The Gathering Storm

“Ah,” said Obligatia, nothing more.

“But the rock is surrounded,” protested Gerwita. “How can we escape?”

“I have had two years to meditate, to pray, and to remember all that I have seen and heard. My memory is good, and I have had many days to contemplate the spell woven by Hugh of Austra when we escaped Lord John with the queen. Now I must know, Mother have—you studied the lore of the mathematici all these years? Have you the knowledge to make the proper calculations?”

The secret, long hoarded, proved difficult for Obligatia to give up, but at last she nodded. “The abbesses of St. Ekatarina’s have studied the murals left on the walls. They have taken down the accounts of travelers. This knowledge they have passed down to each new abbess in turn—to me, last of all. Yet I and my predecessors have never discovered the incantations that open the stones.”

“I know them.” Rosvita gestured to her companions, all of them waiting, all of them hopeful, all of them trusting.

This was the burden of leadership.

“If you are willing to aid us, Mother,” she continued, “we will go now. It was a clear day when we arrived. We must pray that it has remained clear and unclouded. This night is our last chance. If we do not escape tonight, we will be trapped for good.”

3

AFTER darkness came light.

Antonia, once biscop of Mainni, had endured her captivity in silence, but that did not mean she had not planned out in explicit detail the punishment she, and God, would inflict on her tormentors once she was free.

She had prayed, and she had meditated.

In a way, God had rewarded her for her diligence and loyalty by allowing her this respite, as interminable though it had seemed, in which she had had the leisure to ponder the sinful nature of the world and the myriad ways in which most of its creatures, humankind first among them, had gone astray.

At least the beasts of the water, field, and sky were simple and therefore innocent. Perhaps some children were innocent, although she doubted it. The claws of the Enemy dug deep and swiftly. How many slights had she herself suffered as a child from her kinfolk, even from the smallest among them? Of course, they had each one earned their just reward in the end, but she had never forgotten the lesson she had learned.

In the end, only the innocent could be free from fear, and the evident fact that almost every person, adult or child, woman or man, suffered and feared obviously meant that they were all guilty. Had they been innocent, God would have had no reason to punish them.

These ruminations comforted her, yet even so at times she succumbed to the sin of anger at those who had thrown her in harm’s way and abused her trust. In truth, she had recognized all along that Sister Anne was not as holy as she seemed, being afflicted with the sin of overweening pride. Anne must have known into what danger she had sent Antonia. She must have known that the nuns of this isolated, impoverished, and pathetic little convent possessed unexpected powers to confront and bind sorcery; if they had not, they could not have called up a winged daimone of fire to battle and banish the galla. Antonia had not failed in her quest. She had been betrayed by the one who sent her. No doubt Anne feared her because of Antonia’s greater righteousness.

Always it proved to be so, that the wicked envied the pure.

Yet God again had rewarded her. Anne likely thought her dead and when, in the fullness of time, God freed her, she would be able to strike when and where Anne least expected her. She had enjoyed the many, many hours, or days, or weeks—impossible to keep track of the passing calendar when buried alive in this black pit—during which she had contemplated the defeat of vice by virtue and her final triumph over Anne and her minions.

She must only be patient.

She was an old woman, and getting no younger, yet she knew in her heart that God would not abandon her. God would not deny her the final victory granted to the just.

After darkness came light.

A glimmer of light flickered above her where the hole opened in the ceiling of her pit. The light announced mealtime, such as it was: a bucket of water and a tray of a bland, chewy substance that must not, she supposed, be scorned, since it had kept her alive.

As the light strengthened, shading black into a murky gray, she lifted her gaze to track its approach. She had to keep her eyes strong for that day when the sun again shone on her. She heard whispered voices, caught scraps of words. Was that a man’s baritone, sliding in and around the lighter tones of a woman? Surely not. She had hoped never to fall into madness, but perhaps God had chosen a new way to test her.

She waited for the rope to lower down with its precious burden of food and drink—it was the one moment they were vulnerable, and she enjoyed their apprehension, an almost tangible smell drifting down to her.