Season in Strathglass Read Online Free

with a bump in it. (I think of the poet Edith Sitwell, pictured in the biography I'm reading.) Under the straight line of her eyebrows, her eyes are brown.
    Brown eyes? Do we know this? Is it biblical?
    â€˜Well,’ says Sister, ‘brown eyes seem to be right for the Middle East. But let's be honest, brown or blue, who knows?’
    She invites me to see her workroom. This is a privilege since it's in the quarters reserved for female retreat and normally out of bounds to men.
    On a bench, laid out like an alchemist's stall, is her collection of pigments in bottles and boxes containing brightly coloured powders, some ground from rock or clay, others reduced from metals and many scarce and difficult to get – in some cases because of health and safety regulations. One box contains a powder of viridian brightness called Moscow green, precious because it's no longer to be had.
    Next door is her work in progress – a series of panels commissioned to celebrate the return of the Carmelite order to Britain after many years in exile. Under a golden sky, a mitred ecclesiastical figure – the patriarch of Jerusalem – sits on a throne with a tip of crimson cushion peeping from under his bottom. He's presenting a scroll to the leader of the newly founded order of Carmelite monks who kneels at his feet.
    The patriarch wears a white gown embroidered with pale blue crosses, while the Carmelite is more humbly dressed in a woolly garment hooped bee-like in bands of white and brown. This two-tone fashion, says Sister, caused a stir. The Carmelites were mocked as the ‘pied’ brotherhood – pied as in magpies and other birds of variegated plumage – as a result of which they changed into habits in a less flamboyant style. Also in the frame is the prophet Elijah, by virtue of the time he spent as a hermit on Mount Carmel, and a number of brothers busy at various tasks. Some chop logs for firewood, one carries freshly baked loaves from the oven, another washes his pied habit in a tub and yet another scans an illustrated text. A group of monks appears to be just gossiping, passing the time of day.
    Sister explains that the Carmelites owe their origin to the decision of certain crusading knights to opt out of their mission to kill infidels, seeking salvation instead on Mount Carmel, Elijah's former retreat in the Holy Land. ‘I think of them as the first conscientious objectors,’ she says. ‘I'm not sure whether it was the third or fourth crusade. The third was Richard the Lionheart. The fourth was the sack of Constantinople – if so, they were well out of it.’
    Every year Byzantium renews itself in Marydale, a little. Here Sister Petra Clare runs a class in icon making (‘You don't call it painting,’ she explains. ‘Technically, you write an icon.’)
    She extends an invitation: ‘Come and see us.’ So I shall.

10
    Marydale, autumn.
    How to write an icon. Class starts in the kitchen with a reading from a book on the veneration of icons as established by the Council of Nicaea (now Iznik in Turkey) in the year 787. In spite of the dry language, the council appears to have been a stormy affair – lots of long beards wagging. ‘It got quite venomous,’ she says. ‘Rather like prime minister's question time in parliament. They were really going at it.’
    We watch a slide show of icons, with commentary by Sister, who draws attention to an image of James and Peter tumbling in space, weightless like astronauts, Peter head over heels: ‘Just look at the arm and leg movement.’ Andrew in swirling cloak: ‘The garments point up to the head of the saint like a gentle candle flame, St Andrew inspired by the holy spirit.’ Christin glory framed or, rather, bracketed by Elijah and Moses: ‘See how their forms echo the oreole.’ And: ‘See how Christ's feet are never planted but seem to float. The feet become irrelevant to the body