The silence that met Aleswina when she entered the sewing chamber bristled with impatience and irritation. Sister Eardartha pointed to a footstool with one hand, holding a threaded needle in the other, while Sisters Redella and Ralfwolda looked at her sternly, their scissors snipping at the air.
As they circled around her and draped sheets of white linen over her shoulders, snatches of whispered conversations she’d overheard on the way to the noon prayer came back to her.
“. . . gone on missions for the abbess . . .”
“. . . Sister Durthena and Sister Fridwulfa to Lindisfarne and Sister Oslynne to find Father Wulfric . . .”
“Alone?”
“By herself!”
“The roads are dangerous even if the sorcerer is gone . . .”
“. . . all sorts of men are on the roads . . .”
“No Christian man would harm a nun . . .”
“. . . and besides she’s got a letter of safe passage from the abbess . . .”
“. . . and a fast horse!”
There was no way for Aleswina to sneak a horse out of the convent’s stable, but she could and would bring one of her habits when she went to see Anna off that night—and, in a sudden surge of resolve, she made up her mind to get a letter of safe passage from the abbess as well.
Ignoring the trio of exasperated gasps, she hopped down from the box and wriggled out of the swaths of linen. Making hurried gestures for “breviary” and “need to get,” Aleswina ran out of the sewing room and down the hall to the abbess’s chambers.
There was no answer to her knock.
She gathered her courage, pressed the latch, and inched the door open, calling softly, “Mother Abbess?” again with no answer. Peeking through the crack, she saw a thick leather-bound bible lying open on her desk. The abbess never went to chapel without her bible.
Afraid that there might not be another chance to make her request, she slipped through the door and through the curtained entrance of the antechamber where she’d waited for her first audience with the abbess seven years earlier.
Minutes passed.
Aleswina waited, determined to have the coveted parchment to take with her when she slipped out to see Anna off that night.
The bells for the sunset service rang.
She stayed where she was.
More minutes passed.
Then, finally, there was a shuffle of movement in the hall, the latch clicked, and the door scraped open. Aleswina was about to step out when she heard a loud and demanding male voice.
“The king wants her, and he wants her now!”
Aleswina peeked through a gap in the curtains. It was Olfrick, the captain of the king’s guard. He’d gotten older and fatter in the seven years since she’d last seen him, but it was him.
When they were leaving the palace to come to the convent, he’d come up behind Anna, knocked her out of his way, and called her a name so vile that Anna had refused to tell her what it meant.
Aleswina had never forgotten Olfrick’s nasty, sneering face, and she hated him now every bit as much as she had then—only now he’d get his punishment! People did not demand things from the abbess in that (or in any) tone of voice and the abbess looked very, very angry. In a minute she would send Olfrick—awful, ugly Olfrick—to the worst penance ever, and Aleswina wanted to see that happen!
The abbess lowered her eyebrows, fixed Olfrick in her piercing stare, and spoke in the freezing voice that sent chills into a person’s very bones. “Sister Aleswina is a betrothed bride of Christ! She will be taking her final vows—”
Olfrick obviously didn’t realize the danger he was in, because he interrupted, “Not anymore! Now she’s the betrothed bride of King Gilberth, and it’s him she’ll be marrying—so hand her over!”
The abbess drew a deep breath, and in a very low, slow voice said, “I will”—Unconsciously, Aleswina smiled a grim smile and nodded her head, confident that the abbess was going to give Olfrick one last warning before she called on Jesus to smite him into a pile of smoldering ashes—“have Princess Aleswina summoned after the evening prayers have been said, at which time I will tell her about this joyful news. In the meanwhile, you and the rest of your men may find your lodging in the village and return for her in the morning.”
Aleswina’s heart stopped beating. Then it started up again, pounding so loud that she thought they would hear it and find her there behind the curtain. And maybe they would have if Olfrick hadn’t bellowed at the abbess, “The king said to bring her back now, not tomorrow!”
Aleswina held her breath.
The abbess spoke as calmly as if he’d asked for alms. “The bells for the evening prayers have rung. When the service is over, I will bring her to you.”
“My men—”
“Your men may wait in the dining hall.”
“My men will stand guard!”
“As you wish, but outside our gates. You will not disturb our sanctuary further.” The abbess pointed to the door, and Olfrick turned and stalked out. The door slammed behind him.
The abbess went to her desk, picked up her bible, and clasped it to her chest—but instead of leaving for chapel, she crossed the room to stand just inside her private shrine, her back to the larger room, as still as if she’d been turned to stone.
Aleswina bit her lower lip and looked for a way to escape.
With the heat of the burning brazier adding to the unseasonable warmth of the day, the door to the courtyard had been left ajar. Acting with cautious deliberation, Aleswina took off her sandals and tiptoed across the room, keeping her eyes on the abbess’s stiff back. Reaching the door, she sucked in her ribs and her stomach and slipped out. Ducking behind one bush and dashing to the next, she made her way across the courtyard. Once through the garden gate, she paused to take some gasping breaths and tie her sandals back on. Then she darted through the hedges and around to the back of the shrine.
Caelym had spent the last of the daylight hours fending off the tedium of his wait by tossing makeshift dice and moving small stones around a track he’d drawn in the dirt. Having promised to wait for Aleswina and not expecting her until well past the evening bells, he’d returned to the sunken chamber at sunset in order to continue his game by candlelight, leaving the door open for fresh air. He was deep in thought over the best strategy with which to counter his last move against himself and was startled into drawing his knife at Aleswina’s sudden silent arrival.
If Aleswina noticed the dagger in Caelym’s hand, she ignored it. “The guards are back, they’re in the abbey and outside too,” she whispered, and didn’t wait for him to grab his pack, snuff out the candle, and close the chamber door behind him before hurrying to open the entryway in the wall and waving at him to follow.
He squeezed his way out. Assuming she meant to shut the opening behind him and return to her convent, he turned back to thank her for her hospitality and assure her he’d carry her final words of farewell to Annwr, but she pushed him out of the way, crawled through, and closed the entrance from the outside.
“Go back inside before—”
His warning was lost in the clatter of oncoming hooves.
“Get down!” He grabbed her arm and dove forward into the tall grass, bringing her with him, just as a mounted guard came trotting around the corner.
They were saved by the darkness and the stupidity of the Saxon guard, whose horse had to sidestep around them while its rider only spurred it on without looking down.
Slowly, cautiously, Caelym lifted his head and shifted his eyes—first to the left to watch the horse take the turn at the far corner and then back to the right to be sure the way was clear in both directions. Valiantly resolved to see Aleswina safely back inside her convent walls, whatever the risk to himself, he turned to where she’d just been cowering next to him.
She wasn’t there.
Somehow, in the moments he’d looked away, she’d scurried to the edge of the woods, leaving him with no choice but to dash after her, following the fluttering of her gray veil around the bends and curves of the narrow path to Annwr’s cottage.