The Red Abbey Chronicles (13 page)

There was no screaming or crying. Only that short command: Go away! My brave little ones. They were all alone when they had heard the men come. They had done the only thing they could do, which was to find a hiding place. If I had been there I could have led them out. Now they were stuck like mice in a trap. Standing pressed against the door, I could see everything clearly, despite the smoke from the
torches and lamps, but I could not bring myself to move. It was all my fault. I had failed in the only thing Mother had asked me to do. My heart slowed down, as if it wanted to stop beating completely out of shame and fear.

“We can sell these young ones for a good price. It’s easy to prepare them for the whorehouses. I know many a merchant who would gladly buy the whole lot.” The fingerless man smacked his lips and poked his dagger into the alcove. “I can begin teaching them myself, on the sail home. Girls this young are so much more submissive. More tender.”

“Go away!” said Heo again. “The Goddess will punish you. Can’t you feel that she is already here?” The men laughed. But I could feel it. The Crone was breathing so heavily from the alcoves and the corners it was hard to believe the men could not hear her.
Maresi
, she whispered.
My hunger
. I pressed my hands over my mouth to stop myself from screaming.

The fingerless man handed his torch over, stuck a coarse hand into the alcove and dragged Heo out. He pulled her up onto her feet in front of him, holding her skinny little arms in a tight grasp. I saw her slender neck and bare little feet. I saw his heavy hand press between her legs.

Then I forced myself to move. By Goddess, it was difficult. I was so terrified. My shame in writing this now is just as great as my terror was then. Shame that I could not even rush forward to help Heo when I saw that she was in danger. It was a painstaking process as I slowly forced myself to crawl through the hole in the door. My legs could barely hold me up. I was still pressing my hand over my mouth. Heo was screaming now, but I was still walking as though through thick clay. I was so scared of the men’s sharp weapons. They caught sight of me, pointed their weapons at me, opened their dark mouths and bellowed. Then I saw it: the Crone’s silver door. It appeared in the stone wall to my right as if it had always been there. As vivid and real as any other door on the island. Worn around the edges. A handle polished by time. A door which divided the world into inside and outside, like all doors. Still closed, still separating our world from the realm and the hunger of the Crone.

Maresi
, whispered the Crone as I walked towards the fingerless man.
Maresi
, she called as he pushed Heo aside and plunged the dagger into my belly. As my blood ran down the blade, it mixed with the blood of the Rose and Mother: the first and second
aspects of the Goddess. They were the beginning and I was the end. The Crone’s voice grew stronger. It filled me until I barely heard Heo’s screams. I collapsed and landed in the Crone’s shadows. While I crawled towards the door she whispered and told me her true name. I slipped and I slithered along the wet stone floor. My hands were red with my own blood. The Crone’s shadows were caressing me, pulling me in. I stretched towards the door handle but could not reach it. I had to get up. I leant against the wall with one hand pressed over my wound.
Give me what belongs to me
, hissed the Goddess of darkness and pain, and I obeyed her and opened her door.

The darkness on the other side was blacker than anything in this world, so black it blinded me. I fell to my knees with my mouth full of blood, unable to see. But I could hear.

The Crone extended her power through the door and accepted the sacrifice of those who had wandered into her crypt. One by one they hit the stone floor like rag dolls, and I heard cries, screams and the cracking of bones. They screamed in horror as soon as they realized they were facing their own deaths. Their terror filled the whole crypt. The air soured with the smell of intestines and faeces. Torches hissed
as they were extinguished on the wet, bloody floor. The Crone crushed them like the vermin they were.

My own blood was flowing between my fingers and down on the ground in front of the door, and I knew it was my blood that was holding it open. I fought against unconsciousness and the terrible pain which was threatening to drag me down into the darkness. I had to do this final thing for my little sisters. For the Crone.

The Crone opened her jaws and I could feel her sour breath on my cheek. She took a deep breath and sucked the men to her, one after another. They screamed as they smacked down on the stone floor, still alive. She wanted them alive and whole, she wanted their bodies and souls. She wanted no remains left to bury. Complete obliteration. I could smell them, the smell of sweat and steel and blood. Some reached for me as they tried to stop their mutilated bodies from being sucked through the door, but the men’s fingers were nothing against the power of the Crone. Once they were through the door and confronted with the silence inside, their screams were cut off abruptly.

When it was completely quiet in the crypt I finally let myself collapse to the floor. Now it was done. Now it was only me and the Crone. Now it was my turn.

Maresi. You belong to me. Can you see that now?

I could not answer. My voice was gone. I lay on the threshold to her realm and knew that what she said was true. That is why I had never been called to any house. She had already marked me and chosen me in the hunger winter. I was hers.

Come to me and you will not suffer any more,
she said in a tender, maternal tone. For the Crone and the Mother and the Maiden are one, they are only different aspects of the Goddess.
Come here where everything begins and ends, where everything dies and is born anew. You value knowledge more than anything. The ultimate knowledge is here. Everything you have ever wished for. Come to me.

I knew that she had the power to force me. But she was not forcing, she was asking.

Someone grabbed my hand, and I clung to it hard as the darkness fell.

S
OMETIMES
I
THINK
I
CHOSE THE
cowardly way out. The right thing to do, the braver thing, would have been to go through the door and see what was on the other side. The Crone was offering me knowledge beyond my wildest dreams. Knowledge I will never have in this world. I am curious. More than curious, sometimes it keeps me awake at night and I physically ache with yearning. But I did not have the courage. I want to stay here in this world as long as I possibly can. I want to live amongst books and goats and wind and nadum bread. I want to grow up to see what the world has to offer me and what I have to offer the world. I am not finished with it, not yet.

The first thing I saw when I woke up was Jai. Her pale face framed by golden hair. The rings under her eyes were darker than ever before, and darkness still
inhabited my vision which made it difficult to see. My body felt lifeless, as though it were still sleeping while my mind was awake. I tried to speak but my tongue was too dry.

“Praise Mother,” whispered Jai. “You are still with us. Here, wet your lips, but you mustn’t drink anything yet.”

She held a cup of cool water to my mouth. It was difficult to resist gulping it all down immediately, but I wet my lips and tongue and enjoyed the slight relief it afforded me.

“I will get Sister Nar,” she said and got up.

“Wait.” My voice was so weak I could hardly hear myself, but Jai stopped. “First tell me what happened.”

Jai smiled one of her rare smiles. “Now I know you are on the mend. You are already asking questions.” She adjusted my blanket, but I felt so detached from my body I could barely sense where it lay over my chest. Jai saw the worry in my eyes and her smile disappeared.

“Sister Nar has given you strong tranquillizing herbs to lessen the pain while your body heals itself. It is a serious, deep wound you have got in your belly. You have had a fever.” She fiddled with something
on the table next to my bed. “We have been… we thought you would leave us.”

I wanted to ask how long I had been lying there, but it was too many words to get out. Jai saw the question in my eyes anyway.

“You have been here in Sister Nar’s room for three days. And she says you will have to stay a while yet.”

Something moved underneath my bed. A little black head popped up and squinted at me. “Maresi! You are awake!”

“Ssh, not so loud. Maresi wants some answers before Sister Nar comes.” Jai turned to me. “Heo has been sleeping on the floor by your bed the whole time.”

“Well I couldn’t leave you,” said Heo, and took hold of my hand. I winced, remembering how I had left her. Heo pulled her hand away at once.

“Did that hurt?”

I forced myself to smile. “No. Please hold. Good.”

Heo smiled with relief and held my hand extremely carefully. I recognized the feeling of her fingers around mine.

“You held me,” I said. My words were strained and grating. “In the crypt.”

Heo nodded earnestly. “Yes. When the man stabbed you a huge darkness came. The girls hid in
the alcove, and all the men screamed and screamed and it was terrible. You were lying on the floor and there was so much blood, Maresi. I was so scared. I held you because I was afraid you were going to die.”

“You saved me,” I said. “You kept me here.”

Heo said nothing and just squeezed my hand. I think she already knew she had saved my life. I believe that girl knows more than people think, in between all her chatter.

I looked at Jai. The next question was the hardest.

“Everyone… is everyone…”

“Yes. Everyone is alive, Maresi. Including the Rose, though she has been wounded. There were three men guarding the Temple who did not go down into the crypt. When they heard the screams, and then when the other men never returned, my uncle and Vinjan soon led them back to the ship and they sailed away. I released the sisters and novices.”

“Then they came down to the crypt,” said Heo, “and fetched Ismi and the others. Sister Nar dressed your wounds and we carried you here.”

“Heo, I am sorry. I never should have—”

“Hush, Maresi,” Heo said in a strict voice, almost like Sister O. “You did the right thing. You always did what you thought best.”

“That is more than you could say about me,” said Jai bitterly. “I should have given myself up straight away and none of this would have happened.”

“Well then you’d have sailed north by now,” said Heo.

I looked at Jai and she nodded. “Yes, I told them what I did. About my father’s death. I could not live with such a terrible secret.”

“No one blames her,” said Heo emphatically. “Mother says she would have done the same if she could have.”

I wanted to ask more but the tranquillizer started to slip away, and as I came back to my body I felt such indescribable pain that I could not speak. Jai went pale and ran off to get Sister Nar, who came at once with a compress and some decoctions, and I sank back into a deep, dreamless sleep.

A
S
I
GRADUALLY GREW STRONGER
I started drinking water, then eating and receiving visits. First my friends came to see me: Ennike, Dori, Toulan and Cissil. I was even happy to see Joem. They entertained me with stories and jokes which made my scars ache when I tried not to laugh. I had time to myself as well. Time to lie in bed and think. There was a lot to think about. A decision started forming in my head, a decision I did not want to face up to. I knew the right thing to do. But I did not know if I would be brave enough to follow it through. There were many nights when I could not sleep for the pain, and I spent the time grappling with my conscience while the moon gazed at me through the window.

Sister Nar kept a watchful eye over me. At some point she must have decided that my health was returning, because I woke up one morning with
Mother standing by my bed. Sister O was behind her, with a straight back and an unreadable expression on her face. I wanted her to sit on the edge of my bed and stroke my hair, but she stayed behind Mother.

“Maresi. Sister Nar says that you are feeling better,” said Mother.

I tried to sit up in bed. “Yes, much better. I do not need herbs to dull the pain any more and I can eat liquid food.”

“No need to get up.” She pulled a chair up to my bed and sat down. “Can you tell us what happened in the crypt?”

“The Crone was there.” I stopped to think where to begin and Mother nodded encouragingly. “I saw her door during Moon Dance. She called to me. I recognized her door, I had seen it at home when my little sister died. The winter when we were all starving. I was scared. I thought she wanted to take me.” I shook my head. “I misunderstood. After that I was living in fear, I heard her voice everywhere, I was scared that she would come and get me. When the men came I could sense the door again. It was here on the island, it was waiting. I thought it meant I was going to die.”

I looked to Sister O, seeking comfort, but she gazed fixedly at me with tightly pressed lips. I looked away.

“When I heard the men shouting that they had found the crypt I thought about the little girls alone in there. I ran down through the entrance that the Crone herself had shown me. Her door was there and I knew I had to open it to satisfy her hunger. She had chosen me, not to die, but to open her realm.”

“Did she call to you?” asked Sister O. “Did she command you to follow the men through the door?”

I shook my head. “No. She asked me to come, but she did not command me.”

Mother exchanged a glance with Sister O before turning back to me.

“Maresi. You have been in the Abbey for a long time but you do not have a house. I have wondered why nobody has called you. But now I see that you have found your calling.” She leant forward.

Here it comes, I thought. She was going to ask me to become her novice. I knew what my answer must be, but I did not know how I could say it.

“The Crone has vast knowledge,” she continued. “Some of which can be seen from the outside, but there is much that is hidden too. Concealed from
most people. That is why her servant also works in secret.” She turned to Sister O.

Suddenly I understood. The snake on Sister O’s door. Her affinity with books and knowledge, everything associated with the Crone. She met my gaze but still said nothing. Mother continued.

“Sister O is not a name. It is a title, just as the servant to the Rose is a title, passed down from sister to novice. The O is the eternal circle, the snake biting its tail.” Mother drew a circle in the air with one finger and I could almost see the snake in front of me, with blank black eyes and its tail in its mouth. “Sister O serves the secrets of the Crone. Secrets which the Crone has now revealed to you.”

My heart began to race.

“Maresi.” Sister O’s voice was rougher than ever. Deep and raspy, like the voice of the Crone. “My mistress has called you. She has not commanded, but asked. Now I will do the same. Would you like to be my novice?”

I burst into tears. I cried so hard my body convulsed, tears and snot ran down my face and I could barely breathe. Mother was at a loss, but Sister O came straight to my side, sat on my bed and held me and stroked my hair.

“There, there, little one. Do not worry. Tell us what is weighing on you, my Maresi.”

When I could finally speak, every single word pained me even more than the wound in my belly. I clutched Sister O tight and sobbed into her breast.

“There is nothing I want more, Sister. It is like a dream I did not even dare think possible. To be your novice and learn everything you know, and stay in the treasure chamber and read as much as I want…” Sister O chuckled quietly and gave me a little squeeze. “But I have to say no. I…” The words refused to come out. She would be angry. She would be disappointed in me. I spoke as fast as I could, pouring out all the words before I could change my mind.

“This is the dearest place to me on earth. I cannot think of anything more wonderful than spending my whole life here studying and reading and teaching. But it would not be right. Sister O, we cannot shut out the world. It affects us, even here. It would be selfish of me to stay here where I am safe, when I could use everything you have taught me to do a lot of good. The people in my homeland are ruled by superstition and ignorance. A fraction of what I have learnt here could save people dying from starvation and disease. It could change how women and men
see themselves and each other; it could open up a new window to the wider world. I must go home again and see what I can do for my people.”

Sister O and Mother listened to me in silence. Then Mother leant back in her chair. “The Crone has given you great wisdom for one so young.”

Sister O turned to Mother almost angrily. “But her courage is entirely her own!”