Celeste met her gaze. I am a Lady, she thought. I am a guest here, and need not answer to the Abbess.
“We do not care for the ill here, as I told Lord Bernard. We made an exception in your case, of course.”
Of course? She pressed her hands into the folds of her kirtle, feeling them tremble against her thighs. Why could she still not remember her past? She dared not speak for fear of betraying herself.
The Abbess frowned. “We are not ungrateful for your husband’s gift, nor insensitive to your loss. But we cannot have such displays of intemperance here. It distracts the Sisters from their prayers, which is their holy duty and the true purpose of this abbey. It sets a bad example for my novices. And it is not in your own interest that I permit you to so indulge yourself.”
“Indulge myself?” Celeste’s hands clenched within the folds of cloth. She would like to slap the woman, but it would risk exposing her finger.
Slap an Abbess? She blinked, shocked at the thought. Where had such an impulse come from?
“The servants believe you are possessed. They are only peasants, but the novitiates have heard them talking. They do not admit their suspicions to me, but I see it in their eyes.”
Celeste sat very still. “There is no demon inside me,” she said. Her voice was faint, the words sticking in her mouth. Had someone else seen the eyes glowing in the shadows of her room? How could she prove that none of those demons had slipped inside her? Had one? Was that why she could not remember her life before? If the Abbess learned of her memory loss, would she take it as proof? Would they put her to the test?
The Abbess made a dismissive gesture. “I have known you since you were a child. You have ever had a sweet and loving nature, and a devout faith.”
The Abbess knew her as a child? Or did she mean she had known Celeste since she married Lord Bernard? To this gray-haired Abbess, a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old woman might seem like a child.
Celeste pressed her lips together, afraid to speak.
“Your maid tells me you sold a nail from your baby’s coffin to a peddler.”
She looked up before she could stop herself.
“So it is true. I hoped your maid was wrong. You must know that is only a superstition.”
Celeste flushed.
“Even if it were possible to sell our sorrow for another to bear, it would be a wicked thing to do.” The Abbess’ voice warmed to her topic. “Imagine what you might become if you could feel no sorrow. And the poor man who bore a double load, what would become of him? It is neither possible nor desirous to do such a thing: God gives and takes for reasons he alone knows, and it is our duty to submit with grace. Pray for forgiveness and the fortitude to bear your troubles more stoically.”
A hot rage swept over Celeste. How dare the woman speak to her thus, Abbess or not? She was a guest here, not a novitiate. Her hands curled into fists beneath the folds of her kirtle. How dare Marie speak of her to others, even the Abbess? When they were back in her room, she would beat her.
“Courage, child,” the Abbess said sharply. “Where is that boldness that worried your mother and irritated your father so? Do not let your courage fail you when it is most needed.”
“I am not your child! I am a Lady!”
“Good.” The Abbess smiled briefly. “Anger is better than despair. Now you must conquer it also. I will keep you here as long as I can, but you must practice temperance and self-control. Remember that you are a Lady. There must be no more fits, no more tearing sheets and running out through the abbey gates, dabbling in superstition: a very dangerous thing for you right now.”
Celeste endured the reprimand in silence. It was the Abbess, not she, who needed to remember Celeste was a Lady.
***
As soon as Marie closed the door to the cell behind them, Celeste rounded on her, boxing her ear with a satisfying clap!
“Do not talk to the Abbess about me,” she hissed. “Or to anyone else.”
Marie cringed, holding her ear and snivelling.
“Quiet,” Celeste ordered. “If you complain I will slap you again, much harder.”
It was Marie’s fault the ring was lost: Celeste would not have wandered out and met the peddler if Marie had not left her alone. She paced the room until her anger eased. Marie sat on her floor mat, her cheeks damp with tears.
She had never struck Marie before. She had seen that in the child’s face, the moment she slapped her. She felt a strange impulse to apologize—it passed quickly. Marie deserved her chastisement; a Lady’s maid must learn to be discrete. She did not regret punishing her, but she had not done so before.
She had changed. She was not “sweet and loving” now. She did not even want to be, but she did want to know why she had changed. This helpless feeling that everyone knew more than she did, that something terrible had happened to her and she had no control over how it had changed her, this was unbearable. Unbearable!
She covered her face with her hands.
The room was quiet. She felt a shift in the air and looked up. Marie stood beside her. “I am here,” she said softly. “I love you, Lady Celeste.”
Celeste slapped her hard across the cheek.
Marie gasped, wide-eyed with shock, then whirled and ran from the room.
Celeste stared, outraged, at the door swinging shut. Her maid had left without even asking her leave! She stamped her foot. A peasant declaring love as though she was an equal? And then to leave without permission? She stamped her foot again. The world was mad, not she.
Marie did not reappear.
Outside the window an owl hooted; a derisive sound.
She was no Lady; they all saw it and mocked her: the Abbess, her maid, even a foolish bird. She crossed to close the shutters, pausing to stare out the little window. Had she cared for Marie? For a peasant child?
Far away, a sparrow cried. The thin, high trill drifted through her window. She had seen one once, crying like that as it struggled to escape the talons of the hunting falcon. She had refused to go falconing after that. How foolish of her. What had made her decide that? And why was she trembling now, at hearing the distant cry?
Celeste stepped back from the window. She closed the shutters and stood with her arms wrapped tightly about herself.
The room was full of shadows and ominously quiet.
She had to get out of this room. It closed in around her, tiny and dark and cramped, like the room at the bottom of the tower stairwell where Lord Bernard kept condemned men waiting for execution.
She had heard one once, weeping in the small, dark cell. She remembered the sound he made, a low, animal noise, reverberating off the stones of the stairwell. She had begged her husband to be lenient—until he told her what the man had done.
The memory came to her stripped of all emotion now, but she had felt a torrent of emotions at the time—horror, pity, fear, anguish, compassion—over a stranger, a man she had never seen, simply because she heard him weeping. He had done an evil, traitorous thing and would be duly punished. Why had it upset her so? She had lain awake wondering if he had repented, and in the morning had insisted a priest be sent to him. Why? What was his immortal soul to her? She had never used the tower stairwell again, even when the prisoner’s cell was unoccupied.
All that intense caring. What an exhausting person she must have been.
And now here she was, trapped in this little room as though she, too, were a criminal, unable to reclaim her position as mistress of Lord Bernard’s castle because of a lost ring.
Was Marie right in thinking Lord Bernard would set aside their marriage? Marie was only a girl of eleven or twelve years. She had barely begun to show a woman’s figure.
But Marie had not been ill. She must know what Lord Bernard was like; she had lived at the castle as Celeste’s maid. And Marie was terrified. Celeste shivered, remembering the pitch of her voice as she wailed, “and now the ring gone missing!” She could still hear Marie sobbing within the cloud of feathers. Was Lord Bernard truly so
fearsome?
Courage, the Abbess said. Had she shown courage in coming here? Or had she been running away from something, like a coward? She had not taken her life; she had resisted the demons tempting her. Perhaps there was still some boldness in her, then. So she had not entirely changed.
A vicious stab of pain lanced her temples. She pressed her hand to her forehead. If she thought too hard, would she go mad again?
“You are unwell, My Lady.” Marie’s timid voice startled her.
She should reprimand the girl for leaving her. “Undress me,” she said, wearily raising her arms for Marie to remove her kirtle. She was unwell indeed, but she would recover. Leaving Marie to tidy the fallen robe, she walked to the bed.
“How can I help you, My Lady?” Marie asked, her voice small and sad.
“Tell me—” Tell me what I have forgotten. No, she could not confess to losing her memory. The child was impertinent enough without learning that. She must find a less direct way to coax information from the girl.
“Tell me a story.”
Marie looked up, wide-eyed. “A story?”
“I am tired, Marie. The sound of your voice would soothe me. Talk about whatever you wish. Something you remember, perhaps.”
“It is you who used to tell the stories,” Marie muttered, frowning.
“I did?” Celeste managed to keep the horror from her voice.
A smile tugged at the child’s face. “Wonderful stories. We could listen for hours, Lise and I—” She stopped abruptly.
Celeste waited in frustration, trying not to picture herself spinning tales to amuse a crowd of peasant children.
“I did not want to hear stories after Lise died,” Marie said in a low voice. “They reminded me of Lise. That is why I cried. I am sorry.”
“That was long ago,” Celeste said, hoping she was correct.
Marie nodded. “I was but a baby then.”
“Do you remember when Lord Bernard gave the abbey his gift?” she asked, as though the question was of little importance.
“Lord Bernard,” Marie cried. “You had the orphanage built here. You always give others the credit for what you do. But I know.”
Celeste observed Marie thoughtfully. I know. And what else did Marie know? Had she made a peasant child her confidante? No wonder the girl forgot her place. She must change that. For now, however, she would learn more if she let Marie talk. “How could I build an orphanage?” she asked with a coaxing smile.
“You are trying to fool me, but I saw you. You sold your jewels to pay the labourers. Lord Bernard was angry when he got home.”
She sold her jewellery? To build an orphanage? Was the child lying, trying to trick her?
“Then you told him why you did it. You told him—” Marie broke off abruptly.
“Go on. You may say it.” It must be important for her to hesitate.
“That you were carrying his child. Etienne,” she finished in a low voice.
Celeste closed her eyes. She felt his weight against her breast, his warm, downy head tucked into her neck, his little body shedding heat…
She swayed and sat down suddenly on the side of the bed. What use was a memory like that? But it was gone already; only the memory of a memory remained.
She glanced at Marie. The girl looked so downcast it was impossible not to believe her.
“You may leave me.”
“Forgive me, My Lady. I did not—”
Celeste waved her out wearily. She lay on her bed and tried to summon again the peaceful silence she had felt when she returned to the abbey. But it was a wilful companion, dependent entirely on her loss of memory. The minute she tried to recall her life before the peddler took the nail and her ring, or consider what she should do next, the silence was replaced by pounding headaches. Was there a demon inside her? She put her hand to her head, wincing, and closed her eyes, and thought of nothing.
***
It is night time, all the rush lights in the castle keep have been extinguished. She is standing in the great hall, blind in the darkness. Where is the door, or the stone steps leading up to their private rooms? She looks around for something to orient herself, but even the huge central hearth is invisible, its embers as cold and dark as the night. The snores and sighs of sleeping people are all around her, mingling with the quiet yip of dogs dreaming of the hunt and the rustle of the floor rushes when someone turns over. The night-noises echo around her, hemming her in, trapping her.
She must not waken anyone. Something terrible will happen if she is found here. She must get out, but it is so dark; surely she will stumble over someone. She crouches low and stretches her right arm out before her. The dark to her left seems more intense: a wall? If she can reach a wall, she can feel along it until she touches something that will orient her.
Cautiously, she steps to her left. The floor rushes crackle, loud in her ears, but it is such a common sound no one is wakened by it. Another step, and a third and fourth. Her outstretched fingers brush against a woollen cloak. Hardly daring to breathe she traces the form with her fingertips until she knows where she can walk around it. At last she reaches a wall. It is easier walking along the wall; no one wants to sleep against cold stone and she can move more quickly, while taking care to disturb the rushes as little as possible.
Her hand sweeps up and down the wall ahead of her as she walks, up and down and into empty air. She stops, confused. In the dark she feels the stone wall beside her and the place where it abruptly ends. If she has reached a corner, there should be an adjoining wall; if it is a window she should feel the night air through it. But there is only an empty space as high as she can reach. She kneels. The end of the wall reaches all the way to the ground. The stone floor turns at the end of the wall and heads away from the great hall.
Impossible. She rises, resting her right hand against the corner of the wall, and steps ahead. Her toes bump something hard. She yanks her foot back and stumbles, falling forward.
Instead of landing on a sleeping body, her outstretched hand hits a waist-high stone block. The corner of a higher stone strikes her chest, driving the air from her body. She clings to the stones to keep from falling sideways as she tries to breathe; nothing, then a gasp and she is finally sucking air into her throbbing chest.
Someone snorts in the darkness behind her. She freezes, listening to the sound of rushes scratching against the floor as he turns over. She waits, breathless, for his snoring to resume. When it does, she feels along the blocks protruding from the indent in the wall, then grimaces at her own obtuseness. It is the stone stairway that leads to the upper rooms.
Not that way! But there is no other escape. The great door is at the other end of the hall; she will not reach it without waking someone. She has failed.
As she climbs the stairs, a terrible foreboding fills her. Stop! She must stop! Yet step by step she advances against her will, fighting the urge to scream—
***
Celeste sat up in her bed gasping for breath. Where was she? She listened intently. Marie’s even breathing was the only sound in the darkness.
The abbey. She let her breath out and breathed again, slowly, to calm the uneasiness that remained. It was only a nightmare. But when she closed her eyes, she saw that stairway in Lord Bernard’s castle. It was real. Something had happened there. Her heart began to pound again.
Had Marie witnessed it? Was that why she was so frightened of Lord Bernard?
Celeste put her hand to her chest. Underneath her thin nightdress she felt the silver cross. She traced it with her finger in the darkness to calm herself, listening to Marie’s soft breathing until both dream and memory faded.
She got out of bed. Bending down, she fetched the chamber pot from under the bed and used it. Deciding not to waken Marie, she opened the door and placed the pot against the wall outside.
The moon was full in the deep night sky. Beyond the cloister, the garden shimmered in its unreal light, a mixture of black silhouettes and eerie, silvery leave
s and blossoms, as beautiful and haunting as a dream. She watched the play of black and silver, breathing in the cool scent of night simmered in moonlight. Standing at the open doorway within the dark shadow of the cloister, she imagined ghosts flitting through such a landscape, and finding death peaceful there. She took a step toward the garden, and another…
The snide “Whoooot, whooot!” of an owl disturbed the night.
Celeste blinked. She leaped backward into her room and closed the door, leaning against it a moment. Awake and asleep she was drawn to… What? What terrible secret hid in the darkness, calling to her? She shook her head. Let it stay forgotten.
Returning to her bed, she lay on her back with her eyes open, shivering in the silvered darkness until she fell asleep. Behind her dreams, a land of silver and black where nothing was real mingled with the memory of sleeping bodies, breathing and shifting around her in the night.
***
Marie entered with her mid-day platter. She placed it on the table and backed away before Celeste approached.
Celeste began to eat, reminding herself to chew and swallow slowly. She was always hungry, then nauseous afterward if she ate too quickly.
Marie watched her silently. “What is the matter?” Celeste demanded, looking up.
Marie looked away and did not answer.
“Marie? What is it?” The child had barely spoken all morning, helping her dress and combing and plaiting her hair in a welcome silence which only now seemed unnatural.
“N-nothing.”
“Look at me.” When the girl at last met her eyes, she said: “Tell me.”
“T-they say you are possessed by a demon. That you caused the fever that killed so many in the village.”
Celeste swallowed the food in her mouth. With deliberate slowness, she took a drink of small ale. “The kitchen servants,” she said scornfully, when she could command her voice. She forced herself to take another bite of bread.
The Sorrow Stone Page 4