Priscilla Royal - Wine of Violence

“Then there is no more to be said. It is time.”

With that, the two men turned their horses away from the small clearing and guided them with care back over the soft, thick ground covering of rotted wood, vines and woodland flowers, to the path leading from the forest. In silence they rode single file, a finely dressed courtier on an even finer horse, followed by a simple monk on his very plain mount.

Eleanor burst through the chapter house door and into the open, covered walk that surrounded the tranquil and fragrant gardens of the cloister square garth. Her step was brisk but light, and her soft shoes made almost no sound on the smooth stones. The nuns had left to start their tasks. She had survived her first chapter. Now she needed to be alone, think in peace, plan her day, to walk, walk, and walk until the tension built up from pretending to feel little when she had in fact felt so much had dissipated.

She entered a dark, narrow passage, cool even after a long summer’s warmth, which ran between the chapter house and the warming room, unlocked the thick wooden door that protected her encloistered sisters from the world, and stepped into the outer court of the priory.

Beyond the carefully locked quarters where the monks and nuns lived, but still on monastic grounds, the charitable and practical businesses of Tyndal were conducted. The outer court was a largely public area. As Eleanor emerged, she looked to her left where the monks’ quarters, brewery, mill, fishponds, stables, barns and livestock lay. The warm and dusty smells of well-tended animals mixed with the sharp odor of fermenting ale were sweet scents to her. They reminded her of her younger years at Wynethorpe Castle before her mother’s death, when she and her two older brothers fought and played together with that fresh innocence of childhood. The memory brought both pain and joy to her heart.

She stood for a moment. Although the details of these particular priory grounds were still unfamiliar to her, the general design of Tyndal was very much the same as that of any other monastic house. In the middle of everything, and separating the monks’ from the nuns’ quarters, was the parish church, a dark and dominating structure of wind-battered stone. To her right would be the nuns’ cemetery, then the gardens and orchards that provided food for the priory.

She shut her eyes to picture what stood beyond her vision. Lying in front of the priory grounds would be the main gate, near which lay the primary charitable business of Tyndal, a hospital. Just outside that main gate was the almonry where alms and food were given to the poor. Immediately inside the gate was the porter’s cottage. The monks’ cemetery lay near the stables and just beyond the hospital. It was a respectable distance from that of the nuns and sited against the wall of the outer court.

Eleanor turned right toward the gardens, and, after a short walk along the windowless wall of the nuns’ dormitory, she rounded the corner at the stone-enclosed garderobe and stopped to look at the orchard across one of the streams that passed through the priory grounds. The trees were well established and properly pruned, she noted, and a gentle breeze carried the sweet scent of sun-warmed, ripening fruit. Even if the vegetables don’t survive the less than gentle touch of Sister Matilda, we should at least have dried fruit over the winter season, she thought wryly.

Immediately in front of her and near the kitchen were the vegetable gardens. Just beyond them grew beds of both culinary and medicinal herbs, and further on was planted a garden growing flowers to adorn the altar. In a short while, lay brothers and sisters under the supervision of Sister Matilda would arrive to weed and harvest the raised beds. Sister Anne and a few of the nuns might also come to gather and tend the herbs, but for the moment all was quiet. Eleanor needed only a short time to concentrate her thoughts, relax her taut muscles.

As she walked along the edge of the beds toward the flower gardens that lay just beyond the hut where the medicines for the hospital were made, she slowed her pace and took in a measured, deep breath. The morning air was still moist and chill from sea fog, but the sun was warm and soothing where it peeked through the light mist drifting above her. She closed her eyes and listened to the birdsong, the distant whoosh of ocean waves, and smelled the slightly tart scent of seaweed carried on the light breeze. She smiled. It was lovely here, she thought, but she was still homesick for Amesbury.

After the death of Eleanor’s mother in childbirth, Sister Beatrice, her father’s elder sister and head of novices at Amesbury Priory, had taken the frightened six-year-old girl back with her to the convent. There Sister Beatrice had raised the child with warmth and kindness, and, having recognized the eager, intellectually curious Eleanor as a small version of herself, had wisely fed her niece’s mind with all her own learning as a complement to feeding the child’s soul.

Sister Beatrice’s grandmother had come from Aquitaine as a lady in waiting to the equally famous and infamous Eleanor, wife of Henry II, and was known to suffer neither the ignorant nor fools gladly. As strong-willed and independent as her queen, she had no tolerance for intelligent women who pretended to be stupid and had taught her equally strong-minded daughters to use and be proud of their good wits. Thus, unlike most women of their class, they were taught to read and write not only in French and English but in Latin and Greek as well.

And little Beatrice had learned the same from her mother, who also ensured that her daughter was comfortable with arithmetic. These skills served Beatrice well during her marriage. While her husband was away at war, she ran the estate with competence and kept good accounts. Thus she was able to turn profitable lands over to her eldest son after her husband was killed, and happily take the veil at Amesbury, dedicating the rest of her life to the training of young girls.

It was true that Beatrice secretly hoped her niece would one day become Abbess of the entire Order of Fontevraud, a position that would assure great honor to the Wynethorpe family and secure places in Heaven for its more profane members. Such a worldly ambition she kept hidden in the deepest recess of her heart, and any such hope took second place to her love for her niece and concern for her happiness. Had marriage and children meant contentment for Eleanor, Sister Beatrice would have sent her back to the world, albeit shedding tears later in the privacy of her chamber. Meanwhile, before the child had to make her choice between the cloister and the hearth, Beatrice made sure little Eleanor learned and practiced the skills necessary to lead others and to manage priory assets in a profitable way. In a world of mortal men, wealth would always be the key to power, no matter whether the community be secular or religious.

Beatrice need not have worried about losing her niece to the world. For Eleanor, happiness was the cloister, and when Baron Adam wanted to take his child back to Wynethorpe Castle and a good dynastic marriage, Beatrice had stood up on her behalf like a mother lion protecting her cub. After long arguments, Beatrice and Adam did come to a reasonable compromise: the girl would be sent back to the world for one year to test her vocation. After that year, Eleanor chose to return to her aunt’s welcoming arms at Amesbury and take her final vows. What Sister Beatrice understood and her brother did not was that the world and Wynethorpe Castle to Eleanor meant the sound of her mother’s screaming and the memory of her death from childbirth. The convent, on the other hand, was a home filled only with love and peace.

Although she had rejected a marriage that would have gained her father both allies and land, Eleanor was not insensitive to the concept of familial duty. Indeed, she had wept bitterly in her aunt’s arms at the thought of leaving Amesbury when she was told of her appointment to head Tyndal Priory, then quickly washed the evidence of grief from her face, stood with dignity before the king’s messenger, and accepted the position with proper expressions of gratitude and modest joy. She knew full well the honor it had brought to her family, and she was determined to be adequate to the task.