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He came at last, dressed up like a gentleman, and told me he was ready to wait on me to the nunnery.
The gray dawn began to break as we saw the nunnery before us, and it was very cold. But Alswythe pointed to a crimson glow behind us, as we topped the last rise, saying that the sun would be up soon. Wulfhere and I looked at each other. That glow was not in the east, but shone from Matelgar's hall in flames.
We, meanwhile, stepped ashore to examine the ruins of the old nunnery of Godstowe, where Fair Rosamond secluded herself, after being separated from her royal lover. There is a long line of ruinous wall, and a shattered tower at one of the angles; the whole much ivy-grown, brimming over, indeed, with clustering ivy, which is rooted inside of the walls.
Sister Margaret, commonly called the Carthusian nun, was the name of the singular woman who was chosen to be my teacher. She was at once the most pious and learned soul living; she was Prioress of a Carthusian nunnery and had written ten large choirbooks, besides others. Though the rule of her order forbade discourse, she was permitted to teach.
"But Fanny, I am grieved to say, seems inclined to assist this young man with Zoe; that is, because it does not matter to her. She has other views serious ones." "Serious! What? A nunnery? Then I pity my lady abbess." "Her views are plain enough to anybody but you." "Are they? Then make me as wise as my neighbors." "Well, then, she means to marry you." "What! Oh, come! that is too good a joke!"
Of the Austin Canons, the Priory of St Gregory founded by Lanfranc in 1084 near St John's Hospital, also a foundation of Lanfranc, in Northgate Street, really nothing, a fragment of old wall; of the Nunnery of St Sepulchre, a Benedictine house, nothing at all. As for the Friars' houses scarcely more remains.
It is mainly the Early English church of the nunnery curtailed and altered by Bishop Alcock, who put in Perpendicular windows and removed aides without a thought of the denunciations he has since incurred. In many of the windows the glass is by Morris and Burne-Jones, and the light that passes through them gives a rich and solemn dignity to the interior.
"No, but what I should like," added he, munching a pie in his moist-lipped handsome mouth, "would be to slip in over there." He pointed with a smile to a turreted nunnery, and his eyes narrowed and gleamed. "That would be fine, gentlemen!" The officers laughed. "Just to flutter the nuns a bit. They say there are Italian girls among them. On my word I'd give five years of my life for it!"
There remained therefore but one man to be considered: the "splendid Knight" of old Antony's vision; the lover who had pursued her into her Nunnery; wooed her in her own cell, unabashed by the dignity of her office; mastered her will; forced her numbed heart to awaken, disturbed by the thrill of an unwilling tenderness; moved her to passion by the poignant anguish of a parting, which she regarded as inevitably final; won the Bishop over, to his side, and, through him, the Pope; and finally, by the persistence of his pleadings, moved our blessèd Lady to vouchsafe a vision on his behalf.
I was also told that if I swallowed the wafer before it had melted on my tongue, IT WOULD CHOKE ME TO DEATH; and if I indulged an evil thought while I held it in my mouth I SHOULD FALL INTO A POOL OF BLOOD. While in the White Nunnery, I spent the most of my time in the nursery. But the name gives one no idea of the place.
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