The Causeway

A Scottish teenager, Marion, arrives at a convent on the island of Ischia. The year is 1798. The convent is death-factory where novices and nuns are cynically exposed to disease, physical abuse and privation. Few survive. Why were young women exposed to such abuse? Because all too often unwanted daughters--sick, crippled, pregnant or just unmarriageable--blocked family ambition. The system was simple: the convent collected the postulant dowry: the family was rid of an inconvenience. (The convent still lies in the Bay of Naples. Today it is a hotel.) Threatened with starvation, merciless flogging and mental torture at the hands of her confessor and the disciplinatrice, Marion has no way out. An older nun, Sister Teresa, takes pity on the young victim. On Christmas night, she snatches Marion from a whipping in the punishment cell, and the two women escape.

Beyond the convent walls, Ischia is in turmoil: the Jacobin revolution in Naples is boiling, and Nelson’s fleet has just abandoned Naples to mob violence. The women are trapped on the island; scheming their escape, a bond of trust and a strong sexual affinity form between them. Marion’s Jacobite spirit is drawn to the revolutionaries led by Carlo and to the deserters from the British navy who fight alongside them. Marion and Carlo embark on a tentative love affair. Teresa becomes close to Bart, a Cockney deserter. But none of this bears fruit. During a raid against Ischia by Captain Foote of the Seahorse, the two women finally escape the island, their lives united now by an abiding but sadly unfulfilled love.