Three Brothers by Peter Ackroyd Page B

Mother Placentia, he knew nothing. He had vowed never to work again, but he was drawn to the company of these women. “I can do that,” he said.
    “Good. Come into the sacristy.”
    He had not known that there was a convent attached to the church of Our Lady of Sorrows. This small establishment lay behind the church, surrounded by a high red-brick wall. If you had asked any of the local residents about the nuns, they would not have known how to answer. No one knew when, or from where, they had come. They had always seemed to be part of the neighbourhood. But they were rarely seen. They stayed behind the high walls.
    Sam entered through the gate of the convent in the company of Sister Eugenia, the nun who had come up to him in the church. They crossed a courtyard, with the basin of a dried fountain in the middle where fallen leaves rustled in the dust. There was a sundial in the corner of the lawn, its gnomon broken. A bird was perched on the stone rim of the basin of the fountain, singing its eternal song; yet it seemed to Sam that it sang more slowly than any bird he had ever heard.
    Sister Eugenia led him down a corridor, on the walls of which were hanging woodcuts and engravings of sacred scenes. The sister approached a door at the end of the corridor, and knocked upon it gently. “Who is knocking?” asked someone within.
    “Eugenia, Mother.”
    “Enter in God’s name, Eugenia.”
    She opened the door, and asked Sam to go in before her. “It is the young man,” she said.
    “Is it you? You are younger than I expected.” Mother Placentia was a small, plump woman with an expression of brutal amiability; her head was shaken by a slight but continual tremor. On the wall above her was a portrait of the Virgin, hands clasped in prayer or pity, her outline traced in blue and gold. “How old are you?”
    “Seventeen.”
    “So you are the young man who sees visions in the heart of London.” He said nothing but continued to look steadily at her. “You are as still as a lamb. That is good. Do you know the saying, ‘rise up west wind and refresh my garden’?” He shook his head. “You must be our wind. You must refresh our garden. Can you do that?”
    “I hope so.”
    “What is your name, young man?”
    “Sam. Sam Hanway.”
    “Hanway?” She seemed momentarily distracted. “A good name. An old name.”
    “We may be old without being good,” he said.
    She burst into laughter which ended with a fit of coughing. “The Lord has given you wit,” she said.
    The garden smelled sweetly of several herbs, but there was little for Sam to do. One of the nuns, Sister Idonea, tended the sage and the thyme and the rue. He was there to remove the weeds, water the lawns and beds, and burn the dead leaves of autumn. He also performed the tasks that the nuns could not; he built shelves, he painted doors and fences, he restored the stone paths that crossed the courtyard. Yet it seemed that the nuns simply wanted him to be part of their community; he had been given a sign by the Virgin, and they wanted to see what might happen to him.
    He came to know the sisters very well. Mother Placentiaruled over them with the same forceful amiability she had displayed to him. She was massively calm, she was dispassionate, she was obdurate. Sister Delecta and Sister Prudentia, for example, had been involved in an argument over the number of wax candles needed for the vigil of the Assumption of Our Lady. Their quarrel had been loud, and had reached the ears of Sister Idonea. She had stopped shelling peas and listened to them with great eagerness, registering the use of such words as “pitiful” and “ridiculous.” She repeated the conversation, with some exaggeration, to Sister Clarice who was known to be a particular favourite of Mother. The abbess called in the two offending sisters. As soon as they had entered her office she rose up from her chair and slapped them both on the right cheek.
    Sister Idonea was listening at the door, and