Morgan Le Fay; The True Story

Chapter Eleven

I settled into the routine pretty quickly, and I soon began to learn names and recognize face. I learned the varying types of work, but excelled at little.

They have several different types of chores- cleaning the abbey, cooking the meals, working in the gardens and fields the abbey controlled, preparing the abbey for the winter, caring for the ill that are brought to the abbey, gathering herbs and wood, and so on. Although I was decent at cleaning and working in the gardens, I wasn't skilled enough to cook, work in the fields, or make winter preparations for the coming bitterly cold winter.

In fact, the only thing I was good at was tending for the ill. Six months passed and shortly after Christmas, but before Lent, I was accepted as a full fledged sister.

The Abbess assigned me to the infirmary, for which I was grateful. I thanked her profusely, but she waved me away.

"You have an aptitude for the art of healing those pour souls the Lord has sent us," she said serenely. "The Lord has blessed you with that skill, so I have merely placed you where you would be the most effective."

I slowly grew to love my job, and over the course of the next two years I learned everything that the sister who oversaw the infirmary had to teach me. Every form of medicinal poultice, rub or tea that I mixed became my declaration of care for the world.

Babies were born and people died, the cycle of life passed on before me, and I helped with it. During my fourth year as a nun the Abbess created a place for orphaned babies, or the castoffs of those who couldn't care for their child, within the abbey's walls.

The infirmary workers were commanded to care for the babies, and we did, but there were soon too many to care for deeply. Wet nurses were brought in to nurse some of them- those women that had lost their babes in childbirth or had had their children die in accidents.

The babes that were not nursed by the wet nurses were fed by a bottle, and that became the highlight of my day. Most of the sisters only fed the babies, but didn't hold them close or treat them with love, while I took the time to care for each child I fed, talking to them and holding them close.

My supervisor, an elderly sister named Agatha, noticed and told the Abbess what I was doing. I was summoned to the Abbess's office one afternoon, while I was cleaning the floors of the infirmary.

"The Reverend Mother wishes to see you, Sister Morgan," Sister Agatha said, offering me a hand up. She was getting a bit stiff in the joints, and could no longer scrub the floors herself, but she was still a strong woman.

"Whatever for?" I asked, worried. "Have I done something wrong?"

"I'm sure you're not in trouble," she said, taking the rag that I had been using. "Get along, now. It won't do to keep her waiting on you."

"Of course not, Sister Agatha," I said, tilting my head in her direction as I made my way out of the infirmary, pausing only to pour a cup of water for one of our patients, a man who had been chased out of his village for having a painful skin disease.

The Abbess was waiting for me outside of the office. She had been conversing with one of the other sisters, but as I approached she fell silent.

"Oh, good," she said. "Sister Morgan, would you please step inside the office?" That was a peculiar thing about the Abbess. Although she was the only one to use the office, she never referred to it as her office. It was always "the office" to her, and whenever she heard anyone refer to it as her office she would correct them.

"What's this business about my having an office?" she'd ask. "I own no office. If you're referring to the abbey's office, well, obviously that's part of the abbey. I do not own the abbey, therefore it is not my office. It is all the Lord's blessings on this fellowship, and the very idea that any one of us could own it is preposterous." That always ended any discussion about "her" office.