The Silent Treatment

The carriage rolled to a halt just outside the cloister wall, long after the last bell had faded. A single lantern burned above the postern gate.

Lorenzo stepped down first and offered his hand. Agnes took it without looking at him. The too-big peasant shirt and the hem of her overkirtle dragged in the mud. She walked ahead of him toward the abandoned chapel.

Once at the door, Lorenzo cleared his throat.

”Good night, Sister Agnes. You did well.”

She did not answer. She simply pushed the heavy door open with a grunt, stepped inside, and shuffled around her clothes until she could shut it firmly.

In his face.

Lorenzo stood there a moment longer, then turned back toward the wagon.

Cedric and Edgar waited in the dark. Edgar spoke first.

”Ignatius is gone. Took his horse. Left no word.”

Lorenzo climbed up and sat heavily on the box. None of them spoke for a moment, and an owl filled the silence, calling out to them from the convent orchard.

Cedric could no longer stay quiet.

”It’s too long,” he said. “The heart can fail. The breath can shallow.”

”I know,” said Lorenzo.

”We are physicians; this is…courting death,” said Edgar.

”I KNOW,” Lorenzo said, staring at the dark outline of the chapel. “But Duessa will find another way if we refuse.”

Cedric tapped his head, trying to think.

“Perhaps… We should consult with Alaric at first light. He may have a stronger poppy, mandrake, valerian. Nothing stronger than we can reverse if we must.”

Edgar scoffed with exasperation.

”You both keep talking as though you are seriously considering this!”

Lorenzo sighed and rubbed his forehead.

”I will slip a note to the abbess. The Archbishop has forbidden the river. Agnes is safe at home. That much, at least, is done.”

“That comment about Agnes’s hair…” Cedric said. “Lorenzo, Abbess Elinor knows.”

”I realize this,” Lorenzo said. “She will have to grant us an audience. Maybe she can intercede with Du-… that… woman.”

”She must. If Templars come back after Agnes and Ignatius, the entire cloister is in danger,” Edgar said.

Lorenzo kept rubbing his temple. His head felt like it would split in half.

“Hemicrania?” Cedric asked him.

Lorenzo nodded with a soft, pained grunt.

“I have a poultice,” said Cedric.

Lorenzo shook his head.

They sat a little longer in the cooling night before they each finally got up to walk the horses to the cloister barn, then went their separate ways.

Inside the chapel, Agnes had already shed her tattered, oversized clothes and changed into her clean white shift. She climbed into her familiar narrow bed, which was also blessedly clean and scented with lavender. Her sisters had also left notes and sweets to welcome her back from her heroic journey.

She pulled the blanket up to her chin and felt with her finger for the loose front tooth. It still wiggled.

She looked up.

No sacred stag by her window to deliver lectures tonight.

No green light flickered in the walls. Just an abandoned altar and a lonely stone angel.

Agnes closed her eyes and let the silence of home settle over her at last.

✨✨✨

The next morning, the greetings rushed in as soon as the heavy curtains were drawn beyond the grille.

“Little Sister Agnes!”

Sisters Agatha, Margaret, Magdalene, Bernadette and Beatrice cheered when the child nun appeared behind the grille.

”Our little hero’s returned!” Sister Agatha declared. “We heard all about your successful quest to stop the Archbishop. It’s all everyone is talking about!”

”Is it true the dashing Templar Knight accompanied you?” Sister Margaret asked. “Fortunate girl! Tell us everything!”

Agnes frowned sleepily.

“Is he as brave as he looks from a distance?” Sister Magdalene asked.

“No,” she declared. And she did not have the energy to explain further. Nor to soothe their collective disappointment.

And so, the littlest sister’s day settled back to the rhythm of the cloister bell. She prayed the day’s prayers: Prime, Terce, and Sext, by dutifully whispering alone in the chapel while her sisters’ voices drifted from behind the walls.

Between offices, she carried buckets of water to clean the floors, she swept the halls, and spent time in the orchard. She gathered windfalls, stacked kindling, and pulled weeds as a gentler northern wind blew in. While picking roses, she eyed a small rabbit that bolted from under the gooseberry bushes. She chased it happily between rows, giggling and calling it “Robert Rabbit.” Once the creature had vanished, she adjusted her habit again and returned to her basket of roses.

Across the village, the three plague doctors stood at the apothecary counter, now lined with poppy, valerian, mandrake, henbane, and a mysterious dark syrup they all eyed with contempt.

All three doctors took notes, compared proportions, discussed possibilities, measured formulas, and argued over preparations. All this, in between their individual visits to the sick and the dying.

They returned to the same counter that same afternoon. Disagreements grew more heated. Alaric could only throw his arms up when Cedric and Edgar accused his inventory of being insufficient. Meanwhile, Lorenzo fell asleep with his masked face collapsed sideways on the old herbalist book.

At sunset, they wearily walked the lanes. They still marked the doors. They closed the eyes of their newly dead. They left more sprigs of angelica.

Elsewhere beneath that same sunset, Ignatius trained with his sword, grunting as he struck and parried against an unseen enemy. His shifting figure drew a lone shadow against the vanishing sunlight.

That night at the tavern, the three plague doctors took their usual table, the best one, near the hearth. They were greeted by the others, who updated them on their patients and wished to hear all about the quest to Ansel. Although Lorenzo, Cedric, and Edgar were discreet with their accounts of the tale, the three of them were toasted and loudly celebrated by other doctors for talking to the Archbishop and preventing a calamity.

Agnes moved between tables, bringing jugs of celebratory ale and extra loaves. But she did not linger. She did not toast. She did not smile.

Her eyes once flicked to the corner seat where Ignatius had been accustomed to sit. She turned away and kept working, small and efficient, until the candle dimmed in front of the latticed window.

She stepped out to dump the last of the rinse water, but there was no little campfire with three half-bird men waiting to make sure her shift had been completed safely.