Chapter Nine
I FIND MATELAINE IN HER room packing a small leather satchel. She is no longer dressed in her habit but in a traveling gown of forest green with her red hair unbound from its customary braid. She looks up when I enter. When she sees that it is me, the bright look on her face evaporates and she returns to her packing. “What do you want?”
“I have come to bid you farewell. And to explain, and perhaps apologize.”
“You think you can explain away trying to humiliate me in front of the abbess?”
“Matelaine, I was not questioning your skill or devotion—I was questioning the abbess’s decision. You are being sent out before you have even completed your training and I am truly concerned for your safety.”
“Are you sure you are not simply jealous? We all know how much you’ve been longing for an assignment of your own.”
“That is true—I won’t deny it. But even if I were leaving on an assignment of my own this very minute, I would still be worried for you. Aren’t you the least bit concerned? With all the lessons you haven’t been exposed to and the tests you haven’t taken yet?”
She snorts as she places two clean linen shifts in the satchel. “If I was, do you think I’d confess it to you so you could carry the tale straight to the abbess and attempt to keep me from going?”
A sense of helplessness and futility washes over me. I look out the window, wondering how to explain to her the complexity of what I am feeling when I can scarce explain it to myself.
“Is being the next seeress not enough of a prize that you must grab my tasks as well?” Although she keeps her voice pitched low, anger hums through it.
I turn from the window, hoping she will see the truth of my words writ clear upon my face. “I do not wish to be seeress and would gladly trade with you! It does not feel special. It feels like a trap—a trap that I will be stuck in until the day I die. But more importantly, I have no skill, no aptitude for it, and I cannot understand why the abbess has chosen me for such a role.”
She shakes her head. “And now you act as if you know more than the abbess. Truly, Annith, you have let the nuns’ praise go to your head.”
She is the third friend of mine to be sent away, and I am terrified that I will not be so lucky as to have all three survive. I fear for Matelaine in a way that I did not for Ismae or even Sybella. She is so much younger and less experienced. “Matelaine, I do not wish to part—”
“After Ismae left, you and I were the closest in age, and I saw that you were lonely, and I was lonely, and I thought maybe we could be friends. Well, I understand now. We will never be friends. You need not worry that I will make that mistake again.”
Her words cut me to the quick. I reach out and grab her hand, squeeze it. “We have always been friends. But Ismae—well, she was one of the first true friends I had ever had. Of course I was closer to her, just as you are closer to Sarra and Lisabet over Loisse and Audri. It does not mean that Loisse and Audri don’t have a place in your heart.”
There is a long moment of silence, then Matelaine wrinkles her nose. “Well, I’m not particularly fond of Sarra,” she says, and I am filled with a giddy sense of relief. Then her face grows serious. “You always hold a piece of yourself back, Annith. For all your love and affection and kindness, there is always a part of yourself that you withhold from others.”
And of course, she is right. For one sharp moment, I teeter on the edge of sharing my past with her, my awkward, painful childhood, but I cannot. Not now, when she must be preparing herself for the challenges ahead. I squeeze her hand again. “When you return,” I tell her, “if I am not sealed away in that cursed room and unable to speak to anyone, I will tell you about that part of my life.”
She smiles then and gives my hand a return squeeze. “I will look forward to hearing it.”
I surprise her by throwing my arms around her and giving her a fierce hug. “Be safe, Matelaine. I will pray for you every day until your return.” Tears sting at my eyes and try to crowd their way up my throat. With one last encouraging smile, I turn and leave before the abbess arrives.