I accuse myself of spiritual pride and aridity, and pray God and you, my dear Sisters, to forgive and understand these my faults.
If, at some future date, the devil’s advocate came looking for reasons why Sister Joan wasn’t suitable to be raised to the altars he’d find lots of evidence here, she thought.
The bell rang again. She picked up the journal and descended the stairs, sliding into her place as the rest of the community filed in, all except prioress and novice mistress clutching their books. The two senior members of the convent were excluded from general confession lest anything they felt constrained to say denigrate their standing in the eyes of the others. A prioress was elected for five years after which she returned into the body of the community and took her place at general confession with the rest. Sister Joan wondered if it was worth wasting any hopes on the unlikely chance of her ever being elected prioress or put in charge of any novices and decided not to waste her time.
Mother Dorothy, hunched and plain, rimless spectacles perched on a nose that was nearly as sharp as her tongue, came in. Sister Joan, kneeling with the rest, wondered gloomily what penance this little lot was going to earn her. About two hundred Hail Mary’s and salt in her coffee for a month probably. Mother Dorothy belonged to the old school of discipline and hadn’t yet decided if she was going to accept Vatican Two.
I accuse myself of levity and uncharitable thoughts about my dear Sister, Sister Joan thought, rising, beginning the Confiteor. She would save those two for the following week. A thin shaft of sunlight broke free from the prism of stained glass and dyed the daffodils in the vase on the Lady Altar a sinister red.
Daffodils are strumpets, Sister Joan’s mind whispered the phrase as her lips shaped Latin.
Two
Monday morning had come as a relief. Usually Sister Joan cherished the slow, quiet hours of the Sabbath. On Sunday only the bare minimum of secular work was done; in addition to the two extra hours of prayer there were two hours of recreation instead of one, and stretches of spare time when it was possible to read and write letters.
Sister Joan, however, had been constrained, after general confession, to spend the whole day in chapel.
‘With your faults so heavy on your conscience you will not wish to partake of the pleasures of the Sabbath‚’ Mother Dorothy had said. ‘Your meals you may take in the kitchen. I am sure you will want to spend the day fasting, however.’
Sister Joan was equally sure that she wouldn’t want to spend the day fasting, but she controlled the rebellious flash of her dark blue eyes and bowed submissively.
‘What a treat,’ Sister Margaret whispered in passing, ‘to spend the whole day in chapel with no distractions.’
Her own breaking of the grand silence had been met with shocked gasps from the two postulants and an icy lecture from Mother Dorothy. Sister Gabrielle had been told to set her own penance. That she would apply a harsh one to herself went without saying.
The day had crawled on leaden feet, through the morning meditation, the mass, the long hours of solitude. Today the companionship of the Unseen was entirely fled; Sister Joan knelt alone, combatting cramp by making the Stations of the Cross at regular intervals, unhappily aware that true contrition still lay a long way off. Towards late afternoon her stomach had started growling discontentedly.
No, it was a relief to wake up on Monday and start the week afresh. On Wednesday Father Malone came to hear confession and she would have to tell her sins all over again. Father’s penances, however, were light compared with those inflicted by Mother Dorothy.
She had just mounted the placid Lilith for the ride to the schoolhouse when Mother Dorothy had appeared unexpectedly at the stable gate, her pinched face emphasized by the sunlight.
‘Good morning, Sister Joan.’ Her dry voice had held neither praise nor blame.
‘Reverend Mother Dorothy.’ Sister Joan hastily pulled down the skirt of her habit, apt to ride up when she was in the saddle.
‘I believe that it would be quite consistent with the rule if you were to wear a pair of long trousers beneath your skirt when you ride to and from school,’ Mother Dorothy said. ‘More comfortable and less likely to give rise to scandal. I shall tell Sister Margaret to purchase two pairs in your size.’
‘Thank you, Reverend Mother.’ Sister Joan had smiled her gratitude.
‘I used to ride myself when I was a girl,’ Mother Dorothy said. ‘A most enjoyable exercise but only when suitably clad. Good morning, Sister.’
‘Good morning, Reverend Mother.’
Sister Joan had watched the small, hunched figure turn and walk back towards the kitchen quarters. Generosity of spirit manifested itself in strange guises.
Now, mistress of her own domain, she sat at the large desk in the single classroom that comprised the local school and let her eyes rove over her pupils. There were only ten who came now to the school on the moor, and at eleven or twelve years old they would move on into the state school at Bodmin, catching the bus every morning, returning at teatime. At least the farmers’ children would do that; the Romanies, she suspected, would find excuses to stay away.
The farming children — represented by three boys and two girls sat in one block, in an instinctive drawing away from the gypsies that Sister Joan deplored but hadn’t yet succeeded in combatting. Madelyn and David Penglow sat together, faces scrubbed clean, fair
