“Mortain will protect Matelaine like He does all His daughters,” the abbess says through clenched teeth. She turns to Matelaine. “Go to your chambers and pack your things. I will be there shortly to give you your final instructions.”
As Thomine and Matelaine leave the room, the abbess thrusts her hands in her sleeves and strides over to the window. I flinch as she passes, her anger as palpable as a fist. But so is my own. “I have earned this,” I tell her in a low, hard voice. “By right of all of the Dragonette’s trials, I have earned my place as an instrument of Death.”
She turns to look at me, her eyes blazing blue fire. “And what of me, Annith? What have I earned?”
“What?”
“You speak of the Dragonette, of your time with her. Who was it that snuck you food to eat when she would have had you go hungry? Who was always there, ready to free you from your confinement early, even at the cost of punishment to myself? Who soothed you when you cried, hid your crimes from her, and did everything possible to make your life bearable?”
“You did.” Every word she says is true. While Sybella might feel the current abbess to be harsh and unfair, to me she could never be a true monster. Not like the Dragonette, who still gives me nightmares, even though she has been dead for seven years. And while this abbess was as much my rescuer as any knight from the tales of chivalry, I never expected her to use the affection between us like a merchant with a sack of coins, trying to bind my will to hers.
She takes a deep breath and visibly calms herself. “By rights, I should have you expelled from the convent for such insubordination and disobedience. However, because of the extreme fondness I hold for you, I am going to assume this is a one-time occurrence—brought on by the duress caused by the weighty choice before you. But make no mistake, Annith, if this happens again, I will throw you out.”
And there it is. The threat I have lived with my entire life. If I am not good enough, kind enough, thoughtful enough, obedient enough, I will be cast from my home like a stunted fish from a fisherman’s net.
The abbess takes a deep breath and folds away her anger like an unneeded blanket. “Now, I must have your answer, Annith, for I am leaving the convent to travel to Guérande in two days, as events are growing ever more serious. I need to know if this is settled before I leave, and more importantly, I need to know if I can trust you.”
My heart leaps at the news that she is leaving, for if she is gone from here, then I will have more freedom to . . . what? Maneuver. Think. Strategize. Search for answers to the burning question of why she will not let me take my rightful place in Mortain’s service. All that I do not know swirls inside me, like some foul storm, so strong it nearly makes me ill. But I know my chance of finding answers will be better with the abbess gone. I take a deep breath and put my hands up to my face, as if to scrub the tumult away. When I withdraw my hands, I see the abbess watching me carefully. “Yes, Reverend Mother.” I permit a faint tremble of uncertainty to show and allow my shoulders to droop, as if in defeat. “If there is no other choice, I will stay at the convent to serve as seeress.”
It is not the first lie I have ever told her, but it is the first one that I do not feel any guilt or remorse for having told.
Chapter Nine
I FIND MATELAINE IN HER room packing a small leather satchel. She is no longer dressed in her habit but in a traveling gown of forest green with her red hair unbound from its customary braid. She looks up when I enter. When she sees that it is me, the bright look on her face evaporates and she returns to her packing. “What do you want?”
“I have come to bid you farewell. And to explain, and perhaps apologize.”
“You think you can explain away trying to humiliate me in front of the abbess?”
“Matelaine, I was not questioning your skill or devotion—I was questioning the abbess’s decision. You are being sent out before you have even completed your training and I am truly concerned for your safety.”
“Are you sure you are not simply jealous? We all know how much you’ve been longing for an assignment of your own.”
“That is true—I won’t deny it. But even if I were leaving on an assignment of my own this very minute, I would still be worried for you. Aren’t you the least bit concerned? With all the lessons you haven’t been exposed to and the tests you haven’t taken yet?”
She snorts as she places two clean linen shifts in the satchel. “If I was, do you think I’d confess it to you so you could carry the tale straight to the abbess and attempt to keep me from going?”
A sense of helplessness and futility washes over me. I look out the window, wondering how to explain to her the complexity of what I am feeling when I can scarce explain it to myself.
“Is being the next seeress not enough of a prize that you must grab my tasks as well?” Although she keeps her voice pitched low, anger hums through it.
I turn from the window, hoping she will see the truth of my words writ clear upon my face. “I do not wish to be seeress and would gladly trade with you! It does not feel special. It feels like a trap—a trap that I will be stuck in until the day I die. But more importantly, I have no skill, no aptitude for it, and I cannot understand why the abbess has chosen me for such a role.”
She shakes her head. “And now you act as if you know more than the abbess. Truly, Annith, you have let the nuns’ praise go to your head.”
She is the third friend of mine to be sent away, and I am terrified that I will not be so lucky as to have all three survive. I fear for Matelaine in a way that I did not for Ismae or even Sybella. She is so much younger and less experienced. “Matelaine, I do not wish to part—”
“After Ismae left, you and I were the closest in age, and I saw that you were lonely, and I was lonely, and I thought maybe we could be friends. Well, I understand now. We will never be friends. You need not worry that I will make that mistake again.”
Her words cut me to the quick. I reach out and grab her hand, squeeze it. “We have always been friends. But Ismae—well, she was one of the first true friends I had ever had. Of course I was closer to her, just as you are closer to Sarra and Lisabet over Loisse and Audri. It does not mean that Loisse and Audri don’t have a place in your heart.”
There is a long moment of silence, then Matelaine wrinkles her nose. “Well, I’m not particularly fond of Sarra,” she says, and I am filled with a giddy sense of relief. Then her face grows serious. “You always hold a piece of yourself back, Annith. For all your love and affection and kindness, there is always a part of yourself that you withhold from others.”
And of course, she is right. For one sharp moment, I teeter on the edge of sharing my past with her, my awkward, painful childhood, but I cannot. Not now, when she must be preparing herself for the challenges ahead. I squeeze her hand again. “When you return,” I tell her, “if I am not sealed away in that cursed room and unable to speak to anyone, I will tell you about that part of my life.”
She smiles then and gives my hand a return squeeze. “I will look forward to hearing it.”
I surprise her by throwing my arms around her and giving her a fierce hug. “Be safe, Matelaine. I will pray for you every day until your return.” Tears sting at my eyes and try to crowd their way up my throat. With one last encouraging smile, I turn and leave before the abbess arrives.
Chapter Ten
FOR ALL THE TRAINING I have done, for all that I have practiced stealth and cunning and deceit, I never dreamed that my first true use of those skills would be against the very convent I serve.
Because I do not want the abbess to change her mind about leaving, I become as biddable as the sheep she wishes me to be. I do not even give in to the temptation of letting my mind stew over all the questions and issues that plague me, for fear that she will sense it somehow.
It is like putting a lid on a boiling pot.
My new role at the convent is announced that night at dinner amid much merrymaking and goblet-raising, as if the abbess is determi
ned to show me just what a joyous occasion it is. I smile so much that my cheeks ache with it, and I look demure, as if slightly stunned that such an honor should be laid at my feet.
By the next day, as the abbess makes her final preparations to leave, the other girls have begun to look upon me with poorly hidden suspicion, as if I suddenly have the ability to snatch the very thoughts from their heads, and they withdraw from me. They edge away on the prayer bench, claiming to remember something they forgot, then choose different seats when they return. All these girls whose bruises I have tended, whose bodies I have trained, and whose secrets I have shared now act as if I have suddenly sprouted wings or a second head. They have started to separate me from their daily lives just as Sister Vereda is separate, and I feel a lifetime of isolation stretching out before me, as endless as the sea.
Of course, it is too much to ask that the abbess should leave the island without one final meeting between us. I marshal every fiber of deceit and subterfuge I possess and weave them into a façade of calm acceptance to wear for our encounter.