Alma Mater
Run 3: 26th-29th March 2026
Alice
the Chamberlain
Age:
late 30s - late 40s
Psalm 119: O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day. Thou through thy commandments hast made me wiser than mine enemies: for they are ever with me. I understand more than old men, because I keep thy precepts.
Themes:
Romance; consensual sexual contact with women; theological debate; Protestantism; violation of privacy boundaries
If God is love, then surely love is godly? This is what you have always been taught. You have found a place to explore your love of women here in this house of Alma Mater’s love, and you have found purpose too.
Your father was the Master of the Tailor's Guild in Bedford. Both of your parents were busy, hardworking business people and largely left you to your own devices growing up. As soon as you could run faster than your nursemaid, you would spend your days running the streets of the town, playing with children of all ages and classes, coming home late with your clothing muddy and torn.
Your parents were content to let you marry for love—at least as long as you loved the right person. However, you couldn’t find any man you wanted to fall in love with. Instead, you fell in love with a local widow, spending day after day pining for her outside her house. Eventually, you were able to persuade your parents to let you take a job in her household (until you found a husband), where you bent all your will to catching the widow’s attention. Alas, you pushed it too far, and one day found yourself out of a job and broken-hearted, back at your parents’ home.
Role:
The Chamberlain cares for the sisters’ robes and habits. She makes sure each has appropriate clothing provided, and sees to care and mending when required. She makes sure everyone has items they need: candles, ink, monthly cloths, and so on.
Abbess Joan has also delegated to you her duty to ensure that the sisters are communicating appropriately whenever they have contact with anyone from the outside world. As the Almoneress takes care of guests and visitors, you have the responsibility to read all the letters coming in and out of the Abbey. Some nuns, like Sybil, the Almoneress, and Clemence, the Cantrix, have a lot, so you usually don’t do more than give each letter a quick scan. If you did find anything untoward, you could check it with Maud.
Connections:
Maud, the Prioress
When you moved to Whitwood, you found the absence of pressure to marry a blessed relief. However, that relief was short-lived. As the years passed among the sisters, you started to feel stronger and stronger feelings towards some of the women around you. At night, you would dream and see their faces, and during the day, you felt called to sit beside them at prayers or in the refectory. None of them seemed to return the intensity of your affection, though, until you met Maud.
Maud returned your affections, and what at first was expressed in shared prayer and work later turned into stolen kisses when the other sisters were not present. Your relationship with Maud has gone on for a couple of years now, and you love her deeply.
Secrets:
You are in a romantic relationship with Maud
Although you are intensely private about your feelings towards other Sisters, you have always viewed your romantic feelings towards other women as extensions of the holy sistership you share, and as such, neither sinful nor rule-breaking. You are aware that others might not agree.
You are a reformationist