Epic Historial Collection (243 page)

“Does she bear the mark of Satan?”

“We did not examine her.” This answer was evasive, Merthin realized, but Cecilia quickly added: “It was not necessary once she had received absolution.”

“This is unacceptable!” Godwyn bellowed. He had dropped the pretense that Philemon was the prosecutor. “The prioress cannot frustrate the proceedings of the court in this way!”

Bishop Richard said: “Thank you, Father Prior—”

“The order of the court must be carried out!”

Richard raised his voice. “That will do!”

Godwyn opened his mouth to protest further, then thought better of it.

Richard said: “I don't need to hear any more argument. I have made my decision, and I will now announce my judgment.”

Silence fell.

“The proposal that Caris be permitted to enter the nunnery is an interesting one. If she is a witch, she will be unable to do any harm in the holiness of her surroundings. The devil cannot enter here. On the other hand, if she is not a witch, we will have been saved from the error of condemning an innocent woman. Perhaps the nunnery would not have been Caris's choice as a way of life, but her consolation will be an existence dedicated to serving God. On balance, then, I find this a satisfactory solution.”

Godwyn said: “What if she should leave the nunnery?”

“Good point,” said the bishop. “That is why I am formally sentencing her to death, but suspending the sentence for as long as she remains a nun. If she should renounce her vows, the sentence would be carried out.”

That's it, thought Merthin in despair; a life sentence; and he felt tears of rage and grief come to his eyes.

Richard stood up. Godwyn said: “The court is adjourned!” The bishop left, followed by the monks and nuns in procession.

Merthin moved in a daze. His mother spoke to him in a consoling voice, but he ignored her. He let the crowd carry him to the great west door of the cathedral and out on to the green. The traders were packing up their leftover goods and dismantling their stalls: the Fleece Fair was over for another year. Godwyn had got what he wanted, he realized. With Edmund dying and Caris out of the way, Elfric would become alderman and the application for a borough charter would be withdrawn.

He looked at the gray stone walls of the priory buildings: Caris was in there somewhere. He turned that way, moving across the tide of the crowd, and headed for the hospital.

The place was empty. It had been swept clean, and the straw-filled palliasses used by the overnight visitors were stacked neatly against the walls. A candle burned on the altar at the eastern end. Merthin walked slowly the length of the room, not sure what to do next.

He recalled, from
Timothy's Book,
that his ancestor Jack Builder had briefly become a novice monk. The author had hinted that Jack had been a reluctant recruit, and had not taken easily to monastic discipline; at any rate, his novitiate had ended abruptly in circumstances over which Timothy drew a tactful veil.

But Bishop Richard had stated that if Caris ever left the nunnery she would be under sentence of death.

A young nun came in. When she recognized Merthin she looked scared. “What do you want?” she said.

“I must speak to Caris.”

“I'll go and ask,” she said, and hurried out.

Merthin looked at the altar, and the crucifix, and the triptych on the wall showing Elizabeth of Hungary, the patron saint of hospitals. One panel showed the saint, who had been a princess, wearing a crown and feeding the poor; the second showed her building her hospital; and the third illustrated the miracle in which the food she carried beneath her cloak was turned into roses. What would Caris do in this place? She was a skeptic, doubtful of just about everything the church taught. She did not believe that a princess could turn bread into roses. “How do they know that?” she would say to stories that everyone else accepted without question—Adam and Eve, Noah's ark, David and Goliath, even the Nativity. She would be a caged wildcat in here.

He had to talk to her, to find out what was in her mind. She must have some plan that he was not able to guess at. He waited impatiently for the nun to return. She did not come back, but Old Julie appeared. “Thank heaven!” he said. “Julie, I have to see Caris, quickly!”

“I'm sorry, young Merthin,” she said. “Caris doesn't want to see you.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” he said. “We're betrothed—we're supposed to get married tomorrow. She has to see me!”

“She's a novice nun now. She won't be getting married.”

Merthin raised his voice. “If that's true, don't you think she should tell me herself?”

“It's not for me to say. She knows you're here, and she won't see you.”

“I don't believe you.” Merthin pushed past the old nun and went through the door by which she had entered. He found himself in a small lobby. He had never been here before: few men had ever entered the nuns' area of the priory. He passed through another door and found himself in the nuns' cloisters. Several of them stood there, some reading, some walking around the square meditatively, some talking in quiet voices.

He ran along the arcade. A nun caught sight of him and screamed. He ignored her. Seeing a staircase, he ran up it and entered the first room. He found himself in a dormitory. There were two lines of mattresses, with neatly folded blankets on top. No one was there. He went a few steps along the corridor and tried another door. It was locked. “Caris!” he shouted. “Are you in there? Speak to me!” He banged on the door with his fist. He scraped the skin of his knuckles, which started to bleed, but he hardly felt the pain. “Let me in!” he yelled. “Let me in!”

A voice behind him said: “I'll let you in.”

He spun around to see Mother Cecilia.

She took a key from her belt and calmly unlocked the door. Merthin threw it open. Beyond it was a small room with a single window. All around the walls were shelves packed with folded clothes.

“This is where we keep our winter robes,” Cecilia said. “It's a storeroom.”

“Where is she?” Merthin shouted.

“She's in a room that is locked by her own request. You won't find the room and, if you did, you couldn't get in. She will not see you.”

“How do I know she's not dead?” Merthin heard his voice crack with emotion, but he did not care.

“You know me,” Cecilia said. “She's not dead.” She looked at his hand. “You've hurt yourself,” she said sympathetically. “Come with me and let me put some ointment on your cuts.”

He looked at his hand, and then at her. “You're a devil,” he said.

He ran from her, back the way he had come, into the hospital, past a scared-looking Julie, out into the open. He made his way through the end-of-fair chaos in front of the cathedral and emerged onto the main street. He thought of speaking to Edmund, but decided against it: someone else could tell Caris's ailing father the terrible truth. Whom could he trust? He thought of Mark Webber.

Mark and his family had moved to a big house on the main street, with a large stone-built ground-floor storeroom for bales of cloth. There was no loom in their kitchen now: all the weaving was done by others whom they organized. Mark and Madge were sitting on a bench, looking solemn. When Merthin walked in, Mark jumped up. “Have you seen her?” he cried.

“They won't let me.”

“That's outrageous!” Mark said. “They don't have the right to stop her seeing the man she's supposed to marry!”

“The nuns say she doesn't want to see me.”

“I don't believe them.”

“Nor do I. I went in and looked for her, but I couldn't find her. There are a lot of locked doors.”

“She must be there somewhere.”

“I know. Will you come back with me, and bring a hammer, and help me break down every door until we find her?”

Mark looked uncomfortable. Strong as he was, he hated violence.

Merthin said: “I have to find her—she might be dead!”

Before he could reply, Madge said: “I've got a better idea.”

The two men looked at her.

“I'll go to the nunnery,” Madge said. “The nuns won't be so nervous of a woman. Perhaps they will persuade Caris to see me.”

Mark nodded. “At least then we'll know that she's alive.”

Merthin said: “But…I need more than that. What is she thinking? Is she going to wait until the fuss dies down, then escape? Should I try to break her out of there? Or should I just wait—and, if so, how long? A month? A year? Seven years?”

“I'll ask her, if they'll let me in.” Madge stood up. “You wait here.”

“No, I'm coming with you,” Merthin said. “I'll wait outside.”

“In that case, Mark, why don't you come, too, to keep Merthin company?”

To keep Merthin out of trouble, she meant, but he made no objection. He had asked for their help. And he was grateful to have two people he trusted on his side.

They hurried back to the priory close. Mark and Merthin waited outside the hospital while Madge went in. Merthin saw that Caris's old dog, Scrap, was sitting at the door, waiting for her to reappear.

After Madge had been gone for half an hour, Merthin said: “I think they must have let her in, otherwise she'd be back by now.”

“We'll see,” said Mark.

They watched the last of the traders pack up and depart, leaving the cathedral green a sea of churned mud. Merthin paced up and down while Mark sat like a statue of Samson. One hour followed another. Despite his impatience, Merthin was glad of the delay, for almost certainly Madge was talking to Caris.

The sun was sinking over the west side of town when at last Madge emerged. Her expression was solemn and her face was wet with tears. “Caris is alive,” she said. “And there's nothing wrong with her, physically or mentally. She's in her right mind.”

“What did she say?” Merthin asked urgently.

“I'll tell you every word. Come, let's sit in the garden.”

They went to the vegetable patch and sat on the stone bench, looking at the sunset. Madge's equanimity gave Merthin a bad feeling. He would have preferred her to be spitting with rage. Her manner told him the news was bad. He felt hopeless. He said: “Is it true that she doesn't want to see me?”

Madge sighed. “Yes.”

“But why?”

“I asked her that. She said it would break her heart.”

Merthin began to cry.

Madge went on in a low, clear voice. “Mother Cecilia left us alone, so that we could speak frankly, without being overheard. Caris believes that Godwyn and Philemon are determined to get rid of her, because of the application for a borough charter. She's safe in the nunnery, but if she ever leaves they will find her and kill her.”

“She could escape and I could take her to London!” Merthin said. “Godwyn would never find us there!”

Madge nodded. “I said that to her. We discussed it for a long time. She feels the two of you would be fugitives for the rest of your lives. She's not willing to condemn you to that. It's your destiny to be the greatest builder of your generation. You will be famous. But, if she is with you, you will always have to lie about your identity and hide from the light of day.”

“I don't care about that!”

“She told me you would say that. But she believes you do care about it, and what is more she thinks you should. Anyway, she cares about it. She will not take away your destiny, even if you ask her to.”

“She could say this to me herself!”

“She's afraid you would talk her around.”

Merthin knew Madge was telling the truth. Cecilia had been telling the truth, too. Caris did not want to see him. He felt choked with grief. He swallowed, wiped the tears from his face with his sleeve, and struggled to speak. “But what will she do?” he said.

“Make the best of it. Try to be a good nun.”

“She hates the church!”

“I know she has never been very respectful of the clergy. In this town, it's not surprising. But she believes she can find some kind of consolation in a life dedicated to healing her fellow women and men.”

Merthin thought about that. Mark and Madge watched him in silence. He could imagine Caris working in the hospital, taking care of sick people. But how would she feel about spending half the night singing and praying? “She might kill herself,” he said after a long pause.

“I don't think so,” Madge said with conviction. “She's terribly sad, but I don't see her taking that way out.”

“She might kill someone else.”

“That's more likely.”

“Then again,” Merthin said slowly and reluctantly, “she might find a kind of happiness.”

Madge said nothing. Merthin looked hard at her. She nodded.

That was the terrible truth, he realized. Caris might be happy. She was losing her home, her freedom, and her husband-to-be; but she might still be happy, in the end.