Grave Mercy: Deleted Scenes From Ismae’s Time at the Convent

Sometimes it’s hard to know where exactly to start a book. As I worked on Grave Mercy, I ended up writing a lot of scenes that didn’t really earn a place in the final book. Luckily, I can share them with you here!

 

# # #

It is at the very end of the summer of my second year at the convent before I have my first true encounter with Death. A few days before Michelmas, we are all in Sister Serafina’s workshop where she is conducting a group lesson in poison.  She has set the youngest girls to plucking the flowers, leaves, and berries from the nightshade I collected yesterday. She gives them careful instructions not to crush the stem, for it will fill the room with a foul odor. Two of the girls are outside collecting honey from bees fed on laurel and rhododendron, for even the sweetener in our potions is poisonous. Annith sorts through a bag of rye, looking for the highly prized black fungus used in a poison called Martyr’s Embrace.

“Here,” Sister Serafina hands me a plate of goose livers and a mortar filled with a grayish white powder she calls arsenic. “Prepare this for the toads, then have Florette and Aveline feed them. After that, I’ll need your help with the mushrooms.”

I take the supplies from her and set them on the table closest to the cage. The toads croak loudly and crowd close, eager for their meal. The two younger girls play with them while I quickly mash the arsenic into the goose liver, then form the mixture into small, pebble-sized balls. “Gloves,” I remind the girls, and they hurry over to the shelf. When they return, I set the platter of pellets on the floor and watch them feed the first few to the eager toads. Once I am certain they have the hang of it, I hurry over to assist Sister Serafina.

I have just begun to help her place the crop of wild mushrooms on a drying rack when Sybella appears, breathless, in the doorway. “Matelaine!” she snaps. “You are to take the younger girls to the dormitory and stay there until we come for you. Sister Serafina, you and Annith and Ismae are to come with me.”

Once we are all outside, I hear the wail of a horn. The low, somber sounds fills me with a deep sense of dread and foreboding. The sense of dread grows when Sister Serafina lifts her skirts and begins to run.  “Are we under attack do you think?” I ask Sybella.

“I do not know,” she says, then we all fall silent as we chase after Sister Serafina. The look on the nun’s face is so grim, I cannot bring myself to ask her what it means.

The beach is stormy and thick gray clouds move across the sky, casting shadows upon the turbulent waters. A ship approaches. It is not the ferryman and his familiar little boat, but a shallow drafted vessel with black sails. At first I am relieved that it is not an invading army, until I see all the nuns are on the beach awaiting this vessel. Even the abbess stands there. The wind whips at their habits and veils, sending them into the air like great black wings.

At last the ship draws close and a smaller boat is lowered to the water, a black draped casket already in it.

That is when I realize that Death is paying us a visit.

When it is safely in the water, two hedge priests garbed in black climb in behind it and begin poling the vessel to shore.

The waves have kicked up now, and it is hard going. They struggle to keep the boat pointing toward shore and to keep the worse of the swells from crashing over the bow. When they are close enough, Sister Widona hurries into the water, followed by Sister Thomine and Eonette. Annith is the first of us to rush after them, then Sybella and I follow.

The water is like ice as it seeps through my skirts, like Death’s cold grasp trying to drag me down. My skirts grow heavy and wading through them is like wading through mud, but at last I am beside the boat. My numb white hands grip the side and I peer in.

The still white face is Jacinthe’s. She has been returned to us with Death’s hand upon her. I grip the side of the boat along with the others and help guide it through the breaking waves back to the beach.

We are a somber group when we reach the shore, somber and sodden and united in our grief. The nuns grab the corners of the casket and lift Jacinthe from the boat. They thank the hedge priests, then turn and carry their sorrowful burden to the convent.

In the infirmary, the nuns lay Jacinthe out with great ceremony. Annith, Sybella, and I are allowed to help as they wish to impress upon us the absolute price Mortain sometimes asks of his handmaidens.

We wash her broken body—she had fallen, or been pushed, from a great cliff—then anoint her with balsam, its clean scent masking that of death. When that is done, we drape her in a linen shroud, as pure and white as new fallen snow. She will meet her Father wrapped in devotion instead of innocence, but is no less beloved because of it.

Her rich wooden casket is placed on a bier in the chancel and draped in black serge. The abbess herself leads the mourning service, her melodious contralto singing Jacinthe to her rest. When she is done, we all file past the coffin, from five year old Florette to the ancient Sister Vereda who totters along on sister Widona’s arm.

When it is my turn, I stare down at Jacinthe’s white face. I had thought that death would have leached all the beauty from her features, but it is not so. She was beautiful in life, and is even more so in death, whether because of some trick of the nun’s or some grace of Mortain’s, I do not know. I have not spoken more than a dozen words to her in my time here at the convent, but I am filled with unspeakable sorrow nonetheless. I say a short prayer for her soul, then step aside so Annith can say her good-byes. She knew Jacinthe much better than I.

When the last of us are done, six of the stongest nuns lift up the casket to their shoulders and begin Jacinthe’s final journey to the crypt beneath the convent.

The stone stairway is narrow and well worn with the footsteps of all the nuns who have served Mortain before us. Chill air seeps up from the crypt, as if Death Himself is eager to welcome His daughter.

The light from our torches flickers, performing a macabre dance of shadows upon the cold stone walls. Our cortege passes gaping open tombs that line the walls like honeycomb.

At last we reach the tomb the nuns have prepared. The reverend mother blesses Jacinthe once more and sprinkles holy water upon her body. She then covers her face with the shroud and the nuns slide the casket into the tomb. Someone will return later to seal the opening.

As we turn and begin our somber way back through the crypt, I cannot help but notice all the empty tombs, staring back at us like great black eyes, waiting for our service to Mortain to come to an end.

 

 

# #