Sleeping Embers of an Ordinary Mind (17 page)

When Antonia enters the parlour, she’s presented with a scene as conspiratorial as Cenni di Francesco’s fresco. She walks across to her mother and aunt. They stop their conversation.

“Come through to the cloisters, Antonia, through the boarders’ doorway. I want to show you around the scriptorium. I’ll meet you there, and your mother can rest here.”

Although Antonia has sneaked a look in the scriptorium many times, she has never crossed its threshold. She makes her way alone through dark passages to the small courtyard where the convent’s two main workshops face one another across the herb garden. One workshop for gold-thread making and embroidery work, the other for the rougher linen work carried out by the servant nuns. She rushes ahead to the Great Cloister, and there, at the entrance to the scriptorium, her aunt reaches out for Antonia’s hands and kisses her forehead.

Antonia looks into her aunt’s face and notices she’s nigh on unwrinkled. Unlike Antonia’s mother, she has no frown line between her eyes.

“So, Antonia, you’re joining us, and I rejoice in this news. It’s what I have prayed for. You may not thank me for those prayers just now, but a girl with talents could do a great deal worse.” Antonia is wide-eyed. “You will enjoy
three
sources of consolation during your incarceration.” Antonia feels light-headed on hearing her aunt’s blunt words. “You will know that your prayers, as a bride of Christ, will sustain your family and our great city. You will always be protected here from the soldiers of invading armies. And you will take pleasure in using your talents, which Our Lord will countenance as long as you reject the sin of pride. A woman with a husband and children cannot hope for such things. Come with me, and I’ll show you how my sister scribes devote their talents to God, and the abbess.”

Several scribes’ desks line the cloister walk. “These desks will remain here to make good use of the summer light, but as soon as we have three rainy days in succession, they’ll be moved back into the scriptorium. And the communal calefactory next door, with its roaring fire, keeps the scriptorium warm through the winter.

“You’ll find, Antonia, that some of the sisters who work in our gardens and laundry feel our scribes have an easy life. But you must know from your studies, here and with your father, that a mind concentrated for several hours is just as draining as any manual labour, even in winter.”

“I’d prefer anything to freezing fingers, Aunt.”

“When you become a novice, you’ll have to call me Sister Giustina—but it doesn’t matter for now.” Antonia nods, and her head is swimming again. “Anyway, whatever talents we are granted by God, we must make the most of them, and we must offer our work back to him as a form of prayer. It doesn’t matter if your talent manifests itself in the garden or at a scribe’s desk. Having said that . . . let me show you the work of our illuminator, Sister Battista, and two of our best copyists. They’ve completed a Book of Hours for Maria degli Albizzi”—she lowers her head to whisper into Antonia’s ear—“who, as you know, is seated in the parlour as I speak. So take care that you don’t let her hear that I have shown you her book. She has seen the individual pages, but she hasn’t seen the bound volume.”

The scriptorium’s arched windows face the cloister. On the opposite wall, there are smaller arched windows facing the street, but they’re too high for anyone to see outside. Sister Giustina opens the doors of a wooden cupboard that sits at the centre of the scriptorium, and she brings out the new Book of Hours, wrapped in cloth. She sets it down on a lectern and turns to Antonia.

“Sister Battista painted the main illuminations herself. She directed two of our sisters in copying the Latin prayers and painting some of the simpler borders. It has taken them six months to complete the commission.” She looks at Antonia, her eyes twinkling with mischief. “And she included her own portrait within one of the illuminations.”

“Is that allowed?” Antonia is incredulous.

“It was our patron’s idea, but the abbess prayed for guidance for a week before she agreed.”

“But the sin of pride, Aunt.”

“Sister Battista wasn’t motivated by pride. That’s all that matters in God’s eyes. In any case, doesn’t everyone know the paintings of Brother Angelico?” She gives Antonia a knowing look. “And Caterina of the Poor Clares in Bologna wrote essays under her own name. She was a painter, too, you know.”

Sister Giustina carefully unwraps the cloth to reveal the prayer book, bound in red leather with a simple crucifix stamped into the surface and two metal clasps holding the pages closed.

“See, the binding is complete.” She opens the book. Her hand shakes. “Here is one of Sister Battista’s full-page illuminations.”

Antonia is enthralled. Her hand reaches towards the page. She knows she mustn’t touch, but she wants to feel closer to this small wonder. The colours are deep, brighter than stained glass in full sun, and the composition is complex and tight. On the facing page is the Latin prayer, which is wonderfully easy to read; the letters are beautifully rounded and even. Some of the letters are tall, and all the words are neatly spaced. It’s so much easier to read than the northern fashion of lettering, which always looks so squashed and cramped to Antonia—no tall letters and everything pointy. Last week, in her father’s study, she’d tried to read a book, from the University of Bologna, written in this ugly northern style. So many of the words were abbreviated—she couldn’t make sense of a single sentence.

“It’s the Suffrage of Saint Anthony,” says Sister Giustina. Antonia looks back at the painting and finds it difficult to believe that a nun could paint an image of such brutality: a helpless Saint Anthony being beaten with clubs by four winged demons.

“See how much lapis lazuli has been used. Maria degli Albizzi has spared no expense.” She turns the page. “Here, look at Sister Battista’s self-portrait.”

Antonia is disappointed. It isn’t a full-page portrait. It’s a small face framed by a nun’s white cowl and black habit, painted below a block of Latin text. Sister Battista has made no attempt to compose her portrait, or to tell a story. Antonia looks up, but doesn’t speak for fear of sounding unimpressed.

“Naturally, Antonia, you will start by copying breviaries and psalters for the convent’s own use, and as you acquire more expertise, you’ll illuminate choir books and books of sermons. But, imagine—one day, you might produce a Book of Hours as fine as Sister Battista’s.”

Her aunt narrows her eyes, evidently struggling to read Antonia’s silence.

“Antonia . . . why do you believe you were saved from the plague? Surely, Our Lord wants you to serve him in a special way. How better than to serve him here in our scriptorium and make good use of the training you have received from your father?” Her attempt at mind reading continues. “You won’t notice the simple food and the cold winters if you enter with the love of God in your heart. You will find a way to serve him that brings you peace and fulfilment. Life on the outside is hard in its own particular ways. There’s no easy path. And believe me, it’s a bored mind that makes a bright young woman feel like a pauper.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Winchelsea Beach, England, 2113

A slight westerly breeze blows across the beach, and the sea appears depleted of energy. The waves are mere ripples that dissolve into foam rather than break on the shore. Toniah looks along the coast from the top of the shingle beach. Five or so miles distant as the crow flies stands a block of concrete, which can only be Dungeness Fusion Power Station; it appears less brutal than Toniah expected. Strong sunlight reflects off its flat surfaces, giving the impression that the power station is painted white, which seems unlikely. To a time-traveller from the past, it would appear to be a fortress, defending the ancient trading posts of England’s south coast, protecting its inhabitants from murderous incursions. And halfway between Winchelsea and Dungeness, at the far end of Camber Sands, stand the defunct wind turbines. They face into the wind, their blades no longer sweeping, awaiting their final decommission, their scrappage. They’ve served their purpose. The sands at Winchelsea are among the most unstable in the world, but coastal engineers have remained resolute, judging by the line upon line of timber groynes stretching from the highest terrace of the shingle beach down to the sea’s shallows.

It was Ben’s idea to make this day trip. He knows this stretch of the south coast from childhood holidays. Toniah stayed at his place overnight, and she had planned to set off this morning for Norwich to see her old housemates. She needed to escape the city, clear her thoughts. Ben persuaded her that sea air was the best medicine.

“If we turned back the clock a thousand years,” he says, “we’d be standing in the sea. This shoreline has seen a lot of changes.”

“What happened?” she says, surprised.

“Major flooding from the sea. Old Winchelsea and its harbour were inundated, not once but twice in a generation, and the settlement was rebuilt on higher ground. The king ordered it—I think it was Edward I—in the late 1200s.”

“Why was the king so concerned?”

“Winchelsea was the main point of departure for France. After the floods, a new harbour was built, but it was smaller. Basically, this whole area went into a slow decline, and the wine trade with France petered out.”

Toniah finds it reassuring that coastlines such as this still exist—gorgeously bleak, almost sublime, and underpopulated. Yet it lies just one hour from London.

“It’s a wonder they bother,” says Toniah. “You know, conserving these beaches. It must cost a fortune.” The oldest timber piles have the appearance of burnt shards, disfigured yet seductive.

“Once you start with coastal protection, it’s difficult to stop,” says Ben. “When you protect one beach, you push the problem farther along. It’s all about longshore drift—remember that from school?”

“I don’t think I grasped geography, being a city kid.”

“The point is that once you start interfering, you’re committed. And it’s difficult to undo.”

They make their way, half walking, half sliding, down three distinct levels of shingle to the shoreline and head off westwards in the direction of Brighton.

“It must feel good living somewhere like this, at the edge,” says Toniah. “Look,” she says, sweeping her hand around the land horizon. “You can’t see any houses along the coast. There’s only the power station, way off. All we can see is beach, water, sky and clouds.”

“Talks to your inner hermit, hmm?”

Ben takes binoculars from his pocket and stops to scan the sea. Toniah walks on. She stoops to pick up a lump of old, weathered wood, almost black, with a neat circular hole worn through, as though a nail had once skewered it. Similar fragments are scattered along the line of high tide. It must be something peculiar to this area—from an old sunken ship? Or from old timber groynes?

He’s probably right; she does have hermit envy. She knows she likes to focus on one thing, one project. So when her attention is drawn away from that one project, she feels panicked, and that’s when she fantasizes about sitting by a window in a quiet, uncluttered room. She wouldn’t want a view out to sea. She suspects a seascape would induce sleepiness, with the soporific effect of one wave crashing after another, after another.

She told Ben about Maximillian last night. She needed someone to talk to, someone who understood the peculiarities of her home life. He’s pretty astute, she thinks. He said, “I’m not sure you’re ready to settle back home.”

She turns the driftwood over in her hands and lifts it to her face, as though its smell might yield the secret of its origin. Stupid, really.

Since talking with Hildi at the nursing home, she has reached a conclusion. It was a pure accident that she and Poppy were raised in an all-female household. Nana couldn’t bear to have another boy. It almost seems that a small boy—a long time in the past—was loved too much, and as a result, Toniah finds herself in a partho family. Is it possible to love a child
too
much? she wonders. She throws the driftwood into the sea. Nana Stone
would
have loved a second boy just as much as the first. Toniah’s sure of it. But then, if her mother hadn’t been born . . .

She recalls the conversation she had with Poppy after they left Hildi’s nursing home. They walked to a coffeehouse, and by the time they’d finished their coffees, Poppy seemed satisfied that the puzzle was solved; she was ready to shelve the matter. “I’ll tell Eva one day about Maximillian, but there’s no point telling her about Pieter. His name isn’t on the birth certificate, and he didn’t form any attachment; that’s clear enough. Anyway, it’s too complicated. And for Eva . . . Well, it’s ancient history, isn’t it?”

Ben catches up with her, and they hold hands. A large blue plastic glove lies ahead of them, washed up. Toniah stops and twists around to look back along the beach. “We passed the other blue glove, didn’t we?”

Ben turns around and looks through the binoculars. “It’s there.”

“What’s the chance of that? Two blue gloves lost at sea and washed up on the same stretch of beach.”

“Maybe they weren’t washed up. Someone might have left them on the beach. A dog might have picked one up.”

She looks out to sea, and after a few moments, she laughs.

“What’s so funny?”

“We’ll never know, will we? How the blue gloves were lost and became separated. It’s like my job—trying to reassemble the past. And like Nana Stone’s secret. I’ll never have all the answers.”

“If it’s helpful . . .” He pauses, eyebrows raised.

“Go on.”

“As an engineer, I think about tolerances when something shocking happens—like discovering your nana’s secret. When something in your immediate environment changes, you need to ask yourself if you can live with it. If not, then that implies that your environment has changed beyond your tolerance limit. Which begs the question: Is the tolerance limit you’ve set . . . actually incorrect?”

She casts a puzzled look at him. What an alien, but intriguing, way of seeing things, she thinks.

He continues. “In
other
words, is this new knowledge about your nana too much to cope with? Or should you change your world view to accommodate this new knowledge, this new environment?” She screws up her face as though she’s struggling to translate his words.

“In other words,” he repeats, hands outstretched, “is the system broken, or should you change your tolerances?”

She puts her hands on her head. “I can’t think straight. I think I’ve too much on my mind, Ben.”

“Like what?”

She slips her arm around his waist. “Sorry. I’m talking too much about me. Let’s have a run.” She sets off and jogs ahead of him. She uses her hands to vault over a set of timber defences and sprints ahead, then waits for him by the next set of timber posts. He reaches her and stops, panting. “Come on . . . What else is . . . bothering you?”

“I’ve seen a job I fancy, and I don’t know what to do.”

“And you can’t think straight because of Maximillian.”

“And I daren’t discuss the job with Poppy. She’d freak out.”

She explains that her job at the Academy has taken a sour turn. The Gauguin project, which she didn’t want to be involved with in the first place, has leaked. Found its way to the Ministry of Culture in France, no less. And now she’s been told to drop her quattrocento work and join the Gauguin team for the foreseeable future, possibly for the rest of her contract. She’s in the rearguard.

“Yesterday, the real meltdown started,” she says. “The French ambassador in London contacted our vice president, Elodie Maingey. The French are incandescent that Gauguin’s being considered for reassessment. They’re threatening to cut off all their funding to the Academy. So, you see, it’s all politics in the end.”

“Who leaked the report?”

“It hardly matters now. It could have been anyone on the Gauguin team. Let’s face it: if you’ve spent a chunk of your career specializing in his work, you’re going to be pretty pissed off if his reputation is butchered.”

“So what’s the other job? It’s within the Academy?”

“No. It’s a university posting. Not as prestigious as the Academy, but . . .” Her face is alight. “I actually feel the job was created for me. It’s a perfect match with my doctorate, and I’d have my own budget for the first time. But the thing is . . . it’s in Beijing.”

“So . . . ? Beijing isn’t Mars.”

Ben sticks his head around the door of the New Inn in Winchelsea and reports back. “Looks good. Serves Abbot Ale and Old Speckled Hen, and they do food.”

“Beer first? Or the church?” says Toniah.

“Let’s do the church.”

“Save the best till last?”

“I like churches. And let’s walk around the village. I’ve never seen a place like this—not in this country.”

They turn away from the pub and face the thirteenth-century church dedicated to Saint Thomas the Martyr of Canterbury. It stands at the centre of an expansive grassy square with a random scattering of graves. To the left of the square, looking down the village’s main street, there’s a fine view over marshland to the waters of the English Channel.

Winchelsea has none of the higgledy-piggledy streets typical of settlements dating back hundreds of years. It’s laid out on a grid pattern with wide streets. In the tradition of appropriating good ideas from elsewhere, Edward I copied the street pattern from the bastide system in France, from his lands in Aquitaine.

“Saint Thomas the Martyr? That’s Thomas Becket, yes?” says Ben. “Slain at the altar.”

“‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?’”

“One of the history lessons I do remember.”

They walk across the square towards the church, which—from the outside—seems to comprise a main nave and two large side chapels, with ruins either side. Toniah comes to halt by a memorial set into the exterior wall. It’s the date that pulls her up—1888, one of those marker years that stand out on Toniah’s art history timelines. The year that Émile Bernard painted his
Breton Women in the Meadow
. The year that Bernard and Gauguin exhibited with the French avant-garde at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris—when the critic Édouard Dujardin coined a new term for the two men’s departure from impressionism. Cloisonnism, referring way back to Byzantine jewellery making, when wires were used to separate areas of colourful enamel. And memorialized here in Winchelsea—in that same year—the twenty-four-year-old son of the local surgeon, who died “after a few hours’ illness from cholera at Rawal Pindi, East India.” Chiselled in marble. If she were to have a memorial stone, she’d want her name to stand in relief, to have substance.

She adds Rawal Pindi to her timeline marker for 1888. This is how Toniah absorbs world history.

Ben has gone ahead into the church. She makes her way around to the church porch and feels that familiar thrill of anticipation. This is the moment she adores—she turns the circular iron handle and pushes the heavy oak door. What will she find? And in this moment, when the door is open by a crack, she brings to mind, as she always does on the threshold of a church, the marble statue of the Virgin Mary in Venice—she can’t remember the name of the church; she should note these things down, but it was
such
a hot day—a statue dressed in real white robes. Adding another layer of macabre gothic, the Virgin Mary’s robes were greying.

Today, however, Toniah steps into a field of colour. Ben is already standing at the altar rail, and he slowly turns around, mesmerized. Toniah has never seen so much stained glass in a church of this size, or even in a church
twice
this size. The stone walls seem to melt away. And from the bold geometric style and the intensity of the colour, she guesses the glasswork is a twentieth-century addition.

Three altars are visible from the entrance, plus three ancient tombs, which are set into the wall below three large expanses of stained glass. She and Ben are the only people present. They take separate paths around the church, and Toniah finds herself in front of a window with both swirling and geometric waves, and a boat. For a moment, she interprets the scene as the biblical story of Noah’s Ark, but then she realizes it’s a more modern scene. It’s a sea rescue. Women and children stand on a harbour’s edge looking out to sea. Across the bottom panes of glass, there’s text painted in black capital letters. It’s partly obscured by the window’s stonework, but she gets the gist of the story: