The novice gave a curt, low laugh. The reproofs of a year rankled in her like bitter herbs.
“Let the dead bury their dead,” quoth she. “I am for life and the living.”
“Shame, shame!” came the ready response. “May the Mother of Mercy melt your proud heart, and punish you for your sins. You are bad to the core.”
“Shame or no shame,” said the girl, “my heart can grieve for death as well as thine, Sister Claudia; and now the abbey’s burnt, you may couch here and scold till dawn if you will. You may scold the heathen when they come to butcher you all. I warrant they will give such a beauty short shrift.”
The lean nun ventured no answer. She had been worsted before by this rebellious tongue, and had discovered expediency in silence. Several of the women had risen, and were thronging round the novice Igraine, querulous and fearful. Implicit faith, though pious and admirable in the extreme, neither pointed a path nor provided a lantern. Southwards lay the sea and the barbarians; the purlieus of Andredswold came down to touch the ocean. There was night in the sky; no refuge within miles, and wild folk enough in the world to make travelling sufficiently perilous. Moreover, the day’s deed had harried the women’s emotions into a condition of vibrating panic. The unknown seemed to hem them in, to smother as with a cloak. They were like children who fear to stir in the dark, and shrink from impalpable nothingness as though a strange hand waited to grip them to some spiritual torture. As it was, they were fluttering among the pines like birds who fear the falcon.
“It grows dark,” said one.
“Let Claudia pray for us.”
“Igraine, you are wiser in the world than we!”
“Truth,” said the girl, “you may bide and snivel with Claudia if you will. I am for Anderida through the woods.”