Mother Wilfreda chuckled suddenly.
“What?”
“The wistful expression on your face betrays you, dear.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Esme said, but of course she did.
“There is naught wrong with woman-feelings for a man… as long as there is no bedding afore the wedding.”
Esme felt her face heat with embarrassment. “I have no woman-feelings for any man.”
“I may have been a nun these forty-some years, but I know this for certain. God meant for men and women to enjoy each other. There is good lust and there is bad lust.”
“Good lust, eh? I like the sound of that,” Toste said, coming up behind them, then sliding onto the bench next to Esme… way too close.
Esme sidled her bottom along the bench, away from him.
He followed after her.
Mother Wilfreda just made a clucking sound at their antics, then rose and said her good eventides to them both. She would be going off to her cell, along with several of the other nuns, but many of the nuns and novices would set up pallets before the hearths to take advantage of the heat. Most of the bedchambers were cold in wintertime, the only heat provided by numerous woolen blankets; wood for the fireplaces was an expensive commodity.
“She is a good woman,” Toste said, motioning his head toward the departing nun. Mother Wilfreda was speaking to her flock of young novices, who were yawning and placing no objections to an early bedtime. After all, they would have to rise before dawn to begin a new day.
“Yea, she is. I do not know what I would have done without her these many years. She is blood kin… but more than that. She has been like a true mother to me.”
“I’m impressed with this abbey. It is pretty nigh self-sufficient, especially with the mead sales.”
“Yea, it is bare bones here, but we get by.”
“Especially with Sister Mary Rose selling the occasional relic.” He waggled his eyebrows at her for emphasis.
“There is naught wrong with relics.”
“Hah! She tried to interest me in one of the Virgin Mary’s eyelashes today. Christ’s mother must have had eyelashes like the tails of a peacock when you consider how many of them have been found over the years. But this is nothing new. When I was in the Rus lands one time, a merchant tried to sell me twelve shriveled-up things which he claimed were the manparts of the twelve Apostles.”
“Are you teasing me?”
“A little.”
“Well, don’t.”
“Why?”
“Because I will have to go to confession again.”
He tilted his head in question. “Again?”
“Yea, I had to go early today for saying that bad word to you and Bolthor. Then again later when I was dusting the altar of the church sacristy and knocked over St. Stephen’s shin bone. Broke it into two pieces, I did. It flew through the air like a spear. Swish!”
“And that sin would be?”
“Taking improper care of sacred objects.”
” ‘Tis sinful to be clumsy?”
“Apparently.”
“Father Alaric wanted me to make a confession,” Toste told her.
“For what?”
“Abominations.” He winked at her.
Her mouth dropped open
He laughed out loud and chucked her playfully under the chin, thus closing her gaping mouth.
“Do not do that. It is not proper.”
“What is not proper?”
“Touching me… a holy nun.”
“Oh, nay, do not play that game with me. You are no more a nun than I am a monk. Once I learned that you had not taken your final vows, I began to view you in an entirely different light.”
“What do you mean?” She tried to sound prim and uninterested, which she was not.
“It means that I intend to do everything in my power to seduce you to my bed furs.”
She gasped. “You are an abomination.”
“A tempting one, I trust.”
“See, I will have to go to confession now.”
“Did I miss something? What sin did you commit? I am the one who made the sinful suggestion.”
“Yea, but you put impure thoughts in my mind.”
“It is a sin to think impure things?”
“Yea, ’tis. We are taught to avoid the near occasions of sin. And impure thoughts are definitely in that category.”