her veiled head over her prayer beads. ‘Hail Mary, full of grace, blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is—’
A thud on the chapel door had her swinging round. Another harder one had the thick oak door bouncing on its hinges.
‘Cecily! Cecily! Are you in there? You must let me speak to you! It’s—’
The woman’s voice was cut off abruptly, but Cecily’s prayers were quite forgotten. For though the voice did not belong to any of the nuns, it seemed vaguely familiar. She strained to hear more.
Two voices, arguing, and none too quietly. One belonged to Sister Judith, the convent portress. The other voice, the outsider’s, went up a notch in pitch, touched on hysteria…
Part curious, part anxious, Cecily scrambled to her feet. Not more bad news, surely? Hadn’t the loss of both her father and brother at Hastings been enough…?
She was halfway up the aisle when the door burst open. Lamps flickered, and her blood sister, the Lady Emma Fulford, threw off the restraining arms of the portress and hurtled into the chapel.
One year Cecily’s senior, seventeen year-old Emma was a vision in flowing pink robes and a burgundy velvet cloak. Dropping a riding crop and a pair of cream kid gloves onto the flagstones, she flung herself at Cecily.
‘Cecily! Oh, Cecily, you must speak to me. You must!’
Finding herself enveloped in a fierce embrace that bordered on the desperate, Cecily fought free of silks and velvets and the scent of roses so that she could study her sister’s face. One look had her abandoning her vow of silence. ‘Of course I’ll speak to you.’
Emma gave an unladylike sniff. ‘She—’ a jerk of her head at Sister Judith set her long silken veil aquiver ‘—said you were in retreat, not to be disturbed. That you may at last be going to take your vows.’
‘That is so.’ Emma had been crying, and not just in the past few minutes either, for her fine complexion was blotched and puffy and her eyes were rimmed with shadows. In the four years since Cecily had been brought to the convent she and her elder sister had become strangers, but her sister’s delicate beauty had lived on in her mind. This distraught, haggard Emma made her blood run cold.
Sister Judith shut the chapel door with a thump and stood just inside the threshold. Folding her arms, she shook her head at Cecily, the novice who once again had failed to keep her retreat.
Cecily took Emma’s hand. Her fingers were like ice. ‘Something else has happened, hasn’t it? Something dreadful.’
Emma’s eyes filled and she gave a shuddering sob. ‘Oh, Cecily, it’s Maman…’
‘Maman? What? What’s happened to Maman?’ But Cecily had no need to wait for an answer, for she could read it in Emma’s expression.
Their mother was dead.
Knees buckling, Cecily gripped Emma’s arms and the sisters clung to each other.
‘Not Maman,’ Cecily choked. ‘Emma, please, not Maman too…’
Emma nodded, tears flooding openly down her cheeks.
‘Wh…when?’
‘Three days since.’
‘How? Was it…was it the babe?’ It had to be that. Their mother, Philippa of Fulford, had been thirty-seven—not young—and she had been seven months pregnant at the time of the battle at Hastings. Of Norman extraction herself, she had found the great battle especially hard to cope with. Cecily knew her mother would have taken great pains to hide her emotions, but the deaths of her Anglo Saxon husband and her firstborn son would have been too much to bear.
Many women died in childbed, and at her mother’s age, and in her state of grief…
Emma dashed away her tears and nodded. ‘Aye. Her time came early, her labour was long and hard, and afterwards…Oh, Cecily, there was so much blood. We could do nothing to stem the flow. Would that you had been there. Your time at Sister Mathilda’s elbow has taught you so much about healing, whereas I…’ Her voice trailed off.
Cecily shook her head. It was true that she had greedily taken in all that Sister Mathilda had chosen to teach her, but she also knew that not everyone could be saved. ‘Emma, listen. Maman’s death was not your fault. Once bleeding starts inside it’s nigh impossible to stop…and besides, it’s possible she simply lost the will to live after father and Cenwulf were killed.’
Emma sniffed. ‘Aye. We were going to send for you. Wilf was ready to mount up. But by the time we realised the dangers it…it was too late.’ Emma gripped Cecily’s hands.
‘It was not your fault.’
‘Nobody’d trained me! Oh, Cecily, if you could have seen her after the messenger came from Hastings. She could not eat or sleep. She wandered round the Hall like a ghost. It was as though, with Father dead, a light went out within her. Father was not an easy man, and Maman was not one to wear her affections openly—’
‘“Displays of sentiment are vulgar, and not suited to a lady,”’ Cecily murmured, repeating a well-worn phrase of her mother’s.
‘Quite so. But she loved him. If any doubted that—’ Emma gave Cecily a penetrating look, knowing that Cecily and her father, Thane Edgar, had crossed swords on more matters than the delaying of her profession. ‘If any doubted that, this last month would have set them right. And Cenwulf.’ Emma’s gaze brimmed with sympathy. ‘I realise you did adore him too.’
‘Maman’s heart was broken.’
Emma gulped. ‘Aye. And twisted.’
‘Because her own countrymen were the invaders?’
Emma squeezed Cecily’s hand. ‘I knew you’d understand.’
‘Lady Emma…’ Sister Judith’s voice cut in, reminding the girls of the portress’s presence by the chapel door.
It was Sister Judith’s duty to give or deny permission for outsiders to enter the convent. Since the order was not an enclosed one, permission was granted more often than not, but never when a nun or novice was on retreat. Hands folded at her girdle, silver cross winking at her breast, the nun regarded Emma sternly, but not unkindly. She had been moved, Cecily saw, by what she had heard.
‘Lady Emma, since you have seen fit to break your sister’s retreat by this conference, may I suggest that you continue in the portress’s lodge? The Angelus bell is about to strike, and the rest of the community will be needing the chapel.’
‘Of course, Sister Judith. Our apologies,’ Cecily said.
Bending to retrieve Emma’s riding crop and gloves, Cecily took her sister’s hand and led her out of the chapel.
A chill winter wind was tossing straw about the yard. Woodsmoke gusted out of the cookhouse, and their breath made white vapour which was no sooner formed than it was snatched away.
Emma drew the burgundy velvet cloak more tightly about her shoulders.
Cecily, who had not touched a cloak of such quality
