"For that they have not been well tended," the nun said promptly. She held out a hand, turning back toward the interior of the convent.
Gwen accepted the invitation, stepping through the gate with her and toward the main hall.
"You know," said Sister Paterna Testa, "that if a soldier is struck by an arrow but does not die, the barb must be cut out and the wound anointed with healing balms, then bandaged with a poultice."
"Aye, certes."
' Then will the cut flesh grow together once more and the skin seam itself over. Even thus in the mind, the barb must also be drawn out and the balm and poultice given."
Gwen looked up, frowning. "I have given what balm I may."
"Yet we may know of others," Sister assured her, "and there is yet the matter of the barb."
"Why, even so," Gwen said slowly. "Yet how can one draw out that which one cannot see?"
"Or even know is there?" The nun nodded. " Tis that which we may tell you of, milady—but anon. For the present, you have journeyed far and are surely wearied and a-hungered. Will you dine with us, thereafter to take your ease in our guest house?"
The refectory was a long hall, with cream-colored walls, a crucifix at the far end, and a picture of two women in peasant
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dress, one holding a baby, one with a face that would have turned plums into prunes if the smile on it hadn't been so warm and welcoming. There was no other decoration, but the cleanliness of the hall and the huge open windows that filled it with light made it cheerful and refreshing.
Sister Paterna Testa said grace, her sisters said "Amen," and immediately broke into happy conversation. Two of the nuns and two novices rose from their places and went out of the room. They came back moments later carrying trays laden with hearty, but very plain, food.
"I trust you shall not find our company burdensome, milady," Sister Paterna Testa said as she dipped her spoon into her soup.
"I feel peace suffusing my soul already, simply from being within your house," Gwen rejoined. "But who are those dames pictured on the wall? Surely the one is not meant to be the Blessed Virgin."
"You have it; she is not." Mother Superior (for so Gwen thought of her, regardless of her claims) smiled. "She was only a peasant woman, milady, alone and forsaken with her babe—though she was far younger than she is pictured while her daughter was yet an infant."
Gwen began to understand. "Yet she was one of your founders?"
"Aye—the mother or our compassion, much as the other, Clothilda—blessed be her name!—was the mother of our strength." Sister Paterna Testa settled down to tell Gwen the story of the founders of her Order.
Morning started with a bang, one loud enough to bring Gregory out of his trance. He turned his head slowly, feeling his metabolism rise but not yet trusting it enough to leap up— and saw there was no need, for the explosion had simply been the burst of air compressed outward as his brother's body had suddenly filled the space where it had been.
The knight-errant strode up to him, grinning. "Good morn to you, brother!"
"And to you, brother," Gregory returned. "I thank you for coming to aid me."
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"Though somewhat tardily," Cordelia said, rising from her bedroll. "Good morn, brother, even though you could not afford us the benefit of your company sooner."
"Ah, but if I had, I should have left Quicksilver to languish," Geoffrey said, "and you would castigate me for a careless suitor."
There was truth in that, but Cordelia wasn't about to admit it, especially since she was quite sure how Quicksilver had benefitted from Geoffrey's company and he from hers. She kept her expression of severity but said, "How say you, Geoffrey? Shall we make a lover of our ascetic brother?"
"Let me see if the game is worth the candle." Geoffrey stepped up beside the sleeping Finister and looked down. His eyes widened and he gave a long, appreciative whistle. ' This is her natural semblance, yet she chose to go in disguise?"
"She has low self-esteem," Cordelia explained.
"It must be low indeed, not to know the power of such a face and form!"
"She thought the power came from her projective talents," Cordelia said, "that men loved her not for what she was but for how she could hypnotize them into feeling."
"Not without reason." Geoffrey turned to his brother. "Even you, who pride yourself on the cold and emotionless clarity of your mind, have fallen under her spell."
"I cannot altogether deny it," Gregory admitted, "but I can at least claim not to have fallen in love with the form, for I saw her in so many disguises that I knew not which one was real."
"So it would seem," Geoffrey said. "What do you think of the true shape?"
"Far more beautiful than any image she has worn!"
Geoffrey raised his eyebrows at the emphatic tone. "So speaks a man who indeed loves the mind and heart—but how can you, if she is a treacherous murderer?"
"Because I can feel beneath the roil of confusion, anger, and hatred to the forlorn child beneath, the heart of hearts, and it is beautiful indeed."
"That deuced empathy of yours!" Geoffrey exclaimed in exasperation. "Did I not say it would prove your undoing?"
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"Then rejoice that you are proven wrong," Gregory said, looking steadily into his eyes, "for it shall prove instead the making of me."
Geoffrey gave him a long, weighing look, then said, ' 'Perhaps. It shall, at least, give you reason to make yourself into a more conventional notion of manliness." He did not say whether that convention was wise or foolish, but only asked, "Have you dined?"
"Why ... I have not," Gregory answered, surprised by the question.
"So I thought." Geoffrey took a packet from his wallet and held it out, unwrapping it. "A gift from Cook to you, my lad, and freshly and expertly grilled it is!"
Gregory looked down at the huge slab of steak and blanched. "Meat!"
"I know the stuff is alien to you," Geoffrey said, "but you shall become quite attached to it, and it to you."
"But— for breakfast?!!"
"And lunch, and dinner, and belike for elevenses and tea, too," Geoffrey said, grinning but remorseless. " 'Tis high time you were introduced to a high-protein diet. Steak," he said, looking down at the slab of meat, "this is Gregory. Gregory, this is beefsteak. Come now, embrace it and make it yours."
Gregory took the steak warily, "This will make me more attractive to a woman?"
"No," said Cordelia, "but the muscles it builds within you shall." She looked at the huge slab and wrinkled her nose in disgust but said, "Eat it, Gregory. Tell yourself it is medicine."
"Well, if I must, I shall," Gregory sighed, and drew his dagger to begin cutting.
"Clothilda it was who first built a dwelling in this place, though 'twas only a cottage, and a poor one at that. It had but two rooms, in one of which her chickens roosted." Gwen frowned. "Why did she dwell alone in the forest?" "Her parents were dead and she had no husband, having been born poor and unusually . .. plain. ..."
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"Aye." Gwen nodded, glancing at the picture. The woman was not merely plain but downright ugly. "Yet I have seen plain women married afore, if their natures were sweet."
"Hers was not. She was a termagant and a scold, with a sharp tongue and no pity—for she bore a grudge 'gainst all the folk of her village."
"Against the men, because none did want her?"
"Aye—because none was strong enough to stand against the vinegar of her tongue, nor wise enough to see the treasure of the spirit within her. And she hated all the women for sneering at her."
Again, Gwen nodded. It was a common enough story; people always seemed to need to have someone at the bottom of the social heap, and in a medieval society, the women determined that by who was married and who was not. Then, among the spinsters, they determined rank according to who was liked and who wasn't. "She does not seem the sort of woman who would have bo
rne such treatment with patience."
"She was not. She railed against the other women, scolded the men, and became quite the terror of the village."
"Such folk begin to pride themselves on their loathsomeness, or seem to."
"And so did she."
Gwen nodded. "That could not endure. They would oust her soon or late."
"So they did. Someone unnamed denounced her to the priest, charging her with witchcraft. None spoke in her defense; indeed, all were quick to cry that she must needs be a sorceress. They drove her out with bell, book, and candle, and she fled here to this hillock, where the rock beneath the ground made a small clearing. Here she built a hut, then went back to steal a hen and a cockerel and scraped out a lean and meager existence with a garden and chickens, and nuts and berries to gather."
"Hard enough," Gwen murmured.
"Aye; but her true diet was her own heart. She nurtured herself on bitterness and hatred, on thoughts of revenge and plans for dire deeds."
"I have met such as she—yet they commonly become the
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village wise women, learning the virtue of each herb and simple."
4 'Clothilda did not; she swore she would never do good to her folk, only ill to those who had cast her out. Yet she did learn the powers of the herbs, but to harm, not to heal."
Gwen shuddered. "How could such an one endure?"
Mother Superior shrugged. "Given time, she might have sought to wreak havoc on one person or more and been burned at the stake—but ere she could fulfill her desires, she was distracted."
"By what?"
"By a baby's cry."
CHAPTER
-10-
"It was not the common, lusty bawling of a babe a-hungered," said Sister Paterna Testa, "but the tearing bleat of one in true distress. Sour as she might think herself, there was some mother's instinct in her naetheless, and she followed the sound—only from boredom, as she told herself. There under an oak, seeking shelter in a hollow 'twixt great roots, sat a lass not yet twenty, gaunt with hunger, trying to give suck to a babe wasted almost as badly as herself. ..."
"Why, what a parcel's this?" Clothilde snapped, instantly furious on the young girl's behalf. "You cannot give, child, when you have no substance yourself! Nay, come to my cottage and we'll find food for you."
The girl looked up, startled and frightened, then saw another woman and began to weep with relief. "Oh, praise Heaven! Thank the kind God! I had feared I would die alone!"
"Heaven has taken little pity on you, child, and the male God whom you praise has left you to die! Nay, come up on your feet and we'll take you to better shelter than this— though not greatly so, I fear." She bent down to take the girl's arm, and the baby squalled. A flow of gentleness sprang up in Clothilde from she knew not where, and she took the babe gently from the mother, crooning and rocking it. ' There, there, little one, we'll find you gruel at least, soon enough. . . . Why, 'tis scarcely aged a month!"
The girl nodded in misery. "I hid away in the kitchens and pretended to fatness—but I could not hide the child's coming."
"Nay, I warrant not. Up with you, now." She caught the
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girl's arm and lifted. The lass tried to rise, then fell back with a small cry. "I cannot!"
Clothilde was instantly concerned. "Nay, you are wasted worse than I feared! Bide in patience, child—I'll take the babe to feed, then bring back soup for you!"
She turned away, the girl's strangled thanks filling her ears, and strode as quickly as she could to her cottage. The babe pawed at her breast, seeking to nurse, and something brimmed and broke open within Clothilde, something that she had not known endured. To cloak it, she filled the babe's ears with savage denunciations of the father who had left it to die.
In her cottage, she ladled soup from the kettle where it always simmered, cooled and thinned it with water, then fashioned a teat from a scrap of cloth and trickled the broth into it, that the babe might suck. So she held the child against her breast and fed it as best she might, and her feelings were so tender that she had to breathe maledictions against all the male race as she did it. She knew better than to let the babe have its fill, so she had to endure its wailing whiles she carried it, and a crock of soup, back to the mother, fearing she would find the lass fled to Heaven whiles she had been gone—and she was aghast to see the young woman slumped against the oak with her eyes closed. But at the sound of her coming, the girl stirred and opened her eyes. Then for the first time in a year, Clothilde breathed the name of God in aught but a curse, though she quickly denied it to herself, and gave the lass spoonfuls of soup while she cautioned her not to eat too quickly. The lass could not heed, of course, but gobbled every drop Clothilde gave her—and the older woman was glad she'd had the foresight to bring only a small crock of the soup. Then she gave the babe back to the lass and bade her rest, and both dropped off to sleep. Clothilde watched over them, and her thoughts 'gainst men were murderous.
When they woke, Clothilde fetched more soup, feeding the babe even as she had done before; then the lass found the strength to come to her feet and, leaning on Clothilde and pausing oft to gasp and rest, stumbled toward the hut. Time and again she would have lain down to sleep and likely never rise, but Clothilde urged her on, for night was falling fast.
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They came at last to the hut and Clothilde lowered her onto her own poor heap of straw, saying, ''What is your name, child?"
The lass murmured, "Meryl," and slept instantly, and the babe was too weak to stir far, so Clothilde laid it in Meryl's arm and shooed the chickens within before the fox could come, then latched the door and blew the coals on the hearth to flame.
Thus they endured some days, the lass ever eating more soup and more, till her milk came again and the babe could have its proper nourishment. All that time, Clothilde nursed babe and mother alike, cutting up her spare apron to make linen for the child, linen that she washed as soon as it was soiled. She grumbled at the work, but secretly rejoiced, as she told us years later....
"So secretly," asked Gwen, "that even she did not know it?"
"Mayhap. And whiles the lass gained strength, they talked."
It began when Clothilde saw Meryl waken that first night and came to feed her again, grumbling, "A curse upon that foul churl who got you with child and abandoned you!"
"Oh, speak not so!" the lass cried, "for he was my one true love and would have wed me—had he lived!"
That gave Clothilde pause. She recalled what the lass had said of her labor and said, "You did speak of hiding in the kitchens."
"Aye."
"You were a scullery maid in the manor, then."
"Aye."
"And the squire espied you."
"Oh, nay! 'Twas his son."
"As I thought." Clothilde's mouth settled into a grim, straight line. "So he deflowered you, then cast you away with no thought for you or your babe, eh?"
"Nay, nothing o' the sort! He did love me, aye, and we did meet in secret for nigh onto a year—but never once did
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he press me for more than a kiss, and that upon the hand! 'Twas I had to raise his hopes higher." She giggled at the memory. "He was so clumsy in that, yet so graceful in all else! And he asked me to wed him, yet I did hesitate, knowing the difference in our stations."
"Wise," Clothilde sniffed.
"Yet he did woo me and court me, and assured me that he would leave his inheritance if he had to, to wed me."
"You would not wish that," Clothilde scoffed.
"Nay. I wished not to make a rift betwixt himself and his family, so told him I would wed him only if he could gain his parents' blessing—and I could gain mine."
"Aye. Your mother and father had you matched with some village swain, did they not?"
"With three, and would have rejoiced at my choosing any of them. Yet my father groaned under the squire's rule and spoke often
against him—so I determined in my heart that if I could but gain my mother's blessing in secret, it would suffice."
"Men care so little for us!"
"Nay, say not so." Meryl smiled with fond memory. "Tostig cared so greatly for me that he went with the lord's army, leading a troop of men off to the war, that he might gain some money of his own and enough of his parents' pride to outshine their contempt of my station."
"A pretty fool was he! What manner of caring is this, to risk dying and leaving you lorn?"
Meryl's face saddened. "Aye, 'twas foolish, but a man in love will do many foolish things, will he not? As will a woman."
Clothilde stared at her, not understanding. Then she realized the implications of Meryl's words, and her eyes went round as saucers, mouth springing open for a jibe that she bit back just in time.
"Aye." Meryl bowed her head. "I could not let him go without giving him my fullest pledge of love—and being sure I would have something of him left, if he were slain."
"As he was! And left you with child!"
"Aye." Meryl lifted her face, tears rolling down her
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cheeks. "Who could I tell? My ma and da would have been outraged at my foolishness, and the squire would have disowned me as an imposter."
"As they both did. when your babe was born!" 4 "Aye." Meryl bowed her head, the tears falling faster. "The squire's wife cast me out of her kitchens, claiming that she would not have a lying slut to serve her. My own folk did turn me from their door in shame, and the folk of the village drove me out with stones and gibes. I have lived on roots and berries this last fortnight and lived in fear of wild beasts till you did find me."
"The wolves and bears are yet to be feared, child." Cloth-ilde welcomed the change of subject. "We must see to making this cottage stronger." Somehow the matter seemed more important now that she had a baby living with her. and a girl not far out of childhood herself.
4 "Aye." Gwen smiled, amused. "Children give one a greater stake in life."
"I would not know; what your children are to you. the folk of the villages hereabout must needs be to myself and to my sisters—though I will own. the care of these women doth give me cause to be glad in life, even had I not my God to love." Mother Superior looked up at the nuns around the table, who were all listening to the tale as raptly as though they had never heard it before. Gwen wasn't surprised: Mother Superior was a good storyteller. "They lived together, then, and reared the child?"
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