We walk the arcade around the cloister, past the brushy heads of spent flowers, stalks of frosted rosemary, stone saints wearing powdery shawls of snow.
“So you’re a conversa.” Alice adjusts her veil. “What is it, then? Were you born in a brothel or something?”
I blink away the cold on my eyelids. Where would I begin?
The outside walls of the church crouch above us like a hulking troll. Before coming here, I’d only seen one building so large—Saint Gabriel’s Abbey, which governs Hartley Cross—and that from a distance. We enter through a dim side vestibule, and the church’s interior reveals itself, as when the dark peel is pared off an apple. My sight is instantly drawn heavenward. Golden spines of stone splash up into peaks on the ceiling, pouring back down pointed arches between impossibly tall windows of colored glass.
Never have I seen light do this. Colors dance like spirits on the surfaces of the gleaming lime-washed stone, embellished with vivid paintings of ancient stories. I want to grab Alice Palmer and say, Are you seeing this? but I’m afraid it’s just in my head, as always. No, this is different—this is their everyday miracle; in here, the nuns can almost see as I do.
Alice shows me to a bench with some other simply dressed women who must be conversae like me. I look to the eastern end of this cold, bright forest. The ornately carved rood screen casts a shadow of open doors on the floor, pouring more rainbows through the spaces. I feel it in my skin. I reach into my pocket and touch the stylus. This space is begging to be drawn.
The nuns are already seated in their facing rows, ready to begin the daily office.
Gloria, sings one side, and my own colors flit and spark against the others.
Et nunc et semper, sings the opposite side, and they continue, one row breathing the song into the other.
Inhale, exhale.
This is nothing like the plain-folk attempts at song I grew up with in the parish church, nothing like singing around the fire, when Brother Robert would come over from Saint Gabriel’s with his hurdy-gurdy, and we’d dance in circles with the pallets flipped up against the wall.
Gloria, sings one side.
Et nunc et semper, sings the other.
“It’s like another world,” I whisper. And something in me begins to stir.
— 6 —
“Ora et labora,” Agnes de Guile begins our afternoon lesson. “Pray and work. It’s the same thing, after all. Work is prayer, and prayer is work.”
Alice and I and several other girls cluster around Agnes in the calefactory for our class. I’m trying to focus, but I don’t really understand what she’s talking about; it’s not about wool or woad or anything I’m familiar with. And the room is so warm, my stomach so full from the morning meal, my first night’s sleep so spotty. I drowse to the cadence of the magicky Latin.
“Edyth le Sherman,” Agnes says, sharp but short. I jolt awake and slurp the small reservoir of drool at the corner of my mouth.
“I’ve been told that you can read. Please, my dear, the first chapter of the Rule.”
“I, um…I don’t understand Latin.” The other girls stare at me with comical looks on their noble faces. Only Alice seems to see how mortified I am.
“That’s fine,” says the sub-prioress. “To be expected. Just do the best you can, and I will interpret.”
I look at the writing. I look at Agnes, and Alice, and the other girls, and sweat erupts on the back of my neck. The letters run together and look almost identical to each other, but I have to try.
“Caput Primum: De gen-er-ibus mona-cho-rum,” I stumble. “Mona-chorum quattuor esse genera, ma-ni-fes-tum est. Primum c-coeno…”
“Coenobitarum,” Agnes corrects me.
“…coenobitarum, hoc est mo-na-ster-i-a-le, militans sub reg-u-la—”
“Would anyone else like to try?”
Several hands go up, and the girls take turns reading in fair perfection. I sit and look at my hands, notice a hangnail, pick at it. A tiny trickle of blood comes out.
“What does this passage tell us?” Agnes asks. “Alice Palmer?”
“That the best way to live as a consecrated vessel is under the strict guidance of an abbot,” says Alice. “Or in our case, a prioress.”
“Well done, daughter,” says the sub-prioress. “Mercy has decreed that you will all live out your days here in our priory, serving this community with all of your strength, under our strict and careful oversight.”
The blessed bell rings for the next office. I am the first to stand to leave, and everyone stares at me again—apparently, this is the wrong thing to do. The others rise slowly.
“This is Edyth le Sherman,” Agnes introduces me. “Everyone, please make her feel at home. Thank you, girls. Edyth, may I speak with you privately?”
“Yes, Sub—Your Holi—ma’am?”
“My dear,” she begins lovingly, “it’s all right if it takes a while. You’ll only be learning the basics. You are not a novice, like the other girls. You are a conversa, a lay sister. Your life here will be rather more about labora than ora. Do you remember what those words mean?”
“More about…working than praying?”
“Yes, that’s right.” She clasps her hands, tips her head to the side and smiles, revealing a row of gleaming teeth with a single yellow tooth in front. “It’s not as though you have Alice’s bright prospects. Do your best and keep at your reading. Now you may go.”
Her words pinch my skin. She may have been calling me stupid. But what do I know?
Alice has been waiting for me, and we file into the side door of the church. She sits in a choir stall with the other novices. We conversae sit in the back row. The prayers are long and opaque, and I wish the bench had a back, like the nuns get. It’s better than Saint Andrew’s, though. There were no seats at all there, except for the priest’s.
I sit at the very end and let my eyes wander, getting lost in this beauty. All the forms, the people carved in stone, the teardrop shapes of their drapery echoing the pointed arches of windows and doors—my fingers itch to draw everything, but I’m nervous to risk taking out my parchment and stylus. I’ll have to memorize it and draw it back in my cell.
* * *
—
One Sunday, Lady Caxton came to see Mam at the house after Mass. They were worlds apart in rank—Mam had grown up at her manor as a servant—but Lady Caxton still knew how to be a friend.