Gosford's Daughter (34 page)

Sorcha was unable to suppress a smile. It was
true—her foreign accent, the dark hair, and olive skin, had earned
her the nickname of the Black Scotswoman. On the three days a week
she spent in Le Petit Andely tending the ill, helping the poor,
cheering the elderly, teaching the young, Sorcha forgot her own
aching heart and allowed the townspeople to accept her into their
community.

Still, Mother Honorine’s suggestion of becoming a
Dominican lay tertiary seemed premature. “It’s fulfilling,” Sorcha
admitted as the mother superior paused at the end of the vegetable
garden, where two nuns were chattering a few feet away by the stone
well. “Not so very long ago, I should have scoffed at the notion of
living in a convent. Now I find it … soothing.”

Mother Honorine nodded deeply. “Just so. For your
sister, too, though she is quite different from you.” The
slate-gray eyes were frank, as always. “Yet I must ask myself, is
it that you young people from Scotland—and England—have had so
little opportunity to practice your faith that you find greater
freedom here within the convent than at home? Freedom of the
spirit, that is—you comprehend?”

It was not a question Sorcha had ever considered.
While she chafed from time to time at the monotony of daily prayers
and services, she had rarely rebelled, even within herself. There
was a certain satisfaction in self-discipline. Yet Sorcha could not
honestly state that she felt her soul growing closer to God.
Perhaps, instead, she had grown further away from the world, which
was not necessarily the same thing.

The nuns at the well had erupted into gales of
laughter. Mother Honorine glanced inquiringly over her shoulder;
the women subsided immediately. The reverend mother was not strict,
but she was demanding when it came to excess of any kind. If there
was one rule that superseded all others at Sainte Vierge des
Andelys, it was moderation—in food, in speaking, even in religious
devotion. Several weeks earlier, at the beginning of Lent, one of
the young novices had declared a fast for the entire forty days and
had vowed to remain at prayer in her cell except for morning Mass.
Before the sun set on Ash Wednesday, Mother Honorine had the young
novice in the refectory, taking bread and water.

Guilelessly, the reverend mother turned back to
Sorcha. “Perhaps it is too soon for you to know.” She removed her
hands from the graceful draperies and gazed at the ring that had
joined her to Christ. “I had many doubts.” She frowned, then
exposed those large front teeth in yet another smile. “Though my
family did not. ‘A fourth daughter,’ said my dear departed papa,
‘is a dowerless daughter. Guise though she may be.’ And so it was
into the convent I went, yet at the time I would have preferred a
strong young husband and babes in the cradle.” She arched her
shoulders and back in a characteristic shrug. “But later, I found
there was much joy here, great satisfaction. Though,” she
emphasized, waving a long, tapering forefinger at Sorcha, “not such
peace as you might think. Oh,
non, non
! A convent, at least
one where its inhabitants work in the world, is no place for
escape!”

Sorcha started to respond, but Sister Marie Françoise
was approaching in her plodding, bowlegged manner. Not that Sorcha
had ever seen the middle-aged nun’s bare legs, but she could guess
from the woman’s stride that she had spent much of her early life
on horseback in her native Brittany. “It’s the bees,” Sister Marie
Françoise was explaining, direct as ever, “the young are dying in
the hives.”

“
The late frost, perhaps.” Mother
Honorine nodded to Sorcha before allowing Sister Marie Françoise to
lead her back down the path toward the granary, where the convent’s
half dozen hives were kept. For a few moments, Sorcha waited,
watching the henhouse. But either Rosmairi was still inside tending
to her chores, or she had left through the back door. No matter;
Sorcha preferred a few moments alone. Mother Honorine’s inquiries
had brought Sorcha’s hidden thoughts out into the open.

Glimpsing her murky reflection in the well, Sorcha
tried not to think of Gavin Napier. Over two years had passed since
he’d left her at Fotheringhay, bereft of his love and bewildered by
his rejection. If Sorcha couldn’t quite forgive him, neither could
she forget.

Upon Napier’s departure, his brother had come to
offer the comfort of the Church of Rome to the doomed Queen of
Scots. Sorcha never learned whether Mary knew there had been a
change of identity. Father Adam Napier had only a few, furtive
moments alone with the Queen before her execution. Then he, too,
was gone, riding out after midnight, across the Northamptonshire
plains. Sorcha never even saw him.

She did, however, see the Queen one last time. During
the night Mary Stuart was permitted to spend her final hours alone
with her loyal subjects. She distributed her last few belongings,
wrote down some personal requests, and attempted—in vain—to shore
up her companions’ crumbling courage. For Sorcha, who had not known
the Queen as long or loved her as well as the others, the long,
pathetic night still had been deeply disturbing. Several times she
felt her eyes brim with tears, and at one point, near dawn, when
Mary Stuart offered that familiar, engaging, charismatic smile,
Sorcha buried her face in her hands and turned away. At last, as
the Queen was led away to the executioner’s block in the great
hall, she embraced Sorcha with as much fervor as rheumatic joints
and royal dignity would permit. It was a piercing, brittle moment.
Mary Stuart, so often foolish, reckless, obstinate, and flighty in
her youth, wore both her royal diadem and her martyr’s crown with
an unquestionable assurance. She had drawn away from Sorcha and
placed her gnarled hand over her heart. “It is here,
ma
petite
, that truth dwells. May God keep you in His tender care.
Adieu
.”

The attendants who had spent so many years in
captivity were allowed to accompany their mistress into the great
hall, but Sorcha and Gillis Mowbray were ordered to stay behind. To
her shame, Sorcha was immensely relieved. She had spent the next
few minutes in prayer for the Queen’s swift and holy death, but
Mary’s final words kept intruding. Had she spoken of love or faith?
Had she guessed Sorcha’s feelings in some instinctive, omniscient
way? Had those years of enforced patience and inactivity made Mary
Stuart more observant of others? Or was she merely offering a
meaningless paean of farewell?

Absently, Sorcha tossed another pebble into the well,
scarcely noting its soft splash as the two nuns who had been
drawing water earlier returned with their empty buckets. They
greeted Sorcha, replaced the containers, and made their chattering
way toward the convent’s arched entrance. Overhead, heavy clouds
began to roll in from the north. The promise of a warm, sunny
spring day seemed about to be broken.

Sorcha stood up, adjusting her drab gray skirts but
unable to break the train of memory. Less than a month after Mary’s
death, she and Ailis had returned to Scotland. The entire Fraser
family, except for Magnus and his bride, Jean Simpson, were in
Edinburgh, anxiously awaiting news from Fotheringhay. Rob was
despondent over the Queen’s execution, but he was almost as
dismayed when he learned from Sorcha that Father Napier had not
been a real priest. Lady Fraser openly stated that perhaps this
revelation would cure Rob of his clerical notions. But while he was
shaken by the deception, it failed to deter him from his chosen
course.

Rob’s decision had its effect on Sorcha as well.
Since he was going to France to visit various religious houses, she
insisted that he make every effort not only to seek out Gavin
Napier—or Adam, for that matter—but to learn as much as possible
about them and their background. Somewhat reluctantly, Rob agreed.
When he came home to Gosford’s End that autumn, he had made up his
mind to become a Recollect friar—but he had unearthed very little
concerning the Napiers. Adam was a secular priest who had studied
at Amiens and Cambrai. He had been captured and maimed by the
Dutch. After his release, he’d recovered sufficiently to leave
France the previous summer. He was said to be holy, kind, devout,
and fervent to the point of militancy, at least as far as
persecution of the faith in Scotland and England were concerned.
Yes, he had a younger brother, Gavin, who had also lived as an
exile in the vicinity. Beauvais, perhaps, or Clermont. No one Rob
talked to in the Île-de-France region seemed to really know Gavin
Napier, except as Father Adam’s brother.

“
Forget him,” Dallas had told her
elder daughter that Christmastide. Fortified by a great deal of
mulled wine, she dared broach what had been virtually an
unspeakable subject as far as Sorcha was concerned. “He’s a strange
one, mayhap touched in the head. Don’t fash yourself, child, it’s
time, and past time, you and Rosmairi both put those feckless
knaves behind you.”

Sorcha hadn’t replied. That Gavin Napier was strange,
at least when it came to love, was hardly a startling observation.
But touched in the head he was not, nor was he a knave such as
George Gordon. Napier loved Sorcha—and she loved him. It was the
world that was all awry, and Sorcha was convinced she would one day
gaze out from her casement and see Gavin Napier riding up to
Gosford’s End.

But that day never came. And as Rob prepared to begin
his studies at Compiègne and Rosmairi sighed and cried over
George’s impending marriage to Henrietta Stewart, for the first
time in her life Sorcha yearned to leave the Highlands. She no
longer found comfort savoring ripe berries in the bramble brake by
the low stone fence; she had no thrill at the tug of a fish on her
line in the peaty burns; she no longer was soothed on a restless
night by the caw of the night corbie from a nearby tree. And when
she hunted alone, or with other members of her family, the only
time her blood sang with excitement was when she thought she’d
glimpsed the long, flashing legs of the Master of Ness—and then
realized that he was gone, killed by the man she loved. Along with
the great stag, Gavin Napier had turned her heart to clay.

There was no succor for her at Gosford’s End. While
her parents did their best to cheer Sorcha, when Rosmairi made up
her mind to go to France, Sorcha went with her. Whether she fled
from her homeland or ran to that place where Gavin Napier had
dwelt, she could not be sure. Sometimes it seemed as if her
heartbreak had little to do with her disenchantment with Gosford’s
End. It was as if having been forced to leave home in the first
place, Sorcha’s ties hadn’t merely been loosened, they’d been
completely severed. Not even Niall remained as a bridge between her
youth and her coming of age as a woman. He had gone with Magnus and
his bride to live at the edge of the Muir of Ord.

And Sorcha had gone to live in France, on an island
in the middle of the River Seine. If she could not find peace at
Sainte Vierge des Andelys, perhaps she could learn to forget.

On a soft summer night following a vigil Mass to
herald the feast of Saint John the Baptist, Sorcha and Rosmairi
strolled along the river’s edge, taking advantage of the long June
twilight.

“
Mother Honorine asked today if I
would profess my wishes to become a novice,” Rosmairi said
matter-of-factly as they carefully skirted the edge of the little
bluff that dropped sharply to the river. “I replied that I needed
more time. At Advent, perhaps.” Rosmairi lifted her chin, smiling
serenely, if a trifle smugly, at the darkening periwinkle sky. It
was an expression that she often assumed and that annoyed Sorcha
considerably.

“
You risk the wrath of our Lady
Mother.” Sorcha’s remark was intended to goad.

But Rosmairi ascended from serene to sublime. “Even
our dear mother should hardly complain if I became a Bride of
Christ. Each day I pray that she may be filled with the grace of
understanding and acceptance.”

A molehill caused Sorcha to falter just enough to
stifle her response. The idea of Dallas Fraser being enveloped in
an ethereal glow of submissive comprehension seemed to demonstrate
Rosmairi’s apparent inability to distinguish fantasy from fact.
Rosmairi’s brief flirtation with reality had been short-lived.
While their mother was still opposed to Rob’s vocation, at least
Iain Fraser had managed to coax his wife’s acquiescence with
allusions to bishops’ miters and even cardinals’ red hats.
Unfortunately, such goals were beyond a nun’s aspirations.

“
The fact remains,” Sorcha asserted,
deciding upon a more conciliatory note, “would either of us truly
want to spend the rest of our lives on foreign soil, whether nun or
not?”

“
Oh ….” Rosmairi gazed at the
first faint shimmer of stars gathering beyond the wooded hills
above the village. “It might be for the best, since our old faith
is being beaten out like so many late summer brush
fires.”

Sorcha looked askance at the uncharacteristic turn of
phrase. Yet Rosmairi was right—the previous summer, when the
Spanish had sent their mighty armada to invade England and avenge
Mary Stuart’s death, all English Catholics had been deemed enemies
of the Crown. Even in Scotland, Papists were looked upon as
traitors, no doubt conspiring with King Philip II to foment
rebellion all over Britain.

When the armada was defeated, the English interpreted
the victory as a sign that God Himself was a Protestant. Catholics
might disagree, but this was not the time or place to voice such an
opinion. Clearly, Elizabeth of England and her Protestant faith
were riding the high tide of political favor and influence in
Europe.

“
Just think,” Sorcha said, pausing
to observe how the dying light touched the slim silver spire of the
Gothic church in the village, “in our grandparents’ time, or mayhap
before that, there was no such thing as different religions. People
didn’t fight over which version of the Bible was right, or whether
prayers should be said in Latin or Scots, or if a clergyman should
marry or be celibate.” As she uttered the last few words, Sorcha
frowned and looked down at the patch of clover that cushioned her
feet. Even after she had discovered that Gavin Napier was not a
priest, he had still refused to marry her. Why? she asked herself
for the thousandth time—and, as always, found no answer.