The Keepers of the Library (9 page)

“Thank you, sir.”

“Your reward is to get your ass over to the UK immediately to personally monitor developments and intervene as appropriate. I’m giving you full operational control. Take a team. If this has anything to do with Chinese Doomsday, it’s Groom Lake that’s going to break the case, not some minor-league outfit like FBI or MI5. Now pack your bags and get your wheels up.”

Isle of Wight, Britain, 1296

I
t was the twenty-eighth day of December, three days after the Christmas Day feast of thanksgiving. Clarissa had been anticipating Christmas fervently, counting down the forty days of St. Martin by placing forty pebbles on her washstand. She began on the eleventh day of November and removed one pebble each day. When the great day finally arrived her sixteen-year-old heart leapt with joy. The Abbey of Vectis was a hard and dreary place for a young girl who hadn’t yet committed to a monastic life, and any day that offered sweetmeats, presents and a sense of community cheer appealed to her immensely.

But now that Christmas had come and gone she settled back into her monotonous routine. The bells for Lauds awakened her as they always did. It was dark in her small chamber and devilishly cold. Her single window rattled in the stiff, pulsing wind coming off the sea.

She instinctively reached under her cover to feel her belly. Against her palms it was smooth and tense.
Only two months to go. She was told there’d be no kicking and there wasn’t.

But she knew her baby was alive and well. She was certain of it.

He was hers, the only thing in this world she possessed, and she loved him.

Having her own chamber was an unimaginable luxury. Growing up in the wild northern frontier of Cumberland as the sixth child of a Norman farmer, to the age of fourteen she’d shared a bed with four sisters and a single room with her entire family. She had come to Vectis Abbey a year earlier. Baldwin, the Abbott of Vectis, had stopped at the market town of Kirkby Stephen on his return from an arduous journey to Scotland seeking patronage for his order. Following the death of the abbey’s principal patron, the Countess Isabella de Fortibus, Baldwin had been forced to leave his island enclave and travel throughout the Kingdom of Wessex and far beyond, courting earls, lords, bishops and cardinals to support Vectis Abbey, a jewel in the Benedictine crown which possessed the finest cathedral in the land. Baldwin’s entourage had found itself in need of two fresh horses and in the market square the abbot met Clarissa’s father, who had horses on offer.

A deal arranged, Baldwin had a question for the farmer. He was also in need of obedient young virgins to populate the ranks of novices at his abbey. Had the man any daughters to spare? For a price?

Indeed he had. But the question which farmer was which one? His oldest had caught the fancy of the son of the local blacksmith and he was expecting good things from the union. The youngest was too young and the next youngest was his wife’s favorite; he didn’t fancy the slings and arrows coming his way if he dealt her off. That left the middle two. Both
were good enough workers but Mary better met the abbot’s criterion for obedience. Clarissa, on the other hand, was strong-willed and feisty, questioning everything, a burr under his saddle. After he’d made up his mind, he’d showed his wife the coins and told the sobbing woman, “We’ll leave it to the church to tame her.”

Clarissa had left Yorkshire with a mixture of trepidation and wonder. She knew well the strife in store for her if she stayed on the farm. There was no allure to that life beyond the solace of her family’s bosom. She’d work the fields and herd the sheep till her bones ached—right up to the day her father married her off to some village oaf who’d snatch her away from her dear sisters anyway. And the only consolation of the union with that husband who undoubtedly would have bad teeth and onion breath would be a baby. How she longed to have and hold a baby one day! She’d seen her mother with her newborn youngest sister, and when she cuddled her to her milky breast, that haggard woman appeared happy for the only time Clarissa could recall.

And it was that thought that weighed on her during her monthlong journey to Vectis. If she were to marry Christ and not a man, she would never have that baby. How sad, how sad. But she was treated with solicitude by the abbot’s minions and was regaled with stories of the grandeur of the cathedral and the wonderful tranquillity and holiness of the abbey. So she thought about God and wondered if he materialized on earth what he would look like? A handsome young man with a beard as she had seen on crucifixes? An old man with a white beard in a long robe? And how would she feel as the bride of Christ?

She remembered well her first sight of the cathedral spire. She had pulled her new woolen cloak
to her throat to counter the slicing wind. With her free hand, she gripped the ship’s rail hard enough to turn her knuckles white. The sea behaved like it was trying to prevent her from completing her journey. She’d never seen the ocean before, and it seemed like a dark, evil thing, spraying salt in her nostrils and sickening her stomach. But a kindly old monk who had been her protector of sorts during the expedition grasped her shoulders and told her she had nothing to fear. The boatman, he said, had the situation well in hand.

“Just keep your eyes on the spire, child. We’ll be there, soon enough.”

The spire, appearing black against the gray sky, was God’s outstretched hand pointing straight to heaven. Vectis would be her home, her sanctuary. She would devote herself to God, and if she were worthy, she would become a nun. The peacefulness that descended upon her at that moment was the loveliest feeling she’d ever experienced in her young life.

On arrival, she kissed the beach and walked the short distance to the abbey, trailing at the rear of Baldwin’s entourage. Entering through the heavy portcullis of the walled abbey she was amazed at how bustling it was. With a population of six hundred it was the second largest city on the Isle of Wight, and it seemed that all six hundred of them came rushing out at once to greet the returning abbot. Baldwin dropped to his knees on a grassy verge before the grand cathedral and gave loud thanks for his safe return.

Clarissa had been left drifting in the hubbub until a severe-looking nun approached and, without so much as a greeting, instructed her to follow. Sister Sabeline, the Mother Superior of the sisters of Vectis, was a dried-out husk of a woman, so bony and shriveled, it seemed that the weight of her heavy black habit
was all that prevented her from being tossed into the wind. Wordlessly, she led Clarissa through the extensive grounds. Beside the grand cathedral there were some thirty stone buildings at Vectis including the chapter house, abbot house, kitchens, refectory, cellery, infirmary, buttery, hospicium, warming rooms, brewery, stables and dormitories. To Clarissa, it was unimaginably complex.

Clarissa’s destination was the sister’s dormitory, a low structure toward the rear of the abbey near the perimeter wall. Sister Sabeline placed her into the care of a plump, elderly nun named Sister Josephine who took her to an open dormitory lined with straw-stuffed wood-framed beds. On each bed was a neatly folded coverlet, and beside it, a chamber pot. On a low nightstand was a candle and a ceramic basin.

“Have you started your menses, girl?”

“Me what?”

“Oh heavens! Your flowers!”

“Oh, aye”—she flushed—“but not at t’ moment.”

“Lift up your skirt, girl,” the nun commanded.

Clarissa froze.

“You heard me!”

She slowly obeyed.

The nun had a good look at her nakedness and grunted her approval, but no explanation was forthcoming.

“All the girls are working,” Sister Josephine told her. “You’ll meet them after Vespers. This one will be your bed. Do you know how to pray, girl?”

“I know t’ Lord’s Prayer,” Clarissa said.

“Well, it’s a start, isn’t it? And do you know how to peel and chop vegetables?”

Clarissa nodded.

“Good. Let’s get you to the kitchen, so you can start earning your keep.”

“I want to be a nun, Sister. How do I do it?”

Sister Josephine snorted. “You start by peeling potatoes.”

Gradually, week by week and month by month, Clarissa realized her lot was different from most of the other girls in the dormitory. Although she attended prayer hours in the cathedral with the others she was never released from kitchen duty to participate in daily tuition of scriptures and hymns. One girl who seemed to be treated much like her was a big-boned lass with a turnip nose named Fay. But she had disappeared one day, never to be seen again.

The other girls called themselves novitiates, and when they had been at Vectis for a year, they were allowed to take simple vows. And those who had been at the abbey for four years had their heads shorn and took their solemn vows, receiving the ring of Christ. As sisters of Vectis they were given their own sleeping cells and time off chores for solitary prayer and meditation.

Adding to Clarissa’s sense of befuddlement and isolation, other girls shunned her and whispered behind her back. No one would tell her why she was different. She just knew she was.

When she had been at Vectis for six months, a new girl, younger than Clarissa, came to the dormitory. She was a fair-haired lass named Mary, deposited at the abbey by her father to serve at the pleasure of the abbot. The bed she was given was next to Clarissa’s and they shared a peeling and chopping station in the kitchen. Before long it was clear that Mary too was not being treated as a novitiate.

Mary was as shy as she was and the two girls hardly exchanged a word for the first few weeks. When they finally did, their accents and dialects were different
enough to make communication difficult, but in time they came to understand one another.

“Are we not to become nuns like the others?” Mary had asked.

“When I ask for an answer from Sister Josephine, I hear nowt,” Clarissa had said. “When I pray for an answer from God, I receive nowt. Can I ask you something? When you arrived, did Sister Josephine look at you naked like?”

Mary nodded. “She said my hips were good’uns.”

The girls became fast friends, bonded by their seemingly shared fate. To them the abbey was their entire world, and it was a strange and unfathomable place. They struggled to understand the hierarchy of the abbey and the jobs of the inhabitants. They knew that there was a brewery, but which monk was the brewer? They knew there was an infirmary, but which brother was the surgeon? They played a game, trying to guess who did what, sneaking about in the few minutes here and there when they weren’t under the scrutiny of Sister Josephine or the cook, following a likely suspect around the abbey grounds as he went about his labors.

During these adventures the girls discovered two buildings in the complex they found particularly curious.

In a far corner of the abbey, beyond the monks’ cemetery, was a simple unadorned structure the size of a small chapel connected to a long building without windows. To this building they had once seen a wagon deliver provisions of meat, vegetables and grain.

“There must be a kitchen,” Clarissa had said.

“They must have their own girls doing the duties,” Mary replied. “Less work for us.”

The other strange building that caught their eye was close to this chapel and kitchen. It resembled a small version of the sisters’ dormitory made of limestone blocks with rows of identical square windows and chimney stacks on both the short ends. On one of their walks they spied something that filled Clarissa with a turbulent blend of fascination and fear. Fay, the girl with a turnip nose who had vanished months earlier, was waddling from the small dormitory to the outhouse behind it. There was no denying it: she was heavy, very heavy with child.

How does a lass come to be bearing in a monastery, Clarissa had wondered?

That night, Clarissa lay awake on her straw pallet, the memory of Sister Josephine scrutinizing her naked hips weighing on her.

What was her fate to be?

T
he answer to her question came soon enough.

On a sunny day in June, as pretty a day as Clarissa had ever seen, the air sweet with honeysuckle and humming with orange bees, Sister Josephine approached her during morning ablutions and told her to gather up her few belongings.

As she was being led away her eyes met Mary’s. They said good-bye to each other silently with trembling lips. She had no idea if she would see her friend again.

It surprised her not the least when Sister Josephine took her straight to the small dormitory at the edge of the abbey grounds.

Inside, the air was stuffy. The windows and doors had been shut keeping the breeze at bay. There was a central hall and individual cells on both sides.

Down the hall, she thought she heard the cry of a
baby, but it lasted only a moment. Then a girl’s low words. Wasn’t it the voice of Fay, the big-boned girl who was heavy with child?

“What place is this, Sister?” she asked fearfully.

“That’s no concern of yours, child,” she was told.

“When the time comes, you’ll be told what you need to be told. Until then, all you must do is obey and behave.”

“Yes, Sister,” she said as faintly as a squeaking mouse.

She was ushered into a small chamber with a bed, a nightstand and some earthenware necessities.

“There’s but a single bed, Sister,” she exclaimed.

“You do not have to share it, Clarissa. It’s for you and you alone.”

“Me own chamber?” she asked incredulously.

“You must thank the Lord for your bounty, girl.”

“Will I be working in th’ kitchen?”

“You will not.”

“What work will I do then?”

“You will pray and meditate. That is your work now.”

“Will I go to th’ cathedral for th’ hours?”

“You will not. You will make your own prayer here.”

“Are there others with me?”

“Enough questions! Sister Hazel will come presently with food and drink. She will be your superior. Do everything she says without fail.”

Sister Hazel was a sturdy nun with broad shoulders and hair sprouting from odd places on her face. Everything she did, she did quickly, and she made it plain that she expected Clarissa to do her bidding smartly and without complaint. She was in absolute charge of the dormitory and there’d be no nonsense. The rules were simple: there was to be no fraternization
with the other girls. Meals were to be taken within her cell and every morsel had to be consumed. Morning ablutions were to be done thoroughly and swiftly. She must report the beginning of her menses without fail. Her only time outside would be visits to the outhouse. She must be diligent in her personal prayers. And finally, Sister Hazel would not tolerate idle questions.