Free The Raven and the Rose by Jo Beverley

raven on a nearby branch.
    â€œYou woke me at a bad time,” she said, though there couldn’t have been a good one.
    Craak! Craak!
    Somehow she understood that meant,
Hurry up. Time to go
.
    She was hungry, but there was no help for that, and she, too, wanted to hurry.
    She was about to put on her habit when the raven hopped in through the window to stand on one of the chests. When she approached, it hopped onto the other. Inside the first one, she found a loaf of bread, some hard cheese and a stoppered pottery jug. She tore off a bit of the bread and found it fresh and delicious. She took down a wooden beaker from the shelf, then pulled out the wooden stopper and poured the liquid into her small jug. She took a small sip and found it to be excellent ale.
    â€œWhat else do you expect from God’s brewing?” Gledys said.
    She pretended that she was speaking to the raven, but she was talking to hear her own voice. She’d never been alone before and the world felt empty, as if some great plague had swept God’s people away. She shook herself. Soon she’d be where Michael was and among many people.
    She paused, bread and drink in hand, to revisit that blissful encounter, to wonder if he, too, had experienced it. Surely it must be so. They truly had come together in a dreamworld, as they had in the tavern earlier. Which meant he would awaken as disappointed as she.
    All the more reason to hurry. She found her knife and hacked off some cheese, eating quickly, anxious to be on her way. But as she turned to leave, the raven said,
Craak!
    She knew she was supposed to open the other chest.
    She flung the lid up impatiently, but then gasped. It contained fine clothing such as she’d never seen before, in rich shades of green, russet and yellow. On top lay a gilded leather belt with a pouch and a sheath that proved to exactly fit her knife. This clearly was also God’s gift, yet she hesitated.
    â€œI’m to change out of my habit?”
    She didn’t know why this shocked her more than anything else, but it did. As long as she wore her habit she was still Sister Gledys of Rosewell. Once she took it off, she would become someone else and belong in a world she neither knew nor understood.
    â€œDo I really have to do this?”
    Neither God nor the raven answered. What need, when her direction was clear? All the same, Gledys closed the lid on the clothes and sat on it.
    This was the moment of no return. She’d left the only home she’d ever known and broken many of the rules she’d lived with all her life. True, any sister of Rosewell could leave the nunnery if she hadn’t taken her eternal vows, but there was a process. Documents were signed to return her to her family. She would formally renounce her vows.
    Instead she was following a bird and some lights to heaven knew where.
    But—she shot to her feet—she remembered how in her dreams she was never wearing her habit. She’d not seen her clothing, but it felt and moved differently.
    She opened the chest eagerly now and lifted out a green robe. Such soft, fine wool, almost too delicate for her work-roughened hands, and skillfully decorated around neck and sleeves with embroidered braid. Telling herself the shape wasn’t much different from her habit, she put it on. The sleeves were only elbow-length, but those of her chemise reached to her wrists, so her arms were decently covered.
    She buckled the fine new belt around her waist and adjusted the knife and pouch. She checked inside the pouch and found a few small coins. She’d never handled coins and looked curiously at the design. One side showed a man, perhaps the king. The other was stamped with a four-petaled flower.
    What were they worth? What would they buy? The idea of approaching someone to make a purchase turned her stomach. She’d rarely met a stranger and never been in a town or market. She’d never purchased anything. She could only