Begars Abbey by V.L. Valentine

Author:V.L. Valentine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile
Published: 2022-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

HORAE, in laudē beatiſs. virginis MARIAE

She could hear Alec lighting a cigarette, no doubt in irritation. She ignored him, focused on the words before her. She had never taken Latin, but she could guess some of it. Horare. Rare? Schedule? Time? In laudē beatiſs. In beautiful praise. Of the Virgin Mary. Or in praise of the blessed Virgin Mary? Maybe Alec would know. She looked at the text again. Not Horare. Horae. Hours?

She picked up one of the other two books from the case. It was beautiful, too, its cover set with semi-precious stones. There was an unusual texture to the pages in this book; she could see ripples – wavering lines in the material of the page itself, as if it were made from skin. The desiccation of the pages was in high contrast to the brilliant illuminations upon them, which looked so alive, so fresh. Sam shuddered and put it back. The third book was in French, and on the cover page above a delicately sketched skull she picked out the words memento mori and heures.

Memento mori, she repeated to herself. Remember death.

‘Alec,’ she said slowly. ‘I think this might be it.’

He stood up from the behind the desk – he’d been examining the latch on the beam – and looked over her shoulder as she showed him the drawing of the skull, the words she had picked out. ‘This might be where the name comes from, where Vera got the word horror from.’ She leafed through the pages, showed him the various spellings. ‘Hore intemerate virginis marie ſecundū. Horae. Heures. Hore. Horror. Maybe these are the books, Lady Cooper’s horror books.’ She felt somewhat deflated at the thought. ‘But why? This is a little creepy’ – she handed him the book with the pages the texture of dried skin – ‘but not outright horrifying. What did they make this from? Just animal skin, right?’ She looked around; the room was certainly on the dark side, with its heavy furnishings and only two thin narrow windows for light, and she tried to see it through the eyes of a child. ‘Though I guess if I were a kid, I would find this place really creepy – but it can’t be anything more than a play on words, can it?’

‘I doubt it. There’s nothing sinister here,’ said Alec, who had already returned the book to its case. ‘Just rot. Too much of it. I’d have come up with the same thing if I’d had to grow up locked away in here, in an ancient house full of secret passages, not to mention being next to the ruins of a church with a crypt full of dead nuns. Often women unwanted by their families, their lives wasted. Women like Mrs Pritchett.’

‘Stop it. That’s a disgusting thing to say. About her or anybody. You don’t know that. The nuns, they might have had great lives here. At the very least, they had a good home and that’s not nothing. That’s a whole lot better than nothing.

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