Candace Robb - The Nun's Tale

‘I noticed you pressing your hand to your lower back. Are you with child?’

Lucie had not thought Isobel so observant. ‘I did not know it showed much yet. I have four months to go.’

Isobel smiled. ‘Your apron hides much, but some gestures are unmistakable. I shall pray for your safe delivery of a healthy child.’

‘I can use your prayers.’

Isobel gestured round the room. ‘You keep a tidy kitchen, well-stocked with herbs.’

‘The tidiness is thanks to Tildy, my serving girl. The herbs come from our garden. What we do not use in the shop, we use in our food.’ Lucie looked with satisfaction round the room, heavy oak beams, trestle table and chairs also of sturdy oak, well-scrubbed hearthstones in a fireplace with chimney. ‘My first husband’s father rebuilt this part of the house. It is a comfortable room, even in midwinter, with the smoke going up the chimney.’

‘You have a good life, Lucie Wilton.’

Lucie sat down beside Isobel. ‘You did not come here to rediscover me, Reverend Mother.’

Isobel pressed her lips together, then relaxed them with a sigh. ‘In truth, I am not certain what I am asking of you. I hoped you would help me choose the right questions for Joanna. Find out what is in her heart.’ Isobel closed her eyes. ‘I admit that I do fear what might be there. I always have.’

An interesting confession. ‘She was troubling before she left?’

Isobel fixed her pale eyes on Lucie. ‘Joanna has walked in her sleep ever since she came to St Clement’s. Walks and silently weeps. It is frightening to come upon a sleepwalker in the dark — silent, staring at something you cannot see. All of the sisters find it unsettling.’ Isobel dabbed her upper lip with a delicately embroidered linen square.

Lucie remembered her own trouble over much simpler vanities. ‘Tell me about Joanna before she left.’

‘We were much disturbed with her penances.’

‘Was that not a matter to take up with her confessor?’

‘These were — I do not know what to call them. She claimed to have visions in which she was assigned the penances. Or were they self-imposed? I was never able to judge.’

‘What sort of penances?’

‘She would force herself to stay awake, night after night, until she fainted with exhaustion; she would chant until she had no voice left; once she lay down to sleep at night in the snow — she lost a toe.’

Frostbite. How innocent that had sounded. Yet true.

Dame Isobel shook her head. ‘If it were not for Dame Alice’s watchfulness, we would have lost Joanna that time.’

Lucie, remembering how small the nunnery had seemed, how a sound could travel the corridors, how eyes had followed her everywhere, could imagine how disquieting such behaviour would be. ‘Joanna would indeed be a troubling presence as you describe her. For what was she doing penance before her escape?’

‘She said she had dreams. Sinful dreams.’ Isobel blushed.

Lucie bit back a smile. ‘Did she describe these dreams?’

Isobel bowed her head. ‘No. Not directly. But — well, she came to me on several occasions to speak of visions of a heavenly lover, one who would possess her, burn away her sins with the passion of divine love and purify her.’ The prioress glanced up, then back down at her hands.

Lucie raised an eyebrow. ‘You have been reading the mystics in refectory?’

Isobel met Lucie’s gaze, raised her hands, palms up. ‘It was ill-advised, I see that now. But some of the sisters found it inspiring, so from time to time I allowed it. I am afraid the allegory confused Joanna. She was such an innocent.’

Lucie wondered whether Isobel knew how innocent she herself sounded. ‘Do you think she ran off to find such a lover, not realising the mystics spoke of God?’

‘I think it very likely.’

‘You blame yourself.’

‘I do.’

They were both quiet for a while. Dame Isobel daintily sipped her ale.

Lucie broke the thoughtful silence. ‘Did Joanna seem secretive last spring? As if she were planning an escape?’

Isobel closed her eyes, her pale lashes almost invisible against her round cheeks. She sighed, as if the subject of Joanna wearied her. ‘Afterwards, I recognised the signs. She sought solitude even more than had been her custom. She paced the orchard — back and forth, back and forth, like an animal in a cage. But she performed her duties and prayed with us.’

‘If she ran off to a lover, where would she have met him? When?’

‘That is what I cannot imagine.’

‘Did she have a confidante at St Clement’s? A particular friend?’

Isobel shook her head.

‘A sadly solitary woman.’

Isobel pursed her lips. ‘A difficult woman.’

Lucie frowned at that. ‘More difficult than I was?’

Isobel had the courtesy to blush. ‘You did not take vows. You had not asked to come to St Clement’s.’

‘Joanna had claimed a vocation?’

‘In truth, I believe she pretended a vocation to escape her betrothed.’

‘Ah.’ Lucie nodded. ‘Trapped by her own craft.’ She thought a moment. ‘So she had no friends, and there was no hue and cry when she disappeared?’

‘I covered her absence with a lie. I told the sisters that she had gone home to regain her health.’ Isobel looked embarrassed. ‘I, too, was trapped by my cleverness. But worse than that. Had I told Archbishop Thoresby immediately, Joanna might have been found before. . before whatever happened to her.’

Lucie leaned forward. ‘It was inevitable that you would be discovered. Her family would come to visit. .’

Isobel shook her head. ‘The Calverleys never came to see her.’

‘Never?’

‘Her family disowned her. When she came to St Clement’s she was more than symbolically dead to them.’

‘They paid you handsomely for that?’

Isobel nodded.

‘Still, eventually someone would have asked where Joanna was. She could not stay away for her health for ever. How did you intend to handle the questions then?’

‘I planned to tell them she had been released from her vows because of her illness.’

‘And what if her family had suddenly reconsidered and come to visit?’

Sweat glistened on the prioress’s face. ‘I would have told them she was dead.’

‘You were weaving yourself some difficult lies.’

‘Yes.’

‘To have it out in the open must feel like a chance at redemption.’

Isobel looked away. ‘Perhaps it would be, if His Grace were not so angry.’

‘Yes. Back to that. How to proceed with Joanna.’ Lucie bit her lip. ‘She must believe that you are worried about her. You must not sound like an inquisitor. Be patient. Talk with her. Tell her something of yourself.’ Lucie rubbed her back, stood up. ‘I shall think about what you have told me.’

Isobel rose, too. ‘You have been very kind. God bless you.’

As Owen passed through Micklegate Bar, he bade farewell to the fresh country air. The scent of forest and farmland gave way to the layered stench of the city — the mounds of composting manure on Toft Green, the sweat, smoke and onion of fellow travellers crowding through the Bar to market, the rotten fruit and spoiled eggs at the base of the pillory in the yard of Holy Trinity, the ammonia perfume of his own sweating horse, now that he must walk beside it, and, as he approached Ouse Bridge, the pungent scent of the fishmongers, all intensified by the strong midday sun. And flies everywhere. Only Lucie could lure Owen back to this city. But lure him she did; he could not wait to put his arms around her.

Gaspare nudged him. ‘You’re thinking of your lady love, I can tell by the smile. Guilty pleasures.’