The Marsh King's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page B

inside, and I wasn't allowed to meet with any of the other traders and merchants.'
    'And you did all this before?'
    Miriel nodded. 'My grandfather treated me as his apprentice. He took me everywhere with him and taught me all he knew. I went to the great summer fair at Boston with him, and twice to Flanders. I watched him haggle the price of fleeces with wool merchants, I kept tallies for him, and mingled with his clients and customers.' Her breathing grew swift with passion.
    'So it is the power you miss, child?'
    Miriel shook her head. 'It is being powerless,' she said. 'It is being told that to help the business prosper I must bridle my tongue and stay at home like a good and modest daughter, not "gad about playing the hoyden". I should know my proper place.' She made an abrupt gesture of disgust.
    'A proper place,' Mother Hillary murmured and her lips twitched again as if at some inner amusement. 'I have always wondered about that myself.' She scratched the cat between the ears and the purring rose to a crescendo.
    Miriel eyed the Abbess warily. 'Mother?'
    The nun shook her head. 'A proper place to me is a niche that fits,' she said, meeting Miriel's puzzled stare. 'For the nonce you can help Sister Godefe and Sister Margaret in the infirmary. Sister Margaret has the gout and cannot move far for the pain, and Sister Godefe will need a companion when she rides out to tend Wynstan Shepherd's leg.'
    A queasy feeling of joy and the fear that she had misunderstood turned in Miriel's stomach. 'You want me to go with Sister Godefe?' The prospect of open air and freedom for no matter how short a time was almost too wonderful to be true.
    'Have I not just said so?' Now an open smile creased Mother Hillary's cheeks.
    'But. . . but what about my punishment for insulting Sister Euphemia?'
    The Abbess tilted her head. 'If you can perform your new duties without incurring my displeasure, then I consider the matter closed. Sister Euphemia will do the same once you have made your apology to her. Now, go and bring Sister Godefe to me, then wait in the cloister until she comes for you.'
    'Yes, mother.' Miriel dipped another curtsey and, with Hushed cheek and sparkling eye, left the room. Although as a novice nun she was supposed to move with a decorous glide in the eyes of God, she could not prevent herself from skipping like a spring lamb.
    Mother Hillary shook her head, and not for the first time wished a little blasphemously that she could change places with the cat.
     
    Sister Godefe had entered St Catherine's as a ten-year-old orphan, and unlike Miriel had taken to the life as if she had never known any other. The community was her family and she truly saw the other thirty-five nuns as her 'sisters'.
    As assistant to the ageing infirmaress Sister Margaret, she was currently tending an ulcerous wound on the senior shepherd's leg, which had to be dressed and anointed daily.
    'Although it is mending well,' she said to Miriel in her earnest, anxious voice as they rode out from the convent on mules. 'By the week's end I shall not need to come again.' The words carried a note of relief, for she hated forays outside St Catherine's walls.
    Miriel nodded for the sake of politeness, but she was not really listening. Although the mist enclosed her vision, she could still breathe the freedom of the open air. It was as if she had been constricted in a small, airless box and then suddenly set free. The day could have been lashing a storm and it would still have been glorious. The praise to God, which she had no inclination to sing in the dark enclosure of the chapel, swelled in her heart now.
    Sister Godefe glanced at her sidelong. 'Mother Abbess says that you are to help in the infirmary.' She sounded doubtful.
    Miriel concealed a grimace. As always her reputation seemed to have gone before her. 'I have a little knowledge of nursing. When my grandfather was sick, I was the one who cared for him.'
    The nun relaxed slightly, although the anxious