The Lords Of The North by Bernard Cornwell

Author:Bernard Cornwell
Language: eng
Format: epub

The Lords Of The North

alone.

I waited again. A rook cawed on the roof. From some place nearby I could hear

the rhythmic squirt of milk going into a pail. Another cow, its udder full,

waited patiently just beyond the open shutter. The rook cawed again and then

the door opened and three nuns came into the room. Two of them stood against

the far wall, while the third just gazed at me and began to weep silently.

‘Hild,’ I said, and I stood to embrace her, but she held a hand out to keep me

from touching her. She went on weeping, but she was smiling too, and then she

put both her hands over her face and stayed that way for a long while.

‘God has forgiven me,’ she finally spoke through her fingers.

‘I am glad of it,’ I said.

She sniffed, took her hands from her face and indicated that I should sit

again, and she sat opposite me and for a time we just looked at each other and

I thought how I had missed her, not as a lover, but as a friend. I wanted to

embrace her, and perhaps she sensed that for she sat straighter and spoke very

formally. ‘I am now the Abbess Hildegyth,’ she said.

‘I had forgotten your proper name is Hildegyth,’ I said.

‘And it does my heart good to see you,’ she said primly. She was dressed in a

coarse grey robe that matched the gowns of her two companions, both of whom

were older women. The robes were belted with hemp-rope and had heavy hoods

hiding their hair. A plain wooden cross hung at Hild’s neck and she fingered

it compulsively. ‘I have prayed for you,’ she went on.

‘It seems your prayers worked,’ I said awkwardly.

‘And I stole all your money,’ she said with a touch of her old mischief.

‘I give it to you,’ I said, ‘willingly.’

She told me about the nunnery. She had built it with the money from Fifhaden’s

hoard and now it housed sixteen sisters and eight laywomen. ‘Our lives,’ she

said, ‘are dedicated to Christ and to Saint Hedda. You know who Hedda was?’

‘I’ve never heard of her,’ I said.

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