Alys Clare - The Chatter of the Maidens

He had followed the line of her glance. He, too, was looking down at his arm. ‘It is healing, Abbess,’ he said. He managed a grin. ‘Only hurts now if I try to throw a punch.’

‘I am quite sure there is no call for that here,’ she said primly. Then, unable to hold back the question any longer: ‘Sir Josse, was Berthe confiding in you just now?’

‘Before we got going on Original Sin, you mean?’ The old humour was back in his eyes.

‘Yes.’

He sighed. ‘Aye, that she was. Not a happy tale, is it?’

‘That’s just it! I don’t know what the tale is, not really.’ She hesitated. Was it right to suggest that a nun had been deliberately misleading her? Not one of her own nuns, perhaps, but, nevertheless, one that Hawkenlye had taken in. .

Making up her mind — this was Josse, her friend! How many times before had she confided in him and been glad of it? — she said, ‘All I know of Sister Alba, Meriel and Berthe is what Alba has told me.’ She kept her eyes steadily on Josse’s. ‘And, although it pains me to say it, I have become increasingly certain that Sister Alba is lying.’

If only, Helewise thought later as she sat alone in her room, unburdening myself to Josse could make my anxieties vanish. But that would not only be a miracle, it would also be unjust, since the anxieties are, after all, my concern.

She sighed. It was strange how, once she had begun on her misgivings about Sister Alba, they had appeared to grow, so that she heard herself voicing concerns which, until then, she had hardly known she was worrying about. Sister Alba was prickly, difficult to work with, extremely pious — and hers was a particularly heartless, unloving, unforgiving sort of piety — and, as if that were not enough, she also threw her weight about and bossed any of the other nuns who would allow it.

What really concerned Helewise was that, despite Alba telling her more than once that she had been a fully professed nun for five years, Helewise just could not bring herself to believe it. All nuns were different, naturally, just as all women were different, but there were certain things — speech mannerisms, small daily habits such as always holding a door open for another sister and checking in the refectory that one’s neighbours had all they needed — that Alba just never did. Also, although it was a minor detail, there was that rope girdle that the woman wore. It was old and grubby, frayed at the ends, and far thicker, longer and heavier than the ones worn by all the other nuns. Did Alba wear it for the same reason that one might wear a hair shirt? Its weight and its length must surely have made it almost as uncomfortable. But that sort of personal, private penance was not normally performed for others to see; was it just another rather unattractive facet of Alba, that she demanded others witness her perpetual discomfort and praise her for it?

And — although Helewise kept this reservation strictly to herself — she could not, try as she did, detect any real and convincing signs of a vocation in Sister Alba. Helewise berated herself constantly over this — only God knew whom He had called and whom He hadn’t, and it was not Helewise’s business to demand proof. But Alba showed no love! No charity! And in church when the nuns lost themselves in their joyful, mystical meditations and prayers, which took them so close to the Lord, Alba usually spent her time glaring around from nun to nun, occasionally nodding her head, as if she were mentally reminding herself who had made this or that mistake or error.

And the product of her observation she would, sooner or later, come along to reveal to her Abbess.

Then there were her two young sisters. Berthe — oh, Berthe! Helewise broke away from her depressing thoughts and let a picture of Berthe — happy, laughing — momentarily cheer her. Yes, Berthe was a delight. It would take a sea change to turn her into postulant material, but then why was that necessary? Plenty of people lived good, satisfying, useful lives without taking the veil.

And, as for Meriel, she certainly was not happy. In fact, she gave every indication of being lost in a grief so deep that it appeared to have all but drowned her. Was she grieving for her mother? More than likely, but if so, why was Berthe not similarly afflicted by sorrow? Something Josse had said had stayed in Helewise’s mind, because it echoed an observation made by two of the other nuns: he had remarked that Berthe seemed to be in some doubt as to when exactly her mother had died.

Alba had told Helewise originally that the sisters had just lost both parents. But Helewise was almost certain now that that had been a lie; it seemed instead that the mother had fallen victim to some mysterious sickness several years ago, and that it was only the father who had recently joined his late wife in death.

Not that it could be important, Helewise thought; the girls were all orphans, no matter when the two parents died. But why lie about it?

And if Meriel was not mourning her mother, for whom was her heart breaking? Not the father, surely — none of the three had been heard to speak of him with affection. They had been in awe of him, obedient to him, afraid of him. But Helewise was quite sure they hadn’t loved him.

Oh, dear. She got up from her throne-like chair and began pacing her room. Soon, the movement began to soothe her. As the turmoil of her thoughts eased and, once again, she felt calm, she reflected that, as usual, it had been a help to talk to Josse.

Not that he had said anything much — poor man, he was still so weak, even conversation seemed to tire him — but, as Helewise was leaving him, he had made the most comforting comment she had heard from anybody on the vexed question of Alba and her sisters.

‘They are still quite new to this community,’ he had said. ‘And, although you and most of your nuns probably do not realise it, Hawkenlye can be somewhat daunting to a newcomer.’ He had smiled briefly, as if remembering his own introduction to Helewise and her nuns. ‘Plus, we must not forget that the girls have just lost their father, and their home, either of which alone would be enough to make a person act a little oddly. Give them time, Abbess. See how another month or so here in your community affects them.’

She had left him then. Had had to, in fact, since the infirmarer had been hovering, muttering about people who stayed too long and tired her patient so that he didn’t want any supper and was too overwrought for a good night’s sleep.

With Josse firmly pictured in her mind’s eye, Helewise prayed that he heartily enjoy both his meal and his sleep.

At the end of April, a sudden warm, dry spell of weather brought a rush of visitors to the Holy Water shrine down in the Vale. The monks who tended the shrine and cared for the pilgrims were kept busy all day and well into the night and, as always happened, soon Brother Firmin requested some reinforcements from the Abbess.

The Abbess, who was well aware that her nuns were just as busy as the monks and the lay brothers in the Vale — and, moreover, that this was a constant state of affairs and not affected by the tide of fair-weather pilgrims — nevertheless did her best to oblige. She begged a nun from the refectory and one from the reformatory, and, since Berthe had no particular duties, asked the girl if she would like to spend a few days helping to look after the visitors. Berthe leapt at the chance.

A short time after Berthe had been despatched with the two nuns, there came a loud knock on the door of Helewise’s room. Before she had finished saying ‘Come in’, the door was thrown open and Sister Alba hurried over the threshold.

‘You’ve sent Berthe to work in the Vale!’ she said. Her voice was raised and her face was flushed.