“Twenty-five,” the nun answered in flawless Norman.
Fascinating.Adelais had met a handful of diplomats and courtiers with passable Norman—since the reign of Aethelred, the English court had been connected by marriage to Normandy, with plenty of family and trade ties knotting the two shores together—but it was remarkable to find someone so far from London or Canterbury able to speak it fluently.
It was also fascinating that the nun hadn’t elaborated on her unusual age for such a high station.Granted, Adelais was mostly among soldiers and warriors, but it still struck her as strange that her visitor didn’t boast about reaching such a position while being so young.As a greener woman, Adelais might have chalked it up to this person being in the church and therefore humble, but she knew better now.Holy people put soldiers and kings to shame with the tales they told about themselves and their calling from God.
But she also remembered what the archbishop had called the abbess when telling her about the abbey.Tate the Pious.
Perhaps that piety was real.Adelais couldn’t decide what interested her more: the idea that this lovely flower before her was truly saintly, or that she’d somehow fooled the entire West Country into thinking she was.
“Twenty-five is young for your position.”
“It’s uncommon for someone my age to be an abbess, yes,” the nun acknowledged.
Indeed.“Let’s be direct, Mother Tate,” Adelais said, thoroughly enjoying the surprise flitting across the nun’s face as she realized that Adelais knew her name.“What did you come to offer me not to break down your abbey walls and burn everything I find?”
Tate’s gaze was level, direct.There was no cowering; neither was there any bluster.Which made her rise a few notches in Adelais’s estimation.It was a rare thing to find someone willing to trade in objective truths with Adelais’s axe between them.
“I can offer you prayers,” Tate said.
“Prayers are cheap,” mused Adelais.“What about masses instead?”
The abbess didn’t reveal anything by expression or posture, but that itself was revealing enough.“We are currently without a chaplain,” she said.There was a careful neutrality to her voice when she said the wordchaplain,almost as if she were trying to compensate for an internal lack of calm.“But once we have one restored to the abbey, then yes, I could promise you masses.”
Adelais set the axe down on the thin carpet rolled over the grass, the double-edged head planted between her feet.She leaned forward over the handle as if to tell the abbess a secret.“Youcouldpromise them, but unfortunately for you, I don’t require them.My late husband already commissioned masses for his soul and mine before his death.”
Tate nodded, once and a little crisply.Her composure now was interesting to Adelais, especially contrasted with the deep breaths and the wide eyes earlier.It wasn’t sangfroid, not really, but the calmness mingled with the agitation beneath made Adelais want to see how deep the control ran.Most people were cowards, and it was hard to believe that an abbess in the middle of nowhere would have more courage than King Harold’s soldiers defending their home from Adelais’s men.But the possibility of being surprised was even better than the possibility of a good fight, and Adelais leaned back, mind filling with very delightful ideas about how to provoke this woman further.
“Far Hope has some valuables,” said Tate.She spoke so calmly and steadily that Adelais suspected that this was what the abbess had really come to offer: a sort of modernized version of the Danegeld.Pay off the raider with some of what they’d planned to steal, saving time and bloodshed for everyone.
Adelaishadcome to raid the abbey, that part was true.But she’d come to Far Hope for two reasons, and only one of them had to do with helping herself to Far Hope’s treasures.And even then, she wasn’t interested in the offering box or the church silverware.
She’d heard the name of Far Hope long before she’d come to England, as a girl of ten at her father’s side.They’d traveled from Angers to the court of Henri for yet another interminable visit having to do with their province, Maine, being squabbled over by Normandy, and Blois, and the Angevins.Adelais had never cared much for politics unless it meant fighting later, but she did like games, and sometimes politicking was like a game.However, there was one thing she liked even more than games, and that was a secret.
Late one night, when everyone but her father and the king were asleep, she’d heard them whispering.She’d been allowed to stay near her father, curled behind his chair on a thick blanket, partly because he was fond of his fierce little daughter—his only child and the one into whom he poured all the martial aspirations he’d stored up for a son that never came—and partly because tensions around Maine were high enough that a viscount’s child was at risk of being taken and held hostage as leverage somewhere.He didn’t let her out of his sight whenever they left home.
They’d thought she’d been asleep as they started talking of a place in England, a place the king had been to visit—secretly—the year before.
The spies say King Edward goes three times a year, her father had murmured.
I do not blame him. I would go again if I felt I could leave Paris and not come back to my brother trying to steal it, the French king had said.It is the greatest ecstasy I have ever known, what I found at Far Hope.
Her father had paused, and then had said with the casual inflection of someone trying not to sound too interested.What did you find there?
The king had not answered right away, and when he finally did answer, his voice hadn’t sounded devout, or even joyful.But almost haunted.
They keep old ways at Far Hope, you must understand. And a treasure even the pope himself could only ever wish to see.
A treasure even greater than what the pope had?In the Holy City itself?A treasure so great that a king spoke of it with more emotion in his voice than when he spoke of his own crown?
Adelais’s kin were a hundred years removed from being pillagers and raiders, having adapted quickly to the territorial land warfare that dominated France, becoming a people of castles, horses, farms.It was a shame in Adelais’s mind because she wanted nothing more than to be a shield-maiden, sailing off to far-flung shores for loot and glory.
And so when she heard of this treasure, her whole being had come alive with light and color, like the sun shining through a stained glass window.
Far Hope.The English name had stuck in her mind, engraved itself.Far Hope.Her pagan ancestors had raided Lindisfarne and Iona, every vulnerable holy place they could find, and though Rollo’s people were all Christian now, it didn’t dim Adelais’s urge to go there and snatch this treasure for herself.
And when she’d come to England eighteen years later, as part of William’s attempt to seize his stolen crown, she knew it was her destiny to go to Far Hope and find this treasure at last.It had taken a not-insignificant number of sly threats to squeeze more information out of Stigand, England’s corrupt archbishop, but she eventually learned the abbey was in Devonshire, hidden in the hills near an ancient wood.From there, she’d only needed a reason to come to the West Country—which the Exeter rebels had so handily provided—and for the locals to tell her which roads to take.Wild, rough roads that she was surprised King Henri would have deigned to use.
But perhaps for a treasure without compare, any road was worth taking.
