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He turned the heavy iron key in the lock and pushed at the knotted oak door. I swept past him then turned to hear him mutter, “I’m sure the master would only permit one short prayer with her, My Lady.”
I raised my chin and towered over the diminutive figure. “And I am sure your master, my nephew, need not know the minutes or indeed hours my devotions might take.” I motioned to the door. “I will send for you when I am ready to leave.”
I shivered in the damp cold and looked up at the unglazed window opening, the only source of light. The door creaked shut behind me and I crunched my way over debris and twigs towards the bed. A putrid smell hung in the air.
As I approached the bed, I wondered if I was too late, for the body in it was lying so silent and still. But then there was a wheezing cough and a shuddering of angular shoulders as the blankets shifted. I sat down gently on the filthy covers beside her, fighting away my tears. It was distressing to see my friend so ailing. There was a fetid smell all around as if she had not been washed in weeks; but also something worse – an air of rotting and decay.
“Lilias, my dear.” I took a bony hand in mine. “I cannot ask if you are well, for it is obvious you are not. The sight of you saddens me greatly.” Her cheeks were sunken, her skin flaking and sore and her body, even through the thin blanket, emaciated.
The eyes blinked open slowly and she tried to lift her head, to no avail. I pulled the skeletal figure up as gently as I could, shifted myself further onto the bed and cradled her in my arms. 147
“Oh Marie. It’s you,” she whispered.
It was difficult to make out what she was saying, her speech was slurred and her voice so quiet. I leant down to hear her better.
“You’ve come to help me. God be praised.” She ran her tongue around her cracked, chapped lips. “After my last confinement ended in yet another girl, Alexander sent me away from her – and all my little ones – to this cold, wretched place. To die.”
This made no sense, she was rambling, clearly delirious. “Lilias, your husband sent me a letter, telling me you’d been suffering from digestive complications for the past few months and couldn’t keep food down. He said you were near the end. I took the decision to come and see you and so I arrived by boat this morning. Without his knowledge.”
She shook her head weakly. “No, Marie. He was lying.” She panted, as if struggling to breathe. “He is so set upon a male child, he is determined to marry another; I mentioned her to you, I think, in my last letters, before I was brought here.” Lilias turned her watery grey eyes up towards me and spoke in short bursts, her breath now laboured. “He is starving me to death.”
I could not take this in. Surely she was hallucinating and was suffering from delirium; she was so weak, she was obviously disoriented, confused. I knew my nephew was merciless and single-minded, but was he capable of leaving his wife to die, like this, alone? Surely not. I gazed back down at her and I murmured some prayers, while stroking her rough, hollow cheeks. She had closed her eyes again, obviously too exhausted to stay awake.
“I am going to go and get some milk and bread from the keeper and come straight back and try to get you to eat something.” I began to lay her back down on the bed and she tried to shake her head. I bent down to whisper in her ear. “Is that all right, Lilias?”
She struggled to speak once more. “He won’t give you any. I told you, he’s starving me. For Alexander.” 148
Then she shut her eyes and seemed to fall into a deep sleep and her breathing grew shallow.
I blessed her then strode to the door and flung it open. I walked down the narrow stairs past one wooden door on the first floor, where I realised the Queen and I had slept, and to another on the ground floor. I knocked on the door then entered and there, in front of a raging fire, was the vile man. He leapt to his feet, glowering at me. From the corner of my eye, I could see a rat scurry for cover across the floor.
“I need some bread and a cup of warm milk to try to bring this poor girl back to life. Why is she so thin? Why have you not been feeding her?”
He looked at me again and I realised this odious man was scared of me, perhaps because of the authority he saw in my nun’s habit or perhaps even my height. He ran, like a child being scolded by his mother, over to the table and poured some milk from a pitcher into a pan, which he began to warm over the flames. He pointed to a grey bannock on the table. I began to break some up into crumbs between my fingers over a bowl. Everything was filthy, but there was little time to waste.
He turned from the fire. “She would not eat and my Master said not to force her, that she was imprisoned here for a reason and if she chose to die, so be it.”
I threw the bannock down. “What? Why did my nephew say she was to be kept here, to die?”
He peered into the pan then brought the milk over to the table where I poured it over the crumbs, preferring to stir with my finger than with his filthy spoon.
“I repeat. What, pray, was this reason?”
“You must know.”
“Enlighten me.”
“Well, that she’d killed one baby and that my Master was fearful 149 for the safety of the others.”
I stood gaping at this idiot. “And you believed that?” This man was no better than an animal, a low beast. “This gentle, kind and lovely woman has been transformed into a starved skeleton, all because you believed this fabrication?”
He looked down and shuffled his feet.
“And I presume for your trouble and your secrecy, you have been paid admirably?”
“Perhaps a little, My Lady.”
I shook my head. “I cannot believe this has been happening.” I picked up the bowl. “Go and tell Willie to come upstairs to the top floor at once.”
The hideous creature darted to the door.
“And you!” I called after him. “Do not go far, we may need you later.”
I swept past him and headed for the narrow stairway, trying to climb the steps as fast as my old body would permit.
I opened the door to her room, went over to the bed, put down the bowl and pulled her up towards me again. But there was a change in her. She was still warm, but lifeless; I knew she had gone. Her mouth was open and no breath came from her.
I laid her back gently onto the bed, pulled the filthy blanket up over the green dress that in her youth had showed off her beautiful, shiny hair so well. Now her hair was so fine and her scalp was visible, but I tried to comb it through, with my fingers, then swept it up behind her head so that it looked a little neater. I lifted up both her arms and crossed them over her chest.
It was then I noticed my ruby ring on her thumb and felt a pang of sorrow; she had worn it all those years, a memory of our friendship. I hoped it had given her pleasure to wear during her short life. Her fingers had obviously become too thin and she had at some stage moved it to her thumb so it would not slip off. I put 150 my fingers around it and slid it off gently and put it on my thumb. The gold was still warm and I felt tears begin to flow down my cheeks as I stared down at her body in repose. I pressed my hands together, shut my eyes and began to pray for her soul. Please God let her find peace at last.
“Mon Dieu, qu’elle repose enfin en paix.”