Again the contradiction. A moment ago the abbess had her finger on the pulse of things, to avoid inroads of corruption. Now the abbess was living on a higher, otherworldly plane.
“You order food and other provisions?” he asked.
“Everything, down to the salt for the table. ‘An Army marches on its stomach,’ you know.”
“This would include ordering all the ingredients for making the fruitcake?”
If she knew what he was driving at, which she must do, she wasn’t going to give anything away.
“Yes,” she said. “Everything. I told you.” He waited for her to say that ordering berries was generally not part of her job, but she did not rush into that denial. His admiration for her went up a further notch.
“And how are most of these goods obtained?” he asked her.
“We have a standing order with Messrs. Black and Standford in Temple Monkslip.”
“And you find them reliable?”
“I find them honest and reliable, or I would not deal with them.”
“What is your background, if I may ask?”
“I was in the corporate world,” she replied.
“In a management position, I’d wager.”
“Yes.”
He knew from her file she had been rather a big noise in London, but he saw little point in pressing her for specifics. The habit of not looking back was probably so entrenched she could hardly remember the time when she had “been somebody.” She had given up a great deal monetarily to join the nunnery, that was certain. He made a mental note to ask Cotton to look further into her reputation for fair dealing—or not—in the City.
“If there’s nothing else, Father?” she asked with pointed emphasis and a slight turn of her plump middle toward the computer screen.
“There is. Just bear with me a moment,” he said. “Of all the people here, I would respect your judgment and opinion as to character and so forth, you having seen so much of the world outside. Yours no less than Abbess Justina’s.”
This blatant flattery seemed to work, even on someone as savvy as Dame Sibil. She sat up a little in her chair and fussed a bit, straightening the hem of her veil. But then as if recalling herself, she raised a sardonic eyebrow and said, “Of course, I’ll not be carrying tales.”
Dame Fruitcake had said as much, too. “No, of course I wouldn’t ask you to.”
Of course he would ask, given half a chance, but she was not to know that. Softly, softly, then.
“Out with it please, Father.”
“I suppose…” he began. How to approach this? “What precisely are the requirements for joining the nunnery here at Monkbury?”
She paused to consider, and said, “We take everyone on a case-by-case basis. One size does not fit all. Generally, the applicant has to be thirty-five or younger, although we have admitted a few older women. Widows, mostly. The process starts when a woman writes a letter to the abbess, explaining what brought her to think she had a vocation. If the person seems reasonable from the letter, we invite her to stay for a week with the community. If neither side is frightened off at that point we ask for a formal application that includes health and financial history. No one is admitted without a doctor’s certificate of a clean bill of health.”
“I suppose recruitment is an ongoing concern.”
“Yes, and no. We no longer have to actively limit enrollment, as in the past; we are a dying breed. That is not to say we have to take on just anyone who comes along.”
Did Max imagine it, or was there was a particular notion behind her words, a certain unusual emphasis? He remembered her saying earlier: “It is a choice we gladly embrace. Most of us.”
She continued: “The fall in the number of solid vocations is a temporary condition merely; religious vocations will come roaring back with a vengeance one day. Until then, we keep the faith. Literally. We who have chosen the religious life are not finished yet! I see a spiritual revival taking hold out there. Young people want, as young people have always wanted, to do something relevant with their lives. Isn’t that the word they use? Relevant?”
Max acknowledged that it was.
“And authentic,” he said, “Authentic is the word I hear most often from the young. They want to lead lives that make a difference. I’m afraid they’ve seen their parents chase the brass ring for too many years, and they’ve seen how unhappy it’s made them.”
“There. You see?”
Later Max was to wonder at her certainty. Religious vocations were so thin on the ground. What made her think that trend would be reversed?
“Now, back in the days of the Templars,” she continued, “we could pick and choose. A trend that, as I say, I see enjoying a renaissance. We have had no end of guests trekking through the church after that silly book was published. Day-trippers looking for the Holy Grail. Not that I mind. Our revenues from the gift shop have positively soared.”
Max sighed. “You don’t mean Wherefore Nether Monkslip?”
She blew out her cheeks in a show of disgust.
“That’s the one. What a load of hooey.”
“Is it?” Max, while privately having the same view of Frank Cuthbert’s book, wanted to be sure he wasn’t just prejudiced by too many close encounters with it. “Dame Sibil, what makes you say that?”
“Well, there was a fact here or there, but it was fact stuffed with the straw of fiction, if you follow. It is true, we are very near Temple Monkslip. And it is true, villages with the word ‘Temple’ in them have some sort of historical association with the Knights Templar. However, there we reach the end of what we can say with certainty about the relationship. That didn’t stop the author from writing the most appalling nonsense, and making the most outlandish leaps of logic.”
“No,” said Max, who felt who knew this particular author intimately. “No, that wouldn’t stop Frank Cuthbert.”
“That was his name! So you know him?”
“Yes, I know him rather well. He and his wife live in my village, you see. His wife, quite a practical soul, runs a shop selling French food and wine and other imported items. Frank—well, Frank writes. As you know.”
“Is that what you call it? Well, I mean no disrespect, but if he would like to verify his facts he need only come and see me. One way and another I know quite a lot about the history of this area.”
Somehow Max didn’t feel Frank would want to be encumbered by more veracity than was absolutely necessary.
“So, what do you think is fact, Dame Sibil?”
“Well, there’s the rub, isn’t it? With the Templars and the Holy Grail and all, we have a story so treasured and so often repeated round the English hearth, we may never know on what truth the story is based.”
“Fiction does have a way of hardening into fact.”
“The history of the Templars—well, it’s like an Aesop fable or a fairy tale. A tale for children. And have you ever noticed that children will insist on the same story being told in exactly the same way each time? My nieces and nephews used to reprimand me quite sternly if I deviated from the received text of Goodnight Moon or Runaway Bunny. ‘No, no!’ They would say. ‘It’s a young mouse, not a little mouse.’ And they would make me start over reading from the beginning. Children, like adults, are quite particular about their stories. Also, children are quite clever—they will do anything to avoid having to go to sleep.”
There was a wistful look in her large eyes as she said this. He imagined she didn’t see these youngsters often, if at all, since entering the convent.
“So it is with legends of the Templars, and the Holy Grail, and King Arthur—all those stories,” said Dame Sibil. “If a tale is told in the same way often enough through the centuries, it must therefore be true. Anyway, when it comes to the Holy Grail, those who believe that Christ rose from the dead have a much simpler time accepting that there would be miraculous and verifiable evidence of his resurrection. Quite obviously, belief is a precondition.”
“You say ver
ifiable evidence.”
“Of course. Science and religion are headed toward a meeting place. Any day now, miracles will be confirmed scientifically. Absolutely, I believe that.”
“And not that science will disprove the miracles?”
That earned him a “What kind of priest are you?” look.
But she simply said, “How could they disprove a truth, Father?”
He was just asking her if she had noticed anything unusual the night of Lord Lislelivet’s death when a bell rang from somewhere deep inside the cloister. With a nod in his direction she stood and walked past him, called to her choir stall in the church.
The look of relief on her face at getting out of the conversation was unmistakable.
Max followed her out, left with the certain feeling that the interruption by the bell had been welcome and that she knew more about the goings on at Monkbury Abbey than she let on.
And that not all of what she knew was a children’s tale.
Chapter 31
IN OLDEN DAYS II
It is as valuable to read uplifting topics as it is to pray. Both honor the Creator.
—The Rule of the Order of the Handmaids of St. Lucy
Returning to his room, Max opened the copy of Frank’s book that Dame Olive had so grudgingly provided him, noting that the copy was well-worn. Also that it fell open to the passages regarding Monkbury Abbey and Temple Monkslip.
The book was, as Max remembered it, the most exasperating blend of boy’s adventure fantasy and utter hogwash passing as reasoned scientific inquiry. No legend or rumor was too small not to be breathlessly repeated as established fact or extrapolated into certainty by recourse to the “research” of delusional and ill-informed “experts” who seemed to live and work somewhere on Planet Mars.
Frank’s literary influences were difficult to pinpoint. Lewis Carroll meets Tolkien in The Crystal Cave? Max took a moment to admire Frank’s photo on the back of the book, in which the author was portrayed, one arm draped over a tree branch and his eyes gazing heavenward, as if it were from there alone he drew his inspiration.
As Max began to read he wondered if there were any way to actively prevent Frank from writing any more books. He didn’t suppose hiding his pens and pencils would help. When last seen, Frank had upgraded to a very thin, very expensive laptop, which he worked on at the Witches Brew coffee shop, ostentatiously channeling Ernest Hemingway or another of the Great Authors.
Flipping through the pages (and there were many), Max was reminded how right his first impressions of the book had been. It was the strangest mash-up of Mary Stewart and Thomas Mallory. Like Awena, Max loved the Arthurian legends and held them to be somewhat sacrosanct, perhaps because his mother’s people came from the region of Cornwall near Tintagel where Arthur was said to have been born.
Was said. Now he sounded like Frank, spouting wishful beliefs, sprouting whispy tendrils of history.
Max continued reading. He had brought a cup of coffee with him from the guesthouse kitchen, and it rested on the small desk, near his pen and notebook. Max grew fascinated despite himself as Frank’s narrative made one of its dog-legged leaps of logic from Arthurian legend to speculation about the real, hidden purpose of the Templars, centuries later.
At one point Frank’s story digressed into a discussion of a comparatively recent find, during World War II, at nearby Templecombe in Somerset. Known as the Templecombe Face, it was a painted depiction on oaken wood of a Christ-like visage, originally done in bright blues and reds, the head surrounded by golden stars. The painting had been deliberately concealed in, of all places, an outhouse—tied into the roof by wire and hidden by plaster. Hidden from whom and when and for what reason was not clear. Scientific analysis of the wood showed that it could be dated to the years when the Templars roamed the earth.
Leaving that topic for the moment, author Frank jumped back to the Holy Grail. Could this, he breathlessly asked the reader, be the sought-after Grail itself, an image of the living Christ’s face?—thereby ignoring his own report that the image probably dated from the late thirteenth century.
From here Frank led the reader to Glastonbury—and why not? There were few spots in England as shrouded in legend, and much of the legend did have to do with King Arthur and his queen, Guinevere. Glastonbury Tor, near Glastonbury Abbey, Frank asserted without hesitation or a shred of proof, was the site where the Holy Grail, a bejeweled drinking chalice in this telling, had been buried. Along with many others, Frank held that the chalice originally had been carried to Britain by Joseph of Arimathea—and that it was the chalice used at the Last Supper.
Max had visited much of the world but generally had been assisted by the vast technology it now took to move one human from one end of the globe to the other. He marveled still to think of the wide-ranging travels of the largely underfunded apostles: James to Egypt, Thomas to India, Andrew clear up to Russia. He was also inclined toward the school of belief that Jesus had traveled widely during his “lost years.” The ancients were anything but stay-at-homes. So to Max the idea of Joseph of Arimathea’s traveling to England was anything but outlandish. What or whom he brought with him, who could say?
But Frank stated categorically that Joseph had come to Glastonbury carrying with him the chalice that had ended up (leaping a few more centuries) in the care of the monks at Glastonbury. It had disappeared at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries, along with anything else that could be melted down after first being stripped of its valuable stones, when Thomas Cromwell had sent men to denude the church at Glastonbury. The abbot had been hanged, drawn, and quartered as a traitor.
Frank also held, on no basis whatsoever, that in addition to the chalice the monks had been in charge of the Shroud of Turin—that this relict, much more so than the chalice, had been the reason for the abbot’s fatal resistance to the plundering by Henry’s men.
Hurtling across continents and centuries, Frank declared that until it was finally whisked to safety, the Shroud of Turin had found a home not in Italy but in England.
Finally bringing Monkbury Abbey into the tale, Frank stated without equivocation that “sources in the know” had assured him an exact copy of a contemporaneous image of Christ in death was in the care of the Order of the Handmaids of St. Lucy. An order whose sole purpose was “to keep the secret of their Sacred Charge until it was safe to reveal it to a desperate world of non-believers” (Wherefore Nether Monkslip, Third Edition, p. 546).
In Frank’s telling, the Knights Templar, frequent visitors to the abbey, had been in on the secret. When they were persecuted out of existence, one of them had escaped with the Shroud to Turin. The escaping knight had left behind a copy of the Face, as it was called, which had become such a draw for pilgrims that the abbey would have been financially ruined had the running knight taken it with him.
At least Frank had explained, to his own satisfaction, the odd name of the inn at Temple Monkslip.
With the dissolution of the monasteries, the Face disappeared for good. But Author Frank maintained that to this day the nuns knew exactly where it was. And as part of their initiation ceremony, they vowed never to reveal the secret.
Shades of the Masonic rites, thought Max. The story had everything but sacred oaths written in blood. It was all very “made for Hollywood,” and Max was certain it would end up there.
He read grimly on, skipping back and forth between the pages, as it seemed to make no difference where one alighted in Frank’s narrative. “Rumors have abounded for years,” he read, “that in or around Temple Monkslip could be found a relic related to the famous Turin Shroud—a relic long held to have miraculous curative powers, particularly the power of restoring sight. Pilgrims were said to have traveled from all over Europe to be cured by the famous relict.
“But the Face disappeared around the time of the Reformation, denounced as a fraud, as the worst sort of emblem of a corrupt Papacy. A swindle designed to separate the gullible from their coins. Of course, the fact t
hat these coins went into Church coffers, and not into the coffers of the State, did not go unnoticed by the cash-strapped secular authorities of the time.”
Max sat back at his desk, the small chair creaking as he resettled his weight, recalling what he knew as fact about the Crusades.
The First Crusade had been launched in 1095, when Pope Urban II put out the call. If you had no aptitude for the monastic life but were trained in warfare, here was your action-hero alternative. You could be a holy Christian warrior, your killing sanctioned and your bravery rewarded in heaven. Judging by today’s headlines, thought Max, it was a case of everything old being new again. He thought of the League of the Righteous and their lethal agenda, so recently in the news.
And so the Crusaders had swarmed toward Jerusalem, where their erratic behavior had spawned conspiracy theories ever since. It was said—and there were a lot of “it was saids” in the retelling, Frank’s and others’—that the Knights Templar took the opportunity to seize the folded burial shroud of Christ and carry it off with them during the chaos of the sack of Constantinople in 1204. And that they then had proceeded to worship this most holy of holy relics.
This worship had brought about their ruin—to be precise, it became the pretext for bringing about their ruin, used to justify their roundup and extermination.
The Templars were accused of, among other things, worshipping a head. It had been speculated that the “head” they worshipped was actually a face—the part of the cloth that showed when the burial shroud of Jesus was folded into a square.
Claims and counterclaims swirled about the famous Shroud of Turin, of course. What was convincing to many was the realism of the image—no early medieval artist painted in such a precise and realistic way. They simply didn’t know how. Nor was any medieval artist acquainted with photographic images—for the body image on the cloth is undoubtedly a photographic negative, or a rendering of one. The cloth had been variously dated, with some claiming that parts of it dated to the time of Jesus’s life.
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