Page 5 of The Cardinal's Daughter
Barely able to put one foot in front of the other I was escorted back into the church, where the Bishop and the Abbess blessed me.
Then it was back to the normal routine and the long tunnel of monastic life that stretched ahead of me.
The rule at Shaftesbury was strict, and the novice mistress – Dame Margaret Hemmingford – even stricter, but my sister novices were kind and the nuns, with whom we did not often associate – were mostly angels of compassion. I wasn’t the only novice to struggle. Sister Jane had been promised to God since birth – her parents were storing up treasure in Heaven by giving Him their youngest child – and she had no vocation at all. Others dreamed of handsome young men, as did I, for a time, until I told myself to be realistic and accept that I would never be married, never know a man’s body.
The days passed in prayer and manual labour; I was sent to work in the kitchen garden, which was pleasant in the warmer months, but tedious as winter came on, since there was little to do. At length, Dame Margaret assigned me to the still room to help Dame Edith with making physic, candles, soap, polish and other necessities. I learned to enjoy the work, although I wished that we could dry flowers and distil perfumes such as my mother had made at home.
My first year at Shaftesbury passed. Late in 1530, we learned that Cardinal Wolsey was dead. He had gone north, as archbishop of York, to minister to his flock as he had never done during the years of his greatness; but soon after his arrival, he had been arrested for treason and brought south towards London and – no doubt – the Tower. At Leicester, his health failing, he died.
I felt nothing. I kept saying to myself, my father is dead, my father is dead, but my heart remained cold, unstirred. I wondered, as I often did, if my real mother was still alive and if she grieved for him. We were not allowed to have contact with the outside world or those we had known in our past lives, so I had had no word from home in all the time I had been at Shaftesbury. I assumed that my true mother still lived – surely, I would have been told if she had died. Yet I had lost her longbefore, when she lost her reason. Resolutely, I tried to put all thoughts of my family away. They were not helpful when I was trying to conquer myself.
After two years, I became aware of a dawning acceptance of the life I had chosen, but it was three years before I began to achieve a degree of serenity and started to feel that I belonged in the nunnery and that God had called me to serve Him. His ways might be unfathomable, yet I had to concede that He knew me better than anyone, and what was best for me, which was to stay at Shaftesbury and become a nun. And then, because I had been taught to examine myself for the slightest fault to confess to the community in Chapter, I shook myself mentally and told myself that I was indulging in the sin of pride in imagining myself to be the Lord’s chosen and fit for acceptance into the professed sisterhood.
Of course, I confessed it. Lying face down, arms outstretched, on the Chapter House floor, I abased myself.
‘But, my child, this is not a fault,’ Mother Abbess said gently. ‘God has called us all to serve Him. Go and pray. He will reveal His purpose to you and whether this is a real calling. And when your time as a novice is up, we will consider if you have a true vocation. Be patient.’
I prayed and I prayed. I knelt at the shrine of St Edward in the Lady Chapel and asked for him to show me the way. But all I heard was silence.
Two months later the madness came upon me – out of the blue, like a thunderbolt. Crossing the garden one day, I saw big, raw-boned Gregory, one of the lay brothers who did the heavy farm work, pissing against a hedge. It was not for me to reprimand him, so I quickly averted my eyes, but not before he had turned and exposed his long member to me, grinning at my discomfiture – for I had not seen a man’s parts before. I hurriedaway, but I could not forget what I had seen. Lying in my bed that night, trying to sleep, I suddenly felt a stab of lust, such as I had never felt. I knew what that member was for, and I could not stop wondering how it would feel inside me. Wondering turned to yearning and a strange physical longing in the female places we were not supposed to touch – and now I knew why! Yet the compulsion to touch was too great, and the pleasurable reward so overwhelming that this became my nightly habit. Sometimes the ecstasy was such that I had to stifle my need to cry out into the pillow lest my sisters heard me.
I knew it was a sin, but I could not confess it. I had not the words or the courage. Besides, confessing meant promising not to do it again, and I could not do that. I had been so long without worldly comfort, and now there was this new delight in my life, and the joy of imagining the lusty Gregory and I as lovers. I could not give that up.
I began to wonder if I had no vocation after all. I fretted over how I would explain my reluctance to take final vows to Dame Margaret, whom I could never imagine having a single lustful thought.
I had been in thrall to my desires for some months when I found myself looking at a beautiful statue of the Virgin and Child in the church and was suddenly gripped with the powerful desire to be a mother. It swamped me, like a tidal wave. I found myself longing to hold a baby in my arms. I imagined my lover planting his seed in me and making me fruitful. The yearning was almost physical. It plagued me every hour of every day, and the worst of it was knowing that it could never be. And that was when the madness descended on me.
When my first courses ceased, I thought little of it, for I had been irregular before. When I missed the second one, I began to wonder, especially when my breasts became tender and I felt sick in the mornings. Twice I had to rush to the privy, my insidesheaving. When my belly swelled, I started to fear that I had something seriously wrong with me.
I went to the infirmary to see Dame Joan, the infirmaress. Heart pounding, I spent a few moments chatting kindly to Dame Alice and Dame Jane who were elderly and bedridden, then went to sit on the bench where other nuns were waiting. Presently, Dame Joan called me into her cubicle, where I poured out my fears to her.
‘If I did not know otherwise, Sister Dorothy, I would say that you were with child,’ she said briskly.
‘But how could that be? I am a maid.’
‘Well, let’s look at you.’
I lay on the narrow bed as she performed a very intimate and uncomfortable examination; I was terrified of what she might say to me. But she shook her head.
‘There are no internal signs of pregnancy,’ she said, and I was conscious of a sense of deflation. She lifted my tunic and felt my belly and breasts. ‘But you are swollen here – and here.’
‘Am I dying?’ I gasped.
‘In truth, I do not know what is wrong with you. Come and see me again in a week and we’ll see if there is a change.’
I sat up. ‘Sister, is it possible that a woman could get pregnant if she has not known a man?’
‘It is impossible, child!
‘But the Virgin Mary. . .’
‘Do not presume to compare yourself with our Holy Mother!’
‘I’m sorry, Dame,’ I subsided.
She regarded me closely. ‘Are you sure you have never known a man, Sister Dorothy?’
‘Quite sure, Dame Joan.’ I couldn’t, of course, count my night-time fantasies.
