“Why? Do you want to be like those girls in Hartley Cross, laughing at people behind their backs, never letting anyone else in on the joke?”
I suddenly see Mason with new eyes. “I never would have thought it.”
“What?”
“I always assumed that you were part of that group, like you were sort of…tolerating me.”
He laughs a little too loud.
I nudge him. “Shh! Someone will come!”
“Edyth,” he says more softly, “you and me, we couldn’t be like them if we tried. You’re a wanderer, like me, and you know it. That’s why”—he pauses and takes a breath—“that’s why you should come with me when this is over.”
“When what’s over?”
“When we finish building the chapel.”
All this time, that had never dawned on me. Leaving the priory had never seemed like an option.
“When”—my mouth feels like dust—“when will the chapel be finished?”
“This fall, I reckon. With the lot of us on the crew, it goes fast. The building wasn’t in as bad shape as they let on.”
I hesitate. “That’s soon….I only just started at the scriptorium.” What I don’t want to say is that I can’t imagine leaving there. I love the work, watching stones become pictures.
“Edie, by the time we’d leave, you’d have a fine skill—you could work in any town I do. Scribe work’s always in demand.”
“I have to think about it, Mason. You say I’m a wanderer—I don’t know if that’s true.”
“It’s true enough, isn’t it?” he presses. “A misfit, maybe.”
“Well, I fit there,” I protest. “In the scriptorium.”
Silence hangs in the night air.
“I should get to bed,” I say at last, rising.
“You will think about it, though?” He takes hold of my hand and kisses it. “Coming with me?”
“I will,” I promise. Conflicted as I am, I lean over and kiss his soft lips.
“That’s all I ask,” says Mason. “Good night, Edyth.”
As I gingerly round the corner, I hear the gravel crunch on the other side of the chapel, and I press myself into the side of the building until I see who it is. It’s hard to tell, but as the veiled figure gets closer, I can make out mutterings, as though the person is having a conversation with an invisible partner.
The Dragon Nun. Felisia.
My heart pounds in my throat. Felisia has no discretion whatsoever. If she sees me, my secret is out. But what is she doing out here herself? Everyone’s supposed to be in bed.
Mason comes around the building and passes right by me on his way to the stonemasons’ shed. He almost bumps into Felisia, and she gives a little shriek.
“God be with you, sister. Should you be out like this in the dark?”
“Thank you, sir,” she fumbles. “I came out to…look at the moon….”
“That’s all right,” Mason laughs. “I won’t give you any trouble. Night, then.”
“Good night,” she says, sounding faraway and strange. I hear Mason go into the stonemasons’ shed and shut the creaky wooden door, so I finally emerge from the shadows.
But the Dragon Nun is still standing in the path, looking at the moon, and as I step out, our eyes meet. She stares at me and breaks into a slow grin, then continues on her way to wherever she was going.
— 14 —
Weeks of our Sunday night meetings have passed, and Mason hasn’t pressed me for an answer again. I guess it’s because growing season’s under way, and all hands are required for haying and planting, weeding and watering. Sunup to sundown, there’s no time for leisure or thoughts of a future beyond harvest. Even work at the scriptorium has to slow down—you’ve got to think of winter in summer, summer in winter, if you don’t want to starve.
Out through the rear gate, arm in arm, Alice and I almost skip with gratitude for the freedom. The woods rising at the edge of the open fields tantalize me with their cool darkness, the hot breeze waving the treetops like a thousand beckoning hands.
As frigid as winter was, summer’s already every bit as unrelenting. I get to wear Mam’s weld-green linen dress and a straw hat without a veil, without even the linen coif—and I don’t have to wear hose under my gown. Bare feet, clean sweat—and seeing Mason there across the field makes me feel my body moving inside my clothes. At home, I would work in nothing but my linen tunic, as long as I had an apron over it. But this is as much of a concession to the heat as modesty will allow, so says Agnes de Guile.
Lately the sub-prioress has been stern with me, short-tempered with my mistakes, dropping cutting little remarks about my family, my poverty, the compromsies made to allow me here. I can’t help but wonder about Felisia and that night near Easter. She must have known I was with Mason, but maybe she hasn’t said anything about it. Still, the change in Agnes has me thinking that either it’s about Mason or she’s gotten wind of my trance in the scriptorium.
“She’s not supposed to treat you that way,” Alice says, rebraiding her hair.
“What way?” I shrug and keep on raking. “I’m not a nun. I can’t expect to be treated like one.”
“Why, because you’re poor? The Rule says that you’re not supposed to show favoritism to anyone because of their estate. It’s supposed to be different here.”
“It only says that the abbot or prioress can’t play favorites.”
“Right,” chides Alice, like a teacher. “So I guess if you’re not officially running things, you get a pass? Because she’s not prioress?”
“Yet,” we say together.
“You’d think—we spend all day and night praying, studying the Rule…” I ponder. “And she’s the one teaching everyone. I guess I assumed people got better as they got older.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” says Bridgit, tying a bundle from the hay we’ve just gathered. Her strong forearms protrude from the sleeves of her wheat-colored linen gown. “People simply get more concentrated, like boiling down a sauce.”
Alice and I both laugh.
“You’re lucky, though, being young,” says Bridgit. “If you put the right ingredients in the sauce now, you’ll thicken properly. And the most important ingredient is forgiveness.”