Daughter of Mystery

by Jones, Heather Rose

  So that had been the mystery woven into the seal. Had it recognized her hands specifically? She tucked away the curiosity for later.

  I send it now when there is news to tell but they have not yet thought to put a close watch on me. I think I will not dare to write again until this matter is settled.

  And what did he know of the matter? She scanned ahead impatiently and then returned to continue reading.

  All your people are well and safe for the moment although your aunt is greatly distressed as you may imagine. I do not know what came to pass at your guildhall, but the charge that has been raised is treason. And as the charge was raised by Estefen Chazillen—

  She noticed that he, like Barbara, still balked at giving him the title of the man they had served so long.

  —I suspect it was a trap laid for you in some fashion. Barbara can tell you of the reasons for thinking this. But his plan misfired when you escaped. No clear proof has yet been offered and treason cannot be judged in absence. If you return, it must not be until you are ready and able to defend yourself and demonstrate his guilt. Chazillen has already overplayed his hand. He tried to seize Tiporsel House but Mesner Pertinek laid claim of hearth-right—

  She looked at Barbara questioningly who responded, “It’s complicated. A nobleman can extend certain immunities to the place he resides.”

  —and called the prince as witness to uphold it. Chazillen has the backing of Princess Elisebet as you may have guessed and there are men in her livery who were seen leaving the city on your trail. I pray you will be safe. Do not leave Saint Orisul’s unless you can answer the charges. And do not return, under any circumstances, until you have come of age and you both are free to act on your own behalf, no matter what news you may hear. I have no confidence in your guardians when the game is played at this level. Trust Barbara; she knows the law. And tell Barbara to remember the spotted pony. Your servant, René LeFevre.

  Margerit sat still, letting the content of LeFevre’s message settle into her understanding. Some parts were a complete mystery, others told little new but confirmed much they had suspected. So Aunt Bertrut was safe for now. Her library, her papers were safe. And if the breaking of the seal had sent a message, then LeFevre could pass that message along to the others.

  The abbess waited patiently until Margerit met her gaze once more and said, “We ask for sanctuary. Is there something…a proper form we must follow in asking? Do we—?”

  “No, child,” she answered. “It’s enough to say it to me. I won’t ask how long you wish to stay—” she began.

  Margerit interrupted. “We don’t know.” She turned to Barbara who shrugged. “We need to…to solve some problems and—”

  The woman held up a hand to stop her. “I don’t need to know what brings you here. But if you plan to stay for some time, then you need to know what we expect of you. You will lodge in the strangers’ dormitory. There are only a few guests at this time.”

  Margerit felt a sharp disappointment, but what had she expected: a private apartment? The list of rules was short and not onerous. They were not to leave the grounds. They were expected to attend ordinary daily services but need not rise for the nighttime ones. They were expected to share in the daily work of the convent. And beyond that they were free of the place, including the gardens and the library. That was welcome news to hear. But of course there would be a library; the school at Saint Orisul’s was famous.

  They were shown to the dormitory and given clean, plain clothes of the sort the secular students at the convent school wore. The guesthouse was built to house considerably more visitors than it held at the moment. There was a woman come to deliver her daughter to the school—she would be leaving soon. Two had come for some unrevealed spiritual purpose. There was an elderly pensioner who clearly had settled in to spend the remainder of her life. Margerit looked around at the available beds and went to place her small bundle of possessions on one at the end of the room.

  “Maisetra,” Barbara said in her even professional voice. “Might I suggest one of the beds closer to the fire? I expect mornings will be cold.”

  Margerit barely heard the question. “Barbara, have I done something wrong again? Why the ‘Maisetra’?”

  Barbara looked around, then pitched her voice low for only the two of them. “Margerit, we aren’t private anymore. Not here. I need to give you the…the respect of your position. For them. For the others who will hear it. And I need to do it all the time or I’ll forget.” She leaned closely and Margerit felt her warm breath in her ear as she whispered, “When I say ‘Maisetra’ to you, it means ‘beloved.’ Always remember that.”

  * * *

  They met the community as a whole for the first time at the evening meal. In addition to the sisters and the few guests there were two groups of girls distinguished mostly by dress: the secular students, brought to take advantage of the convent’s reputation for scholarship, as well as for the practical benefit of being removed from worldly temptations and hazards; and the postulants, learning alongside them but destined to take the veil. Margerit noticed something odd and in the brief period between the prayers and the reading, when ordinary conversation was allowed, she asked her neighbor, “Most of the sisters seem to be, well, older. But I see postulants and novices in plenty—what happens to them?”

  The woman smiled. “We’re a teaching order. After training for a while here they go out to our daughter houses to teach in the schools for a time.”

  “I know about the teaching,” Margerit said. “My governess, Sister Petrunel, was of your order.”

  “Petrunel? She’s in charge of the school at Eskor now, you know. Yes, some go out as tutors or governesses—it provides a great deal of our income. But that’s for an age of steadiness and maturity. It wouldn’t do at all for the younger women to be living in the world like that. Ah, the reading starts, we must be silent.”

  When the meal was at an end, the two new arrivals were called up to the abbess’s table to be made known to the community at large, but as they approached, there was a sudden cry from the end of the table. An old woman—Margerit judged from her wrinkles and frailty she might be past eighty—fixed the two with a look of childlike delight and exclaimed, “Lissa and Bezza! You’ve come back! How kind of you to visit your old teacher.”

  Their escort whispered, “She means nothing by it. Sister Anna’s mind has been wandering of late.”

  But after the introduction had been made, Margerit ventured, “My mother…she was a student here once. And I think she was sometimes called Bezza—Elisebet Fulpi she was then. They say I am very much like her in appearance. Do you think…?”

  The abbess nodded thoughtfully. “Sister Anna would likely have been here in the house at that time. Perhaps she does see your mother in your face. She comes and goes through time, these days. Sometimes she’s a girl again, sometimes she becomes lost at the door to eternity. We pray that she will find her path easily.”

  Barbara stepped forward, staring at Sister Anna in fierce concentration. “You put a name to me too,” she said, almost to herself. And then she dropped to kneel before the old woman and grasped her hands. “Lissa—who is Lissa? Who did you see in my face?”

  The nun looked around and moved restlessly. “Lissa? I don’t know any Lissa.”

  But Barbara wouldn’t be put off. “Was Lissa my mother?”

  “Mother,” she repeated vaguely. Then, “Mother—why did you leave me here, Mother? Why don’t you visit me anymore?” It was the voice of a lost child.

  Margerit took Barbara by the shoulder and pulled her away. “Let her be. Who knows whether she meant anything by it.”

  But Barbara turned to her with the same fierce look. “‘Lissa and Bezza’ she said. And your mother was Bezza. She said them as if the names went together.”

  But there was no more sense to be had from Sister Anna that evening and they were left to spin what-if tales between them as they lay closely together that night. That, at least, was allowed
to them by the customs of the guesthouse. And if they were quiet and discreet, then after the lamps were out they might exchange caresses that made up for the distance maintained in daylight.

  * * *

  Margerit had heard the requirement that they share in the daily work of the convent with some trepidation. Her life had fitted her for very little of a practical nature. She knew how to dance and do fine embroidery but not how to mend torn clothing. She could plan and preside over a dinner party but not cook one. And she’d never come closer to housecleaning than knowing which of the servants owned each task to be done. She was willing, though she suspected they would find her of very little use. But when she laid out the matter to the sister who took them in charge the next morning, she was met by amusement.

  “I don’t think it will be necessary for you to scrub floors. I see by your fingers that you do a bit of writing.”

  Margerit reflexively hid her right hand under the other as if it had been Aunt Bertrut scolding her once again. Realizing what she’d done, she held up her fingers where even two weeks on the road had failed to erase the ink stains entirely. “More than a bit. I was studying at the university.”

  “We can always find a use for someone with a neat hand. And as you’re a scholar, perhaps you might assist the teachers as well, if you have the skill.”

  Margerit hastened to add, “Barbara is a scholar too, for all that she’s my armin.” It had occurred to her that they might not see past Barbara’s station when assigning work.

  Barbara herself ventured, “Might there be something to be done with your archives and records?” She explained, “I want to search…to see what I can learn about the Lissa that Sister Anna mentioned. What better way to find my way around them than to help with the clerking?”

  “There may not be a Lissa,” the sister cautioned. “Last month she was telling us stories about the time she spent at court—all imagined. Or rather, you will likely find dozens of Lissas—it often seems like half our girls are named Elisebet.”

  * * *

  It was easy to fall into the pattern of the days: morning services, a bit of bread and watered wine to sustain one, then laboring among the inkpots until the dinner hour. More services, a bit of time for themselves, more work, another common meal, then services and bed. Margerit was almost grateful that there was little time to think and fret. Barbara, as usual, could not be still. Usually she would be up before the morning bells to find an empty place to run her sword drills with skirts hiked up and a wooden rod for a blade. And in the free afternoons she buried herself among old registers and correspondence in search of the mysterious Lissa.

  “Maisetra, what years was your mother here?” she asked at the start of her quest.

  “I’m not sure exactly. I was born in ninety-eight so perhaps several years before that.” She searched her memory for mentions of her mother’s girlhood. “Oh, but Aunt Bertrut said—” She had listened only halfway to her aunt’s story that day during flood-tide. “She said my mother had a difficult time, that she miscarried several times before me. So it would be some years before that, but I don’t know…”

  “Then perhaps I should start in ninety-five and work backward,” Barbara mused. “Well, it wouldn’t be the first time for that!”

  When Margerit asked her meaning, she heard for the first time of the hunt through the baptisms at the cathedral. “But why didn’t you ask my help?” she protested.

  Barbara looked uncomfortable. “It was a…a personal matter. I wanted—oh, it doesn’t matter now. It just seemed necessary to do it myself.”

  “Would you still prefer that?” Margerit asked hesitantly. She could understand, just a little, what Barbara was trying to say.

  “Do you mind?” Barbara countered.

  “Barbara, you can ask me for help, if you want it. You don’t need to be strong all the time.”

  “But I do,” she answered with a sad smile.

  There was such loneliness in those three words. Margerit seized her hand and held it to her heart. “No! Barbara, promise me something: no more secrets, no more silences. Promise me!” And before Barbara had a chance to answer she added, “And don’t you dare say, ‘Yes, Maisetra’ to me this time.”

  Barbara hesitated long enough that Margerit knew the answer would be the truth. “I promise to try.”

  * * *

  The regular daily services might have been a chore to some guests but Margerit found them inspiring. Someone with true vision had developed their rites, both the ordinary daily worship and the special mysteries. To a vidator, the chapel became a symphony of visitationis, now quiet and peaceful, now like a blare of trumpets, now a swelling river of strings. Even the pure worship of God resonated in her senses. What made the difference? From Sister Petrunel’s indifference to the idea of petitionary mysteries, Margerit had thought the whole order leaned only to devotion, but she was realizing that had been a personal stance. Indeed, the steady flow of pilgrims to the convent came not so much for simple prayer and a touch of the relics as for the benefit of the library of mysteries developed and gathered over the years, selected and adapted for their particular needs. Every few days another party of travelers appeared in the guesthouse to spend their days praying and, if they were so favored, to be taken in hand by the sisters who sorted through their needs and desires for the appropriate ceremony. Margerit longed to watch them with a student’s eye, but the rule was for privacy.

  She felt oddly shy about repeating her own mystery in such a place where she knew it would be noted and remarked on, though once or twice on those rare occasions she found the chapel empty, she had ventured it. And as October passed away she began to think that the ceremony must either have done its work or its time had passed. The first dustings of snow were lightening the lower slopes of the mountains and soon the passes would be closed. And how would she know if it worked? She thought of the charm that had been infused into the seal on LeFevre’s letter. Was it possible to design a mystery that would communicate its eventual success or failure to the celebrants?

  * * *

  The Feast of All Saints, Margerit thought wistfully, would have been the ideal setting to celebrate their castellum. Best to petition a saint when there was a door opened in some way: a feast day, a dedicated chapel, a relic. But for a fabric woven of so many different strands, All Saints was surely the perfect time.

  The services provided her the usual luminous glow of sensation—not the riot of colors of a true mystery, but more like the sun fighting its way through a mist. She thought at first she had nodded in sleep when a shadow crossed her attention. She jerked upright, aware of a sound: a rumbling like cartwheels on cobblestones or the buzzing of a swarm of bees. Another shadow slipped past the corner of her eyes—a sleek shape that seemed to move on four legs. It frightened her. Her visions had always seemed external. She could have traced the exact places and shapes in the air where they flowed past. But these…these phasmas seemed to move inside her own head. The air crackled like the snapping of dry twigs.

  And then the chapel faded away and the shapes rose before her. A wall of stone, a spotted pelt, shining figures standing like the glass windows in the cathedral.

  The turris, she thought wildly. He’s building the tower and they are come. Had her workings prepared the saints against his petitions? She couldn’t think of the right words over the roaring in her ears, but could only whisper over and over, “Hear not the words of he who wishes ill! Blessed Virgin, hear not the words of he who wishes ill! Sweet Jesus hear him not! Saint Mauriz, hear him not! Saint Challun, hear him not!” and on through the litany of all the saints invoked in the castellum. And she saw the Virgin cast her blue mantle over the thorn bush and the leopard was embraced by the Lamb and all went silent and dark.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Barbara

  Barbara had watched the reflections of visions in Margerit’s face often enough to know instantly that this time was different. And when the urgent muttered litany ended with a
small cry, she caught Margerit’s limp form before it could crumple to the floor. With no interruption in the service, one of the sisters stepped in to help carry her through the cloister to a quiet room where they laid her on a low cot.

  “She’s only swooned, I think,” the nun said and left to summon other help.

  Barbara bent over her, chafing her hands and stroking her face and calling her name. She heard someone enter the chamber but didn’t turn. Margerit’s eyes were fluttering a little, though when she opened them she stared as if the visions still danced before her.

  “Margerit, what happened?”

  She was answered uncertainly. “He did it…the tower…the leopard…and Mauriz with his sword. But then he sheathed it…and the Virgin covered them but I don’t know what it means. They’ve come…but are they safe?” Barbara felt her hands grasped tightly. “Did it work? Are they safe?” Margerit’s eyes saw the world again and were fixed on her beseechingly.

  “I don’t know. We won’t know until there’s news.”

  There was a small cough behind her and Barbara rose to see the abbess waiting as one of the other sisters placed a small stool for her at Margerit’s bedside.

  “She isn’t raving,” Barbara hastened to assure her. “There’s more sense in her words than you may think.”

  The woman nodded and took Margerit’s hand in turn. “My child, do you often see visions like this?”

  “Not…not like this,” Margerit said hesitantly as she struggled to sit. “Just the…the ordinary ones. In the mysteries, when the saints are hearkening.”

  Barbara saw the abbess conceal a small bemused smile as she repeated, “Just the ordinary ones.” After a moment’s pause she said, “You should have told me.”