CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Anna knew that she was not the only one within the convent’s walls who felt alone. Sometimes at night she heard a woman weeping, softly distant, and the melancholy sound stole down the corridor and seemed to wrap around her own small body lying silent in her bed, and give a voice to her own misery.
She’d thought that it might be Dame Clare. She’d heard the story from the older girls, about the young and tragic lady who had loved a soldier from the Regiment of Clare, that gallant regiment that charged a nearby battlefield ten years before and captured the enemy’s colours for their bravery, those colours that now hung within the choir here at the convent. But the lady’s soldier fell in that same charge, and grief had brought her here to live and be a pensioner and daily make her peace with that same God who’d cruelly taken all her dreams.
Dame Clare, thought Anna, had cause to spend her nights lamenting, but the other students told her it was not Dame Clare she’d heard. The weeping woman was, they said, a new arrival to the convent, neither nun nor pupil.
‘I was told,’ one of the older girls said, hushed and speaking slowly so they’d not be overheard at dinner, ‘that her lover was an English spy, who wooed her for the simple fact her family lived at St Germain and had connections to King James. But finding she could tell him nothing useful, he abandoned her, and now he’s gone to Paris and her shame has been discovered so her family sent her here.’
The older girls thought this was wildly romantic, and one of the younger girls thought it a scandal, but Anna just thought it unfair.
After all, it hadn’t been the sad young woman’s fault that she had caught the eye of someone so deceitful, and had trusted him, and Anna thought it very wrong the spy was still at liberty while the young woman had now been disgraced and shut away.
When she said so to Sister Xaveria after their prayers the next morning, and asked her how God could allow such injustice, the nun asked, ‘And how did you hear of this?’
Anna explained, ending with, ‘… and so she telt me that it couldnae be Dame Clare.’
They were still standing in the choir of the convent church, and Anna cast a quick look upwards at the captured flags that hung above them, swaying slightly to the unseen movement of the air.
‘She telt me,’ Anna added as an afterthought, ‘that Dame Clare disnae weep.’
‘’Tis true.’ Sister Xaveria looked up, as well. ‘She does not weep. She prays.’
‘Ye’ve seen her, then.’
‘Of course. She’s lived here with us ten years now – of course I’ve seen her. So have you, I should imagine.’
‘I have not.’
‘We rarely see the things we don’t expect to see.’
Anna, not understanding, asked, ‘And did she lose her lover in that battle, truly? Is that why she shut herself up here?’
Sister Xaveria smiled. ‘We are not shut off from the world, my child. Not even here. We merely seek to live more fully in the world, without distraction, so we may more clearly hear God’s voice and do his bidding.’
Which did not answer Anna’s question, but she’d learnt that Sister Xaveria often preferred to ask questions rather than answer them, so it was not a surprise when the nun asked, ‘And where have you heard this sad tale of Dame Clare? Not from any of us, surely?’
‘No. From the other girls. Some of their parents, at court, heard the story, but I reckoned you’d ken the truth of it better than anyone.’
‘Oh yes? And why me, particularly?’
‘Because,’ said Anna, ‘your own sister married a man of that regiment.’
Sister Xaveria’s eyebrows rose up till they touched the smooth edge of her wimple. ‘And where did you learn of that? No,’ she said, raising a hand, ‘do not tell me. I can see I ought to teach tomorrow’s lesson from the Proverbs, starting with: “qui ambulat fraudulenter revelat arcana qui autem fidelis est animi celat commissum.”’ She translated, for Anna’s sake: ‘“A talebearer revealeth secrets: but he who is of faithful spirit concealeth the matter.” Do you know what that means, Anna?’
‘Aye.’ Anna nodded.
‘And what does it mean, then?’
‘It means that what’s heard in the kitchen,’ said Anna, ‘should never be said in the hall.’
The nun’s mouth twitched. ‘Exactly.’
She might have said more, but at that moment Anna saw something that made her stop listening. Near the far wall of the chapel, beyond the dark bars of the grille, stood a man looking up at her father’s stone monument. A man with brown hair tied back over his collar, his hands clasped at a soldier’s ease behind him. With his back to her, he looked like …
‘Captain Jamieson!’ she called out in delight, and leaving Sister Xaveria’s side made a rush to the bars. ‘Captain!’
‘Anna,’ the nun warned, rebuking her for calling out so loudly in the sanctity of church, perhaps, or simply for behaving in a manner unbecoming to young ladies, but the shout had served its purpose.
Anna watched the man turn round, and with a stab of disappointment she saw it was not the captain, but a slightly younger man who peered towards her through the shadows of the church.
Unclasping his hands he strode forwards, relaxed at first, then as though being compelled, his gaze fixing on Anna’s small face with increasing amazement. His eyes lifted once, to the nun standing just behind Anna.