While Caelym fell asleep under the floorboards of the Shrine of Saint Wilfhilda, Aleswina stood rigidly upright at her place in the chapel. Slipping the beads of her rosary through her fingers, she stared at the stained-glass window beyond the altar, but instead of seeing the Holy Virgin kneeling beside the body of her crucified son, she saw Anna sitting on the bed next to the Druid, her hand on his bare back, ready to die with him without hesitation or regret.
Aleswina had no memory of her life before the morning of her fourth birthday when she woke up from a nightmare to find herself cradled in Anna’s arms. From then until she left her palace nursery to enter the convent, she’d slept with Anna in bed with her. Each night, just before she fell asleep, she asked Anna to promise that they would always be together, and each night Anna answered, “I will stay with you tonight, and I will be here in morning, but someday my people will come to get me, and I will go home again.”
Now one of those people had come, and he was going to take Anna away with him. A black fog of dread came over Aleswina, shrouding everything around her in shadows except for the panels’ glowing scene. She was still staring at Mary and Jesus when the service ended so that Sister Idwolda had to nudge her to get her moving.
The rest of the day passed in odd fits and starts. One moment Aleswina was standing in the dark chapel with the sounds of the devotions around her, then she was in the garden weeding and setting out the new plants, then she was back in the chapel for the noon prayers, then she was putting her tools away behind the shrine, then she was in the common room with Sister Idwolda sitting next to her and telling rambling stories about a seemingly endless number of brothers and sisters—then, without remembering getting up or walking down the hall, Aleswina found herself alone, kneeling by her bed in her own small room.
When she began her religious instruction, Aleswina had gone straight from her first lesson to find Anna and tell her about praying to Jesus. Anna’s answer had been, “This god of yours is so all-knowing, why do you have to explain to him what you want? And what good does it do? If you tell a man to do something, he will just do the opposite to be contrary.”
So, with authority of the scriptures and of the Holy Church on one side and Anna’s skepticism on the other, Aleswina had adopted a compromise of rote recitation of her daily prayers while she actually thought about other things. Now she was thinking that somehow she had to keep Anna from leaving her.
“God helps those who help themselves” was one of the few Christian proverbs that Anna didn’t quarrel with, so Aleswina rocked back and forth on her knees, trying to think of some way she could help herself now.
Prayers to Jesus would not work because Anna did not believe in them, but Aleswina remembered that Caelym had sworn an oath promising to obey her every wish. So if she told him that she wished he’d go away and leave Anna with her, he would have to do it. For a moment her heart took wing, only to fall crashing down as she remembered Anna said that he didn’t mean it, and he was just showing off.
As bitter disappointment replaced hope, a cunning, wicked idea crept into Aleswina’s mind. She could go to the abbess and tell her there was a Druid under Saint Wilfhilda’s shrine and the abbess would send for the king’s soldiers and they would come and take him away. But almost as quickly as she thought it, she knew she couldn’t, because the abbess would want to know how she knew the Druid was there.
As hard as she tried, Aleswina could not think of any way to get rid of Caelym without getting into trouble herself.
Leaving her room at night without permission was risking more trouble than she’d ever been in before, so she waited, nervously biting her lower lip, until she was certain the rest of the convent was asleep before cracking the door open. She slipped out of her room and moved swiftly along the dark hallway, down the stairs, across the central courtyard, and into the convent garden. She took a candle from the shrine, went around to the back, eased up the door to the hidden chamber, and reached in to get Anna’s basket, being careful not to wake the sleeping Druid.
Sitting with her back against the side of the shrine and the basket on her lap, she looked at the small, fragile seedlings she’d planted that day, certain that they would wither and die without Anna there to help care for them.
Suddenly, she knew what to do. Anna had told her. A little poppy juice would ease the Druid’s pain and help him sleep. A lot of it would end his pain and make him sleep forever. She just needed to mix the stronger recipe for the potion, and then he would drink it and she and Anna would be safe from him. It would be easy and maybe even kind, for he would be spared the suffering from his illness, or from worse suffering if the soldiers ever found him. Then she could go to Anna and tell her that he had died of his wound, and together they would . . . What would they do then?
The unlikely picture of Anna and herself digging a grave in the convent garden that was big enough for the tall Druid took shape in Aleswina’s mind. Close behind came the thought of telling Anna a lie about how he’d died. She had never told Anna a lie before—what if she didn’t believe her?
Aleswina continued to sit motionless, now with her eyes closed. Without her being aware of it, tears started down her cheeks. When she opened her eyes again, having given up her last hope, she expected to feel inconsolable, but instead felt at peace. Taking a deep breath, she mixed the potion, measuring the poppy juice with exacting care to the amount Anna had specified for fever and aches and not the three-times higher dose that would do that fatal harm.
Carefully setting the cup and candle to one side, she climbed down into the chamber. Most of the space was filled by the man who slept there, his knees drawn up, his leather bag under his head, and his right hand under the bag. There wasn’t much spare room, but Aleswina managed to kneel next to Caelym, and she shook his shoulder to wake him up.