The Keepers of the Library by Glenn Cooper Page A

would devote herself to God, and if she were worthy, she would become a nun. The peacefulness that descended upon her at that moment was the loveliest feeling she’d ever experienced in her young life.
    On arrival, she kissed the beach and walked the short distance to the abbey, trailing at the rear of Baldwin’s entourage. Entering through the heavy portcullis of the walled abbey she was amazed at how bustling it was. With a population of six hundred it was the second largest city on the Isle of Wight, and it seemed that all six hundred of them came rushing out at once to greet the returning abbot. Baldwin dropped to his knees on a grassy verge before the grand cathedral and gave loud thanks for his safe return.
    Clarissa had been left drifting in the hubbub until a severe-looking nun approached and, without so much as a greeting, instructed her to follow. Sister Sabeline, the Mother Superior of the sisters of Vectis, was a dried-out husk of a woman, so bony and shriveled, it seemed that the weight of her heavy black habitwas all that prevented her from being tossed into the wind. Wordlessly, she led Clarissa through the extensive grounds. Beside the grand cathedral there were some thirty stone buildings at Vectis including the chapter house, abbot house, kitchens, refectory, cellery, infirmary, buttery, hospicium, warming rooms, brewery, stables and dormitories. To Clarissa, it was unimaginably complex.
    Clarissa’s destination was the sister’s dormitory, a low structure toward the rear of the abbey near the perimeter wall. Sister Sabeline placed her into the care of a plump, elderly nun named Sister Josephine who took her to an open dormitory lined with straw-stuffed wood-framed beds. On each bed was a neatly folded coverlet, and beside it, a chamber pot. On a low nightstand was a candle and a ceramic basin.
    “Have you started your menses, girl?”
    “Me what?”
    “Oh heavens! Your flowers!”
    “Oh, aye”—she flushed—“but not at t’ moment.”
    “Lift up your skirt, girl,” the nun commanded.
    Clarissa froze.
    “You heard me!”
    She slowly obeyed.
    The nun had a good look at her nakedness and grunted her approval, but no explanation was forthcoming.
    “All the girls are working,” Sister Josephine told her. “You’ll meet them after Vespers. This one will be your bed. Do you know how to pray, girl?”
    “I know t’ Lord’s Prayer,” Clarissa said.
    “Well, it’s a start, isn’t it? And do you know how to peel and chop vegetables?”
    Clarissa nodded.
    “Good. Let’s get you to the kitchen, so you can start earning your keep.”
    “I want to be a nun, Sister. How do I do it?”
    Sister Josephine snorted. “You start by peeling potatoes.”
    Gradually, week by week and month by month, Clarissa realized her lot was different from most of the other girls in the dormitory. Although she attended prayer hours in the cathedral with the others she was never released from kitchen duty to participate in daily tuition of scriptures and hymns. One girl who seemed to be treated much like her was a big-boned lass with a turnip nose named Fay. But she had disappeared one day, never to be seen again.
    The other girls called themselves novitiates, and when they had been at Vectis for a year, they were allowed to take simple vows. And those who had been at the abbey for four years had their heads shorn and took their solemn vows, receiving the ring of Christ. As sisters of Vectis they were given their own sleeping cells and time off chores for solitary prayer and meditation.
    Adding to Clarissa’s sense of befuddlement and isolation, other girls shunned her and whispered behind her back. No one would tell her why she was different. She just knew she was.
    When she had been at Vectis for six months, a new girl, younger than Clarissa, came to the dormitory. She was a fair-haired lass named Mary, deposited at the abbey by her father to serve at the pleasure of the abbot. The bed she was given was next to