Free Thunder On The Right by Mary Stewart

excitement that Jennifer softly opened the chapel door and passed in out of the sunlight.

7 The Jewels off the Madonna
    As she plunged from the heat of the close into the dark censed air of the chapel, she found time to wonder, half-idly, what sort of a shrine for worship the convent's characteristic austerity would have made. The door, swinging shut behind her, lopped off its shaft of light abruptly, and for a few seconds she was blinded by the dimness. Then to her dazzled gaze the nave took shape ... a side aisle, with its little altar . . . the tiny transepts . . . the raised chancel ... the high altar....
    She stood rooted, staring.
    Basically, the chapel was the same as the rest of the convent buildings; the walls were whitewashed, the arches of doors and windows simple, the stonework plain.
    The pillars stood sturdy and unadorned, and the Stations of the Cross lurked, dim and inoffensive, between the windows. The only statue was a small one of Our Lady on the single side altar. But there austerity ended. Up the length of the nave, cutting the white simplicity in two with one arrogant crimson slash, a deep-red carpet ran like a river of blood, drawing the eye swiftly on toward the chancel as the stroke on a flower's petal guides the bee straight into the gold. Past the sturdy pillars, between the plain benches, up the chancel steps, into the shadowy cave of the apse where the sanctuary lamp glimmered above the high altar. . . .
    Jennifer went quickly up the aisle and mounted the chancel steps. She paused at the low rail, beautifully carved of some dark wood, and stood, again to gaze.
    It was gold, sure enough,, that the crimson arrow led to; the seven-branched sanctuary lamp was of gold, and so were the heavy twin arms of the candlesticks, but it was not these that caught and held the eye. Behind and above the high altar, away from the wall, but acting as reredos and east window at once, was a great triptych, its three paintings heavily framed in gray and blue. And here, in the towering rush of flames and wings and the ecstasies of saints, even Jennifer's half-educated eye could trace the hand of a master whose work was not commonly shrined in such places as this. Those soaring visionary gestures, the angular robes, the slashing diagonals of silver and purple and acid yellow . . . who on earth, she thought confusedly, had hidden one of the world's El Grecos in this comparative oblivion?
    Was there not someone—here her thoughts became, if possible, vaguer yet—were there no museums, galleries, the great churches of his own Toledo, who might stop this burying of masterpieces alive?
    She pressed the palms of her hands to her eyes, and then blinked up at the picture again. Masterpiece? El Greco? It was absurd, of course. This couldn't possibly be an El Greco. Not here. It was some trick of memory, no more. But the impression persisted. Surely she could not be wrong? Of all painters, El Greco was the least mistakable. And could a copy or an imitation rouse in the onlooker that queer breathless mixture of exaltation and humility with which we find ourselves studying the best things men have made with their hands? Even as she stared at the picture, Jennifer recognized this as a fallacy; to an inexperienced eye like hers a good copy would doubtless speak as loudly of beauty as the master's own handiwork. No, she had no means of telling. But whether this was a first-rate copy, or the thing itself, it was surely sufficiently surprising to find it here in a community that elsewhere seemed to underline its poverty?
    She peered at the corners of the darkening paint, in the slender hope of some closer identification, but could see no name. Then with some confused memory of painters who marked their canvases on the back, she stepped past the altar, and peered at the back of the left-hand panel, where the side of the triptych stood clear of the wall.
    The frame was solidly backed, and the reverse of the canvas, in consequence,