Read Online Vow of Sanctity by Veronica Black - Free Book Online Page B

unlikely for anyone to try stealing the heavy tome with its steel-bound leather covers. There were a few high-backed, hard chairs and some filled, unlit oil lamps, and against another wall a long table on which bottles of coloured inks and pens were ranged alongside large sheets of paper on which someone or other had been practising the ancient art of lettering.
    A further door in the corner led, to her relief, into a small lavatory, with a washbasin. When she turned the tap water trickled out, reluctant but clear. She scooped some into her hand and quenched her thirst.
    Footsteps sounded in the long apartment beyond. Sister Joan hastily pulled the door closer, feeling a sudden shyness. Emerging from a lavatory was nothing to be embarrassed about, she reasoned, but on the other hand she had no desire to disrupt the quiet monastic routine by any sudden appearances.
    The footsteps paused uncertainly. She had a sense of someone looking round, and then, through the crack left between door and wall, issued a long sigh – no, more of a groan, she thought uneasily.
    It wasn’t repeated and, after a moment, she heard the footsteps retreating again. Somewhere a door closed.
    She waited a moment more and then came out into the scriptorium again, looking about as she did so. Nothing had been disturbed. She frowned, hearing again in her mind thatlong-drawn-out heavy sigh. The footsteps had been heavy. Someone wearing boots? The monks she had seen wore sandals but she supposed that for some tasks they wore sturdier footwear. But what had brought one of them in here? Had she been watched and followed again?
    ‘Sister, you’re getting neurotic,’ she muttered aloud, frowning impatiently at the illuminated manuscript on its stand.
    Something had been changed. The open page of the manuscript had displayed square cut characters in a mixture of red, gold and blue. She had noticed the initial letter B with a butterfly skittering about it. The initial letter now was a D, and instead of a butterfly there was the head of a horse drawn in black ink dappled with gold. She went closer, bending over the manuscript. Perhaps it was the custom to turn a page every day. Carefully she turned back the heavily decorated vellum. No, the letter A was five pages before this one. She smoothed the page down again and wrinkled up her nose in puzzlement.
    ‘Sister, we’re not supposed to touch that.’
    The monk who had directed her here stood in the doorway, his face and tone highly disapproving. He had exchanged the pan he’d been carrying for a tray which he now set down carefully on the end of the long table. There were some biscuits, a couple of apples and a jug of water and glass on it.
    ‘Someone just did,’ Sister Joan said. ‘While I was in the lavatory I heard someone come in. They – whoever it was – turned forward five pages.’
    ‘Only Father Abbot touches the Morag manuscript, and he never turns five pages at once,’ the monk said. ‘I brought you some lunch, Sister.’
    ‘Thank you. The Morag manuscript, you said?’
    ‘It’s what it’s known as but it’s a Book of Hours that some sixteenth-century laird had made for him by the brothers here. It has the story of Black Morag in it, with prayers for her soul.’
    ‘Does this page tell that story?’ She indicated the manuscript and the other came over to look, still holding himself at a little distance as if he feared she might suddenly leap forward and bite him.
    ‘My Latin isn’t very good,’ he said, ‘but I think that’s the page, yes. The title letter has the horse’s head.’
    ‘The horse on which she rode into the loch after the Vikingswent away.’
    ‘She lost her mind, poor soul,’ the monk said quickly, as if Sister Joan had uttered some personal criticism. ‘I must get back to my duties. Leave the jug and glass here and I’ll collect it later.’
    Not to save her trouble, Sister Joan reflected as he went out again, but to keep dangerous females out of his