“Sister Benedict Marie is a lot older than you are,” Sister Benedict Marie said. She grabbed her veil from the back of her chair and jammed it over her head, flattening a mass of grey-blond curls over her forehead. She put up a hand and whisked them out of sight. “Six year olds,” she told Gregor. “That’s what they’ve given me. Six year olds. At my age.”
“What is your age?” Sister Peter Rose asked, in perfectly innocent seriousness.
Benedict Marie made a face at her. “In my day, Sister, you’d have been killed in Chapter of Faults. Good morning, Sisters. Somebody has to get some work done around here. It’s Holy Thursday.”
She turned her back on the lot of them and clumped out, nearly colliding with Sister Martha in the doorway. Then a bell rang somewhere in the distance, and all the rest of the nuns got up, too. There weren’t as many of them as Gregor had thought at first. Only six, including Sister Scholastica. Sister Martha put a covered plate down at Gregor’s place and hurried after the rest of them, retrieving her veil from her chair as she went.
Sister Scholastica smiled a little. She picked up her coffee, stared at the ceiling, and said, “Ah, yes. The peace and serenity of the convent. The womb of the Church, a refuge from the struggles and terrors of the world. A place of repose, of timelessness, of unspoiled community.”
Gregor took the cover off his plate and found himself looking at two pieces of dry matzo, three wedges of lemon, and a pile of lentil beans cooked in tomato sauce.
[3]
The saving grace of breakfast was that Scholastica stayed true to her word. She kept him company. Unlike Peter Rose, she didn’t chatter; but unlike Benedict Marie, she didn’t keep her mouth shut except to scold, either. For a while, she simply talked lazily about Holy Thursday and what it meant to a parochial school, especially one in as conservative an Archdiocese as this one.
“What we try to instill in the children is a commitment to the totality of the Holy Week experience,” she said. “Too many Catholics think Easter is the only important thing. In reality, there’s a lot more going on. Especially during the Easter Tridium. The Cardinal has been particularly upset at the lack of attendance at the Holy Thursday evening Mass. It’s the only Mass on this day at all, and it can’t be held without—”
“Wait,” Gregor said. “Didn’t you just come from Mass?”
“Mass?” Scholastica looked confused. “Oh. You must have seen us in church. No, we didn’t come from Mass. We were setting up for the ten o’clock and some of the Sisters were saying devotions. We have a chapel, but it’s always nice—”
“Wait,” Gregor said. “What about the ten o’clock? I thought it was ten o’clock in the morning.”
“It is. The Cardinal gave permission for the churches that have parochial schools attached to have an extra Mass in the morning. For the children. Most of them are too young to come out for the evening Mass. It tends to be held late. The priests all have to go up to the Cathedral for the Chrism Mass at eleven-thirty—”
“Chrism Mass?”
“A special Mass where priests renew their ordination vows. It’s held once a year on Holy Thursday.”
“I think this is getting very complicated, Sister.”
“Oh, it is,” Scholastica said. “I always get to the end of Holy Week feeling as if I’d been drunk. The rules are fairly straightforward, but there always seem to be special permissions or changes in the details. The altar servers never seem to last from year to year, either, so nobody knows what they’re doing. It’s enough to give you a migraine.”
“I can see how it would be.”
“You’re enough to give me a migraine, too.”
Gregor raised his eyebrows slowly and deliberately up his forehead, but Scholastica waved the gesture off.
“Don’t work so hard at looking politely shocked,” she said. “Ever since you came into this room, I’ve been waiting for you to get to the point. I’m beginning to think you’re never going to do it.”
“What point is that?”
“Cheryl Cass, of course.” Scholastica reached across the table for the pot to refill his empty coffee cup. “One of the things they teach you in the convent—or one of the things they used to teach you, in the old days—is how to be direct when you need to be. You’d be amazed at how many women never learn to do that in ordinary life.”
“I’d be amazed if you hadn’t,” Gregor said. He meant it. Sister Mary Scholastica seemed to him to be the kind of woman who had been born on her way to becoming a femme formidable, although she was prettier than most of the breed. Even her body language was forthright. “You’re a very—commanding woman, Sister.”