Free The Nun's Tale by Candace Robb Page A

even this movement exhausted her.
    ‘May I see your arms?’
    Joanna pushed up her sleeves.
    ‘So many cuts and scratches,’ Lucie murmured. ‘You have not been living a life of ease recently.’
    Joanna suddenly pressed Lucie’s hand and looked earnestly into her eyes. ‘He was so kind. I thought he loved me.’
    Lucie stared at Joanna, puzzled by the shift in mood. ‘Who, Joanna?’ She tried not to sound too eager.
    Tears shimmered in the lovely green eyes. ‘How could I have been so fooled?’ Joanna dug her nails into Lucie’s hand.
    ‘Who fooled you?’
    But the moment died. Joanna withdrew her hand, turned her head aside. ‘I should be dead,’ she said in a matter of fact tone.
    Lucie studied the tear-streaked face, the eyes staring blankly at the curtain. ‘Why is that?’
    ‘I am cursed.’
    ‘By whom?’
    ‘God.’
    ‘How do you know this?’
    ‘The Blessed Virgin Mary told me.’
    ‘Then why were you given the great honour of resurrection?’
    Joanna closed her eyes.
    Lucie pressed a discoloured spot on Joanna’s left shoulder. Joanna jerked. ‘This hurts, doesn’t it?’
    ‘A little. It aches.’
    ‘Someone wrenched your arm out of the joint, I think.’
    Joanna stared at Lucie as if willing her to go away.
    ‘It is difficult to do that with a fall.’
    The staring eyes blinked, betrayed by tears.
    ‘And difficult, if not impossible, to pull back yourself. Was your arm useless for long?’
    Joanna forced her eyes wide, trying to deny the tears.
    Lucie dabbed at the tears already fallen. ‘I am finished. I will tell Brother Wulfstan what I’ve found. Trust him. He is a kind, skilled healer.’
    Joanna thrust out her hand, clutching Lucie’s wrist. ‘I am not to be healed.’ Now her eyes, still wet, beseeched Lucie.
    What on earth was she to make of this young woman? Not to be healed? ‘Why? Because of what you did? Running away, stealing the relic, arranging a funeral? Is that why you must do penance?’
    ‘I am cursed.’ Joanna emphasised each word, though her voice still held no emotion.
    Lucie pulled her hand from Joanna’s grasp, smoothed the pale red strands from the woman’s brow. ‘God be with you, Joanna.’ She closed the curtains and stood quietly for a moment, collecting her thoughts. As she moved towards the door, Dame Isobel stood.
    ‘Joanna responded well to you, Mistress Wilton. You seemed to have a calming effect on her.’
    ‘She seems more secretive than agitated.’
    Dame Isobel shook her head. ‘No. She is different with you. When I ask questions, she becomes disturbed and incoherent. She answered your questions.’
    Lucie found Isobel’s round, unlined, moon-pale face unnerving. Ageless. As if the girl Lucie remembered had merely grown larger, taller, but had not matured. ‘Joanna answered some of my questions. But she hardly gave me useful answers.’
    Isobel looked down at her folded hands, back up to Lucie’s face with meek eyes. ‘His Grace the Archbishop wants me to interrogate Joanna, find out what I can about what has happened to her. Would you help me?’
    Coming to Brother Wulfstan’s aid was one thing, but to help Dame Isobel . . . They had not been friends at the convent. And last summer Owen had told Lucie that Isobel was much to blame in this present case, that she had kept Joanna’s disappearance a secret, being relieved to be rid of the strange young woman. ‘I am a busy woman, Reverend Mother. I have little time to spare.’
    ‘Forgive me.’ Isobel bowed her head and stepped aside. ‘God go with you, Mistress Wilton. Thank you for coming today.’
    Lucie found Wulfstan waiting anxiously in the corridor. She told him what she had found, the chipped tooth, the healing eye, the shoulder, the other inconsequential cuts, scrapes, bruises. And the almost healed abrasions and deep bruises on her back. ‘I do not know what to make of them. Her explanation was that she is clumsy. An odd sort of clumsiness, always to land on her back.’