Tate lifted a shoulder.“At Thornchurch, we don’t make those kinds of distinctions.So when I came here, it made sense to me.Sacred things should be held apart, yes.That’s what makes them special and not ordinary.But I do not think it helps anyone to pretend away their bodies.They are what we live with, know God with.”
She wouldn’t get any disagreement from Adelais, who thought chastity was ridiculous.Only women were made to honor it—even in the clergy—and in any event, it seemed an unfair price to pay for someone who might want the other gifts a religious life had to offer: literacy, community, escape.God.
“But it’s not just sex,” Tate went on.“At Far Hope, everyone is welcome.To love how they wish and who they wish.Like how King Edward came here because it was the only place he could be with the man he loved.”
“I’m living proof that someone doesn’t have to go to an abbey to fuck who they want,” Adelais said bluntly.She had to be careful, yes, and creative, but if she wanted a woman and that woman wanted her back, then she made it happen.
“It’s not just about fucking,” Tate said, voice low.“It’s about being.You can be who you need to be at Far Hope.Any version of yourself.That is what blesses.That is what heals.Not the sex on its own, but the freedom of self that comes with it.The joy of seeing someone else in their freedom of self.”Her eyes met Adelais’s again, and they were softer than her voice.Shining with something that made Adelais’s throat hurt to look at.“You would not have to choose, Adelais, for any other reason than yourself.You could be any Adelais you wanted here.Every Adelais.Far Hope would welcome them all because God loves them all.”
Adelais’s eyelids stung.It was such a simple thing to hear, and yet in thirty years she’d never heard it.All of her—messy, restless, never happy as only one self—could be held in one place.Not only held, but loved.
If Tate believed God could do that, that it was the point of God’s people to love like that…well, then maybe Adelais could understand why Tate loved her god so much.
“You told me you were looking for a treasure here,” Tate went on, looking up at the starred ceiling and then back to Adelais.“And that’s it.That’s the treasure.That is the gift that King Alfred found among the people here and the gift he wanted to keep alive.”An exhale.“A gift that I think is dying, despite his efforts.”
Adelais understood.She understood now.The treasure wasn’t something that could be picked up and carried off, that could beowned.Whatever happened here under the sparkling ceiling of the cave could only happen here, and after it happened, it lived on inside you.She remembered King Henri’s voice when he’d talked about Far Hope, how he’d sounded haunted to her young ears.
But perhaps he hadn’t been haunted at all…but morealive, more incarnated, for remembering his time here.
Adelais looked down at her boots.The floor was level and smooth, although undoubtedly still the floor of a cave.“I don’t like the idea of Far Hope dying, now that I know what it means to you.Now that I’ve finally found it.”
“It would be easy to blame the Normans, but maybe it was always going to happen,” Tate said.She sounded tired.“It gets harder and harder to find new sisters every year, and every reformer with a shred of power has a mind to purge us from the church, either because they know what Far Hope is, or because they’ve heard warped versions of the truth and imagine us worshipping Bacchus and whipping each other with fresh goat hides.Even without William, this day would come.”She rubbed her forehead.“I think Mother Ardith was right about Far Hope not lasting.About needing someone to do what others couldn’t.Which is admit defeat.”
Defeat.This same woman who strode into a Norman camp with nothing but her wimple and her courage to gird her, this same woman who played the game in the dark with Adelais, a game that asked for nothing less than raw honesty and utter trust.This same woman who’d somehow held this war-battered abbey together with her teeth when all she wanted to do was pray away her imagined crime.
That woman was talking about defeat, and Adelais couldn’t stand it, couldn’t bear the idea of the quiet but unbending strength inside Tate yielding now.
Because that quietstrength—thatwas piety.Thatwas holiness.Not fasting or flagellation with their visible dramas, not abnegation where everyone else could see, but holding fast and holding firm when nothing else felt certain, when the way was hard and cold and stark.
Standing anchored in belief like a rock in the sea while the tides swelled and crashed around you.
Adelais had wondered that first night if Tate was truly pious, and now she had her answer: Tate was pious, and more besides.She had courage like a soldier and calmness like a king.Passion like a saint, and humility like a martyr.
That piety made Adelais’s shame from earlier burn all the brighter, and it was mingled with sharp obsession, with memories of Tate arching so prettily underneath her, her thighs soft and silky as they parted for her.Memories of those green eyes, that fascinating mouth.
The nun had pricked Adelais’s curiosity at first, had intrigued her, but the more Adelais saw of Tate, the more her obsession had grown, grown into something that Adelais couldn’t…that she couldn’t name.She couldn’t even trace the far edges of thatsomething, except to know that she wanted Tate in her future like she’d never wanted anything else.Not even Far Hope.
Adelais wanted tokeepthis strong, pious, fascinating nun; she wanted to be near her and with her and entangled with her for as long as she drew breath.But shimmering under that urge to have and to keep, to make sure that Tate was safe and strong and given everything she ever wanted, was the ugly, honest fear of Tate learning the truth of why Adelais was here.
Because once Tate learned that her abbey’s fate had already been decided…
Adelais didn’t know what to do with that fear, or even what it meant that the idea of hurting Tate, and of Tate knowing that it had been Adelais to hurt her, was the most frightening thing she’d faced since joining William’s war.
But Adelais had only ever reacted one way to fear, and so she stepped forward and touched the abbess’s hand.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” she said.“About why I came here.”
Tate looked at her expectantly, and Adelais braced herself, needing more courage than she’d ever needed before.
She took a breath.“William wants me to?—”
A clatter of footsteps on the stone stairs.Adelais looked up to see a sister with light bronze skin and flushed cheeks emerge into the chamber.“Someone’s pounding at the gates,” the nun said urgently.“Threatening to burn the walls down.”
Tate gave Adelais a sharp look.“Are these your men, oh Wolf?”
At the name, the other sister slid a gaze over to Adelais.There was shock in her face, bitterness around her mouth, as she seemed to realize who Adelais was.“It’s the Duke of Normandy himself,” the sister said to Tate, looking away from Adelais pointedly now.“And he says he’s here to see the new mistress of these lands.”
“Me?”Tate asked in a faint voice.
