The Rebel Princess

by Judith Koll Healey

  “What is your name, child?” he asked.

  “She will be Sister Marie of the Sorrows when she makes her final profession,” I interjected, before she could answer. The name Fabrisse, which was native to the rural south, could arouse suspicion even in one so lacking in guile as Brother James.

  Then I cast my eyes to the ground and tucked my hands into the sleeves of my robe, as did the others. Geralda walked beside me, giving no indication that she had even heard the exchange. But it was only with restraint that I managed my insouciance. My head was spinning. Chastellain at Fontfroide! And here to meet with Amaury. How dare he come here, in the livery of the king of France, while a knight of Lord William’s household might be languishing a prisoner in this very same abbey? Or could he have conspired in the abduction of Francis himself? Perhaps that was what the meeting was about.

  It took some walking to arrive at our guesthouse, and I had time to ponder my disturbing suspicions. The hospitaler had spoken truly. Our quarters were well isolated from the main abbey buildings. But that did not displease me.

  We were led along the cloister walks that ringed the massive church, Great Hall, and chapter house of the abbey. The brother fell silent, but roused himself to point out the church and the refectory as we passed them, and indicated in his twangy southern accent that the main meal would take place an hour after the sun was highest.

  We left the main buildings of the abbey and crossed what appeared to be a sizable meadow. We followed a well-worn dirt path. Cows were grazing on either side of us, and I could see cultivated fields off in the distance. After some time we came to a little house and I assumed we would stop here, but Brother James merely continued on.

  Soon we entered a forest, still within the abbey enclosure. We found ourselves at another small hut, and here he finally made us pause. He took from the rope around his waist a large ring of keys, and opened the rusty lock on the door. It creaked as he pushed it inward.

  We entered to find that the house consisted of one somewhat large room filled with a musty smell that indicated a long vacancy. The fire had not been lit for some time, and the pallets for sleeping had certainly not been aired. Not for the first time, Geralda cast me a look that had significant meaning, and it was not optimistic! Ah, well, but here we are, I thought, and brightly smiled back.

  “Thank you, Brother James.” I turned to him with a nod. “If you would ask the porter to send our few belongings, we should be grateful. And perhaps some firewood?”

  “That request is easily answered,” he said, drawing me out the door and around the side of the small building. “Here is cut wood for your fire. I shall send a boy with a burning log, and he will start it for you. And he will bring watered wine as well.”

  “God’s blessings on you, Brother,” I said, as I made to rejoin my companions.

  “You are not from around these parts, are you, Sister?” he asked as he placed his hand on my arm to stay me.

  I looked at his eyes. Though there was no direct sunlight because of the surrounding trees, still heavy with leaves here in the south, I could see in his eyes an intelligence I had missed earlier.

  “No,” I said simply.

  His eyelids lowered for the barest moment, as if in fatigue.

  “We of this community of Cistercians do our best to follow the rule of Benedict strictly,” he said.

  I waited for some further sign of his meaning.

  “We are people of God,” he added, his eyes opening wide. He bent his tonsured head down to mine, as if to tell me a secret. “If you should need help or advice while you are here, have a care from whom you seek it. Not all here do God’s will.”

  Then, as if nothing untoward had passed between us, he turned and reentered the small hut. So much for my disguise, I thought ruefully.

  “Sisters,” he announced to all our group in a raised voice, “when the large bell rings, it will be time for the Angelus. After the chapel service of the holy office, which I know you will want to attend, the dinner will be served in the refectory. God keep you.” He folded his hands and then departed noiselessly.

  Geralda and I looked at each other.

  “What is the chief minister of France doing here?” she nearly squeaked, shading her eyes against the sun to examine the far-off flag. “Does this mean danger to you?”

  “Not if I can forestall it,” I said. “He is here to meet with Amaury, and his presence convinces me that there is a conspiracy between them. I wonder what story he gave my brother to allow him to ride off with a retinue of the king’s men.”

  “We must have a care. He would know you on sight, would he not?”

  “Indeed. But he has never seen me garbed as a nun. And I do not wear a wimple at court. As a princesse royale I am allowed certain liberties with my dress. So he might not recognize me, even if he saw me.”

  “You believe young Francis is here, in this abbey, do you not?” she asked, turning to me.

  “I am certain of it,” I replied. “The Cathar preachers said Amaury was here with a great contingent of northern knights. And Pierre of Castelnau told me Amaury was overly interested in Francis. And that he insisted on coming here when he parted from Pierre. I grow more certain by the hour that my son is near.”

  “Then let us air this bedding, make our fire, and attend the Divine Office. After that we shall go to dinner and then do our best to insert ourselves into this abbey life so we can accomplish our mission.”

  The two younger women were exhausted, and after we shook out the bedding, we encouraged them to rest until the abbey bells should summon us. And, truth to tell, Geralda and I rested also until the sun was high in the sky and a great clanging in the distance summoned us to prayer and our midday meal.

  .21.

  FONTFROIDE ABBEY

  The Women’s Hut and the Church Nave

  We settled quickly into the rhythm of abbey life. Prayers before dawn, a spare breakfast, assigned work, more common prayers, a spare lunch, rest, work, and more prayers. One could easily get accustomed to this life, I thought. It seemed by far more productive than the way we frittered away time in the Paris court. On the third day, a fresh sparkling morning, I found myself alone in the hut, as the others were at their tasks. I had begged charcoal and a small piece of vellum from one of the monks in the scriptorium, and I decided to take these outside, thinking to sketch the birds I heard twittering in the trees before dawn.

  As I left the hut, I came upon a surprise in my path not a stone’s throw from the door to our dwelling. I had been out earlier to pick firewood from the forest floor, and a small object that I now noticed had not been present then. I leaned over to pick it up. On closer examination I saw that it was a ball of fabric, of a faded green color, dirty and wrinkled.

  I unraveled it and saw, to my astonishment, that it was my own green scarf, the token I had given Francis at the tournament in Paris. It had the Capet royal insignia woven into one corner, as did most of my accessories. This was proof that he was somewhere on the abbey grounds! Joy leaped in my heart as I rewound the treasured object and tucked it down the front of my habit, out of sight should anyone happen by.

  Despite my elation I decided it would be good to continue my plan to sketch for a while. I have long found I can contemplate as I draw if I am in the soothing presence of nature. I made my way around to the back side of our dwelling, where the absence of a path would have allowed the birds more safety. Even now they may be ready, perching on branches and waiting for my keen eye.

  As I walked close to the stone wall of the hut, I saw a squirrel scramble up the chimney stones. I bent again to pick up a branch which I intended to use to harry the squirrel down from the chimney, fearing he might wind up in our fire later if I did not. As I moved quickly forward I stumbled. I peered at the ground to see what could have been the cause. A small brick ridge, scarce above the ground, was visible near the corner of the house. I picked at it with my foot, and separated the leaves and branches that had fallen around it.


  In so doing, I exposed a small opening in the ground, like a miniature flue. I noted the position, close to the chimney that rose from the back that served our own small hearth.

  I was puzzled. Where could this small opening lead? Was it connected to our guesthouse?

  I forgot my desire to sketch and slowly retraced my steps to the front door. When I entered, I was facing the hearth. I walked toward it, my eyes scanning the floor for some sign of any stone that might have been disturbed. I walked carefully, dragging my leather shoe on purpose through the rushes. When I reached the hearth, my toe hit a loose tile. I reached down and pried it up with my finger. Then I crouched down, and began to remove the stones around it. After working feverishly for some minutes, I was rewarded by a most amazing sight.

  I knew I had gone as far as I could without help, so I quickly replaced the tiles and the rushes. Then I sat down on the one chair in the room, and thought for some time.

  I was called out of my reverie by the sound of the iron doorlatch lifting. That would be Geralda, back from her work in the kitchen. Her patience was fraying, I knew, for the day before when she had returned she flopped on her pallet without a word of greeting to me. Today, she did the same.

  “Geralda, you seem tired,” I said, addressing her supine figure, but I could not keep the excitement from my voice.

  She looked over at me, as I stood winding my nun’s wimple around my head. “And you, dear Sister, seem unusually animated.”

  “Indeed, you are observant.” I smiled, playing on her interest. “First tell me how you are feeling, and then I will tell you of my morning.”

  She swung her legs over the bed, and sat upright, facing me. We were alone in the small guesthouse, Fabrisse and Grazide having gone to their tasks of sweeping the cloister walk and kneading the bread for the morrow’s meal. Geralda’s long face set, and her chin jutted forward, as a kind of preface to her remarks.

  “All right, Princesse, I will speak honestly. We have been here three full days. We have swept and cooked and washed the linen of the abbey, and we still have no sign that Francis is here. We have only glimpsed the Abbot Amaury once, in procession in the church, and have not seen the king’s minister at all.” She sighed. “I am not complaining, but I am beginning to think our mission here misguided. I do not know how we can crack open this closed egg that is the abbey. Nor am I even certain the young knight is being held here. We have seen no signs of it.”

  “And so you are thinking we should give up our cause?” A grin was spreading wider on my face.

  “Why look you so cheerful, madame?” she asked, a bit irritably. “Surely, my remarks could not inspire that smile.”

  I came to sit beside her on the bed, and put my arm around her broad shoulders.

  “Geralda, dear friend. I believe our task is nearing completion. This morning, after you and the young women left, I walked out into the forest to sketch the small animals. I had just said a prayer to Saint Barbara, the martyr, that she give me courage not to falter in my task, and my prayer was answered in the forest.”

  “I thought you did not believe in the Romish religion?” Geralda leaned away from me.

  “Well, I do, and I don’t. My desperation is leading me to old habits.” I waved my hand dismissively. “But hold, and listen to me. The prayers were scarce whispered, than I looked down and saw this on the ground in front of me.”

  I reached down into the front of my habit, and pulled out the damp and muddy clump of green silk. Geralda who was, I had discovered, quite fastidious, wrinkled her nose.

  “And what, pray, is that?”

  “This, my dear friend”—and I shook out the fine piece so that she could see the corner—“is a token marked with the emblem of the royal house of France.”

  “How came it here?” She was genuinely puzzled, as she took the scarf—for so it was—by the corner with her two fingers.

  “It is mine. I gave it to young Francis on the day of the tourney in Paris, the very day his young friend was killed, and the day before he himself was abducted.”

  She looked at me and understanding spread over her blunt features.

  “He is here, then.”

  “Indeed. And I now believe that he is not only being kept at this abbey, but somehow he knows I am near. This token of mine was dropped deliberately where I might find it.”

  “But where can he be hiding? We have walked the abbey from front to back, almost to a point where we look suspicious, and we have discovered no trace.”

  “But we have not walked these broad meadows and fields, spread behind us. Remember when we came, the hospitaler said there were three guesthouses. But we only passed one on our way to our shelter.”

  I rose and smoothed my skirts. “That means that there is another one, somewhere out of sight. Whether in the woods or in the meadows over those hills, I don’t know. But we must begin to search the grounds.”

  “That will be difficult. We are moving toward solstice and the light fades earlier every day.” Geralda now also had risen, as if informed by new energy at my news. “We should begin now, and go out at every opportunity.”

  “Stay, my friend.” I placed my hand on her arm, though I was pleased to see her spirit returning. “I have another plan. The darkness can be our friend. We might excite suspicion if we were seen prowling about the fields and meadows when we should be at prayer. But at night, with torches sheltered from the wind, we might make better progress.”

  “Yes, vous avez raison,” Geralda said, flopping back onto her pallet. I had taught her some of the expressions we used in the north, and she enjoyed working them into our daily conversation. I smiled. She was a born learner.

  “You should rest now, and I will hurry to my tasks. Today I have been instructed to change the altar cloth, instead of working in the laundry. I shall see you back here before chapel and the midday prayer. Tonight we shall explore our surroundings and find that third guesthouse.” As I spoke, I tucked the small bundle the scarf had become under the covers of my own pallet, where it could not be seen through the window by some inquisitive passer-by, though in truth we had seen few of those since our arrival.

  I was nearly humming as I departed our little hut, as happy as I had been since I had left Paris. My visions and my sense of the presence of Francis had been accurate. This scarf confirmed it. Francis must have seen us, though how that could be I did not know. But surely it was no accident that the scarf had appeared. It was so small, so crumpled, he could have dropped it without being observed, knowing that I would recognize it when I found it.

  My first stop was the laundry, a squat pile of stones set some way from the main cluster of abbey buildings where the monks lived, prayed, and ate. The sisters who did the laundry and helped in the kitchen dwelled in a dormitory attached to the side. I passed their door and went directly into the larger room. There I found huge vats of water, heated over fires, and several women stirring them with large sticks whose bark had been peeled off. The steam filled the room, and made it difficult to see beyond an arm’s length.

  These sisters kept a vow of silence, so they merely nodded to me when I entered. One of them held up her hand, and disappeared into another room, returning in a moment with the white altar linen. It had been washed, laid on a scrubbed wooden table and dried under clean stones, so that it appeared flat and pristine. I marveled that such a clean-looking item could be produced from this outbuilding with its dirt floors covered by simple rushes.

  I bowed to her and extended my arms. She placed the altar cloth over them, and I proceeded to the abbey church in that manner. By the time I arrived, I was grateful to bend my arms and set the cloth down, while I stripped the altar of its current covering. I had rolled up the broad sleeves of my habit and tied back my veil, the better to have freedom to work. I had been pleased to see that no one was in the chapel when I arrived. The less I was observed by anyone, no matter how casually, the better I liked it.

  But some moments into my task I heard
the clip of boots on the floor, and another sound, the soft clap-clap of slippers. I decided to continue my work and did not turn around. It was well for me that I made that choice.

  To my astonishment, the voices I began to hear were all too familiar. Abbot Amaury and Etienne Chastellain, for it was those two conspirators, were seated well toward the front of the church where I could easily make out their comments. They paid no attention to the back of the Benedictine nun at the altar as she slowly rolled and unrolled the used altar cloth, biding for time to hear their exchange. They spoke in ordinary tones, no doubt feeling safe in that sacred space to plot any intrigue.

  “I want you to go, Chastellain. I do not like it that you showed yourself here. This was never part of our agreement.” It was the abbot’s raspy voice.

  “Our agreement was based on mutual interest.” Now it was Chastellain’s turn. It seemed the tone of the conversation would be contentious. “You want gold or arms and men to fight your heretics, and I was willing to aid your request to the king of France. In return, you promised to hold your tongue about the information Eugene had funneled to King John of England.” He sniffed, as if sensing an unpleasant smell. “A situation you would not have known about if it were not for the loose lips of John’s western guard.”

  The abbot grunted, but said nothing, as if contemplating his rejoinder. I dared not cast a glance backward to see the look on his face.

  “But now, I tell you, you have gone too far,” Chastellain continued, his tone lower and more intense. “Abducting a young knight, a favorite of the Princesse Alaïs, belonging to the household of the king’s counselor Lord William, these rash actions were not part of our plan.”

  The church was so quiet that I could hear the rustle of the abbot’s silk sleeve moving as he flung his arm to dismiss Chastellain’s comments.