again there was a long walk down vast, empty corridors until they came to a row of doors, each with a grid in its centre. Azalea was sure they were the Nuns’ cells.

A Sister carrying a key hurried forward to open one of the doors.

It was the tiniest room Azalea had ever seen!

There was one window, very high up, which had a view only of the sky. There was a wooden bed, a ewer and basin on a deal table. There was one hard chair and, on the wall, a crucifix.

“This is your cell,” the Mother Superior said.

“But I want to say – ” Azalea began.

“I have heard of your behaviour,” the Mother Superior interrupted, “and I know how deeply you have distressed those who have tried to be kind to you. Because of what I have learnt, I want to give you time to think about your sins and to repent of them. You will see no one for six days.”

Her expression was severe as she went on,

“Your food will be brought to you, but you will have no communication with anyone outside this cell. Once a day you will be taken to a courtyard for exercise. After that you will continue to meditate on your sins and your immortal soul. Then I will see you again.”

As she finished speaking, the Mother Superior went from the cell and the door closed behind her.

There was the click of the key turning in the lock, then the sound of the Nuns’ footsteps as they walked away down the corridor.

Azalea listened until they faded into the distance.

Then there was only silence – a silence in which she could hear her heart breaking.

Chapter Eight

“I have been here for five days,” Azalea said to herself as the sun rose to illuminate her bare cell with a glimmer of gold.

It might have been five months, five years, or even five centuries.

She felt as if she had ceased to exist, as if she were living in a void where there was no time and no future.

The first night, when she had been left alone in the cell, she had cried desperately, conscious that she was not only frightened but also losing hope.

How could she ever be saved, ever be rescued from this prison that was more inviolable than any gaol could be?

She knew that the Nuns who entered an enclosed Order were forgotten by the world, and once they passed through the door of the Convent they had no further contact with their relations or their friends.

Her uncle and aunt had been very clever, Azalea thought, in removing her so quickly from Hong Kong and incarcerating her here.

It would, she was certain, be quite impossible for Lord Sheldon to find her.

Even if he disbelieved the letter she had been forced to write to him, even if he received the feather of the blue magpie she had handed to Ah Yok, he would still be up against an impenetrable wall of secrecy.

Azalea was quite certain that, where the Nuns were concerned, there would be no gossip.

The Mother Superior would make sure that she became as anonymous as her uncle and aunt wished, and Azalea feared despairingly that sooner or later they would wear down her resistance – she would become a Catholic, and take her final vows simply because there was no alternative.

Her day began at five o’clock when a bell clanged in the Convent, echoing down the empty passages.

She would hear the Nuns hurrying along to what she knew was a call for the first Service of the day.

Far away in the distance she would hear them chanting, their voices intoning the prayers.

At six o’clock her cell door was opened and an elderly Nun brought her a broom and a bucket with which she cleaned her cell.

The Nun did not speak. She only made it obvious what she expected and Azalea found that every other day she had to go down on her knees and scrub the bare boards.

The first morning after she had been awakened, the same Nun had taken away her clothes and left in their stead a black cotton habit, so shapeless and ugly that Azalea had looked at it in horror.

There were coarse calico underclothes to wear beneath, rough and unbleached so that with every movement they hurt the soreness of her bruised and swollen back.

The nightgown they had given her had been of the same material, and after spending an intolerable hour in it Azalea had taken it off and crept back into bed naked.

Thick cotton stockings and serviceable leather shoes completed the outfit, and a postulant’s veil of thin black material covered her hair and fastened at the nape of her neck.

Since there was no mirror in the cell, Azalea could not see herself, but she was well aware of what she must look like, and she thought with a little sob that dressed as she was now, no one would call her ‘Fragrant Flower’.

The elderly Nun intimated that she must draw back her hair in a tight bun at the back of her head, and as she obeyed the unspoken order, Azalea remembered that when she took her vows her hair would be cut off and her head shaved!

Every feminine instinct in her body revolted at the thought!

When the cell was cleaned to the satisfaction of the Nun watching her, food was put inside the door and Azalea was left alone.

At first she decided that she would not eat, then sheer hunger forced her to accept what was brought with monotonous regularity.

For breakfast there was the coarse dark bread that peasants commonly ate in Europe and which Azalea knew was nourishing. With it came a small slice of goat’s cheese, and one day a few black olives.

At ten o’clock the Nuns attended Chapel again and Azalea could hear them chanting for what seemed to her to be a long time.

At eleven o’clock it was time for exercise, and Azalea was taken from her cell into a small courtyard.

The walls rose high on two sides of it and on the top of them Azalea could see there were spikes of jagged glass which glittered in the sunshine like jewels, but which would be exceedingly dangerous to anyone who attempted to scale them.

The walls were very high and menacing, and there were no trees near them.

Azalea, looking at them speculatively, knew it would be impossible for anyone to climb them, however agile he might be.

The courtyard contained no flowers, but there were some shrubs which grew wild and luxuriantly, similar to those she had seen in Hong Kong, and these were in bloom.

They had small white blossoms not unlike lilac, and there was a faint scent about them. Otherwise the courtyard was severe and ugly, and the grass, although it was early in the season, was already browning in the heat of the sun.

Azalea wondered if perhaps it was part of her punishment that there was to be only austerity and ugliness about her and that beauty was another worldly pleasure which was forbidden.

At exactly half-past eleven she was taken back to her cell and locked in. There was then nothing to do but wait until the second meal of the day was brought to her at noon. This consisted of soup, sometimes containing fish, but mostly of vegetables that Azalea did not recognise, and with it a small bowl of rice.

The same ingredients appeared for supper at six o’clock, and the hours in between seemed interminable.

If only they would allow her books, Azalea thought, she would have been able to read and think of something else besides her own misery.

But she knew it was part of the plan that she should, as the Mother Superior had said, “meditate upon her sins and repent of them.”

She decided with the last flickering embers of her defiance she would never repent of having loved Lord Sheldon. She would sit thinking of him, sending her thoughts winging towards him.

She imagined them being carried over the sea between Macao and Hong Kong, so that perhaps he would think of her and wonder where she could be and how he could see her again.

At night Azalea would imagine that his arms were around her and his lips were on hers.

Sometimes she would feel a little flicker of the fire he had awoken in her re-echoing in her breast. Then she would remember miserably that this was all she would have to sustain her through the long years ahead, and she wanted only to die.

Kai Yin Chang had been ready to kill herself rather than be defamed, but Azalea thought helplessly that there was no way that she could do the same.

Besides, she could not help remembering how she had told Kai Yin that it was wrong and wicked to take one’s own life, and that the British always believed that ‘where there was life there was hope!’

Sometimes when the night seemed very long and dark she would tell herself a story in which Lord Sheldon climbed over the wall when she was walking in the courtyard and carried her away to safety.

But her practical mind told her that this was impossible. Besides, she was certain that even if she could haul herself up on a rope and avoid the sharp points of glass on the top of the wall, someone looking through the windows of the Convent was bound to notice her.