Читать книгу Red Sister онлайн | страница 82

By the dormitory wall a plump, red-faced sister attacked an area of the flagstones with a stiff brush, pausing to slosh down more water from her bucket. She glanced up at the girls. ‘Hurry!’ And returned to her task, scrubbing furiously at a dark stain. ‘Away with you.’

Clera stuck her tongue out at the woman’s back and ran off towards the refectory, giggling. ‘That’s Sister Mop. She thinks novices only have two aims in life: to get stuff dirty and to get in her way.’

‘She called herself Mop?’ Nona running behind.

‘No, but everyone else calls her that. She chose some flower name, Crysanthe-something, but nobody can pronounce it or remember it.’

A hundred yards on they passed Sister Tallow, coming from the abbess’s house. She looked away towards the eastern sky as they ran by but not before Nona saw the abrasion across the left side of her face and the bruise darkening around it.

Nona waited until they were out of earshot around the corner of the refectory. ‘What happened?’

‘Don’t know. Can’t imagine anyone getting the best of old Blade,’ Clera panted. ‘Maybe the abbess slapped her!’ She laughed, then more serious, ‘Did you see she had her arm hidden inside her habit?’

Nona hadn’t and once through the doors the sight of food bowls, full and steaming, pushed any questions from her mind. Breakfast was a hasty affair but Nona still made a valiant attempt at leaving nothing edible behind by the time she left the table.

‘Come on!’ Clera turned and beckoned as Nona jogged to keep up, one arm over her over-full stomach. Fortunately the Path cloisters came into view soon enough, past the beehives lined in the lee of the abbess’s house. Four arms of the building reached towards the compass points from a round central tower. Each arm was a framework of ornately-worked stone, open to the elements, with delicate corner pillars and trellised masonry reaching between them to complete the structure. The central tower stood dark against the sky, defying the years with the arrogance of stone, seeming in one moment foreboding and in the next beautiful. Four doors gave onto the ground floor, one for each arm of the surrounding structure.