If There Was Love For Me

19 - Another World

The first day in the nunnery reminded Maria of her first days with Gwen. It was again another world, a world that first seemed like a dream but after further inspection was only life with a fresh coat of paint. It wasn't happy, the life in the convent, but it was as close to happy as one could get, Maria concluded. 

Not all of the nuns loved women, but almost all of them had a reason to have fled the secular world. They told stories of broken hearts, lost love, misfortune and injustice that made a nunnery their last chance for a comfortable life. Some of them really did believe in god, and Maria was fascinated to see that their good was really different from the one she had been taught about. She didn't believe in this one either, but now she could understand why somebody would want to believe. It was a passable medicine against loneliness.

Loneliness was all around the convent, Maria soon realized. First in the way many of the women reacted when letters came. Almost a third of them would flock around the bunch of letters, search for the one meant for them and then disappear for an hour, just to return with red eyes. Later she felt it in the way some of the women spoke about marriage. Then in the way they spoke about children.

"If you want children so bad, why don't we open an orphanage?" asked Maria one day, as she was working in the garden with some of her sisters.

"We could. But if we did, we could not be us. We couldn't hold hands, kiss, talk like we do now, because children talk. And imagine if they told on us. There aren't many places we can go, so we need to protect the ones we have."

Maria could only agree and focus on her work, as not to think about how unhappy she truly felt most of the time.

There were distractions for her, work, books and the studying of medicine she had taken up. Sometimes it made her forget about Gwen, for an hour or two, but even on the best days she would spent her evenings looking at the letters Gwen had sent her. They came almost daily, always addressed to the Violet, and Maria always answered with a letter to the Flame. Like that she also heard that Charlotte was now married, that Lillian had visited her family and that Francesca had finally gotten engaged.

It was again time for the letters, but to her sadness there wasn't a letter addressed to Violet. She was ready to give up, until one of the younger sisters tapped her on the shoulder.

"This one is for you."

There was a letter, sealed with the kings stamp, addressed to Sister Maria, send my princess Gwenewith of Stonewall.

It was an official letter, with no words of love. It only spoke of "My dear friend" and about how the princess, because of her health, required a nurse to look over her. She had heard that Maria had studied medicine and would think it beneficial for her comfort to have somebody take care of her needs she already knew and trusted. So if it wasn't to much of a sacrifice for Maria, could she bare to leave the convent and return to the princesses court?

The other nuns thought Maria must have received devastating news because of the way she ran out of the common room with only the letter in her hand. In her chambers she forced her self to write an equally formal, official answer to the princes, in which she agreed to come back, bus asked politely why she hadn't been contacted sooner.

It was almost a week until the answer came, with a short explanation about a change of staff following Gwens marriage. Maria tried her best not to think about what that meant, about what wifely duties Gwen would have to fulfill, whether she wanted to or not. She forced her self to answer politely and formal, inquiring about when she should return.