No answer. Not a turn of my head. Silence.
Forty-two bunches of herbs hanging up. Three insects trapped in that chunk of amber.
“I can tell most things without words, dear. Skin around the lash marks is like silk. The only rough thing about you is your hands.” Joan unlocks a cabinet and hands me an amber jar. “Have Alice put this on the wounds twice a day until they’re gone. You don’t need much—a drop at a time. Return the jar when you’re done with it.”
I take the top off of the jar and smell the salve, a burst of warm yellow, the scent going through me, already healing me from the inside, stilling the need to count the contents of the room.
Joan confines me to my cell under cover of a bad cold. I overhear her whisper to Alice. “Agnes—that woman,” she huffs. “It’s time for Mother Margaret to come home.”
When Alice escorts me to my cell, it’s been wiped down, but the ghosts of my drawings remain. All I can think of is drawing, and color, and drawing and color, and another tremble begins—but this time, it’s resolve. Agnes can beat me, but as soon as I get the strength to lift my arms, I’m going to do it all again.
— 20 —
The rest and quiet are just what I need to really think about all that’s happened to me. My back heals enough in a few days that I can move without my clothes torturing me. I’m still stunned and jumpy and can’t say much more than yes and no. Even the sound of my own voice is abrasive. But defiance grows like a seed within me. This is the last day before I go back to my duties, and I don’t know how, but something is changing. I feel it.
While everyone else is in the refectory for supper, Alice brings me a simple meal in my cell. I’m not hungry. I sit on the bed, turning the little stone house over in my hand. She tells me the latest news as she applies the salve to my back.
“I’m to give my first teaching at chapter soon,” she says. “I can recite it for you if you want.”
I’m not really listening. “Do you think Mason knows?” I ask blankly. “About the beating?”
“I don’t know. I can try to find out, get him a message,” Alice suggests, “but probably best to keep your distance until things feel normal ag—”
“Did you ever feel like you’re part of something bigger, Alice?” I interrupt her. “First Mason shows up here, then I see that window with my dream in it. I can’t explain it, but I feel it, like something’s unfolding itself to me.”
She’s taken aback at my vehemence. “I’ve always known what I wanted, since I was a little girl. There’s not a doubt in my mind that I’m where I’m supposed to be, whether I’m part of something bigger or not.”
“I’ve never had that certainty a day in my life. But I’m beginning to. And Agnes can’t stop me figuring it out.”
Alice changes the subject. “Why don’t I see if I can get you some scraps of parchment to draw on? Who knows, if you’re more careful, maybe the scribes will put in a good word and you’ll be allowed to work in the scriptorium again.”
I nod and smile. She gives me a cautious embrace and leaves me.
My confinement nearing its end, I go out the rear entrance of the dormitory and head toward the chapel. I’m not sure I want to see Mason after he didn’t even try to get word to me. But there he is, standing in the doorway, his figure sculpted by the fading afternoon light.
“Edyth!” Mason whispers. “Come inside?”
And should I? I stand stock-still, staring at him. Saint John’s Eve seems so long ago. For a few days, I was mad at myself. Now I resent him. For getting my hopes up about leaving, then never mentioning it again. For leading me on in the firelight, then ditching me in the morning. For not fighting for me when I needed him. Still, something makes me step over the threshold into Saint Eustace’s chapel for the first time.
I’ve never been inside an unfinished church before, and its roughness takes me by surprise. It’s far bigger than Saint Andrew’s, but not majestic like the priory church, either—more like a lord’s hall than a sanctuary. A thick coating of stone dust lifts from the floor and floats in the air. Wooden scaffolding lines the walls, and rafters await a covering. Shapes are drawn on the floor, and cubes of dressed stone lie waiting to be placed.
He points out the chapel’s features. “There’ll be arches to match the priory church. And stained glass, and a roof, of course,” he chuckles.
We sit on the steps of the chancel, neither of us knowing where to begin. “Alice came to see me,” he says at last. His voice is halting. “But I already knew—I saw you when you came out of the goat barn. It was hard to miss…the blood, you know…coming through your dress.”
I grind a little pile of dust under my shoe. “You knew.” He doesn’t say anything, and I clench my jaw. “And you didn’t try to get a message to me? Nothing?”
He looks genuinely surprised. “I was trying to protect you.”
“Protect me? You left me there in the field, Mason. I woke up with Agnes standing over me. And you forgot your damn hood.”
“What was I supposed to do?” he protests. “Wake up there with you? Wouldn’t it have been a lot worse if we had both been found in the morning?”
“You don’t protect someone by abandoning them,” I chide. “You could have woken me up so I could go back to my cell. You could’ve spoken up for me when you knew I got beaten for a drawing. Asked how I was. Anything.”
“I really thought if I stayed away—”
“Mason, one minute you say you’re going to break me out of here, then you completely drop the subject. What is it that you really want?”
“I didn’t want to pressure you. And I hoped the answer would be yes, anyway.”
“But you can’t assume that, because the fact is, aside from what’s going on with the sub-prioress, I actually like it here. Being assigned to the scriptorium was the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and I’ve lost that. Now? If I breathe sideways or, God forbid, I shit at the wrong time of day, I’ll be punished. I’m trying to make it work here and I can’t risk it all on a fantasy. What if I get kicked out because you can’t make up your mind? I don’t have other options. I’m here on Henry’s arrangement. I doubt he can find me a better one.”
“Edyth,” he sighs, “I have to tell you something.”
“What now?”
“It’s about Henry. Remember when you asked me for news from home? I didn’t tell you everything. I couldn’t. But I have to now. Henry’s…gone.”