The Dragon of Handale Read Online Free PDF

restored. But you, ma donna, have a choice. Find an escort to take you back to the outside world; then run for your life. Do not stay here when you have no reason to.”
    “I never run,” replied Hildegard. She gave him a smile that for a split second was reciprocated.
    Then his face twisted into a grimace and he pressed his raw red knuckles into his mouth. “This is a place of penitence, ma donna. It’s where those nuns who have broken their vows are sent. They come from many different places, sent here as a last resort. Many come from Rosedale, and when that bleak moorland prison fails to tame them, they finish up here. They are the hardest souls, the most fierce in sin.” He pointed across the rain-swept garth. “See that cell with the bars?”
    Hildegard followed his shaking finger to a set of iron bars at ground level. Beyond them lay darkness. It was a prison cell belowground, she surmised with a shiver of revulsion.
    The priest explained. “The worst are kept in there until they mend their ways.”
    “I came across a nun with a bloody mouth just before tierce, as if—I’m not sure—as if she had been hit across the face or—”
    He gave a furtive glance round. “They say the monster in the woods may have infected one of the nuns within the precinct. To draw her down to the devil’s wiles. This is only a story”—he gave a nervous laugh—“but how would we know it wasn’t true until it was proved otherwise?”
    Hildegard gazed at him in disbelief. “This nun—within—who is she?”
    He pulled his hood closely over his head, face hidden. “I think you may find out to your cost, ma donna  … if you stay.”
    Hildegard stifled a response. She bowed her head. “I thank you most cordially for your advice, sir priest, and shall take as much heed of your warning as common sense dictates.” She stepped from out of the cloister into the rain-swept garth.

 
    C HAPTER 4
    The midday meal was being served when she entered the timbered refectory, where she found six or seven nuns seated at one long table and one or two novices attending them. Prioress Basilda was not in evidence. A nun she took to be the cellarer beckoned.
    “Sit there, mistress.” She indicated a place at the end of the table, then continued to eat with downcast eyes. The rest of the nuns scarcely looked up. They went on eating, the silence broken only by a nun reading from the works of Saint Benedict. A wooden bowl containing gruel was placed in front of Hildegard by a soft-footed novice. Soft-footed, she noticed, because barefoot. Her feet were blue with cold as she padded back and forth over the flagstone.
    The entire meal continued in a heavy silence, broken only by the droning voice of the nun chosen to read that day. At last, one of the nuns rose, mumbled a short prayer of thanks, and then the rest rose in a group and filed out, leaving only the cellarer and her servant.
    “I am instructed to have you conducted to the scriptorium,” she told Hildegard, not looking at her “Follow me.”
    The cheerless repast, the silence of the black-robed nuns, the chill in the atmosphere are burdens to be born, Hildegard told herself as she followed the cellarer up a flight of stone stairs to the first-floor level. This was maybe how outsiders first saw the Cistercian priory at Swyne, little knowing of the rich inner lives of the assembly or the general kindliness and compassion that prevailed. It was no doubt the same here and invisible to the eye of a casual guest such as herself.
    Why she had been sent from Swyne to a house of correction was another question. One which would bear scrutiny later. Was it a covert message from her prioress that she needed, like the nuns here, to absolve herself from her own guilt? Impatiently, she dismissed the idea. It was too oblique. Her prioress was nothing if not forthright. She would tell her in plainYorkshire fashion what she thought of her activities in Westminster the previous year if she thought