“Surely enough time has passed to forget which family has been here longer and to whom our kin owed allegiance so long ago? A good man is a good man whether he be Norman or English.”
“Nay, my lady. One man sees goodness in another only if there is trust; and trust can only exist between equals, my brother says. My family is not on equal footing with yours. We hold none of you in fiefdom. Again, I believe these to be my brother’s words.”
“So you fear us still?”
“And you, us. There is a lack of trust, my lady.”
Eleanor nodded. What Gytha told her had saddened her. Perhaps she even disagreed with some of it, but she grieved that people innocent of any wrong should be afraid of someone like her or her kin.
“I can only say that I will think about what you have told me, Gytha, and pray for wisdom beyond myself. Until those prayers are answered, you must believe that I have no desire to hurt you or your family. I would earn your trust.”
With that, Eleanor hugged Gytha, who hugged her back with genuine affection; but, with her eyes closed and her arms around the Saxon girl, Eleanor remembered the disheveled forest man who ran from her a second time near Tostig’s house. She saw again the frown on Tostig’s face, and once again she wondered what lay behind his silence.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sister Matilda was leaning on her hoe and weeping softly. Eleanor watched her in silence from the cover of the bower, then lowered her head, ground her foot noisily into the pebbles of the path, and slowly walked into the sunlight.
“Ah, Sister Matilda!” she said, raising her head just as she approached the woman. “I am so glad to find you here.”
The nun had had time to wipe the tears from her face, but just barely. “I am at your service, my lady.” She curtsied.
“I see you have been working hard at the garden. Let us take some ease and talk awhile.” Eleanor gestured to a stone bench in the corner.
The nun dropped her hoe, picked it up with an awkward gesture, and rested the implement against a tree. It fell again. With a sigh, she left it lying in the dirt.
Not a tool with which Sister Matilda felt much comfort, Eleanor thought. “Tell me, sister, how you are progressing with the vegetables for this winter’s store?”
The poor nun put her hands to her cheeks, threw her head back, and began to wail piteously.
“Come, come! Nothing can be that bad.” Although Sister Matilda was clearly older than Eleanor, her cries were as piteous as those of a child suffering a bee sting. Eleanor reached out, took her hand, and stroked it soothingly.
“I have failed everyone!”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“Look!” Sister Matilda gestured at the dusty garden. “The poor plants. I am so sinful I kill them. I mean only the best and I work hard, but I cannot make them grow. Sister Edith has tried to teach me, but I cannot learn. She says Satan has given me brown thumbs.” She raised the offending digits and stared hard at them. “I don’t see the change in color, but she has to be right. I must be so sinful I cannot see what Satan has done to my thumbs. I…”
“Hush! Let me see your hands.” Eleanor reached out for both hands.
The nun thrust them at her and turned her head as if afraid she’d see the Horned One sitting in her very palms, painting her thumbs as dark as the soil.
“Now pray with me, sister,” Eleanor said, holding the nun’s two hands gently in her own.
The two women lowered their heads.
“Were you able to pray?” Eleanor asked after she heard Sister Matilda’s breathing return to normal.
“Yes, my lady. After just a moment.”
“Then Satan has little hold on you. I think we can get rid of him quite easily.”
The expression on Sister Matilda’s face grew almost beatific with relief. “I will do anything, my lady. I will don a hair shirt and never take it off. I will care for lepers and wash each of their wounds. I will fast every other day for the rest of my life. I will…”
“Perhaps none of that will be needed. First I must ask why Prioress Felicia chose you to care for the priory gardens.”
“It was to punish my sinful pride.”
“What pride?”
“In the kitchen. I love to cook, you see. Even before my sister, Edith, and I came to Tyndal, we would slip away from our lessons when the servant fell asleep in the sun, I to the kitchen, she to the gardens. Neither of us could embroider an even stitch, but Edith could coax a plant to grow from anything and I seemed to have a talent to cook whatever she grew. When we were older, Inga, our cook, finally let me take charge of one dinner as I had been begging her to do. Our parents told her it was the finest she had ever prepared, but she said nothing about my efforts. They would have been angry that their daughter had done such menial work, but when we came here, Edith gave her talents to the priory gardens with joy. I took over the kitchen.”
“And did the plants grow for Sister Edith?”
“Oh, yes, my lady! Prioress Felicia said her harvests were more plentiful than they had ever been before.”
“And your meals?”
Sister Matilda lowered her eyes. “Prioress Felicia was kind and said her guests were always pleased. Our own fare is simple, but I heard no complaints.”
“Still, your prioress said you suffered from excess pride. Why?”
“I tried too hard to please, my lady. I had overheard someone say our woods had fine mushrooms.” She gestured toward the woods surrounding the stream. “I asked permission to look for some when our prioress was expecting important guests. It was granted and my pasties pleased right well.”
“That is not undue pride, surely?”
“No, but I went often after that. During the Lenten season I found that many of our recipes for meat dishes suited dried or fresh mushrooms quite as well.”
“Again, no sin.”
“It was, my lady, and I was given an unmistakable sign of it.”
Eleanor raised an eyebrow. “Do tell me.”
“One day after Chapter, when I was harvesting mushrooms near a ledge overlooking the stream, I suddenly heard piteous cries coming from the direction of the water. I ran to the edge but could see nothing. The cries, now only whimpers, seemed to be coming from within the earth itself. I was frightened and stepped back. As I did so, a wild, screaming demon burst forth from the earth just under the ledge. His eyes were wild, his arms flailed, his beard was black as smoke. I fled, my lady. I ran in terror back to the priory and told Prioress Felicia and Brother Rupert.”
“And they…?”
“They told me that I must have found a hidden pathway to the dark regions and had heard the cries of lost souls. Surely Satan knew I was coming to the forest, as I had so often done, and had sent one of his devils to drag me down to the fiery pit for my sin of pride. It was only God’s grace that saved me, they said, and forbade me ever to go to the woods again. Henceforth, I should work in the garden as penance.”
“And Sister Edith was to work in the kitchen?”
“She would not know a mushroom from a toadstool, my lady. She would never be in danger of stumbling over that hidden hole to Hell.”
Eleanor smiled at this little hint of pride still exposed in Sister Matilda. “Nor has she ever done so. But tell me, sister, do you remember anything else about the demon or where you found this secret path?”
“The demon came from the earth near the bend in the stream, just below the tree whose roots were exposed by the flood two winters ago. Of the demon, I remember little other than what I have said. He was dressed much like a man, but very ragged.” She hesitated. “Indeed, Satan does not provide for his minions quite as well as I had thought he would.”
“For cert,” Eleanor said, as she remembered the wild-haired man looking down at her as she stood by the cave entrance hidden with matting near the bend in the stream.