could hear the rhythmic ringing of the bell.
The sound grew, and seemed to take on a more urgent note and she awoke. It took Cait some time to realize that it was a real bell she had been hearing. As the last sonorous stroke faded into the air she rose and stepped to the window. The fire on the hearth had burned out and the short winter day had ended; it was growing dark outside. She crept to the door, opened it and looked quickly out. There was no one to be seen, but she assumed the bell summoned the sisters to prayer, and so went out-realizing halfway across the yard that she did not know where the chapel might be. She had seen none when coming to the abbey, nor had the abbess mentioned it.
She paused for a moment, looking around. The sky yet held a blush of fading sunset, but the first stars were glowing high overhead. A light wind was blowing down from the surrounding flame-touched peaks, and it made her cold. As she turned to retreat into her cell, she heard the bell again, and decided to follow the sound-which seemed to come from behind the nearby refectory.
She flitted quickly to the end of the building and saw, in the rock curtain rising sheer from the ground, a wide, low entrance cut into the living stone of the mountain. The snow was tracked with dozens of footprints leading into a cave; as Cait followed them to the dark entrance, she heard singing from within.
After the first few paces, the darkness was all but complete. With one hand to the wall beside her, and the other outstretched and waving before her, she edged slowly on, guided by the singing of the nuns. The texture of the wall beneath her fingertips as she felt her way along suggested that the tunnel had been carved into the rock; both the wall and the floor were smooth and fairly even.
The wall ended abruptly and the air suddenly became warmer, and held the slightly musty smell of damp rock. Taking a hesitant step, she entered a larger chamber; a gentle, almost imperceptible breeze blew over her face from left to right. Instinctively, she turned in the direction of the airflow and saw the pale glimmer of candlelight on the rim of another tunnel opening a dozen paces to her left. She reached the tunnel doorway just as the glint of light faded, leaving her in darkness once more.
More confident now, she proceeded down the corridor as before, keeping her hand to the wall beside her. The floor slanted downward; she could feel it tilting away, and the slight cant quickened her step as if in anticipation of what she would find when she reached the end. The singing grew louder.
And then the tunnel opened out wide and she was standing in the high-arched entrance of an enormous chamber. In the near distance Cait saw, as through a gloom-wrapped forest of limbless trees, the shimmering of ghostly lights. The trees, she realized, were the tapering, slightly misshapen shafts of great stone pillars rising from the cavern floor to the unseen roof high above. The light came from candles in the hands of the nuns, whose voices set the vast empty spaces of the chamber reverberating with the rippling music of their song.
Stepping cautiously forward into this peculiar, frozen forest, Cait moved silently from tree to tree, pausing at each trunk to look and listen before moving on again-fearful of being discovered, yet desiring above all else to be allowed to stay and observe.
Closer, she caught a whiff of incense-a cloying sweet vapour that filled her head with the essence of lavender. She felt her empty stomach squirm at the heavy scent, and paused to swallow before moving on.
The singing stopped, and so Cait halted, too. She heard someone speaking, but was too far away to make out the words. Presently the address finished, and there followed a lengthy silence which was broken at last by the ringing of a bell. The nuns began singing again and, flitting from one column to the next, Cait crept carefully, cautiously nearer.
When the music ceased, Cait peered discreetly from her hiding place behind the last rank of pillars, now but a few paces from the first of three low, wide steps which rose from the level floor to make a platform on which the Grey Marys had assembled before an altar adorned with a great golden cross with two lamps burning on either side; in their gently wavering light the ornately patterned gold of the cross seemed to melt and move.
Abbess Annora stood motionless before the altar with hands raised shoulder-high, palms upward, as if expecting to receive a gift. On the floor between the abbess and the waiting sisters, two richly embroidered lengths of cloth were spread; on each a young woman knelt in an attitude of prayer. Dressed in the same drab grey robes as the others, they were set apart only by the long crimson hoods that covered their heads. Both supplicants were bent over their clasped hands, and both were trembling slightly. Although she could not see their faces, Cait easily recognized the slender, willowy form of her sister, Alethea.
At long last… Alethea! Cait's heart leapt in her breast, and she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth to keep from crying out. Closing her eyes, she slumped against the pillar and felt the cool stone bear her up as relief rolled over her in waves.
'I believe, O God of all gods,
that Thou art the eternal Father of Light.'
The voice was that of Abbess Annora, and she was immediately joined by a chorus of sisters who repeated the phrase three times with but slight variation.
'I believe, O God of all gods,
that Thou art the eternal Father of Life.
I believe, O God of all gods,
that Thou art the eternal Father of All Creation.'
The ceremony was in Gaelic. Although the inflection was odd, and some of the words seemed curiously old- fashioned, Cait understood it readily enough, for the chant had the same qualities she had heard since she was old enough to sit upright in church and listen to Abbot Emlyn's bold, handsome voice declaring the high holiness of the God of Love and Light and his Conquering Son.
Oh, Thea, she thought, that you, of all people, should strike such a bargain. She wondered what her father would make of it, and then remembered that he was dead and would never know. Well, better this, she supposed, than an unsuitable marriage. And where Alethea was concerned that had always been a live possibility; the young woman's gift for making the most ludicrous and improper alliances had long been a worry to almost all who knew her-save Duncan alone. Now, it appeared that his long-suffering faith was about to be repaid.
When she had better control of herself, Cait once again edged from behind the column. After the recitation, there followed another song, which afforded Cait the opportunity to steal to another pillar for a better view. When the song finished two of the sisters approached the kneeling figures with long, tapering unlit candles. Addressing the novices, the abbess spoke in a low voice to each in turn and was answered, whereupon the candle was offered. The two women rose and approached the altar to light their tapers from the lamps burning there.
Returning to their places, both young women knelt once more, set the lit candles in golden sconces which had been provided, and then stretched themselves full-length face down on the embroidered rugs and extended their arms to either side in emulation of the cross.
The abbess took her place before them, her hands outspread above their heads, and she began to pray. When she finished, the two novices rose and, resuming their kneeling posture, began to pray aloud, saying:
'Thanks to Thee, Great of Light,
that I have risen today,
to the rising of my life;
May it be to Thy glory,
All-Wise Creator,
and to the glory of my own dear soul.
O Great King, aid Thou my soul,
with the aiding of Thy mercy,
with the aiding of Thy love,
with the aiding of Thy compassion;
Even as I clothe my body with this wool,
cover Thou my soul with Thy Swift Sure Hand.
Help me to avoid every sin,
and the source of every sin forsake;
As the mist scatters on the face of the mountains,
may each ill thought and deed vanish from my heart.'
There were more prayers, and when these finished the novices rose and one of the sisters came forward bearing a jar of consecrated oil with which she anointed them, dipping her finger and signing them with the cross on their foreheads. Then each of the novices pledged her life to the service of the community, taking a holy vow
