The Sins of the Fathers

Chapter Twenty-Five

Ellington Manor

Meadvale

Surrey

"Sister...how are you feeling this morning?" Sebastian Osborne asked gently, trying to put Sister Caris at some sort of ease. He had already interviewed two of the four current residents of his little Chapter House, but Sister Caris had needed a little more time to recover and he was deliberately leaving Mother Bernadette to last.

"I am fit to work, your grace." Her voice was quiet and further muffled by her veil, as she was wearing her habit, the famous all-white robes of the Winstanley Priory nuns, supposedly the best of the best. He noted that her first thought was her work.

"You are excused work whilst you are here, Sister...can you tell me why you were beaten so severely, Sister?"

"Because I talked to you, your grace."

"I am so sorry...I wanted to get some of you out before now...to help with my investigation and protect you from the bad apples, until we can deal with them...but it was not easy getting the go ahead to proceed?" Osborne sighed, excusing himself, but also blaming himself. He believed in God's will, and in the weakness of man, and he had done all he could to get his investigation underway earlier. He was well aware that breaking into the Priory would cause uproar on the outside, but he had not actually considered the affect it would have inside the Priory. His conversations with the two other Sisters, who were both past victims of Mother Bernadette's predilections, had made him aware of the furious reaction of those who feared losing their positions. But he had tried, he bore no guilt, for anything as it happened. He was discovering things about the past that angered him, and shocked him, but God was there and he trusted in His purpose. "Sister, do you understand what I am trying to do here?"

"Not really, your grace."

"Bishop Ralph Winstanley...who had responsibility for the Order until recently...or rather for the relationship the Church must have with the Order...was unfortunately involved in some...deviant...activities. Having exposed him, and had him dealt with by the appropriate authorities, I have been asked to put things right as far as I can and then recommend how the new Mother should run the Order in the future...under closer guidance from the archbishop himself...so that these sorts of things can never happen again?" Osborne explained, hoping that she was following him. He knew that Sister Caris was not stupid, of course. She had been a doctor before, and a good one according to Hugh Blackstone. But she had been a nun for over forty years. Blackstone believed her to be mentally capable, but she was obviously very institutionalised and extremely nervous. "I am here to help you, Sister?"

"Set me free then, your grace?"

"One of the proposals I intend to make is a mechanism for releasing Sisters from their vows in certain circumstances...but until they are implemented...as I hope they will be...you must remain...as you are, Sister?"

"My vows were prompted with a switch, your grace...after my brother sold me to God?"

"Sister...he was your legal guardian...he had the legal right to accept the government fee in return for your loyal service." Osborne explained as patiently as possible. He did not intend to apologise for the Order as an institution, or at least, the Order as it was intended to be. He regretted what seemed to have happened inside some convents, but that was not something he had ever been responsible for, and the original objectives of the Order had been achieved and exceeded. No girls fell through the net anymore. No girls went hungry, or were forced to turn tricks to survive. And no girls were allowed to go off the rails, because there was somewhere safe to take them in and teach them to love God and find a purpose. In the early days, when the former Caris Johnson took her vows, there had to be a degree of coercion to provide the numbers of nuns they needed to support the health service. But in his view, the ends justified the means. As he constantly had to remind his critics, the dawn of the modern renaissance was a revolution and some sacrifices had to be made. Sebastian Osborne had always believed in working for the greater good, and that always meant that some people would lose out whilst the majority thrived. It was inevitable. "It is the law?"