I ought to have trusted Abbess Mathilde’s judgement. For every item there she had a provenance, and if she could not prove the authenticity of an item, at least she could show the worthy people who had been convinced of its genuineness before her.

  The centrepiece of the collection was a magnificent gold and silver reliquary. My descriptive powers may not be adequate to do it justice, but I must try. It was in the form of a triptych, with one large central box and two smaller side wings that could be brought together and fastened to close it all. The middle box was of gold with enamelled designs picturing saints and Our Lady on the side which closed, and Our Lord on the other side. The wings were of silver filigree, so when they were open you could see in to observe the objects inside. The hinge pins were iron for strength, but they were painted silver, and there was a band of silver which could be placed around the whole thing to keep the wings from falling open, which was held in place by two broad screws, one for each end. It was over a cubit and a half in width and about two handspans and a half deep and tall. I gawped at it for several minutes.

  ‘You may pick it up if you wish,’ Mathilde said.

  It was surprisingly light, largely due to the filigree, but also I could see now that the decorated gold panels were very thin and rested against a gold filigree wall. It was a masterpiece of the jeweller’s work, and in the candlelight of the treasury it glowed beautifully. I had rarely seen, and certainly never touched, anything so stunning.

  ‘What does it hold?’ I asked, my voice lowered in awe.

  ‘The jar of Mary of Bethany.’

  I gasped. ‘Really?’

  Mathilde produced a key from her girdle, removed the band of silver and opened a small lock that held the two wings together. She then used the same key to open a lock on the front of the middle section, and the front dropped forward, though stopped by fine gold chains on each side. ‘See for yourself. You can still smell the nard.’

  If genuine, this balm was over sixteen hundred and fifty years old. The idea that the scent would persist seemed incredible, and yet it did. Surely it was miraculous, but then the miraculous is exactly what one should expect from a relic.

  This alabaster jar was mentioned in the Bible, in the twelfth chapter of the Gospel according to St John. Six days before the Passover, on the Saturday before Palm Sunday, Jesus Christ returned to Bethany, to the home of Martha and Mary and their brother Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. It was customary to offer guests water to wash the dust from their feet. Mary performed this office for Our Lord but then, in defiance of all propriety, anointed his feet with nard, an expensive perfume, and wiped them with her hair. Within the week Jesus had been arrested and crucified, and Mary must have rushed to preserve the jar as a memento of Our Lord. The precious balm had been used, so only traces remained, but that was enough. And now, somehow, it had found its way to a small convent in Germany.

  ‘May I ask how you came by this wonderful relic?’ I asked.

  ‘We are told that it was preserved by the Christians of Jerusalem, but when the barbarians came it was taken to Sicily by the Knights Hospitaller in 1522. It was next heard of at Heitersheim, the seat of the Grand Prior of Germany of the Knights Hospitaller, though how he came to have it is unclear.’

  Now here is an eerie coincidence. The Grand Prior of Germany at that time was Hermann II von Wachtendonck, and the Bishop of Namur who ordained me in 1664 was Johannes de Wachtendonck. There were a lot of Wachtendoncks around then, but I found it hard to imagine that they were not related in some way. In any event, Habsburgs gave them both their jobs.

  ‘And from Heitersheim?’ I asked.

  Mathilde smiled her enigmatic smile once more. ‘In the years 1682 and 1683 there were no less than four Prince-Priors at Heitersheim. It is a position much prized by some and my family is not without influence.’

  ‘So one of the candidates sold it to you in exchange for your vote?’

  ‘Nothing as crass as that, Dr Mercurius. Say, rather, than my family could see the merits of one candidate and in gratitude for their support he was willing to sell me the relic.’

  I could not understand then, and I am no nearer comprehending now, how anyone of true faith would let a holy relic out of their grasp, but I know that there have been many such deals over the years, so I ought not to be surprised.

  Nor was this the only startling relic. The treasury also held a thong from one of St Paul’s sandals and a jewel from the hilt of the sword with which St Martin of Tours cut his cloak in two to give half to a poor beggar. These were precious indeed, if genuine; and I have no reason for doubting their authenticity, particularly since the Abbess seemed convinced and was incapable of artifice, except that I could not imagine how anyone could have come by them and been assured of their significance. But then there are clever people in Rome whose whole lives are spent testing the evidence for such things, so who am I to raise quibbles?

  CHAPTER SIX

  Years of perusing the shelves at Leiden had familiarised me with the cataloguing system, at least as far as theological books were concerned, so I set to work as soon as we had enjoyed supper, at which I was introduced to the other nuns. I cannot quite remember them all now, but I can list those who play a part in this story.

  I have already mentioned Sister Dorothea, the Guest Mistress. She was very businesslike, an energetic woman, not too delicately built, if I may put it that way without offence. In fact, she reminded me in that respect of Lysbeth, which caused me to wonder how she was faring back home in Leiden. One cannot write letters just for the sake of it, but if anyone was going to town perhaps they would take a letter for me if I wrote one.

  Sister Hildegard was a young woman, around twenty years old. I had seen her hair when she was a novice, which was almost black, but I could not have told you what colour her eyes were because she always cast them to the ground when she spoke to me. She was painfully thin, but more confident than she had been when I first met her three years before.

  Sister Brigitte was the part-time librarian and I grew quite used to seeing her look round the door, smile and slip away again, as if she thought that I might be secretly eating the books. She had the most beautiful handwriting, a skill that I greatly prize and that Van der Meer completely lacks, though this meant that she was a slow writer.

  I had not explored the stables but there was no mistaking Sister Angela when she came in to sup. She apologised for the brevity of her greeting, but urgently needed to wash her hands and change her apron. I do not know what she had been doing but the smell told me it was something to do with horses.

  Sister Veronica was the treasurer, which meant that the relics were under her care. Like all the sisters, she shared in the menial tasks and was, I heard, a particularly skilled pastry chef. I resolved to see how her efforts compared with Mechtild’s, whilst admitting to myself that she might come second to Mechtild and still be a very fine pastry chef indeed. Her eyesight was not as sharp as it had been, and lenses could not correct it. Her eyes had become quite milky and she was excused reading duties, but she was able to quote quite lengthy passages from the Bible by heart. She may have been the oldest nun there, with the exception of Sister Barbara who was ninety-three years old and no longer left her cell.

  The kitchen and its gardens were in the hands of Sister Perpetua. She was a very jolly woman, who talked to the birds as she sowed her seeds, warning them that they were not to take the food of the sisters. To compensate them for their forbearance she put trays of seeds and nuts out on a shelf in the garden. She had, however, an intense dislike of squirrels, which she described as rats with bushy tails and blamed for many of the world’s ills. When I argued that they were nevertheless numbered among God’s creatures, she answered defiantly that in her view they owed their existence to Satan.

  The infirmary was managed by Sister Clotsindis. I did not know that there had been a St Clotsindis, but it seems she was a seventh-century abbess in Flanders renowned for her piety and learning. Clotsindis the nun was also from Flanders, and spoke the best Dutch of all of them. Maybe it was her Dutchness that explained her propensity for plain, not to say outright rude, speaking.

  Who else? I ought not to overlook Sister Landrada, another woman from Flanders, who had the vital task of brewing the convent’s beer. They had recently planted some vines with a view to making their own wine, but the vines were not yet bearing fruit. Landrada disclaimed any knowledge of wine-making, so the vines were tended by a Spanish nun, Sister Laura. I had no idea how she would manage when the vines reached their full height, because she struggled enough at this stage, being one of the tiniest women I had seen.

  Last, but by no means least, a petite nun approached me.

  ‘Sister Fabiola, of course, you know,’ said Mathilde.

  But I didn’t. It was only when I saw her bent finger that I recognised Alida Krul, the woman I had rescued from her abusive husband in Moers. ‘How are you, Sister?’ I enquired.

  She looked to Mathilde for permission to reply and, receiving the faintest of nods, answered me. ‘I am well, Master, and I am happy. I run the laundry here.’

  ‘Sister Fabiola took the name of the patron saint of abused women,’ Mathilde explained later. ‘She has learned to read and has a very pleasant singing voice.’

  I turned to the first shelf and lifted a few books off to allow me to read the titles, for they did not all have anything useful on their spines. The first two volumes were the separate parts of the Paraphrases of Erasmus. Alongside them were seven volumes of the Annales ecclesiastici à Christo nato ad annum 1198 by Baronius, which meant that five were missing. It would be good to complete the set. The missing volumes were III, V, VIII, IX and XI. However, when I leafed through them it was clear that IV had been rebound with V. This discovery required me to check the contents of all the other volumes, but I was obliged to break off for the service of Compline, after which I thought I ought to go to bed rather than return to the library. The first service in the morning would necessitate my rising rather earlier than I would normally have done.

  So it did, and quite a bit earlier than I was expecting. Since there was no resident priest to lead the service for men, those in the guest house generally had a lie-in, but Abbess Mathilde had thoughtfully arranged for Sister Dorothea to knock on my door and bring me some hot water with which to shave. Frans got up as well, because he was anxious to be on his way and get as much distance in as possible. In particular, he wanted to be off the forest path and past Melle during daylight.

  ‘Aren’t you worried about thieves?’ I asked him.

  ‘No,’ he said shortly.

  ‘I hope you’ll take care,’ I replied. ‘I’d hate anything to happen to you.’

  ‘So would I,’ he answered. ‘But rest assured, Master, I’ll be prepared.’ He reached into his bag and produced a long object wrapped in canvas, which he unwrapped to reveal a musket.

  ‘Is it loaded?’ I whispered.

  ‘It wouldn’t be much use if it wasn’t,’ he said. ‘I suppose I could throw it at someone.’

  ‘You brought a loaded gun into a convent? With nuns around?’

  ‘Why? Do you think they’d steal it?’

  ‘It could have gone off and hurt them.’

  ‘Master, it’s here, and they’re there. Unlike you, I don’t get to go into the convent proper.’ He smirked, as if my purposes there were entirely dishonourable.

  Sister Dorothea knocked on my door again. ‘Master, when you’re ready I will unlock the gate to let you through.’

  Frans nudged me with his elbow. ‘Play your cards right and you’re in there,’ he muttered.

  Liese was kneeling at the back of the chapel when I entered. She dipped her head slightly in acknowledgement but said nothing. Abbess Mathilde led the prayers but Sister Laura, who had a very fine voice, led some of the sung parts.

  However many times I had said Matins by myself, it was richer and more fulfilling said with others, and I was grateful for the practice at making sure I said all the parts in the right order. I thought we would then proceed in to breakfast, but Abbess Mathilde caught my eye and gestured towards a pile of vestments. It was then that I realised that I was expected to say Mass.

  I was grateful for some assistance in dressing, having somehow finished up with my left arm through the neck of my chasuble — which is a garment that goes over the priest’s head like a bedsheet with a hole cut in it — but the Mass itself went well. I am all in favour of zeal in religion, but I found it rather off-putting when I held the bread in front of Liese and she licked her lips before opening her mouth for me to place it on her tongue.

  We processed in to breakfast, where there was a singular incident. We were disturbed by a rapping on a window. Sister Perpetua must have recognised the person there, because she rose from her seat with a small bow towards the Abbess, and gestured to another window which could be opened. There she conducted a short conversation with someone and then fastened the window again and came to speak to Mathilde.

  ‘Thomas thinks we may need to buy some rat poison. He was kept awake by scratching last night.’

  ‘Rats are creatures of God too. What harm do they do?’

  Perpetua paused as if considering what argument could possibly convince someone to whom it was not self-evident that rats are vermin, almost on a par with squirrels. ‘They are likely to spoil our stores, Abbess.’

  This was an awkward time of year in some ways. The first harvests were not yet in, so to some extent we were still living off last year’s produce.

  ‘Tell Thomas I will come out to him after breakfast and we will discuss whether there is any way of trapping these animals without doing them great harm.’

  Perpetua dipped her head once more and returned to her breakfast.

  ‘Thomas is one of the handymen who lives on the upper floor of the great barn,’ Mathilde explained. ‘A good boy and nobody’s fool, but we must not resort to killing another of God’s creation if it can be avoided, do you not think?’

  I had not thought about it, and until that moment I would not have hesitated. Rats can do enormous damage to books, especially if they are building nests for their young. I still shiver when I remember the shocking discovery that the university’s copy of the Travels of Marco Polo had been chewed by a rodent so that I would never know how his wanderings ended. I had seen Mechtild take a broom to many a mouse, though not, so far as I knew, any rats, if you disregard the time when Albrecht failed to notice her hand before he put a pot from the oven down. Despite great pain she used that hand to belabour him with her broom and a choice selection of epithets, one of the gentler of which was “Rat!”

  I accompanied Mathilde as she walked out to the garden to speak to Thomas, who promptly removed his hat as she approached.

  ‘What makes you think that we have rats?’ Mathilde asked.

  ‘Begging your pardon, ma’am, but Georg and I got hardly any sleep last night for their scratching, like they were trying to get into the convent. I thought it might be a fox or a badger, but when I looked out I couldn’t see anything.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘Hard to tell, ma’am, but probably two or three o’clock of the morning. It was a cloudy night and not much moon.’

  ‘Thomas, if you can find definite evidence of rats then of course we must remove them, but my concern is that if we put down poison it may be eaten by innocent creatures. Keep your eyes open for a few days then come to see me again.’

  Thomas bowed his head and returned to his work.

  ‘He is a good boy,’ Mathilde said to me, ‘and not blessed with too vivid an imagination. If he says he heard rats I am inclined to believe him; but why would they be active on this side of the building, rather than round by the kitchens?’

  ‘I am not well-versed in the ways of rats,’ I admitted.

  ‘Nor should you be,’ Mathilde replied with a gentle and most alluring laugh. ‘It was a rhetorical question, Dr Mercurius.’

  I could hardly begin purchasing new items for the library before verifying what holdings it already had, so my first few days were entirely devoted to that exercise. And what treasures I found! There were books there that I had only heard about, including one or two that were thought to have been utterly lost. There was, for example, a copy of Ecclesiasticae disciplinae, et Anglicanae Ecclesiae ab illa aberrationis, plena è verbo Dei, et dilucidà explicatio by Walter Travers, that was over a hundred years old, printed in Heidelberg because anyone printing it in England might have ended up in the flames with his book. Since this was distinctly not a Catholic book, I could only assume that it was acquired as part of a parcel and nobody wanted to destroy it.

  Much more orthodox was Andrada’s Defensio Tridentinæ fidei, a book written in defence of Catholic belief in 1578, and being used at the convent to hold a shelf up, since it was a very substantial tome. I had heard of it, but never read it through, and I still haven’t, because life is too short.

  The Sixtine Septuagint was interesting because, as a version of the Bible commissioned by a Pope, it had been ruthlessly removed from Dutch libraries. Anyway, there I was surrounded by treasures with no time to read them because I had to make a list before I made for the book shops of Hanover to see what I could find. It would take me three days to reach Hanover, I was told. Bielefeld was closer, but there was no reason to expect much in the way of literature there — though if you wanted underwear, Bielefeld was the place to go. It is known as the city of linen, and there is a good reason for that. Münster was another alternative, but given that it was a centre of advanced Protestant thought, I doubted that much material suitable for Catholics would have survived the book-burning of 1534 that destroyed all books except the Bible. I wondered briefly how doctors there were trained without textbooks, but I would avoid falling ill there if I kept well clear, so Hanover it would have to be.