The Priory

The Witch's Daughter: Chapter 10. Hilde tries to earn trust, learns of a secret power, and finds out more about her King in her morning at the Priory.

“Mercy me,” said Gobnait, as she hurried through the corridors of the priory. She stole a glance back at Hilde’s soot covered face, and patted her chest where her crucifix hung. “Dear oh, dear oh me. Hilde, what have you done?”

Hilde rushed to catch up to the taller woman’s long strides. Away from the grand stone chambers of the house of God near the front of the Priory, they now walked down low-ceilinged, clay-brick halls and dormitories. In a long building that had a single door at each end and open wooden stalls, the Sisters of each with a pair of bunk beds inside.

Gobnait stopped at one, drew aside a sackcloth curtain of hemp and rummaged about in a pile of papers that lay on a small stool next to the bottom bunk.

“Mother Superior said it would be alright to stay in the barn,” Hilde said.

“I don’t know why I don’t take you down to the main street and have the Chief throw you in the gaol! The state of you! Don’t you dare imagine for a moment staying in my cell here with me,” Gobnait said, seizing on a slim pile of manuscript with a leather cover.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry, Sister. I tried to explain,” Hilde said. She stepped into the narrow space between the bunk beds and the wooden partition. Nuns in the other stalls peered around the ends of their cells at the sounds of raised voices echoing off the common wooden ceiling.

“To me you did. But what about all those lies you said to Mother Superior! What on earth have I been teaching you all this time, Hilde Blaine!” Gobnait said, standing up, and brushing off her dark woollen tunic. She held up the leather-bound manuscript. “You know I have this book, I’ve been making just for you.”

“Mama is in gaol! She was taken for a hare-attic! That’s true! And my Da, he’s gone too!” Hilde said, slumping to the bed. “God knows I didn’t mean to lie.”

“You didn’t mean to? What about pretending to be a boy, a chimney sweep! It’s all quite mad. I know you’ve been through a lot, but this making up stories is not helping, Hilde.”

“Sister, it’s true! I was chased by Jezabel. She told me that Mama is going to be burned. I didn’t know what to do. What if I’m going to be burned too? She called me a Devil spawn! Who can I trust?” Hilde’s voice fractured at that last, and she slumped to the bed, tears running down her soot-covered face.

“Hilde. Alright,” said Gobnait. “You can trust me. Why would you not trust in the Lord God? This is his house and we are his servants! Why lie to Mother Superior of all people?”

“The man in black! The Bishop! He is here! I saw him in the common room,” Hilde said, her voice hoarse with crying. She reached for Sister Gobnait’s sleeve, and pulled her closer. “Sister, is he really guided by God? Can he take me too?”

“I don’t know. Hilde, I can’t make sense of all this. I don’t think I can help you,” Gobnait said. She pulled a curtain across the end of her cell, and sat on the bed next to Hilde, ducking her head under the bunk bed above. She put the leather-bound manuscripts on the bed next to her. “I don’t know. You are a mess child. Listen, this Bishop is dangerous, I agree. I don’t like him, for sure…”

“Father Stephen says he’s not even a Bishop! I heard them talking. When they didn’t know I was hiding. In the pear tree,” Hilde said, sniffling between sobs as she tried to get the words out. She burrowed her hand under Sister Gobnait’s on the rail of the bed and blinked through her tears.

“What? Not a Bishop?” Sister Gobnait clapped her hands to her face. She smoothed her tunic and stood, searching Hilde’s face. Hilde nodded fiercely.

“That’s what Father Stephen said. He knew him. From Cill Chainnigh,” Hilde said. “I couldn’t understand everything they said. But Father Stephen doesn’t like him.”

Sister Gobnait, peered out of the cell, down the hallway. She gathered some parchment, quills and a bottle of ink and put it in a satchel along with the leather-bound manuscript.

A door in an Abbey. © 2015 Sarah Smith

“We need to get you to the barn. Sister Debforgaill went to tell the Reverend Mother on this Bishop Ahearne for being in the women’s common room. I don’t think he’s here after you Hilde, but we’ll go the back way,” the nun held out her hand to Hilde, and pulled the soot-stained waif toward her. She put her arm around her shoulders.

“Okay,” Hilde said. She blew her nose on her sleeve.

“I don’t think Reverend Mother likes him either. Why he had to come into the women’s part of the Priory I do not know. Just stay behind me,” she said, slipping the satchel inside her tunic.

The morning sun smarted Hilde’s eyes, and she shaded them with a hand. The countryside of Wexford was laid out for them, as she and Sister Gobnait walked the perimeter of the Priory. Rolling fields likely of cabbage and barley, big oxen pulling at a plough, and a miasma of mayfly hovering in the heat above the earth. Vines and apple trees lay to the south, screening the priory from the township.

“It’s so beautiful here,” Hilde said.

“It’s hard work here, my girl,” Gobnait said, a wry smile on her face. She picked up the hem of her long black woollen tunic as she picked her way across a muddy yard pock-marked with oxen footprints, toward a long wooden building. Like the rest of the priory it’s roof was red washed, and its timber walls imitated the masonry and stone of the other buildings. It’s large double doors were thrown open and several nuns worked inside and out with carts and animals, moving grain. The air was thick here with insects buzzing, and the sickly stench of animal dung.

“Oh, it really smells bad,” Hilde said, wrinkling her nose.

“Born with a silver spoon, Hilde Blaine? Well you’ll learn how to earn your keep,” Sister Gobnait said.

“Who’s this young lad?” called one of the workers, a stout woman in a smock and boots. She held her hand over her eyes as Hilde and Gobnait slogged across the mud.

“Hallo!” Gobnait said, shooting a quick glance at Hilde, still in her boys breeches and cap. “New worker! Chores for two nights keep.”