“Father!”
“I would not dream of casting a stone, my daughter. What I think will be kept hidden away in my heart, buried deep into the profound love and respect I bear you,” Baron Adam replied, then he reached over, clasped his daughter’s hand in his, and kissed it.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
In good time, Father Anselm did recover, gaining sufficient strength to return to his duties as priest to the soldiers and residents of Wynethorpe Castle, where, it is said, he continued to counsel all and sundry against the eating of meat and the sins of excess bathing. Never again did he chase young boys riding hobbyhorses down dark corridors, although he did mention from time to time that he might have had just the smallest part in solving the mystery of Lord Henry’s murder.
Juliana and Isabelle remained as Baron Adam’s guests until the road to the Lavenham estates was passable. When the women did at last return to their home, Juliana immediately petitioned the bishop to allow her admission to Tyndal as an anchoress. At the same time she begged her brother, now Sir George of Lavenham, to give both his blessing and financial support so that she might enter Tyndal with honor.
Despite his reluctance to lose a much loved sister to such an austere life, he granted both pleas, and, when his sister was given approval to enter the priory from both Eleanor and the bishop, Sir George sent her off with tears and a generous dowry. Included with his gifts was a letter in which he sent most courteous and quite brotherly affection to Juliana’s new prioress, although Eleanor detected just a hint of wistfulness in his words.
Of the Lady Isabelle, little more is recorded, although the bishop’s register does show that she, shortly after Juliana left for Tyndal, formally took the mantle and ring of a vowess, never to marry again.
There was kept amongst the miscellaneous papers of Tyndal, however, a letter from Sir George of Lavenham to the Prioress Eleanor which was written many years after Isabelle took that vow. In it, he told the prioress that Isabelle did indeed still live. After the young widow had taken her vow of chastity, she locked herself into self-imposed imprisonment in a tower room in Sir George’s castle. She had since aged much, he wrote with apparent sadness, and was seen only rarely except by the woman who served her. On those occasions when she allowed him to visit her, he noted how bent her back had grown and how her eyes had dulled to a milky blue. She said little when he came, refusing to sit or allow him to do so, and silently gazed out the only window in her room, a window that faced toward Tyndal Priory.