The Devil's Door by Sharan Newman

convent.
    “You’re going to be late for the service,” Brother Baldwin warned her again, when it began to appear that Catherine was more in danger of suffocation than starvation. He placed a hand heavily on Edgar’s shoulder.
    Reluctantly, Edgar let her go.

    Catherine reached the cloister just in time to get in line at the end, behind the lay sisters. Silently, they all filed into the choir. The consecrated virgins came in first, with the other moniales behind them and then the lay sisters. Héloïse and Prioress Astane stood in front, one on each side. Hersende, the chantress, faced them. The choir screen running across the nave, just behind the transept, hid them from the view of the people of the town of Saint-Aubin who had come to the service and stood in the left side of the transept.
    There was a rustle of whispers from the other side of the screen and Catherine wished she could see what was happening. She strained to hear what the voices were saying, but she was too far away.
    On the other side of the screen, Astrolabe and Edgar stood with the townspeople. In their worn woolen cloaks, they blended in easily. The convent church was really only an oratory, too small to hold large numbers of worshippers. It reminded Edgar of the local church at home, with children sitting on the floor at their parents’ feet, thumbs in their mouths, quieted with threats or promises. These weren’t querulous, sophisticated Parisians who demanded entertainment with their devotions, but peasants and craftsmen for whom the plain ritual of Holy Week was enough to comfort and refresh.
    Astrolabe nudged him from his reflections.
    “Isn’t that Count Raynald?” he asked, pointing to the man leaning against the transept wall, looking bored. “I thought he was leaving.”
    “Apparently not,” Edgar said. “I’ve never seen him before, but he fits Catherine’s description. He doesn’t look as though he’s here to make peace with the abbess.”
    “If he tries to interrupt the service, I’ll …” Astrolabe stopped. The door to the sacristy had opened and the clergy entered the sanctuary.
    The people around them began whispering in pleased excitement. They had not known that Abelard was visiting.
    Father Guiberc chanted the opening collect. Then, giving his arm to Abelard, he helped the master to the lectern. Abelard bowed his head a second, then began: “Haec dicit Dominus: In tribulatione sua mane consurgent ad me: Venite, et revertamur ad Dominum, quia ipse cepit, et sanabit nos; percutiet, et curabit nos, … ”
    Catherine listened to the melodic voice and realized it was Master Abelard. She couldn’t believe he had recovered so quickly. The world was full of small miracles. “Come, let us return to the Lord, for it is he who has wounded and he will heal us, he has struck us down and he will bind us up, …” God healed Abelard so that he could perform the service for his daughters in Christ once more. But, Catherine remembered at once, no one had healed Alys; she had been struck down and no one had lifted her up.
    Catherine’s anger began to burn again. The words of Hosea rolled through her without meaning until the end of the passage.
    “ Quia misericordiam volui, et non sacrificium; et scientiam Dei plus quam holocausta .” “For I desire compassion and not sacrifice; and understanding of God more than burnt offerings.”
    As the chantress rose to intone the tract from Habakkuk which followed, Catherine felt properly chastised.
    Edgar kept a close watch on Count Raynald throughout the long service. The count took no part in the prayers or responses. He didn’t seem moved by Abelard’s sermon on the Passion or by the unearthly beauty of the singing of the sisters. Why was the man there? What did he want? For a moment Edgar had the wild thought that Raynald was attending on the chance of hearing something heretical to help destroy Abelard and the Paraclete with him. But that was nonsense. Edgar doubted the count