Michael JECKS - Belladonna at Belstone

A sudden gust whisked about her. It whipped on, tearing at the clothes hanging on the lines, snatching at the linen in the lay sisters’ hands. They squealed and giggled, and Agnes grinned. It was good to see them enjoying their work. They had so much to do, it was a miracle that they found any pleasure; but some of them were simple and others were mere serfs, peasants, and Agnes was sure they wouldn’t need much to make them happy.

Then Agnes had to give a deep belly laugh. One of the girls, a tall, rather vapid creature called Cecily, missed her step while rescuing a white cloth. Trying to avoid stepping in her basket, she stumbled, and her foot landed on the rim. While she watched in horror, it flipped up. Another breeze blew past just at the moment as if maliciously determined to complete her ruin; it caught the basket and swiftly up-ended it.

Cecily raised her fists to her cheeks, wailing with dismay, while her friends roared their delight. Then Cecily let her arms fall and stamped with impotent rage. She stared heavenwards, screaming, “God’s bollocks! Damn and bugger!” as the contents of her basket soaked up the mire from the track.

She had to do the whole lot again, of course. Cecily thought it was unfair: anyone could have been unlucky and seen their basket tip, but the laundress was insistent. Cecily had let all her washing fall in the dirt, so Cecily could clean it again.

She rubbed her back, then put a pot of water over the fire. When it was boiling, she wrapped a cloth about the handle and carried it to her barrel, poured it in then dropped her linen in and began the laborious work of pounding it with the wooden club. When the worst of the muck was off, she wrung out the clothes and put them into fresh water, scrubbing the material up and down on a roughened board.

This laundry was a ground-floor room to the north of the cloister. Once it would have been too large for a priory this size, but now it was too small, for the northernmost wall had collapsed, and part couldn’t be used. A temporary wooden partition had been erected to keep the worst of the wind and rain from the girls inside, but Cecily hoped they could get enough money to put up another wall. Breezes got in and froze the lay sisters as they worked.

The whole place was falling apart, but Cecily tended not to think about it. She was content while she had food in her belly and a gallon of ale to drink each day. Matters of finance were for those who were educated enough to comprehend them, not for the likes of her. She was only a servant for the nuns.

It was a position that satisfied her. She didn’t seek higher responsibility. There would be no point, for she would never be able to understand the duties of a nun. All the same, sometimes, when she glanced about her, she wondered whether the prioress was protecting the place as well as she should. Flagstones in the yard were coming loose, there were holes in the roofs, and not only the laundry’s wall had fallen. Others were weakened and looked dangerous.

Still, it was none of Cecily’s concern.

The basketful took her another hour. By the time she had finished, her arms and chest muscles ached. Sitting back, she closed her eyes and yawned luxuriously. Slowly she clambered to her feet and picked up the damp washing. From here she had to walk down a wooden staircase to get to the yard, which was lower than the cloister itself. She picked up the basket and rested it upon her hip, walking quickly to the door.

At the top step she glanced down to make sure where to put her feet. Then, with the speed of assurance, she carried on down.

But after two steps she felt someone grab her ankle. Her eyes widened. She had no time to make a sound, it was so unexpected. The basket flew from her hand and she pitched headlong, falling the six steps to the ground. It was flagged in stone here, and she caught a glimpse of the moorstone rushing to meet her. In a reflex she brought her arms up to protect her face just in time.

She was so jarred that at first she couldn’t believe what had happened. Then she heard the voice: “Never blaspheme again.”

As the steps faded, the pain began to stab at her. Looking down, she wondered what the thing before her was. Then she recognised it was her arm’s bone, red and bloody as a raw oxen’s rib, shoved through the flesh of her arm like a dagger through parchment.

She managed to shriek just once before fainting.

From Moll’s perspective, being taken to the place where she would soon be murdered was merely an irritation. She knew she was well and didn’t feel the need for segregation in the infirmary, especially since it was impossible to get any sleep there, what with Joan snoring and Cecily moaning to herself on the bed beyond.

There were compensations. The fire made it almost as cosy as the calefactory, the hall between the dorter and the frater where nuns could warm themselves. Here, though, there were no nuns except the infirmarer; and although the room glowed with a cheery red light, and for the first time since the onset of winter Moll was neither cold nor hungry, still she could not relax. Her arm itched where Brother Godfrey had bled it.

In the pitch dark she stretched out under the sheets, wondering what could have woken her. There were no strange sounds in the room; mercifully even Joan was breathing quietly like a drowsy hog, and further on Cecily whimpered softly. Both women had been drugged. Before long she expected to hear the bell for Nocturns, the signal for the convent to wake to life, and Moll was aware of a guilty but luxurious delight, knowing she was free of her usual duties and could remain here in bed.

Moll was young to be a novice, but she had gained her place as a result of her father’s string-pulling. He was, if not a great banneret, at least a well-known knight in Exeter, a man of some influence, and although he had not wanted her to take the veil, she had insisted. Ever since she could remember, Moll had felt the lure of conventual life: as a child she had thrilled to the stories told by the mendicant friars; as a teenager she had been keener to attend daily Mass than go riding with her friends. She had learned to read with the help of her priest, and was soon proficient at writing and arithmetic. It was this which had served to persuade her father, for a woman who could both read and write was potentially an uncommonly useful wife to a wealthy lord, able to administer his estates during his inevitable absences, but the sort of husband to whom Moll could aspire would be of a lower order – a squire or knight. To such a man, a wife with Moll’s skills could be threatening. It was better that she should be safely lodged in the cloister.

Closing her eyes, Moll offered a prayer to God, thanking Him for her many blessings. There was much to thank Him for. He had allowed her to take up the challenge of a life of obedience, and had installed her here, where there was so much to be done – for the little priory out on the windy, rain-swept northern fringe of the chase of Dartmoor was, to Moll’s eye, a pit of corruption. She intended to change all that and see that the nuns turned from their loose living to the ideal of the contemplative life.

Arriving at the section of her prayer where she thanked God for her health, she hesitated, unsure whether it would be right to thank Him for what she had suffered. She was not, if she was honest, grateful for the headache or for being bled again, and being a conscientious young woman she felt it would be wrong to say that she was. Moll didn’t want to be hypocritical; perhaps, she thought, she should ask the priest when she next had an opportunity… No, not the priest, she amended quickly. She couldn’t trust Brother Luke, not since the time he had tried to molest her. A quick frown passed over her brow and she moved to a more wholesome topic.