“What happened afterwards I will tell you as it was told to me by Thomas Key, who waited for her outside the gate. They passed along the dark, deserted streets. The plague-fires burnt low in the middle of the roadway, but there were none to tend them, and no living thing they saw but the starving dogs, herded at barred doors. They crossed the bridge and mounted to St Peter’s church. The priest’s manse—you know it—is a low house next the church. A white rose, still in flower, clambered on its walls, and, half hidden by its sprays, a taper gleamed through the open window; but there was no sound of life within. They pushed open the door and entered.
“Stretched on his pallet, forsaken and untended, lay the young priest of St Peter’s, the pangs of death upon him. Margery threw herself on her knees by his bed-side, and Thomas watched and waited. For a time there was silence, for Margery had no voice to pray. Only at times the dying man grumbled and wandered in his talk; but little he said that Thomas understood.
“Then after a long time, he stirred himself uneasily and uttered one word, ‘Margery.’ And she—alas the day!—put out her arm and laid it on his shoulder. In an instant the dying man half raised himself on his bed and turned his eyes on her, and there was recognition in them. And one arm he threw about her neck, and felt blindly for the fair locks that had been shorn long since, and he said heavily and painfully, ‘Margery, belle amie, let us go to the pool above the mill, where the great pike lie, and sun and shadow lie on the deep water.’ So Thomas knew that they were boy and girl again by the old mill at Trumpington.
“That was all, and the end came soon. They two laid him decently beneath his white sheet, and Margery plucked two white roses from the spray that straggled across his window, and laid them on the dead man’s breast. So they left him, with the candle still burning out into the dark.
“There was a horrible dread in St Radegund’s when, four days later, sister Margery sickened of the pestilence; and it was worse when we learnt soon after that Thomas Key was visited—then that he was dead. That was the beginning of our sorrows. You have heard, Lady Prioress, how three sisters died before August was out, how most of the others deserted the house, and some never returned to it. Our prayers were unheard, and to us who remained it seemed as if the saints slept, or God were dead.
“So it happened that when the plague abated, and the first meeting was held in St Radegund’s Chapter-house, about St Luke’s day in the autumn, there were only three to attend it—the Prioress, the Sacrist (Emma Denton), and Margery Cailly. For—wonderful it seems—Margery, who least needed to live, was the one spared of those who were taken with the pestilence. Presently some old sisters returned, and new ones took the place of the departed. But the sword of the pestilence cut off the memory of the old days, and the sins and sufferings, the virtues and the victories of the former sisterhood were a forgotten dream when the cloister filled again. So when Emma Denton passed into her lethargy, and Margery Cailly earnestly petitioned to fill her place in the Sacristy, there was not a sister to question her character and devoutness.
“Not yesterday, but forty years ago, Margery Cailly passed out of life; for you know that, save to me, she has spoken few words since. And though I have waited on her for most of those years she never breathed to me the name of Nicholas De Frevile, never hinted at the story of her unhappy girlhood. But once in the springtime, just after she entered her Sacrist prison-house, she entreated me to plant a white rose-bush on the grave of the young priest of St Peter’s. I did so, and have renewed it since, and one day, by your grace, I shall plant a spray of the same roses where she lies apart from him. I have confessed my wrong in stealing the key and bringing death into the cloister. If you can forgive me, so; if not, all I ask is that you let your sinful servant depart in peace.”
There is a curious aperture in the outer northern wall of the chancel of the nuns’ church which is now Jesus College Chapel. If it is examined its purpose is evident. It was the lychnoscope, through which the Sacrist watched by night the light before the High Altar. It is the sole abiding memorial of Margery Cailly, Sacrist of St Radegund.