Candace Robb: The Fire In The Flint

Though it was close to midnight, twilight glimmered on the water meadow between Elcho Nunnery and the River Tay. Night creatures croaked and called in the background, and ahead the waters of the Tay and the Willowgate roiled and splashed as they joined at the bend beneath Friarton Island. Christiana’s bare feet cracked the brittle crust of the soil dried by the summer drought. With her next step, her right foot sank to the ankle bone in saturated ground. With a shiver of loathing, she freed herself. For the twenty-three years of her marriage she had lived just upstream in Perth, and in all that time she had remained unreconciled with this marshy land. She had grown up amidst mountains, lochs, and the high banks of the Tay upriver. She missed the sharp, fresh air and the land always solid beneath her feet. Here the fields along the river were unpredictable, sometimes more water than land, changing with the weather, as uncanny as her mind.

Terror had awakened her. She had fled her chamber in the nunnery guest house, sensing an intruder, a feeling so strong she had thought she heard his breath, breath which she still felt at the nape of her neck. Fear had squeezed her heart and compelled her to run. Now on the marshy ground she slowed down, though still hardly daring to breathe. She glanced back over her shoulder in dread, but although the July night was light enough that she might have seen any movement, she saw no one. Gradually, as the chill of her wet feet drove away any remnant of sleep, she remembered that her handmaid had not stirred on her cot at the foot of the bed. The intruder had not been a fleshly presence then, but a vision.

Christiana struggled to reconstruct the confusing face. It had seemed that as the man turned his features shifted, changing so quickly it was as if his face were drawn in oil and his movement stirred the lines. It was too fluid to know whether any part of it was familiar. Or perhaps he’d worn many faces overlaying one another. She could not recall precisely where in the dim room she had seen him as she woke and rose breathless.

On the river bank she stopped and tried to calm herself by listening to the water and imagining it washing away the residue of fear. But her attention was drawn across the river to the cliff overhanging the opposite bank. In the midnight sun someone standing at the edge would be able to see her. She felt too vulnerable for calm.

Her mind eased a little when she remembered that the sisters would soon awaken to sing the night office; then she might seek sanctuary in the kirk. Turning her back on the disturbing cliff, she was puzzled to see lights multiplying in the priory buildings, flickering as the candle- and lamp-carriers moved in and out of the window openings and doorways. They were moving across the yard, not in the direction of the kirk but the guest house whence she had fled.

Perhaps they had been awakened by the intruder she had foreseen. She must go back, she might be able to help — why else would God have warned her? As she walked towards the nunnery she heard women’s cries and the authoritative barks of the prioress. The voices drowned out the river’s quiet song. She called out to the lay servant guarding the nunnery gate, and two sisters ran out to her, one with a lantern swinging so wildly beside her that Christiana had to shield her eyes against the dizzying dance of light.

‘Dame Christiana! We feared you had been taken!’

‘Are you injured?’ the other asked.

‘Your handmaid cannot be consoled, fearful you’re dead,’ said the first.

Christiana could not bear the dancing light. ‘Steady the lantern, I beg you.’

The sister complied, and Christiana was now able to focus on the two who seemed to speak as one. ‘As you see, I am neither dead nor injured, thanks be to God. Is the intruder still in the grounds?’

‘You knew about them?’

‘Them,’ Christiana said. So there had been more than one. She had not the energy to explain. ‘Forgive me, but I must see my chamber.’ She pushed through milling servants and sisters and into the guest-house garden, which looked trampled in the moonlight. Two voices came from the opened door, one reassuring, one pitched high with emotion. Christiana stepped over the threshold.

Dame Katrina, the elderly hosteleress, sat holding a servant’s hands as she said, ‘You are not to blame.’

‘I should have heard them on the steps!’ the servant cried.

Christiana interrupted. ‘Did they enter the hall?’ she asked.

Both women started. The servant shook her head.

Christiana hurried out and up the steps to her chamber. She found her handmaid Marion weeping in the protective arms of Prioress Agnes.

‘Marion, calm yourself,’ Christiana said with a sharpness that she had not intended. She inclined her head. ‘Prioress Agnes.’

Marion glanced up, her eyes widening in surprise, and cried, ‘You are safe! Praise God.’ She rubbed her eyes as if to clear her vision and make certain she’d seen aright.

The prioress rose from the bed, hands clasped before her waist, ever dignified. ‘Where have you been, Dame Christiana?’ Her handsome face twitched with emotion. She disapproved of women withdrawing to nunneries after their children were grown but while their husbands yet lived. She’d made it clear to Christiana that she’d expected trouble and now it had arrived.

‘I walked to the river.’ Christiana took in the room, the upturned chests, the emptied shelves. ‘Did they harm you, Marion?’

The handmaid shook her head, her breath coming in gasps.

‘Did you see them?’ Prioress Agnes asked.

‘I was not here.’

Agnes studied Christiana, then apparently decided to believe her, for she said, ‘There were three men. They pulled Marion from bed and shoved her out of the room in her shift, barefoot-’ Her gaze travelled down to Christiana’s muddied feet. ‘Her shrieks woke us all. I see that you, too, are barefoot. You ran out like that without cause? You were not fleeing from the men?’

‘I had a vision of what was to come,’ said Christiana. ‘I confess I fled, thinking I had truly seen them in the flesh. But afterwards I understood that God had sent the vision to me as a warning.’

‘What were they after?’ the prioress asked sharply. ‘Did the Lord tell you that?’

Christiana shook her head. ‘I have prayed that He take the Sight from me. I am too simple to use it. I have not the wit to ken the meaning.’

‘We shall discuss this in the morning,’ Agnes said in a tight voice. ‘Now see to your maid.’

After Prioress Agnes withdrew, Christiana sank down on the bed and picked up a small wooden box, emptied of its physick powder.

‘They have ruined all your medicines,’ Marion said. ‘And torn one of your veils.’ She lifted a square of unbleached silk.

Something in the simple gesture made it real to Christiana. Her home had been invaded, her treasured belongings thrown about, ruined. The medicines were not a serious loss, Dame Eleanor here at the priory was a skilful apothecary and healer with plentiful stores. But the clothing and the furniture held memories that would now be soiled by their handling this night. Most upsetting was the torn veil — it had been a gift from her daughter Margaret, a generous gift that she could ill afford since her husband deserted her.