A Demon Summer (36 page)

Succeeded in killing? Max wondered at the choice of words. She seemed well-informed about the poison, but then, Max reminded himself, she was actually second in command of the place and was probably more in touch with the day-to-day happenings than was the abbess.

“Of course,” Dame Sibil continued, “I understand how difficult you must find it to leave Monkbury. Those of us who live here would never dream of leaving. It is a choice we gladly embrace. Most of us.” The owlish eyes closed complacently for a moment behind the round glasses.

“Most of us?”

“It is a calling like any other.”

Max found he was losing patience with her indirect mode of answering. Hers and everyone's at Monkbury, for that matter. He reminded himself he was here on sufferance, and no one owed him an explanation for anything. No one owed him the time of day. But still he believed Cotton's, and the bishop's, thinking was correct—the nuns might talk to Max at some point about whatever might weigh on their consciences, but they would clam up in an instant in talking with the police. The reasons for that might be to protect themselves, but more to protect the integrity and reputation of the abbey. The outer world must not be allowed to intrude on the holy and tranquil space the women had created for themselves.

“Do you have someone in particular in mind, Dame Sibil?”

“Oh, no,” she said quickly. Too quickly.

He let it pass, hoping she'd let down her guard with a change of subject . “I see you have Internet access,” he said conversationally. “Making it easier to keep up.”

“I'm not really interested in keeping up, Father. Just skimming the headlines brings me down. My eyesight is vastly improved lately, but the headlines strain the soul.” She added, “Still, the satellite is indispensable to sales—although didn't I have a job on my hands, convincing the abbess? With a modem and a satellite dish, we are part of the world of commerce, as we need to be.”

“I've seen the gift shop,” Max told her. “Most impressive.”

She nodded. “We are blessed. The response to our products is most gratifying.”

“They generate a lot of income?” Max ventured.

“A lot,” she agreed.

“The sort of wealth that brings its own problems?” he ventured.

“Not on my watch,” she said, rather sharply. “No indeed. But yes, corruption and bad management and nepotism can creep in, if one is not vigilant.”

“Nepotism? Surely not.”

“With the sort of abbess who might exploit the abbey to enrich her own relatives—we had more than one of those. In the past, of course.”

They were all so eager to assign their problems to the past, ignoring the chaos swirling around them. “There are controls in place to prevent that now?”

“Of course!” She seemed genuinely shocked at the question. She reached out a hand, putting the computer to sleep, and turned her full attention to him for the first time. “Everything we do is agreed upon,” she told him. “The abbess monitors the finances closely, and has the final say. And the bishop of course keeps an eye out.” Not really, thought Max. A situation likely to change now. “But whenever possible the majority rules,” she added.

He was reminded of something Dame Olive had said yesterday in the library, something that hinted the majority might as easily be ignored as not.

“It sounds idyllic,” said Max mildly. “Like a utopian ideal of harmony and cooperation.”

“Doesn't it just,” she said. “The abbess resisted the idea at first for some of our enterprises. She said, ‘The lesson of Mary and Martha was that we should focus on God, and not just be busy, busy all the time.' But she has come around.”

Hearing the triumph in her tone, Max pressed her: “There must be issues where the group is split down the middle?” He let his voice rise at the end of the sentence, a gentle hint for her to spill.

She shook her head. “The Rule is beautifully designed to deal with discord and human failings. Anyway, this group is most companionable. There are so few of us, and perhaps that helps.”

“You know you can't afford an open breach,” said Max.

“Precisely.”

“And if there were one?”

“It is not unknown that a sister has been asked to leave. It is gently suggested that the communal life might not be best for her.”

Max wondered if Dame Sibil realized she had just contradicted herself. First they all got along just fine, then it is clear there has been enough tension in the past that someone had been asked to leave. Max decided to change tack for now. He said, “I find it incredible that you manage all this with such a small staff. Admirable, and incredible.”

She nodded, taking the compliment as her due. Easily he could see her in “civilian” life, on a telephone placing trade orders, or chairing a board meeting, the only sane person in a crazy room. “Basically,” she said, “I run the physical side of things so the abbess can attend to the spiritual life of the nunnery.”

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 verifiable 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.