The Red Abbey Chronicles (5 page)

“How can you protect knowledge?”

“If it is contained in books, for example. Now stop interrupting. The Sisters rushed into Knowledge House and the men surrounded the building. There were a lot of men and the Sisters were far outnumbered. The men had sharp swords which gleamed in the moonlight. They tried to break into the house but they could not. When they tried to smash the window panes, it was as if the glass were made of
stone. Then they tried to set fire to the house, and at first it seemed as if they had succeeded. The wood of the door and roof began to smoulder and the men rejoiced. Soon the Sisters would burn inside, along with all their knowledge.

“But then a man who had stayed behind on the ship came to join them and when he saw the fire he became mighty angry. He yelled that their master wanted them to take the women’s power and knowledge back to him. Their lives were of no consequence but the knowledge could not go up in smoke. The men had to quench the fire at once.”

“I have seen the marks,” said Jai quietly, her eyes fixed on the path beneath her feet. “On the door to Knowledge House. The traces of the fire’s flames will be there for ever.”

As she said this I realized that she was right. The bottom of the door is blackened with ancient soot.

“Then the men said that they would wait them out. The women would have to come out when they ran out of food and water. So the men sat down, crossed their legs and got ready to wait for as long as necessary.”

“But then they saw them!” Heo could not hold it in any longer. “The Moon women!”

“That’s right. While the men were sitting there with their swords in their laps, ready to slay the Sisters if they dared come out, they felt the earth suddenly begin to quake. On the mountain above the Abbey they saw seven giant women walking with great strides. The women were silver-white and looked as though they were made of moonlight, but the ground trembled and quaked under their steps. Their long, loose hair lashed against the mountainside, ripping up flowers and small trees. Then they began to shine all the stronger and, though the men turned their faces away in fear, the women’s effulgence reflected in the shine of the men’s swords and blinded them. When the men could no longer see, the seven giant women picked up huge boulders and hurled them down upon them. The rocks missed the Abbey buildings but hit the men and swept them down into the ocean.”

We all went quiet for a while.

“They say that the ground where the men were standing ran red with blood.” I glanced over at Jai. She was ghostly pale but calm. “The rocks which did not roll into the ocean became the foundation of the outer wall.”

“Where did the giant women come from? The Sisters were in Knowledge House, weren’t they?”

“I don’t know, Heo. Maybe they were summoned by the island itself. Maybe the First Sisters were capable of more than we know. It happened too long ago to know for sure.”

Heo and Ismi scampered down the path, kicking at pebbles and shouting that they were giant women made of moonlight. Jai looked at me with a grave expression.

“Do you think the birds would still wake us? If somebody came?”

We reached the beach soon after midday. The sun was at her highest point in the sky, shining straight down on us. The south coast of the island is the only place without steep, plunging cliffs between mountain and sea, where White Lady’s lowest slopes level off into rolling layers of rock which stretch down towards the water. The beach is shallow and perfect for snail-harvesting. We sat down under a clump of harn trees to eat the bread and cheese Sister Ers and Joem shared out. Cissil, Sister Ers’s other novice, went around with a stone jug of spring water that they had kept cool under the yarn skeins in the donkey carts.

Then Sister Loeni called for our attention.

“Most of you know what to do. Jai and Ismi, watch the others. Fill your baskets with snails and then bring them up here to me and Toulan so we can show you how to do the dyeing. And be careful with the snails! They must not come to harm.”

We all waded out into the cool ocean. The junior novices were jumping and laughing and the sisters were watchful and calm. Jai kept close to me and I showed her how to find where the bloodsnails live in small clusters stuck fast to the rocks, and how to carefully prise them loose and put them in the basket. The snails cling to the rocks with amazing strength, so it takes a long time to detach them without harming them.

“I thought they were red,” said Jai, successfully lifting off her first snail. “They look as white as mother-of-pearl.”

“The red is inside,” I answered and laid the snail in my basket. “You will see.”

When our baskets were full we carried them up to the tree where Sister Loeni and Toulan had constructed a makeshift table of four long planks laid across the two donkey carts. The donkeys were grazing under the trees close by.

Toulan showed us where to put down the baskets, and then unrolled a spool of silk thread until the thread ran the length of the table three times. When the bloodsnails get scared they emit the precious red pigment which gives the snail its name. Sister Loeni handed Jai a snail and showed her how to frighten it by tapping on the shell with her nail and then wiping it along the threads immediately. As soon as the snail had emitted all of its colour, we laid it in an empty basket and picked up the next one.

It is a slow way to dye thread. If we did it by the old Vallerian method, leaving the snails to die and rot in big barrels to extract the colour, we could dye much more and earn much more silver. But then our bloodsnails would soon die out. Besides, the Abbey does not need so much silver.

When we had no snails left we carried the baskets and used snails a little farther up the beach. Then we tipped them carefully back into the sea. Our hands and arms were already tinged with red, and they were going to get redder still. After the dyeing a large part of the beach is always stained blood-red, and under the trees where Sister Loeni and Toulan hang up the threads and yarn to dry, the grass looks as if it is made of garnet.

When evening came, Sister Ers and her novices served up food on the rocks: more bread and cheese and the delicious spiced meat pies filled with dried nirnberries that Sister Ers only ever bakes for the harvest. We ate with dark-red fingers, and the sisters lit two fires, one for them and one for the novices. We gathered around our fire and talked. The sun sank below the creamy layer of cloud resting over the western horizon and hung there like a golden ball. The ocean was a brilliant blue, dappled with darker streaks, and it whispered softly against the shore. The sky along the horizon was the colour of ripe peaches, but above the thin layer of cloud it was bright blue, and the farther my gaze wandered upward, the darker it became. A single star was already out, directly above our heads. Some koan birds flew over the darkening sea with their distinct shrieking calls. Heo was sleeping with her head in my lap while the sun sank into the sea and the sky turned purple. The water shimmered lilac and turquoise like a wrinkled sheet of silk. Then, all the way down by the horizon, the Spring Star lit up, clear and cold.

My eyes felt heavy and my back ached from bending forward all day. The ocean’s whispering song was
like a sleepy lullaby. But I love to sit and watch the night sky come creeping across the sea, and I fought against sleep long after the other novices had wrapped themselves up in their blankets and settled down around the fire. Soon Jai was my only company. Her unwavering gaze was fixed on the deep-blue sky and her eyes shone black in the fire’s fading glow.

“Is it not the most beautiful thing you have ever seen?” I asked her in wonder. “All this beauty makes me ache inside.”

Jai nodded and swallowed, and then I saw that tears were spilling from her eyes. I carefully removed Heo’s head from my knee and crawled over to Jai, though she did not seem as if she was going to have another screaming panic attack. She only sat facing the stars, crying and crying in stillness and silence. I took her hand and held it in mine. We sat like that for a long time while the night deepened around us. Eventually Jai spoke up to the stars.

“She will never get to see this. Unai, my sister. She will never get to see any of these beautiful and wonderful things I am experiencing here.” She wiped her cheeks roughly with her free hand. “That is what I think about, Maresi. Everything she will never get to see or do.”

“Is she dead?”

“She is dead. Dead and buried.” Jai took her hand from mine and pressed it over her eyes. “Maresi, I saw them bury her. I saw my father and his brothers shovel earth over her bare face. I saw them stamp the earth down over the place where she lay. I saw them put down their spades and walk away to the village, to drink and celebrate. To celebrate that Unai was gone, celebrate that my good sister was not their problem any more. They left us there next to her grave, my mother and me.”

Many who come to this island have lost people they love. I tried to take Jai’s hand again, to show her that I understood and I shared her pain. But her fists were clenched and she was rigid and distant. “Unai who had never done any harm to anyone!

Unai who was the most obedient of daughters. She swore nothing had happened between her and the boy she had been seen talking to but Father did not believe her. She was on her way from the well and he’d asked her for a drink of water and she gave him some. She was always kind to everybody. She did not even know his name! But Father did not believe her, he called her a whore. The boy was of the Miho folk, not the Koho folk like us. That made it even worse.
We are never allowed to mix with them. So Father said the family’s honour was tainted. That she must die. I think about how it must have felt, Maresi.” She sat up, turned towards me and leant her face close up to mine. Her large eyes were as black as coal in the darkness. “Every night when I go to bed I lie there feeling what she felt. My mouth full of earth. The weight of stone and soil on my lungs, my nostrils blocking up. Then soon I cannot breathe at all and I slowly suffocate to death while my family watches on, while my beloved sister watches on and does nothing to save me. Every night I am her, Maresi, every night I am Unai!”

I could not stop myself from recoiling in horror. “You mean,” I said and heard myself splutter, “you mean that she—”

“She was alive when they buried her,” whispered Jai. “And then they stamped on her grave.”

The weather held out and we stayed at the beach all week. The harvest was good and Sister Loeni was pleased. Mother was with us most days, but she always went back to the Abbey at night to check on
the oldest sisters who had not come with us. Sister Ers and her novices made the journey back and forth over the mountain several times with food for the snail-pickers, transported on the donkeys’ backs.

Towards the end of the week the junior novices were losing patience. There were more and more occasions when I found myself running around looking for two or three of them who had gone off on their own down to the beach or into the woods. I would not force them to go back to work, but they had to stay in my sight while they played. The sea can be dangerous if you are not careful, and the woods are large and easy for little girls to get lost in.

One afternoon, as I was coming out of the woods leading Heo and Ismi by the hand, Mother came to meet us. I crouched down next to the girls.

“You must stay where I can see you. What if you got lost in the woods and missed supper? Think how hungry you would be. I know Cissil and Joem are bringing fresh cheese and jam buns today.”

“You’d find us in time,” said Heo with absolute certainty. “You always do.”

She took Ismi by the hand and they ran giggling to play on the rocks. Mother shielded her eyes to watch them and I stood up. “I am sorry, Mother. I
try to keep them in line but it is difficult when I am working at the same time.”

I had been at the Abbey for many years but Mother had only spoken to me directly a handful of times. She has more important things to do than talk to novices.

“Has Sister Nummel entrusted the junior novices to you?” she asked, lowering her hand.

“No, Mother.” I looked up. Mother turned her wrinkly face towards me. I had never noticed how long and thick her eyelashes were before.

“Yet you do it anyway. Why?”

I thought for a moment. “They like me. And they need me, I think.” I smiled. “I need them. I do not miss my siblings as much when I can help others.”

“You are thinking about your sister?”

Mother knew all about Anner. It was easy to forget sometimes, but she knew everything about the novices. I nodded. Maybe looking after the other little ones at the Abbey was my way of compensating for her death. I wanted to make sure nothing bad happened to them. I wanted to protect them like I could not protect Anner.

“You are helping Jai as well.” It was a statement, not a question. I looked over at Jai to where she was bent double, walking along the edge of the sunlit sea.

“Ennike helped me when I first came. Now it is my turn.”

“Has Jai told you what she has gone through?” Mother began walking along the edge of the woods, back to Sister Loeni’s dyeing table, and I followed behind. The mild sea breeze carried the sound of the junior novices’ laughter. It smelt of seaweed and salt and trodden grass.

“Some. She will tell more when she is ready.”

“You are important to her, Maresi. You must not abandon her.”

I looked at Mother with surprise. Her tone had suddenly become very serious.

“Of course I will not, Mother.”

“Good.” She raised her hand in greeting to Sister Loeni and her voice sounded normal again. “Perhaps Sister Nummel will call you to be her novice. You are good with the children.”

Sister Nummel? I had never considered it before. Maybe. I did get on well with her and we did often talk about the junior novices and their troubles. But it did not quite sit right in my gut. Of course I liked taking care of the little ones, but…

“You are already responsible for them, in any case.” Mother turned to me, her voice low and
intense again. Her eyes were the same bright blue as her headscarf. “If anything happens I want you to take care of the juniors, Maresi. I trust them in your safekeeping.” She touched my forehead with one finger and I understood that her words carried great importance. I nodded solemnly. Mother regarded me awhile and then left without another word.