Chapter Text
I. A Young Woman
It started and ended in April 1520. On the second of the month, her mother had been waiting at the door for her, demanding in a hush tone where she had been and warning her of the dangers of men.
“It wasn’t like that,” Melinda had insisted.
On the thirtieth, a week before her fifteenth birthday, she returned home before sunrise with May flowers clenched in her fist, only to drop them in surprise at her father’s feet.
On May 8, 1520, she stood before the Abbess with her head held high. She stood tall with the knowledge that her parents had brought this scandal upon themselves. She had told her father so when he woke her on her fifteenth birthday, telling her she would be taken to the convent the next day.
“If I stay here, Father, no one will suspect a thing.” After all, there was nothing inherently scandalous about sneaking off to see your best friend after dark. It wasn’t his fault he’s a boy. “If you send me off, people will talk.”
But her mother only stared at her unseeing and her father said, “Better a nun than a whore.”
So she stood before the Abbess, head held high, knowing that everyone back home was talking about what sweet and quiet Melinda could have done to be whisked so quickly off to a convent.
And she couldn’t care less.
II. The First Girl, age unknown
She had been in the Abbey for nearly three years. Vows had been taken and she had wedded herself to God she could not see. But the other nuns know her story. She’s not so godly, that Sister Melinda. It was her ungodliness that brought her to the nunnery to begin with. But they don’t despise her. You can’t despise the sweet young nun who sacrifices her own meals to the little blonde girl who roams the streets.
It was January 1523 and an entire family and more had died in the village, pus-filled growths at the groined, blackened skin at their fingers. So Melinda did as all good nuns do and prayed. In the morning, the little girl sat outside the abbey, wailing. Through the gates, they could see the buboes hot against her neck, blood and bile dripping down her front.
“We can make her comfortable,” Sister Melinda tried to say.
The Abbess only looked at her. “You will not kill us all.” And locked the gate.
Sister Melinda didn’t fight, not with the whole convent staring at her in terror, silently screaming and praying that the disease would not pass their walls. Inside, Sister Melinda sat and prayed to a God she knew was listening.
Outside, the little girl cried and cried and cried until there was only silence.
III. The Mockingbird, age nine
It was April 1527 and the air smelled it. Some of the local women had grown to like their Sister Melinda. They trusted her, at least. Or the poorer ones did.
An odd one, they said of her. She’s not truly silent, she had not vowed to abstain from the spoken word, but she seldom talked. But prayers for food, for liberation from cruel husbands, always seemed to be answered. Most people in town never heard her voice until that April morning. The Death took a little girl, they said, not even her prayers could work. She was penitent, they said, and none knew if she needed to be. But for two years, she prayed in silence for forgiveness, until one April morning, when she wondered for the first time if anyone was listening.
She was walking through the village with two other nuns, when the shouting started in the square. A young man, maybe even a boy, stood by his mother, his eyes dull and uncaring, though black and blue around the edges. His mother glares towards the center of the square, spewing accusations of sorcery, of seduction, and of wickedness. To Sister Melinda’s shock, her words are hurled viciously at a blonde girl standing tall in the center of the circle. So different from the one who slept for good at the Abbey gates, and yet Melinda wanted to hold the child close and whisper her sincerest apologies. But this girl wasn’t dying. She stood tall in the square, defiant. The woman screeched on and on, telling the world how this child seduced her son and tried to kill him. A man who could only be the girl’s father looked at her with disgust, without recognition or pity.
“What have you done?” he demanded of her.
She spat at his feet. She couldn’t be more than nine.
Better a nun than a whore .
So the silent nun vowed to do better, she would be the protector of the innocent, of the sweet little girl who did not deserve the world’s hatred.
“We will take her,” she said boldly, “and raise her in the way of the Lord.”
She said it even though she knew she would never follow in the steps of anyone who would allow those who followed him to stand idly by as a child was accused of crimes so vulgar.
The Abbess only stared when they returned to the convent.
“You’re willing to take full responsibility for the child?”
The nun and the girl stared right back, their voices loud in their silence.
IV. The Little False Girl, age two
Before was at the convent for six months, sweet little Barbara had become a local favorite. She was the best and the worst of novices, all tied up into one. Sister Melinda loved her because she would never blindly follow. The Abbess loved her because she had yet to discover that.
And, oh, that voice! “She’s more a bird than anything else!” the Abbess was known to coo.
Only the other nuns dislike her, constantly dashing from place to place, her curtsies never more than brief bobs. Sister Raina called her Bobbi once, and it stuck.
Little Bobbi and Sister Melinda were walking carefully to the river, ignoring the shouts from the square. The butcher’s wife was burnt for witchcraft and treason the week before and the whole town quaked with fear of who would be next. They were nearly at the river when a young woman appear beside them.
“Sister, please.”
Bobbi was immediately ready to follow, but Sister Melinda put a hand to her wrist. “Who?”
“The judge’s false one.”
It was a story well-known. A year before, an Italian woman who looked almost recognizable had appeared outside the courthouse, sobbing with an infant at her breast.
“You would leave your own child to the cold?”
For two days and two nights, she stood there screaming and coughing and crying. On the third morning, she lay silent in the dirt, and the infant of not quite two years clutched at the judge’s robes, her big dark eyes older than they had any right to be. And though he never loved her, all the rest did. Full of questions, she sat in the dirt each day while her father worked, right in the spot where her mother died, pulling up leaves and flowers and holding out worms so sweetly, even the Abbess had to accept the child’s gift. “What’s your favorite bird? Your favorite color? Your favorite month?” The little girl who knew everything about everyone and never forgot.
She wasn’t even three.
She wasn’t crying when they reached the square. She stood by her father’s side, looking around and examining the world around her, her fist stuffed into her mouth.
“She’s an odd thing,” her father protested, “But not a witch.”
“A whore’s whelp,” said the priest from the next town over. “Her mother consorted with the Devil, how is the child any different?”
Bobbi stiffens at the word “consort” and looked to Sister Melinda for guidance. She’s a baby, her eyes scream.
“You ought to have drowned it when it arrive.”
The little girl looked up at her father. “Waddud hurt more?” she asked, her voice wobbling with fear and babyhood and betraying the curiosity she was fighting so hard to keep in her eyes. “Drown or burn?”
Sister Melinda shook her head. “What has the child done?”
A nurse maid pointed at the child. “Uncanny, the thing. Reading Latin like the Devil’s got to her.”
Sister Melinda knelt in the dirt and held out her hand. “Or an angel,” she said. “Give me the child.”
“And if demons spawned it? What if it comes to kill us all?”
But Sister Melinda ignore all but the father. “Her fate is in God’s hands.”
The little girl stared at her, sucking gently at her thumb.
“I am Sister Melinda.”
The girl nodded.
“This is Bobbi.”
The girl made a sound around her finger that sounded almost like “Bob.”
The judge looked at them both. “It’s called Jemma and she’s in your hands now.”
“That’s Judge Simons’ bastard. That’s the Fitz-Simmons thing,” Sister Raina said when they returned with the big-eye girl half-asleep in Bobbi’s arms.
The girl studied her surrounding, thumb in her mouth, but said nothing.
V. The Babe
When a baby girl was found outside the convent door, in January of 1527, the Abbess didn’t even ask. She showed up outside the door of the bleak cell Melinda called her room with a child not much smaller than her sweet Jemma.
“You seem to be collecting them, Sister Melinda,” she said, holding out the squirming girl.
Sister Melinda took her without hesitation.
VI. Protector of Women and Girls
Melinda was lucky that Bobbi skipped dinner. It was summer of 1531, and the teenager had been on her way when she heard the most peculiar noise coming through the Abbess’s door. Hesitantly, she stepped in to find Jemma sitting on the floor, Daisy leaned up against her, and a Bible before them.
“What are you doing?” she hissed, grabbing the Bible and returning it to its place.
“Only telling Daisy a story.”
Bobbi rolled her eyes. “You can’t read.”
Jemma crossed her arms and glared with as much frustration as a five-year-old could muster. “Can to!”
“What part are you reading then?”
“Genesis 19:26. I don’t understand.”
For years to come, Bobbi would claim she had almost fainted in surprise. “Our Jemma? Can’t understand?”
Jemma stuck out her tongue as Daisy babbled, “Jem says s’wrong!”
Bobbi reached out quickly to hush the youngest girl. At least Jemma had the decency to look ashamed.
“What’s wrong, Jemma?”
The girl looked at her feet. When she spoke, it was barely a whisper on the wind.
“Not even God can make a lady into salt. It just can’t happen. I know it can’t.”
By the last week of August, Sister Melinda had truly begun to worry. Three cows had been gifted to the convent, named by the little girls who lived there: Bessie, Eleanor, and Henry.
One Tuesday, outside by the barn, Melinda and her three girls stood watching the cows. It was hot and Daisy had cried under the weight of her dress until Bobbi suggested the go watch the cows. The air was thick and humid and Bobbi almost instantly regretted her offer to hold up the smallest girl so she could see over the fence. Jemma stood beside her, precariously balanced on the lowest bar of the fence. Melinda stood behind her, ready to catch her if she fell. But Jemma stood there, babbling on and on.
“Will it be May soon?”
“It’s only August.”
“But May’s your favorite. August, September, October, November, December, January, February, March, and April, then May. That’s a long way away.”
“I can wait.”
“It’s less hot then. I want it to be May. If I ask, can God make it May now?”
How unlike her little girl it was to talk on and on without stopping to breath, and to be making comments so typical of a normal five-year-old...How unlike her Jemma it was to ask the impossible of God. “Jemma…” she said softly.
But when Jemma turned around, Melinda was surprised to see tears in her eyes.
“We can’t eat Bessie, you know,” she said so solemnly, as though she had been holding it inside her for all her years.
Bobbi turned to Sister Melinda, as though to say I told you they shouldn’t have named them .
But sweet little Jemma was always alert and knew each of her companions’ expressions as well as she knew her own. So leaning back against Melinda’s chest, she shook her head. “Henry and Eleanor are just fine and I’m sure will taste lovely,” she said, ignoring Daisy’s scandalized gasp. “But we can’t eat Bessie.”
Melinda leaned forward, lifting the girl and balancing her on her hip. “What’s wrong with Bessie?”
“Her eyes are all wrong. We can’t die yet.”
It’s an odd answer, but said with such confidence that Melinda promised that all four would abstain from meat. “We wish to show the Lord that we are grateful without being given luxuries,” she explained to the Abbess.
On the following Monday, nine sister laid bedridden. By Wednesday, six were dead. Melinda snuck her three girls into her room that night and watched the sleep under a careful eye. She did her best not to wonder what the Abbess would say if she knew that a child of not even six years, and a girl at that, had known to avoid the beast.
It was nearly October before she made up her mind. It grew too cold too fast, and the winds were howling and the thunder roaring like no storm Sister Melinda could remember. The whole convent seemed to shake. The thunder and lightning had never been so horrible, not, she was sure, in Jemma or Daisy’s whole life, and she would not sleep until she checked on her girls. By the time she was outside the little room where her children slept, she was indeed certain that the convent was shaking. She leaned against the door and heard Bobbi whispering inside.
“It’s alright, Daisy, darling. It’s only thunder, it can’t hurt you!” And inside the convent, the world seemed to calm.
Then thunder clapped once more and the ground lurched. Melinda pushed open the door.
Immediately, Jemma broke from the others and ran to her. “She won’t stop shaking,” she said in a terrified whisper.
Melinda looked to the youngest of her girls. Despite the terror in her eyes, the girl was perfectly still. Melinda turned back to Jemma, terrified the child would know her worst fears and the exact answer.
“She won’t stop shaking me.”
She knew the truth then and there. She pulled the six year old against her chest, staring across the room to where a thirteen year old was forced to comfort a little girl with a mind she would never understand. But Sister Melinda did not shed a tear for her girls. Not that night.
“I need you to trust me,” she said.
It was such an odd thing to ask, for if these girls knew only one thing in their lives, it was to trust the odd nun who saved them.
It took two weeks for her to scavenge enough cloth for a new smock for Bobbi and herself. The scraps became mittens and scarves. A woman and three girls traveling alone might be odd, but she was never meant to be a nun.
It was several days before they saw their first cart. She thought they might be nearing Lille.
“Please,” she asked. “My little girls…”
He allowed them on. “Where are you going?” he asked, and when she didn’t answer, “What are you called?”
She stared at the three girls around her. Bobbi leaning half-awake on her shoulder, Daisy curled up fast asleep on her lap. And Jemma, quiet and precocious little Jemma with her head in Melinda’s lap, looking up at her with big brown eyes.
“May,” she murmured softly, dipping to kiss the child’s brow.
“Only May?”
She looked down, nodding in the darkness, adjusting the girls so they all rested in her lap, and watched as they drifted off to sleep, leaving her alone in the silence of her mind.