Candace Robb - The Nun's Tale

Colin had no time to answer. From behind came the sound of knives and swords being drawn, a hissed command. Alfred and Colin drew their daggers and turned to face the attackers side by side. Colin squinted, trying to make out the wavering shadows. He felt Alfred stiffen, then thrust, heard steel against steel. Alfred shouted, then fell away from Colin. They lost contact.

Colin lashed out at the attackers in front of him. A dagger came close to his face, he parried and heard a grunt. Something fell by his feet. He stepped on it. Another shadow loomed, thrust. Colin felt a searing pain in his left arm. He struck out with his right, found nothing. His invisible assailant got him in the waist. He doubled over, but fought the pain to force himself back upright, only to have his right leg kicked out from under him. He went crashing down backwards on something warm and bony. Alfred, he guessed. Colin twisted himself round so his back would be to the attackers. He did not want someone going for his eyes or his throat. A blow to his head, then his back, left him blind and breathless. He panicked, unable to coordinate the muscles in his throat and chest to gulp in air. Jesu, forgive me my sins, he silently prayed as he passed out.

Lucie tapped her foot as she listened to old John Kendall describe the pains in his joints in minute detail. She had measured out his salves and powders and put them in his hands several limbs ago. But she could not bring herself to be unkind. He had lost his wife and a daughter to the floods last winter and Lucie pitied him.

The shop door’s bell cheered her with the hope of release. . Until she saw who it was: Dame Isobel and a novice who stood meekly in her shadow. It had been one thing to see the prioress at St Mary’s, but Lucie resented yet another interruption in her day and the intrusion into her own house and shop. . Dame Isobel conjured up unhappy memories.

Lucie’s time at St Clement’s had been a purgatory. Her mother had just died, crumbling Lucie’s world round her, and the nuns, reckoning her mother a sinner, had watched Lucie for signs of the Devil’s influence. Isobel de Percy had been one of the most diligent in reporting on Lucie’s missteps.

‘Benedicte, Reverend Mother.’ Lucie did not bother to warm her voice.

Old John Kendall turned and bobbed his head at the prioress and the novice in tow. ‘I will leave you to your business, Mistress Wilton,’ he said to Lucie. ‘May the Lord smile on you for your kindness to a windy old man.’

Lucie blushed as she watched John shuffle out; he must have heard her foot tapping.

Dame Isobel’s pale eyes watched Lucie with an unexpected uncertainty.

‘Dame Joanna should improve with Brother Wulfstan’s ministrations, Reverend Mother.’

‘She already seems calmer, praise God.’ Isobel took a deep breath, glanced back at her companion. ‘Is there a more private place to talk?’

Lucie pressed her hands to her lower back. ‘I must watch the shop. I have sent my serving girl out on errands and I am alone this afternoon.’

Isobel stepped closer, holding out her white, uncalloused hands in entreaty. ‘Forgive me. My troubles consumed your morning, and now I intrude on your work. But I could think of no one else who might be of help. I must convince Dame Joanna to confide in me and she seems determined to tell me nothing. You have a rapport with her. I thought you might advise me. And perhaps if I told you more of her past, you might see something I did not.’

Lucie considered her backache, her plans to tidy up for Owen’s homecoming, Isobel’s past betrayals: all good reasons to bow out of any further involvement. And yet she was curious about Joanna Calverley. . She stepped out from behind the counter. ‘Come. Let us go into the kitchen.’ Lucie nodded to the novice. ‘Make yourself comfortable on the bench. I can hear the shop bell in there. You’ve no need to come get me.’

Lucie and the prioress sat down at a small table by the kitchen window, the shutters open to let in the summery breeze.

‘I understand the archbishop is impatient for answers,’ Lucie prompted.

Isobel folded her hands on the table before her, fixed her eyes on her hands. An oddly meek posture for the prioress. ‘I also wish to know for myself,’ Isobel said. ‘I do care about Joanna. But, yes, Archbishop Thoresby is disappointed with me.’ She glanced up at Lucie, back down at her hands. ‘I bear the guilt of whatever happened to change Joanna so.’

‘She is changed, then?’

Isobel pressed her fingers to her forehead. ‘Oh, yes. The spirit has been leached from her.’

‘What do you think happened to her, Reverend Mother?’

Isobel shook her head.

Lucie stared out at the garden, thinking. ‘They say she stole a relic to pay for the funeral and her escape.’

‘A portion of the Virgin’s milk. She claims that Our Lady saved her so she might return it.’

‘This man to whom she offered the relic in Beverley did not sell it?’

‘No. When he disappeared, Sir Nicholas de Louth searched his house and found it.’

An escape plan gone wrong. Lucie remembered her own unhappy time at St Clement’s, her ever more elaborate plans for escape, never carried out, but comforting. Dame Joanna had planned her flight, planned the theft as her source of money. A practical plan. Not everyone would accept a relic in payment. Only someone who traded in relics or knew of someone who did. So Joanna had planned this with the belief that Will Longford traded in relics, or would know who did. What else could she have been thinking? Such a trader would not have a stall at market. ‘How did Joanna come to know Will Longford?’

Isobel shook her head. ‘As I said, she has told me little.’

The shop bell jingled. Lucie rose. ‘Shall I send in your novice to keep you company while I see to business?’

Isobel shook her head.

Lucie nodded towards a shelf with several jugs. ‘To the right, that is ale. The one beside it is water. Help yourself if you are thirsty.’

The customer was one of Guildmaster Thorpe’s children, come to collect several bedstraw pillows that Lucie had prepared. The baby was colicky and slept poorly. When her warm body heated the herb-stuffed pillow beneath her, the bedstraw would give off a soothing, relaxing honey fragrance and encourage restful sleep.

‘How does your mother?’ Gwen Thorpe had almost died delivering the baby.

Young Margaret smiled. ‘She’s walking about. And this morning she yelled at cook.’

‘And that made you happy?’

‘’Tis the best sign she’s mending right. But she coughs a lot.’

‘Has the Riverwoman been to see her?’

‘Oh, aye.’

Lucie picked up a small pouch and handed it to Margaret with the pillows. ‘I trust the Riverwoman is dosing her for her cough. But these herbs are my special remedy. Tell your mother to steep them in a pot and drink the tisane hot, so she breathes the steam. It will help clear out her chest after lying still so long.’

‘Thank you, Mistress Wilton.’

The novice had fallen asleep on the bench and snored softly. Lucie took a cloak from the kitchen and spread it over the girl.

Isobel wandered about the kitchen, a cup of ale in hand.

‘Tom Merchet’s brew,’ Lucie said from the doorway. ‘You’d travel far to find better. This is nothing like the kitchen at St Clement’s, is it?’

Isobel blushed to have been found so blatantly snooping. ‘I confess my curiosity about the life you’ve led since you left us.’

Lucie thought of the routine of St Clement’s, unvaried from year to year, the same schedule, the same faces, the same walls. ‘I have learned a trade, buried a husband and a baby, married again. It is a varied life.’