The Anchoress of Shere

parts?”

Christine looked shocked. “No, I know him not. I cry for all the hurt and pain in this land. So many die by the hands of men, when there be pestilence enough from nature. I pray for His coming to cleanse this land.”

“Amen,” said the old woman, as she shuffled off with the help of her stick.

The long walk home did not daunt Christine, now strong with exercise, food and sated vengeance-but a vengeance that seemed empty with her Margaret lost from this world.

Duval spent three long evenings editing the section describing Christine’s months of freedom. His time was not entirely his own: he had to spend two days in Guildford on church duties, which included another fractious interview with the bishop, still fervent about new American methods of modernising the two thousand years of tradition which graced the Church of Rome. Between the distractions in Guildford and his writing, Duval was not finding the time he wanted to spend with Marda.

He imagined her huddled in her cell. Of course he wanted her to feel comfortable, but it would only work if she did things his way. The other girls had been stubborn. They would not listen.

Especially Denise. Duval had not opened Denise’s door for over four years, his mark of respect for the dead.

He remembered a buxom, strong girl, all kicking and screaming; lots of temper tantrums, including one that had caused him an injury. In the end he had left her to her own devices for a few days, but then, somehow, he hadn’t felt like confronting her red face, bulging eyes, the endless shrieking. A few days had become a few weeks, and finally his conscience and curiosity impelled him into one brief visit to her cell. Thereafter, he had cut Denise out of his mind. Such a difficult girl.

He had left her to God. He did not kill her; she had simply died.

In his more contemplative moments, he sometimes likened his actions to the glorious Inquisition. It had never killed; the priests handed over their victims to the secular arm of the state, and it was they who burned heretics at the stake. When the sinners were handed over to secular authorities, the Church issued a prayer which, while asking that there be no shedding of blood, also had the effect of signifying by what manner of death the wrongdoer should glorify God. The Church thus absolved itself from all responsibility.

Nevertheless, seeing Denise’s skeleton had shocked him. Afterwards, he had scrubbed his whole body for over an hour. A scintilla of remorse entered his heart.

If Duval had been a psychiatrist, and sane enough to analyse himself, he might have admitted that his own obsessive cleanliness was part of the denial of his actions, a way of relegating misdeeds to the lower levels of his subconscious; that even he, a murderer, disliked seeing corpses was perhaps also a subliminal defensive reaction to his own innate destructiveness.

Duval, in his conscious persona as a priest, could certainly understand why Marda was upset by the sight of Denise, but if the shock led her into the path of obedience it would have been worth it. It would save her life, maybe her soul, and make God and His servant happy.

No, he had done it for Marda’s own good. He didn’t want to mollycoddle the girl. He would keep his distance to give her time to settle down and, anyway, he was quite busy with his other work in Guildford.

But he always returned to the primary impulse of his life, the recreation of a spiritually successful anchoress in the modern world. To the outside secular world, Duval might seem a failure, a mere second-rate priest, an Oxbridge scholar who had wasted his potential. But his hidden devotional work, his search for the divine channel to the ultimate energy that suffused the planet, would be worth-if such baubles mattered-a thousand Nobel laureates.

Psychologically, this was a holy transformation of impotence into the experience of omnipotence. Through his work, Duval strove to become the master of his spiritual life, and hence the highest quality of spiritual life had to be nurtured in his chosen ones. He wanted to control, not destroy, and while that meant the issuing of punishments and threats of punishment, he was demanding spiritual surrender, not bodily annihilation. He craved power over his novices’ inner lives.

He occasionally admitted to himself that he was stimulated by their helplessness, but the guests who failed him had been weak in mind and body-they had given up and chosen death. So he would try to distance himself, a little, from the cellar for a while, but he didn’t want to become too forgetful. He would feed Marda, and when she was ready he could start his work on her.

On the fifth day after Marda’s arrival, Duval decided to begin her induction course. He walked down the corridor, opened the grille, and through it spoke to her quietly, trying his best to be comforting. After all, he had some experience: he was a Catholic priest.

“Marda, how are you?” he said, his voice full of concern.

Marda cringed in the corner; she now equated the light with her tormentor.

“Are you cowering from me, or from the light? Is it too bright for you? I thought that perhaps you would have had enough of the darkness down here. Who is more foolish, I wonder, the child afraid of the dark, or the man afraid of the light? Ah, but I came to comfort you, not to philosophise…Really, how are you? I do care, you know.”

Marda said nothing. Duval simply stared at his captive. After a minute or so, he tried again: “I am sorry that opening up Denise’s room upset you.” Duval continued ruefully, “It upset me, too. I hadn’t opened it for a very long time.”

Nausea rose in Marda’s throat. “Did you leave her there to die?” she said, her voice breaking. “How long was she here for?”

“She was my guest for some six months,” Duval explained calmly. “A very difficult guest from whom I removed food privileges because she wouldn’t do as she was told. It was exasperating.”

Marda stared at him in horror. “You mean you starved her to death?”

Duval shook his head. “That’s not what I said. I think she chose death and starved herself, in effect. Just before her spirit left her I cleaned her body and performed the last rites. That was the least I could do.”

Her mind raced with the implications of his words. “You mean…you really are a priest?”

“Yes.” He smiled, and the play of light on the contours of his face made him seem even more disturbed.

“But how can a priest do this to young girls?”

“Do what?” Duval looked genuinely bewildered.

Marda was learning to be cautious. She searched for the right words. “Well, accommodate young…guests…in a cellar.”

“I have a mission,” he replied proudly. “Both in my church and in this sacred cellar.”

Again Marda chose her words carefully. “May I ask how many girls have been your…your guests?”

“You are my sixth guest.”

“Are all the others still here?”

“Yes.”

“And they are all…dead?” Marda held her breath.

“Yes,” said Duval regretfully. “They all failed me. Failed themselves really.”

Again Duval smiled with his whole face but emanated no warmth. “But you, Marda, you will live because you will not fail me. I know you won’t fail me. Let us forget about death and think about life. What can we do to make your life more comfortable?” he asked conversationally.

Marda thought carefully before replying. “Couldn’t I live in a room upstairs?”

Duval furrowed his brow in thought. “That would be quite impossible now for a novice. Perhaps later, when I can trust you, yes.”

“Trust me how?”

“Trust that you will learn what I shall try to teach you. That you will not try to run away before we have finished.”

“Finished what?” Marda had no idea what he was talking about.

“I am required to teach you about God,” said the priest earnestly. “I am obliged to teach you about the life of an anchoress. An anchoress is a woman devoted entirely to God. Later I shall tell you of Christine, about whom I have been writing, and how a woman can achieve everything through a contemplative life. I believe the modern approximation is…” he paused, searching for words to which she might relate, “to teach you to tune in, turn on and