The Devil's Door Read Online Free PDF

books and sing the office? Lay sisters were the drudges of the convent. They did the laundry and carried the water buckets.
    The only answer Catherine could think of was that Paciana had been ordered to perform some long, hard penance.
    But what could she have done? And why was she so clearly terrified of anyone knowing that she was sister to Countess Alys?

Three

    The Paraclete,
Friday, March 29, 1140

    Iusto enim vita ista carcer est: mors huius carceris solutio. Nemo enim his adeo iustus est: ut perfectam possit hic cansequi iusticiam.

    For the just, life itself is a prison: death is the solution to this prison. Truly, no one on earth is so just that he is able to attain perfect justice.
    —Serlo of Savigny,
Sermons

    H oly Week was fast approaching; the time of darkness and fasting would soon be over. Even the weather brightened. The constant drizzle gave way to sunshowers with dazzling rainbows or brief curtains of huge, lazy snowflakes that fell glistening onto the green shoots in the garden before melting into the soft earth.
    Catherine hardly noticed the world waking up around her. She moved through the patterned days, drawing comfort from the familiar prayers and duties, but her mind was always in the infirmary. Even her fears for Edgar were pushed aside for this present pain.
    Paciana must know who beat Alys before, she thought for the hundredth time. She ought to tell us. One can bring a criminal to justice and still forgive him. It would be for the good of his soul to have him face his wickedness now, while he can still repent.
    But when Catherine tried to question her further, Paciana refused even to sign. Her eyes stayed focused on her work, her hands busy sweeping or scrubbing.
    In desperation, Catherine went to her friend Emilie, whose family was connected in one way or another with most of the nobility of Champagne, Burgundy, Blois and Lorraine. She would know, if anyone did. The only difficulty was that, while Catherine had been gone the previous autumn, Emilie had taken her final vows. As someone who was no longer even a novice, but more of a special boarder, Catherine had little to do with the choir nuns. The only time she was with them was in groups, in the refectory or the oratory, and in neither place was there opportunity for private talk.
    Except on Saturday. That was the day for hair washing. If she volunteered to help, pouring the warm water and towelling the short curls dry, she might have a few moments to arrange a longer meeting.
    “Wash hair?” Sister Bertrada pursed her lips in annoyance. “Do you even know how? You’d probably rub soap in everyone’s eyes and leave tangles impossible to comb out. The younger girls get very upset at that.”
    Catherine stifled a sigh. She had forgotten about the students like herself and the novices, whose hair had yet to be cut. “I would be very careful, Sister. I have not done my share of manual labor since I returned.”
    “As if you ever did.” But Sister Bertrada gave grudging, suspicious permission.
    So Catherine, dressed in a shift and apron, with her sleeves tied above the elbow, spent Saturday morning being splashed with suds by squealing fourteen-and fifteen-year-olds. Despite her initial reluctance, she found herself smiling and splashing back. She and her sister, Agnes, had once played so, bent over the sink at the house in Paris, their long hair dripping puddles on the rushes. Outside, they could hear cursing as the soapy water ran down the pipe onto the boots of some passerby. A long time ago, it seemed.
    The choir nuns came last, quietly as befitted their rank. It only took a moment for each shorn head to be washed. Catherine rubbed the towel briskly over Emilie’s blonde cap.
    “I must speak with you,” she whispered.
    It was like Emilie that she wasted no time with inconsequentials.
    “After None, I will be g … grinding herbs in the infirmary,” she answered, her voice shaking with the energy of Catherine’s drying. “I