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A Great Day for the Deadly(24)

By:Jane Haddam


When Scholastica left Gregor Demarkian in Reverend Mother General’s office, she went down the north spine of the main Motherhouse wing, around another corner, and out into the courtyard. It was a cold day and she wasn’t wearing a cape, but she didn’t mind it much. She crossed the courtyard and let herself into the building on the other side. Just inside that door there was both a corridor and a staircase. She had intended to go up to the cloister floor, where she had a “room”—a cell, really—with walls made of muslin curtains and a bed with a gray metal frame. She wanted to be alone and out of sight with a desperate intensity she hadn’t experienced since adolescence. That was how she remembered coming to the knowledge of her vocation—not a blinding vision of light in church or the voice of the Blessed Virgin Mary in a dream, but afternoon after afternoon followed by night after night of sitting on her bed at home, thinking it out and not being able to shake the idea. Since then, she had read a lot of words about mysticism. She had even read the words of the mystics themselves, like Teresa of Avila and Catherine of Siena. She knew that people were granted perfect pictures of heaven and hell, sights and sounds the rest of the world wasn’t privy to. She also knew she was not one of these people. If she had any direct experience of God at all, it was with a God of silence.

She changed her mind about going up to the cloister at the last minute. Maybe she was too guilty to want to spend time with God. It would be just her luck to have the only true vision of her life when she was feeling barely worth the trouble of calling by name. Maybe she was just too restless. It could be torture, sitting on your bed in a muslin-walled room when what you really wanted to do with yourself was pace. Scholastica looked up the stairs for only a moment and then pushed through the swinging doors onto the classroom corridor.

Back when Scholastica was a postulant, classes were held on Saturdays at the Motherhouse, both for Sisters in formation and for the professed. Sisters in formation got a sixth day of convent drill: practice in custody of the eyes, rehearsal for chapel rituals, and explications of the theories and theologies behind interior silence and the habit scapular. Professed Sisters studied for continuing education credits if they were certified teachers and for pleasure or penance if they were not. Today, no one at all was studying, at least not on this corridor. The doors to the small classrooms were all open and the rooms and corridor were both filled with girls—girls in black dresses and black babushkas, girls in black dresses and white veils, girls in black dresses and white veils with a band of black at the hem. Postulants, canonical novices, senior novices: Scholastica looked at them all, scrubbing floors and polishing doors and cleaning windows, and sighed. She still liked the old custom better. There was something spiritually satisfying about it that could never be fulfilled with soap and water.

Down at the far end of the corridor, near the door that led to the outside, Sister Alice Marie was sitting on a high stool, reading aloud from the Introduction to the Devout Life by St. Francis de Sales. Whether any of the postulants or novices was actually listening was moot. From what Scholastica could remember, in her own days of being read to she hadn’t listened much.

Scholastica went up to Alice Marie, tugged on her sleeve, and gestured with her head when Alice Marie looked up. Alice Marie nodded and called out for Sister Josepha to come up to read for her. Scholastica watched as impassively as she could as Sister Josepha came up, a pale wisp of a girl for whom even the modified habit looked too heavy. The band of black on the hem of her veil testified to the fact that she was a senior novice, not a canonical one. The sappy look on Alice Marie’s face testified to the fact that Josepha was one of the stars of her class. Scholastica let it ride. If Josepha had been one of her postulants, Scholastica would have been seriously considering the possibility of sending her home.

Alice Marie released the stool to Sister Josepha and motioned Scholastica across the hall, into the only classroom that was empty. It was also the only classroom that was entirely clean. Closing the door behind her, Scholastica noticed that the desks had been buffed to a high hard sheen, as if they were decorative pieces instead of useful ones.

“I’m glad you came,” Alice Marie said. “I was sitting out there, droning along about the practice of the presence of God or whatever it was, wondering how it was coming along. Did you talk to him?”

Scholastica sighed. “Oh, I definitely talked to him. I talked to him too much. You’d think after nearly twenty years of practicing silence, interior and exterior silence, you’d think after all that, I’d be able to keep my mouth shut.”