The Chatter of the Maidens

by Alys Clare

Feeling foolish, she called out softly, ‘Hello? Is anybody within? I seek the Abbess of Sedgebeck.’

  From inside there was a rustling sound, as if someone were stirring in a bed of straw. ‘Who’s there?’ a loud voice cried. ‘Who comes to disturb our sleep? Be warned, we have dogs we shall set on you!’

  ‘No!’ Helewise exclaimed. She heard Saul crashing through the gap in the fence, and an instant later he was at her side. He had a cudgel in his hand which, she was sure, he hadn’t been carrying when they left Hawkenlye.

  ‘This is the Abbess of Hawkenlye!’ he shouted. ‘She comes on an important mission! Open up, in charity, and let us in!’

  There was more rustling, and a pad of footsteps. Then a small wooden shutter in the door was slid back, revealing the sudden blinding light of a lantern. A pair of eyes peered out, narrowed in suspicion. ‘Hawkenlye?’ the voice said. ‘Hawkenlye, where the Holy Waters are?’

  ‘Yes,’ Helewise said, trying to sound calm and reassuring. ‘We mean you no harm, in God’s name. We need shelter.’

  ‘Hawkenlye,’ the voice repeated. Its gruff tone made it difficult to tell whether it belonged to a man or a woman. ‘Aye, that’s a fair step away, I’ll warrant.’

  ‘We have been on the road a week,’ Helewise began, ‘and—’

  Abruptly there came the sound of a heavy bar being drawn back, and the door swung open. ‘Then you’d better come in, you and your manservant,’ said their host.

  Who, in the lantern light from within the building, was revealed to be a very tall, strongly-built woman, wearing the sleeping cap of a nun on her head and, covering her from chin to ankle, a voluminous, cream linen chemise, much darned and none too clean.

  ‘I am accompanied by two lay brothers,’ Helewise said, hesitating on the doorstep, ‘and we each have a horse. . . .’

  The huge nun glanced outside, taking in at a glance the figure of Saul, just behind the Abbess, and, beyond him, Augustine holding the horses. ‘The men and the horses can go in there.’ She held the lantern aloft, pointing with the other hand towards one of the other two buildings, smaller and less well maintained than the main one. ‘Hardly a stable, since we have no horse, but there’s straw in there for our pig, and it’ll keep out the mist and the fumes of the night air.’

  ‘Will you be all right, Abbess?’ Saul muttered in her ear.

  ‘Yes, Saul. You and Augustine get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.’

  She watched them head off for the outhouse. Then she followed the nun inside and closed the door. The nun edged her out of the way and barred it.

  Then she turned and stared at Helewise. Indicating a curtained-off area at the far end of the room, she said, ‘The others are in there. I’ll tell them who you are and why you’ve come, then I’ll heat some water and make you a hot drink.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Helewise replied vaguely.

  Tell them why you’ve come. But how could the big nun possibly know, since Helewise hadn’t told her? She felt a shiver of fear run through her. This place, this desolate place, she thought, trying to be rational, must be affecting her. She must have misheard. . . .

  The nun was back within moments. Talking as she moved about, poking up the fire in the central hearth and suspending a pot over it from a tripod, she said, ‘I’ve some chamomile, it will help you sleep. And perhaps a pinch of valerian. There, it’ll soon be ready.’ She fetched an earthenware mug, dusted it on the skirt of her gown, and placed it on the floor beside the hearth. ‘Really,’ she went on in the same conversational tone, ‘we were quite sure we’d seen the last of Alba.’

  Chapter Ten

  The nun poured hot water on to the herbs she had put into the cup, stirred the mixture with her finger and, after a few moments, handed it to Helewise.

  ‘Hmm,’ she mused. ‘Think I’ll have one myself.’

  Deliberately closing her mind to the filthy skirt and the finger that the nun had used to stir, Helewise sipped her drink. It tasted surprisingly good; there was the distinct sweetness of honey.

  ‘Now,’ the nun said, settling beside Helewise, ‘you’re here about Alba.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  The woman smiled faintly. ‘We have our share of troubles here at Sedgebeck. Most of them – loneliness, not enough to eat, mist, damp, ague – we can cope with. Alba, however, was beyond our skills.’ She sighed.

  Desperately curious to hear more, nevertheless Helewise remembered her manners. ‘Are you – forgive my asking, but are you the superior here? Only. . . .’

  ‘Only you should not speak of such private matters other than to another superior. Quite right, Abbess . . . ?’

  ‘Helewise.’

  ‘Abbess Helewise. Yes, I am the superior. I am Abbess Madelina.’

  ‘And you are sure that our talking will not disturb your sleeping sisters?’

  Abbess Madelina gave a quiet laugh. ‘One is elderly and almost totally deaf, one is sick and has taken a sleeping draught, one is so deep in her communion with Our Lord that she will be hard put to hear the Last Trump when it summons her.’

  ‘And the others?’

  The Abbess gave her a strange look. ‘There are no others.’

  Four women alone in this wilderness! Helewise thought, aghast. Dear Lord, what a place! What did they do here?’

  Abbess Madelina said, ‘We work our small patch of land, we tend our animals, we pray.’

  Stunned, Helewise said, ‘How did you know what I was thinking?’

  ‘We receive few visitors, as you will readily understand. Those who do persevere through the marsh, the mists and the biting flies all say the same thing. How do we cope with living out here?’

  ‘I am sorry,’

  ‘No need to be. In answer to the question, we always say the same words. That God has called us to this lonely, desolate place in order that His precious light shall illuminate the darkness, and that when He calls, we obey.’ Abbess Madelina stood up. ‘Now, will you have more to drink?’

  No longer the least disturbed at thoughts of grubby skirts and dirty fingernails, Helewise held up her cup. ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘A bite to eat? There’s a heel of bread and some salt pork.’

  It would have been rude to reject the kind offer. Besides, Helewise was hungry, and her own provisions were out in the outhouse with the brothers and the horses. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And now,’ Abbess Madelina said presently, sitting down again, ‘Alba. She is, I would guess, in some sort of trouble that affects you, or else you would not be here.’

  ‘She is.’ Quietly, Helewise told the Abbess of the struggle that the Hawkenlye nuns were having in trying to welcome Alba into their fold. She kept her account brief; there was a temptation to open her heart to this friendly stranger, but Helewise resisted it. She made no mention of Alba’s attack on her youngest sister, and alluded only briefly to the blow that Alba had tried to land on her Abbess. ‘So you see,’ she concluded, ‘I am in the difficult position of having been forced into doubting the vocation of a professed nun.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Abbess Madelina gave Helewise a look from clear blue eyes. Then: ‘I am sorry for your troubles, Abbess Helewise. Our experience of Alba, distressing though it was, did not in general disrupt our little community quite as badly as recent events appear to have disrupted yours.’

  And I have not told you the half of it, Helewise thought.

  The bright blue eyes were studying her with compassion. Helewise found herself warming to this forthright Abbess, who appeared to accept her dismal lot with such fortitude and serenity. On an impulse, she said, ‘How did you cope with Sister Alba?’

  Abbess Madelina said, ‘Not Sister Alba.’

  ‘Not – but she told me she took the last of her final vows! Five years ago, she said!’

  ‘She lied to you, Abbess. She was with us for under a year and, although I permitted her to take her first vows and embark on her novitiate, it was an error of judgement. After only four months, I suggested to her tha
t she should not proceed with us. I requested the archbishop to release her from her vows, and she left the convent.’

  ‘And made her way to us,’ Helewise breathed.

  ‘Not immediately.’ Abbess Madelina’s face was grim. ‘First she tried to destroy our chapel. With some determination, I might add.’ She held out her right arm, in which the inner bone of the forearm was strangely crooked. ‘I fear that is as good as it is going to get, she said, looking at the bent arm. ‘She – Alba – broke a candlestick over it, and the bones did not knit together quite right.’

  Helewise put out a tentative hand, touching her fingertips against the distorted arm. ‘She must have hurt you.’

  ‘I mended. What about you?’

  ‘As I said, I managed to step out of the way.’

  A silence fell between them. Helewise felt scant satisfaction in having been proved right about Alba; right or wrong, it didn’t remove the terrible dilemma of what to do about her.

  Again following the train of her thoughts, Abbess Madelina said, ‘There is much I can tell you about Alba, Abbess, if you will hear me.’

  ‘Gladly,’ Helewise said. ‘I need your advice, Abbess Madelina.’

  ‘And you shall have it.’ The big nun got to her feet and, towering over Helewise, said, ‘But it is too long a tale for now. I will tell you in the morning.’

  Within a short space of time Helewise – no longer hungry nor thirsty, and exhausted from the physical and mental efforts of the long day – was settling down on a hard-packed straw mattress, drifting off to sleep.

  She was awakened by the sound of a nun’s voice, calling out with clearly audible joy, ‘Praise be to God, who in His goodness has awarded us the gift of this new day!’

  From close beside her, Helewise heard the crackle of straw mattresses as the other nuns flumped out of bed and on to their knees on the cold, beaten-earth floor, raising their voices in the morning prayers. After a few moments, she joined in with the familiar words.

  Then, still in almost total darkness, she did as she presumed the others were doing and put on wimple, coif and veil, draping her robe over her undergown and fastening her belt. Stepping out from behind the curtained-off section of the room, she found that the main living area was lit by a pearly, early morning glow.

  One of the nuns was laying out chunks of bread on five wooden trenchers, placing them equidistant apart along a rickety-looking table. Five earthenware mugs stood ready beside a pot of water that was simmering over the hearth. The nun looked up and, noticing Helewise watching, gave her a very sweet smile and beckoned her to be seated.

  The sparse breakfast was taken in silence. Then Abbess Madelina stood up, led Helewise and the sisters in a brief prayer and, with a nod, dismissed her nuns.

  Helewise looked out through the door as they left. It appeared to be a lovely day.

  ‘They all have their allotted tasks,’ Abbess Madelina said. ‘And, Abbess, you will be pleased to hear that your two lay brothers are making themselves useful. One has already rounded up the pig – sensible fellow, he knew the animal would return as soon as she heard the rattle of the stick on the feed bucket – and the other is making good a damaged section of our enclosing fence.’

  ‘They are reliable men, both of them,’ Helewise replied.

  ‘And the elder quite devoted to you.’ Abbess Madelina gave her a smile. ‘He asked how you fared, and was clearly anxious lest you had taken chill.’

  Oh, dear, Helewise thought, I do hope Saul was diplomatic.

  ‘Don’t concern yourself,’ Abbess Madelina added, ‘he was perfectly courteous. Now’ – she pressed on while Helewise was still reeling from yet again having had her thoughts read so accurately – ‘to poor Alba. I said I would tell you what I know, and indeed I shall. Although, in the light of experience of the woman, I do wonder how much will prove to be the truth . . . However, that remains to be seen.’

  She paused, gazing into the corner of the room as she seemed to decide how best to begin. The action gave Helewise a strong sense of affinity with her; she, too, had been trained during her novitiate to assemble her thoughts before she spoke, so as to ensure both clarity and economy of speech.

  ‘Alba came here early last summer – in May, I believe it was,’ Abbess Madelina began. ‘My first impression was that she sought admission with us because of some intolerable situation in the world, which is not, of course, the same thing as a vocation. However, I tried to maintain an open mind and, indeed, to begin with she did seem to adapt quite well to community life. One might almost say too well, for she was rigid in her self-discipline and also in her assessment of the discipline of others. For example, Sister Mary is elderly and deaf, and in addition suffers grievously from pains in her joints, and I turn a blind eye when she fails to hear a summons to prayer, or when she slips a piece of cloth between her aching knees and the cold, hard, damp floor of the chapel when she kneels to pray. Alba, in her single-mindedness, always brought these things publicly to my notice. And she would take our dear Sister Celestine to task over her absent-mindedness; she kept coming to me to report that Celestine was standing staring up into the sky when she should be working, or humming gently to herself when she should be engaged in silent prayer. Now, Abbess, I know Sister Celestine, and I understand that she is blessed with a rare and precious gift, that of communion with the Lord, whose voice she hears in the wind, in the beating of the rain, in birdsong, and in any number of other natural sounds. Who are we, her sisters, to interrupt when Our Blessed Lord chooses to speak? And, as I repeatedly told Alba – who just would not listen – Sister Celestine always makes up her share of the duties.’

  ‘But over-eagerness is quite common among postulants,’ Helewise remarked.

  Abbess Madelina nodded. ‘Yes, indeed it is. That was what I kept telling myself. And, as the weeks passed and Alba began pressing to take her first vows as a novice, I decided to ask her about her background. It can be of help, I find, to know what it is in a person’s personal history that has given rise to certain habitual behaviour.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She said she was from a wealthy family – which was in fact supported by the fact that she had arrived with a generous endowment including both money and goods – and that the richness of her home life had become a great burden to her. The lavishness of her father’s hall sickened her very soul, she declared, when, within so short a distance of that warm, glowing place of abundance, the poor were dying of hunger and disease. She was called to a humble life of prayer, she told me, and fervently hoped that her own renunciation of wealth and comfort would mitigate against her family’s state of self-indulgent comfort.’

  ‘She must have been quite a trial to her family,’ Helewise commented.

  ‘Exactly what I thought, Abbess. I did wonder, although I am ashamed to confess it, whether the generous dowry was her father’s way of saying that he would pay any price to be rid of her.’

  ‘Quite.’ Helewise was thinking, trying to remember exactly what Alba had told her on arriving at Hawkenlye.

  As she had half expected before Abbess Madelina had even begun, it was totally different from what the woman had told the Abbess of Sedgebeck. Alba had said that her family had farmed a smallholding – which they had not owned – and, when the parents died, the girls had been left homeless. And, presumably, penniless.

  Where had the Sedgebeck dowry originated, then? And why had Alba made up the story about coming from a wealthy home?

  Unless perhaps that story were the true one, and the tale of poor homeless orphans was the lie?

  A thought occurred to Helewise.

  ‘Abbess, what did Alba look like?’

  The blue eyes held hers, a shrewd expression in them. ‘Is the story she told us so very different that you question whether your Alba and ours are one and the same?’

  Helewise smiled. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Alba is of medium height, but with a wiriness that gives the illusion that she is tall. Her face i
s habitually pale, save when she flies into a rage, when she takes on a violent flush. Her mouth is small, with thin lips that fold in on themselves when she disapproves of something. Her eyes—’ The Abbess broke off. ‘Do you know, I cannot recall what colour Alba’s eyes are.’ She sounded as if it were cause to reprove herself.

  ‘Neither can I,’ Helewise agreed. ‘They are rather small eyes, deeply-set.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’ Abbess Madelina sighed. ‘I do think, Abbess, that we refer to the same woman.’

  ‘Yes, I am sure of it. And, as you rightly guessed, the story she told to me of her background was entirely different.’ Briefly she related it. ‘One similarity, however, does occur to me.’

  ‘Yes?’ Abbess Madelina said eagerly.

  ‘Oh, it’s only a small point! I was just thinking that, in both cases, Alba made herself out to be heroic.’ No – that sounded far too accusatory. ‘I should say, the circumstances that she related suggested, in each case, that she had acted with courage and a nobility of soul. When she came here, she said she had given up a life of luxury because she could not equate it with the sufferings of the poor. When she came to Hawkenlye, she said she had been forced to leave a community where she was very happy out of duty to her family. Her younger sisters were heartbroken over the death of their parents, and Alba took upon herself the responsibility for their happiness, removing them from the place where they had suffered their loss and taking them on to a new life elsewhere. And – Abbess, whatever is the matter?’

  For Abbess Madelina, surprise quite evident in her face, was slowly shaking her head. ‘Abbess Helewise, we must be speaking of two different women after all. Our Alba had no sisters; she was an only child.’

  Chapter Eleven

  It took a moment for the two Abbesses to reach the clear conclusion that Alba had lied to Abbess Madelina about being an only child, as well as about so much else.

  But why?

  ‘If the parents were living when Alba came here to Sedgebeck,’ Helewise ventured, ‘then, in truth, the little sisters were not her responsibility. But, once the parents were dead – and I should say, Abbess Madelina, that there are doubts about whether they died together, as Alba says, or whether in fact the mother died some time ago and the father but recently – then she could no longer ignore the girls.’