Fool(10)

 

And I might have, but then one day workmen came to the abbey, stonecutters and masons, and in a matter of days they had built a cell off of one of the abandoned passages in the rectory. We were going to have our very own anchorite, or in our case, anchoress. An acolyte so devoted to God that she would be walled up in a cell with only a small opening through which she would be passed food and water, and there she would spend the rest of her life, literally part of the church, praying and dispensing wisdom to the people of the village through her window until she was taken into the bosom of the Lord. Next to being martyred, it was the most holy act of devotion a person could perform.

 

Daily I crept out of Mother Basil’s quarters to check on the progress of the cell, hoping to somehow bask in the glory that would be bestowed upon the anchoress. But as the walls rose, I saw there was no window left to the outside, no place for the villagers to receive blessings, as was the custom.

 

“Our anchoress will be very special,” Mother Basil explained in her steady baritone voice. “So devout is she that she will only lay eyes on those who bring her food. She will not be distracted from her prayers for the king’s salvation.”

 

“She is the charge of the king?”

 

“No other,” said Mother Basil. The rest of us were bound by payment to pray for the forgiveness of the Earl of Sussex, who had slaughtered thousands of innocents in the last war with the Belgians and was bound to toast on the coals of Hell unless we could fulfill his penance, which had been pronounced by the Pope himself to be seven million Hail Marys per peasant. (Even with a dispensation and a half-price coupon purchased at Lourdes, the earl was getting no more than a thousand Hail Marys to the penny, so Dog Snogging was becoming a very rich monastery on his sins.) But our anchoress would answer for the sins of the king himself. He was said to have perpetrated some jolly-good wickedness, so her prayers must be very potent indeed.

 

“Please, Mother, please let me take food to the anchoress.”

 

“No one is to see or speak to her.”

 

“But someone has to take her food. Let me do it. I promise not to look.”

 

“I shall consult the Lord.”

 

I never saw the anchoress arrive. The rumor simply passed that she was in the abbey and the workmen had set the stones around her. Week’s went by with me begging the abbess to allow me the holy duty of feeding the anchoress, but it was not until one evening when Mother Basil needed to spend the night alone with young sister Mandy, praying in private for the forgiveness of what the abbess called a “Smashing Horny Weekender,” that I was allowed to attend to the anchoress.

 

“In fact,” said the Reverend Mother, “you stay there, outside her cell until morning, and see if you can learn some piety. Don’t come back until morning. Late morning. And bring tea and a couple of scones with you when you come back. And some jam.”

 

I thought I would burst, I was so excited when I first made my way down that long, dark hallway—carrying a plate of cheese and bread, and a flagon of ale. I half expected to see the glory of God shining through the window, but when I got there, it wasn’t a window at all, but an arrow loop, like in a castle wall, cut in the shape of a cross, the edges tapered so that the broad stone came to a point at the opening. It was as if the masons only knew one window they could put in a thick wall. (Funny that arrow loops and sword hilts, mechanisms of death, form the sign of the cross—a symbol of mercy—but on second thought, I guess it was a mechanism of death in itself.) The opening was barely wide enough to pass the flagon through; the plate would just fit through at the cross. I waited. No light came from inside the cell. A single candle on the wall across from the opening was the only illumination.

 

I was terrified. I listened, to see if I could hear the anchoress reciting novenas. There wasn’t even the sound of breathing. Was she sleeping? What kind of sin was it to interrupt the prayers of someone so holy? I put the plate and ale on the floor and tried to peer into the darkness of the cell, perhaps see her glow.

 

Then I saw it. The dim sparkle of the candle reflecting in an eye. She was sitting there, not two feet from the opening. I jumped back against the far wall, knocking over the ale on the way.

 

“Did I frighten you?” came a woman’s voice.

 

“No. No, I was just, I am—forgive me. I am awed by your piety.”

 

Then she laughed. It was sad laughter, as if it had been held a long time and then let out in almost a sob, but she was laughing and I was confused.

 

“I’m sorry, mistress—”