The Omega Factor(88)
The road began to level off and they came to its end. Three other vehicles were parked in a small graveled clearing ringed by trees. One of them a Volvo with Belgian license plates. They stepped from the car out into cool mountain air, warmed ever so slightly by bright rays of sunshine that filtered through the leafy canopy.
Sister Ellen retrieved the laptop from her. “Nothing there?”
Enough with the lies, she decided. “I wouldn’t say that.”
The admission grabbed the two women’s attention.
“What did you find?” Isabel asked.
“I’ll tell that to the person in charge. I have some questions of my own.”
“I’m sure you do,” Ellen said. “But today is not the day for answers.”
She wondered about that comment, but let them know, “I seem to have nothing but time.”
“I wish we could say the same,” Isabel said.
She did not like the sound of that declaration.
Ellen motioned and they started walking from the clearing, leaving the gravel for a concrete path through the trees. To the left and right everything seemed groomed, the underbrush trimmed and sculpted in a calculated way. Flowers everywhere. Violas, hepaticas, violets. All natural, wild, yet controlled. She wondered if it was some sort of metaphor for the maidens themselves. They crested a small rise and several buildings came into view, snuggled tight among the towering trees across the ridge.
“The building there to the right is our visitor center,” Ellen said. “We have people come daily for tours and we accommodate hikers who stop by from time to time. The farthest brick building was once a stable. Now it’s a gymnasium.”
“Which your members surely make good use of,” she said.
Isabel smiled. “That we do.”
She spotted an arched, stone gate spanning a paved road that led to another graveled car park beneath the trees. The last building seemed the abbey’s main structure. Multiple wings. Stepped-gable ends. Conical tower. Slate roof. Its exterior was heavy hewn stone held in place by thick mortar, pierced by mullioned windows, their spacing perfectly calculated, the thickness of the walls evident from the recesses. Everything cast a rich blue-gray color, deep, soft, pastoral. It sat on the edge of the summit, open sky framing out the far side where the ridge ended and a gorge stretched to a rock face in the distance. Nothing appeared happenstance, all seemed the result of thought and knowledge, the whole thing a mastery of space, expression, vigor, and movement. She’d always thought that, of all the arts, architecture was the most aesthetic, the most mysterious, and the most nourished by ideas.
“Our motherhouse,” Isabel said.
She’d seen it before.
Everything minus the white cherry tree out front in bloom. Though there’d been additions, the basic structure was the same as what had been painted in the fifteenth century on the altarpiece.
The building Jan van Eyck had pointed toward.
And the number of her questions—
Just multiplied.
Chapter 57
Claire knelt on the crypt’s hard stone floor.
She’d arrived back with Sister Rachel about two hours ago. The maidens had reverently carried the corpse from the car to the abbey. Usually the entombment of a deceased maiden involved two days of prayer and mourning. But they did not have the luxury of time.
So everything was accelerated.
What had happened dated back to the beginning, the same ritual performed on every maiden. The naked corpse was laid onto a long oak table. Two maidens held a dark cloth stretched above the body, while two others washed the flesh with sponges. They carried out their task with great respect and reverence, without looking down, as the cloth held over the body respectfully hid the corpse from view. A fifth maiden wrung out the sponges in a bowl, then dipped them into fresh water. The body, once wrapped in a white linen shroud, was dressed in a freshly pressed gray smock, a veil set in the hair. Then the body was placed into a coffin made of wicker. On the breast was laid a wreath of white, red, and sky-blue flowers, as had been done long ago with the first maiden. The coffin was brought down below the abbey into the church. The space was one of the oldest on the site, first dug from the surrounding rock and soil over a thousand years ago. Huge stone pillars, like tree trunks with branching arms, lost themselves in the shadowy canopy overhead. A series of low vaults and arches, each about three yards high, broke the space up into sections. There was no decoration, no frescoes, sculptures, or stained glass.
All of the other maidens had now gathered, on their knees, heads bent in prayer, a collective silence bonding them together. After a few moments the abbess began, and the others joined, in singing the Ave Maria. Not Sir Walter Scott’s original words scored for piano by Schubert, but the lyrics that came straight from an ancient prayer.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners,
now, and at the hour of our death.
The soulful melody made her heart swell.
Something about the soothing notes drew her closer to God. She never tired of hearing it sung, but wished it was under better circumstances. Twenty-one of the twenty-six maidens were back at the motherhouse, including Rachel who would soon be interred deep within the earth. Only five maidens were not present. Two were assigned lookout duty on the main northern entrance, one watching the car park and pedestrian road, the other the rear that accommodated their own vehicles, where the stolen Volvo she’d taken from Nick Lee sat parked. Two more were off-site, returning with Sister Deal.