by A. M. Linden
After pantomiming what he meant a few times, he put the knife into Aleswina’s hand. Still resting on his elbow, he turned away from her and said, “Now!”
Aleswina thrust the knife downwards. The wound burst open and a flood of thick, foul-smelling pus spewed out, ran down Caelym’s back, and drenched the rug beneath him. Horrified, Aleswina pulled off her wimple and ripped it apart, using half to bandage the gaping wound and half to mop up as much of the gore as she could.
“That is enough,” Caelym snapped.
But it was not enough! Aleswina had been raised by Anna, and Anna always kept things clean. “Move aside,” she said, speaking in a voice that could have been Anna’s own, and she pulled the rug out from under him and rolled it up. Not daring to take it out of the chamber, she used a wooden bowl to scrape a trench in the farthest corner covering the rug and the sodden piece of wimple with as much dirt as she could before handing him the cup of Anna’s draught and leaving the chamber.
The night was crystal clear and the moon, just three days past full, lit the garden almost as if it were day. After the putrid stench of the draining wound, the air outside the chamber was pure and sweet, but Aleswina didn’t dare stop to savor it. Instead, she rushed to the well to wash the residue of the gore off her hands before darting out of the garden, across the courtyard, and up the stairs—murmuring mixed pleas to Jesus and the Goddess that she would find the hall empty.
It was.
As she ran down the corridor, the echoes of her footsteps off the walls around her sounded like four feet instead of two. When she reached her room, blood pulsing in her ears, it seemed like two of the four footsteps kept going off and down the front stairs as she leaned back against the door, gasping for breath.
There was no time to wonder about it. She hurried to the cupboard, pulled out a fresh night habit and night wimple, and was dressed and under her covers in a matter of moments. Thinking to somehow make up for her evening’s disobedience by being especially good now, she adjusted the covers, smoothed her wimple, and settled herself in the exact center of the bed, lying on her back, her hands folded piously above the covers and clasping her cross, the twin of the one she’d given Anna, to her breast.
Chapter 13
Durthena’s Dread
The second set of footsteps were Durthena’s—running so fast that she covered the length of the north hall and disappeared down the east stairway without Aleswina catching so much as a glimpse of her gray habit billowing out behind her.
When the abbess sounded the alarm about the Druid sorcerer, the abbey’s under-prioress had begun to patrol the compound’s buildings and grounds. Starting her nightly rounds as the rest of the nuns and novices were trudging off to bed, she scrutinized the stockade walls for cracks or crevices as she passed along the walkway to the dining hall, kitchen, and workrooms at the west end of the cloister. After looking through all the pantries and into the empty laundry tubs she went back outside, sweeping through the outbuildings and storage sheds. From there she circled around the edge of the central courtyard, checking behind every bush, returned inside to inspect the chapel, scriptorium, and infirmary, and then went on to prowl the halls of the lower and upper dormitories.
The last part of her route took her past the abbess’s quarters, where she always paused to genuflect outside the closed door before climbing the east stairway stairs to the upper dormitory and walking along slowly, stopping to listen at each of the doors.
She always listened longest at door to the room at the northeast corner of the upper dormitory, picturing the miserable little . . . Dear Sister Aleswina . . . inside, not sleeping or praying but sitting up and scheming.
Aleswina was plotting something. And Durthena had thought she knew what it was! The stupid . . . Dear Sister Aleswina . . . had always been afraid of her own shadow, and now that there was really something to be scared about, she’d suddenly decided she wanted to be a nun after all.
For seven years, Durthena had prayed that this day would never come—that the abbess would finally see that Aleswina was unworthy of entering the Holy Order of Saint Edeth and send her back to the outside world where she belonged—but if she took her final vows, there’d be no getting rid of her ever! And because she was royal and had the biggest dowry, she might get to be the next prioress, or even the next abbess!
That was the very thought on Durthena’s mind as she reached Aleswina’s corner room at the end of her second round of the evening. Stopping there, she put her ear to the door and listened, hearing what she’d heard before—nothing!
Not even the sound of breathing!
The chime of a small alarm bell seemed to sound in Durthena’s mind, and with it came an urgent whisper, “Open the door!”
Feeling a force come over her, as if she’d been entered by an angel, she lifted the latch, eased door open, and looked inside.
The room was empty. The bedcovers lay neat and straight.
Propelled by what she was certain was a divine presence, Durthena crossed the room and threw open the shutters. From where she stood she could see over the latrine and into the garden, and there she saw Aleswina—washing her hands at the well, her hair hanging loose and wild around her shoulders.
For a breathless moment Durthena stood rooted to the floor. Then, lifting up her crucifix and gasping, Domine, libera nos a malo, she backed out of the room, slammed the door, and ran to tell the Abbess.
Chapter 14
The Ledger
While Durthena was on her patrol of the abbey’s chambers and corridors, the abbess, Hildegarth, was sitting at her writing table working on her annual report to her bishop, Higbald of Lindisfarne. The accounting sheets from the past year were stacked in twelve orderly piles in front of her, and the ledger from her first year at Saint Edeth’s was lying open on her lap.
She’d gotten it out to check whether her recollection of that years’ candle tally was correct and that its tripling since then could be justified by the comparing the number of illustrated pages they’d completed that year (seven psalm sheets, three saints’ histories, and a psalter) with this year (one complete bible, seven saints’ histories, and thirty-two prayer sheets). Feeling vindicated that the candles were fully accounted for, Hildegarth relaxed and, in an uncharacteristic loss of concentration, flipped through the pages that recorded the history of her first year as the third abbess of the Abbey of Saint Edeth the Enduring in alms and dowries, bushels of grain and bolts of cloth, blocks of salt and barrels of pickled fish.
At the same time that Durthena was putting out her hand to open the door to Aleswina’s room, the abbess was turning to the page of the ledger that recorded Aleswina’s promissory dowry, written in Hildegarth’s steady and precise hand and dated the twenty-seventh day of June Anno Domini 773.
Hildegarth arrived at the Abbey of Saint Edeth the Enduring at a time of crisis.
Saint Edeth had been an inspiring and charismatic figure. Born to a noble family and on the verge of marriage to a king’s nephew, she’d had a vision of Jesus. He appeared to her in the middle of the night and spoke in a voice of unearthly beauty, saying, “Find My wellsprings and you will find Me!” as he pointed to three stars that changed before her eyes into fountains of water spouting up out of a cloud.
Defying her parents, Edeth set out alone on her mission from God, gathering disciples along the way—enraptured women who left pots burning on the hearth and husbands demanding their dinners to follow her to into the wilderness.
Undaunted by hunger, cold, or the sounds of wolves howling in the night, they’d traveled northward until finally reaching a boggy meadow, where they gathered in prayer around three sluggish springs leaking out of the cracks in half-frozen ground that Edeth proclaimed were the same holy waters she’d seen in her dream. That all but three of them survived the winter huddled in makeshift shelters was the first of Saint Edeth’s many miracles. That she met Theobold, then the Earl of Derthwald, three years later, on her way to beg alms from the closest vil
lage, was another.
With the help of God and endowments from Theobold, Edeth saw her holy springs enclosed into wells, the abbey’s major structures raised, and its outer walls completed in the course of five years.
Then she died.
The convent’s second abbess, Freaberga, had been the first apostle to join Edeth’s trek into the wilderness. As abbess, Freaberga imitated Edeth as closely as possible, answering any and all questions by quoting from her predecessor’s extensive list of rules and homilies. Freaberga, however, lacked Edeth’s power of persuasion, and when she died five years later, at the same age and the same day of the year that Edeth died, she left the abbey with an aging generation of nuns no longer able to do the heavier work in the convent’s fields. Despite Saint Edeth’s dictum that God would provide, the community could not feed itself even in good harvest years without Theobold, whose ongoing contributions allowed them to purchase what they could not gather or grow.
Sent by her bishop to revive the convent or close it down, Hildegarth arrived at the abbey’s gate to be greeted by a double row of impassive faces and nervous fingers picking at the folds of threadbare habits. She hardly had time to unpack her reliquaries before the gray-faced prioress, who before this had answered Hildegarth’s spoken questions with abrupt hand signals, rushed into her chambers, wailing that King Theobold had died and, in a despairing moan, adding that the king’s nephew, now the king, cared only for profane earthly pleasures and would never give them the alms the old king had.
Leaving Sister Udella wringing her hands, Hildegarth took the abbey’s only carthorse and went to the palace to offer her condolences and promises of prayers for the departed king’s soul, along with her hope for Lord’s blessings upon the new king’s reign.
She’d returned to the abbey with a miracle of her own—a contract inscribed on royal parchment committing Theobold’s four-year-old daughter to the convent, along with regular endowments that would double when Aleswina entered the convent at the agreed-upon age of thirteen and become permanent on the day she took her final vows.
That had been the turning point for Hildegarth and the abbey both.
As word spread that the king’s own cousin was pledged to the convent, well-endowed entrants began to arrive from as far away as the capital city of Atheldom, swelling both its ranks and its coffers.
When the king’s guards brought Aleswina to the abbey on the appointed day, it was obvious to Hildegarth that the thirteen-year-old princess was not there of her own free will. This did not worry the abbess unduly. She herself had struggled over relinquishing her earthly yearnings and was confident that with the right combination of firmness and patience, Aleswina could be guided along the path to true commitment—maybe not the path she would have chosen for herself, but the highest and best path, nonetheless.
Nodding her head and drawing in a deep breath, Hildegarth closed the ledger. With God’s help, her work had finally paid off. For almost a week now, she had watched with growing confidence as Aleswina had said her prayers with newfound conviction, sung the hymns with inspired passion, and today looked up at Hilde-garth with reverent understanding throughout her elucidation of that most challenging of parables—the return of the prodigal son.
There was no question in Hildegarth’s mind that Aleswina was ready to take her vows, and none too soon. Hildegarth had gotten a cold reception from the king when she went to the palace to convey the abbey’s condolences for the death of his most recent wife. She’d hoped the king would not ask whether Aleswina had made her final commitment—but he had. And when she’d had to admit that after seven years of daily indoctrination, Aleswina was still a novice, she’d had an uneasy feeling that the king might be considering sending his cousin to some other convent.
Chapter 15
What Durthena Saw
Hildegarth had only moments to savor her satisfaction with a job well done before her door flew open and Durthena burst in, crying, “Holy Mother, hurry! Send for the guards! Tell them she’s in the garden . . . at the well . . . washing the filth of the sorcerer’s sinful secretions off her hands . . . her head uncovered . . . her face lustful and licentious . . . that’s why she always wants to go to the garden by herself . . . she’s fornicating with her demon lover . . . coming late to chapel, the filth of rolling in the dirt still clinging to her habit . . . they must be caught and burned before they contaminate us all . . . call the guards . . . call the priest to do exorcisms of the garden . . . her room . . . everywhere she has fouled with her vile, sinful thoughts and—”
Standing up and putting out her hand, Hildegarth used her most commanding voice to break into the torrent of words.
“Sister Durthena, calm yourself! Who was in the garden?”
“Aleswina!”
“Sister Aleswina!”
“She isn’t a Sister, she’s an evil, sinful harlot!”
“She is the king’s . . . she is a member of our holy family, a daughter of Christ, and a sister to us all. What were you doing in the garden?”
“I wasn’t in the garden. I saw her from the window.”
“What window?”
“The window in her room.”
“What were you doing in Sister Aleswina’s room?”
“An angel made me open the door, and I saw her bed was empty, and the angel told me to go the window and open the shutters and look into the garden, and that’s when I saw her—”
“At the well.”
“Yes, and—”
“Did you see the sorcerer?”
“No, but—”
“Did you see anyone else?”
“No, but—”
“So all you saw was Sister Aleswina washing her hands at the well in the garden!”
“Yes, but”—this time Durthena managed to rush on—“her hair was uncovered, and her habit was wrinkled, and she was out of bed in the middle of the night without permission!”
“Did you go to her and ask what she was doing in the garden in the middle of the night?”
“No, I came to warn you, and—”
“Then I think we’d best go to the garden to find what she has to say for herself!”
With that the abbess strode past Durthena and out of the room to cross the courtyard and thrust open the garden gate. Durthena hurried after her, reaching her side as she stopped and surveyed the moonlit scene. Before Durthena could catch her breath, Hildegarth said, “It appears the garden is empty—perhaps you were dreaming!”
“No! No! I wasn’t dreaming I saw her! Look! There at the well! You can see the marks of her sandals!”
“Sister Aleswina works here in the garden. She draws water for the plants, so of course there are marks of her sandals there, as everywhere around us. Do you see any other prints? Cloven hooves?” Hildegarth’s voice was calm, and she hesitated only slightly before she added, “A man’s boots?”
Looking desperately around for some trace of proof that she’d seen what she’d seen, Durthena was forced to say, “No, but—”
“But”—Hildegarth interrupted— “what I see is a well-planted and lovingly tended garden marked with nothing but the signs of Sister Aleswina’s devoted labor.”
“But, but—”
“But we will go to Sister Aleswina’s room and see whether she is there and whether she bears some traces of the abominations you say you saw.”
Hildegard led the way back, keeping her pace steady and measured. Her face, a rigid mask, gave away nothing of her hurried calculations of what it would mean if, God forbid, there was truth behind Durthena’s hysterical accusations.
Dismissing out of hand Durthena’s absurd delusions of Aleswina cavorting with a demon sorcerer but grimly able to imagine an earthly lecher scaling the garden wall and seducing the innocent novice, Hildegarth had her own dread-filled vision of finding Aleswina’s bedchamber empty and, beyond that, of kneeling before the king and confessing that the kinswoman he’d entrusted into her keeping had run off with some unknown lover.
The two women came to a halt outside Aleswina’s door, Durthena eager to pull it open and catch her nemesis in the guilty act of changing out of the filthy, soiled habit marked with the stains of her sin, the abbess wanting one more moment to brace herself for the sight of an empty bed.
Aleswina heard the footsteps come along the hallway and stop outside her door.
Lying motionless in her bed, she pictured herself in a meadow, her head on Anna’s lap—not holding a cold silver cross but a freshly gathered bundle of flowers in her hands. She breathed in slowly and easily, imagining the sweet smells of grass and flowers, the cheerful sounds of singing birds, and Anna’s soothing voice promising her that she was safe and that she’d tell her one more story to help her fall asleep.
The door swung open. Light and shadows flickered across her eyelids—if they fluttered or even tensed she was lost, and Anna along with her. But she kept her mind in the meadow, listening to Anna’s story about a mother fox taking her three little cubs there to play and how the cubs ran off and had one funny adventure after another until their mother found them and took them home to have supper and go to bed—and she closed her ears to the dialogue being whispered just outside her doorway.
“Do you see she is holding the blessed cross of Jesus in her hand? If she had done the evil you accuse her of, would it not burn her skin?”
“Yes, but it might not if the sorcerer cast some spell—”
“So what would you have us do? Search her room? Look under her bed and in her closet for some proof of her supposed sinfulness?”
“Yes!”
“No! We will leave Sister Aleswina in peace, sleeping the sleep of the pure and chaste! And you will go to the chapel and spend the rest of the night reading out loud the gospels of both Matthew and Mark to cleanse your mind of these lewd and lascivious thoughts.”
Hildegarth’s rebuke ended the argument just as Aleswina imagined she was hearing Anna’s voice telling her she could go to sleep now, and she never even heard the door close or the two sets of footsteps—one brisk and relieved, the other dragging and disappointed—retreating down the hallway.