The Blessing Stone (42 page)

Winifred felt her bones freeze. To use pigments that had been mixed by someone else? “But I always purchase my raw materials from Mr. Jaffar,” she said in a tone that sounded almost pleading.

“We have nothing to do with him,” Rosamund said with undisguised contempt. “He offended my father. That blackguard is not permitted to set foot on our property, and it extends all the way to the main road.”

Winifred felt the floor tilt beneath her. The edges of the room grew dim. She was near faint with the shock of what had just transpired. To no longer be prioress, to no longer have control over the manufacture of pigments that was her very reason for being. And now: never to see Mr. Jaffar again!

As Rosamund escorted her guest on a tour of the new convent, cheerily pointing out all the wonderful amenities and luxuries, Winifred barely heard a word. She stumbled with the gait of a woman who had suddenly aged by two decades. Her head spun with grief and disappointment and shock.

But as she was taken from room to room, through a cloistered garden and down flagstone paths, her shock turned to awareness, until gradually her eyes were opened at last and she was asking herself: how could she have even thought that she and her sisters would never move here?

It was another world, a wonderful world. Each guest room had its own
necessarium
—a little closet built off the outer wall with a pipe carrying the waste to a trench below. Such luxury, not to have to trudge through all weather when nature called! There were special amenities found only in the homes of wealthy nobles: candles marked to tell time, lanterns of transparent ox horn, the freshly swept floors covered with sweet-smelling rushes. And luxuries: in the yard behind the kitchen, hired servants were boiling sheets, cloths and undergarments in a wooden trough containing a solution of wood ashes and caustic soda. Boys working in the vegetable gardens, women feeding flocks of fat hens and geese. An old man hired to fashion bars of sweet-smelling soap.

The kitchen was five times the size of that at St. Amelia’s and its fully stocked pantry and buttery, for all of being five years old, still smelled of fresh wood and whitewash. Winifred’s eyes bulged at the sight of the noon meal laid out: a whole ham, slabs of rare beef, crusty bread, barrels of ale and wine. When Rosamund put a generous plate in front of her, Winifred said she had eaten fully before leaving St. Amelia’s, but so as not to offend, she would carry this meal back in a cloth and save it for later. In truth, it would be divided among the others, who had not tasted jam in a very long time.

She was then taken to the grand chapel where the pilgrims—knights and paupers, lords and clergy, the sick and the lame—all waited in line to pray before the magnificent shrine of the True Cross. This church had something her own little chapel did not have: a stained-glass window. And so much gold! So many candles, all white and straight. All for the reverence of a piece of wood, whereas the bones of a real woman, a woman who suffered martyrdom for her faith, were housed in a homely place where the candles were squat and smoked badly. Winifred did not feel bitter toward this contrast, only sadness, and suddenly wanted to gather St. Amelia into her arms and whisper, “This might be grander but you are loved more.”

Finally: this place had an infirmary, which St. Amelia’s did not. Eight beds and a nursing sister who specialized in ailments. Winifred’s eyes bulged at the sight of the medicine cupboard: the potions and lotions, ointments and salves, pills and powders. Several vials of curative eyewash. Remedies for arthritis. Rose-hip tonic for kidney troubles.

Marveling at the generous stock of medicines, and thinking of the private
necessarium
that Sister Edith would have, right off her own room so she did not need a nightly escort, and the young man in the outer yard who was ever ready to draw water from the well, thus putting fear of wells out of Dame Odelyn’s mind…

Winifred sighed. There was no denying it. This would be a haven for her elderly sisters. They would be well fed, taken care of. Never mind that they would no longer have duties. Peace and comfort mattered more.

She had been invited to stay the night, in the guest quarters where the mattresses were filled with eider down, but Winifred was eager to get back to her own home before dark. Thanking Mother Rosamund for the tour and hospitality, Winifred hurried from the chapter house as quickly as decorum allowed. After she passed through the main gates and followed the path back to the main lane, she paused beneath a leafy beech tree and, alone in the shadows, retrieved the blue crystal from her pocket.

As it lay in her hand, catching sunlight that filtered through the branches overhead, Winifred realized that the crystal had not been a sign after all. There was no message from Amelia, no significance to the stone’s discovery. It had been an accident, nothing more. Winifred knew now that she and her sisters must come here and live out their lives in this place. She would strive to do her best teaching the art of illumination to the novices, but she knew that the excellence that had once gone into her labors would not be there, for already she felt the creative spark fading. The gift St. Amelia had bestowed upon her many years ago had run its course. From now on, Winifred would be an ordinary illuminator; she would teach ordinary girls to execute ordinary paintings. And she would set aside once and for all her foolish dream of creating a splendid altarpiece for St. Amelia.

Mr. Ibn-Abu-Aziz-Jaffar returned after three days as promised. And Winifred had the money she owed him, for she had sold their one last item of worth, a handsome unicorn tapestry that had hung in the chapter house—what need was there for it now that St. Amelia’s was to be closed?

He said he was sorry to hear that she was losing her home, and said he would pray for their happiness and success in the new place. And then he did a surprising thing: he gave her a gift, something he could have clearly sold at a good price, a chunk of costly Spanish cinnabar. He placed it now freely in the prioress’s dye-stained, work-roughened hands.

Winifred looked at the offering speechlessly. The red stone, crushed, would make excellent vermilion paint, which they were badly in need of. “Thank you, Mr. Jaffar,” she said in all humility.

He further shocked her by taking her hand and holding it between his. Winifred had not felt human touch in forty years, and certainly not a man’s! And in that instant the strangest moment occurred: Winifred felt the warm skin beneath her fingers and for the first time in her life saw a member of the opposite sex not as a father or a brother, a merchant or a priest, but as a
man.
She looked into Simon’s dark lively eyes and she felt something unfamiliar move within her breast.

And then she saw a vision, a function of the Celtic sight that had once led her to lost spoons and meat pies, but this time it was something lost in the past: all in a flash she saw herself meeting this same man on the day before she first visited St. Amelia’s over forty years ago. But now he is an itinerant young man carrying juggling balls and a box of magic tricks. Their eyes meet as they pass in the lane, and then they are gone. But later, in the chapel at St. Amelia’s, instead of going exploring, fourteen-year-old Winifred thinks instead of the handsome young man she met on the road. She does not wander through the convent and happen upon the scriptorium, but instead returns home with her mother and sisters, to travel the next day to the market fair in town, where she encounters the young man a second time. On this occasion they speak, and the magic between them is instantaneous. He speaks with a thick accent and his clothes are foreign. He says he comes from Spain and wishes to travel the country and bring dreams and joy to folk. He promises to come back someday and so Winifred waits for him. Five years pass before she sees him again, and there he is at the gate of their manor, with a brand new wagon and horse, and he is asking her to go with him. They will travel the world together, he tells her, and have many children and many adventures. So Winifred runs off with the stranger and never looks back.

She blinked and caught her breath and looked into Mr. Jaffar’s dark eyes. And she realized she had just been given a glimpse of
what might have been.

“Where do you go from here?” she asked suddenly.

The question surprised him. “To the abbey, Mother Prioress. I sell medicines to the monks there.”

“Go inland,” she said. “Travel first to Mayfield.”

“But Mayfield is far out of my way, another two days’ journey. And then to make my way back—”

“Please,” she said urgently.

“Can you tell me why?”

“I have a presentiment. A
feeling.
You must turn inland from here, travel through Bryer Wood.”

He considered her words. “I shall discuss it with Seska, Mother Prioress,” he said, referring to his horse. “If she agrees, we shall make the detour.” Then he climbed onto his wagon, took up the reins and waved good-bye for the very last time.

“Where is Sister Agnes? It is time for us to leave.”

Dame Mildred came into the chapter house with the last of her packed goods—ancient pots and pans, a broken rolling pin, useless items that had sentimental value, which she could not bear to leave behind, even though Winifred had informed her she would no longer be doing any cooking. “Agnes is in the graveyard,” Mildred said, breathing heavily from the exertion. She had refused to leave even a spoon; her entire kitchen had been picked clean and packed into sacks. The man who was to transfer the sisters to the new convent was going to need more than one wagon. It was ironic: although the sisters had taken vows of poverty, the requirement to get into a convent was a payment in money and goods, to be held for common use. And so although Winifred and her ladies were themselves poor, they nonetheless had the accumulated effects of generations of women going with them.

Winifred was not surprised to hear that Agnes was in the convent graveyard. She had visited it every Sunday for sixty years. Now she must say good-bye to it.

The prioress found the elderly nun kneeling at a tiny grave that was shaded by an elm tree that had recently been stricken with leaf blight. She was brushing away dead leaves with her arthritic fingers. And she was weeping.

Winifred knelt beside her, crossed herself and closed her eyes in prayer. The miniature coffin beneath them contained the corpse of a baby that had lived only a few hours. Sixty-one years ago, during a Norse raid on Portminster, Agnes and her cousins had been caught at the river by a gang of Vikings. While the other girls had managed to escape, Agnes had been seized and raped. When she turned up pregnant a few weeks later, she had been brought to the convent of St. Amelia’s and ordered to stay there for, in her father’s eyes, she had dishonored the family. The nuns had taken her in, but her child had not lived long. After he was buried here in the convent cemetery, Agnes stayed and never saw her family again. She took holy orders and learned to paint illuminations, and spent every Sunday for the rest of her life pouring love into a grave that was marked simply, “John—d. 962 Anno Domini.”

She squinted up at the bare branches and wondered why God would inflict the tree with the blight just now, for its leaves were raining onto the little grave and within hours it could be completely covered. Once the sisters left, there would be no one to keep the grave clear of blighted leaves. “Soon my wee Johnny will be covered up and forgotten.” There was already a pile near the grave that Andrew had intended to burn later. Except that Andrew wouldn’t be here; he was moving to the new convent with them.

Winifred helped the elder nun to her feet. “Andrew says the new convent is very large,” Agnes said.

“It is, Sister Agnes, but it is also nice and new. And”—she peered up at the blighted maple tree through her own tears—“all the trees are healthy and green.”

“I shall never find my way around it.”

Winifred had heard the same fear expressed by the other nuns. She herself dreaded having to learn her way through that maze of corridors and courtyards and buildings.

“And I shall never paint again,” Agnes said, drying her eyes.

“It is time for you to rest. You have spent your life in the service of God.”

“Retirement is for old horses,” Agnes said petulantly. “Am I so useless? I can still see. I can still hold a pen. What shall I do with myself? And who will look after my wee Johnny here?”

“Come along,” Winifred said gently. “It is time for us to go.”

They gathered in the chapter house, which was dominated by an enormous fireplace that had been installed two hundred years earlier by a mother prioress who had been particularly sensitive to the cold; her wealthy brother had paid for the ostentatious hearth that was much too large for the room, but had failed to provide the constant wood and coal it required, and so the fireplace had fallen into disuse. Carved into the massive mantelpiece were the words of Christ by which Winifred and her sisters tried to live:
“Mandatum novum do vobis: ut diligatis invicem”
—“A new law I give you, that you shall love one another.”