I May Be Wee

“Reverend Mother.”

Elinor looked up to find the tiny nun, dripping suds and water in front of her door.

”What is it now, Agnes?”

”A word?” Agnes said.

”Come.”

In she came, shedding water on the floor.

“The water…Mind the water, Agnes…!”

”Vicaress Cecily gave you the apothecary’s collected debt, did she not?”

“She did. It was about time. Months he owed us…”

But Agnes interrupted her.

”We should open the tavern again.”

Elinor rolled her eyes.

”This again.”

“And supper. We should…we should serve supper.”

”Serve supper to whom? Nobody’s out and about these days.”

”The plague doctors are.”

”The plague doctors. Are you mad? Expose our sisters?”

”Our sisters will not be exposed. They can brew the ale in the brewery and bake bread and the stew inside the abbey. I’ve devised a modified preparation and delivery system to conform to our unusual circumstances. Instead of pilgrims, we will serve weary travelers, merchants, knights...”

”A nine-year-old runt of a girl serving ale and stew to strange grown men?”

“Aye. I can handle it. I work hard and I don’t catch or carry the sickness.”

“We don’t know this for sure…”

”I will live and sleep in the old abandoned chapel, away from you all. So we won't even chance it,” she said.

“A shuttered chapel is no place for a child to…!”

“I don’t mind it! Please, please, Revered Mother. We are blessed with such bounty here, even with all the new sisters who have joined we can’t finish it. But we have needs beyond what the orchard and the barn yield. You need parchment, ink, materials for repairs, one of the barns collapsed just last week... We have obligations attached to our lands. Reverend Mother, we need income.”

“I am aware of our needs, girl,” Elinor said. “I’m just not sure this is how we should go about it. You are the littlest of our sisters… It could expose you to more danger than we can protect you from.”

“Pray on it before you say no…” she said, closing the heavy oak door before leaving. “Pray on it.”

“The floor…my floor, Agnes!”

Abbess Elinor sat back with a sigh.

✨✨✨

Lorenzo’s first stop was the cottage closest to the abbey. The woman who opened the door kept her face turned away. Inside, a boy of six lay on a straw pallet, skin flushed, eyes fever bright. He immediately shrank away from the tall black figure by the door as it approached him, looming closer.

Still, Lorenzo moved slowly to press around his neck. No swellings yet.

He took the boy’s pulse next, pressing on his wrist. His dark glass eyes remained still for a moment.

”Am I sick?”

The terrified boy asked, searching for a gaze.

But found none.

Lorenzo merely nodded.

”The sickness is progressing,” the plague doctor declared.

While he continued his examination, he noticed the boy grew silent and very noticeably frightened. Lorenzo’s voice then softened.

“But I heard a rumor… that the sickness is very scared.”

”Scared?” the boy asked. “What is it scared of?”

”Of you.”

”Me?”

”Without a doubt. Because by now it has seen what a strong lad you are.”

The boy’s eyes lit up.

”Tell the sickness to be scared of me indeed.”

”Me squeezing your arm like this…” he showed the boy the pressure point on his wrist. “That is me telling it.”

”Really? What did you say to it? This moment.”

”I said: ‘sickness, you will not win,’” Lorenzo said.

”And it believed you?”

“Yes. Because you’re going to be brave and stay in bed and you will not give your mum any trouble.”

“Indeed, sir, I promise.”

“And you won’t fuss when she gives you the medicine I am leaving you. Even if it tastes bitter, you will take it. Every last drop.”

”On my honor, sir!”

“What I want to hear,” Lorenzo said, and then playfully touched his nose.

The boy smiled then, still seeking eyes behind the glass.

Lorenzo stood up and wrote a few scribbles on a note that was then left on the table.

”I drew the shape of the vial you will give him,” he said to his mother. “Send for me if it worsens.”

”Thank you, thank you!” the woman gushed.

Lorenzo nodded again, then waved at the boy before walking out the door.

✨✨✨

Across the village, hard against the outer wall of the convent, a handful of sisters and young postulants faced the abandoned long room with its timbered roof and a door that opened directly towards the village lane. The group stood at attention, armed with brooms, buckets and cleaning rags.

Agnes was leading the charge.

“What is this place?” the young postulant Elyse asked.

”The old hospitium,” Sister Agatha explained. “Before the pestilence, it used to receive traveling pilgrims, merchants and even knights."

Agnes rolled up her oversized sleeves and turned around to face the company that included Sisters Agatha, Margaret, Bernadette, Magdalene, and Beatrice. Behind them, postulants Elyse and Isabella peeked shyly at the sad dejected room.

Agnes stood on top of a wooden bucket to make herself taller.

“Now, hear ye, my sisters. I have been given authority of this space under strict, and most hostile conditions. Abbess Elinor doesn’t like it. Vicaress Cecily certainly doesn’t like it. I am certain Archbishop Gregory would detest it. I have enlisted you to turn this damp hole into a proper tavern in the middle of a deadly pestilence. All sisters helping with this mission will remain behind the wall. Supper is prepared in the abbey kitchens, and the ale will be brewed in its bowels. Yet, I alone will face the world…”

Then she noticed the floor.

“Leaves!”

The nuns had no choice but to watch little sister Agnes walk and stomp over the dried leaves.

”Crunchy, crunchy, crunchy…”

Then they watched her squeal and make “leaf angels” on the floors.

”Behold, our wee champion,” sighed Margaret. “The floor is probably covered in mouse droppings.”

“Why must you always be so mean to little Agnes, Sister Margaret?!” Agatha reproached. “She’s doing this out of the kindness of her heart to try to help our cloister in the middle of a pestilence when the church and everyone else has abandoned us!”

“That’s right!” Agnes said, sitting up from the floor. “I may be wee, but I vow to deliver colossal profits!” Agnes said.

”Why did the abbess put you in charge of all the sisters?” Sister Magdalene questioned, while looming over Agnes and wagging a finger.

”Eeep!” Agnes began to tremble.

”Quiet, you! Even Sister Beatrice, who was prostrate with grief, is here and already working and not complaining half so much as you!” Agatha admonished, while tugging Magdalene’s ear.

”Ow, ow, ow, ow!” Sister Magdalene shrieked.

”We’re sisters, we shouldn’t be arguing!” Sister Bernadette reminded them, now tugging the ears of both bickering sisters.

“Hostility is good for industry!” Agnes declared, unfettered, as she climbed on top of the counter. “Order me fresh kindling! And a barrow of the driest logs you can gather from the convent woodpile! Evict all the mice! Turn aggression into perspiration, and let’s turn this into the greatest tavern in all of Christendom!”

All of the nuns stood around, without cheering.

”I find this precocious child both unsettling and vexatious,” Postulant Isabella remarked. Elyse nodded in agreement.

And so, the two shy postulants dragged away the heavy benches from the walls, while the older sisters swept the dried leaves that littered the floors, cleared cobwebs, and dusted off months of neglect and disuse. It took five of them to scrub off the long oak table, formerly the guest refectory, and future bar. Even Sister Beatrice, looking dejected, was setting tables.