The Abbey of Saint Edeth the Enduring was a cloistered convent in the northeastern corner of the Kingdom of Derthwald. A dense forest surrounded the abbey and a narrow clearing around its outer wall was all that separated the nuns and novices inside from the wilderness, so there was a strict rule that all the doors and all the windows had to be kept closed and latched at night.
Shy, high-strung, and fearful, Sister Aleswina was an unlikely delinquent, but she eased herself out from under her blankets, tiptoed over to the window, and opened the shutters. While Caelym was looking up at her window, Aleswina was looking at the horizon, as if by staring hard enough she could make the dawn come faster. A breeze wafted in, carrying the enticing scent of spring, and she gripped the window’s ledge, overcome with longing to have her trowel in her hand. If she had dared, she would have gone out in the dark to start digging her beds and planting her seeds.
While there was not much in her dress or in her features to distinguish her from any of a dozen pale, blond Saxon nuns, Aleswina was different from the other women at the convent in three ways— her passion for growing plants, her deep love for the servant who had once been her nursemaid, and in her being the cousin to the king of Derthwald. An unspoken deference to her royal status did more than save her from open reproach over the length of time it was taking her commit to her final vows; it gave her two unusual privileges within the abbey. She was allowed to work by herself in the convent’s garden, and she was allowed to keep her servant, Anna, in a cottage on the edge of the convent’s grounds.
While they were packing to leave the palace for the convent, Aleswina had entrusted Anna with a substantial cache of coins and jewels, and as soon as it was safe, Anna had bribed a traveling tinker to cut a secret door into the back wall of the convent garden so that Aleswina did not really work in the garden by herself. It was against the rules and, cousin to the king or not, Aleswina would have faced untold days of penance if the abbess ever found out, but every day weather allowed, Anna slipped in through their secret entrance to work along with her.
The morning promised to be exceptionally warm and balmy for so early in the year, and Aleswina was anxious to begin.
“Not our wishes but the Lord’s!” was what the abbess would say if Aleswina told her how much she wanted to tend her plants instead of singing or praying. She’d tried that once and been confined in her room to pray and reflect for the rest of the day.
It was a lesson she’d taken to heart. She’d spent those long, lonely hours terrified that the abbess would send someone to the garden in her place, that Anna would be caught, and that their secret door would be discovered. Whether it was the Virgin Mary or the Mother Goddess who heard her frantic prayers, someone did; and Aleswina never said another word to the abbess about anything that really mattered to her ever again.
Now, she leaned as far out of the window as she dared, savoring the smell of fresh night air, until the bells rang for the sunrise service. As she closed the shutters—careful not to let them clatter—she realized she’d waited too long to change into her daytime habit. She snatched her wimple off its hook, pulled it on as she felt under her bed for her sandals, and was just in time to open her door and take her place in between Sister Erdorfa and Sister Idwolda as they filed past her door.
While the poorly lit passageway between the dormitory and the chapel was among the spaces exempted from convent’s rule that secular exchanges were to be conducted using officially sanctioned hand signals, the nuns and novices of Saint Edeth usually went to the first office of the day in sleepy silence. That morning, however, they were wide awake, whispering,
“Did you hear?”
“Killing babies and drinking their blood!”
“Raping virgins!”
“Coming for us!”
Before Aleswina could ask who was killing babies and raping virgins, they reached the chapel. The whispering changed to shushes as they filed into their places.
After they sang the opening hymn and recited the designated psalms, the abbess stepped up to the altar, but instead of reading from the gospels, she announced that the rumors were true.
“A Druid sorcerer has been sighted near Strothford, just across the River Bense.”
The nuns on either side of Aleswina gasped.
The abbess put up her hand for silence. “The king’s soldiers are searching every cottage and shed. They will find the sorcerer and the rest of the devil’s minions—the witches that brew his deadly potions, the demons that cavort at his feet, and the incubi that lure hapless girls into his grasping claws—and burn them at the stake.”
The abbess lifted her voice in a fervent prayer for the Lord’s protection before dismissing them with a final warning: “No one is to go outside of the abbey, and if you see anything suspicious—the slightest change in the behavior of any of the servants or even one of our own—you must come and tell me at once!”
The nervous chatter started up again on the way from chapel to the dining room and did not stop until the abbess took her place at the head of the table. After she said the blessing, they murmured “amen” in unison and began to eat. As Sister Aleswina moved her spoon from her plate to her mouth and back to her plate, the abbess’s warning echoed in her ears.
Although she was afraid of many things, Aleswina was not frightened of Druids or witches, because Anna was both. It was no use trying to explain it to the abbess, but not all witches brewed poisons, and not all Druids were in league with the devil. There were good ones like Anna, who made healing potions to ease the pain of childbirth and who kept evil spirits away with magic sachets filled with sweet-smelling herbs and who rocked you to sleep at night with lullabies that banished nightmares and brought happy dreams of sunlit meadows blooming with beautiful flowers.
As soon as the after-breakfast benedictions and announcements were finished, Aleswina got up from the table, genuflected to the abbess, and left the room—not hurrying, hardly breathing, for fear of looking suspicious. Once she was in the hallway, she walked quicker, almost running, to the convent garden. She expected to find Anna waiting for her, but the garden was empty.
There was no time to waste. She had to tell Anna to hide her powders and potions so no one would know she was a witch and burn her at the stake. Aleswina ducked out the back way, then rushed across the clearing and into the forest, running as fast as she could along the path to Anna’s cottage.