Turn 6 of 7

Go to Ammet and ask why she was in the garden before you this morning

You leave Ilde crouching by the trunk, her fingers hovering over the bare footprint as though she could read it like a page. The grass is wet against your shoes as you cross the garden toward the refectory, where the smell of barley porridge and warm bread tells you the sisters are breaking their fast. The morning light has strengthened, and the garden wall throws a long shadow westward, but inside the refectory the candles are still lit, and the low murmur of conversation stops when you appear in the doorway.

Ammet sits at the far end of the table, her bowl untouched, the ledger closed beside her plate. She sees you and her spoon stops halfway to her mouth, and she sets it down with a care that tells you she has been expecting this moment since you left her at the garden gate. Breta and old Sister Fen glance at each other. You do not sit. You stand in the doorway and you look at Ammet, and after a moment she pushes her chair back and stands, picking up the ledger.

"Walk with me," she says, barely above a whisper, and you follow her out through the cloister and into the herb garden where the rosemary grows thick against the south wall. The air is sharp with its scent, and the morning sun is warm on the stone. She stops beside the bench where the sisters dry lavender in summer and turns to face you, and her face is the face of someone who has rehearsed this conversation through a sleepless night and still cannot find the right words.

"I could not sleep," she says. "I have not slept well in — weeks, perhaps. I kept seeing Ilde's shadow on the garden wall, and I kept thinking about the pencil mark, and I kept thinking about Corrin. So I came down before the bell. I came to the garden to — to see for myself whether anything had changed."

She stops. Her hands are shaking, and she presses them flat against the ledger to steady them.

"The gate was latched. I unlatched it and went in, and I saw the stems. Three of them, cut clean, on the north bough. I stood there for a long time. I did not know what to do. I was afraid — I was afraid that if I raised the alarm, it would come back on me, because I had no business being there, and because I knew about Ilde's visits and had said nothing."

"You did not take them," you say. It is not a question.

"No," she says, and her voice breaks on the word. "No, I did not take them. But I know who did, or I think I do, and I am terrified of being right."

She opens the ledger to the page with the pencil mark beside Ilde's name. She holds it toward you, and her finger trembles against the margin.

"I did not write this. But I know whose hand it is. I have seen it before — in the Abbess's personal notes, in the margins of her prayers. Corrin marks what she watches. She marks what she intends to act on."

The rosemary scent is heavy around you both, and somewhere inside the Abbey a door closes. Ammet's eyes are wide and dark and full of something that is not quite grief.

"Corrin has refused her portion for nine years. Nine years of giving back what the tree offered her. And she is dying — you have seen her. She cannot stand for Lauds. She cannot eat more than bread. I think she took the fruit. I think she took it and did not eat it, because I cannot find it anywhere, and I do not know what she means to do with three years of life she has spent nine years refusing."