Chapter Text
High atop a windswept hill overlooking the coast was an abbey.
Many times you’d heard of its majesty in passing, the strange whispers of the fearsome and pious abbess who had once been a foreign-born princess and her iron fist ruling both the monastic brothers and sisters who lived there, competed with the awed whispers of the magnificent bells that nestled high in the legendarily massive tower.
You had never thought you would actually be in attendance there, standing as an ant does, brought to your knees almost by the sheer terror of being confronted with such architectural magnificence. Such a physically imposing reminder of how insignificant you were.
And yet, how loved by God that you could come here, despite your infinite tininess on all of His creation. Even though you were a grain of sand on the enormous beach of life He’d made, you’d been made with love and craftsmanship finer than the richest king could commission.
“Go with God, sweet sister.” Your elder sister, freshly a bride, had packed your trunk and pressed her lips to your forehead. Being sent away may have be seen as a punishment to some, but you knew better. After all, what sort of life awaited the eighth daughter of a petty lord, motherless and now sisterless with the seventh married?
Father had secured marriages for all, ranging from wonderful matches to simply serviceable as his list of daughters grew. When it came to you, he was freshly depleted of good men, and you were, by station alone, far above that of a farmer’s wife. A handsome donation to the struggling abbey was just the right thing to ensure his youngest daughter could take her place under God and become a novice, training in monastic life. Much gold had changed hands, behind closed doors, that had led to you standing by that abbey near the beach.
The ocean wind swept and tangled its salty fingers in your hair, the hair you knew would soon be shorn and hidden beneath a cap. It mingled for a moment with the hair of the horse that had drawn your carriage, your constant companion from home that you now would never see again. You’d never again smell the sweet hay-scent of his breath, the way his eyelashes brushed sweetly against his noble cheeks like butterflies. You had the sudden, strong urge to seize his nose in your hands and kiss it, to hold desperately on to the last shred of your old life for a few seconds more.
You were afraid, though, to look like a child in front of the sister standing by the huge wooden doors that led inside. Better not to make a bad impression when you were dangerously close to being kept here under sufferance already. Instead of a kiss, he was given the brush of your hand on the bridge of his fine, grey nose.
“Fare-you-well, Grisel,” you whispered, so low that the sister would not hear, nor the driver. “God keep you.”
It was not long before you stood before the abbess in her chambers, blue eyes intelligent in her elderly face. She took you in as a bird of prey might a newborn chick, looking all over for flaws, for cracks in your pristine exterior.
But you’d practiced well, your gaze respectfully downcast. “Hail, Reverend Mother Celia.”
She had paused, slender and elegant fingers probing her chin. She was aristocratic and noble down to the very gesture.
“Bless you, daughter. From this day, let yourself be known to your sisters as Sister Heloise. It is the name of one of our departed sisters. Wear it well.”
And so began your new life, your new identity as a cloistered sister, secluded from the world, a bride of Christ.
You became used to the ritualistic life of the abbey faster than you had expected. It was easy, in a way, to give yourself over to the well-worn routine. Eight times a day came prayer and reflection, each one of your sisters in perfect harmony. It still chilled you to the bone and made your heart soar, no matter how many times you heard the stirring of your sisters singing the liturgy, their voices high in praise. Sometimes it felt as though the very roof of the chapel would lift off and float away from the power of so many voices joining as one, banding you together like a hive of bees in the beauty of music.
You bathed in it because there was so little beauty otherwise in the stone cloister. Plain clothes, plain speech, certainly no singing or whistling while going about one’s business. Eight times daily, music lifted you out of the dreariness and ordinariness and made you feel whole and holy, uplifted and real. Overlong hours stretched between those snatches of sweet release, though you couldn’t really complain.
That was because you had finally been nominated to work as a scribe in the library, taking the place of the now-deceased Heloise you had taken the position of, as well as her name.
You had been taught to write from youth, and it was now paying off, saving you from the horrid duty of tending to the abbey’s pigs. Of course, it meant you would be slavishly kept in a dungeon-like building, surrounded by paper and ink, copying books onto paper to be sent to the brothers next door in the scriptorium to illuminate with beautiful inks. Though you longed to see such inks for yourself, no abbey could afford to furnish both sexes with such expensive materials. Instead, the abbess had decreed that the sisters were given the more grunt task of copying the majority of the text, freeing the artistic brothers to spend the most of their time focusing solely on the imagery that decorated each page, each leaf of paper worth a fortune in gold. And such fortunes were paid for complete manuscripts, soon-to-be heirlooms of far-off families and dignitaries.
It was in the library that you were, then, when you saw the faintest flicker of candlelight on the far wall. The light leaked through what looked to be a crack in the crude stone construction, and in the darkness you stepped lightly towards it, hardly daring to breathe. If you got close enough, you could possibly catch a glimpse of the magnificent inks of gold and blue and red that would adorn the very paper you were writing on now, some day.
Your fingers probed the stone as you leaned closer. For one glorious moment, you took in the splendour of the room through the crack in the wall: closest to the split, a wooden table propped up paper, still shining wet with ink.
Alongside the scripture written immaculately, you saw the wonderful illuminations bringing the page to life. The paper seemed to glow, close to being aflame with shimmering gold pigment. Fanciful illustrations of unicorns, monsters, creatures with half-human faces cavorted in the margins of the script and for a few precious moments, you marvelled at the sight. Such a precious snapshot of beauty that was uniquely yours in this draughty little dungeon.
The illusion was shattered when you noticed the figure seated at the desk, obscured by the shadow thrown by soft candlelight. It must be the creator of the wonderful piece of art that lay splayed out for your secret perusal.
The artist was turned towards the crack, and it was obvious that your presence had not gone unnoticed.