The Sacrist of Saint Radegund
Ona certain day in mid June in the year 1431 the tolling of the bell inSt.Radegund’s church tower announced to the neighbours of the Priory that a nun was to be buried that day.
In an interval between church services the nuns wander in the garden, which is also the graveyard of St Radegund’s, and lies sequestered next the chancel walls. To-day they are drawn thither by a new-made empty grave; for a funeral is a mildly exciting incident in conventual routine. But three sisters sit in the cloister on the stone bench next the chapter door. Also a small novice is curled up on the paved floor with her back against the bench. The day is warm, and the church wall casts a grateful shadow where they sit. And, because labour and silence are enjoined in the cloister, they rest, and two of them gossip, and Agnes Senclowe, the novice, listens and lays to heart.
The two who gossip are Joan Sudbury, succentrix, and Elizabeth Daveys, who is older than Joan, and holds no office in the monastery. With them sits, and half dozes, Emma Denton, who is very old and very infirm. She does not gossip, for she has hardly spoken a word of sense these forty years past. She is a heavy affliction to the cloister society. She lives mainly in the infirmary, and does not attend church. She knows when it is the hour for a meal, and she knows very little else. If she speaks an intelligible word, it is about something that happened forty years ago. She remembers the great pestilence in 1390.
What ailed poor sister Emma to bring her to this sad pass? When she was young she was something of a religious enthusiast, and because enthusiasm was rare in the cloister, she was promoted by her sisters to high station. When they made her Sacrist she had her one and dearest wish. To have the charge of the beautifulchurch, of the books, vestments and jewels of the sanctuary, to live in the holy place, with holy thoughts for companions, and in the unfailing round of holy duties—was not that a happy lot? Dignified too the office was; for in the little cloister world the Prioress herself was scarcely a greater lady than the Sacrist. The Sacrist did not sleep with the other nuns in the dormitory; her constant duties did not allow her ordinarily to take her meals in the refectory. Like the Prioress, she had her own servant to attend her, her own house to dwell in. Her habitation was built against the northern chancel wall, and consisted of two chambers. From the upper room, through a hole pierced in the wall, she watched the never-dying light that hung before the High Altar.
But it was not good to be Sacrist for long. The unvarying routine of duty produces torpidity; holy thoughts uncommunicated end in cessation of thought; the solitude was deadly. The office was not coveted by the sisterhood, and was seldom held for more than a year or two together. Wherefore they rejoiced when Emma Denton held it for nine years. For nine years she trimmed the sacred lamp. During nine years her own light dwindled out, and at last the world became dark to sister Emma.
The crazy belfry rocked with the swaying of the bell, which, being cracked, was doubly dolorous. The sound of it roused old sister Emma to a dim consciousness of what was passing, and she spoke to nobody in particular.
“The bell,” she said, “the bell again! Last week it tolled, and we buried two. Now there are two more in the dead-house.”
“The saints protect us!” said sister Joan; “she is at her old talk of the pestilence year.”
“It was Assumption Day,” continued the old nun, “when we buried them. We had no Mass that day. To-day it is the cellaress and sister Margery Cailly—God pardon her for a sinful woman. No; Margery is sick, not dead; and I forget, I forget.”
“Margery Cailly,” cried Joan Sudbury, “what quoth she of Margery Cailly, that goes to her grave to-day? Margery Cailly, that has been our most religious Sacrist ever since yonder poor thing fell beside her wits.”
“Religious you may call her,” said Elizabeth Daveys, “but God knows, and sister Emma knows, that of her which we know not. Thirty years have I lived in St Radegund’s, and I remember not the time when any but Margery was our Sacrist, and well I know that the sacristy has been her prison all those days. But I have heard sister Emma say in her dull way that Margery once knew the convent prison too.”
“Well, twelve years I have spent here, and never had speech with the Sacrist. Once I was alone in the church when it was dark, and the daylight only lingered aloft in the roof, and of a sudden I lighted on her in the chancel, busied in her office. Her pale face in her black hood showed like a spirit’s, and I thought it was the blessed Radegund that had come down from her window, and I was horribly afraid.”
“I think that from the sacristy window her eye followed me about the garden as I walked there,” said Elizabeth. “It follows me still, and it makes my flesh creep. What good woman would shun her sisters so? Heaven rest her soul, for be sure she has much to answer for. If she has confessed herself, it is not to our confessor or the Prioress, for I think she has hardly spoken these many years to any but Alice Portress that waits on her.”
“Yes, Alice was with her at the end. It was Alice that dug the grave; Alice rings the knell; Alice laid her out in her Sacrist’s chamber, and she has placed two white roses on the dead woman’s breast.”
“Roses?” said Elizabeth Daveys; “roses are not for dead nuns. Whence got she roses?”
“That I can tell you,” said the novice, glad to take her part in the conversation, “for Alice told me herself. She got them from the churchyard of St Peter’s on the hill.”
The office for the dead was said, the empty grave was filled, and Alice the Portress was closeted with the Prioress.
“To you, lady Prioress—not to the Nuns in Chapter—I confess the sin of my youth; not to them, nor yet to you while sister Margery lived. She is gone, and why should I remain? Forty years weshared the secret. She is past censure or forgiveness. On me let the blame rest. I ask no pardon, but only to be dismissed from the house of St Radegund, that I have so unworthily served.
Entrance to Chapter House
Entrance to Chapter House.
“There is none but myself and poor sister Emma that remembers St Radegund’s before the pestilence year. I was but a child then, and my mother was Portress before me. My mother often brought me to the lodge, and I used to play with the novices, or sit at the gate when my mother was away. Margery had but lately come to St Radegund’s—seventeen, perhaps, or eighteen years of age she was. Hers was a proud family—the Caillys of Trumpington, and they wererich, and good to St Radegund’s. They are gone and forgotten now, but often have I heard old Thomas Key tell of them, for he was a Trumpington man, and he knew the De Freviles of Shelford too. There are De Freviles at Shelford yet, but I think that none there remembers young Nicholas De Frevile that was Sir Robert’s son.
“I had a child’s thought—that Margery was the most beautiful creature in the wide world—most beautiful and best. And because she was young and fair and gracious in speech even our hard sisters loved her, and thought it pity of the world when her fair tresses were shorn and she took the ugly veil. For Margery was not religious. God pardon me for my sinful words, but I think she was meant for better things than religion and a cloister. And though she was good and kind to all, Margery did not take to our sisters. There was some trouble—I know not what, for she never told—and for some family reason she was sent to St Radegund’s, and ill she liked it. So she went about her work in cloister and church, grieving; and there was talk of her among the sisters. Some thought, some said, that they knew, but Margery said nothing.
“It is all forgotten now, for the pestilence wiped out the memory of those days. Scarcely twelve months had gone since she took the veil when Margery Cailly disappeared from the Priory. You may think what babble of tongues there was in our parlour—how they who were wisest had always known how it would be, and the rest rebuked them for not telling them beforehand. And so for another twelvemonth she was lost to us, and some sisters, who were kind, hoped that she would come back, and some who were kinder, hoped she would not.
“Then, one day in the year before the pestilence, comes an apparitor with our lost Margery, and a letter to the Prioress from the Lord Bishop of Ely. The letter is to say that the Archbishop of Canterbury, in his visitation of Lincoln diocese, has found Margery there, living a secular life; and because secular life is sin to those who have entered the religious order, he commits her to his brother of Ely, in order that the lost sheep may be restored to the fold where she was professed. And his Lordship of Ely—Heaven helphim for a blundering bachelor!—directs that she shall be committed to the convent prison-house until she repents of her wickedness, and when she is loosed from it, shall make public confession in Chapter, and implore the pardon of the sisters for her enormities.
“Our Prioress was kinder to Margery than the Bishop meant—who could not be kind to her? Her prison life was no longer than would satisfy the Bishop’s enquiries, and as for the confession in the Chapter-house—it never happened. There were some, though they liked not confession for themselves, who thought an opportunity was missed, and blamed the Prioress; for cloister talk is dull if we know not one another’s failings. Still, the sisters were kind to Margery, and very kind when they wanted to get the secret from her. But she said never a word about it, unless it were to the Prioress. Beautiful she was as ever, but grief and humiliation were on her, heavy as death, and because she confided in none, she lost the friendship of the sisters. To me, who was but a child, she would talk, but scarcely to another, and her talk with me was never about herself.
“One other there was with whom sometimes she had speech, and that was old Thomas Key, maltster and trusty servant in general matters of the Priory. Him she had known in happier days when he was a tenant of the Caillys at Trumpington. Her family was too proud and too pious to remember the disgraced nun, and they never visited her; but from Thomas she learnt something of home and the outside world.
“Then came the dreadful year when the pestilence raged in Cambridge town. The nuns had been used to get leave from the Prioress to go out into the town, but there was no gadding now. The gate was closely barred, and none were admitted from outside except Thomas Key. We carried the Host in procession about the Nuns’ Croft and—laud be to the saints!—it protected our precincts from the contagion. And while the sinful world without died like the beasts that perish, we sat secure, but frightened, in our cloister, and blessed our glorious saint for extending the protection of her prayers over the pious few who did her service in St Radegund’s.
“You have heard how the parish clergy died that year. One,two, sometimes three died in one parish, and the Bishop found it hard to provide successors. Boys that had barely taken the tonsure a week before were sent in haste to anoint the sick and bury the dead in places where the plague had left an unshepherded flock. Sir John Dekyn, priest of St Peter’s church on the hill, was one that died, and his successor did not live a fortnight after him. Then we heard from Thomas Key that a mere youth had taken the place, one Sir Nicholas of the Shelford De Frevile family, who had but lately been ordered priest at Ely. And we were told that he worked with a feverous zeal among the poor, the sick, and the dying of his parish.
The Chancel Squint
The Chancel Squint.
“Now when this news was brought to sister Margery by Thomas Key, it was to her as a summons from death to life. Her eye brightened and her cheek glowed when she heard of the heroic goodness of this young priest. While the sisters shuddered and shrank at each morning’s fatal news, she was consumed with a passionate desire to know what was passing in the plague-stricken town, and she plied my mother and Thomas Key with incessant questionings. ‘Who was sick of the townsfolk? Were any of the clergy visited? How went it with the poor in St Peter’s, where the pestilence was hottest?’ For some weeks she heard that the light burned still at night in St Peter’s parsonage, and that the priest was unscathed, incessant in his ministrations and blessed by his parishioners. And it seemed as though the sickness was abating.
“Then, late one afternoon in early August, there came a call for Margery. Thomas Key brought it, and whether it was his own tidings, or a message from some other, I cannot say; Margery never told me. But this I know, that she took me apart in the cloisterand spoke to me, and she was terribly moved and her voice was choked. ‘Little Alice,’ she said, ‘as you love me, get me the gate-key after Lauds to-night. It is life or death to me to go out into the town. Only do it, and say nothing—no, not to your mother.’ Young as I was, I knew how the nuns were used to humour my mother into letting them pass the gate; but that was in day-time. At night, in our besieged state, with the death-bells tolling all around, it seemed a terrible thing to venture. But I asked no questions. Say it was the recklessness of a girl—say it was the love that I bore to Margery. I stole the key and gave it to her after sundown.
“What happened afterwards I will tell you as it was told to me by Thomas Key, who waited for her outside the gate. They passed along the dark, deserted streets. The plague-fires burnt low in the middle of the roadway, but there were none to tend them, and no living thing they saw but the starving dogs, herded at barred doors. They crossed the bridge and mounted to St Peter’s church. The priest’s manse—you know it—is a low house next the church. A white rose, still in flower, clambered on its walls, and, half hidden by its sprays, a taper gleamed through the open window; but there was no sound of life within. They pushed open the door and entered.
“Stretched on his pallet, forsaken and untended, lay the young priest of St Peter’s, the pangs of death upon him. Margery threw herself on her knees by his bed-side, and Thomas watched and waited. For a time there was silence, for Margery had no voice to pray. Only at times the dying man grumbled and wandered in his talk; but little he said that Thomas understood.
“Then after a long time, he stirred himself uneasily and uttered one word, ‘Margery.’ And she—alas the day!—put out her arm and laid it on his shoulder. In an instant the dying man half raised himself on his bed and turned his eyes on her, and there was recognition in them. And one arm he threw about her neck, and felt blindly for the fair locks that had been shorn long since, and he said heavily and painfully, ‘Margery,belle amie, let us go to the pool above the mill, where the great pike lie, and sun and shadow lie on the deep water.’ So Thomas knew that they were boy and girl again by the old mill at Trumpington.
“That was all, and the end came soon. They two laid him decently beneath his white sheet, and Margery plucked two white roses from the spray that straggled across his window, and laid them on the dead man’s breast. So they left him, with the candle still burning out into the dark.
“There was a horrible dread in St Radegund’s when, four days later, sister Margery sickened of the pestilence; and it was worse when we learnt soon after that Thomas Key was visited—then that he was dead. That was the beginning of our sorrows. You have heard, Lady Prioress, how three sisters died before August was out, how most of the others deserted the house, and some never returned to it. Our prayers were unheard, and to us who remained it seemed as if the saints slept, or God were dead.
“So it happened that when the plague abated, and the first meeting was held in St Radegund’s Chapter-house, about St Luke’s day in the autumn, there were only three to attend it—the Prioress, the Sacrist (Emma Denton), and Margery Cailly. For—wonderful it seems—Margery, who least needed to live, was the one spared of those who were taken with the pestilence. Presently some old sisters returned, and new ones took the place of the departed. But the sword of the pestilence cut off the memory of the old days, and the sins and sufferings, the virtues and the victories of the former sisterhood were a forgotten dream when the cloister filled again. So when Emma Denton passed into her lethargy, and Margery Cailly earnestly petitioned to fill her place in the Sacristy, there was not a sister to question her character and devoutness.
“Not yesterday, but forty years ago, Margery Cailly passed out of life; for you know that, save to me, she has spoken few words since. And though I have waited on her for most of those years she never breathed to me the name of Nicholas De Frevile, never hinted at the story of her unhappy girlhood. But once in the springtime, just after she entered her Sacrist prison-house, she entreated me to plant a white rose-bush on the grave of the young priest of St Peter’s. I did so, and have renewed it since, and one day, by your grace, I shall plant a spray of the same roses whereshe lies apart from him. I have confessed my wrong in stealing the key and bringing death into the cloister. If you can forgive me, so; if not, all I ask is that you let your sinful servant depart in peace.”
There is a curious aperture in the outer northern wall of the chancel of the nuns’ church which is now Jesus College Chapel. If it is examined its purpose is evident. It was the lychnoscope, through which the Sacrist watched by night the light before the High Altar. It is the sole abiding memorial of Margery Cailly, Sacrist of St Radegund.
Prosperum iter facias
Prosperum iter facias
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