Anne Herries - Medieval Brides

Sister Judith shut the chapel door with a thump and stood just inside the threshold. Folding her arms, she shook her head at Cecily, the novice who once again had failed to keep her retreat.

Cecily took Emma’s hand. Her fingers were like ice. ‘Something else has happened, hasn’t it? Something dreadful.’

Emma’s eyes filled and she gave a shuddering sob. ‘Oh, Cecily, it’s Maman…’

‘Maman? What? What’s happened to Maman?’ But Cecily had no need to wait for an answer, for she could read it in Emma’s expression.

Their mother was dead.

Knees buckling, Cecily gripped Emma’s arms and the sisters clung to each other.

‘Not Maman,’ Cecily choked. ‘Emma, please, not Maman too…’

Emma nodded, tears flooding openly down her cheeks.

‘Wh…when?’

‘Three days since.’

‘How? Was it…was it the babe?’ It had to be that. Their mother, Philippa of Fulford, had been thirty-seven—not young—and she had been seven months pregnant at the time of the battle at Hastings. Of Norman extraction herself, she had found the great battle especially hard to cope with. Cecily knew her mother would have taken great pains to hide her emotions, but the deaths of her Anglo Saxon husband and her firstborn son would have been too much to bear.

Many women died in childbed, and at her mother’s age, and in her state of grief…

Emma dashed away her tears and nodded. ‘Aye. Her time came early, her labour was long and hard, and afterwards…Oh, Cecily, there was so much blood. We could do nothing to stem the flow. Would that you had been there. Your time at Sister Mathilda’s elbow has taught you so much about healing, whereas I…’ Her voice trailed off.

Cecily shook her head. It was true that she had greedily taken in all that Sister Mathilda had chosen to teach her, but she also knew that not everyone could be saved. ‘Emma, listen. Maman’s death was not your fault. Once bleeding starts inside it’s nigh impossible to stop…and besides, it’s possible she simply lost the will to live after father and Cenwulf were killed.’

Emma sniffed. ‘Aye. We were going to send for you. Wilf was ready to mount up. But by the time we realised the dangers it…it was too late.’ Emma gripped Cecily’s hands.

‘It was not your fault.’

‘Nobody’d trained me! Oh, Cecily, if you could have seen her after the messenger came from Hastings. She could not eat or sleep. She wandered round the Hall like a ghost. It was as though, with Father dead, a light went out within her. Father was not an easy man, and Maman was not one to wear her affections openly—’

‘“Displays of sentiment are vulgar, and not suited to a lady,”’ Cecily murmured, repeating a well-worn phrase of her mother’s.

‘Quite so. But she loved him. If any doubted that—’ Emma gave Cecily a penetrating look, knowing that Cecily and her father, Thane Edgar, had crossed swords on more matters than the delaying of her profession. ‘If any doubted that, this last month would have set them right. And Cenwulf.’ Emma’s gaze brimmed with sympathy. ‘I realise you did adore him too.’

‘Maman’s heart was broken.’

Emma gulped. ‘Aye. And twisted.’

‘Because her own countrymen were the invaders?’

Emma squeezed Cecily’s hand. ‘I knew you’d understand.’

‘Lady Emma…’ Sister Judith’s voice cut in, reminding the girls of the portress’s presence by the chapel door.

It was Sister Judith’s duty to give or deny permission for outsiders to enter the convent. Since the order was not an enclosed one, permission was granted more often than not, but never when a nun or novice was on retreat. Hands folded at her girdle, silver cross winking at her breast, the nun regarded Emma sternly, but not unkindly. She had been moved, Cecily saw, by what she had heard.

‘Lady Emma, since you have seen fit to break your sister’s retreat by this conference, may I suggest that you continue in the portress’s lodge? The Angelus bell is about to strike, and the rest of the community will be needing the chapel.’

‘Of course, Sister Judith. Our apologies,’ Cecily said.

Bending to retrieve Emma’s riding crop and gloves, Cecily took her sister’s hand and led her out of the chapel.

A chill winter wind was tossing straw about the yard. Woodsmoke gusted out of the cookhouse, and their breath made white vapour which was no sooner formed than it was snatched away.

Emma drew the burgundy velvet cloak more tightly about her shoulders.

Cecily, who had not touched a cloak of such quality since entering the convent, and in any case was not wearing even a thin one since she was within the confines of the convent, shivered, and ushered her sister swiftly across the yard towards the south gate.

The portress’s lodge, a thatched wooden hut, sagged against the palisade. Abutting the lodge at its eastern end was the convent’s guest house, a slightly larger, marginally more inviting building; Cecily led her sister inside.

Even though the door was thrown wide the room was full of shadows, for the wooden walls were planked tight, with only a shuttered slit or two to let in the light. Since no guests had been looked for, there was no fire in the central hearth, only a pile of dead ashes. November marked the beginning of the dark months, but Cecily knew better than to incur Mother Aethelflaeda’s wrath by lighting a precious candle. If she added the sin of wasting a candle in daylight to the sin of her broken retreat, she’d be doing penance till Christmas ten years hence.

Dropping Emma’s riding crop and gloves on the trestle along with her rosary, Cecily wrenched the shutters open. The cold and ensuing draughts would have to be borne. Emma paced up and down. Her pink gown, Cecily now had time to notice, was liberally spattered with mud about the hem, her silken veil was awry, and the chaplet that secured it was crooked.

‘You rode fast to bring me this sad news,’ Cecily said slowly, as her sister strode back and forth. Now that the first shock was passing, her mind was beginning to work, and she had questions. ‘And yet…if Maman died three days since, you must have delayed your ride to me. There is more, isn’t there?’

Emma stopped her pacing. ‘Yes. The babe lives. A boy.’

Cecily gaped. ‘A boy? And he lives? Oh, it’s a miracle—new life after so much death!’ Her face fell. ‘But so early? Emma, he cannot survive.’

‘So I thought. He is small. I took the liberty of having him christened Philip, in case…in case—’

Emma broke off with a choking sound, but she had no need to add more. Having lived in the convent for four years, Cecily knew the Church’s view as well as any. If the babe did die, better that he died christened into the faith. For if he died outside it, he would be for eternity a lost soul.

‘Philip,’ Cecily murmured. ‘Maman would have liked that.’

‘Aye. And it’s not a Saxon name, so if he survives…I thought his chances better if he bore a Norman name.’

‘It is a good thought to stress Maman’s lineage rather than Father’s,’ Cecily replied. The son of a Saxon thane could not thrive if in truth England was to become Norman, but the son of a Norman lady…

Emma drew close, touched Cecily’s arm, and again Cecily became conscious of the incongruous fragrance of roses in November, of the softness of her sister’s gown, of the whiteness of her hands, of her unbroken lady’s nails. All the mud in England couldn’t obscure either the quality of Emma’s clothing or her high status.

She brushed awkwardly at her own coarse skirts in a vain attempt to shake out some dust and creases, and hide the hole at the knee where she’d torn the fabric grubbing up fennel roots in the herb garden. There were so many holes in the cloth it was nigh impossible to darn.