A Vow Of Silence

by Veronica Black

  ‘She lied,’ Sister Joan said bluntly.

  ‘She told Sister Felicity and me that she wanted to protect Sister Sophia’s reputation. It would have hurt her family terribly and prevented her burial in consecrated ground. She felt no good could be served by telling the exact truth.’

  ‘Was there an inquest?’

  Sister Perpetua nodded, rising somewhat stiffly from her knees.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Death by Misadventure. The Coroner added a rider about the foolishness of testing faulty equipment without an expert present. I must go back to my ladies.’

  ‘Sister, why are you telling me all this?’ Sister Joan caught at the edge of the other’s habit. ‘Why are you telling a complete stranger?’

  ‘Mother Frances told me that a sister would be coming — that was no news since Sister Sophia had to be replaced, but Mother Frances said the new sister would bring a breath of fresh air into the convent.’

  ‘Did Mother Frances know—?’

  ‘No indeed.’ Sister Perpetua looked startled. ‘She was a shrewd old lady though. Right to the end she was very shrewd. And anyway—’ She hesitated, the reddish eyebrows working up and down as if each one had an independent life of its own.

  ‘Anyway?’

  ‘Look, I was never a mystic or a dreamer,’ said Sister Perpetua. ‘I’ve always been down-to-earth, practical. I don’t imagine things, Sister. But I can feel evil here. Don’t laugh but I can feel evil all round me. I had to tell someone, that’s all.’

  FIVE

  ‘I do feel that I ought to come with you,’ Sister David had fretted, ‘but I promised Sister Martha that I’d get the peas and beans staked. It is a task that requires two people. Of course she could ask—’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of putting anyone to any inconvenience,’ Sister Joan said firmly. ‘I am perfectly capable of riding back along the track and finding the school. Sister Felicity pointed it out yesterday.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure,’ Sister David said doubtfully. ‘Here are the keys. The timetable is on the wall there and the books and registers are in the desk and the cupboards.’

  ‘I’m sure I’ll find them. Thank you, Sister.’ Sister Joan had escaped thankfully, walking rapidly to the stable before the other could protest further.

  Now, mounted on Lilith’s broad back, she trotted through the open gates with a sense of freedom.

  ‘You will never stand being locked up for the rest of your life,’ Jacob had scoffed, his eyes hiding hurt. ‘You’ll get claustrophobia.’

  ‘I’ll get over claustrophobia,’ she had retorted.

  The moor stretched away to the horizon at both sides of the wide white-pebbled track. The rain had held off so far but parts of the moor were a dark and sodden brown. There were patches of paler greener grass starred with wild flowers with clumps of blackberry and whinberry and wild gooseberry to trail spiked branches over the turf. Here and there the low ground dipped lower into a narrow valley of bracken. Over the whole brooded an air of waiting calm. This moor, she reflected, sitting easy in the saddle and letting the mare pick her own way, was unlike the Yorkshire moors where she had spent her childhood. Those moors had been steep and windswept with drystone walls to separate the tiny fields from the common land. This landscape was deceptively mild. She suspected granite beneath its placid aspect.

  While she was at the school she would write her letter to Reverend Mother Agnes. It would be longer than the one she had composed early that morning. Now she had been virtually appealed to by another sister who felt instinctively that all was not well. And there had been a cover-up which might or might not have been devised to protect Sister Sophia’s posthumous reputation.

  The low building behind the wall was visible for a fair distance before she actually reached the gate. She dismounted and tethered the mare to the lower branch of a thorn tree that grew outside the wall. There were no other trees save that one and the school building seemed as deeply rooted as the thorn, its walls of grey stone, its roof of dark slate. The building was in good repair, the key sliding easily into a well-oiled lock.

  She stepped into a small hallway with doors to left and right. The left-hand door revealed when opened a large cloakroom with pegs and hooks and four toilets, two of them with low seats presumably for tiny children. There were tiles on the floor and half way up the walls and a shallow trough for wet boots.

  The schoolroom was on the right. It was a large room with a swivel blackboard at one end and about fourteen flat-topped desks and chairs. There were windows at front and back with baize-covered boards fixed between them. On the boards were pinned drawings clearly executed by the children. She stepped closer to take a look, her mouth twitching as her eye fell on stick-legged beings intended to represent families. One child had drawn her father, a taller, thicker figure than anyone else in the drawing, and then crossed it out with savage black strokes. Did that mean Daddy was dead or that Daddy was hated? She moved on to a more cheerful picture, with an orange-haired mother and father hanging up stars and a Merry Christmas printed lopsidedly across the bottom.

  The cupboards behind the blackboards contained piles of exercise books and textbooks, boxes of pencils and crayons, rubbers and sharpeners. There was nothing personal here at all. She had scarcely expected to find anything after six months. All of Sister Sophia’s things would have been cleared away after her death. There would be nothing to give a clue to her personality.

  The teacher’s desk was at a slight angle giving a bird’s-eye view of all the desks. It was a high, flat-topped desk with a high-legged chair behind it on which Sister Joan wriggled herself with some difficulty. From this vantage point she would be looking down at her pupils, a position that had its disadvantages as well as its advantages. Whoever had ordered the furniture had not relied entirely on the nun’s habit to inspire respect and obedience. She used the smaller of the two keys that Sister David had given her to unlock the desk, folding back the lid to reveal the register with what looked like a floating population of pupils when she turned the pages. There was nothing else in the desk save some pens and a flat box of watercolour paints. She lifted the lid and read. ‘Brenda Williams’ on the slip of paper pasted on the inside. The paints hadn’t yet been used.

  The timetable was pinned to the wall behind the desk. She twisted round to look at it, wondering why anyone had bothered to write it out since every day was the same as the day before it and the day that came after.

  9.00 … Prayers.

  9.30 … Reading.

  10.00 … Writing.

  11. 00 … Break.

  11.15 … Arithmetic.

  12.00 … Drawing.

  It ended there. Presumably the children were not expected to return to school in the afternoon. Judging from the many Absents in the Register she guessed that some pupils took the mornings off too. It seemed a lax way in which to run a school.

  There had been pad and envelopes in the cupboard. She slid from the high chair and went to get them, squeezing herself behind one of the smaller desks to write.

  In the Name of Our Blessed Lord.

  Dear Reverend Mother Agnes,

  I am writing this in the schoolhouse where I shall be teaching every morning. We had a safe and uneventful journey down into Cornwall and were met by Sister Felicity, one of the lay sisters, the other being Sister Margaret.

  The Cornwall House is large and belonged originally to the local squire which accounts for its being a curious mixture of styles added to over the centuries. There is a rather beautiful and ancient private chapel to which the parish priest, Father Malone, comes to offer Mass for the sisters.

  I received a most pleasant welcome which makes me hesitate before informing you that the late Mother Frances had, I believe, some reason for her disquiet. The death of Sister Sophia last December which was attributed to accident was in fact suicide. The infirmarian, Sister Perpetua, confided to me that Mother Frances could have had no knowledge of events but she may have suspected an
d wished to discuss the matter with you. According to Sister Perpetua who strikes me as a woman with an active conscience, Sister Sophia had complained of difficulty sleeping but had not seemed to be physically ill. Sister Perpetua was woken at eleven at night by the Prioress and Sister Felicity who told her they had seen Sister Sophia hanging out of her cell window. The cord of the fire-escape apparatus was round her, and the Prioress persuaded the other two to say they had been testing the apparatus. That was the story given to the police and a verdict of Misadventure returned. This you will already know since the notice of Sister Sophia’s death will have been circulated round our Houses. The Prioress took the steps she did in order to spare the feelings of the family and ensure that Sister Sophia was buried in consecrated ground. I must add that I have heard this story only from Sister Perpetua who felt the need to unburden herself to someone, and I can see no reason why she should lie about so serious a matter. My own feeling, if I may express it, is that no good purpose would be served by raking over the affair, but naturally you may have a different opinion.

  I know you will be pleased to hear that Mother Frances was highly respected and that she was very clear in her mind right up to the end.

  Your loving daughter in Christ,

  Sister Joan.

  Licking down the flap of the envelope and turning it over to write the address on the front she wondered if she ought to have mentioned the nail varnish and lavender perfume, but that seemed petty. Even a prioress was allowed her small vanities. Indeed she thought it quite likely that nobody else had even noticed. Neither had she mentioned Sister Perpetua’s remark about evil. It sounded too melodramatic, too much like a remark passed by a slightly hysterical woman.

  A step behind her made her jump guiltily, shielding the letter with her hand as she turned round.

  ‘My apologies, Sister. I ought to have knocked or something, but I’m so accustomed to walking in and out that I forget my manners.’

  For one crazy second before he spoke she thought that Jacob stood there, with his tall, rangy figure, the shock of black hair which continually fell forward into his eyes. It was not Jacob, of course. It never would be Jacob again.

  ‘You must be Mr Tarquin?’ She squeezed herself back out of the desk.

  ‘Grant Tarquin. Intelligent of you.’

  ‘Not really, Mr Tarquin. I can see this school was privately endowed and as the Tarquins were the local aristocracy—’

  ‘Whoa, Sister.’ He put up his hand, displaying white teeth in a broad smile. ‘My grandfather, who incidentally founded this little school, was never higher in the social scale than a knight and my father lost nearly everything my grandfather had built up. We cannot be regarded as even minor aristocracy, if the term itself isn’t out of date. You must be the new teacher.’

  ‘Sister Joan.’ She shook hands, her initial impression fading. The resemblance to Jacob was only superficial. This man was some years older, in his early forties she calculated, with nothing about him of Jacob’s quick, sharp, bitter charm.

  ‘I saw Lilith at the gate,’ he said. ‘Did you ride her over?’

  ‘Is she yours? I hope that—’

  ‘I left her at the house, or rather my father did. She’s quite an elderly lady. I’m glad she is to be ridden again. Sister Sophia and Sister David preferred to walk.’

  ‘You knew Sister Sophia?’

  She had spoken too eagerly. He gave her a slightly puzzled look before replying.

  ‘She taught at the school here during the second year of her novitiate.’

  ‘Surely not.’ Her exclamation was involuntary. The rules for the two years of the novitiate had been sternly laid down by the founder of the order. The first year was spent in strict seclusion, apart from nearly all the professed nuns, concentrating on prayer and hard physical labour with the complete crushing of one’s personal will in obedience to the higher Will. In the second year the novices were permitted to join in more with the day-to-day activities of the professed nuns, but under no circumstances did they accept work outside the convent.

  ‘It is unusual, I believe,’ he said calmly. ‘However Mother Frances had really grown too old to cope here any longer and Sister David is not fully qualified, so Sister Sophia was given dispensation to work at the school before she was fully professed.’

  Sister Joan hadn’t realised that Mother Frances had taught here. It would have been logical for her to have remained as Novice Mistress surely, but perhaps she herself had wanted a change. And then she had grown too old and Sister Sophia had been released from the strict discipline of the Novitiate in order to help Sister David.

  ‘You sound as if you are well versed in conventual routine,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘Would you believe that I once spent a year in a Seminary?’ he returned.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really. I had a wild idea that I might become a priest. The Tarquins have always been Catholic though most local people are strongly Protestant. I fancied myself as the first Cardinal in the family.’

  ‘May I ask what happened?’

  ‘I discovered that I liked girls too much,’ he said ruefully.

  ‘As good a reason as I ever heard for leaving a Seminary,’ she agreed.

  ‘My father had just sold off the old homestead and he died soon afterwards. I went into the Stock Exchange and did reasonably well, so I decided to come home again. Built a new house on the outskirts of town, not as grand as the one that is now the convent but much more modern. However I’ve kept up my association with the order and with the school here.’

  ‘It’s a very nice school,’ she said cautiously. ‘I suppose it will be all right if I go ahead and rearrange some of the desks?’

  ‘You’re the school teacher,’ he said easily. ‘I merely pay the bills with a grant from the Council. Did the Prioress tell you that your pupils will frequently be away?’

  ‘I had a look through the register,’ she said wryly.

  ‘Most of the children bus into Bodmin these days, but a few prefer to start here and transfer to the Elementary School later on. Some of them are the children of the Romanies who camp out on the moor. They still come and go with the seasons. Then there are sheep farmers round here, and their children come to the school.’

  ‘It will be a challenge,’ she said.

  ‘Aren’t all children?’ He cocked a black eyebrow at her.

  ‘That’s what makes them interesting. Do you have children of your own?’

  She was unprepared for the grief that flashed across his face. For a moment his mask of polite indifference was stripped bare to reveal something quivering and raw, as near great rage as sorrow.

  ‘I’m a widower,’ he said. ‘No children.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry,’ she said carefully.

  ‘You did not,’ he said in the same abrupt way. ‘My wife died ten years ago. She was the only woman I ever loved or ever shall love. Does that sound dramatic? It is the literal truth.’

  ‘Such feelings do exist, I know,’ she said quietly.

  ‘If you imagine that I’m going into the Jewish equivalent of a monastery you’re vastly mistaken,’ Jacob had said. ‘They don’t exist and if they did I’d steer clear. The first duty of a man is to be fruitful and multiply.’

  ‘There are many ways of being fruitful—’

  ‘Not in a convent full of neurotic women.’

  ‘Jacob, I do love you. People of different faiths do get married, work something out, but I can’t see myself trotting off to Mass with my children going the other way to the synagogue.’

  ‘They wouldn’t be Jews. Judaism is inherited through the female.’

  ‘Is it so important to you?’ She had stepped back a pace, staring at him. ‘Is it so important, Jacob?’

  ‘I never thought it would be,’ he’d said.

  Her last glimpse of him before she walked away had been rage and grief struggling in his face.

  ‘Sister?’ Grant Tarquin was gazing at her.


  ‘I was wool-gathering,’ she said swiftly.

  ‘I wondered if you had everything you need here. You’ll be starting teaching tomorrow morning, won’t you?’

  ‘Apparently mornings only,’ she said, glancing at the timetable.

  ‘I have a feeling you’ll be exhausted by lunchtime,’ he said.

  ‘Well, it’s true that I haven’t taught for five years,’ she admitted.

  Nor stood talking to a man, she realised. She had expected to feel awkward but she felt completely at ease. That was partly due to the man himself, who chatted to her much as he might chat with any other woman, neither assuming an over-hearty manner nor backing off as if she might bite, both things she had observed sometimes happened when a man was faced with a female who had diverted her sexuality into channels where he had no influence.

  ‘If there’s anything you need send one of the children over and I’ll do what I can to supply it,’ he said.

  ‘That’s very kind of you, Mr Tarquin. What I propose to do is spend the first few days getting to know the children and finding out what standard they’ve reached,’ she said. It was clear there was nothing more to be seen here. After six months she didn’t expect there would be. Perhaps there never had been anything, no conveniently forgotten diary or unposted letter to explain why a bright and dedicated young nun had hanged herself from the window of her cell at eleven o’clock one December night. ‘I’d better be getting back. Wasting time is definitely against the rules,’ she said, locking the desk, picking up the letter she had written.

  ‘You’ll be needing a stamp for that, Sister.’

  His eye had fallen upon it.

  ‘Just a quick note to my old prioress to let her know that I’m settling in well,’ she said, hoping her colour hadn’t risen.

  ‘I’ve stamps at home. If you’ll trust it to me I’ll pop it in the mailbox tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you. I have money for the—’