Ashes of the Elements by Alys Clare Read Free Book Online Page A

fringed with almost colourless lashes. Peg was slim and willowy, with a smooth, cream complexion, dark hair, and eyes like the midsummer sky at dusk.
    Peg was, in short, quite exceptionally beautiful.
    But, despite her awareness of all that separated her from her adoptive family, she was an obedient and hard-working child, doing what was asked of her without complaint, ever grateful to the kind-hearted people who had taken her in. Throughout her early childhood she fed chickens, mucked out their smelly runs, collected their eggs and went to market to sell what the family would not use. She also learned to cook and clean. But it was only when Alison Hurst began to teach her garden lore that Peg seemed to come alive; from that time on, from the exciting spring when the Hursts discovered that Peg had a green thumb, she was excused all other duties and put solely to cultivation.
    But even that was not enough.
    When Peg was fourteen, she presented herself at Hawkenlye Abbey and asked to be admitted as a postulant.
    Helewise, who made it her policy to try not to turn anyone away, had grave misgivings about Peg. For one thing, the girl was very young. For another, she had seen nothing of life outside the small confines of Hawkenlye: how could the child be sure that convent life was for her?
    The Abbess’s most important doubt, however, was that she could detect little of a religious vocation in Peg.
    She did her best to discover it – sometimes, she had found, a woman kept her love for God very close to her heart, so that it was not readily apparent to an outsider – and she spent many an afternoon walking and talking with Peg. She also visited Alison Hurst, who, when asked a direct question, replied, after considerable thought, ‘The lassie’s what you might call spiritual, and no mistake, Abbess. That I’ll swear to right willingly. But as to whether she worships the same Holy Spirit as you and me…’
    She had left the sentence unfinished.
    Helewise, after much thought, had decided that it would do no harm to accept Peg for a trial period, but with the condition that her postulancy should continue for a year instead of the usual six months. She gave as her reason Peg’s youth.
    But Helewise had accepted postulants of fourteen before, many of whom had grown up to be good nuns. The true reason for her decision regarding Peg was that a full year would give Helewise more time to assess this strange spirituality of the girl’s. To decide either that it was truly Christian in inspiration – or Christianity in some other similar guise – or whether it was something else.
    That something else Helewise did not define, even to herself.
    Thus, right from the start, there was a difference about Peg.
    *   *   *
    Within a few weeks of being in the convent, Peg’s talents in the garden were being put to work. She was apprenticed to the elderly Sister Tiphaine, who grew the herbs which Sister Euphemia used in her tonics, medicines and ointments. Sister Tiphaine took a shine to the girl, and reported favourably on her to the Abbess; but Helewise took Sister Tiphaine’s enthusiasm with a pinch of salt, since the old woman herself had always verged on unorthodoxy.
    Then, one morning in late autumn, when there was little to occupy her outdoors, Peg knocked on the Abbess’s door and asked to be taught to read.
    Amazed – for few of the sisters either read or had the least desire to – Helewise demurred. Thought about it for a couple of days, saw no earthly reason to refuse. Finally agreed, and took on the task herself.
    Peg was an apt pupil, and was reading simple words within a few months; she would have reached that milestone earlier, had her Abbess had more time to spare for lessons. By the following spring, Peg was begging to be allowed to read the precious manuscripts kept in the Abbey’s scriptorium; despite the vehement objections of the young, aesthetic and highly intellectual Sister Bernadine, who had the care of the