World Without End Page 0,355

"Sleep well," she said. "If you get lonely, I'll be here by the fire."

"I'll remember that."

They put Mother Cecilia on a bedstead, not a mattress, and placed it immediately in front of the altar, the holiest place in the hospital. Nuns sang and prayed around her bed all day and all night, in shifts. There was always someone to bathe her face with cool rose water, always a cup of clear fountain water at her side. None of it made any difference. She declined as fast as the others, bleeding from her nose and her vagina, her breathing becoming more and more laboured, her thirst unquenchable.

On the fourth night after she sneezed, she sent for Caris.

Caris was heavily asleep. Her days were exhausting: the hospital was overflowing. She was deep in a dream in which all the children in Kingsbridge had the plague, and as she rushed around the hospital trying to care for them all she suddenly realized that she, too, had caught it. One of the children was tugging at her sleeve, but she was ignoring it and desperately trying to figure out how she would cope with all these patients while she was so ill - and then she realized someone was shaking her shoulder with increasing urgency, saying: "Wake up, sister, please, the Mother Prioress needs you!"

She came awake. A novice knelt by her bed with a candle. "How is she?" Caris asked.

"She's sinking, but she can still speak, and she wants you."

Caris got out of bed and put on her sandals. It was a bitterly cold night. She was wearing her nun's robe, and she took the blanket from her bed and pulled it around her shoulders. Then she ran down the stone stairs.

The hospital was full of dying people. The mattresses on the floor were lined up like fish bones, so that those patients who were able to sit upright could see the altar. Families clustered around the beds. There was a smell of blood. Caris took a clean length of linen from a basket by the door and tied it over her mouth and nose.

Four nuns knelt beside Cecilia's bed, singing. Cecilia lay back with her eyes closed, and at first Caris was afraid she had arrived too late. Then the old prioress seemed to sense her presence. She turned her head and opened her eyes.

Caris sat on the edge of the bed. She dipped a rag in a bowl of rose water and wiped a smear of blood from Cecilia's upper lip.

Cecilia's breathing was tortured. In between gasps, she said: "Has anyone survived this terrible illness?"

"Only Madge Webber."

"The one who didn't want to live."

"All her children died."

"I'm going to die soon."

"Don't say that."

"You forget yourself. We nuns have no fear of death. All our lives we long to be united with Jesus in heaven. When death comes, we welcome it." The long speech exhausted her. She coughed convulsively.

Caris wiped blood from her chin. "Yes, Mother Prioress. But those who are left behind may weep." Tears came to her eyes. She had lost Mair and Old Julie, and now she was about to lose Cecilia.

"Don't cry. That's for the others. You have to be strong."

"I don't see why."

"I think God has you in mind to take my place, and become prioress."

In that case he has made a very odd choice, Caris thought. He usually picks people whose view of Him is more orthodox. But she had long ago learned that there was no point in saying these things. "If the sisters choose me, I'll do my best."

"I think they'll choose you."

"I'm sure Sister Elizabeth will want to be considered."

"Elizabeth is clever, but you're loving."

Caris bowed her head. Cecilia was probably right. Elizabeth would be too harsh. Caris was the best person to run the nunnery, even though she was sceptical of lives spent in prayer and hymn-singing. She did believe in the school and the hospital. Heaven forbid that Elizabeth should end up running the hospital.

"There's something else." Cecilia lowered her voice, and Caris had to lean closer. "Something Prior Anthony told me when he was dying. He had kept it secret until the last, and now I've done the same."

Caris was not sure she wanted to be burdened with such a secret. However, the death bed seemed to overrule such scruples.

Cecilia said: "The old king did not die of a fall."

Caris was shocked. It had happened more than twenty years ago, but she remembered the rumours. The killing of a