Alys Clare - Fortune Like the Moon

Josse caught her eye. She knew what he was going to say before he said it. ‘It sounds a relatively undemanding life, compared with that of your sisters,’ he remarked.

He had picked up what she had tried so hard to ensure that he didn’t. I must, she told herself sternly, be even more careful not to allow my resentments to show. ‘The monks work devotedly,’ she said, filling the words with sincerity.

He was still watching her, and the brown eyes held a certain compassion. ‘I don’t doubt it.’

There was a moment of silence, during which Helewise felt the very beginning of a sympathy between them.

Then Josse d’Acquin said, ‘You have, Abbess, given me a most clear picture of life at Hawkenlye Abbey. I think, now, that I am ready to ask again if you would tell me what you can of Gunnora’s final hours here.’

Helewise sat back in her chair, and, after a moment to collect her thoughts, turned her mind back to that day, remarkable, surely, because, although it had been Gunnora’s last on earth and the precursor to that terrible death, yet it had been so very un- remarkable.

‘Gunnora had, as I believe I told you, been with us not quite a year,’ she began. ‘This means that she was still a novice. During a sister’s first year, we prefer her to spend more time at her devotions than engaging in the practical work of the sisterhood — it is important, we feel, to ensure that our nuns are firmly secure in the spiritual life of the community. Trials and rigours lie before them, and we wish to armour them for the test by helping them to become safe in the Lord.’

‘I understand,’ Josse said. ‘It sounds very wise. Besides, a year is not long.’

‘Indeed not. There is much for a novice to learn.’

He twisted on his flimsy seat, making as if to cross his long legs; again, she had a sudden vivid impression of energy kept under strict control. The stool gave a squeak of protest, and Josse arrested the movement, slowly and carefully replacing his foot on the floor. Bringing her mind back — not without difficulty — to the matter under discussion, she heard him say, ‘You also commented earlier that Gunnora wasn’t really suited to convent life,’ he said. ‘Could you elaborate?’

‘I did not mean to sound judgemental,’ Helewise said quickly. Dear Lord, but she had. ‘Only it seemed to me that Gunnora struggled more than most with the tenets of a nun’s life.’ He was still wearing his enquiring expression. ‘Poverty, obedience, chastity,’ she said. ‘Different sisters have difficulty with each of those three. Young women who come to us in their late teens and early twenties have to fight a natural inclination towards the strong demands of the flesh, and older women who enter the Order after a life as a wealthy man’s wife find it very hard to sleep on a plank bed and wear the plain black habit. Many, if not all, of us find constant and total unquestioning obedience a heavy cross to carry.’ She paused. ‘Gunnora, God rest her soul, while not, I think, having problems with chastity, never ceased to fight poverty and obedience. So consistent were her infringements against the Rule that I find it virtually impossible to say with any honesty that she had made much progress in a twelvemonth.’ She met Josse’s eye. ‘Soon she should have been taking the first of her final vows. I was not going to permit it, sir. I was going to tell her, as gently as I could, that I did not consider her ready.’ Again, she hesitated. Would it be disloyal to go on? But then Gunnora was dead. And, to find out the why and the how, this man needed to know the whole truth. She added softly, ‘And that, in my view, she never would be.’

He accepted that without comment. But she knew he had heard, knew he had understood the significance. His contemplative silence went on for several moments, then he said, ‘And that last day, presumably, had its share of infringements?’

‘Presumably, although they would not necessarily all have come to my notice straightaway, unless I happened to observe them. Gunnora was present at each Divine Office, outwardly one of the community, yet, as ever, giving that sense, that strong sense, that her thoughts were elsewhere.’ She leaned towards him, trying to put across what she had perceived of Gunnora in terms that would have meaning for one who had not known the girl. ‘Sir, she was here at her own wish, yet always you felt she considered she was imparting a great gift by favouring us with her presence. When things went well with her — and it would be wrong to suggest they never did — she would adopt a particular expression. A sort of superior smile, as if she were saying, there, I can do it if I so choose. And, if one of the senior sisters uttered even so much as a mild reproof, Gunnora would receive it with a face cut out of stone. There was clear resentment in her very immobility.’

Josse nodded. ‘Aye. What in a soldier would be called dumb insubordination.’

‘Yes!’ The phrase fitted perfectly.

‘She had few friends, I believe you said?’

‘I did, although in truth the concept of friends is not one we recognise here. Partiuclar associations are discouraged, since it is too easy for a group of two or three close friends to exclude others, ignore the social needs of less outgoing sisters. However, what you say is right in essence. Gunnora was rarely sought out in recreation, rarely the first one to be chosen if a sister required a companion for an excursion outside the Abbey. Until shortly before her death, I would have judged that she spent most of her time in the secrecy of her own thoughts, and that it was precisely where she preferred to be.’

‘What happened to change that?’ Josse prompted.

‘The arrival of a new postulant. She and Gunnora took to each other, although it seems hard to imagine why, when they were so different. Elvera is a lively young woman, and I am at present entertaining doubts as to whether what she has is truly a call from God, or a romantic notion that she cuts a dashing figure in a habit, administering holy water to the grateful sick.’ She met Josse’s eye, echoing his smile. ‘It happens, sir. Out of the many girls and women who ask for admittance each year, at least a quarter eventually decide that the call existed only in their imagination.’

‘What do you do with them?’ He sounded genuinely interested. If, as seemed likely, he had been in command of men, then it followed that he would be interested in such delicate matters of administration.

‘Everyone who comes knocking on the door is allowed entry, but at first all we undertake is to admit them for a trial period of six weeks, during which they are free to leave at any time. With the totally unsuitable, it usually takes no more than a fortnight. When the six weeks are up, those still with us are admitted as postulants, and their training as nuns begins. Six months later, they take a simplified form of the vows and become novices. If, after a year, all has gone well, they then take the first of their permanent vows.’

‘And how long, Abbess, do you give this Elvera?’

She permitted herself a brief laugh. ‘She may not even last the day.’

‘Don’t allow her to go till I’ve spoken to her,’ he said quickly. ‘If that’s allowed?’

‘Yes.’ She did not think she needed to ask him why he wanted to talk to Elvera; he would no doubt tell her.

She was right.

‘They were friends, you say, these two?’ She nodded. ‘So, a woman who had been quite content with her own company for nearly a twelvemonth suddenly becomes close to an apparently quite unsuitable new arrival. How new was she?’

‘She has been here almost a month. She and Gunnora had known each other a little over a week.’

‘Brief, for the birth of such an unlikely liaison.’