Within the Palace Precincts

Even though Susanna was growing closer to Savaric, life in the convent was drawing her in ...

THE winter of 1265 was hard. The convent used firewood up so fast that it made Abbess Berta stare at her order book in disbelief.

Her coffers, already stretched, were close to breaking point, and Edwin Godfrey, Clerk of Works, was worse than useless.

He seemed to have no interest in the abbey.

Berta knew that this was because it was full of women, and he failed to appreciate the difficulties they worked under.

The women he despised did a brilliant job of keeping the abbey afloat.

Godfrey called at her office late one afternoon.

Berta was standing to one side of the slit aperture in the wall of her office when the knock came.

She was trying to keep out of the way of an icy air flow that trickled in from a hard sky.

She looked out at the gardens, and thought how much like good white flour the frost looked, lying on a black flower-bed that Sister Joanna had dug over the day before.

Godfrey came in without waiting for a reply to his knock.

"You need to get one of your women in to stoke that fire," he said as he took his usual seat.

The grate was empty; Berta only had a fire in it until the midday service, and she laid it herself.

She would make no servant out of any nun under her care; they were already servants of Christ.

The rest of the day, after midday, she simply wrapped up.

The clerk wrapped his long red cloak around his knees.

"It's perishing in here," he said.

He took an unusually long time to get to the subject of his visit, and when he did, Berta was immediately uneasy.

"You know the family of this Walter of Durham fellow?" he asked in a casual voice.

"The artist's sister, yes," Berta said, "and I have met Walter." "I think the term 'artist' is questionable," Godfrey said, "but we'll let it pass.

"I am thinking of the woman, Susanna, for a wife.