The Miracle Thief Read Online Free PDF

that pressed in against my soul. “I think, my lady, they must have need of your presence at court.”
    Her mouth had quirked in a disdain I remembered from her grandmother. “Need of my hand for marriage perhaps.” A ray of sun touched her hair, turning it into a gleaming gold.
    â€œThey would miss you.”
    â€œNot my father. Not anymore. He’s taken to wife. A woman of Lorraine.” She chattered on for some moments with scorn for the woman.
    Agony pierced my heart, but I spoke through the pain. I had looked for so long into the past, I had not ever considered a future for these two people I so dearly loved. When she paused, I spoke the one thing I knew to be true. “Your father loves you, my lady.” I could not doubt it. I never had. “Do not despise the life you have been given.” Not when it had come at such great cost.
    ***
    I did not see them again. The bell for prime tolled, and I went to offices with the rest of my sisters. By the time we had finished, they had gone.
    Charles had asked me for words of wisdom, but I had given her none. And what had I received? The certain knowledge my child was better off without me. I had been told it before, but it was only then that I came to know the truth of it. I wept along with the pilgrims that forenoon for all I had given up, and all that had been taken from me.
    The abbess summoned me after vespers. It was with raw grief and shameful weeping that I entered her chamber.
    â€œYou torment yourself, Daughter.”
    â€œI do not know how to stop myself from thinking of them. I have so many memories.” And now I had these new ones to add to all the rest. Perhaps I loved my memories more than I loved God. How stingy, how sparing my devotion must seem to Him.
    â€œThink on other thoughts.”
    â€œBut how do you forget the people you love? How do you give them up?”
    â€œBy realizing there is One who loves them still more. You must sacrifice your own poor interest in their souls to One whose interests are higher and greater. You must rest in the thought that He can do more for them than you can.”
    I could not do it.
    God help me, I had tried.
    ***
    Should confession truly free the soul, then I confess I did not hurry to the refectory for the meal on the day of the election.
    As always, Sister Isolda read the Holy Scriptures to us as we ate. The table at which the nuns dined was silent. Though I could not discern actual words coming from the novitiates’ table, and though I could not have accused any one of them of actually speaking, a restless, ceaseless noise rose from that quarter nonetheless.
    After the meal, we who had taken our vows left the others and repaired to the chapterhouse. A clerk waited in the hall, ready to take the news of our decision to the bishop. After we took our seats, Sister Clothild led us in a prayer, and then she stood. “Today we choose a new abbess. I must know, before we proceed, if there is any other who wishes to be considered.”
    She was the one who ought to have been the new abbess. It was she who had served at the abbesses’ side for years, who oversaw the tradesmen and those who worked the fields. It was only for her lack of education that she could not be considered. In every other way she would have been perfect.
    I felt an unreasonable surge of anger at her ignorance. She could have managed with a clerk to do her writing, but why had she never learned to read? She had always told me the effort to do so made her ill. She seemed astonished anyone ever could. If she were to be believed, words were sly, changeable creatures, always jumping about the parchment before they could be deciphered. That such an otherwise kind and generous person should evidence such laziness was troubling and—“Would no one else like to propose a name?” She seemed to ask the question directly to me.
    I blinked. Looked to my right and to my left. No one replied.
    â€œAre