Free Matilda Bone by Karen Cushman

abbey as an infant so knew only praying and fasting and doing what she was told. That was no help. Matilda thought to call next on Saint Mary Magdalene, who certainly knew much about the world, but she was not at all sure that what that saint knew was what she wanted to know.
    Tears prickled her eyes. When she finally fell asleep, she dreamed of people sick and suffering who begged her for help, but she had no hands and could only say over and over in Latin:
Volo, non valeo—l
would, but I cannot.
    The next Sunday, when Matilda arrived back from Mass, she found Peg bustling about from Gilbert Carpenter to the red-haired brothers who sold salt and spices at the market to a tall man she did not recognize who lay silent as death on the table. The four had been carried to Peg's from the Shambles, where, drunk and fighting, they had slipped on bloody beef bones and knocked into each other, one after another, like ninepins.
    Peg looked up from wrapping Gilbert Carpenter's wrist. "Matilda, thank Saint Modomnoc the Beekeeper, you are back! I need you to pound some comfrey, cut linen into strips, and—"
    "It is Sunday, Mistress Peg, the Lord's day. Is it not a grievous sin to work on Sunday?"
    Peg stopped wrapping and looked at the girl. "These men are injured and in pain. They've come to us for help. Would you turn away fellow human beings in pain because they are in pain on a Sunday?"
    Matilda stood confused and unsure. Peg said, "Ah, have you learned nothing from me, for all your experience with pounding and pulling?" She finished wrapping Gilbert's wrist and started to bandage the elbow.
    Matilda lay down on the floor with arms outstretched, so Peg had to step over her, and prayed for Peg's soul.
    After a few minutes Matilda lifted her head to watch Peg. Her hands, chapped and red as they were, were as deft as a juggler's as she stepped to the unconscious man on the table and began to move his arms and legs, hands and feet about. Her smile, even though weary, cheered and eased her patients, doing as much to help them, Matilda saw, as her bandages, splints, and liniments. Matilda sighed, prayed to God for forgiveness in case she was wrong, and got up to help.
    Peg smiled at her. "Good. This man's ankle is broken, and both wrists are sprained. We have to set and splint them all—and soon, before he wakes, for he is hard to handle even when he has not a belly full of ale. Now pound the comfrey."
    Afterward Peg said, "Come and have a bite of supper. You have earned it. And my pleasure. And the gratitude of those men." With hands like tree roots, strong and sturdy, yet gentle as a pigeon's sound, she tore a piece of bread from a hard loaf. As Matilda chewed her own piece of bread, she watched Peg, feeling something like awe. Peg worked hard, earned little, ate poorly, was cold in the winter and would be hot in the summer. She saw friends suffer, patients die, and the unworthy prosper. Nevertheless she had more of laugh lines than frown lines marking the freckled surface of her face as she sat down happily to her bread-and-porridge supper, while Matilda sat tormented over having worked on Sunday, fearful that either Peg was wrong and Matilda had sinned, or Peg was right and Father Leufredus was wrong, and then where was Matilda?
    She put her head in her hands.
Saint Perpetua,
Matilda prayed,
I am tormented and confused.
    My child,
she heard the saint responding,
I was torn apart by wild beasts. I find it difficult to sympathize with your small worries.
    The trouble with saints, Matilda thought, was that you never could tell just what they would say.

Chapter Eleven: Easing Sarah

    On her way back from the market one day, smelling strongly of the fish heads and onions she carried, Matilda stopped by to greet Tildy, as had become her habit. "Fat Annet just poured a bowl of frumenty over the cook," Tildy said. "I am afeared that her temper is growing worse as the days grow warmer. Best you not come here anymore, or we both may suffer the