Eadgifu's Willpower Struggles To Overcome Her Deception
Chronicles of an Unwilling Abbess: Episode 3
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This is the third instalment in the miniseries, Chronicles of an Unwilling Abbess. It was billed as a three-parter, but I think it will end up being a six-parter. The first two parts are linked below.
So far, we have met Eadgifu and watched her dreams be destroyed as her father first opposed her marriage to her childhood sweetheart and then sent her across the seas to France to learn the ways of monasticism. She has grappled with the fate bestowed upon her by others and ultimately decided that she will show them that she is not one to be messed with.
Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3: Eadgifu's Willpower Struggles To Overcome Her Deception
I threw myself into watching everything that Clotilde did.
If I was to convince her that I was capable of running an abbey, I had to study every aspect of her role. I had to put on a show so convincing even I might become taken in by it. I had to inhabit the life of an abbess to my core.
And so I took every opportunity to work alongside her. She showed me how to run the accounts with integrity, unlike some of the monasteries she knew of. Occasionally, I was allowed to read the lesson over our evening meal, adding brief commentary here and there to show the other nuns how they might apply what they were hearing to their lives. By my first Christmas at Brie, she had even allowed me to direct the group of nuns responsible for clothmaking, though I had never spun wool or woven cloth in my life.
“You have an eye for detail, my dear,” she’d replied when I asked her why she had placed someone so ill-equipped in charge of talented craftswomen. “It is not always necessary to be an expert to lead. Rather, it is the skills that cut across different aspects of abbey life that one looks for in an abbess.”
Radegund had laughed when I recounted this conversation to her.
“An eye for detail?” She characteristically threw her head back as another laugh escaped. “Of course you do! You are taking in every single detail with razor-sharp clarity, storing it somewhere in that head of yours –” she jabbed at my temple – “ready to unleash it when it’s required. Oh, if only she knew your real motivation!”
I was less impressed. “But what if she does? She knew before that I wasn’t being wholehearted. Why would she think any different now?”
She held my shoulders slightly too firmly. “Because you are winning, Eadgifu! You are doing exactly what you set out to do. You are deceiving her, tricking her into thinking your devotion is genuine so that you can be released back to your beloved Northumbria.”
I couldn’t hide my horror. Yes, this was exactly what I had wanted, all those months ago when I’d first arrived. But as I’d spent more time with Clotilde, gained her trust and affection, it dawned on me that I wasn’t all that happy about manipulating an old holy woman into getting what I wanted.
“You do still want to return to Northumbria, don’t you?” Radegund’s voice had a nervous edge to it.
I flopped down by the fire. “Oh, I don’t know. Yes? I think so?” I picked at the threads in my dress that had frayed where it dragged under my feet. “I certainly don’t feel any more drawn by the monastic life. And I’m still very cross at my father for sending me here. I just feel so bad about the web of lies I’ve spun around Clotilde. She’s such a genuine woman and I see that she really loves God. If I was her I’d be horrified if someone did what I’m doing to her.”
I pulled my hands across my face and let out a big exhale. I felt stuck – stuck in this nightmare my father had created. Was he aware of the way its tendrils entrapped others?
Pacing my tiny room that night, I fretted over what to do. Part of me wanted to reveal the whole rouse to Clotilde: confess my sins and be shipped back off to my father, condemned to live the rest of my life in shame. Yet another, perhaps louder, part of me wanted to continue my venture to free myself from the shackles of others’ ambitions. It still didn’t sit right with me, the way he could just decide my future depending on his own schemes and whims. The way that he’d forced me to abandon my love and journey across treacherous seas to learn a way of life so alien from my own, and so far from what I’d dreamed of.
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