The priest seemed not to notice. "The Lady Julian waits for you," he said quietly. "She believes you well enough to come to her today."
Katherine had thought much about the anchoress during these days of recovery, and been astonished to find a longing to speak with her again. She went back that afternoon to the little churchyard and knocked at the cell window. The voice through the black cloth told her to come in at the door which had been unlocked.
Katherine entered Julian's cell nervously, puzzled, curious. It was but six paces long and wide, and curtained down the middle with fine blue wool. There were two windows, the "parloir" window to the churchyard, and above a wooden prie-dieu a narrow slitted window that opened into the church. Through this, Julian could see the altar and take part in the Mass. There was a small fireplace, a table and two wooden chairs on the warm brick floor. The bumpy flint walls had been painted white.
A moment after Katherine shut the door, Julian came around the blue curtain. A plain little woman, neither fat nor thin, with greying hair beneath a. white coif. She wore a soft unbleached linen gown. A woman nearing forty and so ordinary that one might see a hundred like her in any market-square, except that, as she took Katherine's hand and smiled, the cell filled with the undefinable fragrance, and at the touch of the square blunt fingers Katherine felt a strange sensation, as though there had been an iron fetter around her chest that now shattered, to let her breathe a light golden air.
"So you are the Katherine Father Clement brought," said Julian, in her comfortable slow voice. She sat down in one chair and motioned Katherine to the other. "The pains're better? Can you chew? 'Twould be a shame to lose those pretty teeth, and tell me-" She asked several frank physical questions, which Katherine answered with faint amusement and disappointment. She had come for the spiritual guidance that Father Clement seemed so certain of, and Lady Julian talked of laxatives. Yet there was still the strange sense of freedom.
"This sickness that you have," said Julian, "I too had once, when I had fasted overmuch. And was in great trouble and pain, so near death that my confessor stood over me." She glanced towards the crucifix that was mounted on her prie-dieu, and said simply, "God in His marvellous courtesy did save me."
"By the visions," said Katherine, sighing. "Father Clement told me of them."
"Ay - by the sixteen showings, but I don't know why they were vouchsafed to me. Truly it was not shown me that God loved me better than the least soul that is in grace. I'm certain here be many that never had showings, nor sight but of the common teaching of Holy Church, that love God better than I."
"It's very hard to love God," said Katharine below her breath, "when He does not love us."
"Oh Katherine, Katherine - -" Lady Julian smiled, shaking her head. "Love is our Lord's whole meaning. It was shown me full surely that ere God made us He loved us, and when we were made, we loved Him."
It was not Julian's words, which Katherine barely heard, that brought an odd half-frightened thrill. Like the first time Katherine had climbed to the top of the minster tower at Sheppey and seen the island stretching out for miles to other villages and blue water in the distance, a landscape she had not dreamed of.
She stared unbelieving at the homely broad face beneath the greying hair and wimple, for suddenly it looked beautiful, made of shining mist.
"Lady," whispered Katherine, "it must be these visions were vouchsafed to you because you knew naught of sin - not sins like mine - lady, what would you know of - of adultery - of murder - -"
Julian rose quickly and placed her hand on Katherine's shoulder. At the touch, a soft rose flame enveloped her, and she could not go on.
"I have known all manner of sin," said Julian quietly. "Sin is the sharpest scourge. And verily as sin is unclean, so verily it is a disease or monstrous thing against nature. Yet listen to what I was shown in the thirteenth vision." She moved away from Katherine. Her voice took on the low chanting note of power.
"I had been thinking of my sins, I was in great sorrow. Then I saw Him. He turned on me His face of lovely pity and He said: It is truth that sin is cause of all this pain: sin is behovable - none the less all shall be well, and all shall be well, you shall see yourself that all manner of thing shall be well. These words were said to me tenderly, showing no kind of blame. And then He said, Accuse not thyself overdone much, deeming that thy tribulation and thy woe is all thy fault: for I will not that thou be heavy or sorrowful indiscreetly. Then I understood that it was great disobedience to blame or wonder on God for my sin, since He blamed me not for it.
"And with these words, I saw a marvellous high mystery hid in God, which mystery He shall openly make known to us in heaven; where we shall truly see the cause why He suffered sin to come. For He made me see that from failure of love on our part, therefore is all our travail, and naught else."
Julian looked at Katherine and smiled. "Do you understand?"
"Nay, lady," said Katherine slowly, "I cannot believe there could be so much comfort." Julian sat down and spoke again, simply and quietly.
When Katherine left Julian's cell that day, she did not know how long she had stayed, nor clearly remember the things that had been told her, but for the time she had ceased to question. As she walked out into the little churchyard, it seemed lit with beauty. She stood bemused in a corner by a dark yew tree and saw meaning, blissful meaning in everything her eye rested on: the blue floweret of the speedwell, the moss on a gravestone, an ant that laboured to push a crumb through the grass - all these were radiant, as though she looked at them through a crystal.
She picked up a black flint pebble that seemed to glow with light like a diamond, while some of Lady Julian's words came back to her. "In this same time, our Lord showed me a spiritual sight of His homely loving. A little thing like a hazelnut, in the palm of my hand, and I thought what may this be? And it was answered: It lasteth and ever shall, for that God loveth it."
During that moment that she held the pebble, Katherine understood this, and why Julian had said, "After this I saw God-in a point, by which sight I saw that He is in all things, be it never so little. Nothing is done by hap or adventure - if it be hap or chance in the sight of man, our blindness is the cause."
These words echoed in Katherine's mind as she held the pebble, joy shimmered through its black flint, there was joy in the grass, the yew tree, the gravestones, the moss. Slowly it faded, and a great sleepiness came over her. She dropped the flint. She scarcely could drag her heavy limbs across the alley to her chamber in the rectory. She laid herself on the bed and slept the night through. There were no dreams.
Each day Katherine went to Julian's cell and listened, each day came back refreshed by glimpses of a love she had not known existed, though the exaltation of that moment in the churchyard did not return.
She argued sometimes, at times cried out in disbelief, unable to hide her doubts, and then indeed Julian once sighed and looked sad and humble, as she said, "All this was shown to me in three ways, Katherine, by bodily sight, by word formed in my understanding, and by spiritual sight. But this spiritual sight, I can not, and I may not, show as openly as I would. I trust in God that He will of His Goodness make you take it more spiritually than I can, or may, tell it."
Humility. Katherine saw in those days how far she had ever been from truly feeling it. She saw that she had never known the meaning of prayer. Her prayers had all been violent commands and bargainings - dictated by fear.
To Lady Julian, prayer was communion. "Prayer oneth the soul with God." And it was thanking. Giving thanks even without reward. In the fourteenth showing, Julian had heard the lovely words, "I am the ground of thy beseeching." And with these blessed words had seen a full overcoming against all our weakness and all our doubtful dreads.