“Do you know how good a pomegranate tastes, Edyth?” says the dying woman. “Have you ever seen one?”
“No, Mother, only in paintings.”
The prioress falls into a fit of coughing. I immediately hold the rag to her mouth until it subsides.
“I used to have lots of them when I was a child,” she continues. “I could pluck one up from the bowl whenever I wanted, break it open, roll the seeds out to stain my fingers like blood and run after my little brother as though I was a murderer. He would shriek and hide behind my mother, and I would pop the seeds in my mouth and feign total ignorance.”
The prioress chuckles and forgets her pain for a moment. But she grows quiet again.
“I know nothing of games and intrigue beyond that, Edyth. I wasn’t always locked up here in this place, you know. It wasn’t my first choice, just like it wasn’t yours. I was destined to be a noble lady. I was one, long ago. I had children, a husband. I had long, golden hair,” she says, reaching up and picking at the scraggly white ends.
“I think you’re beautiful,” I say. “Like my own mam.”
“But I found myself alone, like you, Edyth. And then I, too, heard a call to be part of something bigger than I could have dreamed. Something far more ancient than simply being the leader of this great priory. No—what some call power is nothing more than a cheap bauble. It had to unfold like this, and I could not interfere. Mine was simply the call to clear the path. For you.”
The prioress beckons me closer, and I lean in. She looks acutely at me, her eyes losing their blue intensity.
“I’ve heard about what’s going on in the church,” she says. “We are infected with much more than pestilence. Don’t believe those fools. They’ll beat themselves right into hell. But what good is that? Look up instead, and follow the call to the most excellent way.”
Her voice rattles.
“The world is about to be shipwrecked, Edyth. Be strong. Trust your vision.”
She braces herself hard against me and closes her eyes. All the air rushes from her lungs, and she is gone.
* * *
—
At dawn, Mason digs the prioress’s grave under the yew in the churchyard, in a plot chosen years before when she made her final vows, lying on the cold stone before the altar, marrying herself to death and love.
Joan leads the office for the dead, with the infirmary nuns and pilgrims assembled. As we part, she calls me aside and presses something into my hand. It’s Prioress Margaret’s seal. Her name has been burnished out. And on it is inscribed a new name.
— 43 —
There’s one last pilgrim needing the water before Mason and I attempt to bring it to the church. In this cell lies another of the whippers, delirious, pleading for clemency. I slide my arm under his neck, lift the cup to his lips and recite—
O omnes sitientes, venite ad aquas
—just as a heavy fist pounds on the door, startling me into spilling the water down his neck.
Joan keeps working, stirring the juniper tar over a brazier. “No more pilgrims,” she grouses. “Please, Lord, have mercy.”
Mason opens the door, and before he can stop her, Agnes de Guile stumbles in, bedraggled and soaking, her hands black, her neck covered in sores.
Joan steps out from behind the table, shocked to see her. “Agnes.” Her address is firm but soothing.
“I hear Margaret suffers no more,” she says calmly, holding out her hand, as though expecting Joan to kiss her ring. “I am happy to assume my office as prioress.”
Joan’s face is a mixture of disgust and pity. “Agnes, you’re dying. Come, take a bed. I don’t think you’ll be assuming any office today.”
“No one has cared for Saint Christopher’s like I have,” she rambles. “Margaret could not steer the ship.”
I can’t hold my peace. “Is that why you poisoned her?”
“Poison?” says Agnes, seeming genuinely surprised, her voice even and soft. “Did someone poison the prioress? Is this true, Joan? Let that person be cursed!”
Is she lying? Or delirious? Can it be that she doesn’t remember her own crime?
“God help her,” Joan says, bewildered. “Agnes, look at you. You are about to succumb to the Judgment yourself. There’s still time to repent. Here—take the waters.” She procures a cup for Agnes and reaches out to give it to her. Agnes looks at it with disgust, and her tone changes completely.
“You might want to think about repenting, yourself,” she hisses, her yellow tooth flashing. “And everyone else in here with you.”
Agnes throws open the doors. A throng of men and women wait for her, flailing their backs and howling. She leads them away to the church.
“That’s it, Mason,” I say. “It’s time!” I head toward the rear door of the infirmary.
“What about the water?” he calls.
“Not the water. Hammers. We’re breaking Alice out now.”
* * *
—
In the chapel, I grab two of his smaller hammers, and Mason shoulders his tool satchel and another full-sized sledge.
We crash through the church door and are immediately confronted with the odor of old death. This beautiful sanctuary is completely defiled. The floor is smeared and puddled with congealed blood. Benches are overturned. Nuns and whippers shout frenzied prayers. Rats scurry across the sanctuary, right at the feet of Agnes, who has slumped herself onto the prioress’s oaken throne.
“What do you have to say for yourself, demon?” demands Agnes, wild-eyed and frothing at me. “What kind of sorcery were you working on those pilgrims?”
I stand silent in the doorway, and she rushes at me, undaunted by the two heavy hammers I carry, and strikes me on the mouth. “Answer me!” she yells.
I don’t care. There is only one thing to be done.
I push past Agnes into the ambulatory, raise my hammer and smash it into the wall of Alice’s enclosure. She screams.
“Stand back, Alice,” Mason calls, not stopping his swing, “we’re breaking you out of there!” No one dares come near us as we beat at the stone. Many of the whippers scatter, spilling out of the doors in terror.
“Is anyone with you?” Alice shouts. “Edyth?”
“I’m here, Alice. It’s over. Everything’s over.” My face reddens and I rage against the wall, completely enveloped in the fire of my anger. The stone cracks and begins to crumble down, dust mixing with blood on the floor, on our scratched hands.