Chapter 1763: Initiate Maela
Several days had passed since Midwinter’s Night, but peace had yet to return to the Convent of Confession in DuCoumont city.
Word of Marquis Bors’ death had reached the convent on Midwinter’s Night, as if the longest night of the year were destined to herald the darkest news the convent had received in living memory.
The death of a lord like Bors, by itself, was hardly enough to shake the foundations as old as the Sisterhood of Confession, but it arrived alongside the news that Bors had handed a member of their own order over to the Inquisition and worse, that Confessor Eleanor had died at the Inquisition’s hands.
That alone would have been enough to disturb the peace of the convent for months, and many expected the Mother Superior to pay a visit to Abbot Recared in Maeril to demand an explanation for their sister’s death. Speculation ran rampant in the halls until the Mother Superior announced that she’d already written to the Grand Inquisitor in Keating to demand answers about Eleanor’s death.
But while her decree could silence some whispers, it couldn’t silence others.
"... really isn’t going to see her own daughter..."
"... one daughter to the demons and the other taking the first one’s place..."
"... fault that Sister Eleanor went to Lothian in the first place..."
"... deserves the chance to seek a path back to the light, but Mother Superior favors her too much..."
Maela moved through the well-worn corridors of the convent, carrying a basket filled with scraps from the kitchens, and each whisper fell on her like a blow from an Inquisitor’s lash.
In the months since she’d arrived at the convent, she’d long ago ceased to think of herself as ’Countess Maela,’ and the simple white robes of an initiate had come to feel like a form of armor, protecting her heart from the storm that had torn her family apart.
There was solace in simplicity, and on most other days, she could lose herself in the quiet monotony of daily prayers and chores. Ever since word had arrived from Lothian, however, that armor had proven to be thinner than a silk shift, and the wounds on her heart that had only begun to heal were torn open and laid bare.
It didn’t help that she’d found few friends within the walls of the convent since she’d donned the robes of an initiate. No longer was she a mighty countess, visiting the convent closest to the home where she’d grown up in the hopes of giving birth to another child. It had been many years since the last time she’d visited to pray for the health of a babe in her belly, and the women who had been Initiates then had long ago become Sisters or even Confessors.
Now, she was the oldest woman in the convent still wearing plain white robes and she couldn’t help but look at the young women she shared quarters with as being similar in many ways to her own daughters... A thought that always brought the pain simmering back up to the surface.
All of these things conspired to create a bubble around Maela that very few could penetrate. The Initiates couldn’t relate to a woman of her status who seemed to be willing to walk away from all of that in order to become a Confessor, and they related even less to a woman doing so at her age.
The Sisters passing by, the ones who wore the gold-trimmed robes of women who had been accepted into the Sisterhood in the hopes that they would one day become Confessors, had their own reasons for avoiding the countess in their midst.
Maela bowed her head and made way every time one of the Sisters came close to her, but no amount of deference or politeness could make up for the rift that had formed between her and the Sisters when Maela had performed her first minor miracle... without taking on any of the vows of the Sisterhood.
The light that Maela conjured had been pale and flickering, but it seemed to manifest from pure devotion in a moment of prayer, and gossip had spread through the convent like a wildfire, claiming that she would be a Sister any day now and that she might set new records for the shortest time between becoming an Initiate and donning Confessor’s robes. Some even speculated that she might be chosen as the Mother Superior’s successor.
Yet months had passed since then, and the Mother Superior still hadn’t allowed Maela to take the vows of the Sisterhood. The tone of the convent’s gossip changed as people began to speculate that there must be something deeply wrong with Maela, and no Sister who dreamed of becoming a Confessor wanted anything to do with the Initiate who seemed to have been forbidden from joining their ranks.
It was fine, Maela thought as she set the basket of kitchen scraps down long enough to retrieve a warm fur cloak before stepping out into the cold, night air. She wasn’t in any hurry to become a Sister or a Confessor. She still had to find peace within herself before she could hope to guide others to the Light, and she understood that very well.
For now, she welcomed these quiet moments in the cold. The only sounds in the convent’s garden were the faint fluttering of birds and the crunch of her booted feet on the frost-covered ground as she carried the basket of scraps to the compost bin.
Come spring, the garden would be full of initiates tending the soil, pulling winter weeds and preparing neat rows for the convent’s most important crops. The public kitchen would open not long after, serving meals to those in need while the convent’s Confessors tended to those who were sick in body or in spirit.
It would be difficult to find quiet moments to reflect once that happened, and Maela found herself looking forward to those days more and more with each day that passed. Keeping busy kept her from thinking about her family... About the daughter she’d lost, or the one who’d betrayed her sister...
More than anything, it kept her from thinking about the husband who stood at the center of it all, taking risks they couldn’t afford for reasons she never understood... Risks that had cost Maela everything she loved in this world...
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