More than a hundred and fifty women from several orders had followed her, and there were occasionally others drifting in as they heard about it and made their way there. There they established a convent that soon was quite heretical to both churches, but so minor and so understandable it was ignored. For their part, the scared and confused nuns, many of whom were run out of places like Florence by anti-clerical governments and mobs, became convinced that they were in the presence of a delivering saint. For her part, the new Mother Superior, who had been Sister Magdelana, more or less became convinced of that, too.
The theology of Holy Mount was simple, basic, and heretical in the extreme. No man, not even a priest, was permitted entry, for one could not be certain if the priest were of the true pope or the Antichrist. Magdelana convinced them that she had visions from the Virgin Mary herself establishing the place, and none who had come this far with her doubted her in the slightest. As they were all Brides of Christ, Christ Himself would say the Mass and administer the sacraments, through the body of the Mother Superior. All reaffirmed their vows of poverty, chastity, and absolute obedience. An additional vow of silence was imposed if not in the performance of religious duty or dire emergency. To cement them to the new order, they were also to renounce all worldly ties, including their names and their nationalities. They were a unit, a sisterhood; henceforth, there would be no individuals or individualism.
Thanks to some good salesmanship on the part of the Mother Superior with the nearest town, almost ten miles away—mostly down—they acquired a few cows and goats and a rather large number of sheep. The wool from the latter the sisters made into fine wool garments, and traded their products with the town on a seasonal basis. The town’s lone parish priest, disgusted himself with the situation but allied in the heart with the Italian Urban, went along with them and helped them to a degree, thanks to the sponsorship of a local nobleman who had been caught up in the political and religious turmoil and who liked to think of his help as a thumbing of his nose at what had become of the Church. With his sponsorship, however slight, the nuns on Holy Mount were allowed their pious heresy and enough food and materials to get by.
The townsfolk, of course, were not told of the heresy, just the fact of the convent and the extreme otherworldliness of its occupants. When a local peasant gave the sisters some fruit as a gesture, and then his wife who’d borne him two daughters presented him with a son, word got around that these were holy folk indeed, ones that would bring God’s blessing if helped.
It seemed as if she had always been on Holy Mount. Certainly she’d had a life before it, but it was a total blank in her mind. Only a scar, the remains of an old but serious burn, indicated that her past had at least terminated in violence which had driven it from her grasp. She had been brought to Holy Mount by those who knew of it and thought it the best place for her, but even that was just a hazy memory. Certainly, she had been a nun, for she retained that much as her identity and knew the prayers and rituals.
It was strange for Ron Moosic to recognize brainwashing and understand the nature of a cult even as he was a part of it. Far stranger than being a woman. He had wondered how Sandoval had adjusted back in London, but now he understood that it was just like the gay Neumann in Trier. One was what one was, and had the knowledge and intimacy that being raised female brought. Even with the amnesia, the result possibly of some war or being caught in some terrible fire, it was natural and normal to feel your body this way, and to know and accept and cope with the periodic cycles of the body.
The routine was simple and automatic. Up before dawn from your straw bed in the tiny monastic cell, don the simple woolen habit, then make your way up to the chapel for morning services, which were always the same. Then down to the kitchen, for her, to knead the dough and bake the simple bread that would be part of the breakfast meal. The kitchen was a horror by twentieth-century standards, but familiar and normal to her. She felt a familiarity as close as to any family member with the others helping her in the kitchen, each doing her own tasks. She felt no boredom at the tasks, for prayer was joy, and she was mentally reciting prayers constantly, over and over, in her mind, while her hands did the work automatically. All except the sounds of the crackling fire and the clatter of pots and pans was silence.
So unvarying was the routine and the work that there was an almost telepathic bond between them, and even when more than one pair of hands was required the other always knew and was there to do it right.
She looked into those smiling faces and knew that she loved them as much as humans could love other humans, that they were one in total love and harmony. Their minds and hearts were with each other and with God; the rest of the world simply did not exist.
The power of this total and absolute emotional commitment was beyond Moosic’s power to fight, for even if he exerted his will, he would stand out and call attention to himself. The more the sister sensed his worry, fear, and confusion, the greater and more powerful was the assault on his own psyche. Unlike the first two times, he found himself quickly swallowed up and dominated by the pure fanatical power of this host personality.
After breakfast there was cleanup, and then several hours of intensive communal, repetitious prayer. Others then served a communal midday meal that was more of a snack, a hot porridge of lumpy consistency and the taste of bad library paste.
The afternoons were her favorite time, spent looking after the sheep that grazed all over the meadow. This, of course, was also a time for prayer and glorifying God, but at least it was outside the walls and the view was tremendous.
He realized that the woman, all the women, had effectively ceased to think at all, but were, rather, some gloriously happy automatons full of tremendous, overpowering emotion. Although he might want to do something different or think of something different, the social pressure from those around her prevented him from any sort of deviation. Deep inside her mind, he found that deviation was the one thing to be feared—and the one thing not to be tolerated. The punishment was so painful that one eventually no longer even wished to deviate.
The Mother Superior was clearly centuries ahead of her time.
Evenings for her were spent cleaning the interior of the place. Although a pigsty by modern standards, they kept it as clean and as neat as was possible under the circumstances.
There were even prescribed times to use the pit-type toilets that emptied into a small stream below. Bladder control was considered a part of the test of faith and endurance.
Finally, after fourteen hours of prayer and hard work, there was an evening meal that was hardly much but was elaborate by the standards of the others, another service, and then, finally, to bed, where she was so dead-tired there was no time to think or reflect before sleep.
The more pressure Ron Moosic put on her to get some control, the more counterpressure was applied on him. At the end of a mere five days, he, too, found it difficult to think at all, and he knew intellectually that the longer this went on, the less he’d be able to fight it.
But Thursday was to be a feast day, and that meant someone had to be sent down to the village to fetch back from the town the makings for the feast. This was known from the morning service. Volunteers were requested, and no one really wanted to volunteer, to leave this cocoon even for a day.