Fortune Like the Moon by Alys Clare Read Free Book Online Page B

adoring the Lord, or in this case His Holy Mother, while the Marthas – Helewise and her nuns – got on with being ‘busy with many things’.
    Instead she went on, ‘You appreciate, my lord d’Acquin, the reason for our hospitals and homes?’
    ‘Aye. You have a healing spring in your Abbey.’
    ‘Yes. And, according to tradition, the original sick merchant to whom the Blessed Virgin appeared – you are aware of the story?’ He nodded. ‘The merchant said that Our Lady praised him for giving the spring water to his fevered companions, and she told him it was the best possible cure.’
    ‘The monks, then, tend the spring,’ Josse summarised.
    ‘Yes. They see to the immediate needs of those who come to take the water. They provide shelter from the sun or the rain, a warm fire when it is cold, benches to sit on, simple lodgings for those who wish to stay overnight. They collect the water in jugs and pour it into the pilgrims’ cups. They also provide. spiritual counsel for those in need.’
    Josse caught her eye. She knew what he was going to say before he said it. ‘It sounds a relatively undemanding life, compared with that of your sisters,’ he remarked.
    He had picked up what she had tried so hard to ensure that he didn’t. I must, she told herself sternly, be even more careful not to allow my resentments to show. ‘The monks work devotedly,’ she said, filling the words with sincerity.
    He was still watching her, and the brown eyes held a certain compassion. ‘I don’t doubt it.’
    There was a moment of silence, during which Helewise felt the very beginning of a sympathy between them.
    Then Josse d’Acquin said, ‘You have, Abbess, given me a most clear picture of life at Hawkenlye Abbey. I think, now, that I am ready to ask again if you would tell me what you can of Gunnora’s final hours here.’
    Helewise sat back in her chair, and, after a moment to collect her thoughts, turned her mind back to that day, remarkable, surely, because, although it had been Gunnora’s last on earth and the precursor to that terrible death, yet it had been so very un- remarkable.
    ‘Gunnora had, as I believe I told you, been with us not quite a year,’ she began. ‘This means that she was still a novice. During a sister’s first year, we prefer her to spend more time at her devotions than engaging in the practical work of the sisterhood – it is important, we feel, to ensure that our nuns are firmly secure in the spiritual life of the community. Trials and rigours lie before them, and we wish to armour them for the test by helping them to become safe in the Lord.’
    ‘I understand,’ Josse said. ‘It sounds very wise. Besides, a year is not long.’
    ‘Indeed not. There is much for a novice to learn.’
    He twisted on his flimsy seat, making as if to cross his long legs; again, she had a sudden vivid impression of energy kept under strict control. The stool gave a squeak of protest, and Josse arrested the movement, slowly and carefully replacing his foot on the floor. Bringing her mind back – not without difficulty – to the matter under discussion, she heard him say, ‘You also commented earlier that Gunnora wasn’t really suited to convent life,’ he said. ‘Could you elaborate?’
    ‘I did not mean to sound judgemental,’ Helewise said quickly. Dear Lord, but she had. ‘Only it seemed to me that Gunnora struggled more than most with the tenets of a nun’s life.’ He was still wearing his enquiring expression. ‘Poverty, obedience, chastity,’ she said. ‘Different sisters have difficulty with each of those three. Young women who come to us in their late teens and early twenties have to fight a natural inclination towards the strong demands of the flesh, and older women who enter the Order after a life as a wealthy man’s wife find it very hard to sleep on a plank bed and wear the plain black habit. Many, if not all, of us find constant and total unquestioning obedience a heavy cross to