The Keepers of the Library by Glenn Cooper Page B

Clarissa’s and they shared a peeling and chopping station in the kitchen. Before long it was clear that Mary too was not being treated as a novitiate.
    Mary was as shy as she was and the two girls hardly exchanged a word for the first few weeks. When they finally did, their accents and dialects were differentenough to make communication difficult, but in time they came to understand one another.
    “Are we not to become nuns like the others?” Mary had asked.
    “When I ask for an answer from Sister Josephine, I hear nowt,” Clarissa had said. “When I pray for an answer from God, I receive nowt. Can I ask you something? When you arrived, did Sister Josephine look at you naked like?”
    Mary nodded. “She said my hips were good’uns.”
    The girls became fast friends, bonded by their seemingly shared fate. To them the abbey was their entire world, and it was a strange and unfathomable place. They struggled to understand the hierarchy of the abbey and the jobs of the inhabitants. They knew that there was a brewery, but which monk was the brewer? They knew there was an infirmary, but which brother was the surgeon? They played a game, trying to guess who did what, sneaking about in the few minutes here and there when they weren’t under the scrutiny of Sister Josephine or the cook, following a likely suspect around the abbey grounds as he went about his labors.
    During these adventures the girls discovered two buildings in the complex they found particularly curious.
    In a far corner of the abbey, beyond the monks’ cemetery, was a simple unadorned structure the size of a small chapel connected to a long building without windows. To this building they had once seen a wagon deliver provisions of meat, vegetables and grain.
    “There must be a kitchen,” Clarissa had said.
    “They must have their own girls doing the duties,” Mary replied. “Less work for us.”
    The other strange building that caught their eye was close to this chapel and kitchen. It resembled a small version of the sisters’ dormitory made of limestone blocks with rows of identical square windows and chimney stacks on both the short ends. On one of their walks they spied something that filled Clarissa with a turbulent blend of fascination and fear. Fay, the girl with a turnip nose who had vanished months earlier, was waddling from the small dormitory to the outhouse behind it. There was no denying it: she was heavy, very heavy with child.
    How does a lass come to be bearing in a monastery, Clarissa had wondered?
    That night, Clarissa lay awake on her straw pallet, the memory of Sister Josephine scrutinizing her naked hips weighing on her.
    What was her fate to be?
    T he answer to her question came soon enough.
    On a sunny day in June, as pretty a day as Clarissa had ever seen, the air sweet with honeysuckle and humming with orange bees, Sister Josephine approached her during morning ablutions and told her to gather up her few belongings.
    As she was being led away her eyes met Mary’s. They said good-bye to each other silently with trembling lips. She had no idea if she would see her friend again.
    It surprised her not the least when Sister Josephine took her straight to the small dormitory at the edge of the abbey grounds.
    Inside, the air was stuffy. The windows and doors had been shut keeping the breeze at bay. There was a central hall and individual cells on both sides.
    Down the hall, she thought she heard the cry of ababy, but it lasted only a moment. Then a girl’s low words. Wasn’t it the voice of Fay, the big-boned girl who was heavy with child?
    “What place is this, Sister?” she asked fearfully.
    “That’s no concern of yours, child,” she was told.
    “When the time comes, you’ll be told what you need to be told. Until then, all you must do is obey and behave.”
    “Yes, Sister,” she said as faintly as a squeaking mouse.
    She was ushered into a small chamber with a bed, a nightstand and some earthenware