Lucie considered her backache, her plans to tidy up for Owen’s homecoming, Isobel’s past betrayals: all good reasons to bow out of any further involvement. And yet she was curious about Joanna Calverley. . She stepped out from behind the counter. ‘Come. Let us go into the kitchen.’ Lucie nodded to the novice. ‘Make yourself comfortable on the bench. I can hear the shop bell in there. You’ve no need to come get me.’
Lucie and the prioress sat down at a small table by the kitchen window, the shutters open to let in the summery breeze.
‘I understand the archbishop is impatient for answers,’ Lucie prompted.
Isobel folded her hands on the table before her, fixed her eyes on her hands. An oddly meek posture for the prioress. ‘I also wish to know for myself,’ Isobel said. ‘I do care about Joanna. But, yes, Archbishop Thoresby is disappointed with me.’ She glanced up at Lucie, back down at her hands. ‘I bear the guilt of whatever happened to change Joanna so.’
‘She is changed, then?’
Isobel pressed her fingers to her forehead. ‘Oh, yes. The spirit has been leached from her.’
‘What do you think happened to her, Reverend Mother?’
Isobel shook her head.
Lucie stared out at the garden, thinking. ‘They say she stole a relic to pay for the funeral and her escape.’
‘A portion of the Virgin’s milk. She claims that Our Lady saved her so she might return it.’
‘This man to whom she offered the relic in Beverley did not sell it?’
‘No. When he disappeared, Sir Nicholas de Louth searched his house and found it.’
An escape plan gone wrong. Lucie remembered her own unhappy time at St Clement’s, her ever more elaborate plans for escape, never carried out, but comforting. Dame Joanna had planned her flight, planned the theft as her source of money. A practical plan. Not everyone would accept a relic in payment. Only someone who traded in relics or knew of someone who did. So Joanna had planned this with the belief that Will Longford traded in relics, or would know who did. What else could she have been thinking? Such a trader would not have a stall at market. ‘How did Joanna come to know Will Longford?’
Isobel shook her head. ‘As I said, she has told me little.’
The shop bell jingled. Lucie rose. ‘Shall I send in your novice to keep you company while I see to business?’
Isobel shook her head.
Lucie nodded towards a shelf with several jugs. ‘To the right, that is ale. The one beside it is water. Help yourself if you are thirsty.’
The customer was one of Guildmaster Thorpe’s children, come to collect several bedstraw pillows that Lucie had prepared. The baby was colicky and slept poorly. When her warm body heated the herb-stuffed pillow beneath her, the bedstraw would give off a soothing, relaxing honey fragrance and encourage restful sleep.
‘How does your mother?’ Gwen Thorpe had almost died delivering the baby.
Young Margaret smiled. ‘She’s walking about. And this morning she yelled at cook.’
‘And that made you happy?’
‘’Tis the best sign she’s mending right. But she coughs a lot.’
‘Has the Riverwoman been to see her?’
‘Oh, aye.’
Lucie picked up a small pouch and handed it to Margaret with the pillows. ‘I trust the Riverwoman is dosing her for her cough. But these herbs are my special remedy. Tell your mother to steep them in a pot and drink the tisane hot, so she breathes the steam. It will help clear out her chest after lying still so long.’
‘Thank you, Mistress Wilton.’
The novice had fallen asleep on the bench and snored softly. Lucie took a cloak from the kitchen and spread it over the girl.
Isobel wandered about the kitchen, a cup of ale in hand.
‘Tom Merchet’s brew,’ Lucie said from the doorway. ‘You’d travel far to find better. This is nothing like the kitchen at St Clement’s, is it?’
Isobel blushed to have been found so blatantly snooping. ‘I confess my curiosity about the life you’ve led since you left us.’
Lucie thought of the routine of St Clement’s, unvaried from year to year, the same schedule, the same faces, the same walls. ‘I have learned a trade, buried a husband and a baby, married again. It is a varied life.’
‘I noticed you pressing your hand to your lower back. Are you with child?’
Lucie had not thought Isobel so observant. ‘I did not know it showed much yet. I have four months to go.’
Isobel smiled. ‘Your apron hides much, but some gestures are unmistakable. I shall pray for your safe delivery of a healthy child.’
‘I can use your prayers.’
Isobel gestured round the room. ‘You keep a tidy kitchen, well-stocked with herbs.’
‘The tidiness is thanks to Tildy, my serving girl. The herbs come from our garden. What we do not use in the shop, we use in our food.’ Lucie looked with satisfaction round the room, heavy oak beams, trestle table and chairs also of sturdy oak, well-scrubbed hearthstones in a fireplace with chimney. ‘My first husband’s father rebuilt this part of the house. It is a comfortable room, even in midwinter, with the smoke going up the chimney.’
‘You have a good life, Lucie Wilton.’
Lucie sat down beside Isobel. ‘You did not come here to rediscover me, Reverend Mother.’
Isobel pressed her lips together, then relaxed them with a sigh. ‘In truth, I am not certain what I am asking of you. I hoped you would help me choose the right questions for Joanna. Find out what is in her heart.’ Isobel closed her eyes. ‘I admit that I do fear what might be there. I always have.’
An interesting confession. ‘She was troubling before she left?’
Isobel fixed her pale eyes on Lucie. ‘Joanna has walked in her sleep ever since she came to St Clement’s. Walks and silently weeps. It is frightening to come upon a sleepwalker in the dark — silent, staring at something you cannot see. All of the sisters find it unsettling.’ Isobel dabbed her upper lip with a delicately embroidered linen square.
Lucie remembered her own trouble over much simpler vanities. ‘Tell me about Joanna before she left.’
‘We were much disturbed with her penances.’
‘Was that not a matter to take up with her confessor?’
‘These were — I do not know what to call them. She claimed to have visions in which she was assigned the penances. Or were they self-imposed? I was never able to judge.’
‘What sort of penances?’
‘She would force herself to stay awake, night after night, until she fainted with exhaustion; she would chant until she had no voice left; once she lay down to sleep at night in the snow — she lost a toe.’
Frostbite. How innocent that had sounded. Yet true.
Dame Isobel shook her head. ‘If it were not for Dame Alice’s watchfulness, we would have lost Joanna that time.’
Lucie, remembering how small the nunnery had seemed, how a sound could travel the corridors, how eyes had followed her everywhere, could imagine how disquieting such behaviour would be. ‘Joanna would indeed be a troubling presence as you describe her. For what was she doing penance before her escape?’
‘She said she had dreams. Sinful dreams.’ Isobel blushed.
Lucie bit back a smile. ‘Did she describe these dreams?’
Isobel bowed her head. ‘No. Not directly. But — well, she came to me on several occasions to speak of visions of a heavenly lover, one who would possess her, burn away her sins with the passion of divine love and purify her.’ The prioress glanced up, then back down at her hands.
Lucie raised an eyebrow. ‘You have been reading the mystics in refectory?’
Isobel met Lucie’s gaze, raised her hands, palms up. ‘It was ill-advised, I see that now. But some of the sisters found it inspiring, so from time to time I allowed it. I am afraid the allegory confused Joanna. She was such an innocent.’