Julian, the Anchoress

Julian regarded the visitor occupying the stool beneath her parlour window. Perhaps "visitor" was no longer the right word. The little creature had appeared in the anchorhold only a week ago, but now seemed quite at home. They were so close to one another that Julian might have reached down and touched the mouse from her place behind the sturdy, wooden lectern, where she was standing with a finger pressed against a line of text inscribed on a piece of parchment. The anchorhold was no larger than a shed, attached to wall of the St. Julian's Church from which the anchoress took her name. Its furnishings consisted of the lectern which doubled as Julian's writing table, the stool taken lately by the mouse, a bed without curtains, and a simple altar. Windows had been cut into two of the three exterior walls, but at this late hour the openings were shuttered and the anchorhold was lit only by a single candle.

Julian leaned against the lectern to stretch her spine and ease the pain of her scoliosis. The mouse sat upright on the stool displaying her furry, white paunch. She balanced on her hind legs and the base of her tail, and her attention was fixed upon the salad of recently cut grass which she handled deftly with her forepaws.

"You are thinking of someone who is not Our Lord," said the mouse as she began to nibble at her meal. Her voice was not thin and weak, as one might have expected. Instead, it was a deep, melodious and confident voice, that seemed to reverberate in the deathly stillness of the chamber. Julian could feel the voice within her chest. The accent suggested the influence of a language much older than English, from a land far to the East and the South. Very far from Norwich, Julian was certain of that. She chided herself for these absurd reflections. It was madness to pay heed to a talking mouse. But she enjoyed listening to the rich, deep voice all the same.

"Yes," she replied after a moment's hesitation. "I was thinking of someone who is now with Our Lord."

She sighed, wondering whether it might be best to cut short the conversation and extinguish the candle. According to the Rule, she should be making ready for bed. But she was not yet ready for sleep. She did not feel ready. Her spirit was agitated by a sense of urgency that had plagued her thoughts for the past week, and even affected her prayers and devotions.

"Is it our brother Sawtry?", inquired the mouse.

Julian felt a twinge of guilt. Sawtry had been burnt in chains years before. She had prayed for him, but she no longer thought of him very often. "No, Suriz. It is not he."

The little rodent's whiskers began to twitch, as did the tip of her pink tail. "Ahh! It is Master Adam, then. Tell me soothly. It is Adam Easton; it is he, is it not, anchoress?"

"Cardinal Easton to you, I think."

The mouse rocked on her hind legs, shifting her weight from one leg to the other and performing the little dance Julian had come to recognize as a kind of laughter, and as she stirred her grey coat glistened in the candle-light.

"You are being unkind, Suriz", she said disapprovingly.

"One day Cardinal of England. Then Cardinal locked in a dungeon." The mouse stomped one tiny foot for emphasis. "Then Cardinal of England, again!"

"He was tortured and nearly put to death. He suffered greatly."

"Oh! I know! I know!", cried Suriz, as if she herself had witnessed all these things. "They say that he came all the way back to Norwich to be healed, with all his bokes in great barrels. A broken man. And that he mended here - but perhaps that is not truly what happened... he did mend your boke, though. Tell me if I am mistaken."

"He did not mend it!" Julian said crossly. They had touched upon the subject of her writing before, but not to the point of discussing Easton's involvement with her work. She wondered what other scraps of old gossip the mouse might have picked up.