Quiet as a Nun (20 page)

Our plans. That was it. I had to face the fact - that Skarbek had an accomplice within the convent itself. A highly efficient accomplice or as he himself described her, an intelligent female. Someone who had nightly opened the crypt door to let in the Black Nun. Not Beatrice O'Dowd, who was no longer an inmate of the convent, free to come and go as she pleased. Besides, I believed Skarbek when he said that Beatrice, foolish clothes and all, was still in her own way animated by love, or at least idealism. "Very easily led,' Mother Ancilla had said. In more ways than one, I was beginning to think that the Reverend Mother's opinions represented the most solid canon of common sense in this unquiet convent.

'And so Jemima, I must leave you. I must go once more among the brides of Christ.'

I watched the Black Nun depart. His figure in its habit soon melted into the darkness of the crypt staircase. At least he left the lower door open. The candles flickered. I prayed - yes, prayed to something or someone - that they would not go out. And leave me alone and helpless in the darkness. No smoking, no praying, where now were the principles of a lifetime, I asked myself. Come on, Jemima. It was a grim attempt at humour. At least it might help me to survive.

I had many reasons to wish to survive. For one thing, I now knew where the last will and testament of Rosabelle Powerstock was hidden.

16

Healing hands

He was gone. I was alone in the crypt with the coffins - and the statue of the Blessed Eleanor - for company. I heard the upper sacristy door shut. I was entombed. There was silence.

Only minutes later, it could not have been more, there was a noise. It sounded like that same sacristy door opening. Yes, and now footsteps down the stairs again. Why? Had Skarbek forgotten something, or had he perhaps thought better of leaving me in the crypt? Was I destined for the tower straight away ... All these questions thronged through my mind, none of them arousing very pleasant images, as the light footsteps descended the stairs.

A nun stood framed in the doorway. It was not, I thought, Skarbek. So far as I could be sure against the limited light of the candles. The crypt light flicked on.

'Why Miss Shore’ said a familiar voice. 'Whatever are you doing here?'

It was Sister Agnes.

A lesser woman might have screamed. Or amplified her question. At least she might have cried out: whatever are you doing there tied up with ropes, with two candles beside you, confined to a grille in a crypt, backing onto a multitude of ancient coffins. Not so, Sister Agnes.

'Oh dear, oh dear,
¹
was all she said, moving swiftly across the crypt to my side. 'Poor Miss Shore. Poor dear Miss Shore.' From her tone she might have been sympathising with a child who had fallen over and cut her knees.

'Free me, Sister Agnes, free me please.'

'Of course, Miss Shore, of course I'll free you.' Her delicate strong fingers were already plucking at the rope.

'There's a knife somewhere. On the floor over there.' Sister Agnes bent down and came up with a cigarette stub. She wrinkled her nose. Then she found the knife. She straightened and held it towards me - for a moment, I even thought—

But Sister Agnes quickly and competently cut the rope. I was free. Dusty, stiff, still terrified, but free. She put the knife down on the
prie-dieu.

'You must have help,' she said.

'We must both have help,' I replied earnestly. 'Tell me, first of all, is Tessa all right?'

'Tessa? But she ran away. You remember—'

'No, no, she didn't run away. Anyway she's back. Oh, God, don't tell me he's got Tessa—'

'There's no sign of Tessa Justin upstairs in the dormitory, I assure you. But we can deal with that later. First, I must help you upstairs. Why, you're in the most distressing state.'

Once more Sister Agnes began to cluck, and dust my clothes. I felt her healing hands cross my brow for the second time; she had rescued me before, and was experienced in how to soothe me. Then carefully and I thought disapprovingly, Sister Agnes blew out the candles which had constituted my shrine.

'How dreadful,' said Sister Agnes. It wasn't clear whether she meant the whole enterprise or just the candles themselves.

'Now I shall help you back up the stairs.'

I thought: we've done this before too, as the young nun put her arm round my shoulders and began to aid me back up the winding stair to the sacristy. Once inside, there was no light on. That was odd. Perhaps Sister Agnes, like Sister Boniface, had not wanted to alarm the whole convent. But in my opinion, growing rapidly in urgency, the sooner the whole convent was alarmed, the better.

Where was the switch? I felt round to the door, found it. The sacristy flooded with light. Sister Agnes moved quickly round after me and switched it off again.

'Please Miss Shore,' she said. 'Not yet. Here's your torch. I found it on the floor. Use that if you like. We nuns can see in the dark, you know.' As Sister Boniface had observed to me earlier. Sister Boniface. Surely the old nun would have sent someone by now to my rescue.

'I left Sister Boniface here in the chapel—' I began.

'Hush, hush, Miss Shore. Don't worry about Sister Boniface. If she was praying here, and has gone, she was probably needed by Mother Ancilla. Our Reverend Mother is gravely ill and Sister Boniface is by convent tradition her deputy. Until the new Reverend Mother is chosen.'

She sounded amazingly matter-of-fact about the prospect of her superior's imminent death. But one expected nuns to be matter-of-fact about death. It was Sister Agnes's calm approach to my own predicament which confused me. To say nothing of the missing child.

'But Tessa Justin, I
found
her. And now what's happened to her? You don't understand what's going on here, Sister Agnes.'

By way of answer Sister Agnes opened the sacristy door to the chapel. We were once more in the religious light of the sanctuary and its candles. Candles in their proper place in front of a proper shrine. It was a great relief to me to find myself back in the ornate Victorian chapel, away from that mediaeval nightmare of crypts, secret passages and towers.

The chapel, so far as I could see, was empty. I devoutly hoped - not quite the cliche the phrase usually was - that no-one was lurking behind the far pillars. No Black Nun within the distant shadows.

Sister Agnes paused by the first pew.

'No, Miss Shore,' she said. 'I think it is you who doesn't understand quite what is going on here.' Then she guided me out of the chapel by the visitors' door. 'Come, we must go to your room.'

There was great authority in her low voice. I felt mesmerised by her. Far more mesmerised than I had felt while in the power of Alexander Skarbek. Her personality was hypnotic. In her mixture of tranquillity and strength, combined with her physical resemblance to my dead friend, I found all the qualities I had once sought, and sought in vain, in Rosabelle.

I tried once more a feeble protest.

'Don't you think the infirmary - Tessa—'

'No.'

We went in silence up the stairs. Sister Agnes opened the door of my room. She settled me in my chair, taking my coat, dusting the skirt of it again, and finally placing it on the bed. It look dishevelled, and as I felt, forlorn as a result of its experiences in the passage.

'Listen to me, Miss Shore. I have to leave you here for a while. There is something I have to do. Someone I have to see. Please stay here.' She paused and placed one hand on mine. It was a clasp whose warmth and firmness reminded me not so much of Rosabelle as of Mother Ancilla.

'Promise me that whatever you do, you won't leave this room until I return. Is there a key? Good. Then lock your door. And don't let anyone in.'

I was only too delighted at the idea of locking my door. I had absolutely no wish to admit any of the sinister nocturnal ramblers at Blessed Eleanor's. Above all, not the Black Nun. Still roaming somewhere loose in the corridors, the rooms, the passages. Maybe even in the empty guest room next to mine. I shivered. I would lock my door all right.

'Trust me, Miss Shore,' concluded Sister Agnes solemnly. 'It won't be for very long. I shall come back. Later. We have so much to talk about.' She was the second person that evening to use those same words.

I ought to warn her—

'The Black Nun—' I began desperately.

'Later. Lock your door.' Sister Agnes departed. I was abandoned to the three holy pictures on the walls, where the Botticelli Virgin still looked at me with her expression of detached pity, the Titian Madonna still offered cherries to her child, and an Angel was, as ever, arrested in mid act of announcing impending pregnancy to the maiden Mary. Then there was the Treasury of the Blessed Eleanor, described by Alex Skarbek as intolerably dull. I could do with a little dullness, I decided. I picked it up. No white marker this time to mark my place. I turned a few pages, was guiltily inclined to agree with Skarbek, then went to the brief life at the back of the book.

'Of all the holy women under her care, Dame Ghislaine le Tourel was the one for whom our foundress had the most tender love,' I read. 'Blessed Eleanor loved in Dame Ghislaine le Tourel the blessed reflection of Our Saviour Jesus Christ, which she loved in duty bound wheresoever she found it, and most of all she found it in Dame Ghislaine le Tourel.'

The reflection of Christ - who was I to say that was not the truth of their relationship? It was, as we all agreed, a very long time ago. The anonymous author of this charitable nineteenth-century life was just as likely to be right as a later historian. A non-believer. And a man. His insights into the mentality of mediaeval nuns were as likely to be limited as mine were. The relationship of Rosabelle and Beatrice O'Dowd had turned out to be an innocent one. Why not then give the benefit of the doubt to Blessed Eleanor and Dame Ghislaine?

I read on.

Then I saw the handle of my door turning. It turned and did not give. There was a little rattle. My visitor seemed to be disconcerted to find the door was locked.

I heard a voice, very low but not whispering, outside the door: 'Miss Shore, Miss Shore, are you there?'

'Yes, I'm here. Who is it?'

'Oh thank God you're all right. Thanks be to God. I've been so worried. I didn't know where you were. I didn't know what to do. Tessa Justin came rushing to the infirmary in the most ghastly state—'

It was Sister Lucy.

With a great sigh of relief, I jumped up and unlocked the door. Sister Lucy was outside, panting. She came in, and recovered her breath.

'You're safe. Thank Heaven. I haven't known what to think. You see Tessa Justin reappeared a while ago, running to me with some extraordinary story about Black Nuns and secret passages and the tower, and kept saying "Save her, save her" meaning you—'

Admirable little Tessa Justin.

'We were all upside down from seeing to Mother Ancilla. And then Sister Boniface came along from visiting Mother Ancilla's cell and said that it really seemed too much to have Tessa Justin calling attention to herself with a pack of lies when Reverend Mother might be dying—'

'Sister Boniface said
that
—' I was bewildered.

'Yes. And of course I knew what Tessa was saying must be nonsense. Tessa is really a most emotionally unstable child.' Sister Lucy was recovering something of her normally competent manner. 'Just the sort of story she would tell - the concept of the tower for example and the passage - full of psychological significance. I agreed with Sister Boniface to that extent, that she had made the whole thing up. At least we were as one about that. Then Sister Boniface suggested corporal punishment, a good hiding was her exact phrase. As you can imagine, I didn't go along with that. Tessa was simply mixed up in herself. So I gave her a nice soothing sedative, something strong but appropriate to a child. And she went down like a baby. Sleeping the whole thing off now.'

'But Sister Boniface knew—' I began. I stopped.

'Yes, please do explain,' said Sister Lucy. 'What is going on? Where on earth have you been, Miss Shore? I looked in here a while ago and the room was empty. Sister Agnes is missing too; her cubicle is empty.'

I hardly knew where to begin. But Sister Lucy was a nurse and must have heard some strange tales in her time, tales of humanity twisted between good and evil. Nurses, even nurses who have become nuns, knew all about the dark side of human nature.

'Oh, Sister Lucy. I've had the most terrible time.' The strain of it all was beginning to tell on me.

'Sit down again, Miss Shore. Yes, you do look - well, exhausted is hardly a strong enough word. I'll get you something. A good tranquilliser is what you need. In fact I think I've got something right here in my pocket. I was going to ask the doctor if any of these would help Mother Ancilla.'

She dug in her capacious black skirts with her healing hands, and produced a small pink box.

Sister Lucy held it out towards me with a happy smile at having solved my problem.

‘I’ll get you a glass of water.'

I did not take the pink box.

My eye had followed Sister Lucy's gesture automatically downwards as her arm went towards the pocket of her habit. And stopped there.

Sister Lucy's skirts, the whole length of the hem, very deep, eight or nine inches of it, were covered in tell-tale white dust.

The crumbly particles of the secret passage showed up particularly strongly in contrast to the black of a nun's habit. More strongly, for example, than they had shown up on my brown coat, now lying on my bed, or on Tessa Justin's maroon uniform.

After a moment Sister Lucy followed the direction of my eyes. It was too late to avert them.

But Sister Lucy did not stop smiling. Nor did she withdraw the small round pink box.