Free Roses in the Tempest by Jeri Westerson

went through their minds. I soon learned to be a rigid surveyor of what I gleaned from their faces alone.
    Stern but fair, Prioress Margaret no doubt prayed for enough food to feed us and our servants, for not only did we support the chaplain and bailiff, but also two women workers and four men, for there was far too much for four nuns to accomplish alone. The property boasted a brewhouse, bolting house, kilhouse, cheeseloft, stables, and fields, not to mention the mill and ponds. It was quite impossible to remain self-sufficient without help.
    Cristabell, on the other hand, was unreadable under any pretext. Her wide, shiny forehead was smooth except for brows that lay in a flat, though expressive, line over the rims of dark green eyes. Her skin, too, was not pale but darker than most, like sage. Her family name was Smith, and I wondered if it was from these kinsmen she received her sharp upturned nose, pixie mouth, and mistrustful nature.
    Dame Elizabeth Warde’s face was heart-shaped. A pale rose mouth always lay slightly ajar from the projection of rabbit-like teeth, and above that was a squat nose and gray-blue eyes, the color of gray horses in the rain. She was much older than either Cristabell or myself, and even, I suspected, the prioress.
    When Elizabeth glanced in my direction I swiftly averted my eyes, angling my head toward the nard-rich aroma of our stalls.
    What was at first frightening in its mystery and sanctity became comfortable by repetition. It was true: I only stepped out of one door and through another, giving up the servitude as a daughter for that of chaste “spouse.” I also discovered I was here at Blackladies for a noble purpose: to enrich my friendship with the Almighty, to feed my soul, to empty Isabella of herself. I did desire this. For with it, all the pain would be gone.
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    I jerked awake in the quire stall. Dame Cristabell jabbed her arm into my shoulder to make me rise with the others. It was back to bed until Prime.
    I found it difficult laying my head on the pillow beside that of Cristabell’s night after night. Stiffly I lay abed, waiting for her to drift to sleep first before I could relax.
    In the morning hours after the High Mass, when we were allowed recreation, she would eye me as I moved away from the study carrels to my own pursuit.
    On the days that I scrubbed the hard cloister floor with a wide straw brush while on my knees, I could tell without looking up that Cristabell hovered in the shadows, watching me. What is it about me , I wondered, that makes her so disagreeable? Was it my inexperience? My lack of education? This latter seemed to plague all the nuns of Blackladies, for not one of them could read or understand Latin.
    Sharing a bed night after night with Cristabell was no better than with my own sister Agnes, for the nun’s disapproval was just as weighty.
    On the occasion of my second day at the convent—a month ago now—we four women sat together in the chapter house. My head was buzzing from weariness, for we rose so very early in the morning, I was unfamiliar with the chanted prayers, and I was desperately nervous of the others who did not warm to me. They sat in their stalls in the quire that first day while I sat apart. I understood that after I petitioned for admittance formally in Chapter that I, too, would be admitted to the quire.
    “Isabella,” said the prioress in the chapter house, and my heart throbbed. I rose from my place and stepped before her, looking at the floor. “Kneel,” she whispered and I did so. She took my hands in hers and kissed my cheek. “Now prostrate yourself.”
    She had told me of this earlier, and instructed me as to what I was to say, but in a panic, I suddenly forgot each of my replies!
    “Dear daughter, what is it you are asking?”
    And then the words formed in my head, and my white lips muttered them into the dust of the floor boards, “The mercy of God and yours.”
    “What is that mercy that you ask?”
    “To