Then he would add breaching an abbey to his list of sins.
One way or the other, he wasn’t going to let her fall victim to The Chaos.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“He called himselfAlasdair Baird Douglas and he brought a message from our Holy Father,” the Mother Abbess was speaking in hushed tones in her native Italian language. “He has made his wishes known to us.”
She was addressing three small women bound up tightly in the woolens of their order, older women with nondescript faces set within the confines of their nondescript habits. One woman had a hook nose and small, brown eyes, while the woman next to her was a little rounder, with a round face and strangely dark eyebrows. The third woman was taller, far more slender, and had a nervous tick. She kept scratching her eyes, leading to no eyebrows or eyelashes.
“Did we have a visitor?” the eye-scratcher asked, also in the Italian language. “I did not see anyone. Did anyone else? Did anyone see him?”
It was nervous chatter, but that was normal coming from her. Sister Dymphna portrayed a woman who was frightened of her own shadow, and a constant worrier, always the one to speak out with questions or concerns. It didn’t matter the subject; Sister Dymphna had been known to worry herself into vomitingon more than one occasion, and sometimes she vomited blood, which the Mother Abbess told her followers was a sign that the Holy Spirit was upon her. Sister Dymphna’s nervous stomach worked well to strike fear into the hearts of those at St. Blitha on several occasions.
But she was always the one with questions, now about the appearance of the mysterious Alasdair Baird Douglas. The Mother Abbess answered patiently but, as always, her patience was limited.
“Sister Vera saw him,” she said. “She admitted him into the chapel. Then, the du Bose girl was passing through the chapel at that time and he spoke to her, asking her to confirm my identity. She saw him as well.”
Sister Dymphna was still twitching, itching at her eyes, but she didn’t ask any further questions because she knew that tone in the Mother Abbess’ voice. It hinted at silence and obedience. Therefore, she looked to the other two women in the room, waiting for them to voice their own questions, but no one did. They remained silent. Therefore, Sister Dymphna fell silent as well.
It was the usual dynamic between the four of them. The Mother Abbess would speak and the three of them, her most trusted companions, would listen, mostly with unbridled adoration, but sometimes, Sister Dymphna had questions. Like now. Questions that would die on her lips because asking them, to the Mother Abbess, signaled a lack of faith. And no one wanted to project that.
The four of them had been together for a very long time, since they had been very young and had all been orphans in the Santa Giulia convent in northern Italy where the Mother Abbess had been a nun at the time. She took the three orphans under her wing, teaching them how to survive and thrive under the strict rule of the church.
But the Mother Abbess lived by her own rules, even back then, as they soon discovered.
The Mother Abbess’ name was, in fact, Giulia. Her parents had been wealthy land owners, the Orsini family, and Giulia and her brother, Celestine, had both been given over to the church at a very young age. While Celestine begged, borrowed, and schemed his way to the top, Giulia did much of the same, only her actions were darker and more sinister than her brother’s behavior.
Guilia had the heart of a killer.
If she had felt threatened, a pillow over the face of her sleeping rival would take care of the issue. She had never been beyond such things. She didn’t view life as most people did; to her, it was disposable. There was no value to it. The three orphans, Dymphna included, had watched Giulia kill and lie and scheme, and once, she’d even surrendered her virginity to a particularly lustful priest who had then, in turn, given her a glowing recommendation when it came to assuming a post at a wealthy convent. A post that had been a stepping stone to becoming the Mother Abbess of her own convent– St. Blitha.
The woman had clawed her way to the top.
Therefore, Dymphna and her two comrades were shadows of the Mother Abbess, Seaxburga as she was now known, and they catered to her every whim, her every need. They were mere shadows themselves now, wraiths of what they’d once been, women who no longer possessed minds or wills of their own. Everything they did, and everything they thought, came from the Mother Abbess, and that included the directive they were now facing.
There was no remorse, no sense of morality.
Just death.
The Mother Abbess knew all of this, of course. She knew how much control she had over these women and it pleasedher deeply. Seeing that Dymphna’s questions had been silenced for the moment, her gaze drifted to the other two women in the chamber. The woman with the hook nose was known by her chosen name of Sister Agnes, while the round woman with the dark brows was Sister Petronilla. All names they’d chosen at their consecration, names of Christian martyrs, leaving their birth names behind as one would shed a skin.
The innocence they’d once had, as children, was long since vanished. What was left in its place was nothing short of mindless obedience, women who had convinced themselves that ambition and servitude on behalf of Christ and the Mother Abbess knew no boundaries or no limits. Much as Christ had disciples to do his bidding, she had hers. And in this case, they would understand the significance of this particular undertaking.
It was, perhaps, the most important they’d ever faced.
“As I was saying, Alasdair Douglas brought a message from our Holy Father,” she said, lowering her voice. Even though they were in her private chamber, and she was speaking in Italian, she did not want her words overheard. “He serves the Holy Father as we do, a great and pious servant of God. It seems that the Holy Father has a task for us, a task of the utmost importance. We have never had such an important calling, Sisters. We have been asked to change England’s destiny.”
As Sister Dymphna scratched, Sister Agnes looked at the Mother Abbess most curiously. “But how are we to do such a thing?” she asked. “Surely we cannot change the destiny of an entire country.”
The Mother Abbess lifted a thin eyebrow. “We can,” she insisted quietly. “I shall be plain– we have been asked to remove the king.”
Now, all three of the nuns were looking at her with great confusion, shocked by the words coming out of her mouth.
“Remove the king?” Sister Agnes repeated. “But… how? We have no great weapons, no great armies. The king is surrounded by knights, men we cannot fight. How are we supposed to remove a man who surrounds himself with men who could easily kill us?”
The Mother Abbess shook her head sadly. “Have you learned nothing, Sister?” she asked. “When have we ever used force to accomplish that which has been asked of us?”
That brought Sister Agnes some pause, but she wasn’t sure how to proceed at that point. Sister Petronilla spoke instead.
