but neither side cared for the women. Some are fled into Winchester, they say, though there’s little safety to be found there, but the lord bishop must try to do something for them, their house was allied to the Old Minster. Others… I don’t know! I hear the abbess is fled to a manor near Reading, where she has kin, and some she may have taken with her. But all’s confusion-who can tell?”
“Where is this manor?” demanded Nicholas feverishly, and was met by a weary shake of the head.
“It was only a thing I heard-no one said where. It may not even be true.”
“And you do not know, Father, the names of those sisters who died?” He trembled as he asked it.
“Son,” said the priest with infinite resignation, “what we found could not have a name. And we have yet to seek there for others, when we have found enough food to keep those alive who still live. The empress’s men looted our houses first, and after them the Flemings. Those who have, here, must share with those who have nothing. And which of us has very much? God knows not I!”
Nor had he, in material things, only in tired but obstinate compassion. Nicholas had bread and meat in his saddlebag, brought for provision on the road from his last halt to change horses. He hunted it out and put it into the old man’s hands, a meagre drop in a hungry ocean, but the money in his purse could buy nothing here where there was nothing to buy. They would have to milk the countryside to feed their people. He left them to their stubborn labours, and rode slowly through the rubble of Wherwell, asking here and there if anyone had more precise information to impart. Everyone knew the sisters had dispersed, no one could say where. As for one woman’s name, it meant nothing, it might not even be the name by which she had entered on her vows. Nevertheless, he continued to utter it wherever he enquired, doggedly proclaiming the irreplaceable uniqueness of Julian Grace, separate from all other women.
From Wherwell he rode on into Winchester. A soldier of the queen could pass through the iron ring without difficulty, and in the city it was plain that the empress’s faction were hard-pressed, and dared not venture far from their tight fortress in the castle. But the nuns of Winchester, themselves earlier endangered and now breathing more easily, could tell him nothing of Julian Grace. Some sisters from Wherwell they had taken in and cherished, but she was not among them. Nicholas had speech with one of their elder members, who was kind and solicitous, but could not help him.
“Sir, it is a name I do not know. But consider, there is no reason I should know it, for surely this lady may have taken a very different name when she took her vows, and we do not ask our sisters where they came from, nor who they once were, unless they choose to tell us freely. And I had no office that should bring me knowledge of these things. Our abbess would certainly be able to answer you, but we do not know where she is now. Our prioress, also. We are as lost as you. But God will find us, and bring us together again. As he will find for you the one you seek.”
She was a shrewd, agile, withered woman, thin as a gnat but indestructible as scutch grass. She eyed him with mildly amused sympathy, and asked blandly: “She is kin to you, this Julian?”
“No,” said Nicholas shortly, “but I would have had her kin, and very close kin, too.”
“And now?”
“I want to know her safe, living, content. There is no more in it. If she is so, God keep her so, and I am satisfied.”
“If I were you,” said the lady, after viewing him closely for some moments in silence, “I should go on to Romsey. It is far enough removed to be a safer place than here, and it is the greatest of our Bendictine houses in these parts. God knows which of our sisters you may find there, but surely some, and it may be, the highest.”
He was young enough and innocent enough still, for all his travels, to be strongly moved by any evidence of trust and kindness, and he caught and kissed her hand in taking leave, as though she had been his hostess somewhere in hall. She, for her part, was too old and experienced to blush or bridle, but when he was gone she sat smiling a long, quiet while, before she rejoined her sisters. He was a very personable young man.
Nicholas rode the twelve miles or so to Romsey in sobering solemnity, aware he might be drawing near to an answer possibly not to his liking. Once clear of Winchester and on his way further south-west, he was delivered from any threat, for he went through country where the queen’s writ ran without challenge. Pleasant, rolling country, well tree’d even before he reached the fringes of the great forest. He came to the abbey gatehouse, in the heart of the small town, in the late evening, and rang the bell at the gate.
The portress peered at him through the grille, and asked his business. He stooped entreatingly to the grid, and gazed into a pair of bright, elderly eyes in beds of wrinkles.
“Sister, have you given refuge here to some of the nuns of Wherwell? I am seeking for news of one of them, and could get no answers there.”
The portress eyed him narrowly, and saw a young face soiled and drawn with travel, a young man alone, and in dead earnest, no threat. Even here in Romsey they had learned to be cautious about opening their gates, but the road beyond him was empty and still, and the twilight folded down on the little town peacefully enough.
“The prioress and three sisters reached here,” she said, “but I doubt if any of them can tell you much of the rest, not yet. But come within, and I’ll ask if she will speak with you.”
The wicket clanked open, lock and chain, and he stepped through into the court. “Who knows?” said the portress kindly, fastening the door again after him. “One of our three may be the one you’re seeking. At least you may try.”
She led him along dim corridors to a small, panelled parlour, lit by a tiny lamp, and there left him. The evening meal would be long over, even Compline past, it was almost time for sleeping. They would want him satisfied, if satisfaction was possible, and out of their precinct before the night.
He could not rest or sit, but was prowling the room like a caged bear when a further door opened, and the prioress of Wherwell came quietly in. A short, round, rosy woman, but with a formidably strong face and exceedingly direct brown eyes, that studied her visitor from head to foot in one piercing glance as he made his reverence to her.
“You asked for me, I am told. I am here. How can I help you?”
“Madam,” said Nicholas, trembling for awe of what might come, “I was well north, in Shropshire, when I heard of the sack of Wherwell. There was a sister there of whose vocation I had only just learned, and now all I want is to know that she lives and is safe after that outrage. Perhaps to speak with her, and see for myself that she is well, if that can be permitted. I did ask in Wherwell itself, but could get no word of her-I know only the name she had in the world.”
