And finally Megan found what she had been searching for for so long. She belonged. These were her sisters, the family she never had, and they were all one under their Father.
Megan worked in the convent as a bookkeeper. She was fascinated by the ancient sign language that the sisters used when they needed to communicate with the Reverend Mother. There were 472 signs, enough to convey among themselves everything they needed to express.
When it was a sister’s turn to dust the long halls, Prioress Betina held out her right hand with the heel forward and blew on the back of it. If a nun had a fever, she went to the Reverend Mother and pressed the tips of her right forefinger and middle finger on the outside of her left wrist. If a request was to be delayed, Prioress Betina held her right fist before her right shoulder and pushed it slightly forward and down. Tomorrow.
One November morning, Megan was introduced to the rites of death. A nun was dying, and a wooden rattle was rung in the cloister, the signal for the beginning of a ritual unchanged since the year 1030. All those who could answer the call hurried to kneel in the infirmary for the anointing and the psalms. They silently prayed for the saints to intercede for the departing sister’s soul. To signify that it was time for the last sacraments to be given, the Mother Prioress held out her left hand with the palm up and drew a cross on it with the tip of her right thumb.
And finally, there was the sign of death itself, a sister placing the tip of her right thumb under her chin and raising it slightly.
When the last prayers had been said, the body was left alone for an hour so that the soul could go in peace. At the foot of the bed the great Paschal candle, the Christian symbol of eternal light, burned in its wooden holder.
The infirmarian washed the body and clothed the dead nun in her habit, black scapular over white cowl, rough stockings, and handmade sandals. From the garden one of the nuns brought fresh flowers woven into a crown. When the dead woman was dressed, six of the nuns in a procession carried her to the church and placed her on the white-sheeted bier facing the altar. She would not be left alone before God, and in their stalls by her side, two nuns stayed through the rest of the day and night praying, while the Paschal candle flickered at her side.
The next afternoon, after the Requiem mass, she was carried through the cloister by the nuns to the private, walled cemetery where even in death the nuns kept their enclosure. The sisters, three and three, lowered her carefully into the grave, supported on white bands of linen. It was the Cistercian custom for the dead to lie uncovered in the earth, buried without a coffin. As the last service they performed for their sister, two nuns started to drop soil softly onto her still body before they all returned to the church to say the psalms of penance. Three times they begged that God have mercy on her soul:
Domine miserere super peccatrice.
Domine miserere super peccatrice.
Domine miserere super peccatrice.
There were often times when young Megan was filled with melancholy. The convent gave her serenity, and yet she was not completely at peace. It was as though a part of her were missing. She felt longings that she should have long ago forgotten. She found herself thinking about the friends she had left behind in the orphanage, and wondering what had happened to them. And she wondered what was happening in the outside world, the world that she had renounced, a world where there was music and dancing and laughter.
Megan went to Sister Betina.
“It happens to all of us from time to time,” she assured Megan. “The church calls it acedia. It is a spiritual malaise, an instrument of Satan. Do not worry about it, child. It will pass.”
And it did.
But what did not pass was the bone-deep longing to know who her parents were. I’ll never know, Megan thought despairingly. Not as long as I live.