Toys In The Attic Part Five
Title: Toys In The Attic, part five ( of six)
Summary: A discovery in an antique shop leads to trouble.
Rating: PG13.
Warnings: It's getting rather dark.
previous parts here
http://community.livejournal.com/gen_storyteller/40058.html#cutid1
http://www.livejournal.com/editjournal.bml?journal=gen_storyteller&itemid=41549
http://www.livejournal.com/editjournal.bml?journal=gen_storyteller&itemid=43288
http://community.livejournal.com/gen_storyteller/45696.html#cutid1
Thanks to stir-of-echoes for the first read through and to hesadevil for being a great beta.
Previously:
Antique shop owner Ella finds a diary hidden in the pocket of a Victorian
cloak . The diary contains increasingly troubling scenes from the life of
tormented young woman.
We do not engage in works outside our monastery.
For we have chosen to live in silence and concentration.
At the hidden springs, the deepest level
where the struggle is enacted
between the powers of good and evil.
Where our union with Christ bears fruit for all mankind…
We have chosen a stillness
more powerful than all activity.
A detachment more fulfilling than all possession.
A wisdom exceeding all knowledge.
And a love beyond all.
(Stanbrook Abbey prayer book)
Note, contemplative orders such as The Cistercians, The Poor Clares, The Benedictines and The Brigittines, live in Monasteries rather than convents. The word ‘Convent’ originally applied to communities of women living in simple vows but has come to be common usage for any community whether in simple or solemn vows.
I am at peace here. The Sisters have been good to me. Tomorrow they will bring the basket to my cell and into it I shall place all that connects me to the world; my journal, my locket, my miniature of my parents, my memories. Tomorrow I shall no longer be a postulant. I shall kneel at the grille and receive the habit. I shall be clothed and enter the novitiate where I will begin my preparation. God willing, two years from today I shall make my final vows, and be accepted for life within this house, this order, this world.
The Grand silence has begun and, save for grave emergency, no voice shall break the stillness until the call of Deo Gratius that summons us to rise and prepare for Lauds. This night is mine, mine to say farewell to my old life and to prepare for the new. Even my name is to change. I shall no longer be Drusilla but Sister Clare. I shall be born anew. But before dawn breaks I feel drawn to record a little of the path which brought me to this sanctuary. I do not know for whom I am writing. I see a room cluttered with strange objects and garments and I see this page. It is as if I am reading through another's eyes. This night's work is an offence against the Rule. My Sight is surely a still graver offence. I must note it in my book of faults, the only journal which will now be allowed to me.
Tomorrow my new life begins. But tonight I must write.
Tonight I am still Drusilla.
I cannot wholly escape from the past; even my clothing ceremony will bring it to me. For when my fellow postulants stand at the altar clad in their bridal robes and crowned with orange blossom as the choir sings "Jesu Corona Virginum", I shall not stand with them. My clothing will come later, after the guests have departed and my Sisters have gone through the gate into the enclosure. I shall kneel at the grille, clad in my postulant’s dress and ask the Bishop for the grace of the holy habit and for permission to try my vocation as a Cistercian in this house.
It is a service for a widow and I am no widow, but no bride either. He unfitted me for that honour when he took my innocence.
I remember how he laughed. He laughed and he left me, broken and bleeding, bound, and silenced and humiliated. He mocked my pain and my tears and my grief and then he turned and left me there, unable to call for help, alone in a house of the dead.
How long I lay there I do not know for I awoke days later in a cool, dimly lit ward. I raved, I fought them, I told them of my vision. I told them that they must find and stop this man, and they calmed me and gently told me that this had been no nightmare but all too real. The man was sought to bring him to justice. But there is no justice in this world.
I could not bring myself to believe them, for surely it was in some measure a nightmare? Surely I only dreamed that his wicked yet angelic face contorted and that, as he reared above me, he became no man but a fiend tearing into me with the body and jaws of a brute beast?
A dream then? Another vision? It must have been so. But then what of these marks on my neck? What of the scars that mar my skin?
I must not think of these things. I should not have committed them to paper. The things of the body are sinful, and should be banished from my thoughts. I must pray for the grace to accept and, God willing, to forgive.
Yes to forgive, to forgive even the man who took my honour and my family.
Strangely enough, I find it in my heart to forgive him more readily than I can forgive the woman who stood and watched, who held me as I struggled, and who clapped her hands and praised her "darling boy" for his cunning, his skill, his brutality. Her face haunts me as his does not. It is she whom I see on those nights when, even in this most blessed of sanctuaries, sleep evades me.
But I have wandered from my tale. I was speaking of the hospital, of that terrible awakening when I first knew the full extent of my loss: Mother, Father, sisters; not even the servants were spared. I was truly alone.
I lay ill for a long time then, sick both in body and in mind. But by the grace of God and through the kindness of the nuns who nursed me, I found my faith again. The dark man was no priest! I know that now; nor an agent of the evil one. He was simply a man. Mortal and wicked, but a man nonetheless.
When I was released from hospital, I began to seek for answers. The Sisters of the hospital were good and kind but always busy, always about God's work. I sought peace and quiet, silence and contemplation. My quest led me to visit the parlours of this house and to talk with the Reverend Mother. I told of her all that had happened to me, all of it! Every last detail! And I found that I was neither shunned nor disbelieved. The grilles of the parlour allowed no contact, but Reverend Mother's eyes held me tight and close as she soothed and gentled me. She called the Extern Sisters to bring me tea. She gave me sanctuary, allowed me to stay in the guesthouse and to follow the Office. She helped me to take my first steps towards life. And every day we would meet in the parlour and talk, until I no longer noticed the grilles. She was indeed a Mother to me, and it is to her that I owe my sanity. To her I owe the grace of this night.
Reverend Mother was unwilling at first to accept that I had a vocation, for the Cloister is no place for those who wish to escape from the world. But I stood resolute. I have been called by God to follow a life of prayer and contemplation, to add my prayers to those
of my Sisters and to intervene, with Christ's help, against the evil in this world. And so I spoke, and Mother listened and she sought guidance through prayer and in chapter and finally she agreed to my admission to the community.
I have never felt such peace as on the day when I was finally accepted as a Postulant. Once again I had a place in this world. For six months I have worked and waited, and on the morrow I shall be cleansed and born anew. May God be praised for his great mercy and give me the strength and the fortitude to be faithful in life and in death to the path that I have chosen.
Ella turned the leaf with trembling fingers, disappointed and yet relieved to find that nothing but blank pages remained, pages marred and spotted with age and damp. So many questions unanswered, so much already told that should have remained hidden. She felt the wetness on her face and wondered how long she'd been crying. Stiff with sitting she stood and stretched her arms above her head then gasped as she felt her wrist seized in a steely, ice cold grasp.
"Not nice to read other peoples diaries, my sweet. Not nice at all. I am afraid that I shall have to be very cross with you. Very cross indeed"
Summary: A discovery in an antique shop leads to trouble.
Rating: PG13.
Warnings: It's getting rather dark.
previous parts here
http://community.livejournal.com/gen_storyteller/40058.html#cutid1
http://www.livejournal.com/editjournal.bml?journal=gen_storyteller&itemid=41549
http://www.livejournal.com/editjournal.bml?journal=gen_storyteller&itemid=43288
http://community.livejournal.com/gen_storyteller/45696.html#cutid1
Thanks to stir-of-echoes for the first read through and to hesadevil for being a great beta.
Previously:
Antique shop owner Ella finds a diary hidden in the pocket of a Victorian
cloak . The diary contains increasingly troubling scenes from the life of
tormented young woman.
We do not engage in works outside our monastery.
For we have chosen to live in silence and concentration.
At the hidden springs, the deepest level
where the struggle is enacted
between the powers of good and evil.
Where our union with Christ bears fruit for all mankind…
We have chosen a stillness
more powerful than all activity.
A detachment more fulfilling than all possession.
A wisdom exceeding all knowledge.
And a love beyond all.
(Stanbrook Abbey prayer book)
Note, contemplative orders such as The Cistercians, The Poor Clares, The Benedictines and The Brigittines, live in Monasteries rather than convents. The word ‘Convent’ originally applied to communities of women living in simple vows but has come to be common usage for any community whether in simple or solemn vows.
I am at peace here. The Sisters have been good to me. Tomorrow they will bring the basket to my cell and into it I shall place all that connects me to the world; my journal, my locket, my miniature of my parents, my memories. Tomorrow I shall no longer be a postulant. I shall kneel at the grille and receive the habit. I shall be clothed and enter the novitiate where I will begin my preparation. God willing, two years from today I shall make my final vows, and be accepted for life within this house, this order, this world.
The Grand silence has begun and, save for grave emergency, no voice shall break the stillness until the call of Deo Gratius that summons us to rise and prepare for Lauds. This night is mine, mine to say farewell to my old life and to prepare for the new. Even my name is to change. I shall no longer be Drusilla but Sister Clare. I shall be born anew. But before dawn breaks I feel drawn to record a little of the path which brought me to this sanctuary. I do not know for whom I am writing. I see a room cluttered with strange objects and garments and I see this page. It is as if I am reading through another's eyes. This night's work is an offence against the Rule. My Sight is surely a still graver offence. I must note it in my book of faults, the only journal which will now be allowed to me.
Tomorrow my new life begins. But tonight I must write.
Tonight I am still Drusilla.
I cannot wholly escape from the past; even my clothing ceremony will bring it to me. For when my fellow postulants stand at the altar clad in their bridal robes and crowned with orange blossom as the choir sings "Jesu Corona Virginum", I shall not stand with them. My clothing will come later, after the guests have departed and my Sisters have gone through the gate into the enclosure. I shall kneel at the grille, clad in my postulant’s dress and ask the Bishop for the grace of the holy habit and for permission to try my vocation as a Cistercian in this house.
It is a service for a widow and I am no widow, but no bride either. He unfitted me for that honour when he took my innocence.
I remember how he laughed. He laughed and he left me, broken and bleeding, bound, and silenced and humiliated. He mocked my pain and my tears and my grief and then he turned and left me there, unable to call for help, alone in a house of the dead.
How long I lay there I do not know for I awoke days later in a cool, dimly lit ward. I raved, I fought them, I told them of my vision. I told them that they must find and stop this man, and they calmed me and gently told me that this had been no nightmare but all too real. The man was sought to bring him to justice. But there is no justice in this world.
I could not bring myself to believe them, for surely it was in some measure a nightmare? Surely I only dreamed that his wicked yet angelic face contorted and that, as he reared above me, he became no man but a fiend tearing into me with the body and jaws of a brute beast?
A dream then? Another vision? It must have been so. But then what of these marks on my neck? What of the scars that mar my skin?
I must not think of these things. I should not have committed them to paper. The things of the body are sinful, and should be banished from my thoughts. I must pray for the grace to accept and, God willing, to forgive.
Yes to forgive, to forgive even the man who took my honour and my family.
Strangely enough, I find it in my heart to forgive him more readily than I can forgive the woman who stood and watched, who held me as I struggled, and who clapped her hands and praised her "darling boy" for his cunning, his skill, his brutality. Her face haunts me as his does not. It is she whom I see on those nights when, even in this most blessed of sanctuaries, sleep evades me.
But I have wandered from my tale. I was speaking of the hospital, of that terrible awakening when I first knew the full extent of my loss: Mother, Father, sisters; not even the servants were spared. I was truly alone.
I lay ill for a long time then, sick both in body and in mind. But by the grace of God and through the kindness of the nuns who nursed me, I found my faith again. The dark man was no priest! I know that now; nor an agent of the evil one. He was simply a man. Mortal and wicked, but a man nonetheless.
When I was released from hospital, I began to seek for answers. The Sisters of the hospital were good and kind but always busy, always about God's work. I sought peace and quiet, silence and contemplation. My quest led me to visit the parlours of this house and to talk with the Reverend Mother. I told of her all that had happened to me, all of it! Every last detail! And I found that I was neither shunned nor disbelieved. The grilles of the parlour allowed no contact, but Reverend Mother's eyes held me tight and close as she soothed and gentled me. She called the Extern Sisters to bring me tea. She gave me sanctuary, allowed me to stay in the guesthouse and to follow the Office. She helped me to take my first steps towards life. And every day we would meet in the parlour and talk, until I no longer noticed the grilles. She was indeed a Mother to me, and it is to her that I owe my sanity. To her I owe the grace of this night.
Reverend Mother was unwilling at first to accept that I had a vocation, for the Cloister is no place for those who wish to escape from the world. But I stood resolute. I have been called by God to follow a life of prayer and contemplation, to add my prayers to those
of my Sisters and to intervene, with Christ's help, against the evil in this world. And so I spoke, and Mother listened and she sought guidance through prayer and in chapter and finally she agreed to my admission to the community.
I have never felt such peace as on the day when I was finally accepted as a Postulant. Once again I had a place in this world. For six months I have worked and waited, and on the morrow I shall be cleansed and born anew. May God be praised for his great mercy and give me the strength and the fortitude to be faithful in life and in death to the path that I have chosen.
Ella turned the leaf with trembling fingers, disappointed and yet relieved to find that nothing but blank pages remained, pages marred and spotted with age and damp. So many questions unanswered, so much already told that should have remained hidden. She felt the wetness on her face and wondered how long she'd been crying. Stiff with sitting she stood and stretched her arms above her head then gasped as she felt her wrist seized in a steely, ice cold grasp.
"Not nice to read other peoples diaries, my sweet. Not nice at all. I am afraid that I shall have to be very cross with you. Very cross indeed"