Whit

CHAPTER ONE

I was in my room, reading a book.

I turned a page. The curved shadow of one candle-lit white surface fell over another and the action made a small sharp rustling noise in the silence. Suddenly, a dizziness struck me, and I was acutely aware of the paper's thin dryness, rough against the skin of my fingers and seemingly conducting some powerful, disorienting energy from it to me. I sat as if stunned for a moment, while the unbidden memory of my first Healing coursed through me, suffused with the light of a distant season.

It was a hot summer's day; one of those close, still afternoons when distant haze over the hills or across the plain might become thunder before the evening, and stone walls and outcrops of naked rock will give off small bursts of sweet, heated air when you walk close by. My brother Allan and I had been playing daringly far away from our home at the farm, and daringly close to a main road. We had been stalking rabbits in the fields and looking for birds' nests in the hedgerows, all without success. I was five, he a couple of years older.

We found the fox lying in a just-cut field on the far side of the hedge from the road, where cars and trucks roared past in the sunlight.

The animal was small and still and there was dried blood round its nose and mouth. Allan poked the fox's body with a stick and pronounced it long dead, but I looked and looked and looked at it and knew that it could still live, and so went forward and stooped and raised it up, gathering its stiffened form into my arms and burying my nose in its fur.

Allan made noises of disgust; everybody knew foxes were covered in fleas.

But I felt the flow of life, in me and in the animal. A strange tension built in up me, like a blessed opposite of bottled-up anger, germinating, budding and blossoming then flowing out of me like a glowing beam of vitality and being.

I felt the animal quicken and stir in my hands.

In a moment it jerked, and I set it down on the ground again; it wobbled to its feet and shivered once, looking shakily around. It growled at Allan and then leaped away, vanishing into the ditch before the hedge.

Allan stared at me wide-eyed with what appeared to be horror and - for all that he was the boy and two years my senior - looked very much as though he was about to cry. The muscles at the hinge of his jaws, beneath his ears, quivered, spasming. My brother dropped his stick, shouted incoherently and then also ran off through the brindle stalks towards the farm.

I was left alone with a feeling of unutterable contentment.

Later - years later, with the benefit of a more mature perspective on that vivid childhood instant - I was to recall precisely (or at least seem to) what I had felt when I'd lifted the fox off the ground, and, troubled, ask myself whether whatever Gift I had could act at a distance.

… The dizzying moment passed, the turned page settled against those read before it. Memory - the gift we all share, and which certainly does act at a distance - released me back to the present, and (though I didn't know it at the time) what was the start of my own tale.

I shall introduce myself: my name is Isis. I am usually called Is. I am a Luskentyrian.

I shall begin my story properly the day Salvador - my Grandfather and our Founder and OverSeer - received the letter which set in motion the various events described herein; it was the first day of May 1995, and all of us in the Order were already caught up in the preparations for the Festival of Love due to take place at the end of the month. The quadrennial Festival, and especially the implications it would involve for me personally, were much on my mind then, and it was with a sense of impending relief and only a hint of guilt that I was looking forward to departing the Community for my weekly walk to Dunblane, its cathedral, and the Flentrop organ.

Our home lies in a loop of the river Forth a number of miles upstream from the town of Stirling. The river - rising from a confluence just above Aberfoyle - meanders like a brown rope the Creator has dropped haphazardly across the ancient green flood-plain which forms the eastern flank of Scotland's pinched waist. The river curves, swerves, doubles back and bows round again in a series of convoluted wriggles between the Gargunnock escarpment to the south and the long, shallow slope of collectively untitled hills to the north (my favourite of which, for its name alone, is Slymaback); it passes through Stirling itself, swelling gradually, and continues to snake its way to Alloa, where it broadens out further and begins to seem more like part of the sea rather than a feature of the land.

Where it passes us, the river is deep, not yet tidal, smoothly flowing unless in spate, often soupy with silt and still narrow enough for a child to throw a stone all the way across, from one muddy, reeded bank to the other.

The pouch of raised land where we live is called High Easter Offerance. The Victorian mansion, the older farmhouse, its outbuildings and associated barns, sheds and glasshouses as well as the various abandoned vehicles that have been pressed into service as additional accommodation, storage or greenhouses, together take up perhaps half of the fifty or so acres the river's loop encompasses, with the rest given over to a small walled apple orchard, two goat-cropped lawns, a stand of Scots pine and another of birch, larch and maple, and - where the old estate slopes down to the river - a near-encircling wilderness of weeds, bushes, muddy hollows, giant hog weeds and rushes.

The Community is approached from the south across a bow-arched bridge whose two main girders each bears an unidentifiable coat of arms and the date 1890. The bridge was once quite capable of supporting a traction engine (I have seen photographs) but its wooden deck is now so thoroughly rotten there are numerous places where you can see through its eaten timbers to the swirling brown waters below. A narrow pathway of roughly nailed-down planks makes a pedestrian route across the bridge. On the far side of the bridge, set amongst the crowding sycamores on the raised bank opposite the Community proper, is the small turreted house where Mr Woodbean and his daughter Sophi live. Mr Woodbean is our gardener, though the house he lives in belongs to him; the estate of High Easter Offerance was gifted to my Grandfather and the Community by Mr Woodbean's mother on condition she and her descendants possessed title to the turret house. I am fond of telling people Sophi is a lion-tamer, though her official title is Assistant Animal Handler. She works at the local safari park, a few miles across the fields, near Doune.

Beyond the Woodbeans' house, the overgrown driveway winds through the trees and bushes to the main road; there tall, rusted-shut iron gates look out over a semicircle of gravel where Sophi's Morris Minor sits when not elsewhere, and the postman's van parks when he comes to deliver mail. A single small gate to one side gives access to the dank, tree-dark driveway within.

North, behind the Community, where the coiling river almost meets itself at the draw-string of our enpursement, the land dips towards the line of the old Drymen to Bridge of Allan railway line, which describes a long grassy ridge between us and the major part of our policies beyond, a rich quilt of flat, fertile arable land comprising some two thousand acres. There is a gap in the old railway line where a small bridge, long since removed, had given access to the fields back when the line had been operational; my route to the cathedral that mist-bright Monday morning would begin there, but first I would break my fast.

Our secular lives tend to centre around the long wooden table in the extended kitchen of the old farmhouse, where the fire burns in the open range like an eternal flame to domesticity and the ancient stove sits darkly in one corner, radiating heat and a comfortingly musty odour, like an old and sleepy family dog. At this point in the morning at this time of the year, the kitchen is bright with hazy sunlight falling in through the broad extension windows, and crowded with people; I had to step over Tam and Venus, playing with a wooden train set on the floor near the hall door. They looked up when I entered the kitchen.

'Beloved Isis!' Tam piped.

'Buvid Ice-sis,' the younger child said.

'Brother Tam, Sister Venus,' I said, nodding slowly with mock gravity. They giggled embarrassed, then returned to their play.

Venus's brother, Peter, was arguing with his mother, Sister Fiona, about whether today was a Bath Day or not. They too stopped long enough to greet me. Brother Robert nodded from the open courtyard door, lighting his pipe as he stepped outside to get the horses ready; his nailed boots clicked across the flagstones. Clio and Flora ran yelping and screaming around the table, Clio chasing her elder sister with a wooden spoon and followed by Handyman, the collie, his eyes wide, his long pink tongue flapping ('Girls…' the girls' mother, Gay, said with weary exasperation, looking up from the Festive banners she was sewing, then seeing me and wishing me good morning. Her youngest child, Thalia, stood on the bench beside her, gurgling and clapping her hands at the show her sisters were putting on). The two children hurtled past me, shrieking, with the dog skittering across the tiles behind them, and I had to lean back against the warm black metal of the stove.

The stove was built for solid fuel but now runs on methane piped in from the waste tanks buried in the courtyard. If the fire, with its giant black kettle swung over the flames, is our never-extinguished shrine, then the stove is an altar. It is habitually tended by my step-aunt Calliope (usually known as Calli), a dark, stocky, dense-looking woman with beetling black brows and a tied-back sheaf of thick hair, still raven-black without a trace of silver after her forty-four years. Calli is particularly Asian in appearance, as though almost none of my Grandfather's Caucasian genes found their way to her.

'Gaia-Marie,' she said when she saw me, looking up from her seat at the table (Calli always refers to me by the first part of my name). In front of her, a knife glittered back and forward over the chopping block, incising vegetables. She rose; I put out my hand and she kissed it, then frowned when she saw my travelling jacket and my hat. 'Monday already?' She nodded, sitting again.

'It is,' I confirmed, placing my hat on the table and helping myself to porridge from the pot on the stove.

'Sister Erin was in earlier, Gaia-Marie,' Calli said, returning to the slivering of the vegetables. 'She said the Founder would like to see you.'

'Right,' I said. 'Thank you.'

Sister Anne, on breakfast duty, left the toasting rack at the fire and fussed over me, dropping a dollop of honey into my porridge and ensuring I got the next two bits of toast, plastered with butter and slabbed with cheese; a cup of strong tea followed almost immediately. I thanked her and pulled up a seat beside Cassie. Her twin, Paul, was on the other side of the table. They were deciphering a telephone scroll.

The twins are Calli's two eldest, an attractive mixture of Calli's sub-continental darkness and the Saxon fairness of their father, my uncle, Brother James (who has been performing missionary work in America for the last two years). They are my age; nineteen years. They both rose from their seats as I sat down. They quickly swallowed mouthfuls of buttered bread and said Good morning, then returned to their task, counting the peaks on the long roll of paper, converting them into dots and dashes and then gathering those into groups that represented letters.

A younger child is usually given the task of collecting the long scroll of paper from the Woodbeans' house each evening and bringing it back to the farm for deciphering. This had been my duty for a number of years - I am a few months younger than the twins, and even though I am the Elect of God I have, quite properly, been brought up to be humble in the sight of the Creator and to learn some of that humility through the accomplishment of common, simple tasks.

I recall my scroll-collection duties with great affection. While the trip to the house on the far side of the bridge could be unpleasant in foul weather - especially in the winter darkness, carrying a wind-swung lantern across the decaying iron bridge with the swollen black river loud below - I was usually rewarded with a cup of tea and a sweet or a biscuit in the Woodbean household, and there was anyway the fascination of just being in the house, with its bright electric lights shining into the corners of the rooms and the old radiogram filling the sitting room with music from the airwaves or from records (Mr Woodbean, who is a sort of fellow traveller where our faith is concerned, draws the line at television; his concession to my Grandfather's strictures on the modern world).

I was under instructions not to linger in the house longer than necessary, but like most of us charged with the scroll run I found it hard to resist staying a while to soak in that shining, beguiling light and listen to the strange, distant-sounding music, experiencing that mixture of discomfort and allure younger Luskentyrians commonly endure when confronted with modern technology. This was also how I came to get to know Sophi Woodbean, who is probably my best friend (before even my cousin Morag), even though she lives mostly amongst the Blands and - like her father - is what my Grandfather would call Only Half-Saved.

Cassie ticked off another group of signals and glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner.

It was almost six o'clock. Unless the scroll looked like containing an especially urgent signal, Brother Malcolm would be calling the twins away to their work in the fields soon, where up to a dozen others of our Order were probably already working. At the far end of the table, the primary-age youngsters were trying to eat at the same time as feverishly copying each other's homework before Uncle Calum rang the bell for class to begin in the mansion house across the yard. The secondary-school children were almost certainly still asleep; the bus which would stop at the end of the driveway to take them to the Gerhardt Academy at Killearn wouldn't arrive for another hour and a half. Astar - Calli's sister - was likely busy supervising bed-making and laundry collection while Indra, her son, was probably to be found tinkering with some piece of pipework or joinery, if not attending to the Festive Ale being prepared in the hop-fragranced brew-house in the barn beyond the courtyard's western corner. Allan, my elder brother, was almost certainly already in the Community office, also across in the mansion house, keeping the farm records up to date and giving Sister Bernadette or Sister Amanda letters to type.

I finished my breakfast, gave the plates to Brother Giles, who was on washing-up duty that day, said a general Goodbye to all in the kitchen - Sister Anne fussed over me and thrust an apple and a couple of pieces of haggis pakora wrapped in greaseproof paper into my pocket - and crossed the yard to the mansion house. The mist above was only faint, the sky beyond clear blue. Steam rose from the wash house, and Sister Veronique called out and waved to me, a laundry basket piled and heavy on her hip. I waved to her, and to Brother Arthur, holding one of the Clydesdales while Brother Robert and Brother Robert B. adjusted its harness.

The men called me over to look at the horse. Dubhe is the largest of our Clydesdales but also the laziest. The two Roberts reckoned he was limping a little but weren't sure.

I have a way with animals as well as people, and if I have anything that can be said to resemble a duty in the Community it lies in helping to soothe some of the pains, injuries and conditions people and beasts are prone to.

We walked the horse round a little out of his harness and I clapped his flanks and held his head and talked to him for a while, rubbing my face against his while his breath thundered out of his black-pink nostrils in hay-sweet clouds. Eventually he nodded once, taking his huge head out of my grasp and then holding it high, looking around.

I laughed. 'He's fine,' I told the men.

I crossed to the mansion house; this is the rather grand title given to the dwelling Mr Woodbean's father had built to supersede the original farmhouse at the turn of the century. It is built of chiselled grey-pink sandstone rather than the rough, undressed stone of the earlier building, and its three storeys stand taller, better lit and devoid of whitewash. It was reduced to a burned-out shell some sixteen years ago, in the fire that killed my parents, but we have rebuilt it since.

Inside, Brothers Elias and Herb, two muscular American blonds were on their hands and knees, buffing the hall floor. The air was filled with the sharp, clean smell of the polish. Elias and Herb are converts who came to us after hearing about our Community from Brother James, our missionary in America. They both looked up and smiled the broad, perfect smiles which they have assured us (almost proudly, it seemed to me) cost their respective parents many thousands of dollars.

'Isis-' Elias began.

'Beloved,' Herb snorted, glancing at me and rolling his eyes.

I smiled and gestured to Elias to continue.

'Beloved Isis,' Elias grinned, 'would you kindly cast some light into the poor occluded mind of our brother here on the matter of the co-essential nature of the body and the soul?'

'I'll try,' I said, suppressing a sigh.

Elias and Herb seem to thrive on interminable debates concerning the finest points of Luskentyrian theology; points so fine, indeed, that they were almost pointless (at the same time, I have to admit to a certain feeling of gratification at having two such glowing examples of Californian manhood - both a couple of years older than I - on their knees before me and hanging on my every word). 'What,' I asked, 'is the exact nature of your dispute?'

Elias shook his yellow duster at the other. 'Brother Herb here contends that if the Heresy of Size is to be fully rejected, then the soul, or at least that part which receives the Voice of the Creator, must effectively be the skeleton of the believer. Now, it seems obvious to me that…'

And on they went. The Heresy of Size came about when a few of Grandfather's original followers, misunderstanding his teachings on the physicality of the soul, decided that the bigger and fatter one was, the larger a receiver one presented for God's signals and so the better one would hear God's Voice. Perhaps the fact that Salvador had filled out somewhat over the previous few years to become an impressive and substantial figure had something to do with the Sizist Heresy; the disciples concerned had only known our Founder as a big, bulky man, and did not know that his rotundity was entirely a result of both blissful inner peace and his wives' extravagantly generous cooking; had they been able to see photographs of Salvador when he first appeared on the sisters' doorstep, when he was, apparently, quite skinny, they might not have deceived themselves so.

While Elias and Herb argued on, I nodded with all the appearance of patience and looked fleetingly round the wood-panelled hall.

Hanging in the hall and on up the gleaming walls of the broad stairwell there are various paintings and one framed poster. There is a portrait of the elder Mrs Woodbean, our benefactress, several landscapes of the Outer Hebrides, and - almost shockingly, given the way Grandfather feels about the contemporary media - a bright purple and red poster advertising an event in something called The Royal Festival Hall in London two years ago. The poster publicises a concert on the instrument called the baryton to be given by the internationally renowned soloist Morag Whit, and it is a measure of Grandfather Salvador's love of and pride in my cousin Morag that he suffers such a garishly modern thing to be displayed so prominently in his sanctum. Cousin Morag - the jewel in the crown of our artistic missionary work - was to be our Guest of Honour at the Festival of Love at the end of the month.

We are not a wealthy Order (indeed part of our attraction for outsiders has always been that we ask nothing from our followers save belief, observance and - if they come to stay with us - honest toil; all donations are politely returned) but we are more than self sufficient and the farm produces a decent surplus each year, part of which it pleases our Founder to spend supporting missionary work. Brother James in America and Sister Neith in Africa have saved many a soul over the last few years and we hope that Brother Topee - currently at Glasgow University - will become our envoy to Europe after he graduates and receives suitable instruction from Salvador. Cousin Morag is not a missionary as such, but it is our hope that her fame as an internationally famous baryton soloist, when combined with her espousal of our faith, will help turn people to the Truth.

Additionally, it has been Morag's expressed desire since the last Festival of Love to take a fuller part in this one, and we were happy to hear a couple of years ago that she had met a nice young man in London and wanted to marry him at this year's Festival.

When Elias and Herb had both explained their positions I looked thoughtful and answered them as best I could; as usual it was a dispute about nothing very much resulting from them making two subtly different but equally profoundly mistaken interpretations of Grandfather's teachings. I assured them that the answer would be found in their copies of the Orthography, if they only studied them properly. I left them still looking puzzled and ascended quickly to the first floor before they could think of any supplemental questions (that they would in any event I had no doubt, and could only hope that they would have moved on to another part of the floor or a different - and preferably quite distant - task entirely when I descended again).

The rattle of the Community's ancient Remington typewriter sounded from one of the old bedrooms, now the office, to the left at the top of the stairs. I could hear my brother Allan's voice as I reached the landing, where the floorboards creak. Allan's voice cut off, then I heard him say something else, and while I was walking towards the double doors which led to my Grandfather's quarters, the office door opened and the broad, flushed-looking face of Sister Bernadette poked out, framed in crinkly red hair.

'Sis - ah, Beloved Isis, Brother Allan would like a word.'

'Well, I'm a little late already,' I said, clutching the handle of Grandfather's anteroom and knocking on the door with the hand in which I was holding my travelling hat.

'It won't take-'

The door swung open before me and Sister Erin - tall, greying, primly elegant and looking somehow as though she'd been up for hours - stood back to let me in, sparing a small smile for Sister Bernadette's crestfallen face on the other side of the landing as she closed the door behind me.

'Good morning, Beloved Isis,' she said gesturing me towards the door to Grandfather's bedroom. 'You're well, I hope?'

'Good morning, Sister Erin. Yes, I am well,' I said, walking across the polished floor between the couches, chairs and tables while Sister Erin followed. Outside, beyond the partition at the courtyard windows which screens off Grandfather's private kitchen, I heard the school bell sound as Brother Calum called the children to their studies. 'And you?'

'Oh, well enough,' Erin said with a sigh it was hard not to suspect was fully supposed to sound long-suffering. 'Your Grandfather had a good night and a light breakfast.' (Sister Erin will insist on talking about Grandfather as though he is a cross between royalty and a condemned prisoner; admittedly he does encourage us all to treat him somewhat regally, and at the age of seventy-five may not have all that long left with us; but still.)

'Oh, good,' I said, as ever at a loss to respond suitably to such portentousness.

'I think he's had his bath,' Erin said, reaching round me to open the door to Grandfather's suite. She smiled thinly. 'Marjorie and Erica,' she said crisply as I took off my shoes and handed them to her. She hauled the door back.

The door opened to steps which led up onto the surface of Grandfather's bed, which is composed of six king-size beds and two single beds squeezed hard up against each other and which entirely fills the bedroom itself save for a single raised table near the far wall. The bed surface is covered with multitudinous quilts and duvets and several dozen pillows and cushions of varying shapes and sizes. The curtains had not been drawn, and in the gloom the bed looked like a relief map of a particularly mountainous area. The air was thick with the smell of incense candles, scattered everywhere along the single shelf which ran round the walls; a few were still lit. Gurgling noises and voices came from a half-open door ahead of me.

My Grandfather's large round wooden bath lies in the spacious bathroom beyond his dressing room, which is in turn beyond the bedroom. The bath-tub and its surrounding platform, constructed for him by Brother Indra, fills half the room; the rest contains an ordinary bath, a shower cabinet, washhand basin, toilet and bidet, all supplied from a tank in the mansion house loft which is itself fed from our river water-wheel (based on an ancient Syrian design, Indra says) via various filters - including a raised slope of reed-bed - a tangle of pipes, a methane-powered pump, roof-mounted solar panels, and, finally, a methane-boosted hot-water tank immediately above the bathroom.

'Beloved Isis!' chorused Sister Marjorie and Sister Erica. Marjorie, who is three years my elder, and Erica, who is a year younger than me, wore peach-coloured shifts and were drying the bath with towels. 'Good morning, Sisters,' I said, nodding.

I pushed through the double doors into the lush and fragrant space which Grandfather calls the Cogitarium, a greenhouse which extends from the end of the mansion house's first floor and rests on the roof of the ballroom below, where we hold our meetings and services. The Cogitarium was even warmer and more humid than the bathroom.

My Grandfather, His Holiness The Blessed Salvador-Uranos Odin Dyaus Brahma Moses-Mohammed Mirza Whit of Luskentyre, Beloved Founder of the Luskentyrian Sect of the Select of God, I, and the Creator's OverSeer on Earth (and patently unembarrassed when it came to bestowing extra and religiously significant names upon himself), sat in a modest cane chair situated within a splash of sunlight at the far end of the greenhouse, up a chessboard-tiled path between the in-crowding fronds of multitudinous ferns, philodendrons and bromeliads. Grandfather was dressed, as usual in a plain white robe. The long, whitely curled mane of his hair had been dried, and with his dense white beard formed a nimbus round his head which seemed to glow in the misty morning sunlight. His eyes were closed. The leaves of the plants brushed at my arms as I walked up the path, making a gentle rustling noise. Grandfather's eyes opened. He blinked, then smiled at me.

'And how is my favourite grand-daughter?' he asked.

'I am well, Grandfather,' I said. 'And you?'

'Old, Isis,' he said, smiling. 'But well enough.' His voice was deep and sonorous. He is a handsome man, still, for all his years, with a powerful, Leonine face and skin that might grace a man half his age. The only blemish on his face is the deep, V-shaped scar high on his forehead which is the original emblematic mark of our Order. That deep, rich voice, which rings out above us all when we sing during a service, is identifiably Scots, though tinged with a hint of public-school English and the occasional American vowel sound.

'Blessings to you, Grandfather,' I said, and made our Sign, bringing my right hand up to my forehead and administering what might best be described as a slow tap. Salvador nodded slowly and indicated a small wooden seat by the side of his cane chair.

'And blessings to you, Isis. Thank you for coming to see your old Grandfather.' He put his right hand slowly up to the back of his head, and winced. 'It's this neck again.'

'Ah ha,' I said. I put my hat down on the seat he'd waved at and went to stand behind him, putting my hands on his shoulders and starting to massage him. He let his head drop a little as I kneaded his muscles, my hands working across his smooth, lightly tanned skin.

I stood there in the hazy sunlight, its glowing warmth twice-filtered by mist and glass, and ran my hands over my Grandfather's shoulders and neck, no longer massaging but simply touching. I felt the strange, welling itch inside myself that is the symptom of my power, felt its tickle come rising through my bones and go tingling into and through my hands, and knew that I still had my Gift, that I was Healing.

I confess that a few times in such situations I have attempted to discover if touch is really necessary for my Gift to work; I have let my hands hover just over some afflicted animal or bodily part, to see if mere proximity is sufficient to create the effect. The results have been - as my old physics teacher would have said - indubitably ambiguous. With animals, I simply am not sure, and with people, well, they can tell you aren't touching them, and touching is what they seem to expect for the Gift to work. I have always been coy about taking anybody into my confidence concerning the exact reason for my interest in this matter.

'Ah, that's better,' Grandfather said, after a while.

I took a deep breath, letting my hands rest on his shoulders. 'All right?'

'Very much so,' he said, patting my right hand. 'Thank you, child. Come now; sit down.'

I lifted my hat and sat on the wooden seat at his side.

'Off to play the organ, are we?' he asked.

'Yes, Grandfather,' I said.

He looked thoughtful. 'Good,' he said, nodding slowly. 'You should do things you enjoy, Isis,' he told me, and reached out to pat my hand. 'You are being given the luxury of time to prepare for your role in the Order, once I'm gone-'

'Oh, Grandfather-' I protested, no more comfortable than usual with this line.

'Now, now,' he said reasonably, patting my hand again. 'It has to happen eventually, Isis, and I'm ready and I shall go happily when the time comes… but my point is that you should use that time, and use it not just to study and sit in the library and read…'

I sighed, smiling tolerantly. I had heard this line of argument before.

'… but to live your life as young people need to, to seize the opportunity to live, Isis. There will be time enough to take on cares and responsibilities in the future, believe me, and I just don't want you to wake up one morning after I'm gone with all the weight of the Community and the Order on your shoulders and realise that you never had any time for enjoyment and freedom from cares while you were young and now it's too late, do you see?'

'I see, Grandfather.'

'Ah,' he said, 'but do you understand?' His eyes narrowed. 'We all have selfish, even animal urges, Isis. They have to be controlled, but they have to be given their due, as well. We ignore them at our peril. You may make a better and more selfless leader of the Order in the future if you behave a little more selfishly now.'

'I know, Grandfather,' I told him, and put on my most winning smile. 'But selfishness takes different forms, too. I indulge myself most shamelessly when I'm sitting reading in the library, and going to play the Flentrop.'

He took a deep breath, smiling and shaking his head. 'Well, just never forget that you're allowed to enjoy yourself.' He patted my hand. 'Never forget that. We believe in happiness, here; we believe in joy and love. You are entitled to your share of those.' He let go of my hand and made a show of looking me up and down. 'You're looking well, young lady,' he told me. 'You're looking healthy.' His grey, abundant eyebrows flexed. 'Looking forward to the Festival, are we?' he asked, his eyes twinkling.

I brought up my chin, self-conscious beneath the Blessed Salvador's gaze.

I suppose I must describe myself at some point and now seems as good a time as any to get it over with. I am a little above average height and neither skinny nor fat. I keep my hair very short; it grows in straight if allowed to. It is surprisingly blonde for my complexion, which has a hue roughly in keeping with my 3:1 racial mix (though in my vainer moments I confess I like to think I inherited a little more than my fair share of my grandmother Aasni's high-boned Himalayan handsomeness); my eyes are large and blue, my nose is too small and my lips are too full. They are also inclined to leave a slight gap through which my unremarkable teeth may be seen unless I deliberately keep my mouth firmly closed. I believe I developed late, physically, a process that has at last ceased. To my great relief my chest has remained relatively non-pneumatic, though my waist has stayed narrow while my hips have broadened; at any rate, I have at last gone one full year without once being referred to - at least in my earshot - as 'boyish' in aspect, which is a blessing in itself.

I was dressed in a white shirt - reverse-buttoned, of course - narrow black trousers and a long black travelling jacket which matches my broad-brimmed hat. My brother Allan calls this my preacher look.

'I'm sure we're all looking forward to the Festival, Grandfather,' I told him.

'Good, glad to hear it,' he said. 'So, you're off to Dunblane, are you?'

'Yes, Grandfather.'

'You'll come round this afternoon?' he asked. 'I've been having more thoughts about the re-draft.'

'Of course,' I said. I had been helping Grandfather with what we all suspected would be the final version of our Good Book, The Luskentyrian Orthography, which has been undergoing a kind of divinely sanctioned rolling revision ever since Grandfather began the work, in 1948.

'Fine,' he said. 'Well, have a good… whatever it is you have playing an organ,' he said, and smiled. 'Go with God, Isis. Don't talk to too many strangers.'

Thank you, Grandfather. I'll do my best.'

'I'm serious,' he said, frowning suddenly. 'I've had this… feeling about reporters recently.' He smiled uncertainly.

'Was it a vision, Grandfather?' I asked, trying to keep the eagerness out of my voice.

Visions have been important to our Faith from the beginning. It all started with one which my Grandfather had all those forty-seven years ago, and it was the series of visions he had thereafter that guided our Church through its early vicissitudes. We believed in, trusted and celebrated our Founder's visions, though they had - perhaps just with age, as he had been the first to suggest - become much less frequent and dramatic over the years.

He looked annoyed for a moment, then wistful. 'I wouldn't put it as strongly as a revelation or a vision or anything,' he said. 'Just a feeling, you know?'

'I understand,' I said, trying to sound soothing. 'I'll be careful, I promise.'

He smiled. 'Good girl.'

I took my hat and left the Cogitarium. The Sisters had left the bathroom looking dry and smelling clean. I ascended into the up-thrust landscape of the bedroom and crossed to the far side through the gloom. I picked my boots up from the floor of the sitting room.

'How is he this morning?' Erin asked from her desk near the double doors as I did up my laces. Sister Erin looked at my boots with an expression consistent with having seen something unpleasant on the soles.

'In a jolly good mood, I'd say,' I told her, to be favoured with a wintry smile.

'Hey, Is,' Allan said as we exited doors on either side of the landing at the same time.

My elder brother is tall and fit, and fair both in hair and skin; we share eye-colour, though his are apparently more piercing. He has a broad face and an easy, confident grin. His gaze is prone to darting about, shifting all the time as he talks to you with that winning smile, coming back to your eyes every now and again to make sure you're still listening and only zeroing in on you when he wants to convince you of his sincerity. Allan claims he clothes himself by way of the Stirling charity shops like the rest of us, though some of us have wondered quite how he seems to find perfectly fitting three-piece suits and smart blazers with such remarkable regularity. If we occasionally ungraciously suspect him of Vanity, however, we are content that when he travels out-with the Community he favours frayed, tatty country clothes. That morning he wore a pair of faded jeans with a crease and a tweed jacket over a checked shirt.

'Good morning,' I said. 'Bernie said you wanted a word?'

Allan shrugged, smiling. 'Oh, it was nothing,' he said, walking downstairs with me. 'It was just we heard Aunt Brigit wouldn't be coming back for the Festival, that's all; thought you could have mentioned it.'

'Oh. Well, that's a pity. But you'll see Grandad today; you tell him.'

'Well, yes, but it's just that he takes these things better from you, doesn't he? I mean, you're the apple of his eye, aren't you? Eh, sis?' He nudged me and favoured me with a sly grin as we reached the bottom of the steps. The smell of polish lingered and the floor looked like an ice rink, but Elias and Herb had departed.

'If you say so,' I told him. He held open the front door for me and I preceded him into the courtyard. He pulled on his tweed jacket. 'You off to Dunblane?'

'I am.'

'Right.' He nodded, gazing up at the gauzy mist as we walked across the damp cobbles. 'Just thought I'd take a saunter out to the road-end,' he told me. 'Give whoever's on the post-run a hand.' He adjusted one shirt cuff. 'Expecting some fairly heavy parcels,' he explained. 'Hamper, perhaps.' (We do all our food shopping by post, for somewhat ridiculous reasons I shall probably have to explain later. There are hidden intricacies and interpretative choices associated with the post-run itself, too.) We stopped, facing each other in the centre of the courtyard.

'How's, ah… how's the revision going?' he asked.

'Fine,' I told him.

'He changing much?' Allan asked, dropping his voice so slightly he probably didn't realise he was doing it, and unable to resist a furtive-looking glance at the mansion house.

'Not really,' I said.

Allan looked at me for a moment. I suspected he was debating with himself whether to be sarcastic. Apparently the decision went my way. 'It's just, you know,' he said, looking pained, 'some of… some of the others are a bit worried about what the old guy might be changing.'

'You make it sound like a will,' I smiled.

'Well,' Allan nodded. 'It is his legacy, isn't it? To us, I mean.'

'Yes,' I said. 'But as I said, he isn't changing much; just tidyings up, mostly. So far we've spent most time explaining false signals; the early self-heresies; he's been trying to explain the circumstances behind them.'

Allan crossed his arms then put one hand to his mouth. 'I see, I see,' he said, looking thoughtful. 'Still think all this will be ready come the Festival?'

'He thinks so. I'd imagine so.'

My brother flashed a sudden smile. 'Well, that sounds all right, doesn't it?'

'I'd say so.'

'Good. Well…'

'See you later,' I said. 'Go with God.'

'Yes, you too.' He smiled uncertainly and walked away.

I turned and headed out of the Community.