The elderflower blooms at Midsummer

Love will be ever more blissful!

During the following nights—and often during the day, too—they didn’t bother running to the forest. They made love just outside the convent wall, in a sun-soaked bower among bushes of blackthorn and elder. They made love and—even during the day—sylvan spirits cavorted around them.

Parsley, carrots, celery

Grow in our garden,

The gorgeous Jutta is the bride

She should wait no longer…

The convent in White Church was divided into three parts, which Reynevan inevitably associated with the Three Circles of Initiation. The First Circle—which wasn’t circular, of course—housed the convent’s utilities, including the garden, the infirmary, the guests’ and workers’ refectory and the converse nuns’ dormitory, and also the guests’ bedchambers and rooms. The Second Circle—the heart of which was the church—was off limits to guests and included the library and scriptorium, and also the abbess’s chambers. The Third Circle consisted of the completely and strictly secluded clausula, and the nuns’ refectory and dormitories.

The Poor Clares of White Church observed—on the face of it, at least—a stern religious rule. They fasted strictly and there was no meat in the convent’s bill of fare. They kept silent during meals and utter silence was maintained from Compline to the convent Mass. Work, prayer, penance and contemplation took up their entire day; they were only entitled to one hour for their own affairs and rest, with the exception of Fridays, when no rest was allowed. The conversae—apart from Jutta, there were four in the convent, all maidens from noble families—followed a considerably tempered version of the rule and their duties were limited in principle to worship and religious study.

However, the longer Reynevan resided in the convent, the more departures from the rule he noticed. What was conspicuous right away was the quite relaxed approach to the clausula. Absolutely inaccessible from the outside, from the inside the clausula wasn’t a barrier—the nuns could move through the entire convent. Even the presence in the convent of two men—Reynevan and Samson—didn’t limit their freedom of movement. There was only a peculiar piece of etiquette to observe—the nuns pretended that there weren’t any men and the men pretended not to see them. This didn’t apply to the abbess, who did what she wanted, when and how she wanted to. The sister housekeeper and the infirmarist also had complete freedom of contact.

The more Reynevan was accepted by the nuns and considered trusted, the more he was allowed to see. And he saw that the penance and contemplation ordered by the rule were substituted in White Church by study; the reading of books, writings and postills; discussions; and even debates. But he was not allowed into those restricted areas. Although Jutta had access to them, he didn’t.