‘Come,’ the voice was firm, yet melodious.
‘Reverend Mother. Your guest has arrived. Madame Marguerite de Landois.’
‘Thank you, Sister Constance.’
It was the first time Marguerite had heard the pleasant old woman’s name and she repeated it now as she made her own thanks.
Sister Constance hurried away. In her hurry, Marguerite caught a wish to avoid the Reverend Mother who now faced her.
She was a tall, prepossessing woman, herself a little like a Gothic cathedral, with a sharply angled face where the grooves ran deep. Her coif was stiff with starch and impeccably placed, so that it flowed over the lines of her fine-woven habit. She had the grandeur of some Spanish patrician – and the pride.
It was there in the bony hand she thrust in Marguerite’s direction, in the grandly prominent ring with which she had married herself to Christ. Marguerite bowed her head and made a gesture of touching her lips to the ring. She murmured a respectful ‘ma mère’.
‘Welcome to our order, Madame la Comtesse. I hope your stay replenishes you. I don’t know if Sister Constance explained the rules.’
She motioned Marguerite to a chair in front of her desk and sat down herself. The room had been tastefully furnished, spare but with touches that gave it an aspect of wealth and grace – the polished mahogany of desk and chairs, a small glazed bookcase, a fine oil showing a Virgin and Child. Mother Hélène picked up a rosary of thick beads and played it through her fingers. Behind her, windows of stained glass split a sudden beam of sunlight and lodged a rainbow of shards across the opposite wall where a great heaving Christ rested on a stout cross.
‘We lead a simple life here, Madame la Comtesse. You may even find it austere. We congregate in the chapel for the hours. Mass is held at None, when I trust you will join us. The sisters break their fast after the office, though there is an earlier meal after Terce for our lay sisters and guests. When they’re not engaged in duties, the sisters follow the rule of silence from Compline until None and into the dinner afterwards.’
‘I see,’ Marguerite murmured.
‘Your letter said you wanted to help out in the nursery. Sister Agnes will direct you. The nursery is in the east wing. We ask the women who have sought refuge here and who will soon be mothers to help out as well. You might say it’s a kind of training.’
Her smile was so brief, Marguerite wasn’t certain she had seen it. It left a faint curve in the line of her mouth, which gave her face a mundanity, even a fleeting wickedness.
‘Now is there anything in particular you want to ask of me, Madame? Anything that is troubling you that has sent you to us?’
‘I felt I needed a period of quiet and contemplation, ma mère.’ Marguerite could say it without dissembling. ‘It has been a fraught time.’
‘If you want to share this with me, my child, then I am at your disposal. I cannot offer you absolution, but I can offer relief in other ways. Otherwise Father Hippolyte comes to us daily to take our confessions.’
‘Thank you, ma mère.’ Marguerite lowered her eyes. It was best not to let herself run away with questions to the prioress until she had been here a little longer. She had to feel her way.
On the desk, she noticed an old leather-bound breviary, its edges frayed with use. There was a name embossed in gold at its base. She read it upside down, only half taking in the swirl of letters as she listened to the Reverend Mother.
‘Good. You will want to be quiet now, after your journey. One of our novices, Sister Béatrice, will see you to your room.’
Marguerite stared at the woman. Could she have read the name correctly? Was it hers?
Mère Hélène rang a little gold bell on her desk and a moment later a woman, wimpled in white, swept into the room from a side door.
Marguerite stepped back. She arranged her expression and thanked the Reverend Mother. It was now difficult to take her eyes away from the novice’s face.
The skin was fair, the features delicate, the forehead high; the eyes glowed blue beneath the lashes half-lowered in perpetual modesty. The likeness, even without a visible aureole of hair, even with this lacerating thinness of cheek and hand, was uncanny. It had to be her. She hadn’t anticipated meeting her so soon. Her pulse set up a triumphal beating. She was alive. Yvette was alive. She hadn’t wholly dared to count on it before.
‘Do not expect Sister Béatrice to respond to your questions, Madame la Comtesse. She is under the rule of silence.’
Marguerite gave a little nod of thanks and followed the novice into the corridor.
She could only see her profile, but she studied it covertly as they walked back through the arcade and up a flight of stairs. The girl she had always thought of as Yvette wore an expression that was quite different from her sister’s. There was a containment to her, a quietude even in the fingers that calmly counted the beads of her penitence. The face was longer too, now that she looked at her more closely, the chin stronger. Yes, she would be less vulnerable to the slings and arrows of everyday fortune than her younger sister. Might even welcome their pain as something to overcome, something to signal her marriage to the greatest of sufferers, Jesus Christ himself. Martine had intimated that, she now remembered. She had conveyed it as a buried secret.
But there were shadows under the girl’s eyes, her nose was pinched. Her hands shook slightly. The passionate austerity was taking its toll. It would be a delicate task to urge the girl into speech. This mixture of fragility and elation was not something Marguerite had confronted before.
The room under the eaves was chill. The bare, whitewashed walls bore only a single medallion-like picture of the Virgin and Child, hung above the narrow bed. An oak table held a pitcher and a bowl. There was a plain chair with a woven cane seat. On it lay a prayer book. The window looked out on the courtyard, at the far end of which stood the buttressed chapel. The door sported two hooks on its back. On one of them hung the grey cloak and mantle that would now be her daily apparel.
The young woman she would have to think of as Sister Béatrice stood by, whether waiting for an instruction or waiting to be dismissed was unclear.
Marguerite smiled at her.
‘You’re very familiar to me, Sister Béatrice. You’re very like your sister. She has been searching for you everywhere. She’s been in some distress, you know. I’m sure she’ll want to come and see you, now that I’ve found you.’
The girl stared at her in shock. Tears leapt into her eyes. She shook her head. Her lips clenched as if to force away speech. Before Marguerite could say any more, she had fled the room, leaving Marguerite to wonder at her reaction.
She washed the dusty traces of the journey from her face and tried to take in the solid, if silent, fact of Yvette’s presence. Had her response of flight meant that she didn’t want to be found? And why not? Was it mere coincidence that had led the girl to take refuge in a convent that bore some link to the name she was now certain she hadn’t dreamt on the cover of the Reverend Mother’s breviary? Marchand. Could Yvette have brought the book with her and left it with her superior?
Barely had she had time to consider this, when the Reverend Mother appeared at her door. Were Sister Béatrice’s sudden departure and her proud superior’s arrival related? Marguerite smoothed the habit she had only just finished slipping over her head. The prioress had a gleam in her eye as she looked at her. She couldn’t be certain whether it intimated humour or malice at her new modesty.
‘I thought we might have a little time together before Mass, Madame la Comtesse. We could take a stroll, if you like. I’ll show you the grounds. We have a library, too, for the more studious sisters. It contains a fine illuminated volume of St Augustine, and some early and beautiful editions of the Church Fathers … Oh yes, we have had our bequests over the years. All this may serve to comfort you during your stay.’
Marguerite followed the woman dutifully. Despite her walking-stick, the old prioress was nimble, her carriage erect as they moved down the stairs
and into the gardens.
Only then did she address Marguerite again. The intimacy of the question took her by surprise. As did the mother superior’s knowledge.
‘Has your husband’s decision to run for public office distressed you, Madame? Oh yes, yes. News travels, even across these thick walls. The bishop sometimes visits…’
Marguerite measured her reply. ‘It has a little, if I am honest. It was not something I expected. But that is not what has brought me here.’ She sidestepped the woman’s questions. Walking next to her like this, and looking straight ahead rather than at her, the Reverend Mother lost a little of her frightening aura. She had the feeling she was simply another woman, one who wanted to pry into her private life. It was not something Marguerite acquiesced to easily.
‘No, ma mère…’ She stumbled over the words as well as over what to say. She had never thought to call anyone mother again, couldn’t remember doing so in the past. Why did the Church take on these family names: mother, father, sister, brother? Why did they want to displace or replace an existing family? Was this a better one? Or worse? Was it useful to be turned into a child again? At least, mothers and fathers apart, the sisters were all equals, equal before Christ. A democracy of faith within a strict hierarchy of rule.
The thoughts raced through her as she talked.
‘No, what has distressed me … But I doubt that events of this kind should make their way into your sanctity…’ She had leapt haphazardly and landed on an answer that bore a partial truth.
‘Speak, my child.’
‘Very well, what has distressed me is a murder I witnessed. A killing. Of a young, rather simple-minded man, who was no less worthy of life for that. He was killed by the woman his mother worked for. The circumstances were tragic.’
‘I see.’ There was a long pause, then a slow, resonant utterance. ‘Remember, death is a beginning, my child.’
Marguerite said nothing. They had reached the maze at the centre of the formal gardens. It was darker here. The blue-green of the high trimmed evergreen hedge swallowed the light. The silence felt more intense.
‘You do not feel it this way,’ the Reverend Mother said at last. ‘Perhaps by the time you leave us … I will do my best for you.’
‘Thank you, Reverend Mother.’
‘Were these people related to you in any way?’
‘No, ma mère. I only knew them a little. The youth was called P’tit Ours. Though his real name was Eustache Molineuf.’
Even in the shadow of the hedge, the woman’s piercing glance seemed to bruise her cheek.
‘You have heard of him?’
‘No, no. Though the family name means something. Perhaps one of his relatives came to us for one reason or another.’
‘Madame Molineuf works for Madame Tellier, who was the perpetrator of the brutal act. A difficult family.’
The mother superior looked straight ahead. Her long, thin fingers worked her rosary. The beads gave off a distinct clack. Their sound and the woman’s expression prevented Marguerite from pressing her questions. It was clear, however, that she must have heard of Madame Tellier from Martine’s sister.
‘We will pray for all their souls. Prayer can help, my daughter. Believe me.’ Intense eyes flashed at her to bring the point home.
They walked in silence for a few minutes. Marguerite was about to try a delicate question about young Sister Béatrice when another figure appeared in the maze. Reverend Mother called her to their side.
‘This is Madame’s first day here, Sister Agnes. I would like you to show her the nursery and then accompany her to Mass. You can point out the delivery rooms on the way. I want you to see those, Madame. We have recently refurbished them to the highest standards.’
The path took them through a warren of corridors and small courtyards, through massed arches and airy loggias. She wondered if she would ever be able to replicate the route on her own, though at one point she did realise they must just have crossed what was the front drive of the convent and the point at which she should have entered. Somehow, she had chosen the hidden door used by the fallen mothers, the door near the place where the orphan children were left, rather than this grander entrance.
Sister Agnes, who smiled and gestured but didn’t speak, gave her a glimpse into an infirmary that contained three high beds, masks for oxygen, and an assortment of polished instruments neatly laid out on a rolling table.
A lone figure was mopping the floor. From a half-open door came murmurs and a low, mewling cry.
‘Anne has just been delivered of a girl,’ the woman with the mop announced. ‘Sister Constance is with her.’
Sister Agnes nodded sagely, and whisked Marguerite away. At last, past storerooms and a laundry where a number of sisters scrubbed and ironed, they arrived in a long rectangular room, ranked by cots and cradles and a few narrow beds. The whitewash was fresh, the shutters half closed. One of the cradles and two of the cots had children in them. They were asleep, as quiet as if they had taken in the rule of silence with their first breath.
Next door, there was a schoolroom. A dozen or so toddlers sat on benches on one side of the room. Slightly larger children were two at a table on the other side. Their hands were neatly crossed in front of them. It took Marguerite a moment to realise there were no boys amongst them. The girls wore long dresses, a fall of grey beneath scrubbed faces and rigidly held-back hair. There were pictures of saints on the walls and they were all listening to a story about Saint Anthony recounted by a burly sister. The robed and wimpled storyteller walked and gestured like a competent actor, so that the girls’ eyes hardly strayed when they entered.
Two women looked on. From the swing of their protruding robes, she realised they must be expectant mothers who had come here to seek shelter. The grey habit of the convent had a way, at first glance, of wiping out all distinctions.
A second room all but replicated the scene in the first, although there were fewer children here and they were all boys. There was also a blackboard with the alphabet written on it and the numbers 1 to 10. In the corner a nun tapped a threatening ruler over her palm, as if the boys might at any moment burst into unruliness without the menace of punishment. Beyond this room a courtyard was visible through the windows, a place for recess.
The tolling of bells erupted like an alarm. The children rose from their seats as one, even the smallest of them, and lined up behind the sisters. Sister Agnes motioned Marguerite into the line. Within moments, the queue was marching silently towards the chapel. A single straggler was prodded into the procession with minimal fuss.
The voices rang out clear and pure and high even before they had entered the chapel. After the whitewashed walls and plain stone of the rest of the convent, its interior was a cornucopia of riches. Carved stone pillars, adorned arches, warm wood, sumptuously painted Stations of the Cross, all tantalised the eye and gleamed mysteriously under a brightly starred indigo canopy of Italianate inspiration. Striated light flowed through an ornate rose window, picking out sacral objects for illumination.
Marguerite slipped into what she hoped was an inconspicuous place near the back. Her height permitted her to see over the heads of much of the congregation to the richly dressed and gilded altar. Behind it, the image of the Blessed Virgin and her plump child bore the imprint of a master. She wondered for a moment at the wealth of the convent and then felt her eyes drawn to that known face in the choir of voices. Sister Béatrice, who had become everyone’s sister but her own, had a voice that seemed to soar above the others. Her mouth was a perfect circle. Her eyes were raised to an invisible sphere. Her chest heaved with the exuberance of her musical praise.
Then, as if pulled downwards by a terrible weight, everything about the girl drained away and fell: her eyes lost their lustre, her colour dimmed, her lips sagged. She held on to the rail in front of her so as not to topple.
Marguerite looked round for the cause of this sudden transformation. Was it the thin, hawk-nosed priest who had just come
up the blood-red carpet of the chancel steps? Or the mother superior, who moved behind him with the slow grandeur of a ship of state that would stop for no obstacle in its path?
THIRTY-ONE
The routines and rituals of the convent had their own mesmerising logic. Under the mother superior’s intractable rule, it was one that efficiently shut out any interest in the noisy outside world, unless it penetrated in the form of a penitent woman or an abandoned child. Whatever her intentions, Marguerite’s retreat quickly became one. The similarity of each day, the strict order of the hours, the ringing of bells, the stately procession to chapel, the frugal meals eaten in silence with only the drone of a lesson in Latin for accompaniment: all this made one lose one’s sense of time, except as a passage.
Though only three days had passed, she felt she had been here for a very long time. Passions had grown distant. La Rochambert had become a misty figment on a receding horizon.
Perhaps that was why she had discovered so little. Twice after Mass, as she filed out past her, Sister Béatrice had raised eyes of fearful despair towards her, but then walked on as if that look meant nothing. The girl had made no attempt of her own to see her. And Marguerite had been unable to find her outside the chapel. She melted away, swallowed by the endless corridors, the sway of lookalike grey.
Despite all this, something made Marguerite feel that the girl was in need, that she would welcome contact with her sister. Simply asking under the Reverend Mother’s vigilant, all-seeing eye was out of the question. Terrestrial power in the convent lay too firmly in the woman’s gnarled, ringed hands.
Nor had Marguerite been able to learn anything about Louise Limbour and the babe she had given birth to from the silent sisters in the infirmary.
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