The Nun's Tale

Five

Orchards surrounded St Clement’s, leafy and alive with bird song. But Alfred grumbled.

‘Where are the apples, that’s what I’d like to know.’

Archbishop Thoresby, frustrated that Alfred and Colin had watched St Clement’s for two days without sighting the watcher, had ordered them to the nunnery at first light this morning, so early that they had not had time to break their fast.

Colin laughed. ‘Too early for fruit. When have you eaten a fresh apple before midsummer?’

‘Can’t say I notice when I eat what.’

‘Didn’t you have fruit trees as a lad? Don’t you look around you?’

‘I’m not partial to trees and such. Just what comes off them.’

‘And I suppose you’re proud of that.’

‘What’s a soldier want with such things?’

‘It’s civilised to notice such things.’

‘I notice people is what I notice. And I’ve noticed that character pass the priory gate twice this morning.’ A stocky man in a russet cloak stained by travel. As the day warmed, he had removed the cloak and wide-brimmed hat. His clothes were those of a modest merchant. His balding head was tanned and weathered.

‘So have I. And I notice when I eat what, too.’

‘So does that make you a scholar?’

Colin jabbed Alfred in the stomach. ‘Course not.’

‘He’s eyeing the damage on the north wall, seeing whether he can scale it quickly, I’ll wager. Look!’ The man was indeed examining the height of the crumbling wall. ‘He’s our man or I’m King of France.’

‘Lord help ’em over there, he’d best be our man.’ Colin hooted.

Alfred rolled his eyes. ‘Calm yourself,’ he muttered out of the corner of his mouth. ‘We must approach this cutthroat with caution.’

‘I doubt he’s a cutthroat. Look at him. Clothes dusty from travel, but decent clothes, all the same. Clean shaven.’

‘What’s he doing lurking round a convent, then?’ Alfred demanded.

‘You should need no help guessing what a man might want in a convent.’

‘Look at the dagger he wears at his waist.’

‘He’d be a fool to travel without one.’

‘You’re becoming a regular Captain Archer.’

‘Wouldn’t I like that? Pretty wife, nice house, an adventure now and then with enough danger to keep life interesting. I wouldn’t say no to the captain’s lot in life.’

‘Don’t go poking your eye out to wear a patch.’ Colin groaned. ‘Shall we approach the man?’

‘Lead on, Captain.’

‘God speed, stranger,’ Colin called out.

The man backed away from the crumbling wall. ‘God be with you two gentlemen.’

‘You seem uncommonly interested in that wall, stranger,’ Colin said.

‘I thought I might find work fixing it.’

‘You’re a stonemason, then? You don’t wear the guild badge.’

The man looked uneasy. ‘I have done nothing wrong. Nor shall I.’

Colin glanced over at Alfred. Alfred nodded. ‘Glad we are that you mean no harm, stranger. And His Grace the Archbishop will be glad of it when you tell him so.’

Colin gave a little bow. ‘If you will allow us to escort you.’

The stranger frowned. ‘What is the need? I have told you I mean harm to no one.’

Alfred grinned. ‘Then you have nothing to fear.’

The stranger looked from one to the other. ‘I have no choice in this?’

Colin and Alfred exchanged glances. Shall we seize him?

The stranger sighed. ‘I shall come peacefully.’

They led him away from St Clement’s, past the comfortable houses and orchards facing the city walls, and re-entered the city through the gate by the Old Baile. As they headed down Skeldergate toward Ouse Bridge, the stranger asked, ‘Is there no other route?’

‘’Tis the straightest route to the minster close,’ Colin said. ‘What do you fear?’

The stranger said nothing, but just beyond Kirk Lane he began glancing behind him every few steps.

Alfred and Colin began to check their backs, too. But the trouble appeared before them, four men blocking their way, shadowy figures standing with legs apart, arms folded. Their message was clear. The stranger gave a cry and took off down an alley, in the direction of the river.

Alfred and Colin hesitated. Neither was familiar with this part of the city.

Colin put his hand to the knife hidden beneath his jerkin and said quietly, ‘Could be a blind alley, and he’s going to turn and fight. But he did not seem pleased to see these gentlemen.’

‘He might be a good actor, leading us into an ambush,’ Alfred said.

‘And while we’re arguing, it might not be a blind alley and he’s got away.’

Alfred groaned. ‘What about turning back?’

Colin glanced round. There were now several men at their backs. ‘No choice, I’m afraid.’

With a nod, they took off after the runaway. The others pounded after them.

The alley was narrow and dark. The second storey of the house on their left jutted out to touch the one-storey roof of the building across from it. Odd to find a city street so deserted in late morning, so quiet but for the rats rustling through debris in the shadows. A baby cried somewhere ahead. The two men groped their way along, coming once more into sickly day-light, a house to one side, a high fence to the other. Alfred and Colin kept alert to all sounds and shadows, but their prey eluded them.

‘I don’t see light ahead,’ Alfred whispered.

‘So we’re coming up on a bend. Is there a straight alley in all York?’ Colin was as nervous as his mate, but they must go on, they would be fools to turn back into the arms of their pursuers. It was so dark he had to listen for Alfred’s whereabouts. They passed under more jutting second and third storeys. A sound of water lapping. The river was close.

But instead of the riverbank they encountered a stone wall.

‘Devil take you, I was right!’ Alfred hissed.

Colin had no time to answer. From behind came the sound of knives and swords being drawn, a hissed command. Alfred and Colin drew their daggers and turned to face the attackers side by side. Colin squinted, trying to make out the wavering shadows. He felt Alfred stiffen, then thrust, heard steel against steel. Alfred shouted, then fell away from Colin. They lost contact.

Colin lashed out at the attackers in front of him. A dagger came close to his face, he parried and heard a grunt. Something fell by his feet. He stepped on it. Another shadow loomed, thrust. Colin felt a searing pain in his left arm. He struck out with his right, found nothing. His invisible assailant got him in the waist. He doubled over, but fought the pain to force himself back upright, only to have his right leg kicked out from under him. He went crashing down backwards on something warm and bony. Alfred, he guessed. Colin twisted himself round so his back would be to the attackers. He did not want someone going for his eyes or his throat. A blow to his head, then his back, left him blind and breathless. He panicked, unable to coordinate the muscles in his throat and chest to gulp in air. Jesu, forgive me my sins, he silently prayed as he passed out.

Lucie tapped her foot as she listened to old John Kendall describe the pains in his joints in minute detail. She had measured out his salves and powders and put them in his hands several limbs ago. But she could not bring herself to be unkind. He had lost his wife and a daughter to the floods last winter and Lucie pitied him.

The shop door’s bell cheered her with the hope of release. . Until she saw who it was: Dame Isobel and a novice who stood meekly in her shadow. It had been one thing to see the prioress at St Mary’s, but Lucie resented yet another interruption in her day and the intrusion into her own house and shop. . Dame Isobel conjured up unhappy memories.

Lucie’s time at St Clement’s had been a purgatory. Her mother had just died, crumbling Lucie’s world round her, and the nuns, reckoning her mother a sinner, had watched Lucie for signs of the Devil’s influence. Isobel de Percy had been one of the most diligent in reporting on Lucie’s missteps.

‘Benedicte, Reverend Mother.’ Lucie did not bother to warm her voice.

Old John Kendall turned and bobbed his head at the prioress and the novice in tow. ‘I will leave you to your business, Mistress Wilton,’ he said to Lucie. ‘May the Lord smile on you for your kindness to a windy old man.’

Lucie blushed as she watched John shuffle out; he must have heard her foot tapping.

Dame Isobel’s pale eyes watched Lucie with an unexpected uncertainty.

‘Dame Joanna should improve with Brother Wulfstan’s ministrations, Reverend Mother.’

‘She already seems calmer, praise God.’ Isobel took a deep breath, glanced back at her companion. ‘Is there a more private place to talk?’

Lucie pressed her hands to her lower back. ‘I must watch the shop. I have sent my serving girl out on errands and I am alone this afternoon.’

Isobel stepped closer, holding out her white, uncalloused hands in entreaty. ‘Forgive me. My troubles consumed your morning, and now I intrude on your work. But I could think of no one else who might be of help. I must convince Dame Joanna to confide in me and she seems determined to tell me nothing. You have a rapport with her. I thought you might advise me. And perhaps if I told you more of her past, you might see something I did not.’

Lucie considered her backache, her plans to tidy up for Owen’s homecoming, Isobel’s past betrayals: all good reasons to bow out of any further involvement. And yet she was curious about Joanna Calverley. . She stepped out from behind the counter. ‘Come. Let us go into the kitchen.’ Lucie nodded to the novice. ‘Make yourself comfortable on the bench. I can hear the shop bell in there. You’ve no need to come get me.’

Lucie and the prioress sat down at a small table by the kitchen window, the shutters open to let in the summery breeze.

‘I understand the archbishop is impatient for answers,’ Lucie prompted.

Isobel folded her hands on the table before her, fixed her eyes on her hands. An oddly meek posture for the prioress. ‘I also wish to know for myself,’ Isobel said. ‘I do care about Joanna. But, yes, Archbishop Thoresby is disappointed with me.’ She glanced up at Lucie, back down at her hands. ‘I bear the guilt of whatever happened to change Joanna so.’

‘She is changed, then?’

Isobel pressed her fingers to her forehead. ‘Oh, yes. The spirit has been leached from her.’

‘What do you think happened to her, Reverend Mother?’

Isobel shook her head.

Lucie stared out at the garden, thinking. ‘They say she stole a relic to pay for the funeral and her escape.’

‘A portion of the Virgin’s milk. She claims that Our Lady saved her so she might return it.’

‘This man to whom she offered the relic in Beverley did not sell it?’

‘No. When he disappeared, Sir Nicholas de Louth searched his house and found it.’

An escape plan gone wrong. Lucie remembered her own unhappy time at St Clement’s, her ever more elaborate plans for escape, never carried out, but comforting. Dame Joanna had planned her flight, planned the theft as her source of money. A practical plan. Not everyone would accept a relic in payment. Only someone who traded in relics or knew of someone who did. So Joanna had planned this with the belief that Will Longford traded in relics, or would know who did. What else could she have been thinking? Such a trader would not have a stall at market. ‘How did Joanna come to know Will Longford?’

Isobel shook her head. ‘As I said, she has told me little.’

The shop bell jingled. Lucie rose. ‘Shall I send in your novice to keep you company while I see to business?’

Isobel shook her head.

Lucie nodded towards a shelf with several jugs. ‘To the right, that is ale. The one beside it is water. Help yourself if you are thirsty.’

The customer was one of Guildmaster Thorpe’s children, come to collect several bedstraw pillows that Lucie had prepared. The baby was colicky and slept poorly. When her warm body heated the herb-stuffed pillow beneath her, the bedstraw would give off a soothing, relaxing honey fragrance and encourage restful sleep.

‘How does your mother?’ Gwen Thorpe had almost died delivering the baby.

Young Margaret smiled. ‘She’s walking about. And this morning she yelled at cook.’

‘And that made you happy?’

‘’Tis the best sign she’s mending right. But she coughs a lot.’

‘Has the Riverwoman been to see her?’

‘Oh, aye.’

Lucie picked up a small pouch and handed it to Margaret with the pillows. ‘I trust the Riverwoman is dosing her for her cough. But these herbs are my special remedy. Tell your mother to steep them in a pot and drink the tisane hot, so she breathes the steam. It will help clear out her chest after lying still so long.’

‘Thank you, Mistress Wilton.’

The novice had fallen asleep on the bench and snored softly. Lucie took a cloak from the kitchen and spread it over the girl.

Isobel wandered about the kitchen, a cup of ale in hand.

‘Tom Merchet’s brew,’ Lucie said from the doorway. ‘You’d travel far to find better. This is nothing like the kitchen at St Clement’s, is it?’

Isobel blushed to have been found so blatantly snooping. ‘I confess my curiosity about the life you’ve led since you left us.’

Lucie thought of the routine of St Clement’s, unvaried from year to year, the same schedule, the same faces, the same walls. ‘I have learned a trade, buried a husband and a baby, married again. It is a varied life.’

‘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.’