Adam spoke softly.“Do ye want me to take him?”
She shook her head.She had one more task to do.Using the warm mint water to baptize the infant, she murmured the familiar words to bless him.
Then she took a moment to swallow down her grief and square her shoulders.
A nun’s purpose wasn’t only to heal the sick.When that wasn’t possible, it was her task to comfort the survivors.
She straightened and tenderly turned the bairn over, cradling him in her arms.
When she turned toward the bairns’ mother, the woman’s face crumbled with devastating knowledge.She clapped a hand over her mouth to filter the keening wail that erupted from her soul.
It took every bit of strength Eve had to walk toward the woman without collapsing in anguish.She handed the bairn carefully to his mother.
“I’m so sorry.”
She was supposed to say something philosophical, like “’twas God’s will” or “he’s in the Lord’s hands now.”But she didn’t have the heart to cheapen the woman’s grief with words that felt empty and inadequate to her pain.
Instead, Eve wrapped an arm around the woman and let her weep upon her shoulder.
Adam, closing the door for their privacy, began packing up the satchels.
After a while, the woman ceased crying enough to whimper, “The poor wee bairn didn’t even have a name.He was ne’er baptized.He’ll not be goin’ to heaven.”
“Aye, he will.I baptized him e’er he died with the water ye warmed.”She mustered a weak smile of reassurance.“I hope ye like the name Nael.It means ‘gift o’ God.’”
“Nael,” the woman repeated, holding the bairn close against her breast.Then she nodded in approval as a tear trickled down her cheek and onto the infant’s swaddling.
After making sure the woman could manage until Finlay returned, Eve and Adam departed in respectful silence.But as they rode along southward path for Strivelin, lost in their sorrow, they couldn’t seem to find a way to break that silence.So it continued all morn.
The thoughts in Eve’s head, however, clamored like warning bells, punishing her with insistent clanging.Telling her she had lost her way.Saying she was wicked.Wanton.Sinful.
That was the reason God had let the bairn die.
Last night, in one moment of weakness, Eve had fallen from grace.A nun.She’d let herself be tempted by carnal pleasures.Reveled in the garden of the Devil.Like the woman for whom she’d been named, Eve had tasted the forbidden fruit.
It had felt miraculous at the time.A perfect union of souls.A transcendence of body and spirit that felt like something holy.She’d been so convinced it was God’s will.
But now she knew better.And His retribution had been swift and brutal.
It had been made much worse by the knowledge that His wrath had hurt not only Eve.It had devastated a woman who didn’t deserve such pain.And killed a guileless bairn who hadn’t lived long enough to even understand sin.
She had no words for the remorse she felt.And so she continued to ride, weeping quietly, endlessly, not daring to speak, until hours later they crossed the wooden bridge over the River Forth at Strivelin.
Adam was the first to break the silence.Departing the bridge, he rode up even with her.
“’Twasn’t your fault, ye know,” he murmured.“Ye mustn’t blame yourself.Infants are…fragile.”
Eve knew what he was trying to do.But in this circumstance, he was wrong.Shewasto blame.
She couldn’t tell him why.She didn’t want him to thinkhewas responsible in any way for her lapse of morality.
After all, he didn’t know she was a nun.And a virgin.None of it was his fault.Making love had beenheridea.She’d asked him to couple with her.Practically begged him.
She couldn’t say any of that.
So instead she said, “I know.”
“I doubt even a master surgeon could have saved the lad.”
