Vow of Evil Page 6

  At precisely the same instant something landed on her shoulder, digging in sharp claws.

  ‘Ah-ah!’ She couldn’t avoid a startled yelp before the creature leapt down and streaked away again.

  ‘Malkin!’ Instinctively she called out the name and the large cat paused in its flight to stare at her from its emerald eyes before it continued its flight. Mrs Pearson! The name wrote itself across her mind as she rubbed her ankle, grateful for the thick stockings she wore.

  Mrs Pearson had walked a long way, she reflected grimly, in order to light the evil-smelling candles. It was highly unlikely that her cat would have wandered up here alone at the precise time someone else was making mischief in the postulancy.

  ‘Mrs Pearson! Mrs Pearson!’ Finding her voice she raised it against the wind.

  There was no answer. Sister Joan resisted the temptation to take the same direction as the cat and, promising herself that she would call on the old lady as soon as possible, went on towards the convent.

  First there were the candles to dispose of. She lugged the bucket round to the refuse bins and lifted the lid of one, her heart contracting in panic as another hand was laid on her arm.

  ‘What?’

  Swinging round violently she saw a familiar countenance beaming at her in the dusk.

  ‘Can I give you a hand with anything, Sister?’ he enquired genially.

  ‘You frightened me half to death!’ she gasped.

  ‘I’m awfully sorry! The wind’s pretty noisy so it probably muffled any sound I made,’ he said apologetically.

  ‘Brother Cuthbert, what are you doing here?’ she asked shakily.

  ‘I walked off with the keys,’ he said. ‘I really am getting quite absent-minded these days. Do you want me to go and lock up the old postulancy for you first?’

  ‘All done and dusted! Mother Prioress had another set in her desk.’

  ‘And I could have saved you the trouble—’ he began.

  ‘Do forgive me, Brother Cuthbert, but I must go and make ready for benediction,’ she broke in.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Sister! I’ll leave you to get on then!’

  ‘If you go into the kitchen Sister Marie will likely make you a quick cup of tea,’ Sister Joan said, putting on the lid of the refuse bin and beginning to regret her shortness of tone.

  ‘And Father Malone will shortly be on his way! No, thank you, Sister. I have some meditating to do before I retire tonight. I shall be sorry to miss benediction though. What a delight it always is!’

  ‘Then stay for it. Father can give you a lift back when it’s over.’

  ‘Next week perhaps. I need a good long windy walk to clear my head,’ he said.

  ‘It’s certainly windy,’ she agreed.

  ‘A cleansing wind with healing rain to follow, please God. My regards to the Sisters.’

  ‘Brother Cuthbert—?’

  ‘Yes.’ He turned back in mid stride.

  ‘The keys?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, good Lord!’ He dug in his pocket and handed them over.

  ‘I’ll see that Mother gets them,’ she said. ‘Are you sure you won’t—’

  ‘I have to get back. Be safe, Sister!’

  He trod the grass silently in his sandals. Safe from what, she wondered, as she carried the now empty bucket round to the stable?

  FIVE

  Sleeping in the cell that opened on to the kitchen had its advantages, Sister Joan thought. Though it meant trudging upstairs to one of the two bathrooms there to take her turn in the queue for water it meant that being so near the cooking area the cell itself always felt slightly warm. It also meant that she could whisk out to tend Lilith and let Alice out before the latter forgot she was supposed to be trained and disgraced herself on the matting.

  Even the fact that it was Saturday which meant confessing one’s sins before the assembled sisterhood didn’t distract from the pleasure of waking up feeling reasonably warm. Not, she thought as she dressed, that one could claim to be completely warm at five o’clock on a dull, dark morning! She had woken once or twice during the night to listen to the wind as it wailed about the building and the occasional gusts of rain that threw themselves against the shuttered windows.

  In chapel, the flickering candles reminded her uneasily of the strange black and green candles she had found in the postulancy. The memory of their sweetish yet acrid smell and of Malkin’s claws digging into her shoulder was disquieting. With determination, she settled herself to the private devotions which occupied the time until Mass.

  Sister Hilaria rose and went into the sacristy as a car was heard drawing up outside the door. It was something of a disappointment when, instead of the homely features of Father Malone, Father Stephen’s chiselled profile was seen as he stepped up to the altar.

  He was back from his working holiday then. She ought to be glad, she reminded herself, that his return would lighten the burden on Father Malone who must be past sixty yet never stinted his efforts, but the truth was that the mellow tones of the younger priest, the slightly theatrical manner in which he elevated the Host, the whisper of his beautifully worked robes as he moved about served only to irritate her. Certainly she could never have envisaged confiding her present worries to him.

  At breakfast, as they stood eating their bread and apples and drinking their coffee, he was full of his recent trip to Rome.

  ‘Of course many of the older murals are quite badly faded but I’m happy to say that concentrated restoration work is being done on them and from my own small stock of knowledge I was able once or twice to point them in the right direction,’ he was saying.

  ‘I’ve always wished,’ Sister Perpetua said unexpectedly, ‘that the camera was invented centuries ago. How marvellous it would be to have a photograph of the Blessed Virgin.’

  ‘We might be disappointed,’ Sister Joan heard herself say. ‘She was never blonde and blue-eyed for a start!’

  ‘It is how we picture her mentally that matters,’ Father Stephen said. ‘There may have been blonde tints in her hair.’

  ‘Father, she came from Northern Israel!’ Sister Joan said with a throb of impatience in her tone. ‘Brown or olive-skinned with dark eyes and dark hair – I will grant you a tinge of red in the hair since she was of the line of David and that tribe often had reddish hair, but not fair!’

  ‘We are all indebted to Sister Joan for her information,’ Father Stephen said, a trifle too graciously. ‘Mother David, I’ve not yet congratulated you on your elevation to the position of prioress.’

  Sister Joan clenched her teeth and bit into the core of her apple. Luke would’ve had some sarcastic remark to fling back, but Luke, being Jewish, had scant regard for clergy of any denomination, including his own.

  Why did she suddenly think of Luke now after long years of not thinking of him? It was so long since she had seen him that if she were to meet him now she probably wouldn’t recognize him. In the old days, both at art college, he had been lean and dark and intense, forcing her to query every assumption she held. Refusing to marry him had been the sharpest pain she had ever borne. Now it was no more than a faint ache in the recesses of her being – the vague recollection of a pain that had passed more than anything else.

  She shook off the depression that threatened to descend on her and, by way of contrition but feeling a bit of a hypocrite, asked Father Stephen if they would be permitted to house a copy of his published paper on Renaissance murals in the library.

  ‘After His Lordship the Bishop and Father Malone you shall be the first to receive a copy, Sisters!’ he assured her.

  ‘Sister Joan, I have been thinking,’ Mother David said, as he took his leave and they began to repair to their cells to clean them before going to their various duties, ‘that it might be a pleasant gesture if we were to stock up the refrigerator and the cupboard in readiness for our tenants when they arrive on Monday. Could you drive into town this morning? Sister Marie will give you a list.’

  In the kitchen, Alice,
having contemplated the outside world through the back door, decided to remain convalescent for a little longer and curled up in her basket again.

  ‘Cereal, long life milk, sliced bread, some frozen hamburgers – we can’t expect them to be vegetarians – tea, coffee, sugar, eggs – potatoes and cabbage and fruit and some jam we can spare from our own stocks,’ Sister Marie said, ‘I’m going to help Sister Katherine put up the curtains there today. Oh, and a nice bottle of wine if the money stretches that far.’

  ‘I’ll see to it. Oh, Mother David now has two sets of keys,’ Sister Joan remembered to tell her.

  Sister Joan went off briskly, shivering slightly as the wind caught her. It was more like March than September, she thought, as she climbed up into the vehicle. In the van it was comparatively warm. She switched on the engine, let in the clutch and drove towards the track that led her past the little schoolhouse where Brother Cuthbert now lodged and into town.

  As she had half expected, Brother Cuthbert was outside, his arms full of broken branches from the fringe of trees that outlined the level ground on which the former schoolhouse stood.

  ‘The wind brings blessings as well as discomfort!’ he said, as she drew up. ‘Luther and I shall have a fine fire tonight.’

  ‘Luther’s with you? Thank goodness, I had begun to wonder where he’d vanished!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘He’s rather disturbed at present, poor chap!’ Brother Cuthbert allowed a faint frown to cloud his cheerful countenance. ‘Fretting about Sister Martha and her cold – is she better?’

  ‘Much improved.’

  ‘I shall tell him so. He went over to the camp earlier to see Padraic Lee, Dreadful about the poor lurcher!’

  ‘Yes indeed. Was there anything you wanted from town?’

  ‘I’ve everything I need right here,’ he said simply. ‘Drive carefully, Sister Joan!’

  ‘I will!’

  She raised her hand in salute and continued on her way. At least Luther would be all right. Brother Cuthbert wouldn’t ask questions or pry into what had upset him but go calmly and joyfully about his work and contrive to find the silver lining behind every cloud.

  The stray thought that living with such unrelenting good humour would drive her crazy made her smile for a moment.

  She parked neatly and legally, went into the supermarket and bought the required supplies.

  When she emerged it was to see Mrs Pearson standing by the door of the coffee shop attached to the store, a flapping mackintosh covering her brightly knitted coat, a hat plonked firmly on her head.

  ‘Sister Joan, isn’t it? We met—’

  Her nose was tipped with red from the chill of the wind and her eyes were red rimmed from what Sister Joan guessed might be another cause.

  ‘Mrs Pearson, how are you?’

  There was no answering smile. Mrs Pearson clutched at her arm and said in a hurried whisper, ‘You haven’t seen him, have you?’

  ‘The Dev— who exactly do you mean?’ Sister Joan corrected herself.

  ‘Malkin, my cat. He didn’t come home last night,’ Mrs Pearson said.

  ‘You let him out? When?’

  ‘Late afternoon. It was getting quite dark and the wind was starting up. I thought he might want to do his – excuse me, Sister – his tiddles before the rain started, though it seems to have died down.’

  ‘And he didn’t come home?’

  ‘I went out to look for him,’ Mrs Pearson said. ‘I walked up on to the heath and quite a long way – the wind drove me on and I was quite worried you see. Malkin doesn’t like wet weather.’

  ‘Did you go as far as the convent grounds?’

  ‘Almost as far but the wind was really very rough and I had no torch with me so I turned back. I thought I heard mewing but he was nowhere to be seen. So I turned round and went home again. I’ve been awake half the night hoping he’d come home. I always leave the pantry window open a little way. There’s still no sign of him.’

  ‘I was over at the postulancy – that’s the smaller building on the edge of the property round about four-thirty – five o’clock. I saw your cat then. He streaked off.’

  ‘It must’ve been around six when I reached the moor,’ Mrs Pearson said in a troubled tone. ‘You didn’t see which way he went?’

  ‘No, I’m sorry. Perhaps he ran past you as you were on your way?’

  ‘But he’d’ve come to me even in the dark,’ the other fretted.

  ‘Perhaps the wind upset his sense of direction? I only caught a glimpse of him. Were you wanting anything particular here?’

  ‘I thought I might put an advertisement in – the woman in the coffee shop often puts them in the window.’

  ‘If I were you,’ Sister Joan said, ‘I’d go home first. Malkin may well be waiting for you there.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ Worried eyes peered through the drizzle. ‘You don’t think – if the forces of evil had got him!’

  ‘Mrs Pearson …’ Sister Joan hesitated, then rushed on, ‘I do think, living by yourself as you do, it isn’t very sensible to read about such things. They must disturb the imagination. I’m sure that Father Malone would tell you the same thing.’

  ‘But the Devil does walk—’

  ‘You saw someone dressed up to frighten peoople. Surely the actual Devil has better things to do than cavort in a churchyard with only one witness to see him and take fright?’

  She had spoken to no avail. Mrs Pearson dropped her hand and shook her head in a hopeless way. ‘He is legion,’ she said, in a breathless mutter and, turning, hurried away before Sister Joan could reply.

  The wind seemed to blow her out of sight.

  She gripped her own packages more securely and, ignoring the scent of fresh coffee drifting through the café door, went back to where the van was parked.

  This evening was general confession. One extra unlicensed tea or coffee would mean more hours on her knees than she had time to spare.

  By the time she was halfway back to the convent she was regretting her brusqueness. Mrs Pearson might be a trifle – more than a trifle – eccentric, but she deserved better than a brush off. If she could find some excuse to drive into town later she’d pay the old lady a call.

  She parked outside the enclosure wall and carried the bags of groceries to the postulancy. The new curtains were almost all up, their cheerfulness removing the last traces of bleakness from the building.

  ‘Oh, you’ve brought the stuff! That’s kind of you, Sister!’ Sister Katherine emerged, smiling as she relieved the newcomer of her burdens.

  ‘What do you think?’ Sister Marie was on the stairs.

  ‘I think they look really pretty,’ Sister Joan said, ‘but won’t they get damp with all the windows open?’

  ‘Oh, I shall be closing them in a few minutes,’ Sister Marie said cheerfully. ‘It was the smell actually.’

  ‘The smell?’

  ‘I don’t know what it was. Kind of sickly and sweet and yet acrid at the same time. It certainly wasn’t here when I was a postulant.’

  Sister Marie, who was all of twenty-seven, spoke as if she was recalling a time almost lost to memory.

  ‘You haven’t seen a cat anywhere around?’ Sister Joan asked.

  ‘No. Is there a stray about?’ Sister Katherine wanted to know.

  ‘An old lady in town seems to have lost hers. Name of Malkin – the cat, not the old lady.’

  Both nuns shook their heads.

  Leaving the groceries, she got back in the van and drove round to the front gates which always stood open.

  ‘Mother David wants to see you,’ Sister Dorothy said, as she passed her in the hall. ‘Something to do with the books she’s writing.’

  ‘In the parlour?’

  ‘She’s up in the library. She asked me to itemize this month’s bills for her. Then she can start with everything in order.’

  ‘Right, Sister.’

  Sister Dorothy inclined her head slightly and went on into the parlour. It must fe
el strange, Sister Joan mused, to go back and sit at a desk behind which one has dispensed authority for ten years. Did Sister Dorothy regret the rules that had demoted her, or was she content to fill the not very demanding post of librarian?

  The library itself was over the chapel, a large square room reached by a flight of circular steps behind the Lady Altar. On the other side of the narrow landing were two storerooms filled with the boxes and discarded furniture of more than fifty years.

  ‘You wanted to see me, Mother Prioress?’

  Mother David, bent over a table, looked more at home here than in the parlour.

  ‘Have you made any progress on the spoiled documents?’ she asked.

  When, thought Sister Joan, have I had any time? Aloud, she said placatingly, ‘Not yet, Mother.’

  ‘I have been looking at them,’ Mother David said. ‘Not a very pleasant task I fear, but I believe the – obscenities were made with a ball-point pen. I wondered if, with bleach and a fine brush, it might be possible to eradicate them without spoiling the paper. What do you think?’

  She moved aside to enable the other to examine the document placed in the glare of the table lamp.

  ‘The paper is certainly thick,’ Sister Joan agreed. ‘It would certainly be possible to get rid of the … marks though it might roughen the surface of the paper itself. I can certainly try.’

  ‘If you take them into the further store-room – I’ve placed a table and chair there and a lamp, though on a brighter day the skylight will provide sufficient illumination. Make a start anyway. I know that Father Malone is anxious to have them back safely.’

  ‘Of course, Mother. About the books – when did you want me to make a start on the illustrations for them?’

  ‘Hardly books, Sister!’ But Sister Joan had caught the quick flush of pleasure on Mother David’s face. ‘Booklets really – easy for a child to hold. I have the first five here. Saints Anne, Bernadette, Christopher, David and Elizabeth. You may get on with the illustrations whenever it is possible for you to do so without neglecting your religious observances, or any other duties you may have.’

  ‘Thank you, Mother Prioress.’