Their cowled heads were bowed, and the mumble of rosaries being recited surrounded them like the buzz of bees around a hive. She did not dare to move, hunched there in her stone recess that was cold and covered in a light film of condensation. Time seemed suspended, not to be passing at all. But then gradually, she saw the five tall windows behind the high altar in the east begin to separate themselves from the night. The monks stirred, and there was a metallic clanking as the incense was lit in its censer.
Te deum laudamus . . .
The deep, measured cadences rolled upward with the incense. The sun sent a first tiny ray through a purple spear of glass in the window. The Virgin Mary, in her niche near the high altar, seemed to glow as the first light caressed her alabaster face. Mary nearly swooned with the beauty of it all, with the cold, with her excitement, with the forbiddenness of her own presence. The incandescent colours, the mystic smell, the deep, beckoning, otherworldly voices, and the glowing face of the Virgin swirled in her soul.