Elden shut the door behind him. Maeve shut her eyes, lifting one hand to her chest to feel the movement of her breath. It didn’t matter if she was wanted here. Didn’t matter if she was liked. What mattered was the Abbey. Her tasks. Her icon.
She moved her hand up to cup her throat. No matter how practised she was in the motion, swallowing her desires never came any easier.
9
Maeve
The following days bled quickly from one to the next, and Maeve had yet to see Jude.
She’d caught glimpses of him. Remnants, like a smudge of ash after a fire. The edge of a black coat trailing around a corner. A half-finished cup of tea, still warm. His mud-covered boots left in a heap by the door. She told herself it didn’t matter that he was avoiding her. It was the end of the week. He’d promised to show for his first sitting. She’d get her share of observing him then.
And observe him, she would.
She’d slept later than normal that morning. The small black cat, Olive, as she’d learned, had made a home curled at the foot of the quilt. She’d found a tray with slightly burnt toast, gooseberry jam, and cold tea waiting outside her door. Elden, no doubt.
Writing her initial letter to Ezra hadn’t taken long. She didn’t have much to report back yet besides the information she’d gleaned from Elden and her assurance that she was starting Jude’s icon straight away. She added a few sentences detailing her journey and how she was settling in despite a small part of her whispering that Ezra would probably skip those parts, so why bother? She’d yet to sign it, hoping she’d have more to add after Jude’s first sitting.
She’d spent the majority of her first week doing her best to search the house, partly to look for information and partly fora room to use as a studio. To her frustration, she’d only found one nearly empty room on the first floor that was unlocked, next to the mysterious door Jude had found her kneeling beside.
Inside, she’d pressed down on all the floorboards, picked at a loose curl of wallpaper, and examined every inch of skirting. There had been nothing more interesting than a child’s worn rabbit toy tucked into the corner and a series of scratches on the windowsill that looked like words scrawled out. It was just her, a three-legged stool, and her paints.
Maeve placed her hand on the cold glass of the lone window. A band in her chest slowly loosened at the view before her. A stream cut steadily through two windswept hills, a lonesome oak silhouetted against the steel-grey sky. A formation of birds high above.
The cramped confines of the Abbey had always choked her, as much as she hated to admit it. She needed the cool air to ghost her skin unencumbered. It nurtured a certain wildness that all her years in the Abbey hadn’t quite managed to stamp out.
Typical that she’d find that need for freedom satedhereof all places.
She straightened her row of brushes on the windowsill as she waited. She’d completed dozens of paintings over the years. Most with little more than a short description.
Yet, the prospect of painting Jude seemed impossible.
A vindictive part of her wanted to paint him as some hideous beast rather than a man. Another pettier side of her wanted to paint himjustoff enough to make him doubt his appearance. Perhaps if she made him believe his outward looks matched the prickliness he’d shown her so far, she’d finally be satisfied.
Maeve sighed, pulling back from the glass. Her hand left a fogged print behind, fading more with each passing second. It had taken her longer to set up the makeshift studio than she imagined. Nightfall wasn’t far off, and still no Jude. The light was starting to fade from the hills, ushering in a bruised purple dusk, highlighted with the deepest ochre.
The sight made her ache. A deep yearning for something she didn’t have words for.
Maeve wondered if she was homesick.
She didn’t like it here, didn’t enjoy the unsettled feeling Jude’s home forced upon her. She missed her room back at the Abbey, with all its familiar corners and smell of sea-soaked lavender. Perhaps that was what homesickness was – an itching desperation to return to steadier ground.
When she had left, she hadn’t had time to consider how she would feel to be so far away from Ezra and the Abbey. It was like losing the heavy weight of a collar around her throat. Freeing, somewhat, but frightening. As though she could stumble at any moment.
She leaned her forehead back against the glass. It was time to face reality – Jude wasn’t coming. She doubted he ever planned to.
A secret part of her was glad. She didn’t want a repeat of whatever strange force had gripped her the last time she’d picked up a paintbrush. The buzzing in her skull, the liquid slip of time and memory… had it truly been Felix’s magic at work? Was Jude capable of doing the same?
She considered the differences between Felix and the saint she’d been sent to paint. Was it blasphemous that she couldn’t picture Jude as the saint he was? That maybe he wasn’t so special after all?
Maeve shoved the thought from her head, feeling sick. She could not allow herself to harbour such thoughts, such doubts. Whatever had happened with her painting had been Felix alone. Felix the saint, with power too great for her to understand, its glory unknowable to an acolyte like her. Who was she to doubt how it worked? Who was she to claim blasphemy?
She pushed off the window and stumbled to her knees. Her breaths came in frantic pants as she shuffled forward until her bag was within reach. There was only one way to find the comfortshe was so desperate for. Only one way to repent. She fished out one of her coin-like icons from her bag and held it to her lips, closing her eyes. The tattered edges of her heart chafed with guilt.
It’s natural to question, Maeve told herself.As long as it goes no further than questions.
Picturing Felix’s face, she asked for clarity. For peace of mind to finish her task and return home. To avoid the temptation to allow her questions to develop into doubts. To trust inhim. In the Abbey, in Ezra and all the saints.
Almostall the saints.
