4 A Demon Summer

by G. M. Malliet

  “Am I a suspect, then? How very thrilling. I can’t wait to get back to France and tell my nuns.”

  “If you wouldn’t mind answering the question?” Max asked deferentially.

  He was well aware she’d be within her rights to refuse to talk to him, but she said: “Absolutement. It is rather a coincidence, a bit of bad timing on my part. Although I would not have missed this excitement for anything.”

  “Did you have a chance to meet Lord Lislelivet while you were here? Talk with him at any length, I mean?”

  She answered obliquely.

  “He is God’s child. I remind myself of this constantly.”

  “You didn’t like him.”

  “I don’t suppose God really likes all his children. Loves them, yes. But only He knows and sees and forgives all. We humans can only struggle against our dislikes.”

  “How true. So I gather he is not a favorite. But again, you are here now because…?”

  “We talk business,” she said. “Abbess to abbess. The church is in great crisis, as you know. Falling vocations. Declining revenue. If we are to keep these grand old places going, or even keep them from falling into disrepair, it will take business ingenuity. We are nearly the last generation that can save all of this.” The rosary at her waist rattled as she swept out an arm to embrace the material beauty of their surroundings. The beads were of polished stone, possibly ebony.

  “Is Abbess Justina in agreement with you on that?”

  “In theory, yes. I think she does not like the … how you say … the vulgarity of the whole thing. The grubbing after money. To her it is a vulgarity epitomized by the American, Clement Gorey. But I say to you that it will take his sort of know-how to keep this fine old house a religious establishment. Otherwise, they may as well sign the deed over to the National Trust tomorrow.

  “And that would be a catastrophe.”

  Chapter 19

  AT THE ALTAR

  A sister should never forget that she is always seen by God in heaven, and that her actions are reported by angels at every hour.

  —The Rule of the Order of the Handmaids of St. Lucy

  Max left Abbess Genevieve waiting for the doctor to finish his ministrations to Dame Meredith. Max was sure the French abbess was right about the reviving effects of her small thoughtful present, even if it was too much to hope a bit of pampering could stave off eternity.

  Prompted by this thought, he was drawn to the church with its inviting stillness. It was three-thirty. The nuns would have finished the mid-afternoon prayer, None, and dispersed again to their various chores or to quiet reflection on their own. The church would likely be empty until Vespers—evening prayer—at six.

  Going by way of the guesthouse and the gate feebly guarded by Dame Hephzibah, he reached the outer door to the church, the door by which visitors were permitted entry to the nave. Just inside, steps to his left led up to the bell tower, which was located at the front of the church rather than atop the cross passage further in. From the entry he again took in the grandeur of the place, the wooden vaults darkened by age soaring over his head. It was easy to imagine heaven was somewhere just beyond the interlaced beams. He spotted the occasional grotesque, too, peering down on him—the puckish, carved faces of inhuman creatures meant to warn or entertain the wandering eye of the faithful below. Max subscribed to the theory that the grotesques were often extreme caricatures of those who had offended the artist in some way. The bulbous eyes and nose, the comically exaggerated leer, the lolling tongue. Surely that was a master who had failed to pay wages on time?

  Max walked down the nave, studying the occasional worn inscription underfoot. His internal compass told him the altar faced not directly east as was customary but slightly toward the north. The rocky landscape must have dictated to the early architects what was possible. There was also a chance that a seismic event had shifted the whole thing like building blocks tumbling on sand.

  Like many abbey churches, this one had probably started small and been added on to as the nunnery prospered. This would have been not so much a matter of showing off but a practical matter as well, to accommodate and flatter rich patrons who wanted masses said for their souls—patrons like Clement and Oona Gorey. In the beginning the building would have been a simple rectangle; the bell tower may have come later. Special chapels would have been added north and south of the nave and presbytery for the lucrative practice of saying prayers for the dead.

  Max crossed the area where the public were permitted and walked up the steps to the choir stalls where the nuns prayed throughout the day. He looked over the stalls with their elaborately carved canopies, designed for beauty as well as to protect the nuns from the cold in winter.

  Just then a voice halloed softly across the aisle.

  It was Dame Olive, the abbey librarian, in her role as sacrist or keeper of all that was holy or valuable in the church. She had entered from the cloistered area, her footsteps making the merest whisper of sound.

  “Don’t mind me. I’ve just brought fresh flowers for the altar.” If she was put out that he was in fact in her territory she gave no sign. He stood respectfully back and watched as she adjusted the arrangement, a perfect offering of phlox and marigolds and other summer blooms. His untrained eye spotted peonies and violets and roses, from all of which a heady odor wafted around the altar area and into the choir stalls, mingling with the spicy scent of incense.

  Finally satisfied that every bud was perfect, every leaf perfectly unfurled, she stepped back and made a quick obeisance toward the altar.

  She turned to Max, saying, “You should see the church decorated for the holy days—for Christmas and Easter and Pentecost. Candles are everywhere, hundreds of candles. And a great fir tree stands behind the altar. We are woken from our beds by the pealing of the bells—all of them at once. It is the most glorious racket imaginable. And we have a wonderful meal at midday and at supper.”

  “With fruitcake for the pudding?” he said lightly.

  She returned a sardonic smile. “It would be a shame to stop the custom now, wouldn’t it?”

  His gaze went to the altar with its finely fashioned altar cloth, the product no doubt of months of eye-straining labor by the nuns. “I’d like to have a look around, if you don’t mind. At some of the artwork and carvings. There’s no need for you to linger. I know you have things to do.”

  She hesitated—just a fraction, but Max noticed it. Had she been sent to keep an eye on him? Surely not. She gave him a slow, thoughtful once-over and then seemed to make up her mind.

  “Of course, Father,” she said. And then added, as if to cover for her prior hesitation, “You may have questions. If so, you can always come and see me. Or Dame Hephzibah—she knows a lot of the history of the acquisitions. Most were donations, of course, or came to the convent as a dowry with the postulants. Some of our work is quite priceless, you know. Oh, and feel free to go up in the belfry. The view is fantastic. One of the bells has a crack in it that is rather worrying—you’ll see.”

  Max nodded. Still seeming to fetch about in her mind for something more to delay her leaving, she finally gave him a short bow and withdrew in the direction of the chapter house with the remaining flowers in her basket. He heard a door into the cloister open and shut behind her.

  Max began his survey of the artwork—an exercise in art appreciation that was a pretext for assessing what might be the draw for the unscrupulous visitor. There were various fantastic scenes from the Book of Revelation, designed to induce nightmares. One painting, part of a triptych, depicted the Whore of Babylon. She looked faded, rather as if centuries ago someone had taken a scrub brush to her and her seven-headed beast.

  He continued down the aisle. Mary Magdalene washed the feet of Christ, drying them with her red hair. The Apostles looking astonished, not terribly bright—their usual role, as Jesus tried over and again to explain his mission. There was a charming, rather rustic depiction of the Nativity, displayed in an elaborately carved and g
ilded frame, and it was matched by a painting of the flight into Egypt, with Mary on a donkey, holding the Christ child as Joseph and angels led the way. The artist had had difficulty with profiles, so everyone, including the donkey, looked like the artwork found inside an Egyptian tomb.

  Max walked on, smiling, the images doing their job of inspiring and diverting. And of educating a populace that didn’t necessarily know how to read. In a niche between two paintings was a beautifully executed statue depicting Christ healing the blind man. Across the centuries, the astonished gratitude of the man could be imagined, even in his carved stone eyes. Max remembered reading that some of the grand early monasteries in England had imported stonemasons and glassmakers from Gaul. The English had learned their lessons well.

  The works of art appeared to have been collected over many centuries. Some might even have survived the Vikings, never feted as art connoisseurs. Monasticism had been restored to England only after decades of systematic pillaging. Someone probably had hidden these works for safety, before the marauders arrived.

  He turned, taking in the solemn beauty of the nave. Unlike in the pews of his own St. Edwold’s, here there were no colorful needlepoint kneelers of vines and crosses and flowers, provided by a long-ago altar guild. He imagined “chapel knees” were not a big concern of the nuns. Visitors were invited to kneel as the nuns did in their choir, on plain wood. The nuns used the 1662 Book of Common Prayer with its poetic and haunting language—a book written by a committee of fifty vicars and academics, each one more obscure than the last. That these men had managed to produce some of the most stirring prose in the English language was still a source of wonder. The nuns would pray the Collect for the Queen, a Queen they never would set eyes on again in their long lives, even on the telly. The whole place was positively creaky with old-world beauty, the twenty-first century having made few encroachments.

  He came upon a side altar containing a statue of St. Lucy, the nuns’ patroness. The legend, as Max recalled it, was that St. Lucy, a young woman from a wealthy Italian family, had begun her career as a miracle worker around the year 1200 by curing a blind man, a talent for which she would forever after be famous. It was the age of unshakeable belief in God and miracles and wonder. The order must at some point have been renamed in her honor.

  Hard now to separate myth from wishful thinking from fact.

  Max paused before the statue: Lucy was holding a cloth that she used to cover a man’s eyes. He was a bad guy, according to legend, but he was cured anyway. Beside the altar was another carved effigy of the saint, but there was no case or casket displaying relics of her body, as would have been common in the Middle Ages. Max during his time in Italy had been brought up short more than once to realize what he had been staring at was some ghastly relict—some bit of saint’s bone or tooth—still venerated by the faithful.

  Dame Olive had said the convent had been a popular site of pilgrimage; at one time there probably had been lots of bones and things credited with healing powers. Churches claiming to have relicts associated with the life of Christ were of course at the top of the list of most-visited spots—on the medieval pilgrim’s list of “places to see before you die.”

  His steps took him again to the stunning choir, divided into individual stalls for the nuns. Now he noticed that the head of each stall was carved with scenes from the life of St. Lucy, a bit like a cartoon strip.

  Max looked closer at the carvings. From these charming illustrations he came to understand that St. Lucy had categorically rejected the lover chosen for her by her parents or guardians. No doubt he had been a man of pagan beliefs or perhaps he had been a man given to only sporadic personal grooming, and lacking in compensating charms. One scene showed Lucy with both hands held out before her, in a classic silent-movie gesture of repulsion. In another illustration, a winged angel appeared in a vision to a sleeping Lucy. And here some sort of soldier, a man at any rate dressed for warfare, held a knife to her throat. What a life. Although the carvings were necessarily worn with age, Max looked in vain for a depiction of the legend most closely associated with Lucy—that she had sacrificed her eyesight rather than her honor. That gruesome bit may have been a later embellishment to her life story. At least, Max hoped so.

  He thought of the anchoress the abbess had told him about over dinner. Perhaps her existence was just hearsay, recorded in some dusty old tome now guarded by Dame Olive. Or perhaps it had been the poor woman’s job to guard some ghastly token of St. Lucy’s brief life, a life she had strived to make into a perfect offering to God.

  Max, now standing at the main altar, found that a train of thought about offerings led him to Leonard Cohen, one of Dame Olive’s favorites. He’d written that we should forget about perfect offerings, for there can be no such thing. The lyrics, sung in Cohen’s raspy voice, began to sound inside Max’s head.

  “Ring the bells that still can ring,

  Forget your perfect offering.”

  Max turned from the altar and walked purposefully down the nave toward the back of the church. In the porch, he opened a door leading up the wooden stairs of the belfry. He walked up, scarcely seeing the fine old masonry, the careful layering of stone on stone, meant to last forever. At the top, among the four bells, he took in a commanding 360-degree view of the countryside from each of eight windows: of the river that ran nearby, and of cows and sheep in distant pastures, of farmland and hills in the great distance. One of the bells had a crack in it, as Dame Olive had said. That would need to be seen to. Surely with the sort of money donated by the Goreys and through fund-raising activities there was no shortage of cash, although he knew from experience that would be a costly repair.

  But nothing else revealed itself, so after a few minutes, feeling a bit like Quasimodo, he lumbered back down the narrow stairs. Although the steps had been kept in good-ish repair, they were designed for smaller feet than his, forcing him into a rolling gait as he descended, alternating with a sideways tiptoe move. He was opening the door to leave the stairwell when he noticed a trapdoor, its old slabs of wood thick and splintering with age. Light showed faintly through the cracks. It had to be an entry into the old crypt. But why would there be a light in there? Even as he watched, the light changed, moving and flickering. Candlelight, or a torch.

  Max stepped back, thinking, mapping what must be the layout of the old church in his mind, assuming it ran true to type.

  “How the light gets in”—the words ended the Cohen stanza. He recalled it was the title of a recent popular book.

  Max saw there was dust coating the top of the trapdoor and then he noticed a padlock, rusting. He knew there must be another way in; if the crypt ran under the nave, as this one seemed to do, it might even stretch as far as the choir and transept. Another entrance might be outside somewhere, although it seemed unlikely. There would, however, be an entrance near the passageway to the chapter house, possibly as a continuation of the night stairs, used by the nuns for direct access to the church.

  He was faced with a choice. There was no way that old trapdoor was going to open without a protesting creak, alerting whoever it was to his presence, even if he could open it. Apart from the padlock, it was probably frozen shut with age.

  And some instinct told him it might be best not to let on. Someone might be down there on some perfectly legitimate business, but still … it was the only unexplained happening during his time at the abbey, and he didn’t want the chance of its meaning something to the case to slip through his fingers.

  He returned to the church proper, closing the double doors behind him loudly, to announce he was leaving.

  Chapter 20

  DARKNESS FALLS

  It is in the dark of night that we can best hear the beating of our souls. So on leaving Compline, there is to be no speech except in extraordinary conditions or as needed to attend to the needs of guests.

  —The Rule of the Order of the Handmaids of St. Lucy

  Dinner that night was a quiet affair, in keeping wi
th the traditions of Monkbury Abbey. The visitors ate in the refectory with the community, but at their own table, off to one side.

  The Gorey family was there, Xanda looking distraught and preoccupied, like someone being held hostage. She would have faded entirely into the darkness but for the candlelight that occasionally glinted off the sparkles in her hair. Paloma Green, likewise making no concession to the austerity of her surroundings, wore a bright chartreuse gown that draped over one shoulder Roman-style and was gathered at the waist by a diamante belt. Her companion Piers Montague sat across from her, also looking out of place and absurdly louche, like a man posing for the cover of a Harlequin romance. Dr. Barnard, who had been attending Dame Meredith, had long departed the premises, or so Max assumed.

  And of course, clearly chafing at the imposed restriction on speech, Lord Lislelivet was there. He sat across the table from Max, who thus had full opportunity to witness the shifting in his seat and the eye rolling as one of the nuns read a chapter from the life of St. Lucy. The nuns communicated with hand signals for water or for different items of food they might require. Indeed they seemed able to read one another’s minds. Only Mary Benton, the postulant, forgot herself, asking someone to please pass the bread and being silenced by horrified looks from her companions.

  The food was plain, as locally sourced as the nearest garden, and delicious. Dessert was a selection of cheeses and homemade bread.

  A final prayer of thanks and they were released to attend Vespers. Max opted for a walk around the grounds while it was still light and stepped off in the direction of the ridge overlooking the river. The heat of the day now rose from the grounds in a fine mist; soon the nuns’ voices reached him as they warbled the notes of their age-old chant. He imagined he could single out Dame Fruitcake’s voice, soaring above the rest. It was a beautiful sound, of mystery and of longing and of giving thanks to a Creator whose existence was never in doubt. He let the beauty of their disembodied voices wash over him and fill him with peace.