Chapter 2 Maeve
Maeve
The vicious beast of worry struck as soon as Maeve awoke the following day.
Her questioning was concerning. She’d entertained the odd doubt over the years – who wouldn’t?
The Abbey was all she’d ever known. Her parents had chosen to give her up and offer her life and talents to the saints.
It was an honour and a privilege she’d do well not to squander.
There was no room for questions, not when the saints had given her so much.
Besides, once she was made lead iconographer, she’d have no need for questions.
The nausea grew teeth, guilt biting down.
Questioning showed a lack of devotion, and Maeve was nothing if not devout.
She’d spent years bundling up her questions into neat parcels and shoving them into the furthest recesses of her mind, hoping to forget the truth that underneath the surface she presented as an acolyte, as a believer, she was cracked. Crumbling and drying out.
Soon, her questions would ruin her.
If she attained lead iconographer, it might allow her to pick at the secrets that shrouded the Abbey, like the saints’ ability to answer prayers or why their community needed to remain separate from the outside world.
Maybe she could even convince them to loosen their rules around friendships between the acolytes.
Unpicking their rigid confines wouldn’t be easy, nor could she do it alone, but as lead iconographer, she could encourage the process.
But not yet.
She couldn’t question yet.
Maeve shifted off her bed to kneel. She pictured Felix as he’d looked in his icon. Paint and canvas and not flesh and blood. Someone who couldn’t see her in her entirety. Someone safer at a distance. The prayer for forgiveness came easily to her lips.
All too soon, the bells for the morning meal split the air.
Ezra was an early riser. Why hadn’t he come to see her yet? He had said a good night’s sleep might offer clarity, that he’d talk to her tomorrow, now today.
Yet… nothing.
She pushed up to her feet and rubbed the ache in her back as the bells finished their chiming.
She kept her space neat and orderly. Jumpers, coats, and dresses in the wardrobe.
Shoes under the desk, laces tucked inside.
Freshly cleaned brushes in a glass jar she had salvaged from the sea.
Coins stacked in a neat pile, one on top of the other.
Sitting in front of the small mirror, she smoothed her pale, thick hair with a boar bristle hairbrush before braiding it down her back.
She leaned closer to the mirror, touching her fingertip to where the thin skin under her eyes shifted to a bruised purple.
Another mark of a sleepless night and too little sunlight.
She tried the door, finding it unlocked.
Maybe she’d imagined the metallic echo of Ezra bolting it shut last night, or maybe he’d told her to meet him in his study and she’d forgotten.
Either way, if she didn’t hurry, she was going to miss breakfast. She stepped into the hall, casting a final look at her bedroom.
Water beaded on the iron-webbed window like pearls, tracking down the glass in slick rivulets.
Sunlight illuminated swirling dust motes.
For a moment, the dust flashed gold.
Her steps faltered. She blinked once, twice, as a shudder coursed through her body.
Emptying her thoughts, Maeve kept moving.
A cold rush of sea air swept through the corridor as she approached the stairs leading to the courtyard below.
Despite the early hour, the courtyard was half-full of acolytes milling about.
Though each acolyte kept to a schedule of meals, prayers, and hours designated for study or craft, interaction between each other was minimal in the extreme.
Even after over a decade at the Abbey, Maeve wasn’t sure if she could count any of her fellow acolytes as true friends – exactly as the elders wished it to be.
She scanned the courtyard for Ezra, instead spotting Brigid heading towards the open doors of the dining hall. She let out a relieved breath. Just the person she ought to speak to. If there was anyone who might know what strange phenomenon had completed the icon, it was the lead iconographer.
The stairway down the courtyard was crowded this time in the morning with the youngest acolytes leaving the basilica. Maeve gazed over their heads as she reached the ground floor, searching for Ezra’s familiar cap of thick grey hair. Had he taken the early prayers, maybe?
A bright wash of light cut from the gap between the massive doors leading to the basilica, momentarily flooding her vision. She blinked. The sound of the acolytes pattering feet disappeared up the stairs behind her.
Suddenly, a shout cut the air.
Two elders wrestled a young boy from the basilica before throwing him bodily onto the rough flagstone.
One knelt, wagging a finger in the boy’s face.
Maeve was too far to see what was being said but close enough to see how his face paled as he gazed up.
His mess of blond curls flung back from his face.
A tear, vivid against the bright blue of his eyes.
She started forward, to intervene or to watch closer, she wasn’t yet sure.
She’d also been thrown from the basilica in her younger years for gossiping, picking at the pews, lagging behind on the prayers. Still – he didn’t deserve the rough treatment. Her heart clenched at the startlingly red blood streaking down his temple.
Maeve froze mid-stride.
Something was strange about the boy’s habit.
His collar flapped in wide points that covered his shoulders, the edges intricate with embroidery.
She hadn’t seen that style in years, and maybe only in icons.
It had to be at least twenty years old. Perhaps older.
They were given new habits each year, some subtle differences marking the year’s style.
Always in dark grey for acolytes. As the previous years were taken to be remade…
there was no reason for the boy to wear something so markedly old-fashioned.
The boy reached out, clasping his hand on one of the elder’s shoulder. The elder jerked back, his hand flying towards the boy’s face in an open-palmed slap.
‘Maeve! Maeve.’
Maeve whipped around. Her legs were shaking, a stitch in her lungs like she’d been running.
No one was there.
An ink-black raven sprang off the arched cloisters above. Wingbeats filled the air as it ascended towards the pearl-grey sky, disappearing amongst the clouds.
Her pulse pounded unsteadily in her throat.
Slowly, she turned back to the basilica’s firmly latched doors.
There was something she’d been watching, a reason she had stopped…
wasn’t there? A finely pointed headache throbbed behind her eyes as though she’d been staring at the sun.
Maeve closed her eyes, pressing her fingertips to her lids. Her ears echoed with a phantom scream.
Suddenly, the pain left as quickly as it had come.
She opened her eyes. Her back was pressed tight to the wall, the jut of a stonework digging into her spine. The Abbey was still and silent around her. It was breakfast. She was here to meet someone, wasn’t she? Brigid. She’d seen the other woman making her way to the dining hall.
Slowly, Maeve peeled off the wall, giving her head a rough shake. Pushing past the strange uneasiness swirling in her stomach, she stepped inside the hall. The room was half full, the platters set up in the middle of the long tables almost empty.
Brigid’s hand trembled slightly around a piece of charcoal as Maeve sat beside her and picked up a piece of toast. She was midway through some kind of still life – of what, Maeve wasn’t sure. An empty breadbasket, maybe, though it looked like blankets were trailing from the lip.
Maeve cocked her head and looked closer. She choked on her toast, hurriedly washing it down with a sip of lukewarm tea. Not a breadbasket. A bassinet.
Brigid dropped her charcoal. ‘My goodness, Maeve. Must you cough so loudly?’
‘Sorry,’ Maeve managed. She forced her gaze from the bassinet and took a moment to collect herself.
‘Did you need something?’ Brigid prodded. She glanced over her shoulder. ‘You shouldn’t be sitting so close.’
‘Yes. I… well,’ Maeve paused. She didn’t want to be too hasty with her questions. Or too revealing. ‘Did you know Felix is here?’
Brigid replaced the charcoal in its tin and snapped the lid shut. ‘Of course.’
‘I’m surprised you weren’t the one to paint his icon.’
‘I declined the offer,’ Brigid said. Watery daylight streamed in from the window across from them, sinking into the creases of her face. ‘My time as iconographer is coming to an end, as I’m sure you know.’
Maeve took another sip of tea to hide her awkwardness. ‘Have you painted him before?’
Brigid’s lips twitched downwards. ‘Yes.’
Saints. It was like drawing blood from a stone. ‘What do you think of him?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘He’s the first saint I’ve met with, just the two of us,’ Maeve replied. ‘I wasn’t sure what to expect. About him or his abilities. I’ve never considered that he could—’
‘That’s enough,’ Brigid interrupted, harsh enough to make Maeve jump. She looked around, lowering her voice to a whisper. ‘Have you no sense, Maeve?’
Brigid’s dark eyes were wide under their hooded lids. Fearful.
Maeve swallowed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she replied convulsively.
Doubting, even voicing questions aloud, was strictly forbidden. Every acolyte knew to search for answers from prayer and study alone. Never from each other. Brigid was afforded more freedom as the lead iconographer… but not Maeve. Not yet.
But she had to ask someone.
‘I know it’s not my place to ask, and certainly not of you,’ Maeve whispered. Brigid’s eyes narrowed. ‘But something happened, and I think… I think Felix lied to me about it.’
As quickly as she could, and before Brigid could protest, she told her about the strange buzzing that had suffused her body, how she’d passed out and woken to find the painting finished and the room cast in gold. How Felix had denied it.
Brigid made a rapid motion with her hand, an urge for Maeve to stop speaking, but now that she’d started, she couldn’t quite seem to stop.
‘Felix wanted to leave immediately to get Ezra, but he arrived before he could and saw the icon. Felix tried to convince him I had a hysterical fit or something. But Felix did it, whatever it was that finished the icon.’ She took a breath.
‘Can a saint’s abilities work that way? Do you know if—’
‘Maeve,’ Brigid interrupted. ‘Please. Please stop talking. Now.’
Pain sprang up her jaw from how tightly she clamped her teeth together.
Slowly, the other woman shifted to face forward once more. She stared out the window. In the distance, the chimneys and gables of Whitebury blurred with morning haze. Maeve continued to try to breathe. Panic tied knots in her chest.
‘Did you tell Ezra about the gold?’ Brigid asked carefully.
‘He saw it. The room was covered.’
Brigid nodded. Opened her mouth. Closed it. Nodded again. ‘Some things aren’t for us to know,’ she said, a note of finality in her voice. ‘Or to tell.’
Maeve’s heart sank deeper as Brigid opened her charcoal tin and drew out a stick. She sketched a symbol on the crisp white paper. Maeve knew what it was going to be even before she started.
A half-circle with three lines fanning from the top. A pared-back version of the Abbey’s insignia of two hands holding a cupped sun. One of the first symbols every new acolyte was taught.
Each ray held a meaning. Piety. Belief. Devotion.
The symbol of the sacred distance between saint and intercessor.
The glorious magic of the Abbey; an unknowable force for them to believe in.
Not to doubt. Not to question. Even if Brigid knew more than she was letting on, she wouldn’t tell Maeve.
She needed to believe. To trust fully, even without answers.
Maeve straightened her fingers on her thighs, wincing at the stiffness.
‘Do you understand?’ Brigid asked. ‘You might be taking my place soon. I need you to tell me you understand what I’m saying.’
‘Yes,’ Maeve whispered. ‘I understand.’
Brigid closed the notebook and moved to her feet. She bent to collect her bag pushed under the bench, dust swirling through the buttery sunlight. Maeve kept her eyes dutifully forward, breathing slowly through her mouth.
The whisper pressed against Maeve’s ear was unexpected. ‘Ezra will summon you tonight. You must agree to whatever he asks.’
Maeve turned towards Brigid to ask what she meant, to see her face—
She was already gone.
The vast dining hall was empty.