Day Ten of Hewi-manod, the Hay Month

Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended You and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all because they offend You, my God, who are all good and deserving of all my love.  I firmly resolve, with the help of your grace, to confess my sins, to do penance and to amend my life.

It is my act of contrition.  It runs in my head and across my lips constantly.  It is what will bring Father Lucas home.

A day ago, a village boy, cutting hay in the fields by the river, let slip his scythe and sliced open his father's face.  An accident or consequence of my sins?  Did I release a darkness when I opened the book?

Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry, I whispered even as I held the man still while Mother Agnes cleaned his wound.  I detest all my sins echoed in my mind with each stitch I took to bind the man's cheek again.  It was the first time Mother Agnes trusted me to use the skills she has been teaching me.  I will be a healer, she says.  And a good one.

I firmly resolve to do penance.  

But Sister Edith burned her leg this morning when her habit caught fire at the hearth.  The kitchen still smells of burned flesh.  She will heal.  Mother Agnes will make it so.

And I will be good.  And Father Lucas will come home at Michaelmas.  And you will forgive me because, Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended You.  I script         my contrition in my blood.  Surely you will forgive me.

The Brothers had a letter today from Father Lucas.  It tells us that Frederick the Quarrelsome is dead.  Father Lucas fears that war will come soon.

Consequences

Father Lucas left the Abbey this morning for another trip.  He did not come to say goodbye.  He sent Mother Agnes with a message for me.  

He wants me to rest until he returns at Michaelmas.  I am forbidden to enter the Library.  

I know it is meant as punishment.  I know I deserve it.  And I know Father Lucas has taken the book with him.

Where will I look for answers now?

And what am I to do for two months with no books?

I will go mad with nothing but needlework and prayers day after day.

Oh, God, I am sorry for what I wrote.  I know my Book of Hours by heart.  I do.  And I don't mind the prayers.  Not really.  Please, God.  Father Lucas took away the Library.  Do not punish me by taking Father Lucas.

I will recite my act of contrition until Father Lucas is home again.  Safe.

Please, God, let him come home.

A Return

Though it has been weeks, my fingers are still so swollen from the spider bites that I can barely hold my quill.  But the skin, which had grown black with rot, has finally sloughed off.  Mother Agnes keeps the raw, new skin covered in salve.  It smells like honey and the purple lupin that cover the fields behind the Abbey in the late spring.

Now, in my nightmares, the spiders no longer come pouring from an old book, but rather scurry out of giant hives while I pick flowers in the sun.  I never see them coming.  Until it is too late.  And I wake, screaming.

Father Lucas found me in the library that night, screaming.  I was covered with bites, but there were no spiders.  The book was closed again.

Father Lucas keeps asking me what I saw in the book.  I ask him where the book came from and who wrote it.  Neither of us will give an answer.

I cannot tell him what I saw because I am afraid that whatever lives in the book will come for me again.  Or for him.

I hear the Sisters in the hall outside my room whisper as they pass with their heads lowered.  Their eyes cut toward my open door.  They say I should be dead, sick as I was from the bites and then the rot.

Even Mother Agnes crosses herself when she turns from me, her kiss on my forehead still damp with love.