Lilies for Love (23 page)

To her surprise, Agnes followed her and crouched beside her to help. 'Do you really think it's too late for me?' she whispered.

Janna looked at her, noticing the red eyes, the shine of tears on a hastily wiped cheek. 'I don't know,' she said honestly.

'If I could only be sure of the right thing to do. If only there was a sign!' Agnes clasped her hands tight together, as if unconsciously praying for the way to be shown to her.

'It's something you have to decide – not God.' Janna tried to soften her words with a smile. 'You surely care for Master Will, for I have seen in the past how you've talked to him and about him. He is a kind man, and he will care for you, I am sure of that. The question you really have to ask yourself is: are you brave enough to leave the abbey and live in the outside world, live as Will's wife and the mother of his children? You might perhaps have a child of your own one day, or even more than one.'

A rosy blush heated Agnes's face. 'I would love to have a child of my own, but it's the thought of lying with a man, being intimate, that worries me,' she confessed. She heaved a despairing sigh. 'I'm afraid, Janna. I'm afraid of how it will be when Will sees me, sees the full extent of my injury. What if he spurns me, turns from me in utter disgust? If I leave the abbey but he won't live with me as my husband, where will I go, what will I do?'

'According to St Benedict's own Rule, you can come back to the abbey.' Janna caught Agnes's hands between her own. 'But that won't happen. It won't!'

Agnes glanced towards the imposing buildings that were her home, and at the walls that surrounded the convent and kept them in, and her face pinched tight. 'Master Will has had my answer. He will not ask again, you said so yourself. And even if he did, how can I answer him when I'm so unsure of him, and so unsure of myself?' She picked up a spade, dug it savagely into the earth and winced as the shock jarred her sore shoulder. 'He'll find someone else. He will not wait. 'Tis better so.'

Janna took a breath, ready to argue, but then thought twice about it. She had interfered enough already, she'd done enough damage. It would all turn out as fate decreed. The sudden image of Godric and Cecily laughing together came into her mind, accompanied by a shaft of misery that stabbed her to the heart. That situation, too, was beyond her control. She would just have to make the best of it, and move on from the abbey.

'God's bones, look at this!' Agnes beckoned Janna over to inspect some new parsley plants which had been reduced to just a few sparse stalks.

'Hares . . . deer . . . rabbits from the king's warren?' Janna looked around for a possible culprit.

'Blighted creatures,' Agnes grumbled.

'But just as worthy in the sight of God as rats, cockroaches and every other obnoxious little pest – including Sister Catherine's dog!'

Agnes's mouth twitched into a reluctant smile. Suddenly she dived sideways and pounced on a small, quivering ball of fur. She scooped it up and opened her hands to Janna's gaze.

'A leveret.' Janna looked down at the baby hare, recalling her time in the forest when Edwin had captured just such a one and they had eaten it. She shuddered, feeling greatly relieved that she had never known so great a hunger since then. She took the hare from Agnes, and gently stroked it. It looked up at her with bright, frightened eyes.

'This isn't the work of just one baby.' Janna swept out a hand to indicate the ravaged parsley bed. 'The rest of its family must have hopped off and left it here.' She cradled the creature against her habit, and kept on stroking its soft fur.

Agnes shrugged. 'We'd better get rid of it, stick it over the wall or something. I'm not wasting my time planting things out if they're just going to be eaten.'

Janna nodded in agreement. Reluctantly, she held the leveret out to Agnes, then suddenly snatched it back again. 'I know something else we could do with it,' she said, and hurriedly stuffed the tiny creature down the front of her habit as the dinner bell sounded.

With dinner over, Janna went once more to Sister Ursel, stealing time out from the garden where she was meant to be working. The nun greeted her with a smile, which grew broader when Janna complimented her on her reading of the Rule.

'In truth, my heart feels so full of the Lord, I . . . I no longer think of how difficult it is to read aloud in the company of the convent,' she said. 'I used to dread it so, and the more anxious I . . . I became, the worse it got.' She hesitated a moment. 'For me, it was always a test of faith,' she confessed. 'I thought that, if I loved the Lord enough, he would f-free me to speak as others do. When it did not happen, I d-doubled and redoubled my efforts, but it seemed to make everything worse. I just got more and more tongue-tied. I thought God had . . . had abandoned me. I thought it was His judgment for . . . for not having enough faith, for not believing in Him. And yet I do, with all my heart!'

'God didn't abandon you. You abandoned yourself.' Janna remembered the heartbroken cries she'd overheard in the church. She was sure that it was Ursel's lack of faith in herself that lay at the heart of her affliction, probably stamped on her by her unhappy childhood. The fact that pages of her manuscript were being stolen and destroyed must have seemed like an extra sign that God had abandoned her.

'You cannot think you've earned God's displeasure, that He has forsaken you, not when He's given you such a marvellous gift,' she said gently. She was coming to realise how lonely Ursel's affliction had made her. If only the nun could have shared these thoughts earlier, so much could have been said and done to give her confidence in her worth and in her work.

'I have something for you.' Janna put her hand down the front of her habit and withdrew the baby hare. It had been lying still, asleep against her heart, but at her touch it jerked awake and struggled in her grasp.

'Ah.' Sister Ursel took the hare from Janna and looked deep into its eyes. Its struggles quietened; it seemed mesmerised by her gaze. She stroked it gently, never taking her attention away from it for one moment. Janna watched them, and smiled.

But her pleasure turned quickly to impatience and irritation as she struggled to read the words Ursel had written on the slate for her to decipher.
'Le renard et le loup vont a la chasse au lapin.'
She tried to sound out the words. Something about a fox and a bear? Or was that a wolf? Chasing a rabbit? Learning to read was taking far longer than she'd realised, yet Sister Anne grumbled about her absence from the infirmary and begrudged the time Janna spent away from her own tuition. 'You have more need to learn from me than from Sister Ursel,' she had pointed out, on more than one occasion. 'Your gift lies with healing, not with learning something that scribes are trained to do. Besides, you have no time to waste for there is much to do in the garden now that spring has come.'

Unable to confess the real reason for wanting to learn to read, Janna sought to placate the disgruntled infirmarian. 'I am truly grateful to you for all you are teaching me,' she said. It was the truth. Sister Anne's knowledge was wideranging. In addition, the infirmarian always encouraged Janna to administer the potions and deal with the patients herself, albeit under her watchful eye. This was the practical experience that her mother had never given her, and Janna appreciated the nun's generosity, her willingness to share and to train her new pupil. It seemed to Janna sometimes that her brain would burst with all the new things she was trying to cram into it, but at the same time her confidence in her own ability was growing and she was happy.

At least, she was happy until she thought of Hugh and Godric. Then her heart would sink like a stone to the bottom of a pond; she could imagine mud and slime oozing over it, covering it, burying it in a mire of her own making. She couldn't leave the abbey. She couldn't bear to face them. Nor, if she was honest, was she sure whom she cared about most. The one was too highborn; they could never wed. The other . . .

If Godric had turned his attention to Cecily there was nothing she could do about it other than wish them happiness – and Godric's happiness, above all, was what Janna wanted. Why, then, did she feel such a corresponding misery at the thought of him with Cecily, and not her?

She had plans, big plans! Janna sought to bolster her courage. As soon as she managed to read her father's letter, she would leave to find him. She had no use for suitors right now; they would just get in the way, come between her and her quest. She must find her father and ask him to seek justice for the death of her mother, justice against Robert of Babestoche. Until that was done, there was no point even thinking about romance.

Janna sighed as she turned her attention to the sheet of parchment handed to her by Sister Ursel. She began to sound out the words that stopped her, trying to make sense of them. Becoming impatient with her efforts, she read the piece through quickly, and recognised it as the day's Rule that Ursel had read out during dinner. Although she could not recall the reading word for word, she found she could remember enough to guess the words that puzzled her, and so find the meaning of the text. She picked up the metal stylus and began the task of copying out what Ursel had written on the slate.

When Janna next looked up, the hare had vanished. She jerked around on her bench to search the cloister, but there was no sign of it. Janna inspected the nun more closely, detecting then a suspicious lump in the front of Ursel's habit. As she wondered just what she was looking at, the fabric bulged suddenly, and as quickly subsided. Just so had Janna witnessed a child kicking from within a pregnant woman's stomach, and she smiled at the sight. Sister Ursel caught her watchful gaze, and smiled in return. 'I shall call him "Harry",' she said, and went back to carefully smoothing a piece of vellum with a pumice stone in preparation for a new page on the life of St Edith.

W
ITH THE HIGH
holy time of Easter now passed, spring gave way to early summer. The green fuzz on the trees sprouted into pale leaves that darkened into a thick canopy of green. Daffodils and bluebells bloomed and died, corn grew higher and so did the weeds of the cornfields. It was time to scythe the long grass in the water meadows to make hay. Janna wondered if Agnes would go out and brave a meeting with Will, but got a sharp rebuff when she suggested it.

'I can't scythe the hay. My arm gets too sore.' Janna thought she could detect an expression of regret as Agnes drew her wimple closer around her cheeks and turned her face away.

'You could mind the children.'

'No. It's too late for that now.' Agnes hurried off without another word, not even of farewell.

With the spring sneezes over, and warmer weather to soothe old bones, the infirmary had become less crowded. Janna was quick to take advantage of a quiet hour after dinner to visit Sister Ursel in her carrel. The nun greeted her, and handed Janna the wax slate that lay always in readiness. As she chose a passage for Janna to read and copy, Janna gazed about the cloister. The lilies had grown tall and were swelling into bud. One was already in full flower. Janna remembered Will's comment: that lilies reminded him of Agnes. She wondered if Agnes also remembered, but she knew that Agnes still lacked the courage to take action. Janna, herself, was beginning to understand how Agnes felt about leaving the abbey. She longed to be free, and yet she dreaded to venture outside in case she met up with Godric and Hugh. The very thought of seeing them made her heart pump faster, but she lacked the courage to confront them for fear of what she might find out.

'I'm not ready to leave,' she consoled herself, knowing that her decision was justified for she would not depart the abbey until she'd managed to read her father's letter. But that day was not too far away, for more and more tantalising glimpses into the past were being revealed to her impatient gaze. Nor could she use the winter cold and rain as an excuse for delay, for it was promising to be a warm, dry summer and conditions for travelling were perfect. All too soon, she would have to leave behind her childhood, everything and everyone she knew. She would have to leave Agnes, and the safety of the abbey – leave Hugh and Godric. Feeling miserable and afraid, she cast about for something to take her mind off the future. Her glance fell on Sister Ursel's manuscript, and the delicate border of white lilies that framed the text.

'See, Janna,' she said, when she noticed Janna's glance. 'I'm likening the lilies of the field to our saint, being as pure and holy almost as the Virgin Mother herself.'

Janna thought of Agnes. 'They toil not, neither do they spin,' she quoted softly.

Ursel smiled. 'Of all the flowers, I think lilies are the most beautiful.'

'And so is your work, Sister Ursel.' Janna never let a chance go by to praise the nun, and indeed the praise was justified. 'The lilies look as if they are alive on the page.'

To Janna's intense satisfaction, there had been no more trouble with missing pages. Ursel had reported, under Janna's questioning, that very little had needed to be said when she returned the box to Sister Catherine. The nun had realised that her acts of vindictive spite had been discovered, and was most anxious that they remain a secret. Not only did she stay away from Ursel's manuscript thereafter; she also made sure to keep her dog away from Harry.

Janna glanced about the cloister to find him. The hare was full grown now, and was contentedly munching grass where it grew long among the lilies that Janna had planted with Agnes. She looked from the bloom to Ursel's illustration, marvelling how well the nun had managed to capture its grace as well as the fine detail in the glossy petals and long green throat, the furry yellow stamens at the heart of the flower.

Sister Ursel handed the passage she had chosen to Janna. 'Why don't you read this aloud to me while I work?' she suggested.

Janna hated reading aloud. She got ever more flustered as she floundered among the words she didn't recognise and couldn't read. But Ursel was always patient and kind, and Janna understood that it was better to get her help with the difficult words rather than keep on misreading them.

'Your reading is improving, Janna,' the nun complimented her, after a better than usual performance. Janna smiled, pleased. Soon now, she promised herself; soon the secrets of her father's letter would be revealed, and the past with it.

Shadows were beginning to creep across the cloister. It was time for her to go back to the infirmary to relieve Sister Anne. But, once she'd thanked Ursel and said goodbye, a strange restlessness stayed her passage and turned her steps instead towards the church and the shrine of St Edith. It had become far more crowded now, with the hand of St James the Apostle to attract extra pilgrims. Nevertheless, it was St Edith's presence that Janna sought, for it had not escaped her attention that the saint's name was almost the same as Eadgyth, the name of her own mother. It seemed right, therefore, to attempt yet another reading of her father's letter to her mother in the saint's presence.

To Janna's relief, the chapel was empty, for the outer gate had been closed and not even the sacristan was present to disturb her privacy. With a feeling almost of dread, she reached under her habit for her purse. She untied it, and pulled out the sheet of parchment, then sank to her knees before the reliquary.

She hadn't looked at the letter for some time and now she peered at it, trying to decipher the unfamiliar words in the glow of candles placed around the saint's golden casket. How she wished she'd asked Ursel to teach her to read Saxon English! It would have made her task so much quicker and easier, yet she had been sure her father's letter would be written in Norman French, all of it, instead of just the opening salutation and the close. Perhaps he had written it thus on purpose, knowing English was Eadgyth's native tongue? Perhaps he thought that, although she was able to speak Norman French, she might not be able to write or read it? But the phrases he used at the beginning and end must have been familiar to her mother. Janna had managed to read them and blushed at the memory. She closed her eyes and tried to relax for already she could feel the strain of not knowing, knew it would scrunch up her insides and shrivel her brain, and make her so anxious that reading became impossible. She breathed in a deep breath, and then released it.

When she opened her eyes again, her gaze fell on a wall painting of the saint. Edith's hand was raised; it was clear she had just performed a miracle, for a child and his parents were gambolling around her, while a discarded crutch lay on the grass nearby.

A miracle. Janna looked down at the letter. This time, instead of straining to read the message word by word, she let her glance flick over it, picking up the words she'd already understood before, so that she had a framework to guess the rest of them. And, as if a veil had been lifted from her eyes, the words began to hold together, to make sense, and to speak of love, and loneliness, and longing.

'Mon amour, ma cherie.'
My love, my darling. That was easy enough to decipher. Heart thumping hard with fear and excitement, Janna read through the rest of her father's letter.

I had hoped to return to you long before this time, but I find that my father has gone to Normandy and so I must follow him there. I cannot send a message to him for he will not understand why I need to break my betrothal to Blanche, nor will he forgive me unless I meet him face to face to explain why I am utterly unable to wed anyone but you.

He will be wrath, but I feel sure I will be able to persuade him that, in this, I know best. While he has made a worthy match for me, I know that once he meets you and witnesses our happiness together, he will fall under your spell just as I have done, and will welcome you into our family and bless you as a daughter. For certes, no-one could be more worthy than you to be my wife, or bring such grace to our family.

You have my ring, and now I send also this ring brooch to you to pledge my love.
'Amor vincit omnia.'
It means 'love conquers all' – and so it shall.

I will return as soon as possible, for I miss you more than life itself.

Je t'embrasse de tout mon coeur, de tout mon corps, ma cherie. John.

Shock kept Janna kneeling on the floor, utterly still. She looked at the words again and again, knowing that she had read enough of them to fully understand the sense of the letter, yet unable to comprehend what was in it that had forced her mother to run, to beg the abbess for charity rather than stay to face her lover. Even if he hadn't known Eadgyth was pregnant, he'd obviously loved her so much he was prepared to break his betrothal and face his father's wrath rather than give her up. 'I kiss you with all my heart and all my body, my darling.' That was what he'd said at the end of the letter, and presumably he meant it. Surely such a love would also have welcomed a child of their union? It just didn't make sense.

Janna opened her purse and drew out the silver brooch with its multi-coloured gemstones. With shaking fingers, she traced the words on the back of it.
Amor vincit omnia
. Love conquers all. But it hadn't. Why?

Perhaps John's father had refused to let him break the betrothal? Perhaps, after all, he'd had second thoughts about setting Blanche free once he'd got to Normandy?

No! Janna frowned, trying to order her thoughts, for they flew around like a swarm of bees, buzzing in her head so that she could not think straight.

No. John had written to Eadgyth to explain his delay in returning to her. If he had changed his mind, once he saw his father or Blanche, surely he would have written again to explain why he would not return?

Had her mother destroyed the second letter but kept the first, to remind her of their love? Was it the second letter that had forced her to flee?

Janna shook her head, trying to make sense of the muddle. There was something at the back of her mind, something someone had said. She was sure it was important, if only she could recall what it was. One by one, she recalled everyone she'd spoken to about Eadgyth, thinking through what each one of them had said. The abbess had told her nothing. The sisters had tried to be helpful, but it was obvious that they were passing on gossip, not facts. Only Sister Ursel had spoken to her mother. Janna began to replay their conversation in her mind. As the scribe's words came back to her, she realised then what had troubled her.

'As to why your mother confided in me, she c-came to ask if I could show her how to write a name. Your name, Johanna. "In c-case I have a little girl," she said.'

Johanna? If Eadgyth had read this letter, and perhaps even replied to it, she would surely have known how to write 'Johanna'. Why, then, did she ask Ursel to show her how to write the name? Why?

The answer came like a blast of thunder. It cracked Janna's heart wide open.

She'd often wondered why her mother had never taught her how to read or write when she'd taken such pains to school her in everything else, including how to speak Norman French. Now, at last, Janna understood. Eadgyth couldn't teach her what she herself didn't know! She felt numb with the shock of her discovery. Her mother had never read this letter because she didn't know how to read.

She didn't know how to read!

John had taught her mother the language of the Normans, but must have believed that she could read and write in her own language and that she would understand his message. She must have been too proud to admit her ignorance. He had written and asked her to wait for him – but she, finding herself pregnant, had fled. She must have thought he was writing to tell her that his betrothal could not be broken, that his father would not agree to it, and that he could not return to her.

Suddenly Eadgyth's bitterness, her pride and her solitude, her determination not to speak of Janna's father, all began to make sense.

Janna bowed her head and crouched low, shaken to her very soul by her discovery. She began to cry, a storm of weeping that spoke of her sorrow for a great love gone so badly wrong. How different their lives might have been, hers and her mother's, if Eadgyth had only swallowed her pride and asked someone to read the letter to her! How could she have had so little faith in John's good intentions, why could she not have trusted him? Thinking of her mother, and the hard life they'd led, and how Eadgyth had died with John's name on her lips, loving him to the end in spite of everything, Janna felt desolate with grief. She sobbed for her mother's mistaken belief in her betrayal; she sobbed for the father she'd never known, who had loved Eadgyth so much he'd been prepared to defy his father and break an arranged betrothal to marry her.

At last, when her tears had dried, and she was able to think more clearly about the letter and what she had discovered from it, her spirits lifted slightly. John was not a priest after all, for he was expected by his own father to marry someone called Blanche. If he'd had to follow his father to Normandy, it might mean that the family had land there, or perhaps his father had been summoned there by the king? Many barons had land both in Normandy and in England and needed to keep an eye on their interests, as did the king himself.

It was clear, from the insignia on the ring, that her father's family were loyal supporters of King Henry. Janna reached into the purse and pulled out the heavy ring, looking at the inscription in the wavering light of the candles. There was a crown on one side and, on the other, two strange beasts with tails. In the centre was a swan, forming the letter 'J'. J for John. J for Johanna. Holding the ring gave Janna a feeling of warmth, as if it could somehow bring her closer to her father.

England? Or should she rather seek him in Normandy? If he was there, he might well be there with Blanche, his betrothed, who would not take kindly to her husband's bastard coming to their doorstep. She would probably send her away. Janna wept anew at the thought of losing her father all over again. It seemed that whenever a door opened for her, it was only to disclose ever more obstacles beyond. 'Please,' she whispered to the saint, 'please, show me where to go, what I should do next, for I am utterly, utterly lost.'