Sidney Sheldon - The sands of time

But Susana Cerredilla had belonged to a different world.

Her father was a professor at Madrid University, and her mother was a lawyer. When Susana was seventeen years old, she had the body of a woman and the angelic face of a Madonna.

Ramón Acoña had never met anyone like this woman-child. Her gentle vulnerability inspired in him a tenderness of which he had not known he was capable. He fell madly in love with her, and, for reasons which neither her parents nor Acoña understood, she fell in love with him.

On their honeymoon, it was as though Acoña had never known another woman. He had known lust, but the combination of love and passion was something he had never previously experienced.

Three months after they were married, Susana informed him that she was pregnant. Acoña was wildly excited. To add to their joy, he was assigned to the beautiful little village of Castilblanco, in Basque country. It was in the fall of 1936, when the fighting between the Republicans and Nationalists was at its fiercest.

On a peaceful Sunday morning, Ramón Acoña and his bride were having coffee in the village plaza when the square suddenly filled with Basque demonstrators.

"I want you to go home," Acoña said. "There's going to be trouble."

"But you—?"

"Please. I'll be all right."

The demonstrators were beginning to get out of hand.

With relief, Ramón Acoña watched his bride walk away from the crowd toward a convent at the far end of the square. But as she reached it, the door suddenly swung open and armed Basques who had been hiding inside swarmed out with blazing guns. Acoña watched helplessly as his wife went down in a hail of bullets. It was on that day that he had sworn vengeance on the Basques and the Church.

And now he was in Ávila , outside another convent. This time they'll die.

Inside the convent, in the dark before dawn, Sister Teresa held the Discipline tightly in her right hand and whipped it hard across her body, feeling the knotted tails slashing into her as she silently recited the miserere. She almost screamed aloud, but noise was not permitted, so she kept the screams inside her. Forgive me, Jesus, for my sins. Bear witness that I punish myself, as You were punished, and I inflict wounds upon myself, as wounds were inflicted upon You. Let me suffer, as You suffered.

She was nearly fainting from the pain. Three more times she flagellated herself, and then sank, agonized, upon her cot. She had not drawn blood. That was forbidden. Wincing against the agony that each movement brought, Sister Teresa returned the whip to its black case and rested it in a corner. It was always there, a constant reminder that the slightest sin had to be paid for with pain.

Sister Teresa's transgression had happened that morning as she rounded the corner of a corridor, eyes down, and bumped into Sister Graciela. Startled, Sister Teresa had looked into Sister Graciela's face. She then immediately reported her own infraction, to which the Reverend Mother Betina frowned disapprovingly and made the sign of discipline, moving her right hand three times from shoulder to shoulder, her hand closed as though holding a whip, the tip of her thumb held against the inside of her forefinger.

Lying on her cot, Sister Teresa was unable to get out of her mind the extraordinarily beautiful face of the young girl she had gazed at. She knew that as long as she lived she would never speak to her and would never even look at her again, for the slightest sign of intimacy between nuns was severely punished. In an atmosphere of rigid moral and physical austerity, no relationships of any kind were allowed to develop. If two sisters worked side by side and seemed to enjoy each other's silent company, the Reverend Mother would immediately have them separated. Nor were the sisters permitted to sit next to the same person at the table twice in a row. The Church delicately called the attraction of one nun to another "a particular friendship," and the penalty was swift and severe. Sister Teresa had served her punishment for breaking the rule.

Now the tolling bell came to Sister Teresa as though from a great distance. It was the voice of God, reproving her.

In the next cell, the sound of the bell rang through the corridors of Sister Graciela's dreams, and the pealing was mingled with the lubricious creak of bedsprings. The Moor was moving toward her, naked, his manhood tumescent, his hands reaching out to grab her. Sister Graciela opened her eyes,

instantly awake, her heart pounding frantically. She looked around, terrified, but she was alone in her tiny cell and the only sound was the reassuring tolling of the bell.

Sister Graciela knelt at the side of her cot. Jesus, thank You for delivering me from the past. Thank You for the joy I have in being here in Your light. Let me glory only in the happiness of Your being. Help me, my Beloved, to be true to the call You have given me. Help me to ease the sorrow of Your sacred heart.

She rose and carefully made her bed, then joined the procession of her sisters as they moved silently toward the chapel for Matins. She could smell the familiar scent of burning candies and feel the worn stones beneath her sandaled feet.

In the beginning, when Sister Graciela had first entered the convent, she had not understood it when the Mother Prioress had told her that a nun was a woman who gave up everything in order to possess everything. Sister Graciela had been fourteen years old then. Now, seventeen years later, it was clear to her. In contemplation she possessed everything, for contemplation was the mind replying to the soul. Her days were filled with a wonderful peace.

Thank You for letting me forget, Father. Thank You for standing beside me. I couldn't face my terrible past without You… Thank You… Thank You…

When the Matins were over, the nuns returned to their cells to sleep until Lauds, the rising of the sun.

Outside, Colonel Ramón Acoña and his men moved swiftly in the darkness. When they reached the convent, Acoña said, "Jaime Miró and his men will be armed. Take no chances."

He looked at the front of the convent, and for an instant he saw that other convent with Basque partisans rushing out of it, and Susana going down in a hail of bullets.

"Don't bother taking Miró alive," he said.

Sister Megan was awakened by the silence. It was a different silence, a moving silence, a hurried rush of air, a whisper of bodies. There were sounds she had never heard in her fifteen years in the convent. She was suddenly filled with a premonition that something was terribly wrong.

She rose quietly in the darkness and opened the door to her cell. Unbelievably, the long stone corridor was filled with men. A giant with a scarred face was coming out of the Reverend Mother's cell, pulling her by the arm. Megan stared in shock. I'm having a nightmare, she thought. These men can't be here.

"Where are you hiding him?" Colonel Acoña demanded.

The Reverend Mother Betina had a look of stunned horror on her face. "Shh! This is God's temple. You are desecrating it." Her voice was trembling. "You must leave at once."

The colonel's grip tightened on her arm and he shook her.

"I want Miró, Sister."

The nightmare was real.

Other cell doors were beginning to open, and nuns were appearing, with looks of total confusion on their faces.

There had never been anything in their experience to prepare them for this extraordinary happening.

Colonel Acoña pushed the Reverend Mother away and turned to Patricko Arrieta, one of his key aides. "Search the place.

Top to bottom."

Acoña's men began to spread out, invading the chapel, the refectory, and the cells, waking those nuns who were still asleep and forcing them roughly to their feet through the corridors and into the chapel. The nuns obeyed wordlessly, keeping even now their vows of silence. The scene was like a motion picture with the sound turned off.