“Woman, the noise of your misdeeds has filled all Christendom. The Holy Father has decreed the breaking of the abbey of Holy Guard.”
“These are false words.”
The man ignored the Abbess’s straining lips and upraised cross. His eyes were searching the faces of those who thronged the altar, white and mute, carven as out of stone.
“Rise, women, we command you.”
Some obeyed him, others hesitated. Joan the Abbess still stood before the altar with a few of the women huddling about her feet. The man in the green cloak pointed towards her with his sword.
“Take her hence, sirs,” he said. “Let her not cheat you with that cross of hers.”
There was some scuffling, some screaming, as in a dovecot where a hawk has entered. The Abbess calmed the scene by sudden surrender to the tyranny of the hour. She put the men from her, folded the crucifix over her breast, passed down from the altar towards the door. Her women gathered at her heels like sheep, thronging betwixt the line of torches and the glistening helms.
The man in the hood of sables suffered them to pass before him one by one, staring hard into each frightened face. At each motion of his sword the soldiers let a woman through, and they passed singly from the flare of the torches into the night.
The last woman had drawn her hood down over her face. She was taller than her fellows, and moved with more stateliness, a more youthful grace. At a sign one of the soldiers tossed back her hood and uncovered the face of Rosamunde of Joyous Vale, dead Ronan’s wife.
The man in the green cloak made a gesture with his sword. The soldiers herded to the entry, passed out from the chapel, and closed the creaking door. The torchlight flickered in through the lattices; vague cries pierced the clamour of the storm; the wind screamed, the sea surges thundered against the rock.