by Jill Barnett
The girl stopped before her and shook her head.
The hood fell away.
Judith gave her credit for that action, especially when the nuns gathered nearby gasped at the sight of the proud young woman who stood before them.
They all stared at pure proof of God’s perfect hand. The girl’s features were breathtakingly lovely—the small but straight nose, the white skin and fine bones, her full mouth, and the shortly cropped hair that was so deep a black it shone like the onyx candle holders that decorated the altar. But it was her magnificent skin that caught Judith’s eye and appreciation, white, white skin that appeared untouched by the harshness of an intense sun.
Even before she had gone to the East, Judith had not the pure creamy skin of this young woman. For the first time in years she felt envy.
She stepped forward. “Lady Sofia. I am Sister Judith of Kempston, prioress of Grace Dieu. We welcome you, and may His Lord bless you and keep you well while you are within our walls.”
“My thanks, sister.” The girl nodded, quickly averting her eyes, but by the time she raised her head up again she had returned immediately to the straight look she had been giving Judith.
No, Judith thought, this was no simpering lass. She adjusted her crutch and raised her free hand, gesturing toward the hallway beyond. “Come. I shall show you to your room.”
“Thank you.”
Judith looked at the King’s men. “Please bring the lady’s belongings.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
Judith turned back to the girl with a questioning glance.
“This is all I have brought.” She pointed to a small handled trunk that one of the guards held easily and lightly in his large hands.
“You travel light for a noblewoman, Sofia.”
“I have all I need,” was all she said.
“Then follow me.” Judith walked down the long, dark and cavernous hallway that led to the small cells used by the nuns of Grace Dieu.
Sir Tobin de Clare rode north toward the Scots border, on one of Edward’s more useless missions. He was to take papers of some kind of agreement between Edward and his sister’s husband, King Alexander of the Scots, to a meeting place near Carlisle.
Tobin was still bent in half about it. ’Twas a puny messenger’s mission, not one for a knight and half of his men-at-arms.
Merrick had voiced it best when Tobin had told him of the King’s order. Merrick knew Edward better than Tobin. “He has a motive, Tobin,” Merrick had said as he paced the guard room in long and angry strides. “He would not send you on this mission unless he has some other plan that is cooking.”
Tobin knew what that plan was. For some reason, Edward did not want them wed yet. There was no reason for him to be carrying these papers north. No reason other than Edward wanted to put miles between him and Sofia. This trumped up mission had come on the tail of Tobin’s royal request for permission to wed immediately.
Parcin rode up to Tobin’s side. “’Tis getting dark.” He pointed ahead of them, in the area he had just reconnoitered. “That ridge up ahead will be a good spot to make camp tonight. It looks out over the entire valley and the roads, both north and south.”
“Fine. Tell the men we will stop there for the night.”
“Aye.”
Tobin shook his head and turned in the saddle, looking back as his captain rode along his troops, relaying the plan. He turned back and faced the road.
’Twas a waste of time. They all knew there had been more trouble from the Welsh lately than from the Scots and there were almost no skirmishes near the Marchlands. He and his men were about as safe here as they would be riding into London. He waited until Parcin was in place behind him again, then Tobin spurred his horse toward the ridge.
By sunset, just after the bell for Vespers, Sofia was in the long, dark windowless room that served as a dining hall, sitting with the nuns at a huge trestle table while they ate their food with great fervor, and she stared down at it with great horror.
The bread was dark bread, not the sweet dark kind made with honey she’d tasted in London when she was with Alan and Miranda. But heavy dark bread with hard flecks of whole grain that hardly looked as if it had ever been milled into flour. Certainly it was nothing like the smooth bread made from white flour that was always served at the King’s table.
There were no courses, no fowl to begin the meal, no rich, dark meats, only tough salted fish, ling cod, with a dollop of muddy-looking mustard, and as for vegetables, there were only some pale and sickly colored mashed turnips, without seasoning. Sofia watched the watery turnips spread across the trencher of dark bread and congeal next to those two dry, weathered-looking strips of salted cod.
The meal looked about as appetizing as dining on her oldest pair of shoes.
Sister Katherine looked up from her food. “You are not eating.”
Sofia shook her head and took a long drink of the water in her goblet so she would not have to answer. Goblets for water, not for wine, because there was no wine, no sweet honeyed mead. There was nothing but plain well water.
Sister Katherine turned to the others. “Lady Sofia is not eating.”
They all looked up, chewing, and stared at her as if she were mad.
Sister Judith, who was sitting at the opposite end of the table, gazed at Sofia as if she could read her thoughts. “Perhaps Lady Sofia is not used to our simple fare.”
Sofia was not fool enough to lie in a room where she was surrounded by nuns. Even she did not have that much pluck, nor did she choose to push her luck with God, so she said nothing.
“Perhaps her journey exhausted her,” Sister Katherine suggested, and gave Sofia a gentle pat on the hand before she returned to her meal.
Sister Judith gave Sofia an arched look. “When she is hungry, she will eat.” That being said, she went back to finishing her food, too.
The meal was over soon after and Sofia made the mistake of standing to leave, only to find goblets and turnip bowls shoved into her arms. She stared down at them.
“Come along.” Katherine glanced back over her shoulder on her way out the door. “We must clean up the table and the pots from the kitchen.”
“But you have servants,” Sofia said. There was a distinctive whine to her voice that she couldn’t have masked had she wanted to, which she did not. She went after Katherine. “But I saw them. They made and served the meal.”
“Aye,” Katherine turned and stacked another heavy pewter bowl on Sofia’s forearm. “But they go home to their own families at sunset. We clean up after the meals.” She bustled back and forth, back and forth, like a guard on a castle wall. From the table to the minuscule kitchen that was in truth nothing but a drafty wooden shed built off the dining room. “Since we eat the meals, it seems only right that we should clean up after them, don’t you think?”
Sofia did not mention that she had not eaten. She did not think that argument would count a whit here.
“Put those in the wooden tub and scrub them clean with the sand.”
“Sand?”
“Aye. There in the jar on the shelf. While you do that, I shall fetch some hot water.” Katherine bustled outside the small shed, where there was a fire pit for cooking and a tall stone oven.
Sofia frowned at her work, then she looked up, spotted the fat jar, and scooped out a handful of sand. She rubbed it across the bowl; it mixed with the turnips and became huge sticky clumps that did nothing but spread and smear over the metal bowl. She stared down at the clump of stuff stuck to her hand.
“What did you do?” Katherine was next to her, also staring at the mess in Sofia’s hands.
Sofia glanced over one shoulder. “I rubbed the sand on it the way you told me to.”
Katherine frowned, then looked up at her with a completely baffled look. “But you did not scrape the food off first.”
Scrape off the food? You did not tell me to scrape off the food first.
Before she could speak, Katherine lifted
a pot of water and dumped it over Sofia’s hands and the bowl and into the washtub.
“Ouch!” Sofia yelped and jumped away, shaking her scalded hands in the air and then fanning them.
“Was the water too hot?” Katherine jammed her bare hand into the tub up to her elbow. “Doesn’t feel too hot to me. Feels just about perfect.”
Steam wafted up from the tub and turned the air moist from the heat. The nun must have had skin like leather. Scowling, Sofia stared down at her red hands and she rubbed them gently together. They still throbbed.
“Give your hands time, my dear, and they will become accustomed.”
What was she going to have to do to have her hands used to being boiled? She had no chance to ask, because the next thing she knew, Sister Katherine stuck a turnip bowl in her hands and told her to “scrub.”
The night was clear, a thousand stars were scattered over the sky above the ridge. Off in the distance, over the jagged tops of the trees, rose a line of steep, gaunt hills that were Scotland. It was quiet; nothing stirred in the trees that bordered the ridge, and the peat fires around the camp were burning down to a smolder.
Tobin squatted in front of one, an arm resting on his knee as he chewed on a piece of roasted hare. He finished, then tossed the bone in the fire, where it sizzled and caught flame.
He stood, nodding goodnight to the men there and moved to another fire where they were sharing a fat wineskin. He raised the wineskin in the air and drank, then passed it on to the next man. One of them told a bawdy jest that made them all laugh and then Tobin took the time to speak with each man, saying something personal or commending them.
He had watched Merrick de Beaucourt over the years he’d spent with his mentor, first as page, then squire. He learnt the importance of knowing his men well, for they were the ones who guarded his back at the risk of their own lives, and who swore fealty to him, the same way he had to Earl Merrick, Sir Roger, and then the King.
He spoke to the watch guards, then moved to where he’d dropped his saddle, like the others, and he bedded down, lying under the stars with his hands folded behind his head. An image of Sofia’s face was there before him, blocking out the stars, the night sky, those hills and trees, everything that was truly there.
She haunted him. Her face would come into his mind whenever he least expected it. He did not know why and he did not like it, but over time he was used to it, mostly because it had been going on for so many years. It was as if she had seeped into and under his very skin, for there were times when she was almost all he could think of; it was about to drive him mad. He wanted them wed, had brought her back with that in his mind as the next step. In fact, he wanted it so badly that when Edward had told him of this mission, Tobin had left swiftly, for fear he would do something treasonous.
He inhaled deeply, then exhaled.
There came a shout.
Tobin sprang up in one lithe motion, pulling his sword from its sheath.
A second later, a band of Scots stepped out of the woods, almost as if they had come from the tree trunks.
He looked left, then right. They were surrounded.
Two of them held his guards fast, dagger points pressed into their necks.
“Yield, English, else yer men die here and now.”
Tobin inhaled sharply, angrily, then dropped his sword.
Chapter 22
A short time later Sister Katherine led Sofia back to the tiny room that was to be her new home. She unlocked the door and opened it. Sofia had been told that the women of Grace Dieu were locked into their rooms every night at Compline so they could pray in peace.
Sofia figured they probably prayed for release from a life in a place that seemed to be little more than a prison. They even referred to those rooms as cells. The only thing missing were the bars.
She undressed and washed, then lay down on the small, narrow bed, with its lumpy and thin straw tick and no linen sheeting. She pulled the single, rough woolen blanket over her shoulders and felt a chilly draft skate up her bare legs. She raised up on one arm and looked down.
The bed was so short her feet hung off the end. She flopped over onto her back and folded her hands behind her head. She stared around the dark little room and felt more alone then she had felt in a long, long time.
She closed her eyes so she would fall asleep more quickly. Then she would not have to think. Then she would not have to feel. Then she would just be asleep.
But she could not sleep. Something was eating at her. Tension.
It was the same every night. Her mind would take her back to the places she did not want to go back to: sometimes back to the sight of her friends and their dreadful fate. If she ever fell asleep after that, she would have nightmares of being chased down roads or long dark hallways, of being caught and grabbed by grubby murderous hands and having no way to protect herself. She would awake in a cold sweat, her bedclothes soaked and her body shaking.
Then she would lie awake, trying to think of something, anything, else. It never failed. Sometime before dawn, her thoughts went to Tobin. Back when she had no will of her own, back to those kisses she craved and the moments when his hands roved her body and touched her in places that no one but she had ever touched before.
And she would imagine herself in his arms again; it was the only way she could sleep—to think of him. It was the only thing that would block out her fears.
She would lie there and imagine his kiss. His scent. His touch. Even when she told herself she should forget him. Even after he had hurt her that first time, and again. She could tell herself to forget him, but her heart and her mind would not.
The truth was: she was his. Not because of the betrothal, although that did make it official. She had been his ever since the first time she’d seen him, perhaps even since that first hoodman blind game when she was but twelve.
And he had gone and left her again.
Tobin had not even bid her farewell. He was her betrothed. He had seemed to enjoy her and she him. They had been intimate together in that inn and he had held her all night when she could not sleep.
And yet he had not even bothered to say good-bye. He was just gone again, and no one knew for how long.
She called herself every kind of a fool for ever secretly hoping or even thinking he would be different from any man she had known.
The truth was: men left women.
Oh, they could touch you and kiss you and desire you, they could tell you lies and make you promises. They could talk about your children and your future, but men were fickle. They did as they pleased. They trotted off somewhere in the name of duty or of honor or of war, and left you wondering if they had ever even been with you at all. Or if perhaps you had imagined their touches and words and kisses. Imagined even those promises.
So he was off somewhere and she was here, in a convent. For how long, she did not know. Her cousin told her she was to pray for humility and meekness.
She closed her eyes and sighed. She’d had a taste of convent life this afternoon and evening. And her biggest fear was that she did not know how she would live through the boredom of it all.
After her first week at the convent, Sofia collapsed into that small bed every night at Compline, exhausted, closed her tired eyes, and with her last waking breath she prayed for boredom.
The nuns had a lovely boundary garden at Grace Dieu, for which they felt great pride, since they had made it to resemble Gethsemane. The very next day after her arrival, it had become Sofia’s duty to weed that garden. When the weeds were all gone, Sofia was to replant it, then to water it, bringing bucket after bucket of water from the well at the opposite end of the convent.
She learned to mix wood ash, garbage, and chicken manure, which stank of the most foul odor possible, and how to shovel and blend them into the soil. She was to rake the garden clean each and every day, and change the water in the birdbath that sat behind the convent, where the hill was so steep she had to the stop seven times and catch her breath before s
he could even reach the top of it.
When she was not in the garden, she was helping each of the nuns with their duties. She fed cattle. She counted pigs. She mucked out the stables and carted the muck back to the vegetable garden near the kitchens. She gathered eggs from hens that did not want to part with them, and was pecked until she threatened to cut off their beaks and feed them to the pigs. She washed linen and towels until soon her hands were chapped and dry and she had blisters across her palms.
She pressed and cared for her own clothes. She made her own soap. She lugged firewood from the Charnwood Forest where the nuns themselves would chop it. By the end of that first week, she ate the salted cod and the watery turnips. She even ate the dark bread.
And then Easter week came. Blessed Easter, a day when she had no duties whatsoever. Sofia came into the dining hall and sat down on the hard wooden bench. She bowed her head with the others as Sister Judith gave the Lord thanks for their meager fare. Then she opened her eyes and unfolded her cracked and blistered hands.
It was then that she smelled heaven. She knew it must be heaven because nothing on earth could possibly smell that wonderful.
The nuns were chattering back and forth, until the door between the kitchen and the hall creaked open. There was a sudden lapse of silence and the women turned almost as if they were one, their faces expectant and happy.
Then Sofia saw why.
In came the servants and the cook, carrying platter after platter of the most incredible looking and smelling food Sofia had seen since her arrival. One placed a platter on her right.
“Is that what I think it is?” she asked the man.
“’Tis stuffed pork roast with gooseberries and almonds.” He made a slight bow and left.
She grabbed the serving spoon and piled some on her trencher, just as another platter was placed by her right elbow. She stared at the piles of golden beef pies and decided she had died and gone to heaven.
