The two monks left before the sun could rise. Since a meeting with the abbess for which Walter had not been in attendance, Aelred had retired to his famous silence.
But the quiet between the travel companions became unbearable.
“Tell me what happened,” he pleaded with Aelred. So he did.
When the Abbess of Watton saw them at last, Walter felt as though he might keel over and fall asleep on the stone floor: His eyelids drooped, and during the conversation he dozed constantly, starting himself awake several times.
“Would you like to retire?” she asked him, having had enough.
“Go ahead, Walter,” Aelred said. “I will join you as soon as I can.”
The younger monk hesitated, but with a kiss on his father’s head, he left to his cell.
Aelred continued.
“Mother Madeleine, you say that the Lord has miraculously ended the sister’s pregnancy, and that he has spared you the scandal of such an affair.” Aelred breathed deeply through a thoughtful pause. “I am not convinced,” he continued, tempering the frustrated indelicacy of his tone as well as he could, “that a miracle has happened as you describe.”
“Ye of quick judgment and little faith!” the abbess crowed. “What the Devil has sown, the Lord has uprooted!”
“I mean no disrespect, but from what I understand, it is quick judgment on your behalf that has brought this day upon us. It is not in God that I doubt, but I have very, very serious doubts about you.”
At this the abbess fumed, breathing through her nose like a bull. She calmed herself momentarily, smiling coolly.
“Let you see our sister, then, and may you find the miracle aptly described.”
“So be it.”
She stood, crossed to the doorway, and peered out, calling, “Sr. Rita?”
“Yes, Mother?” An elderly woman appeared. She avoided the monks’ eyes, pointedly keeping her attention to the abbess.
“Father Aelred would like to bear witness to the great miracle of Watton. Please, bring him to our sister’s cell.”
“Yes, Mother.”
She retreated into the hallway, and the abbess took only a small step back, so that Aelred had to pass closely by her to leave the room. He felt her damp breath on his neck as he passed—and was that a smirk on her face? It took a fair deal of willpower not to rebuke her then and there for such inhospitality.
They arrived at a hallway lined with little doors that opened into what must have been dozens of cells. Once outside the one in question, Sr. Rita stopped and turned to Aelred and spoke at last.
“Forgive me,” she said. How she trembled!
He reached out and took the keys from her hands; she surrendered them, then covered her face, from which tears spilt.
“Whatever you find in there,” she cried, “forgive me.”
Aelred stood with his mouth agape but with no words. His breathing trembled, and he held a hand to his heart as though to make sure it kept beating. When he spoke, his voice was thin.
“Wait outside, please.”
Rita nodded and stepped aside.
He tried two keys until he successfully discharged the lock with the third. The strong wooden door creaked achingly at his push, and a wretched stench hit him like a wall. He wrinkled his nose and shook his head, and the reek remained.
His lamp just barely lit the cell. The walls and floor of the cell were stone, and it was roofed with wooden planks. A figure sat naked and crumpled in one corner.
He stepped forward warily and held his lamp forward. “What have they done to you, my daughter?”
The girl only muttered and cried in such a way that they could not hear. Another step closer, and she tried retreating further into the corner of her cell.
“Where is your child?”
She shook her head.
“Is he still with you?”
She shook her head some more.
Aelred shook his own head, frustrated but— The girl raised a pale, withered hand and pointed across the cell. He cast his eyes where she pointed to another corner. A small wooden bucket sat pushed up against the walls. At an earlier point in the woman’s incarceration she must have used it to relieve herself. As he approached and held his lamp over it, he peered inside, discovering to their great horror that the bucket now operated as an open coffin.
Aelred signed himself with the Cross as his breathing quickened. He could not seem to take his eyes off the bucket’s bloody contents, so Sr. Rita took it upon herself to draw him away by wrapping her arms around him and physically removing him from the cell. When she released him, every hair on his person stood on end, and he let out a shuddering sigh.
“God have mercy on us all.”
Walter wanted to scream. “Did they not know the evil in their midst? Why did they not stop it? Why did they do as their wicked abbess told them?” he demanded of his superior, who remained silent for long enough that Walter began to apologize for his impertinence, but as he opened his mouth to beg his abbot’s pardon, the older man spoke.
“Because they trusted her,” he said, and Walter saw that the man was crying. “They trusted her,” he repeated, “and they trusted us, and we betrayed them… betrayed the smallest of them.”
“What do you mean?”
“Are we not our brothers’ keepers?”
Aelred’s whole person shook, wracked with sobs.
When he could bear the sight no longer, Walter yanked the horses to a stop and embraced his friend, pulling him into his robes and cloak so that his abbot’s tears wet the coarse wool over his very heart. Not knowing what words could possibly console his beloved mentor, the young monk only focused on the horizon and watched the sun rise.