“Humph!” said Sister Gaillarde. “It would be a mercy if some folks weren’t. And if one or two of us had a trifle more self-assertion, perhaps some others would have less.”
“Have I too much self-assertion, Sister?” I said, feeling sorry it should be thus plain to all my Sisters. “I will really—”
Sister Gaillarde patted me on the shoulder with her grimmest smile.
“You will really spoil every body you come near!” said she. “Go your ways, Sister Annora, and leave the wasps in the garden a-be.”
“Why, I do,” said I, “without they sting me.”
“Exactly!” said Sister Gaillarde, laughing, and away. I know not what she meant.
Mother Joan is something troubled with her eyes, and the leech thinks it best she should no longer be over the illumination-room, but be set to some manner of work that will try the sight less. So I am appointed thereto in her stead. I cannot say I am sorry, for I shall see more of Joan, since in this chamber she passes three mornings of a week. I mean my child Joan, for verily she is the child of mine heart. And my very soul yearns over her, for Sister though I be, I cannot help the thought that had it not been for Queen Isabel’s unjust dealing, I should have been her mother. May the good Lord forgive me, if it be sin! I know now, that those deep grey eyes of hers, with the long black lashes, which stirred mine heart so strangely when she first came hither, are the eyes of my lost love. I knew in myself that I had known such eyes aforetime, but it seemed to be long, long ago, as though in another world. Much hath Joan told me of him; and all I hear sets him before me as man worthy of the best love of a good woman’s heart, and whom mine heart did no wrong to in its enduring love. And I am coming to think—seeing, as it were, dimly, through a mist—that such love is not sin, neither disgrace, even in the heart of a maid devoted unto God. For He knoweth that I put Him first: and take His ordering of my life, as being His, not only as just and holy, but as the best lot for me, and that which shall be most to His glory and mine own true welfare. I say not this openly, nor unto such as should be likely to misconceive me. There are some to whose pure and devoted souls all things indifferent are pure; and they are they that shall see God. And man saith that in the world there are some also, unto whose vile and corrupt hearts all things indifferent are impure; and maybe not in the world only, but by times even in the cloister. So I feel that some might misread my meaning, and take ill advantage thereof; and I keep my thoughts to myself, and to God. I never ask Joan one question touching him of whom I treasure every bye-note that she uttereth. Yet I know not how it is, but she seems to love to tell me of him. Is it by reason she hath loved, that her heart hath eyes to see into mine?
Not much doth Joan say of her mother to me: I think she names her more to others. Methinks I see what she was—a good woman as women go (and some of them go ill), with a little surface cleverness, that she reckoned to run deeper than it did, and inclined to despise her lord by reason his wit lay further down, and came not up in glittering bubbles to the top. I dare reckon she looked well to his bodily comforts and such, and was a better wife than he might have had: very likely, a better than poor Alianora La Despenser would have made, had God ordered it thus. Methinks, from all I hear, that he hath passed behind the jasper walls: and I pray God I may meet him there. They wed not, nor be given in marriage, being equal unto the angels: but surely the angels love.
Strange talk it was that Joan held with me yesterday. I marvel what it may portend. She says, of late years many priests have put forth writings, wherein they say that the Church is greatly fallen away from the verity of Scripture, and that all through the ages good men have said the same (as was the case with the blessed Robert de Grosteste, Bishop of Lincoln, over two hundred years gone, and with the holy Thomas de Bradwardine, Archbishop of Canterbury, and with Richard Rolle, the hermit of Hampole, whose holy meditations on the Psalter are in our library, and I have oft read therein): but now is there further stir, as though some reforming of the Church should arise, such as Bishop Grosteste did earnestly desire. Joan says her lord is earnest for these new opinions, and eager to promote them: and that he saith that both in the Church and in matters politic, men sleep and nap for a season, during which slow decay goes on apace, and then all at once do they wake up, and set to work to mend matters. During the reign of this present King, saith he, the world and the Church have had a long nap; and now are they just awake, and looking round to see how matters are all over dust and ivy, which lack cleansing away. Divers, both clerks and laymen, are thus bestirring themselves: the foremost of whom is my Lord of Lancaster, the King’s son (John of Gaunt), among the lay folk, and among the clergy, one Father Wycliffe (Note 1), that was head of a College at Oxenford, and is now Rector of Lutterworth in Leicestershire. He saith (that is, Father Wycliffe) that all things are thus gone to corruption by reason of lack of the salt preservative to be found in Holy Scripture. Many years back, did King Alfred our forefather set forth much of the said Scriptures in the English tongue; as much, indeed, as he had time, for his death hindered it, else had all the holy hooks been rendered into our English tongue. But now, by reason of years, the English that was in his day is gone clean out of mind, and man cannot understand the same: so there is great need for another rendering that man may understand now. And this Father Wycliffe hopes to effect, if God grant him grace. But truly, some marvellous strange notions hath he. Joan says he would fain do away with all endowing of the Church, saying that our Lord and the Apostles had no such provision: but was that by reason it was right, or because of the hardness of men’s hearts? Surely the holy women that ministered to Him of their substance did well, not ill. Moreover, he would have all monkery done away, yea, clean out of the realm, and he hath mighty hard names for monks, especially the Mendicant Friars: yet of nuns was he never heard to speak an unkindly word. Strange matter, in good sooth! it nearly takes away my breath but to hear tell of it. But when he saith that the Pope should have no right nor power in this realm of England, that is but what the Church of England hath alway held: Bishop Grosteste did as fervently abhor the Pope’s power—“Egyptian bondage” was his word for it. Much has this Father also to say against simony: and he would have no private confession to a priest (verily, this would I gladly see abolished), nor indulgences, nor letters of fraternity, nor pilgrimages, nor guilds: and he sets his face against the new fashion of singing mass (intoning, then a new invention), and the use of incense in the churches. But strangest of all is it to hear of his inveighing against the doctrine of the Church that the sacred host is God’s Body. It is so, saith he, in figure, and Christ’s Body is not eaten of men save ghostly and morally. And to eat Christ ghostly is to have mind of Him, how kindly He suffered for man, which is ghostly meat to the soul. (Arnold’s English Works of Wycliffe, Volume 2, pages 93, 112.)
Here is new doctrine! Yet Father Wycliffe, I hear, saith this is the old doctrine of the Apostles themselves, and that the contrary is the new, having never (saith he) been heard of before the time of one Radbert, who did first set it forth five hundred years ago (in 787): and after that it slumbered—being then condemned of the holy doctors—till the year of our Lord God 1215, when the Pope that then was forced it on the Church. Strange matter this! I know not what to think.