She and the escort of her husband’s grim dog-soldiers, all swagger and lust, came to it past herb banks and trellised rose bushes, black and clawed now but, she knew, a riot of beauty in the spring and summer. There was a carp pond, half-frozen and, beyond that, a cobbled path they had to walk to reach the nunnery, a series of stone buildings, some of the stones yellow, others rich pink, like jewels in the black-brown of it.
Arrow-slit windows and a stout door told much of how it had survived and the woman who came to the gate revealed more without saying a word. She was dressed in plain grey homespun, but wore a small gold cross on a chain about her neck. As tall as me, Isabel thought, and pale-haired under the headcover if her brows were anything to go by. Not white, though – in the plain, shapeless clothes and veil it was hard to guess her age, but Isabel thought her not greatly older than herself. She moved with dignity and bowed to Isabel.
‘The lord of Buchan craves shelter, lady, for his countess and protection from the world. He begs you instruct her in the ways of God.’
The serjeant said it by rote, having memorized it in mutters all the way here. The woman did not even look at him, but at Isabel.
‘I am the Prioress Bridget,’ she said simply and held out both hands. ‘Welcome. Are you with child?’
Isabel, taken aback, almost shook her head, then recovered herself.
‘If I was,’ she answered with bitter haughtiness, ‘I would not be here. And I am the Countess of Buchan.’
The prioress did not blench, merely nodded a receipt to this reminder of their station, but remained still as an icon, arms folded in her sleeves.
‘If you were,’ she answered blandly, ‘and are sent here, then it would not have been the Earl’s child.’
‘Countess,’ she added, with a slight, wintery smile, then looked at the scowling, shift-footed thugs.
‘Your task is done. You may leave the lady’s baggage – Elcho is no place for men.’
The serjeants went, dismissed like the dogs they were; Isabel smiled, liking this prioress, yet recalling the other time she spent in a nunnery in Berwick as a prisoner of Malenfaunt.
She turned, to take a last scornful look at the retreating backs of her husband’s thugs and saw another grey woman shut and bar the heavy door; she knew then that this was no different than the last time – save that the nuns here were truer Brides of Christ.
The prioress smiled softly, gentle as falling snow and just as cold.
‘Your husband sent word of your coming,’ she said. ‘Now we have established that an unwanted child is not the reason for your arrival, we may thank God for His guiding you here. We are to care for you and instruct you in the ways of God’s love. Victoria veritatis est caritas – the victory of truth is love.’
Isabel followed her meekly, past where women, unveiled, shaved heads revealed, wore stained sacking overserks and worked with lime water and sinopia at marking out a fresh plastered wall for painting; the blood-red sinopia ran in sinister runnels, swiftly halted by squirrel-hair brushes before they could besmirch the glory of the Raising of Jairus’ Daughter.
Red lead and cups of gold dust for the halos lay nearby, showing the wealth of Elcho, and Isabel wondered at what Buchan had paid for this, her final instruction.
Her quarters were simple, but comfortable. The prioress pointed out where the wash place was, and the latrines, showed where meals would be served, and told Isabel how she would be called by the ringing of the bell.
There was no need to show where the chapel was, for the sound of chanting revealed it; the prioress offered another thin smile.
‘Qui cantat, bis ora,’ she said – who sings once, prays twice.
Alone, Isabel sank on the bedplace, feeling good springy heather and thick warm wool plaids. There was wood stacked beside the fireplace, but it was unlit and her breath smoked; a pair of panting nuns sweated in with her meagre baggage, all that had been garnered in the brief moments between her husband’s brusque instruction and her own departure from Balmullo.
There had been little time to do anything, but she had used it as wisely as she could. A quick press of coin and token into the hand of Ada, a whispered, urgent message and the swift secreting of a bundle in the depths of her cosmetics.
She hoped it would be enough, the first to bring rescue, the second to bring some succour and, after a moment, she hunted out the bundle, unwrapping it to reveal the contents, the remaining five bright berries of blood on the snowy linen.
Wallace had shoved them at her in the cold half-light of the hall on the morning he had limped away from Balmullo.
‘For yer love and care, ye mun have need o’ this, lady,’ he had said, ‘though sell them abroad and tell only those ye trust that ye have them. They are no use where I am bound, since no-one has the coin or the will to buy them in this country.’
The sixth ruby Apostle she had sent with Ada glowed brightly in her mind and she wondered who was there, clasped in the warmth of her tirewoman’s considerable cleavage. James the Greater? Matthew? Peter?
‘May the saints bless your sleep,’ the prioress had said portentously on taking her leave and had been puzzled at Isabel’s sharp reply.