The Abbess cleared her throat. “My daughter, we are women—”
But Ermengarde was not comforted by that.
The six nuns plied their needles. The blue, the green, the scarlet went into the long, narrow web. The linden flowers sent out a sweet odour; the multitude of bees shaped a sound as continuous as a fountain. The sunshine through the leaves made a net of gold. The Abbess Rothalind turned the gold thread in her fingers.
She was moved—the stitching nuns were moved. Because law and custom were what they were, it was true enough that Ermengarde might very soon be put to death as harlot and poisoner. And none in the garden believed in their heart that she was such. That perception had somehow to be squared with the time’s belief as to the manifested “judgment of God.” As it would take great trouble to square the two, they were able simply to decline the trouble. If Ermengarde’s cause met defeat, they and all people must say, under penalty of sin, that she was justly doomed and punished. But already was in use with them and all folk the Mental Reservation—though it was not capitalized and was given a hidden cell up a winding twilight stair. At the moment, it was allowable still to believe that Ermengarde might find a champion and that the champion might slay Torismond.
The Abbess pushed aside the gold thread and coloured silk cope and talked. It was always a relief to her to talk and not to listen, though she had that self-control that she could listen by the hour if that better served her plans. “Freedom, my daughters, is in the nunnery—” The bees hummed in the linden tree, hummed and hummed.
Her homily drew to a close. “At the World’s End, how well then to be found in the shade, in the fold, about the knees of Blessed Thorn!”
Cried one of her nuns, a favourite and a bell for the thought of the others: “Reverend Mother, it grows that we cannot sleep at night for thinking that the End of the World is nigh—and how we shall meet it—”
The Abbess threaded her needle with gold thread. “It is just, my daughter, that ‘how shall we meet it?’ which makes so excellent a broom of this news of the End of the World—”
A lay sister came to the garden door and with her the soothsayer gathered yesterday from the heath.
The Abbess nodded. “Come, you, and tell us what you know! Soothsaying is an idle thing, but like a sandalwood box or a curious flower it passes the moment!”