Father Fludd looked down. “I hardly know. I just drink it as it comes.”
“Ah, I might have known. You young priests. So ascetic. So unworldly.” Perpetua sighed, and supplied herself generously with sugar. “I suppose the bishop is very proud of you.”
Fludd tested his tea, hedgingly. “Do you think so?”
“Else why would he send you here to sort out this mess, if he didn’t put his absolute faith in you? Oh, you’re young, of course, to take on a wily old fox like Father Angwin—and by the way, he drinks, you know, and he has been seen in Netherhoughton, hanging about the tobacconist’s—but no one who took a look at you could doubt your capabilities.”
Go on then, Fludd silently challenged: look at me. He let his own eyes dwell on the coarse skin of the nun’s cheeks, her fleshy nose; she raised her head briefly, but then dropped it again, as if its black wrappings had suddenly become too heavy. She reached out for the teapot and topped up her cup.
“What mess?” Fludd said. “What are you talking about?”
Perpetua was startled. She put down the pot. “Well, don’t tell me His Grace hasn’t put you in the picture? Angwin’s to be modernized, he’s to be made to change his ways, I thought you knew all that. Perhaps—I don’t know—perhaps the bishop thought it would be better if you formed your own opinions. A very fair man, His Grace, a very just man, I always have said that about him. Though in my opinion the benefit of the doubt can be extended once too often.” She thought for a moment, and suddenly sat up straighter, preening herself. “Of course, he knew that you had a reliable source here. He knew that he could rely on me to set you straight.”
Father Fludd picked up one of Sister Anthony’s biscuits. He bit into it, gave a cry of pain, and dropped it to his knee, whence it bounced to the floor and skittered under the table. “Holy Virgin,” he said. “I have nearly broke my teeth.”
“Lord, I should have warned you, Father. We are all used to them. We have a little toffee hammer that we pass about to deal with them.”
Fludd held his hand across his mouth.
“Would you like me to look in your mouth?” Perpetua said tenderly. “I could see if there was any damage.”
“No thank you, Mother Perpetua. Do go on with what you were saying.”
“The man’s in a world of his own,” the nun continued. “More tea? Oh, he’s sound enough on doctrine, we all know that, too sound, the bishop says, an obstinate sort of man always on about the Church Fathers and talking over people’s heads. But his sermons can be mere gibberish. In the pulpit the other week he said the Pope was a Nazi. He said he was the head of the Mafia.”
“And the congregation?” Fludd took out his handkerchief and dabbed at his lip. “How did they take it?”
“Quietly,” said the nun, with a careless air. “They always do. They’ve a great want of education.”
And whose fault is that? Fludd muttered, behind the muffling folds of linen.
“And if his wild sermons were not offence enough, he sets his judgement up against His Grace’s! Of course, you’ve heard of this ridiculous business about the statues.”
“Oh, of course,” said Fludd. He was beginning to sense which way the wind was blowing. “I think I will have that other cup of tea.”
By now the scuffling outside the door had much increased, and a sort of impatient rhythmic breathing was evident, the concerted effort of six lungs.
“Oh, come in,” Purpit cried, her patience snapping. “Don’t hang about out there snuffling like a tribe of old dogs, come in and meet Father Fludd, the great hope of our parish.”
The three nuns who entered the room in single file were of an age, as Purpit had told him, and of a height, which was little more than five foot; looking from one lined, dim, paper-white face to the other, Fludd knew that he would never be able to tell them apart. They kept their eyes cast down, behind their wire-framed spectacles, and shuffled their feet. Their habits smelt musty, as if they never went out of doors. Of course, they did go out of doors, walking up and down the carriage-drive; but what they experienced, between the black banks and the dripping trees, did not count as fresh air. They took no exercise, apart from beating small children with canes— which they did fiercely, in a spirit of rivalry. Malice marked their countenances, and a kind of greed.
“Are we not going to have tea?” one of them said. “The pot is big enough.”
“We could fetch cups,” said another.
“You have had your tea,” said Purpit, crushingly.
The three nuns peered at Fludd, from beneath the starched parapets of their headdresses. “They are working on a tapestry,” Mother Perpetua said. “Aren’t you, Sister Polycarp?”
“It is a big one,” said Polycarp.
“We do it
“It is like the Bayeux Tapestry.”
“But on a religious theme.”
Fludd set down his teacup. He felt uneasy; one of the Sisters wheezed a little, and he felt that his own breathing had become difficult, a pain across his breastbone.
“You don’t sound well, Sister,” he said; and he saw the lips of the other two nuns tighten with wrath.
“She is very well,” one said.
The other said, “She gets linctus.”
The first added, “She has no cause for complaint.”
“Your tapestry … ,” Fludd said, “what is the theme?”
