Rexanne Becnel (3 page)

Yet Joanna struggled inside. More than anything else she sought an inner peace, a calm that might sustain her when one of her moods came upon her. But she found no solace in prayer. Her soul resisted, as if the devil had taken root within her breast. The prayers she knew by rote were so much muddle in her head, and when she searched for her own words, they would not come.

You are not one to judge your betters,
she silently chastised herself.
Or even your equals.

How she longed to shift her weight. Her left leg was cramping, yet she stubbornly stayed as she was.
Who are you to think your sin any less than hers?
she reviled herself.
You who are so proud?
Yet the fact was, she had spied one of the other aspirants meeting a man near the small pond in the woods, and she had judged the woman at once.

Joanna had been collecting arrowroot in the damp places beyond the pond when she had seen Winna and the fowler, and she could not help but stare. How they had clung together—their bodies pressed close, their mouths seeking each other’s. How familiarly they had touched each other, then sunk down in the thick ferns where she could not see any more of them.

She had not
wanted
to see any more. Indeed, she had been repulsed and horrified, and she had not lingered in that place a moment longer. But on her hurried return to the priory she had recalled the scene over and over again. That Winna was a shameless hussy! Yet Joanna knew it was not her place to judge another. That was only for the heavenly Father to do. Through the prioress He would have his penance from Winna. Joanna should concern herself more with a penance for her own pride in judging another when such was not her place to do.

Yet her sin was not limited to pride, and that was what preyed most sorely upon her mind. When she had seen Winna with that man, she had become unaccountably angry. She had tried to pretend it was a righteous anger that Winna could betray the other Gilbertine sisters and aspirants by consorting with a man. How could she! Yet quite perversely, Joanna had also felt a disturbing desire to know more. What had they done in the deep bed of ferns? Why had Winna gone to that man so willingly?

A long-ago memory of her mother weeping and her father’s cruel tone and furious accusations came back to her as she wrestled with her conflicting emotions, and it restored her righteous anger. Men hurt women. Winna might not know that yet, but eventually she would find out. Perhaps that would be God’s way of punishing her for her sin.

Then Joanna made a devout sign of the cross in atonement for daring to impose her own human need for justice on a matter that lay only between Winna and her Lord.

She stayed upon her knees on the ancient stone floor until the bells rang for the afternoon chapter reading. But even after she joined the other aspirants in the chapel, sitting across the aisle from the white-garbed sisters, she feared her prayers fell short of cleansing her of her sinful feelings.

It was true that she no longer was angry at Winna. That emotion was ill-placed. Nor did she judge the woman for her weakness. After all, she herself had her own weaknesses that seemed to defy mending. Her temper, her quick tongue. Her propensity to judge others. Yet try as she might, Joanna could not rid herself of her unseemly curiosity. What had Winna and the fowler done together in the woods? And when would they do it again?

When they all knelt at the prioress’s signal, Joanna’s knees protested their renewed abuse, and a faint groan of pain escaped her lips.

“Shh” came the quick censure from, of all people, Winna herself. Joanna frowned down at her own clasped hands, trying hard to restrain her freshening anger.

“… and beg His forgiveness for our sins—both those sins known to us as well as the many unknown. Pitiful creatures that we are, it is only the good Lord’s love of us that confers any dignity upon us,” the prioress intoned in her familiar low monotone.

Once more Joanna was overcome with guilt and vowed, as she seemed to do now on almost a daily basis, that she would keep her troublesome thoughts under control. She would not be proud. She would not be contrary. She would not judge others. Yet as they lingered at their prayers, celebrating only portions of the mass since the sacraments were now forbidden in England, Joanna felt a sinking desperation. She feared that even after five years at the priory she would never make a good nun, humble and meek, content with quiet days of prayer and endless labor at embroidery. It was what she wanted, but …

Of their own volition her thoughts strayed back to the little scene she had witnessed in the forest, and she sighed disconsolately. Sister was right, she
was
one of God’s most pitiful creatures.

Visitors at St. Theresa’s Priory were rare. Joanna had often thought it due as much to the priory’s lonely situation on a promontory that pointed into the German Sea as to the spare accommodations associated with all of the Gilbertine houses. No well-dowered priory, this. St. Theresa’s was peopled primarily with the castoffs of society: women fallen on hard times with nowhere else to turn; reformed prostitutes from Durham and York and Lincoln; the occasional widow, unwilling to be sold by her liege lord into another marriage. And others like herself—daughters of lesser lords. By and large they all shared one trait in common—a lack of funds—and this accounted for the priory’s dire situation. Yet that was as their founder, Gilbert of Sempringham, would have had it, and so it was that the Gilbertines drew those women whom the Cistercians, Cluniacs, and White Ladies would not accept into their holy orders.

The aspirants and sisters at St. Theresa’s labored long and hard to sustain the priory and, therefore, themselves. Their embroidery graced many an English church as well as grand castle halls. Fine stitching was their bread and sustenance, and twice monthly the cart left with their goods for York. Prayer, stitching, and the gardening necessary to provide for the kitchens formed the sum total of life at the priory, and by and large she and the others were content with their lot. Their choices outside the priory were grim.

Yet precisely because of this solitary existence, visitors were a rare treat and cause for great excitement. Thus everyone buzzed with curiosity when, during one morning’s reading, the prioress was interrupted by a messenger. After hurriedly completing her sermon, Sister Edithe announced to the curious congregation that a group of travelers approached down the stony track that led to St. Theresa’s.

As they filed out from the chapel, an uncommon animation gripped the whole of St. Theresa’s populace. In a flurry of activity, the priory was hastily prepared for its visitors. The stone steps were swept by the younger girls. Tables were dragged out for an early supper while the cooks hastened to the kitchens. From the tower above the chapel one of the nuns marked the company’s progress down the narrow route.

They had made the turn past Norse Beck. They filed down the narrows that edged Christa’s Spout, where a clear stream of water fell past the chalk-white cliff. They came now up through the moor!

Joanna was as filled with anticipation as the others, and as eager to glimpse a new face, hear a different voice, and learn news from elsewhere. For the moment, at least, she forgot her determined rejection of the outside world. Here was a reprieve from the dull and repetitive life at St. Theresa’s for a little while.

The men who rode into the unfortified yard of the priory were an awe-inspiring lot. Though they wore neither armor nor mail and flew only one pennant—a black field dominated by a white circle and a bloodred eagle—they were nonetheless unmistakably men of war. There was that aura about them that spoke of strength and daring and even menace, should circumstances demand it.

Yet as Joanna watched, only one face within a crowd of observers, her eyes were drawn to the man who led the band, and a prickle of alarm rippled up her spine.

Though all of the men appeared impressive, especially to women unaccustomed to men of war, the leader of the group was the most formidable of all. It was not his height nor his breadth of shoulder and chest that marked him apart from the rest. The fair-haired giant who rode at his right surpassed him on both those counts. It was more in his bearing, so erect, so composed, as if he possessed a power—an authority—that no one dared cross.

The typical arrogance of a nobleman, Joanna thought, only tenfold. But though she felt an instant dislike toward him, she still could not pull her eyes away. He sat tall and easy in his saddle, at one with the proud steed he rode. His garb was simple and dark: a short leather tunic above deep-green hose and tall gray boots. A cape was flung back over one of his shoulders, held by a dark glittering brooch. His only concession to the chivalric style was the fine girdle that circled his waist, leather worked with gold and silver, and encrusted with jewels that winked in the thin sunlight.

He was every inch a lord of the realm, yet as Joanna followed his progress, she was put more in mind of a marauding Dane than a gallant from the court of King John. He was too watchful; he sat too still upon his mount. Then there was the unorthodox length of his hair, worn well past his shoulders, as if he were a Vandal of old. Indeed, he most assuredly looked the part, and she shivered in apprehension.

He let his eyes slide slowly across the yard, as if he searched for some unnamed thing, and Joanna felt certain nothing escaped his discerning scrutiny. As his gaze passed over the little group where she stood, she shrank back, suddenly fearful of his presence at St. Theresa’s. This boded ill, she thought in a sudden, unwarranted panic. At once she regretted her foolish longing for some break in the monotonous life in the priory.
Send him away,
she silently prayed as he dismounted before Sister Edithe and made a courteous bow.
Oh, please, sweet mother Mary. Send him away from this place.

“I hope there’s news of York,” she heard a whisper behind her.

“If they’re up from London, p’rhaps they’ve word of Scunthorpe. I’ve no word from me mum …”

“Sure as anything they ain’t come from the bishop.”

The chatter picked up as Sister Edithe led the man toward the main hall, and the remainder of his fellows began to dismount. The several steeds and two sumpter animals that were lightly loaded were led to the sheds—meager housing for such fine beasts. But then, St. Theresa’s had few horses—there was no need save for the delivery cart. Still, it was not the housing of the horses that troubled Joanna as the women in the yard began slowly to disperse. That man had come here for a reason. She was certain of it. The priory was too remote for it to be otherwise. He did not look to be a messenger from the Gilbertine Order. Therefore, it must be something else.

“Such a fine group of men. ’Tis enough to make a body forget the troubles a man can cause a woman,” a sultry voice remarked. When Joanna identified the speaker as Winna, still staring after the men who now followed their lord to the hall, she frowned.

“’Tis best to avoid visitors, and thereby avoid the temptations of the world,” Joanna replied curtly, quoting from a recent sermon she had heard.

“Are
you
tempted?” Winna asked in a deliberately provoking tone. “Best be forewarned, then. Men are a hard habit to renounce.”

“And
you
quite clearly have not rid yourself of the habit,” Joanna snapped in irritation.

“And methinks you are too curious by half about that selfsame habit,” Winna drawled out knowingly. “I wonder why?”

Joanna’s temper rose in quick response, but she determinedly squelched her sharp retort. Winna judged everyone by her own standard of loose morals. For a moment Joanna worried that Winna might have seen her watching in the woods after all. But she dismissed that as unlikely. Her real concern should be whether she
was
too curious about these men—about men in general. She marshaled her emotions, cloaking herself in an icy calm.

“You make a mockery of yourself—and this place—by your unseemly remarks.”

“I am here because I must be. Piety I will leave in the hands of those better suited to it. Like yourself,” Winna added archly. “But then, perhaps piety is not precisely to your liking either, despite the prim demeanor you affect. I’ve always wondered, Joanna, why
you
are in this place. Why hide yourself among us when you’ve a home and title? Why hide from the pleasures you might claim as your birthright?”

Joanna had no answer to give, and as she stalked angrily away from Winna’s mocking laughter, she was caught between a terrible fury and a sudden dejection. Her place at St. Theresa’s was no one’s concern but her own, she fumed. No one’s! But Winna’s cruel taunt had opened up memories that, once unearthed, were always hard to bury.

The Priory of St. Theresa’s had been home to her since she had arrived at the tender age of twelve. Certainly it was more her home than the castle of her birth. For three long years—from the time her mother had died until her father’s second wife had so proudly presented him with a son—her father had ignored her completely, rarely even condescending to acknowledge her presence. Joanna had pleaded continually to be sent away to a convent school. Anything to escape from Oxwich. But her father had been adamant in his refusal. Only the birth of a worthwhile heir had softened his stance. Or perhaps it was Lady Mertice’s impatience with her difficult stepdaughter that had swayed him. Whatever the reason, Joanna had come to St. Theresa’s gladly, hoping to find solace and to escape the bitter memories at Oxwich. But she had not succeeded. Not really. And now, for whatever unknown reason, the day’s unexpected visitors heightened that realization.

Joanna stayed away from the main hall during the meal. She did not want to see or hear any more of the strangers who supped with them—especially the man with the long dark hair. Instead she begged a bowl of cabbage soup and a piece of brown bread from the cook in exchange for a promise to help clean up after the meal.

It was as she was rinsing the collected spoons and wooden cups in a vat of warm water that the summons came.

“Sis-sister Edithe wishes to see me?” she stammered in dismay.