The Sumerton Women (21 page)
Mirabella bowed her head, annoyed. How dare the abbess presume that her intentions were anything but pure?
“I beg of you, Sister, do not do this,” Sister Julia cautioned Mirabella as the two quit the chapter house, where, to the surprise of everyone and the dismay of some, Mirabella did not receive punishment for her diatribe. “You have great sway over the women here—you could lead them all into danger. Do not persist. You must accept our fate and trust in God to care for us.”
“It isn’t always that simple, Sister,” Mirabella told her with a sigh of annoyance. “God requires us to serve Him above and beyond what we sometimes feel capable of. I am fighting for His Church. I am not going to slink off into the country to lick my wounds while the monasteries are looted and my brothers and sisters in God are thrown to the wolves. Perhaps some can live with that on their souls, but I cannot.”
“Mirabella.” Sister Julia’s voice was soft as she spoke her given name. “You are my child... . I beg you, for the first and last time, as your mother, not to do this. Come with me. We will retire to York. I have an uncle there. I am certain he will extend his generosity to me. We could be so happy. And we could establish some sort of monastic community of our own, perhaps not as formal as this. Perhaps it does not need to be like this. As long as our hearts are pure in their intent to serve and know the Lord, I do not think it matters where we reside.”
Mirabella stopped walking and turned to Sister Julia, fixing her with eyes hard as mirrors. “If you think you can use our tie of blood to manipulate me, you are wrong,
Sister
.”
Sister
.”
Sister Julia flinched at this, then averted her head.
“As it is, I do not expect you to understand,” Mirabella went on. “You are accustomed to running away from life; you ran from me, you ran from scandal, you ran from my father. Why would now be any different?”
Sister Julia straightened, raising her chin in defiance as she regarded her daughter. Her voice when she spoke was low, laced with venom. “If I have been running my whole life, then indeed so have you. Did you not run away from the scandal of Lady Grace, from Brey’s death, from your feelings for the man you love and can never have? Don’t lie to me, Mirabella, not to
me!
” At once her face softened. She reached out, cupping Mirabella’s cheek in her hand. “Above all, don’t lie to yourself. Examine your motives, my girl. Examine your soul.”
me!
” At once her face softened. She reached out, cupping Mirabella’s cheek in her hand. “Above all, don’t lie to yourself. Examine your motives, my girl. Examine your soul.”
Mirabella bit her lip until she flinched from the pain. At last she said, “You do as your conscience advises and I shall do the same.”
Sister Julia cocked her head, her eyes filled with irony. “Well, then. If your introspection is sincere, I have nothing to fear. Do I?”
Cecily watched her son, Harry, romp through her garden in the company of his favorite companion, Alice’s daughter Joanna. Together the two children toddled about, exploring their surroundings, pinching flowers off their stems, fingering the delicate petals in amazement as they took in the bright colors of summer.
The young mothers looked on through fond eyes. Nearby Alice’s daughters Ellen and Margery played, shifting to other locales as soon as the babies caught up to them.
“The little ones always get left out,” Alice laughed.
Cecily smiled as she rubbed the slight swell of her belly. Her womb had only just quickened with her and Hal’s second child. She was as happy as she was terrified. She did not know if she could live through another birth if it proved as difficult as Harry’s. It seemed, however, that as fearful as she was, Alice was far more anxious.
She observed her friend now, noting the pinched, pallid complexion, the puffiness beneath her eyes, the distant gaze.
“Alice, what is it?” she asked at last.
Alice pursed her lips. She bowed her head. “I have been thinking of the future, of my daughters. With the dissolution of the monasteries, I cannot imagine it possible that they ever be sent away now. I had hoped to send them soon, but now ...”
Cecily’s heart lurched at the thought. “Alice, but they’re only babies!” She laughed in nervousness as she covered her friend’s hand with hers. “You need not send them off so soon.”
“I do. The sooner the better.” Alice bit her lip, averting her head.
Cecily’s heart pounded with some unnamed dread. “Why, Alice?”
“He ... he just won’t leave me alone. You know?” She rubbed her neck absently as she spoke. “Every day, every night, he is on me. I’m so exhausted. And the babies keep coming, all of them blasted girls.” She began to tremble. “Had God granted me a different life and a different husband, I wouldn’t have minded them. They would have been a comfort to me... .” She shook her head. “But not here, not now. Now they are as much a curse as they are accursed. Edward and his eldest sons ... they descend upon us like vultures. No one is safe. They
are
just babies, Cecily!” She hugged herself, stiffening a moment, perhaps stifling a sob before continuing. “If it were just me it would not matter. I can stand it. I have stood it,” she added in soft tones. “But Edward says it’s our duty to satisfy the hot blood of the family males. Far better for him and the boys to get it from home than contract the pox by whoring.” The meaning of the statement hung in the air like a dense, strangling fog. Burning bile rose in Cecily’s throat. She swallowed hard. “You see, he has his heirs,” Alice went on. “It makes no difference to him now who my children look like—if they resemble one of his sons more than him... .” She shrugged.
are
just babies, Cecily!” She hugged herself, stiffening a moment, perhaps stifling a sob before continuing. “If it were just me it would not matter. I can stand it. I have stood it,” she added in soft tones. “But Edward says it’s our duty to satisfy the hot blood of the family males. Far better for him and the boys to get it from home than contract the pox by whoring.” The meaning of the statement hung in the air like a dense, strangling fog. Burning bile rose in Cecily’s throat. She swallowed hard. “You see, he has his heirs,” Alice went on. “It makes no difference to him now who my children look like—if they resemble one of his sons more than him... .” She shrugged.
Cecily’s stomach churned. “Oh, God, Alice ...”
Alice buried her face in her hands, dissolving into sobs.
Cecily wrapped her arms about her, holding her close, her heart wrenching in terror as all of her suspicions about Alice’s household were at last confirmed.
“Is there not something to be done?” Cecily breathed. “Perhaps my Lord Hal—”
“No!” Alice’s tone was sharp, edged with tears. “Not a word to a soul, Cecily, do you hear me? I told you to relieve my burden, to seek your comfort, nothing more. There is nothing more can be done.”
“But Lord Hal could help,” Cecily urged. “He is a gentle, honorable man. If he knew what Edward was about he would see justice done.”
“Justice for a woman?” Alice returned, her tears replaced by a cynical smirk. “Cecily, don’t be naïve.”
Cecily’s shoulders slumped. “All right,” she acquiesced. “I won’t tell him.” Whether it was right or wrong she did not want to ponder. She would do as Alice asked. She was her friend, was she not?
Alice visibly relaxed, her features softening, her shoulders easing. She sighed. “As it is, there will be no more children.”
“How will you manage that?” Cecily asked. She couldn’t fathom it, especially given the circumstances.
“There is a woman in the forest,” Alice said. “She has ways, herbs and the like that can stop a child from starting—”
“A witch?” Cecily’s cheeks burned at the thought. “But if Sir Edward ever found out—”
“He won’t find out,” Alice said in low, certain tones.
“But how can you be sure?”
“Cecily! He won’t find out!” Alice said again. “Unless you tell. And you will not, will you?”
Cecily’s heart sank. She felt queasy as she shook her head.
At once she was certain she trod on dangerous ground.
12
I
t was agonizing watching the nuns trickle forth from the convent into the world, leaving the safety of the cloister behind them perhaps forever. With tearful good-byes, the women left the only home they had known, some for the better part of their lives. Some were collected by family members, some ventured out alone. The abbess thought to stay till the last sister in Christ departed but in the end shook her head at Mirabella, her rheumy eyes glazed with tears.
t was agonizing watching the nuns trickle forth from the convent into the world, leaving the safety of the cloister behind them perhaps forever. With tearful good-byes, the women left the only home they had known, some for the better part of their lives. Some were collected by family members, some ventured out alone. The abbess thought to stay till the last sister in Christ departed but in the end shook her head at Mirabella, her rheumy eyes glazed with tears.
“I will not stay for this,” the abbess said. “My heart cannot take it.” She made the sign of the cross before Mirabella. “Bless you, child. I pray you are directed in wisdom—and right.”
And it was so that only three remained as servants to Lord Francis Morton, the gentleman who assumed temporary management of the abbey for the Crown, which would now be a sheep farm, like any other ordinary landholding. Nothing more.
When the guards came to dismantle their home of its treasures, Sister Julia, with great reluctance, Sister Agnes, the sub-prioress, and Mirabella awaited them. They made for a pathetic resistance, gathered in the chapel, pretending as they had pretended to for so many days now to be occupied with the mundane tasks of servitude to their new earthbound master.
“Three is not so bad a number,” Mirabella quipped with forced cheer as her heart thudded in time with the hooves thundering up the road. “We do remarkably well with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,” she added, feeling clever.
Sister Agnes began to wring her hands. “They are coming! Oh, blessed Christ, they are coming! Today is the day!” She began to cry. “I should have gone. Taken my pension and removed myself to safety. Now we will be seen as rebels. Poor old Lord Morton will have been betrayed, and him just doing what he’s told,” she rambled. “I should have followed the abbess’s advice; didn’t she tell me we were two old women, unfit for the battles of men? God’s truth will reign in the end, with or without our interference. Now I will never know a day of peace.”
“Take heart,” Mirabella assured her in tones gentle but firm as she reached out to still her hands. “If God is for us, who can be against?”
The doors to the chapel burst open as the small regiment of guards entered.
“Good day, ladies. We mean you no harm. If you will simply step aside that we might carry out our orders, all will go smoothly,” said the lieutenant, his tone not altogether threatening as he regarded the three women standing at the altar.
“I am afraid you will be disappointed,” said Mirabella. “We are sisters in Christ and stay to remind you that you are in peril of your souls if you desecrate this holy place.”
The man tossed a smirk at his comrades-in-arms before returning his attention to Mirabella, who fixed him with her uncompromising stare, all the while hoping he could not hear her heart pounding against her ribs. She entwined her hands in those of the two nuns at her sides.
“You expect to hold us off then from our duty ordained by the king?”
“Yes,” said Mirabella. “For we are ordained by one even higher than the king: God.”
The man laughed as he approached her. “Not anymore,” he said. His breath was foul, his cheeks ruddy. He appeared to be in his middle thirties and was built with the shoulders of an ox. He reached out, laying a heavy hand on Mirabella’s shoulder. She resisted the urge to tremble. “Lass, I respect your determination, but ’tisn’t wise to meddle in the affairs of the world. Leave this place. ’Twould be better for you.”
“We will not,” Mirabella said, shrugging his hand off of her shoulder as she stepped closer to the altar, as if hoping to absorb some supernatural strength from it. “Nor will we allow you to defile the house of the Lord by robbing it of its holy treasures. You will go now! Go in the name of the Lord!”
“My lady,” the man said, his voice low and menacing as he stepped even closer. “I am still here. I am a man, not a demon to be cast out, and I have not a saint’s patience. Remove yourselves and no harm will come to you. Remain and you will be dealt with in the manner I see fit.”
At this Sister Agnes began to wail.
The man turned to her, a dark smile twisting his lips. “You want to leave, don’t you, my lady?” he asked, his tone an exaggeration of gentleness. “Go now. We’ll not detain you. Go.”
Sister Agnes tossed Mirabella and Sister Julia a fleeting glance of wild fear mingled with apology before hurrying out of the chapel, the heavy oaken doors slamming with the resounding crack of finality behind her. Mirabella’s throat went dry.
“Men! These ladies prefer to watch us do our bidding! Let us commence as we have been commanded!” he ordered then.
At once, with the practiced efficiency of seasoned soldiers, the men took to loading up trunks and chests with all manner of décor. The carts were already heavy with loot: paintings, books from the library, tapestries, plate, altarpieces for the treasury. Mirabella swallowed an onset of tears. In weeks prior, all rents and lands owned by the abbey had been reverted to the Crown without incident. But this ... this was tantamount to rape.
Sister Julia clasped Mirabella’s hand. “We best leave while we have the chance,” she whispered. “Before we are in real danger.”
Mirabella shook her head. She swallowed hard. “Lord Morton will protect us.”
“Lord Morton is with
them,
don’t you see?” Sister Julia said in a frantic whisper. “He doesn’t care what happens to us. If we are seen to be working against the king’s will he’ll just as soon help them be rid of us. Do not be a fool to expect his protection—”
them,
don’t you see?” Sister Julia said in a frantic whisper. “He doesn’t care what happens to us. If we are seen to be working against the king’s will he’ll just as soon help them be rid of us. Do not be a fool to expect his protection—”
“Then go if you are afraid!” Mirabella snapped. She did not want to hear arguments, logical or not. Nothing could be allowed to mar her victorious fantasy.
Sister Julia remained rooted in place, her breathing shallow.
When the lieutenant began to chisel away at a golden statue of the Holy Mother from its marble base, Mirabella could stand it no more. She hurled herself upon him.
“Blasphemer! How dare you? No!” she cried, pummeling him with her fists. Tears of fury streamed down her cheeks. Was nothing sacred? How could this man go about these evil deeds so carelessly?
“Look at this!” he cried, delighted with the spectacle. He wrapped his arms about her, pinning her to his body. “Gentlemen, perhaps we have been too hasty in our efforts to dismiss these lovely ladies,” he muttered as he removed her hood, revealing her cropped dark curls. He stroked her jawline. Mirabella averted her head, bile rising in her throat as she at last began to realize the enormity of the danger she had placed herself in.
“Come now, lass, I told you I would be reasonable!” he teased as he backed her against the wall. He pressed himself against her groin; she attempted to wriggle away. “If you’re a good girl, I’ll even give the other lads a turn with you... . I’ve never had a woman of God before. I expect the experience to be ... divine?”
He began to chuckle as he ran his hand under her gown, along her bare leg to her secret parts. Mirabella squeezed her legs together, yelping in pain as he inserted his fingers. This seemed to excite him further, for his breathing quickened as he forced her legs apart with his own and attempted to hike up her gown. Mirabella squeezed her eyes shut, emitting an involuntary sob.
In all her life she had never been as afraid as she was at that moment. She began to scream. It had all been for nothing. She had failed God and now He was punishing her.
“You will stop this!” a voice thunderous with authority cried. Sister Julia! Her mother ... Yes, her mother would save her... .
Time seemed to stop. There was no sound, not that Mirabella could make out, and everyone’s movements seemed too slow to be real, as though they were exaggerating them in a masque mocking movement itself. Maybe that’s what this was: a horrible, evil masque. Yes, that had to be it. It couldn’t be real. It couldn’t have all gone this wrong. People couldn’t be this wicked.
Mirabella turned panicked eyes to Sister Julia, who was charging toward the lieutenant with the very chisel he had been using on the statue. She raised it above her head. Mirabella drew in a sharp breath as she watched Sister Julia’s green eyes widen. Slow, fluid as a dancer, the soldier turned from Mirabella toward her mother and manipulated the chisel from her hand by a twist of her delicate wrist while with his other hand he brought the hilt of his sword crashing against the side of her temple.
As slow as time seemed to be moving before, now it lurched forward with dizzying speed. Sister Julia was flung—or was she flinging herself?—into Mirabella’s arms and the two collapsed to the floor.
“Sister!” Mirabella cried, cradling her mother’s bloodied head. “Oh ... please ...”
In a movement almost spasmodic, Sister Julia seized Mirabella’s face between her hands, fixing her with a hard, uncompromising gaze. “Forgive,” she whispered, her voice audible only to Mirabella.
“Let go.”
With that, the eyes glazed over and the surge of life that gave Sister Julia the strength to utter this last command receded. Her hands slipped from her daughter’s face, her head lolled to the side.
“Let go.”
With that, the eyes glazed over and the surge of life that gave Sister Julia the strength to utter this last command receded. Her hands slipped from her daughter’s face, her head lolled to the side.
Mirabella cast helpless eyes at the lieutenant, whose sword was already in his scabbard as though that unpleasant episode had just been in a day’s work. She swallowed an onset of bile, reverting her gaze to Sister Julia once more. In awe, she watched a pool of deep crimson surround her mother’s head, some nightmarish perversion of a halo.
“You.” The lieutenant’s voice. Mirabella raised her eyes, dazed. He towered over her, the darkest shadow in her world. “Now I’ve had enough from high-minded bitches. Let me to my business.”
There was naught but to obey. He had won, he and the king, Cromwell and Cranmer. She had lost. How much she had lost! Mirabella clasped her mother to her breast. She lowered her head, forcing herself to look upon the face of the woman who had loved her completely, without condition, the woman for whom she had shown nothing but disrespect. Even in the end she had accused her of being a coward, of running away from life, from her... . Yet when Mirabella’s life was in jeopardy Sister Julia did not hesitate once. She would have killed for her. This sister in Christ would have killed to spare her daughter’s virtue. In that brave, selfless attempt she lost her life.
And Mirabella was to blame. Mirabella had killed her the same as if she had been wielding the sword.
Mirabella began to rock the body back and forth. In vain she felt for the pulse of life in Sister Julia’s neck. Nothing. What had she done? Surely she could have found a better way... . She could have appealed to her father. He would have raised an army for her... . No. Not Hal Pierce. He was too passive, too obedient. He would never risk the king’s displeasure.
Oh, Mother, forgive me ... forgive me... .
“My lady ...”
A warm hand stroked Mirabella’s forehead. She grimaced, her eyelids fluttering as a strangled whimper stuck in her throat. Images came swirling back to her, merciless, terrible.
“Oh, my dear lady ...” The soft male voice once more.
Mirabella’s eyes opened at last, allowing her to draw into focus the face of the abbey’s new steward, James Reaves, stooping over what she assumed to be her bedside, though how and when she arrived in a bed she never knew. She had the presence of mind to recognize the infirmary, however, and fresh tears stung her eyes at the thought of the many hours she had spent there nursing the sick. She squeezed her eyes shut against the memory.
“I didn’t know,” Master Reaves was telling her. “The soldiers ... everything was happening so fast and I was detained. I found you in the chapel unconscious and Sister Julia ... oh, the poor, dear lady ...” He bowed his head, stray locks of blond hair sweeping across his forehead.
“Where is she now?” Mirabella demanded in tones sharper than she intended.
“She has been laid to rest, Sister Mirabella,” Master Reaves assured her. Then softly, “Do you know ... who did it, my lady?”
“It matters not,” Mirabella replied in hoarse tones. “Justice will not find them in the England of Henry VIII.” She rolled on her side, back to the young steward.
“Sister, you cannot mean to keep this quiet!” he cried, resting a hand on her shoulder. She jerked it away, drawing the covers to her neck. He withdrew his hand, backing away. “I am sorry ... I meant no disrespect. It is just that I want to help you. Please.”
Mirabella remained silent.
“Your family,” he said. “They should be informed.”
“I will go to them when I am ready and not before,” Mirabella said in sharp tones, rolling over to face him. “Until then, we will not speak of it to anyone. Please.”
Master Reaves shook his head. “But, dear mistress, why?”
“I am not your dear mistress,” Mirabella hissed. “I am Sister Mirabella, do you hear?”
The bewildered steward nodded. “Yes, of course. But—but you do recall what has come to pass?”
“I do,” Mirabella said. “That changes nothing.” With this she laughed a shrill, joyless sound that caused the steward to shiver. “Do you honestly think I remained to be a mere servant to Lord Morton? No. I stayed to fight for my home, for my calling, for everything holy that King Henry and his—his
minions
are stripping the land of.” Tears rolled down her cheeks in smooth, slick trails. “But I lost ... I lost.”
minions
are stripping the land of.” Tears rolled down her cheeks in smooth, slick trails. “But I lost ... I lost.”
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