My eyes have been clenched so tight, I can barely open them, but I stare her right in the face.
“Thank you for the privilege,” I sneer.
She looks me up and down for a moment—and then strikes my jaw so hard, it’s an explosion of violets as I fall into the hay.
* * *
—
When Mason finds me later, the bell is ringing for some middle-of-the-night office. I know my face looks bad, straw adhered to my skin and my tongue swollen in my mouth. Mason lifts me up from the floor and throws my arm over his shoulder. He helps me walk toward the chapel, but I don’t want to go there. I just want to be alone, alone. As he fumbles with the door, I want to punch the stone wall in front of me, but know I’ll regret it.
So I run.
I break away from Mason and throw open the calefactory door. The still air on top of my red anger makes me sweat instantly. I push along the wall of the spiral staircase, propelling myself faster to my cell, tears mingling with perspiration, trying not to swoon. The second bell rings, but I don’t care if I miss prayer, even if I’m beaten for it again. I don’t care.
I slam the door to my cell, and Henry’s clay honey pot wobbles and spills water and field flowers across the desk. I rip off my veil; I hurl my shoes at the wall and roar.
Off comes this damned dress.
I tear my hair out of its braids.
I stand wild-haired in my linen tunic and throw myself, sobbing, against the stone wall.
Nothing is opening itself up to me. Nothing is in my control.
Back in my old life, I could talk to people who knew me. I could come and go as I pleased, in and out of the sheepfold, dance around the maypole with whoever I liked. I could pick pears and put a flower behind my ear or weave a whole crown of them and wear it all day. But in this priory, a world away from Hartley Cross, it’s different—what it means to be a peasant’s daughter, with a peasant’s choices.
— 30 —
Five sisters are missing from chapter Monday, and everyone’s restless. I show the prioress the wax tablet with the list of announcements. She tries to get through them, but her focus is wavering. She looks utterly exhausted.
“Why don’t you sit, Mother?” I whisper, easing her into her chair.
“Thank you, daughter,” she responds, weakly placing a hand on my bruised and lacerated jaw. I’ve put on a wimple to try to mask it, but it’s obvious. Should I tell her, in her weakened state, what happened to me? Something tells me she’s already guessed.
Prioress Margaret struggles through the agenda.
“Lastly,” she concludes, “Agnes de Guile has something to say to us.” She waves a hand at her sub-prioress. “Go ahead, sister.”
Agnes rises and stands in the center of the room, surrounded by column capitals full of grotesque creatures, their eyes rolling and tongues sticking out. She takes her time before speaking, looking around the room at each sister, magnifying them like a scribe’s water flask.
“Let us give thanks that our beloved prioress is feeling well enough to join us today.”
“Amen,” Bridgit chimes in, loudly.
“Sisters, in this confusing time, we must look for tokens of clarity,” she continues. “And we have been shown mercy by the provision of two holy offices. First, the revealing of our prophetess, who sits among us even now, enduring terrifying visions on our behalf.” She gestures grandly toward Felisia, who, plucked from her nest in the sanctuary, sits backward on the bench, staring at the wall and moving her lips soundlessly. I glance at the prioress, but she’s just trying hard to sit up straight. Agnes continues.
“Second, in this very priory, we are favored to be taking on an anchorite.”
There was an anchorite back home, on the road from Hartley Cross to Saint Gabriel’s Abbey. He lived alone in a roadside chapel, in a room with no doors, only a window where travelers passed food in, and a muddy hole where he dumped out his chamber pot. No companions, no sunshine. The very image makes it hard to breathe. Who would want to do that here?
“We will celebrate Mass for her today: our very own Alice Palmer.”
“Alice?” the Pri asks, incredulous. Suddenly she leans forward in her chair, seized by a pain in her side. This can’t be right. My head’s all in a muddle—I jump up to help the prioress, but I want to run and find Alice.
No one can stay quiet. The budding preacher? The promising scholar? The girl who’d rather live on gossip than food? Why would she shut herself away?
“Alice has had an epiphany,” says Agnes, ignoring the prioress. “Her life’s calling is to pray for our community and for an end to this pestilence.”
“Where is she?” says the prioress.
“She is even now keeping vigil in prayer. We are grateful for such a sacrifice. Someone of her talents, my, my.”
Joan approaches Agnes and whispers against the din. “Sub-Prioress, you must be mistaken. My apprentice would have told me about—”
“Come to order, please,” Agnes interrupts her, putting an arm around Joan. “Our most learned physician is only beginning to understand why this sickness has come to us. She does not have the deeper insight given to those of us who attend exclusively to prayer; she can only consider the heavens, as the psalmist says.”
Joan sets her jaw and shrugs off Agnes’s arm. “I’ve taken holy orders, same as you,” says Joan. “Committed my path to the service of the Great Physician Himself, and studied in Salerno. Spare me your sermon, Sub-Prioress.” She walks back to her bench, staring intently at Agnes as she sits.
“That is good enough in its way,” Agnes continues, “but Alice will be doing the greater part by devoting her life to solitary prayer. You wouldn’t deter your apprentice from her true calling, would you, Sister Joan?
“And let us look more closely at this illness, sisters, at how violent its end. The afflicted do not die peacefully in their beds, nor can they in any way be comforted, but are in wide-eyed horror to the last. Sin and compromise are in our midst. Remember—a bad end is a judgment!”
Several of the eldest sisters murmur—their ends are near, no matter what the cause.
“Sub-Prioress,” Joan protests, “our priory has always been a place for the sick. That is who we are. We don’t judge whether the patient is a sinner or saint—we treat them, like we would God Himself.”
“What do you propose, Sister Joan?” asks the prioress, bracing herself, at that moment, against some unbearable pain. Instead of answering, Joan and I run to her side and help her to stand. Agnes nods permission for us to leave.