The Woman Who Died a Lot

17. Tuesday: The Sisterhood

The small craft had landed on the front lawn, and Landen was chatting to Finisterre about how the technology had progressed since tiltrotors were used in the Crimea as spotter aircraft, a role in which they had been less than successful. The joke at the time had been “How do you get to own a tiltrotor?” and the answer was “Buy an acre of land in the Crimea and wait.”

“We’d better be going if we’re to make our appointment,” said Finisterre as I arrived. “The Sisterhood can’t abide impunctuality. Will you be coming?”

He was talking to Landen, but I already knew that Landen wouldn’t ever get into one again. Although his initial leg injury had been caused by to a land mine, it was the evac on a medical tiltrotor that had necessitated the partial amputation—the craft had crashed due to a gearbox failure sixteen miles short of the military hospital in Sevastopol, and those jeep-ridden sixteen miles, said Landen, were the most excruciating he had ever known. Still, that was almost thirty years ago, and tiltrotor technology had grown by leaps and bounds since then—especially after Mycroft became involved, which explained why they are no longer used militarily. I kissed Landen, we exchanged passwords again, and I climbed aboard the small craft as Finisterre spooled up the reactor, and few minutes later we had left Aldbourne behind us, passed overhead Marlborough and were skimming low across the Downs.

“How’s your day going?” asked Finisterre.

“Interesting so far,” I replied, and he smiled knowingly. “Wouldn’t want you to get bored.”

“No indeed,” I replied.

We swept past the single induction rail of the Southern Bullet Route and dropped down into the Vale of Pewsey. We flew on in silence for a few minutes until Finisterre called air-traffic control for transit permission into the Salisbury Danger Area and orbited twice around Urchfont while we waited for clearance. I had trained on Salisbury Plain myself on tracked vehicles before being dispatched to the Crimea aged only eighteen. We had been briefed never to stray near the Sisterhood’s hundredacre enclave, and it was hard to claim you didn’t know if you did— the convent’s tower soared two hundred feet above the plains, and the main Venerating Chamber was the size of an airship hangar.

“We’re in,” said Finisterre, and we headed off toward the convent, which even now dominated the landscape, though we were still five miles away. We circled the tower once before coming into a neat landing near the entrance, and while Finisterre conducted the power-down checks, I stepped clumsily out and looked around.

I had never been here before; few had. The Salisbury Plain order of the Blessed Ladies of the Lobster was the hub from where all other orders received instructions and to where all funds were sent. The Lobsterhood had been the nation’s most populous religious order, with over a hundred convents across the land, and although the Global Standard Deity’s unifying action had subsumed many of those within the order, a few had held out, Salisbury among them. But all that defiance had come to nought the day that He had revealed Himself and confirmed that yes, the game was up, there was only One, and all the silly lobster stuff was indeed transparent nonsense, and cower in the presence of Him. The fact that it was a He after all caused a lot of problems with the feminists. But it might have been worse— He could have turned out to have been French, too.

“My name is Sister Megan,” said the greeter nun who had stepped ahead to receive us, “and you are fourteen seconds late. We cannot abide unpunctuality here in the Lobsterhood.”

“We had to orbit for clearance into the zone,” I explained. “My name is Thursday Next.”

Sister Megan gave a sharp cry and covered her mouth with her hand. I had to get used to this. Joffy’s efforts with the GSD had not always been welcomed, and indeed, before the Lord’s Revealment, over a billion people had wanted him shredded as a heretic.

“Causing trouble already?” asked Finisterre as the greeter nun ran back inside the lobster-shaped double doors.

“I think it’s the connection with my brother. There were many religious orders who found it difficult to accept that they had been idolizing clearly demonstrable falsehoods for hundreds of years.”

“Like the notion of the all-redeeming, ever-knowing and oftnipping ‘Big Lobster’?”

“One of the more sensible ones,” I replied. “You’d better do the talking from now on, and refer to me by my married name.”

But it didn’t come to that. No sooner had we taken two steps toward the convent than another nun had come running out of the doors firing a small pistol and screaming at the top of her voice that I was a ‘procreating girl dog,’ but not using those precise words. I was used to being called that, of course, but rarely by a nun. She had loosed off two shots by the time she’d been adroitly rugger-tackled to the ground by two other nuns, and Finisterre and I, caught out by the sudden violence, had not had time to move a muscle and had simply stood there as one of the shots passed between us at head level with a zip and the second passed cleanly through my shoulder bag, penetrating not just my purse and notebook but also a picture of Landen.

Finisterre and I stared at each other as an unseemly fight developed in front of us, our assailant being finally subdued by two additional nuns, both of whom I suspected might actually be men. The gun was wrested from her hands, and she was sat upon while she struggled, howled and screamed the sorts of obscenities that would embarrass a docker.

“I’m sorry about that,” said one of the other nuns, who had a cut lip and a wimple now dented and askew, “but we all joined the order for different reasons, and . . . well, some of us have a lot of repressed anger.”

“Against me?” I asked.

“I’m afraid so. Daisy always swore to kill you the next time you met—that was why she has closeted herself here. To protect herself and you from her rage.”

“Should we take this up with the mother superior?”

“Daisy is the mother superior. We’ll have to wait until she calms down. By the way, we all think Joffy is remarkable even if he is a man.”

“No one’s perfect.”

“Right. And we thank him for pointing out the error of our veneration. We all felt a bit silly to begin with, but when our mistake was plainly spelled out, we were more than happy to change four centuries of loyal tradition.”

“Perhaps I should leave?” I said. “And let Finisterre speak to Mother Daisy on his own?”

“No, no, no,” replied the nun, “she’ll be fine. She just has to compose herself. Forgiveness, companionship, self-control and not reading in the toilet are but four of the ninety-seven simple rules we live our lives by.”

Mother Daisy was indeed calming down, and after another five minutes the others thought it safe to stop sitting on her and she got to her feet, covered in grass clippings and a bit bruised. She smoothed her habit, took a deep breath and approached us both.

“Welcome to the Sisterhood of the Lobsterhood Salisbury Plain Chapter,” she said in a sedate and measured manner. “My Name is Mother Daisy. I do apologize for the attempted murder. It is not how we usually welcome distinguished guests. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?”

“Of course,” I said, suddenly realizing who she was and why she’d tried to kill me, “think no more of it. May I present Head of Antiquities James Finisterre of the Swindon All-You-Can-Eatat-Fatso’s Drink Not Included Library?”

She shook his hand. “Welcome, Mr. Finisterre. Your expertise and reputation precede you. Just one question: Why did you have to . . . bring that lying man-stealer with you?!?”

She had screamed the last line and in an instant had her hands around my throat. We toppled over backward, and I felt myself fall unconscious, but in an instant I was gasping for air as the two nuns who looked suspiciously male had dragged her from me.

“Shit,” I said, sitting up.

“Are you okay?” asked Finisterre.

“Annoyed,” I said, giving him my hand so he could heave me to my feet.

“Yes, I should imagine being attacked by a nun might be annoying.”

“It’s not that,” I said, coughing and rubbing my throat. “It’s just that even six months ago I would have been fast and aggressive enough to have her on her back before she’d even grabbed me. And earlier?”

“Yes?”

I tapped the center of my forehead. “I’d have planted one right here before she got to fire the second shot.”

“I’m very glad you didn’t,” said Finisterre with a shudder. “It might have put a damper on getting access to their library.”

“She could have killed us both.”

“Life is short, art is long, Thursday. You and I are passing through history; the contents of this library is history.” He thought for a moment. “You came to a convent tooled up?”

“I’m always tooled up.”

“I’m so sorry about that,” said Mother Daisy, who seemed once again to have recovered her composure. “My only companion from the outside world during nineteen years of isolation has been my personal hatred of Thursday Next. It’s kind of like the old me suddenly taking over, and I promised myself that this was how I would act if I ever saw you.”

“I have the same thing, but with Tom Stoppard,” I said.

“You’d kill Tom Stoppard?”

“Not at all. I promised myself many years ago that I would throw myself at his feet and scream ‘I’m not worthy!’ if I ever met him, so now if we’re ever at the same party or something, I have to be at pains to avoid him. It would be undignified, you see—for him and for me.”

“I can see that,” said Mother Daisy, “and since I demonstrably can’t control myself, I have allocated Sister Henrietta as your bodyguard.”

One of the more masculine nuns bobbed politely and took up station beside me.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Don’t mention it,” replied Sister Henrietta in a deep voice.

“I’m impressed that the Sisterhood has embraced inclusivity regarding its adherents,” I said as we walked toward the main doors.

“What do you mean?” asked Mother Daisy.

“That you now count men among the Sisterhood.”

She stopped and looked around suspiciously. “You think there might be men present in our sanctuary?”

“Oh,” I said, suddenly realizing that it might be a secret, “just idle talk from Swindon, I suspect.”

“Hmm. Worth looking into. Sister Henrietta, would you conduct a gender check tomorrow? Nothing intrusive. Just find out if there is anyone who doesn’t know the name of Jennifer Grey’s character in Dirty Dancing.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Sister Henrietta, staring daggers in my direction as soon as Mother Daisy looked away.

“And what news of Swindon?” asked Mother Daisy. “We have no radio, no TV, and only The Toad on Sunday once a month.”

“There’s a new roundabout in the Old Town, Acme Carpets is having another sale, SpecOps is to be reformed—oh, and part of the city is to be wiped from the earth by a cleansing fire on Friday.”

“An Acme Carpets sale?”

“Forty percent off everything, I heard—with free installation, but you have to pay for the underlay.”

“Worth a look. And a smiting, you say? What level?”

We were now at the reception desk in the lobby. She indicated the visitors’ book for me to sign. I noted that the last visitor had been admitted in 1974.

“A Level III,” I said, “to punish Joffy for his impertinence, we think. That is,” I added, “unless my daughter Tuesday can perfect her anti-smite device.”

Mother Daisy reached behind the counter and picked up a length of lead pipe that happened to be there. She made a swipe in my direction.

“A daughter that should have been mine, you scarlet Jezebel!!”

I was quicker this time and took a step back. Sister Henrietta was on the ball, too, and had Daisy around the waist and grappled to the floor in less than a second.

“The Sisterhood likes to scrap, don’t they?” said Finisterre as the pair of them wrestled on the ground, with Mother Daisy howling and scratching and biting while Sister Henrietta attempted to calm her down. She did calm, eventually, and once more apologized for her conduct and asked for my forgiveness.

This I gave, although less readily, as one can take just so much of nun violence. We moved into the main part of the convent, a large room that served as living space and refectory. To either side of the chamber were smaller cells for the sisters to live in. All about us was the lobster motif that the order lived beneath, a constant reminder of the mildly deluded notion that the world would one day be unified under a single lobster of astonishing intellect, and all ills, sorrow, hunger and thermidor would be banished forever. Although this might seem peculiar— even when compared to other, equally wild religions—my father had often traveled into the distant future and learned that there was indeed a time when the earth was dominated by the arthropods. Two hundred million years away, he said. But any notion that the Sisterhood might be planning for this was doubtful— there would be only six species of mammal on the earth at that time, and none of them with a higher intellect than a confused hedgehog.

“How is he?” asked Daisy through half-gritted teeth.

“He’s . . . very well,” I said warily, making sure there was a reasonable distance between us. Sister Henrietta had guessed that this was over a man and had placed herself in a position where it would be most easy to intervene.

“A bestselling writer by now, I expect?”

“Not quite,” I replied slowly, as Landen’s career since winning the coveted Armitage Shanks Literary Prize had been in a somewhat downward trajectory.

“Why?” she asked.

“I guess he was looking after me,” I replied, as honestly as I could, “and the kids.”

“I would never have allowed that if he were my husband,” she scolded. “You should be ashamed of yourself. Has he still got one leg?”

I stared at her. “It’s not likely to have grown back.”

“He . . . he might have lost the other one.”

“He’s not that careless.”

“You had children?”

“Two.”

“What sort?”

“One of each.”

“A boy and a girl?”

“No, an ant and a whale.”

She glared at me, and a vein in her neck pulsed. “There’s no cause to be snippy.”

“I’ll stop being snippy if you stop making inane observations.”

“You were the one who stole my husband at the altar.”

I stared at her for a moment. Before she was Mother Daisy, she had been Daisy Mutlar and had almost ensnared Landen into marriage.

“He didn’t love you. He loved me, and technically speaking he was never your husband.”

“Only because of a short, meddling, plain-as-wallpaper, delusional ex-girlfriend with relationship issues and a borderline-personality disorder.”

“I’m not short.”

I could see Sister Henrietta tense, expecting another attack. There wasn’t one, however, and we moved on through a wide stone arch to the large building that I had seen attached to the tower. It was, as previously stated, enormous—perhaps more than seven hundred feet long and one hundred twenty feet to the roof. But what I hadn’t expected was that the interior was pretty much hollow and made of a delicate latticework of wood and steel that seemed to have an air of temporariness about it. Around the periphery of the chamber were workshops, rooms, scaffolding and the evidence of recently abandoned industry. Tools lay about, and large blocks of stone were lying on trolleys half finished. The focus of the centuries-old toil lay in the center of the room.

“Is that what I think it is?” asked Finisterre.

The sculpture was about the size and shape of a carrier-class airship, but more flattened and clearly designed for longevity, not flight. At one end the sculpture had only just been begun, with the inner foundations constructed of blocks of limestone, while up near the finished end the limestone had been clad with delicately carved Portland stone, each piece set into position so finely it was difficult to see where the individual blocks lay. The surface was mottled, lumpy, and it was hard not to see what it was—the claw of an enormous rock-hewn lobster.

“Tremble before the might and majesty of the Great Lobster,” breathed Mother Daisy. “We had planned to build the entire Lobster. It would have been over a mile in length and made the pyramids at Cairo look like the work of uninspired amateurs.”

“How long did this take?” asked Finisterre.

“Five centuries. As soon as we were done with the claw, we were going to move the building shed to begin on the antennae and feeding mandibles. We estimated the whole thing might have been finished in as little as five thousand years.”

“It seems a shame,” I said, “after five centuries of toil.”

“Yes,” replied Daisy stoically, “we’ll grind it up and sell it as motorway hardcore. Shame, but . . . well, there you go. This way.”

We arrived at a large, steel-belted door. There was a bunch of keys on the rope tied around Daisy’s waist, and she paused, waited until Sister Henrietta wasn’t watching, then threw a punch in my direction.

I was more wary of her now and expertly sidestepped the blow, although it was so close I felt the air move on my face. She shrugged, cursed at me below her breath, then placed a key in the lock. It turned easily, and she pushed it open to reveal a long staircase that led upward into the gloom. Blast. Stairs.

I think there might have been at least a hundred of them, and they wound slowly up for what seemed like an age, while my leg and back throbbed and shouted at me. I told them to move on ahead and was helped eventually by Henrietta, who wasn’t Henrietta at all but an ex-physicist from Manchester named Henry who was trying to find meaning in an otherwise empty existence by pretending to be a nun.

We reached the top of the stone steps in due course and entered the lowest tier of the libraries. There were books here in abundance, and Finisterre was already looking through the dusty tomes. I pulled one out at random and found an obscure treatise on accountancy dating from the tenth century. Of interest to those obsessed with the history of finance, but not much of anyone else.

“There is an index here,” said Daisy, pointing to a younger book. “The older stuff is on the top floor.”

“Aeschylus’s The Spirit of Pharos,” murmured Finisterre, peering through the gazetteer, “which is argued to be the first ghost story. Have you read it?”

“Sister Georgia translated it for us,” said Daisy. “It’s not totally rubbish. The ghosts turn out to be the lighthouse keepers in disguise, to prevent people from discovering their illegal trade in stolen amphorae.”

“So that’s where the Scooby-Doo ending originated,” I murmured. “Scholars have been hunting for the primary source of that for years.”

“It’s one of only two known copies anywhere in the world,” said Finisterre, “although the other copy is fragmentary. But you’re right about primary sources: When we discovered the second volume of Aristotle’s Poetics, it ended a lot of academic contention on who devised the format for Columbo.”

“There’s little new in literature,” I added. “For many years William Shatner’s depiction of Kirk in Star Trek was considered unique, until it was discovered that an identical character pops up in Ovid’s Metamorphoses 2: Fat Foreigners Are Funny all the time.”

“Horace wrote truly filthy limericks,” added Mother Daisy. “We recite them on special occasions. There was a very good one about a young man from Australia who painted his arse like a dahlia. Do you want to hear it?”

“No thanks.”

“Well,” said Finisterre, who was in no doubt as to the unique value of the library, “I’d like to catalog all this in situ, then take the books to my team of conservators to be copied and—”

He stopped because there was a sharp report far below in the convent.

“What was that?”

“A shot,” I said, “but then we are in the middle of a firing range.”

“Range fire is softened by distance,” replied Daisy expertly. “closer ones are a crack— and that was a crack. Sister Henrietta, close the scriptorium door and defend the library to the death.”

“We use a similar oath in the Wessex Library Service,” murmured Finisterre. “Thursday, do you still carry two pistols?”

“On my right ankle—but you’ll have to get it. I can’t bend that far. Landen has to put on my socks these days.”

“Isn’t he just the perfect husband?” murmured Daisy sarcastically. She was herself searching through the folds of her habit and produced a very ancient-looking Colt.

“How do I fire this thing?” she asked, showing it to me.

“Pull back the hammer, push this lever down,” I said, “and, to fire, squeeze the grip safety and trigger. The bullets come out here.”

“Cow.”

“Moo.”

I drew my own automatic, released the safety, and we all stood facing the stairway entrance.

“Is there another way in?” I asked.

“The roof,” said Daisy, “next floor up. But don’t worry—it’s bolted from the inside and can’t be reached from the ground.”

As she spoke, there was a muffled detonation from somewhere far below us. We all looked at one another.

“Word has gotten out the treasures within our walls,” said Mother Daisy. “I fear for my library.”

I thought quickly. If I were planning a raid on the library, I would use a diversion and attack from where it was least expected.

“You stay here and open fire at anything that comes up the stairs that isn’t in black and white. I’m going to keep an eye on the entrance to the roof.”

I didn’t wait for a reply, as sporadic gunfire was now ringing out downstairs, along with shouts and cries as the nuns returned fire. I limped up the steps to the next floor, which was a similar room to the one below—made of stone, lined with books and smelling of damp and birds’ nests. Above me in the ceiling was a large wooden hatch that was bolted from the inside. I took up station behind a stone pillar and waited. The windows gave little light and were too narrow to climb through. If an attack were forthcoming, this was where it would come from.

I raised my pistol in readiness as with eerie predictability the hatch blew inward with an almighty concussion. I was vaguely conscious of firing off one shot, probably by accident, and the next moment I was lying on my back among shards of wood, cobwebs and dust. Ears ringing, I struggled to sit up. I even halfheartedly raised my pistol, only to have it removed from my hand by a smiling face that I recognized. It was Jack Schitt.

We’d crossed swords many times in the past, and I kind of thought we had reached something of a truce when his wife died and I returned her locket to him. In fact, the last I heard, he was retired. But the odd thing about this was that Goliath wasn’t really into violent assaults on libraries—they always favored stealing stuff by persuasive arguments “for the greater good” and, when that failed, veiled threats, legal action and sneaky behavior. This wasn’t their style, and, to be honest, Jack was getting a bit long in the tooth for fieldwork—as was I.

“Shit and ballocks,” I said, more through frustration than anger.

“Language, Thursday.”

Jack dropped the magazine from my pistol, pulled back the slide to eject the unfired round and tossed the empty weapon to the other side of the room. He paused to bolt the door to the lower levels of the scriptorium and then looked thoughtfully about the room. He didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry.

“We’ve not even begun to catalog it yet,” I said. “I hope you’ve got some time on your hands.”

He ignored me and moved past the shelves, his fingertips brushing the spines of the books. He wasn’t choosing a book by reading the spines; indeed, there was nothing written on many of them. It appeared that he was sensing the book he was searching for, and after a moment he stopped, paused and drew out a volume.

“Goliath stealing antiquarian books?” I said. “Bit of a comedown, isn’t it?”

He had opened the book and answered without looking at me. “What are you doing here, Next?”

“Playing silly buggers,” I told him, slowly crawling into a position from where I might be able to get to my feet.

“I meant in particular,” he said with a smile, “not in general.”

There was more gunfire from the floor below. It looked as though the diversionary attack had been utterly successful—in that it was diversionary. I got to my feet and staggered across the room to where he had thrown my pistol. He saw what I was doing but didn’t seem that put out by it. I picked up the weapon, then glanced around to see where he had thrown the clip.

“Over there,” he said, still not looking up from where he was leafing though the book. I moved to the other side of the room to where the clip lay, in some dust by the door. I tried to bend over, but when that failed, I grasped the door handle and used it to lower myself.

“You’re pretty much trashed, aren’t you?” said Jack, tearing two pages out of the book and letting the rest of the volume fall to the floor.

“It’s early days,” I said, grunting with the pain and effort. “Physiotherapy will see me as right as rain in the fullness of time.”

“There aren’t enough years left in the universe,” he said, staring at the pages he had torn out, “the weak will not survive.”

“Personal opinion?” I asked, my fingers just touching the magazine.

“Corporate policy. Crabbe? Would you?”

A foot descended on my hands from a second assailant, one whom I had not seen. I would have cried out in pain if I weren’t already in pain.

“Okay, okay,” I said, handing him the pistol, “let me keep my fingers.”

“It’s good news for you that you’re Protocol 451,” Crabbe breathed close to my ear. “It would give me immeasurable pleasure to put an end to the once-magnificent Thursday Next.”

“Why don’t you tell me what you’re looking for? I might be able—”

I stopped, because when I turned back to look at Jack, he had gone.

“Time to go,” said Crabbe. “I hope we don’t meet again— next time I won’t be so charitable.”

He took my arm, twisted it until I crumpled in a heap, then walked across to where Jack had been standing. The book was lying on the floor, splayed downward, pages crumpled against the stone.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic sack, much like an evidence bag. He cracked it open, dropped the two pages Jack had been reading inside, zip-locked it, then broke a large phial that was inside the bag. There was a hissing noise, and he shook the bag twice, then let it fall to the floor, where it bubbled quietly to itself.

“Time to go,” he said again, and moved to the center of the room, where the shattered trapdoor was positioned. He fired a flare gun through the aperture and then jumped up, grabbed the parapet and was out in an instant. I heard his footfalls on the roof t a k i ng severa l long paces, t hen a pause, t hen t he high-pitched whine of a fast rope descender. I frowned. Now that I’d heard Crabbe’s descender I realized that I hadn’t heard Jack’s.

As the light from the parachute flare flickered red through the narrow window slits, the diversionary gunfire abruptly stopped, and within a few minutes it was calm once more, the only noises those from nuns who’d been wounded in the action.

“Shit,” I said, to no one in particular.