Chapter 3
Chapter three
Martyrs & Healers
“If you think I will cooperate with this derangement,” Sissi hissed, “you will need to think again. I refuse to spy on the people I am bound to serve, and especially not on children! Nor will I allow the Iron Fist to investigate any of my Sisters. This is lunacy, Your Eminence, please!”
Piers’ voice trembled as he said, “I understand your reticence, Sister, but…the Church is not entirely independent of the crown. We operate in tandem, and if these are the Prince’s wishes, then…”
“Then you have the power to stop it!”
“Refusal to cooperate will be seen as an admission of guilt,” Scarlett growled. “If you truly want to defend your faith, you will report suspicious behavior to the Iron Fist, and if your Sisters are as…faithful as you say they are, then you have nothing to fear. I’m sure you understand.”
“I’m sure I do not,” Sissi replied icily. “I mean no insult to you or the Sheriff, Eminence, but his role and yours are not compatible. The Church and the faith are not weapons, nor should they ever wield one, except in defense. The Iron Fist has no place inside these walls.”
“In that case,” said the Sheriff, “you will see your taxes doubled.”
“W-what?” Sissi spluttered. Behind the pillar, I slapped a hand over my mouth and shut my eyes. A double tax would destroy Locksley. “You would punish me for upholding my Holy Mandate?”
Scarlett’s next words came out as a threatening hiss. “If you would like to be the first Sister to find herself in the Iron Fist’s grip, Brigid, I can easily arrange it.”
“You have forgotten your faith, Osric, and I am not the martyr you wish to make.”
“Heretics and blasphemers do not deserve your martyrdom, nor your protection!” he seethed at her. “They will corrupt this Abbey from the inside out! You mark my words!”
“Enough, both of you!” Piers croaked. “Brigid, if you refuse these orders, I cannot shield you from an increased tax. It is your choice whether or not to allow the investigations, but I urge you to consider the gravity of the situation. Sheriff Scarlett, you will treat Locksley with a gentle hand, or I shall be speaking to the Prince about your conduct personally. Do we have an understanding?”
There was a brief, tense silence, and a few moments later, I moved around the side of the pillar so Scarlett would not spot me as he escorted Archbishop Piers down the aisle.
They vanished through the chapel doors and I began to plan my exit strategy, until Sissi’s clear, stern voice echoed off the stone walls.
“Marina!”
“Damn the Son,” I muttered, stepping out into the aisle and attempting to appear contrite.
“Explain yourself,” Sissi chided.
I walked slowly back toward the altar. “I…I heard talk of the Iron Fist.”
“And that is none of your concern, is it?”
My head jerked up and I frowned. “Isn’t it? Would I not be the first one dragged out to the stocks? Tell me I wouldn’t!”
“Then perhaps you should take your vows,” came the stoic reply.
Too stunned to speak, and too cowed by Sissi’s stare, I looked away until I found the strength to ask, “Is that what you wish me to do?”
Sissi let out a long sigh and turned her eyes toward the stained glass window of the apse. “I wish to keep you safe, May. That is all I have ever tried to do, but you certainly do not make it easy, do you?”
I looked down at the worn toes of my brown leather boots, guilt surging through me.
If only she knew just how much danger I had put myself in—had put the Abbey in—all to save her life.
When I’d returned from the Arden with my healing gift, and the Devil’s coin, I sat by her bedside for ten days, holding her hand and pouring the magyk into her until my own body nearly gave out too.
Then, I’d lied to the other Sisters, saying that the Daughter herself had appeared to me in a dream and told me how to cure Sissi’s illness.
Out of respect for my holy vision, they had not asked about the concoction of herbs I’d ‘used’ to bring her back from the edge of death.
Since then, I’d healed hundreds of people, perhaps thousands, and had been called ‘gifted’, ‘blessed’, and even ‘divine’.
Sissi was no fool, however. Her faith ran deep, but even she knew the limits of herbal medicine and prayer.
If she had ever guessed my secret, she never said it aloud, and I was grateful for that, at least. But I knew that her stand against the investigations was mostly for my sake, and I hated it.
“Will you allow him to investigate Locksley?” I asked quietly.
“Of course not.”
“But…the tax…”
“We will have to make adjustments,” Sissi said, “as we have always done when the world changes. Locksley has stood for five hundred years, May. I will not see her fall now, and never to a man like Osric Scarlett. It is not for you to worry on, dear girl.” She cupped my cheek in her hand, then kissed my forehead gently.
I leaned into her warm touch, but it was over as soon as it began, and she was walking back down the aisle toward the chapel doors.
Finally alone with my thoughts, I leaned on the altar and looked up at the stained glass window on the back wall of the apse.
Moonlight filtering through made it glow in a way the sun never could, softening the features of our Holy Family until all four—the Father, the Mother, the Daughter, and the Son—appeared nearly alive.
It was a standard depiction, with the Father and Mother standing shoulder-to-shoulder, their teenage children in front of them.
The Father’s hand rested on his Daughter’s shoulder, and the Mother gripped her Son’s upper arm, each adorned according to their role in the faith.
The Father wore a crown and carried a scepter. He was a King, martyred by giving everything in service to his people, by deciding each day whether the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few, and whether the ends justified the means. A martyrdom of the spirit, if not the body.
The Mother wore a circlet of roses and lilies, an ornate dagger clutched in her hand. She represented the martyrdom of motherhood, that tenuous line between gentleness and rage—willing to nurture or to kill for her children. Giving life, even at the cost of her own.
The Son stood in front of her, clad in gilded plate armor.
His young face appeared melancholy but resolute, a broadsword held to his chest and his other hand raised, as if to swear an oath.
He was the Soldier—martyred on the battlefield, fighting for freedom or honor or justice, whatever it was the faithful needed to call up at any given moment.
Finally, my eyes fell on the Daughter, the Healer, who held a bouquet of pain-relieving herbs in one hand and a lancet in the other.
She was martyred by visiting the sick, or tending to wounded soldiers, putting her own body on the line to save others.
But I knew all too well that hers was also a martyrdom of the spirit—so worn down by the relentless tableau of suffering, which she could do little to stop, that she simply faded into shadow.
Every day in the infirmary brought me closer to that same fading, as I tended the crushed bodies of young boatmen, burned children, bleeding women, and so many others.
Some, I was able to save by channeling my magyk through poultices, bandages, medicine, or a needle in order to disguise it.
Other times, my patients had ‘already paid the Boatman’, as the Devil so delicately put it that night in the Arden, and I could do nothing except speak the prayers and hold their hands.
My healing gift, the ‘sacred blessing’ of the Holy Daughter, the one thing keeping me safe behind Locksley’s walls, felt more like a curse most days.
And now, along with my feelings for Will, it had put me first in line for the Iron Fist’s interrogations.
Sissi could not keep them out forever, that much I knew for certain.
A steady voice echoed through the chapel, pulling me back from the dark thoughts. “Is the family providing any worthwhile advice tonight?”
I whirled to find a stocky, gray-haired man standing in the center of the aisle, his steel-blue eyes twinkling merrily.
“Oh, Tuck!” I gasped, rushing down the steps and throwing myself into the friar’s arms. “We didn’t expect you back for another month, at least!”
“I cannot stay out on the road as long anymore, little May,” he laughed in reply. “An old man needs his rest, and there is no better rest to be had than at Locksley Abbey.”
“I’m not so sure about that anymore.”
“Oh dear, do I sense trouble in my peaceful paradise?”
“It’s just—”
“Ah, ah.” He held up a hand. “Unwelcome news is always easier to swallow with a cup of wine.”
“I think you might be right,” I agreed. We left the chapel behind and made our way through the Abbey corridors while I interrogated him about the goings-on in the rest of Athenium.
Tuck was an itinerant friar from another Holy Order, moving from one town to another, assisting various churches and abbeys, conducting public prayer services, and working in orphanages or hospitals.
He had been staying in Nottingham during the war, caring for dead and dying soldiers, when he’d found me, a squalling, swaddled newborn, on Locksley’s steps, and given me my name, according to Abbey tradition.
Ever since, he made a point of returning every few months, to check on me and to enjoy Locksley’s hospitality.
Once we reached the dining hall, he was immediately flooded by greetings from the rest of the Sisters, who also relied on him for much of their news, and even a little gossip.