Hildegarth had only moments to savor her satisfaction with a job well done before her door flew open and Durthena burst in, crying, “Holy Mother, hurry! Send for the guards! Tell them she’s in the garden . . . at the well . . . washing the filth of the sorcerer’s sinful secretions off her hands . . . her head uncovered . . . her face lustful and licentious . . . that’s why she always wants to go to the garden by herself . . . she’s fornicating with her demon lover . . . coming late to chapel, the filth of rolling in the dirt still clinging to her habit . . . they must be caught and burned before they contaminate us all . . . call the guards . . . call the priest to do exorcisms of the garden . . . her room . . . everywhere she has fouled with her vile, sinful thoughts and—”
Standing up and putting out her hand, Hildegarth used her most commanding voice to break into the torrent of words.
“Sister Durthena, calm yourself! Who was in the garden?”
“Aleswina!”
“Sister Aleswina!”
“She isn’t a Sister, she’s an evil, sinful harlot!”
“She is the king’s . . . she is a member of our holy family, a daughter of Christ, and a sister to us all. What were you doing in the garden?”
“I wasn’t in the garden. I saw her from the window.”
“What window?”
“What were you doing in Sister Aleswina’s room?”
“An angel made me open the door, and I saw her bed was empty, and the angel told me to go the window and open the shutters and look into the garden, and that’s when I saw her—”
“At the well.”
“Yes, and—”
“Did you see the sorcerer?”
“No, but—”
“Did you see anyone else?”
“No, but—”
“So all you saw was Sister Aleswina washing her hands at the well in the garden!”
“Yes, but”—this time Durthena managed to rush on—“her hair was uncovered, and her habit was wrinkled, and she was out of bed in the middle of the night without permission!”
“Did you go to her and ask what she was doing in the garden in the middle of the night?”
“No, I came to warn you, and—”
“Then I think we’d best go to the garden to find what she has to say for herself!”
With that the abbess strode past Durthena and out of the room to cross the courtyard and thrust open the garden gate. Durthena hurried after her, reaching her side as she stopped and surveyed the moonlit scene. Before Durthena could catch her breath, Hildegarth said, “It appears the garden is empty—perhaps you were dreaming!”
“No! No! I wasn’t dreaming I saw her! Look! There at the well! You can see the marks of her sandals!”
“Sister Aleswina works here in the garden. She draws water for the plants, so of course there are marks of her sandals there, as everywhere around us. Do you see any other prints? Cloven hooves?” Hildegarth’s voice was calm, and she hesitated only slightly before she added, “A man’s boots?”
Looking desperately around for some trace of proof that she’d seen what she’d seen, Durthena was forced to say, “No, but—”
“But”—Hildegarth interrupted— “what I see is a well-planted and lovingly tended garden marked with nothing but the signs of Sister Aleswina’s devoted labor.”
“But we will go to Sister Aleswina’s room and see whether she is there and whether she bears some traces of the abominations you say you saw.”
Hildegard led the way back, keeping her pace steady and measured. Her face, a rigid mask, gave away nothing of her hurried calculations of what it would mean if, God forbid, there was truth behind Durthena’s hysterical accusations.
Dismissing out of hand Durthena’s absurd delusions of Aleswina cavorting with a demon sorcerer but grimly able to imagine an earthly lecher scaling the garden wall and seducing the innocent novice, Hildegarth had her own dread-filled vision of finding Aleswina’s bedchamber empty and, beyond that, of kneeling before the king and confessing that the kinswoman he’d entrusted into her keeping had run off with some unknown lover.
The two women came to a halt outside Aleswina’s door, Durthena eager to pull it open and catch her nemesis in the guilty act of changing out of the filthy, soiled habit marked with the stains of her sin, the abbess wanting one more moment to brace herself for the sight of an empty bed.
Aleswina heard the footsteps come along the hallway and stop outside her door.
Lying motionless in her bed, she pictured herself in a meadow, her head on Anna’s lap—not holding a cold silver cross but a freshly gathered bundle of flowers in her hands. She breathed in slowly and easily, imagining the sweet smells of grass and flowers, the cheerful sounds of singing birds, and Anna’s soothing voice promising her that she was safe and that she’d tell her one more story to help her fall asleep.
The door swung open. Light and shadows flickered across her eyelids—if they fluttered or even tensed she was lost, and Anna along with her. But she kept her mind in the meadow, listening to Anna’s story about a mother fox taking her three little cubs there to play and how the cubs ran off and had one funny adventure after another until their mother found them and took them home to have supper and go to bed—and she closed her ears to the dialogue being whispered just outside her doorway.
“Do you see she is holding the blessed cross of Jesus in her hand? If she had done the evil you accuse her of, would it not burn her skin?”
“Yes, but it might not if the sorcerer cast some spell—”
“So what would you have us do? Search her room? Look under her bed and in her closet for some proof of her supposed sinfulness?”
“Yes!”
“No! We will leave Sister Aleswina in peace, sleeping the sleep of the pure and chaste! And you will go to the chapel and spend the rest of the night reading out loud the gospels of both Matthew and Mark to cleanse your mind of these lewd and lascivious thoughts.”
Hildegarth’s rebuke ended the argument just as Aleswina imagined she was hearing Anna’s voice telling her she could go to sleep now, and she never even heard the door close or the two sets of footsteps—one brisk and relieved, the other dragging and disappointed—retreating down the hallway.