As they pulled away from the market he caught site of the old woman who had accompanied Nolana. She was obviously searching for her. Their eyes met. He hoped she understood his silent signal.
THERE'S A WOMAN IN THE OXCART
Beautiful. Her monk had said she was beautiful, though she didn’t feel like a thing of beauty, curled up under the heavy canvas in a smelly oxcart. The calm that had lulled her to sleep had fled, to be replaced by dread and uncertainty. This was madness. What was Aidan thinking? The abbot would be furious when she was discovered.
Again, she cursed a world where men made the rules and women were forced into impossible situations. Once more she was at the mercy of men, and on Holy Island she would be surrounded by them. The odor of unwashed male bodies swept over her, mingling with the smell of mead. Bile rose in her throat. No doubt she didn’t smell too fresh either after the afternoon she had endured. She hoped none of the men in the cart had a good sense of smell. Did monks know the scent of a female? It was at once humorous and terrifying to ponder.
There was no conversation among the men. Perhaps they weren’t allowed to speak to each other. If she had to endure a vow of silence, she would die. She prayed she would not be sent to a convent with such a rule.
A voice startled her. “We’ve almost left it too late thanks to your dawdling, Brother Christian. The tide is coming in already. We’ll barely make it to the island.”
“Mea culpa, Father Abbot. Again I apologise.”
Aidan’s voice. How safe it made her feel, despite the note of sarcasm in his words.
A short while later, she held her breath when the cart rumbled to a halt. It lurched as the men descended. Now she would be discovered.
His voice was strong, full of authority. “A word, Father Abbot.”
“What is it, Brother Christian? I’m tired and have yet to see to...”
“There is a woman in the oxcart.”
Nolana pressed the back of her hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle, imagining the look of confusion and consternation on the old cleric’s face.
“A woman?” The abbot was choking. She imagined Aidan biting back the impulse to laugh. Aidan. How right his name sounded. It was as if she had known him forever, like a brother. Nay, the feelings that assailed her in Aidan’s presence had naught to do with brotherly love.
Her monk cleared his throat. He was trying not to laugh. “Yes. She requested sanctuary. I granted it.”
Silence. The monk had clearly died of an apoplexy brought on by shock.
“You...you granted sanctuary?”
“I did. You may castigate me later, Father, but she is no doubt suffocating under the canvas while we stand here.”
Nolana squealed when the canvas covering was whipped away. She blinked and struggled slowly to her feet, legs cramped and stiff. Three monks gaped. In the rapidly waning light the abbot’s contorted face glowed red. With a trace of a smile on his face, Aidan offered his hand.
She walked unsteadily to the edge of the cart. He reached up, put his hands at her waist and lifted her down. She took hold of his shoulders. It was the first time she had put her hands on him. She remembered the jolt that had travelled up her arm when he had helped her into the cart in those desperate moments in the field. The warmth of his hands seeped into her ribs and pooled in her breasts. His robe felt rough, but his shoulders were broad and muscular. They belonged to a knight, a warrior. How did he bear the coarse robe against his skin? He grinned, reassuring her, and desire spiralled in her most intimate place.
“I have two sisters, one of them my twin. I am used to helping maidens alight from conveyances.”
The abbot snorted and waved a dismissive gesture to the other gaping monks. “Be gone, back to your dormitory and prepare for supper. There is naught of interest to you here.”
They scurried off, heads bowed.
The monk steepled his hands under his hooked nose and sniffed, as if some distasteful odor had assailed his nostrils. “Now, Brother Christian, who is this woman?”
How typical, Nolana thought, that he did not address her directly. She took a step forward. “I am Nolana Kyncade, daughter of Laird Ian Kyncade, late of Turaid Kyncade in...”
The abbot turned his head slowly and looked at her as if examining a maggot. “You’re a Scot.”
She gathered the playd around her shoulders and stiffened her backbone. “I am a Highlander. I seek sanctuary from the cruelty of my stepfather.”
He scoffed. “And who might he be?”
Nolana felt a twinge of fear. “Neyll Maknab.”
The abbot’s mouth fell open. “Maknab? He’s your stepfather? What is this cruelty you speak of?”
Her discomfort grew. A man would not understand. “He wishes to marry me to an auld man.”
The abbot looked scathingly at Aidan and pointed a boney finger at Nolana. “You’ve brought this wench here because she cannot obey her father’s wishes in the matter of marriage?”
Aidan shifted his weight, looking sheepish. The smile had left his face. “She was fleeing, afraid, she asked for sanctuary. I did not know from what.”
Oh God. He was of the same mind. She might have known. Aidan too would believe she should have obeyed her stepfather.
She fell to her knees and grasped the hem of the monk’s robe. “My intended betrothed will beat me. He is a cruel man, as is my stepfather. I wish to become a nun. I beg you for sanctuary.”
The man was clearly uncomfortable. “Get thee to the refectory, Brother Christian. I’ll deal with you later. I must see Mistress Kyncade to a private cell and ensure she doesn’t come into contact with...”
She was to be a prisoner. Aidan walked away, fists clenched, broad shoulders rigid, his mouth tightly drawn. The forbidding walls of the abbey soon swallowed him up.
Don’t leave me.
She had never felt so alone.
~~~
Filled with conflicting emotions, Aidan had no idea what he was eating. Maknab. He should have recognised the devise on the men’s tunics. Nolana was Maknab’s stepdaughter. It was a widely held belief at Kirkthwaite Hall, and in the nearby village of Bolton, that it was Maknabs who had attacked and destroyed the manor long ago. They had slaughtered Aidan’s grandparents and uncles.
Many young Saxons who fled to Scotland to escape the conquering Normans allied themselves with marauding Scots. Though Aidan’s own father had unwittingly abetted in the destruction, he had never confirmed or denied it was the Maknabs with whom the Saxon refugees had allied themselves. It was a topic Caedmon FitzRam had wanted left in the past. He had believed at the time the Kirkthwaite holding belonged to Normans, whom he then considered his mortal enemies, before he learned he was the illegitimate son of a Norman.
Aidan swallowed hard, afraid the food might come back up his throat...Nolana Kyncade beaten and forced into a marriage she dreaded. He lay his hands flat on the trestle table, palms down. His fingers still tingled with the memory of holding her body. She was lightness itself, and he had wanted to twirl her around in the air, throw her over his shoulder and carry her off to bed...his bed.
He must convince the abbot to grant her asylum, but could not allow her to become a nun. Religious life would destroy her. She was spirited, brave, warm, a woman born to love a man. The thought filled his lonely heart with unbearable yearning.
SWARM
Nolana was convinced the hand of God had stirred up the gale that lashed Holy Island for three days after her arrival. The weather had been unseasonably warm and now it seemed the heavens had unleashed their pent-up fury. Nothing moved on or off the island.
She was confined to a small cell. Food was brought, but all she saw of the men who delivered it was the top of their tonsured heads, their eyes fixed on the tray. Obviously, they had been given strict instructions. It was difficult to be sure, but she believed a different monk came each time. She longed for Aidan to be the bearer of food, but he would never be allowed contact with her. She prayed he had not been too seve
rely punished for his compassion.
She paced the few steps the cell allowed, hugging the playd tightly to her, trying to keep warm. She was given no books to read. The monks no doubt believed her illiterate...a woman and a Scot. How little these Northumbrians knew of the windswept Fells and the people who dwelled there.
Her anger over her fate intensified at the sound of the windblown surf hurtling itself at the ancient stone walls. She had been shut away in this tiny hole because she was a woman who had dared challenge her fate. She was given no news of what the abbot intended to do with her. Whatever it was, it would not be good. Either he would ship her off to a nunnery, or summon her stepfather. She was helpless, like the midges struggling to free themselves from the spider web above her pallet.
On the third day of her imprisonment, late in the day, the abbot rapped on the door and shouted. “The storm has abated and I have sent a message to the Bishop in Durham. He will send an escort to take you to the convent. In the meantime, you must earn your keep. The monthly laundry takes place on the morrow...you will assist with the bucking. Someone will come to collect you at dawn.”
Nolana slept fitfully that night. It was more than she had hoped for, and she was to be allowed a reprieve from this box, albeit that she would be steeping linens in lye. Pray God she might at least catch a glimpse of Aidan.
~~~
Aidan was relieved he’d been allowed to continue his work with the bees. He had assumed it a lost cause during the hour-long lecture in the misericord on the subject of the sins of the flesh and the follies of rash decisions.
The diatribe had included the abbot’s utter disbelief that any woman might question the edicts of a man. She should be soundly beaten in that event. Aidan deemed it fortunate Ragna was not present.
He thought of his father and the respect he had always shown their mother. No one had judged him less of a man for it. Nor would anyone have dared suggest that Caedmon FitzRam was not master in his own house, but he didn’t have to be a tyrant to be such. The same had been true of Aidan’s grandfather, Ram de Montbryce, despite his being a powerful Norman Earl, a hero of the Battle of Hastings.
It seemed to Aidan that women responded better to kind words and love than to threats and brutality.
He had served his penance...five hours on his knees in the chapel, five hours spent with his thoughts on Nolana Kyncade.
Prevented from tending the outdoor hives during the storm, he looked forward to visiting them. There had not been much activity in the manmade skeps sheltered in the recessed bee boles in the south wall and covered with protective straw hackles. The bees would be out and about again today.
Their industry inspired him. Free to fly abroad, they never failed to return to their hive. It saddened him that by the time the skeps were broken open the bees would be dead, killed by sulphur smoke. Fervent prayers would be sent heavenward for the repopulation of the new skeps by new colonies, and the process would begin again.
Aidan sensed great excitement among the monks. The first day of breaking open the skeps signaled a new beginning, a harbinger of summer that followed the late spring ritual. Taking honey in the spring allowed the bees a chance to replenish over the summer.
Honey would be jarred, new beeswax candles and writing tablets made, and best of all, fresh mead fermented. There would be projects to keep him busy, a respite from the monotony of winter.
The band of brothers selected for the task helped each other don the masks that would protect them from bee stings. Aidan’s round wooden mask didn’t feel particularly secure after another brother fastened the ties behind his head. Hopefully, his cowl would help deter the bees. Brother Tristan, who seemed to have taken a liking to Aidan, told him they would make two kinds of mead with the fresh honey...ordinary meth for the common folk and metheglin for the nobility. Aidan suspected some of the latter would find its way into the hands of the abbot and his cronies.
“What’s the difference?”
Brother Tristan put a finger to his chapped lips and looked around. “Lavender, and sometimes rosemary,” he whispered with a conspiratorial wink.
They made their way first to the hives in the tree trunk hollows. Brother Tristan deemed it a safer place for the postulants to start. They already had some experience collecting small amounts of honey. These bees would not be killed, but the smoke from smoldering cow dung heaped in a clay shell would lull them into gorging on honey.
Aidan was glad of two things. Firstly, he had not been charged with collecting the dung. What’s more, he was to scoop out the honey and not hold the hot shell from whence the obnoxious odor emerged. Tall as he was, Aidan would be obliged to stand on tiptoe in order to reach inside the hives since the trees were cut at a height out of reach of animals.
Everything went as planned. They collected honey and wax from a dozen hives. Thankfully, no one got stung, and the masks stayed in place. The smoke worked its magic. The thick linen bindings protecting Aidan’s hands were saturated with honey.
But his back ached. He had been too long on his knees on the stone floor of the chapel. Bending in an unnatural position to scoop out the liquid gold, poised to react if things went awry, had also taken its toll. He prized fitness and worked hard at keeping in good fettle, now it seemed his body was weak. Sweat poured down the back of his neck and trickled into his eyes as he labored in the sun, the cowl over his head. The mask prevented him wiping his brow.
Only one hive left.
“Keep the smoke going,” Brother Tristan urged the postulant holding the clay shell. Aidan suspected the young man was in an even worse state, contending as he was with the acrid reek of the cow dung under his nose and the heat of the clay shell in his hands. He took one hand off the shell to fan the dwindling smoke towards Aidan. His intention was probably to blow on the dung. He inhaled deeply, but his breath caught and he coughed...and coughed...then hacked and hacked. Aidan was afraid the youth might choke. In his panic, the lad dropped the clay shell to grasp at his mask.
Aidan reached out to grab his hand. “Don’t take it off. You’ll get stung.”
Too late. The young man wrenched off his mask and was stung instantly. As he screamed and lashed out, his hand caught the edge of Aidan’s mask. It slipped askew on his wet face. Aidan reached up to right it with his honey soaked hands. The bees had become agitated with the commotion and without the smoke to subdue them they swarmed Aidan’s hands.
He reflected later that the unexpected intensity of the stings must have been what caused him to panic. How else to explain why he had ripped off his mask and rubbed his eyes? If the stings on his hands were painful, they were pinpricks compared to the unbearable fire consuming his face. He fell to his knees, aware only of a deafening roar, yet somehow he heard the calm voice of Brother Tristan warning the others not to run.
Within minutes, he was being carried inside the walls of the abbey. A few bees still buzzed around him, but they disappeared quickly. His eyes were sealed shut, his hands on fire.
Brother Tristan remained in calm control. “Take him to the infirmary.”
Trembling uncontrollably and gasping for air, Aidan vomited. Choking was the last thing he remembered before darkness engulfed him.
BEESTUNG
Nolana spent most of the day stirring the cauldron which Brother Thomas used to steep the linens in lye. The laundry was set off the kitchens, since fires weren’t permitted anywhere else in the abbey.
She felt like a limp rag. The steam had dampened her clothing and she had long ago discarded the playd. Her léine clung to her and sweat trickled between her breasts and down her back.
To her dismay, several monks passing in and out of the kitchens gave her more than a cursory glance, then cast their eyes down and scurried off, faces red. No matter the clothing, her ample breasts were difficult to conceal. Maknab’s table had offered meagre sustenance, yet her breasts continued to grow.
Her thick hair was heavy with moisture. Ironically, her throat was bone dry. She had
been offered nothing to eat or drink. How good a tumbler of mead and a spoonful of honey would taste. She was a slave, longing for the blessed coolness of her hateful little cell.
After interminable stirring, she had to heave the sodden cloth out of the vat and transfer it to another cauldron of cold water to rinse. Fortunately, two burly monks came to haul the rinsed linens to the drying racks after they had wrung as much water as possible from them.
Another monk was responsible for keeping the fire going, but when the new wood was added, billowing smoke brought tears to her eyes. Crackling sparks flew, sometimes stinging her raw hands.
Late in the afternoon, Brother Thomas waddled over, laden with another pile of linens. “Surely not more?” she rasped.
He dropped the pile next to her. “No, these are clean. Take them to the infirmary.”
Escape.
The abbot would disapprove of her wandering the passageways, but she had no intention of raising the possibility to Brother Thomas. Taking a deep breath, she reached for her playd and stooped to pick up the heavy pile. “I don’t know where...”
He strode away, muttering directions. “Stay there and make yourself useful. We’re done here.”
She stepped out of the laundry, relishing the fresh air of the cloister. It was a warm afternoon, but the breeze felt cool on her damp hair and clothing. Thank goodness for the playd.
Her footsteps echoed off the stones of deserted corridors and hallways until she paused before a large wooden door which she assumed was the infirmary since she had followed Brother Thomas’s instructions exactly. The linen pile was getting heavy. She leaned her back against the door and pushed. It creaked open and she peered inside.
There were six raised pallets in the room, two of which had shapeless mounds atop them, covered with linens. Another monk, standing next to one of the pallets, pressed a finger to his lips and beckoned her. “I’ll show you where to place them,” he whispered. Since he showed no surprise at the presence of a woman, she surmised everyone in the abbey must by now know of her existence.
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