Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor 1)

‘That’s the Dome of the Ancestor, Nona. The Ancestor lives there, nobody else.’

‘Is he terribly big?’ Nona asked. Behind her Sister Apple stifled a laugh.

‘The Ancestor occupies any space built in their honour. In Verity the Ancestor is present in ten thousand household shrines, some into which even you would find it hard to squeeze, others larger than most houses. Here on the plateau the church was able to give the Ancestor a grander home – a gift of Emperor Persus, third of his name.’

Nona followed on in silence, her lips buttoned against the thought that the Ancestor seemed very greedy to be taking up so much room while the children at the Caltess wedged themselves into any nook or cranny that would take them.

‘This is my house.’ Abbess Glass waved a hand at a blocky stone building looming out of the deepening shade. ‘At least for as long as I am abbess here. It’s also Malkin’s home.’ A large grey cat lay coiled on the steps. The abbess turned to face Nona and the two sisters. ‘Sister Apple will find you somewhere to sleep and in the morning you’ll be introduced to your class, after which—’

‘Class?’ Nona blinked. In the village Nana Even had held class every seven-day, teaching the older children their numbers and such. Nona had tried to listen in but bigs chased her away as if their stupid numbers were a secret too important for her ears.

‘You’re here to join the convent, Nona.’ Shadow hid the abbess’s face but perhaps there was a smile there. ‘If you want to. And that means living here and learning all the things a sister needs to learn. There are classes every day except seven-day.’ She turned and walked away.

‘Come, Nona.’ Sister Apple held out her hand. Nona regarded it, uncertain whether the woman wanted something from her. After a moment Apple returned her hand to her side and continued on around the curve of the dome. Sister Tallow followed, her habit flapping about her legs.

Darkness had swallowed the plateau behind them and the wind roamed there. Nona stared back along the path the nuns had brought her by, the pillars invisible now. The heat of the climb had left her and the Corridor wind ran sharp fingers through her Caltess shift, filching any remaining warmth. It carried a salt edge – perhaps the sea, though it lay so many miles away. Nona shivered, hugged herself, and followed the nuns.

At the rear of the dome a long, low building extended like a tail on a huddled dormouse. Sister Apple stopped at a sturdy door beneath the peak of a tiled roof. A lantern swung on a hook, sparing enough light for the nun to match the iron key she drew from her habit to the keyhole in the door’s locking plate.

Sister Apple lifted the lantern down from its hook, adjusting its cowl. ‘These are the nun’s cells.’ She kept her voice low.

‘Cells!’ Nona took a step back.

‘Not like prison cells.’ Sister Apple smiled, then frowned. ‘Well, quite similar truth be told, but they’re clean and there are no locks on the doors.’ She stepped through the doorway. ‘You’ll sleep here tonight. If you study hard and do well you might get to come back for another night in about ten years.’

The door gave onto a long corridor. The beam of Sister Apple’s lantern revealed the passage extended all the way to a black door where it reached the dome. Left and right, repeating every few yards, a pair of round-topped doors guarded nun’s cells. Sister Apple walked in, stepping softly. Sister Tallow turned without a word as they passed the third pair and passed into the darkness of the cell to the left. The black door at the end drew Nona’s eyes. Something about it.

Eighteen doors in, about half the length of the corridor, Sister Apple stopped and pushed open the door to the right. She leaned in and took a candle from the box on the wall, lighting it from the lantern. ‘You’ll be in here. There’s linen and a blanket on the pallet. I’ll collect you in the morning.’ She handed the candle to Nona. ‘Don’t start any fires.’

Nona watched Sister Apple walk back towards the main door, the light diminishing with her departure. Finally the nun entered one of the cells close to Sister Tallow’s, leaving Nona in her own small and flickering pool of light. The silence that had rolled back with the shadows now returned, deeper and thicker than any Nona had known. She stood, held by its completeness. No sound. Not the wind’s moan. Not the creak of timbers or rustle of leaves. Not the skittering of rats or the distant complaint of owls. Nothing.

The door at the end of the corridor reclaimed her attention, although the darkness had hidden it. The memory of that door, black and polished, pressed like a finger between her eyes. Her feet wanted to take her there, her hands to set themselves flat against the smooth wood and to feel up close the vast and slumbering … fullness … that lay beyond.

Somewhere a few cells back a woman coughed in her sleep, breaking the silence and the strangeness. Freed from both paralysis and compulsion, Nona raised a hand to shield her candle’s flame and advanced into the narrow room that Sister Apple had led her to.

Even her cell at the Harriton had boasted a window, high and barred perhaps, but offering the condemned the sky. Nona’s new cell had a slit wide enough to reach her arm through, shuttered with a pine board. She made a circle. A sleeping pallet, a pillow, a chair, a desk. A pot to piss in. Last and strangest, a length of metal running along the outer wall at ground level. It emerged from the cell to the left and vanished through the wall to the right. Round as a branch and just a little too thick to close her hand around.

Nona sniffed. Dust, and the stale air of an unused room. She went to the pallet. Heat rising from the metal stick burned on her cheeks. The whole cell held the warmth of it. Nona pulled the pallet away from the hot metal, mistrusting it. She set the candle down, pulled the blanket over her, and laid her head on the pillow. One last look at the room and she blew out the flame. She stared at the darkness, her mind too full for sleep, certain that she would lie awake the whole night.

A moment later the clanging of an iron bell opened Nona’s eyes. The door swung open, banging against the wall. Nona levered herself up from the pallet and blinked towards the entrance, the darkness now a gloomy half-light. A groan escaped her, every limb stiff and aching though she only recalled straining her legs on the climb.

‘Up! Up! No slug-a-beds here! Up!’ A small, angular woman with a voice that sounded as if it were being forced violently through a narrow hole. She strode into the cell, reaching over Nona to throw back the shutter. ‘Let the light in! No hiding place for sin!’

Through fingers held up to defend against the daylight Nona found herself staring into a humourless face pinched tight around prominent cheekbones, eyes wide, watery and accusing. The woman’s head, which had seemed a most alarming shape in the gloom, sported a rising white headdress, rather like a funnel, and quite different to those the other nuns had worn the previous evening.

‘Up, girl! Up!’

‘Ah, I see you’ve met Sister Wheel.’ Sister Apple stepped through the open doorway holding a long habit, the outer garment grey felt, the inner white linen.

‘Sleeping after the morning bell, she was!’ The old woman raised her hands, seemingly unsure whether to strike Nona or to use them to better depict the enormity of her crime.

‘She’s new, Wheel, not even a novice yet.’ Sister Apple smiled and looked pointedly at the doorway.