Free Vow of Sanctity by Veronica Black Page A

overhead and the loch spreading its ruffledwaters like pleated silk before her. Had it been thus, she mused, in Galilee when the fishermen had sat, sharing bread, each busy with his own thoughts, all waiting for the young man with the intense gaze who widened horizons every time He came by?
    Stones and pebbles spattered up painfully into her face, and she let out a yelp as she opened her eyes. Between her and the sunlit water a dark shape loomed, and she shaded her eyes with her hand, preparing to launch on a blistering reproof.
    ‘I didn’t see you there,’ said a voice indignantly. ‘Why, you scared Rob Roy half to death!’
    ‘I was praying and never heard you coming,’ Sister Joan said defensively.
    ‘Churches are for praying.’ The girl with long dark hair dismounted and stared down accusingly. ‘Not out here.’
    ‘Anywhere’s for praying,’ Sister Joan said trying to sound mild, but irritably conscious that the other was trying to put her in the wrong.
    ‘Well, you’re a Catholic so you’d be bound to have peculiar ideas anyway,’ the other said scornfully.
    ‘Sister Joan.’
    Scrambling to her feet she held out her hand and, finding it ignored, leaned to pat the horse instead.
    ‘Rob Roy doesn’t like strangers,’ the girl said.
    ‘I take it he’s a Protestant horse,’ Sister Joan said, having achieved mildness, outwardly at least.
    ‘He’s my horse,’ the girl said.
    ‘And you are …?’ Sister Joan gave her a questioning look.
    ‘Black Morag, of course.’
    ‘Of course,’ Sister Joan said promptly. ‘You’ve worn very well over the centuries.’
    A reluctant grin struggled to life on the pretty mouth and was killed by a scowl.
    ‘I’m Morag Sinclair,’ the girl said. ‘My father is the minister here.’
    ‘I hope he’s more tolerant than you are,’ Sister Joan said.
    ‘You’re not likely to meet.’ Morag had turned and was mounting up again. She was in her early twenties, Sister Joan reckoned, and certainly lovely but she would have beenlovelier had her expression held more tranquillity, and had her voice been gentler.
    ‘And has better manners‚’ Sister Joan added.
    In reply Morag jerked her head and set off at a trot that sent another shower of pebbles leaping up. The breeze, catching her hair, tugged it into a dark tail that streamed behind her.
    ‘Well, well, well.’ Sister Joan gazed after her thoughtfully.
    If Morag Sinclair was an example of the attitude of most of the local people then it was no wonder that Dolly McKensie and her son kept themselves to themselves. No doubt Dolly had blotted her copybook by wedding a Catholic in the first place. Sister Joan felt a little wave of sadness at the intolerance that sprang up in quite small places and marred the unity of the human race.
    Her peace of mind had been disturbed by the intrusion and she walked back slowly to where the slanting scree led to the steps of the retreat. The girl had been, she was prepared to swear, the same dark rider who had galloped along the shore on the evening of her arrival, the girl about whom she had asked Rory. And Rory, instead of saying, ‘She’s Morag Sinclair, daughter of the local minister’, had launched out into a romantic legend and a possible ghost. All of which told Sister Joan, whose female intuition was quivering like the whiskers of a cat stalking a bird, that there was some connection between Rory McKensie and the rude young woman on the splendid horse. Sister Joan, who had always enjoyed a bit of genuine romance albeit vicariously, wondered if an association between them was forbidden by their families and at the same moment imagined only too clearly Mother Dorothy’s probable comment.
    ‘Capulets and Montagues, no doubt! Two teenage tearaways if you ask me.’ Except that her prioress was unlikely to use the word ‘tearaway’ which would have smacked too much of modern, slipshod slang.
    It was as she began to walk up the slope between the clustering pines that