Marda, after what she thought must be three days, begged God to free her from her tomb, or end her life mercifully soon. Traumatised, almost unable to speak, she was barely able to consume the dry toast and tepid drinks that Duval brought every day. But, after eating the food, she became immensely hungry. He hardly bothered to speak to her, let alone, in his perverse way, try to console her.
Most of the time she shook uncontrollably. For hours she would curl herself into a ball, rocking back and forth on her haunches, muttering to herself. Random flashes of memory coursed through her brain, and songs came into her tormented mind, snatches of old nursery rhymes, modern pop, Gilbert and Sullivan. Scraps of force-fed school poetry jumped from hidden corners of her brain. Sometimes she thought obsessively of food and devised ever more complex recipes for dinner parties she would hold when she was free. She could not sleep, could not take refuge in dreams or nightmares. She imagined herself stranded in a huge circular tank, the sides of which were impossibly high, and where there were no handholds, just a smooth, shiny metal surface. Water kept flooding into the tank, and she could survive only as long as her strength held out to keep swimming, knowing all the time that she wasn’t going to escape and that eventually she would drown. After an interminable time, her panic became a rage, first against him and then turned against herself. What had she done to deserve such treatment? She felt like an animal. Waves of nausea swept over her, then feelings of abasement, of self-loathing, as she smelt her unwashed body, the reek intensified by the pungent aroma of abject fear.
Marda thought that he was probably mad, and now she knew without doubt that he was also a killer. The image of Denise’s skeleton constantly marched through her mind.
After the initial shock subsided, she found that she was detaching herself from her body, becoming two people, the one frightened, childlike and compliant, the other a mature adult observing the deteriorating habits of this helpless woman-child. She clung to a certainty that she would be released soon, but should her inevitable freedom be delayed, she knew-without understanding why-that her best chance of psychological survival would be to hang on with all her reason to her own personality and not be broken by captivity. Let the woman-child disintegrate; the real Marda would become stronger. Let him see the weaker woman, the one he wanted to control. She would play-act for him, but her inner core had to be safeguarded. When she was free, she would still be Marda Stewart. No one and nothing else. Until she was free again she must separate these two parts of her, these two personalities. She had to separate her reason from her fear. It was the only way to keep alive, to stay sane…yet she threatened her own sanity by continuously asking herself whether Duval’s other victims had attempted the same strategy-and failed.
September 1331
Christine left the audience with the bishop with fear in her heart, and yet hope that justice would be done. She feared excommunication and an eternity in Hell, but the fires of vengeance burned almost as fiercely. Christine was made to wait in the convent for two weeks.
She was anxious about being summoned to the court which the bishop had explained would take place in the Sheriff’s Court in Guldenford castle. The petty court met every three weeks, she was told, but the Assizes were a very special event, where the King’s travelling judges heard serious cases of crime. She dreaded, but steeled herself for, the confrontation with Sir Richard. The bishop’s advocates visited her three times in the convent to rehearse her words. “What can I speak but the truth?” she kept saying, but she decided that lawyers did not understand truth.
They explained that her testimony about her lord’s lewd behaviour was only a small part of the bishop’s indictment, which was principally concerned with Sir Richard’s theft of properties to which the Church lay claim. Despite the turmoil of the civil war, the rule still stood: no alienation of Church land without royal licence. True, the tyrant Edward II had, with his allies, despoiled much of the land of his opponents, including the fiefs of the clerics who had supported the insurrectionary barons, but the new king needed to restore his alliance with the Pope. The young king’s position after his father’s forced abdication and mysterious death was still tenuous. In sum, Edward III, the new king, needed the Church if he was to keep his throne.
In this case, the simplest solution for monarch and clergy was the death of one man by an arraignment for treason.
Sir Richard, although he had sympathised with the rebels, had carefully managed to avoid the fate of many knights and nobles who had fought the old king. He had not been exiled, nor had he forfeited lands, but the bishop was determined to regain for the Church the lands that Sir Richard had disseised and taken for himself. The knight would suffer, the bishop would prosper with the new archbishop’s backing, and Christine was a mere pawn. She knew this, but she would play her part.
Nothing was said by Christine’s guardian, the abbess, about excommunication. Instead, she decked out the anchoress in a new habit so that she would represent the Church in best holy orders-to impress the judges.
When the day came, the abbess accompanied her in a small open wagon drawn by two bay mares and driven by a male servant of the abbey. This was the first time Christine had travelled in such style, and it only added to her nervousness.
The dining hall of the castle had been transformed into a court room. On the high table sat three judges, with an elaborate canopy erected above their heads to emphasise their rank. Two had travelled from Canterbury and one from Winchester, carrying the writs with the king’s great seal. Beside the judges sat the Bishop of Hereford, to advise on the laws of the Church. On benches along the side of the hall, local noblemen were arrayed; commoners, of course, were not allowed to sit in judgement on a knight.
This was English justice witnessed by Sir Richard’s peers, but his fate was to be decided by high politics, not by law or natural justice, although justice it would be to Sir Richard’s too numerous enemies. His attempts to play both sides in the civil war had succeeded for a while. Wisely, he had been in France during the climactic battle of Boroughbridge when the king’s opponents had been defeated. He did not suffer in the first wave of massive recriminations, but he had not tempered his land hunger sufficiently. The bishop had bided his time, and now the last of Sir Richard’s allies at the royal court had been removed.
The judges sat for three days while Sir Richard’s alleged crimes were carefully recited. The lawyers debated the significance of the deeds of the lands claimed by the Bishop of Winchester, while the last day was reserved for the destruction of the knight’s position as dutiful custodian of the laws of the realm.
Sir Richard’s tenants were paraded, and they confirmed that his enforcement of forest law was unduly harsh. The Charter of the Forest had been binding on countrymen for a century, but Sir Richard had claimed to be acting for the king, they said. Two men had been unjustly hanged for killing a deer; another man-Wat Smith-had suffered the loss of both his hands for carrying a longbow near a roe deer; a villager had been blinded, said the witnesses, for merely disturbing a royal deer. The prosecution then built up its case on cows and sheep and stolen acres. Commoners could not sit in judgement, but witnesses they could be: dyers, weavers and fullers chastised the crusader with pretty lies and practised truths. In short, Sir Richard had undeniably breached local custom and law.
The hall resounded to the phrase “Quasi veteri more Anglicano,” according to the old English custom. Two best beasts, not the traditional one, had been taken by the lord for heriot, death duty. Sir Richard had denied access to common land. Armed men had been levied for more than sixty days for the Scottish wars. And so it went on: Sir Richard’s aggrieved bonded men came from the Welsh Marches, from his lands in Surrey and Kent. Occasionally men spoke well of their lord, especially those who had fought by his side, but complimentary words were silenced by the bishop’s lawyers. Sir Richard’s own learned advocates, sniffing the changes in the political climate, fell silent too.
Two hundred men, knights and nobles, filled the smoky hall; no woman spoke to the court until Christine was led in. The prosecution thundered that the lord’s right of prima nocte was not acceptable in the settled lands of England, although it was admitted that it was not uncommon in the conquered parts of the Celtic territories.
Christine was asked to stand before the high table, with the bishop’s chief lawyer by her side. He read out a brief description of who she was and whence she came.
The judge in the centre of the high table spoke first, although Christine could not understand his curious Latinised French. In English she said, “My lord, I do not comprehend your words for I am unlearned in such affairs.”
The bishop’s man translated into English, “Summarise your indictment against Sir Richard.”
Christine had been told to be as brief as possible, and not to speak further unless the judges asked her to say more, which was not likely, they said.
So far Christine had not looked at Sir Richard, whom she had always remembered in his fine linen and purple tunic. Above all she recalled his jewelled dagger. This day he was dressed in a simple black robe, with no adornments. His feet were chained together, his face was dirty, and his beard bedraggled. He had aged ten years in the two since last she saw him. Although her enclosure had honed her hatred, the period of intense devotions permitted some pity to enter her soul.
She recited the lines the bishop had instructed. “I swear to God and King that I verily speak unto ye this day.” She spoke quietly and nervously. “I am Christine of Shere, the daughter of William, also of Shere. I confirm the times the deposition states regarding Sir Richard’s offences against my person and against my sister Margaret, now deceased. I confirm that Sir Richard…” She stopped staring at the floor and looked into her tormentor’s face. The words died in her mouth.
The bishop’s lawyer poked her with his finger. “Proceed,” he said.
Christine continued: “He did…he did violate my chastity, by cruel force, and with no volition on my part. I had been betrothed to Simon, a tailor of Shere. In shame thereafter I did confess and was sworn by holy vows as an anchoress of St. James’s church. There was I bound by my vows for life until-I beg the holy Mother Church for forgiveness-I did break these vows. I did this to aid my sister who had been made victim of Sir Richard’s cruel lust for the months she had worked as scullery maid in Vachery Manor, the seat of Sir Richard. She was chaste until she was by Sir Richard employed. He and his son did by brute force violate my sister, and then she was with child-from their seed. She died in childbirth, and is now buried these three weeks past in Peaslake.”
She stopped and coughed a little as the bishop’s lawyer glared at her. “My father, William of Shere, did protest to Sir Richard,” she went on, hesitantly, “but was dismissed from his presence with threats. My father has no debts to his lord, and has honoured all the tallages and obligations. Sir Richard has brought shame on our house, humble though it be. He has scorned our local customs as well as laws of king and Mother Church.”
She spoke quietly and nervously, but she had delivered all that she had rehearsed. Nor had she lied, although she accepted that the bishop’s lawyers could tutor her in words more befitting the court.
The judge did not question her, but spoke in French to the bishop’s lawyer, saying, “You will translate this statement, taken in Latin, by our scribe, and this Christine of Shere will sign that it is a true account of her words sworn in this Court of Pleas.”
The bishop’s lawyer caught the sleeve of Christine’s robe to indicate that she must leave. As she turned, she looked back at Sir Richard. She expected to see the fire of anger in his eyes, but instead they were dull; like his face, they showed no emotion. She wondered whether torture had broken his spirit.
The abbess took her back to the convent in her carriage. She did not at first converse with Christine, who knew not to speak unless addressed by her superior. Christine felt a cold emptiness in her heart. There was no joy, but she had had her moment of justice.
Eventually the Abbess Euphemia spoke, and with tenderness: “Christine, you acted bravely and well. The bishop has granted you to stay with us until the trial is complete. You may be taken before a bishop’s court to be examined, to restore your vows if you are shriven well and are truly penitent. The bishop, I trust, will look with kindness on you. The King’s Assizes, I know, will restore the lands belonging to the Church. And you have acted to the bishop’s will.”
Christine stayed five more days in the convent, until the King’s Bench found Sir Richard guilty of all the charges. Although the king had not returned to the despotic ways of his father, the issue of Church land was dear to his benefactor, the Pope. It had been seven years since a knight had been thus dispossessed, for the king had need of noble support, not least for the wars in France and Scotland. For reasons of state, however, Sir Richard was stripped of all his chivalric rights. Knights were executed by beheading, but he was to be treated as a commoner.
On the appointed day, Christine was allowed to leave the abbey to join the common throng. The abbess insisted that Christine attend his hanging in the square, and she did not argue against the order.
As the abbess led Christine the short distance to the centre of the town, the townspeople respectfully stood back to let them pass. In the square, the crowd carried an effigy of Sir Richard on a pole, then burned it, and danced and sang round the flames.
After an hour or so of peasant revelries, Christine saw Sir Richard’s broken body dragged by four horses through the cobbled streets of Guldenford. Battered and bloodied, he was hauled, scarcely conscious, to the steps of the single gallows, ten feet high. The people hissed and booed at him, while the mob nearest him spat. Gobbets of spittle streaked his face and robe, decorated with his coat of arms, but reversed so that they would never again be worn by any courtly family. Upon his head they placed a crown of nettles.
Two hooded men dragged Sir Richard up the wooden steps and thrust his head roughly into the dangling noose. The once proud lord showed no emotion; he seemed beyond caring or, perhaps, beyond any further earthly pain.
The sheriff, after reading out a short proclamation in Latin and English, concluded: “Such be the fate of all who dare rebel against the king.”
The crowd roared back, “The king. The king. Death to all rebels against the king.”
Sir Richard, looking up at the grey, overcast skies, tried to speak. Although the crowd ceased their tumult all that Christine heard was, “I deny all these unjust accusations and I curse ye all…”
He was silenced by the shouts of the crowd, and stones were pelted at his broken body. Soldiers tried to push the mob back as the sheriff gave the order to hoist him up.
Christine saw his bowed body straighten and jerk up into the air until, in the utter silence of the throng, she heard a sharp choking sound at which the crowd broke into loud laughter. His body dangled and twitched for many minutes before it grew still and they let him drop.
To all this Christine forced herself to bear personal witness, but she closed her eyes as the sheriff himself lowered Sir Richard from the gallows; deliberately allowing a tiny ember of life to remain within his body. The two hooded men threw the blue-faced victim on to a small bench and tied him down. After his robe was cut off with a large meat cleaver, the sheriff took the cleaver and slashed downwards through the dying man’s stomach. He drew out the intestines and threw them on to a brazier. Still alive, Sir Richard, hearing and smelling the sizzling of his own innards, let out a groan like a dying ox.
The crowd did not shout for mercy, but the sheriff ordered one of the hooded men to wield the axe. After two strokes, Sir Richard’s head tumbled on to the platform. As the blood spouted from the neck, the crowd raised their voices. A peasant cried out, “Justice! Justice!”
The hooded men took turns to quarter the body with the axe as the crowd cheered at every cut. The four quarters of his body were swarmed over by the crowd. With knives they scratched on his skin, and chanted verses from the Holy Scriptures denouncing arrogance and evil. Some of the more drunken members of the mob, particularly the women, started to sing and dance again. At this the abbess led her charge away.
In her convent cell, Christine was too overcome to offer more than perfunctory prayers, but she did finally manage to sleep. She dreamed of floating down a river of blood until her little boat reached an island. The boat steered itself to the shore, where she was greeted by her sister, dressed all in the finest white linen. She stretched out both arms to embrace the dead girl…
That was all she could remember the next morning, yet she felt that Margaret was thanking her for defending her memory and their family’s honour.
After Matins, the abbess instructed Christine to return to her father’s house. She thanked the abbess and took leave of the convent, but asked to be allowed to depart from the garden door via Castle Arch and through the “gates” or passageways of the town. She did not want to pass again through the square, explaining that she had witnessed too much suffering and pain, even if it was to an evildoer.
Yet as she walked alone through the great east gate of the town, she saw Sir Richard’s head impaled on a pike above the wooden arch. Shuddering at the sight of his bloated face, she hurried past, knowing that his disembodied features would haunt her nightmares.
She had endured enough of man’s inhumanity to man, and relished the tranquillity of the countryside after the foetid smells of the town, but at a crossroads a mile or so along the road, near the leper hospital, she beheld another cruel sight: a naked man buried head first, up to his waist. With caution she moved towards the strange apparition and touched his ankle, still warm. Transfixed by further horror, she did not notice an old leper woman watching her.
The woman, swathed in filthy rags, hailed Christine.
“What be this, mistress? Why bury a man like this?” Christine asked.
The woman, cackling, replied, “The judges made this so. The villeins were dealt with first before the king’s men smote down Sir Richard.”
Christine said gently, “Sir Richard’s crimes are known to me, but what of this malfeasant here, naked in the sight of God and man?”
“I be sorry to offend a lady in holy orders,” said the old woman, “but he be killed for his sodomy. Sometimes they hang ’em, sometimes they bury ’em so, to fit their crime. Have you no eyes afore today? ’Tis not uncommon in this town.”
“I live a long way from here, in Shere.”
The old woman looked confused. “Don’t know all ’em villages roundabouts. But upon the holy tears of Christ, you be crying too. Did you know this man, assumin’-beggin’ your forgiveness-that you can recognise his lower parts?”
Christine looked shocked. “No, I know him not. I cry for all the hurt and pain in this land. So many die by the hands of men, when there be pestilence enough from nature. I pray for His coming to cleanse this land.”
“Amen,” said the old woman, as she shuffled off with the help of her stick.
The long walk home did not daunt Christine, now strong with exercise, food and sated vengeance-but a vengeance that seemed empty with her Margaret lost from this world.
Duval spent three long evenings editing the section describing Christine’s months of freedom. His time was not entirely his own: he had to spend two days in Guildford on church duties, which included another fractious interview with the bishop, still fervent about new American methods of modernising the two thousand years of tradition which graced the Church of Rome. Between the distractions in Guildford and his writing, Duval was not finding the time he wanted to spend with Marda.
He imagined her huddled in her cell. Of course he wanted her to feel comfortable, but it would only work if she did things his way. The other girls had been stubborn. They would not listen.
Especially Denise. Duval had not opened Denise’s door for over four years, his mark of respect for the dead.
He remembered a buxom, strong girl, all kicking and screaming; lots of temper tantrums, including one that had caused him an injury. In the end he had left her to her own devices for a few days, but then, somehow, he hadn’t felt like confronting her red face, bulging eyes, the endless shrieking. A few days had become a few weeks, and finally his conscience and curiosity impelled him into one brief visit to her cell. Thereafter, he had cut Denise out of his mind. Such a difficult girl.
He had left her to God. He did not kill her; she had simply died.
In his more contemplative moments, he sometimes likened his actions to the glorious Inquisition. It had never killed; the priests handed over their victims to the secular arm of the state, and it was they who burned heretics at the stake. When the sinners were handed over to secular authorities, the Church issued a prayer which, while asking that there be no shedding of blood, also had the effect of signifying by what manner of death the wrongdoer should glorify God. The Church thus absolved itself from all responsibility.
Nevertheless, seeing Denise’s skeleton had shocked him. Afterwards, he had scrubbed his whole body for over an hour. A scintilla of remorse entered his heart.
If Duval had been a psychiatrist, and sane enough to analyse himself, he might have admitted that his own obsessive cleanliness was part of the denial of his actions, a way of relegating misdeeds to the lower levels of his subconscious; that even he, a murderer, disliked seeing corpses was perhaps also a subliminal defensive reaction to his own innate destructiveness.
Duval, in his conscious persona as a priest, could certainly understand why Marda was upset by the sight of Denise, but if the shock led her into the path of obedience it would have been worth it. It would save her life, maybe her soul, and make God and His servant happy.
No, he had done it for Marda’s own good. He didn’t want to mollycoddle the girl. He would keep his distance to give her time to settle down and, anyway, he was quite busy with his other work in Guildford.
But he always returned to the primary impulse of his life, the recreation of a spiritually successful anchoress in the modern world. To the outside secular world, Duval might seem a failure, a mere second-rate priest, an Oxbridge scholar who had wasted his potential. But his hidden devotional work, his search for the divine channel to the ultimate energy that suffused the planet, would be worth-if such baubles mattered-a thousand Nobel laureates.
Psychologically, this was a holy transformation of impotence into the experience of omnipotence. Through his work, Duval strove to become the master of his spiritual life, and hence the highest quality of spiritual life had to be nurtured in his chosen ones. He wanted to control, not destroy, and while that meant the issuing of punishments and threats of punishment, he was demanding spiritual surrender, not bodily annihilation. He craved power over his novices’ inner lives.
He occasionally admitted to himself that he was stimulated by their helplessness, but the guests who failed him had been weak in mind and body-they had given up and chosen death. So he would try to distance himself, a little, from the cellar for a while, but he didn’t want to become too forgetful. He would feed Marda, and when she was ready he could start his work on her.
On the fifth day after Marda’s arrival, Duval decided to begin her induction course. He walked down the corridor, opened the grille, and through it spoke to her quietly, trying his best to be comforting. After all, he had some experience: he was a Catholic priest.
“Marda, how are you?” he said, his voice full of concern.
Marda cringed in the corner; she now equated the light with her tormentor.
“Are you cowering from me, or from the light? Is it too bright for you? I thought that perhaps you would have had enough of the darkness down here. Who is more foolish, I wonder, the child afraid of the dark, or the man afraid of the light? Ah, but I came to comfort you, not to philosophise…Really, how are you? I do care, you know.”
Marda said nothing. Duval simply stared at his captive. After a minute or so, he tried again: “I am sorry that opening up Denise’s room upset you.” Duval continued ruefully, “It upset me, too. I hadn’t opened it for a very long time.”
Nausea rose in Marda’s throat. “Did you leave her there to die?” she said, her voice breaking. “How long was she here for?”
“She was my guest for some six months,” Duval explained calmly. “A very difficult guest from whom I removed food privileges because she wouldn’t do as she was told. It was exasperating.”
Marda stared at him in horror. “You mean you starved her to death?”
Duval shook his head. “That’s not what I said. I think she chose death and starved herself, in effect. Just before her spirit left her I cleaned her body and performed the last rites. That was the least I could do.”
Her mind raced with the implications of his words. “You mean…you really are a priest?”
“Yes.” He smiled, and the play of light on the contours of his face made him seem even more disturbed.
“But how can a priest do this to young girls?”
“Do what?” Duval looked genuinely bewildered.
Marda was learning to be cautious. She searched for the right words. “Well, accommodate young…guests…in a cellar.”
“I have a mission,” he replied proudly. “Both in my church and in this sacred cellar.”
Again Marda chose her words carefully. “May I ask how many girls have been your…your guests?”
“You are my sixth guest.”
“Are all the others still here?”
“Yes.”
“And they are all…dead?” Marda held her breath.
“Yes,” said Duval regretfully. “They all failed me. Failed themselves really.”
Again Duval smiled with his whole face but emanated no warmth. “But you, Marda, you will live because you will not fail me. I know you won’t fail me. Let us forget about death and think about life. What can we do to make your life more comfortable?” he asked conversationally.
Marda thought carefully before replying. “Couldn’t I live in a room upstairs?”
Duval furrowed his brow in thought. “That would be quite impossible now for a novice. Perhaps later, when I can trust you, yes.”
“Trust me how?”
“Trust that you will learn what I shall try to teach you. That you will not try to run away before we have finished.”
“Finished what?” Marda had no idea what he was talking about.
“I am required to teach you about God,” said the priest earnestly. “I am obliged to teach you about the life of an anchoress. An anchoress is a woman devoted entirely to God. Later I shall tell you of Christine, about whom I have been writing, and how a woman can achieve everything through a contemplative life. I believe the modern approximation is…” he paused, searching for words to which she might relate, “to teach you to tune in, turn on and drop out. Dr. Timothy Leary, I believe. Have you heard of him?”
Marda shook her head, completely confused. Her intuition told her that she would survive only by pretending to be much less intelligent than she really was, and then making Duval feel superior by appearing to learn quickly what he wished her to. She had indeed read about Leary and had discussed his ideas with friends, but she knew that “no” would be the correct answer to the question. Somehow she sensed that he wanted, as did all men, or certainly all men with diminished egos, to explain things to her. Let him go ahead, then.
“Dr. Timothy Leary experimented with drugs in America,” lectured Duval. “LSD-‘acid,’ it’s called-can make a person explore their inner mind, he claims. Silly, really. The religious mystics had better, safer and more sustained visions without this ‘acid.’ Religion, approached properly, can give you a real ‘trip’”-Duval waggled two fingers on each hand to provide the quotation marks-“if you want it enough.”
“And when I have learned your religious course properly, I can go?” asked Marda hopefully.
“If you reach the level of attainment of which I think you may be capable, you will not only learn a new philosophy of life, but you will also be free to decide whether to stay or go.” The lie came easily.
Marda forced a lopsided grin for Duval, then looked thoughtful. “How long will I take to pass your…exam, your examination?” she asked seriously.
“Historically speaking, a few-very few-people have reached the mystical stage in weeks. Others take a lot longer.”
“What about those who fail?”
“As long as you are sincere and you try”-Duval’s eyes glanced heavenwards-“God helps you to try and try again.”
Marda’s knees felt weak, but she struggled to stay engaged in this sinister tutorial. “But some fail, perhaps like the girls in the other cells?” She was not sure if she wanted him to answer this.
Through the grille, Duval looked at her kindly. “I don’t want to hurt you. I want to look after you. Ensure you eat properly. Make sure you are warm. In return I merely expect you to listen to me and to answer me openly and honestly. We will start with a little Sunday school-Bible classes, if you like-and then as we progress and study and gain spiritual depth, I will try to explain why I have chosen you.”
By now Marda was convinced she was dealing not only with a homicidal religious maniac but also a patronising bastard. The only course was to placate him and wait for an advantageous occasion to escape. Meanwhile, appeasing him meant food. Obviously the first lesson.
She took a deep breath. “The sooner we start, then, the better,” she said brightly. “Is that OK with you, Michael?”
Duval looked at her with a slightly quizzical expression. “Indeed,” he said thoughtfully.
Shifting his standing position, he composed himself to begin the lesson. “Let us talk about faith,” he began. “My first definition of faith was provided by my old theology tutor. He told me that a philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there, and a theologian is the man who finds it. I thought it was amusing the first time I heard it, but I soon realised that faith depends upon doubt. Believing in God unquestioningly sometimes, yes, but at other times doubting him. Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith, it’s a crucial element. Religion may be morally useful without necessarily being intellectually sustainable. So you could say that a believer is happier than a non-believer. Perhaps that’s as valid as saying that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.”
Marda wondered yet again whether he was merely trying to impress her or whether he wanted genuinely to engage her in conversation. Intuitively, she grasped that he wanted questions from an eager pupil.
“What is God like?” was Marda’s first question, as she assumed an attentive posture on her bench.
“So you believe in God?” replied Duval, peering through the grille.
“Yes,” she said. But what she really wanted to shout was, I cannot believe in God because long ago he would have destroyed evil men like you. How could God allow such an unspeakable evil? In other circumstances she might have wanted to discuss the holocaust, but for now she was keeping it simple.
“I can tell you that God is alive, Marda, because I spoke to Him this morning,” said Duval smugly. “Perhaps you are surprised by such direct communication. You mentioned, I recall, that you are not a Catholic.”
“No, I’m not,” she replied defensively, “but that doesn’t mean I’m hostile.”
She started to cough suddenly, as the nauseating taste of bile rose in her mouth. She was shivering from the horror and unreality of her interrogation, but she knew she had to try to disguise her disgust. She patted her chest and coughed again. “Please excuse me; the cold is getting to me.”
Duval waited for her to continue. The coughing fit gave Marda time to select her words. “I’m interested in religion but not really inspired by it. I told you, I think, that I was christened in the Church of England and then didn’t really bother. I went through a period of doubting God’s existence. You know how it is. Well, maybe you don’t. That was a stupid remark,” she said, feeling awkward.
But Duval answered her seriously. “I hope I am not an unthinking Catholic. My early conversion changed me. You don’t know how much less tolerant I would be if I hadn’t become a Catholic…” He paused, waiting for a response. Marda did not move a single muscle on her face, and there was silence for a few seconds. Then he continued, as though he was discussing the weather: “But I have my healthy scepticism. In some ways I tread my own path. I have my doubts about big organisations such as the Church. They grow bureaucratic, the arteries become sclerotic. They insist on absolutes. You know, the Curia in the Vatican is a bit like the Politburo in Moscow. Both Catholics and communists are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be honest and intelligent. But I digress…”
He stopped, peered through the grille, and turned his gaze directly to Marda, “All right, let’s start at the beginning. Who made you?”
“Well, God, I suppose.” Marda was somewhat taken aback by the question.
“You are not sure.”
“No,” Marda paused, “but maybe there are various gods.”
“No.” Duval started to recite: “There is the one God, who is three-with His Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit if you like. Again, who made you?”
“God.” Marda felt like a chastened schoolgirl.
“And why is there a God, do you think?”
“To guide us?” she hazarded.
He prompted her: “To provide moral limits, moral goalposts perhaps?”
“Yes,” she said quickly, “that’s a good way of putting it.” Marda gathered her thoughts. “Um, I don’t believe in organisations, either. Yes, I suppose I should know my Bible better, but I try to act according to my own conscience. I try to develop my talents-if I have any-to the best of my own ability, without hurting anybody else.”
She paused to wipe her runny nose with the edge of her finger.
“I don’t need an organisation to tell me what to do,” she continued, “but I suppose that God’s word has been interpreted over the centuries-by the Catholic Church and others-and that provides me with the essence of what I believe, as an individual. So, I suppose, God has provided us with morality.”
Duval waited for her to finish, then said “I don’t know if you understand the philosophical implications of what you have just said, but you are developing the theory of moral relativity.”
“I don’t have a theory; I just try to do what is right.”
“Perhaps,” replied Duval, shifting from one foot to the other, “but if we become too relative, too individualistic, then we might as well decide whether the earth is God’s plaything, His golf ball if you like, or rather-to turn the argument on its head-maybe our role is not to worship God but to create him…that black cat which isn’t there in the pitch-black room. But we do need God, whether we feel Him intellectually or emotionally. And so we are back to faith again.”
He changed tack. “Let me play devil’s advocate: if God cannot make us become better, then perhaps it’s time to get rid of Him. No God, no faith, no nothing…God, however, is necessary for the human condition.”
He sighed, enjoying flexing his intellectual muscles, but felt that at this stage it was probably rather in vain. “Why did God make you, Marda?”
Not to listen to you, you monster, Marda thought, keeping her face neutral.
“Take your time, Marda. I like a considered reply. Not just something flippant, off the top of your head, just to please me. I want the truth at all times. God will know if you lie, and we can hide nothing from Him. So let us try that again: why did God make you?”
“We both make the assumption that there is a God. Then His purpose would be for us to live on earth and be good Christians…or Muslims…or Buddhists, if that’s what you believe. That’s my first thought. But I know that some people want to live in heaven. I’ve never fancied the idea of harps and clouds and all that. I might when I’m sick and old, but not now. As for good Christians, what is ‘good’? Presumably priests are supposed to be good.” She bit her lip slightly, but Duval ignored her ironic parry.
“I am not good,” he said, trying to sound humble, “but in my own small way I try to bring people to God.”
Yes, thought Marda, you put the fear of God in people, but she continued to play along. “And, Michael,” she asked, “are people who are not Christians not good? Can a Buddhist be a good person? Or a Jew? At least by our”-she emphasised the “our”-“definition, as Christians, I mean.”
“Excellent, Marda,” smiled Duval, “you are thinking about God. I suppose you have thought more about Him in the last few days than in all your life.”
Marda’s big eyes flickered nervously, but Duval carried on excitedly. “Let’s try to learn the basic rules and then we can move on to debate. We can discuss good and evil later. I do believe there is evil, I must say. It is tempting to deny the existence of Satan since it removes the need to fight Him. It is so easy to slip back into moral relativism. You might know the saying: kill one person and you are a murderer, kill millions and you are a conqueror. But if you kill everyone, you are God.”
Marda nodded politely, completely appalled.
“I enjoy talking to you, Marda,” said Duval expansively. “I feel very confident about you, but we are running before we walk. Let us get back to God’s purpose.”
Duval stopped and stared at her for a moment, then continued, “Of course there is the classic dilemma. If God is perfectly loving, He must by definition wish to avoid evil, and if He is all-powerful He is able, also by definition, to abolish evil. But evil exists-I suppose you think me evil, Marda? — and therefore, God cannot be both omnipotent and perfectly loving. Do you see?
“Or take our situation here. Even if you think me evil, and let us agree that in some circumstances I may be evil-no one is perfect of course-then let me suggest that even here good can come from evil, that new life can come from old. Christ’s crucifixion was an utterly despicable historical act, but from this sacrifice emerged the New Testament, Christianity and the possibility of redemption on a world scale. So what seems a bad action may actually be good. Do you understand?”
Marda frowned, and deliberately did not answer.
“I shall give you a Catechism to read and learn,” Duval continued, not really having expected an answer. “Initially I shall allow you to have one hour’s light a day to read the Catechism and a Bible which I shall also give you. If you use this period fruitfully, I shall extend the reading time. Later, if your studies go well, I shall give you some paper so you can make your own notes.
“When I go I want you to think about your soul.”
Marda thought he was about to leave, but Duval rambled on about the soul and its immortality. She came to realise that often he wanted to indulge himself in long monologues. Despite his excellent memory, he would sometimes repeat himself.
When he touched on faith again, he suddenly asked Marda, “Where is God?”
Her mind had been wandering and she was not prepared for the question. “I’m sorry, I don’t know,” she stuttered.
“Ubique. The answer in the Catechism is ‘God is everywhere,’” he said confidently.
“Well, He’s not bloody well here, is He?” she blurted out, unable to hold back the tears any longer.
Duval stood back, disappointed. “Ah, Marda, you were doing so well until now. I don’t like this kind of facetiousness-which, by the way, is also blasphemous. Since this is just the start, and you have had a difficult few days, I shall be lenient on this occasion. For two days you will have no light, and you will have only plain bread and water. Now I know you do need more nourishment, and I was about to add, for example, some cardamom to your coffee and put some fenugreek seeds in the bread; that is so good for your digestion. But if you insist on being a poor and recalcitrant pupil, you have only yourself to blame.”
Marda was beyond caring what Duval thought of her. She grabbed the frame of the grille and brought her face close to the priest’s. “Maybe my stomach can survive on bread and water,” she shouted at him, “but my bare feet won’t last much longer. Will you, please, give me the shoes and stockings you mentioned? The ones that are appropriate for this nun’s habit.”
The afterthought, more calmly expressed, was well targeted, but Duval ignored her, closed the grille and walked away.
Marda sat in the absolute silence, the absolute darkness, feeling proud of herself. A short time before she had been a quivering mass of abject terror. Now she had somehow managed to engage a maniac in a sustained philosophical discussion. She could pretend to play according to his rules. He wanted to control her mind and body, but he could control only her body. Her mind was hers, and she would beat him at his own game. Let him think he had the power; she would somehow discover how to use it against him. Meanwhile, she would survive. She resolved not to allow herself to be foolishly flippant again, no matter what she felt like saying. In the lonely blackness she would train her body and her mind. No matter how her stomach was knotted in agonising fear, she would not show it. She would not be humiliated. That was how she would win.
And yet doubt and despair sapped her bouts of confidence. She wondered whether she could continue to subdue her intelligence, to get the balance right between her assumed mantle of dedicated student and docile victim. Her life teetered along a razor’s edge every time he asked a question, so she would have to think hard and plan her words more carefully. She had plenty of time to think. She would use this time to her advantage, no matter how cold and desperate she was.
An hour later, Duval opened the grille without a word and threw in a brown paper bag. The grille was slammed shut and she heard his footsteps echo angrily down the corridor.
Marda tore open the bag and found clean woollen stockings, and shoes. They were a little large, but it made no difference to her feet, aching with cold.
Two days passed, and Duval opened the grille twice without speaking. Each time he handed in a clay jug of water and half a loaf of dark bread. Marda started to beg for some light on the first occasion, but the grille crashed shut before she could get the words out.
When it opened the second time, Marda said in rush, “Please give me a Bible so that I can read.”
Duval still said nothing, leaving her standing in the darkness.
On the third day, he silently brought a wooden tray with strange, rather gritty coffee, a fruit she did not recognise and cold venison, heavily larded with horseradish. As soon as he passed the narrow tray through the grille, Marda seized it and began to devour the food.
The priest watched her gorge, then said in a clipped voice, “I have brought you a Bible. I will permit you light for one hour.”
He flicked on a switch in the corridor.
“You can also have this tallow candle so that you can study as they did in olden times.” She heard the now familiar sound of his heavy tread disappearing down the hall.
Spiritual and physical food, thought Marda. She scanned the cell, her first chance to see it in proper light. As she chewed greedily, she flicked open the first pages of the Bible: the Catholic Douay version. It was unfamiliar. She would have preferred the King James Bible, the one she had used at school, but realised it was ridiculous to worry about that.
Wiping her hands on her habit, she began to read the first line of the first book: “And in the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth…”
“What am I beginning?” she asked herself. “And can I prolong the beginning to avoid the end?”