Agnes | Alma Mater Larp

Agnes

the Sacrista

Age:

30s - 40s

Psalm 91: Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.

Themes:

Loneliness; being an outsider; consensual sexual contact with a man; being pregnant

You have been through the dissolution of an abbey before. It is a deep cruelty, even when you have another House to go to, and nowadays you hear they don’t always offer a new home. You’ve seen false rumours of sin swirling around the collapse of an institution. Since sin erodes the foundations of an abbey, and you know there is a storm about to come to Whitwood, you lie awake thinking about your part in undermining those stones.

You are a bastard - the product of a well-born young woman’s mistake with a well-born young man. Your mother died at your birth, leaving you in the care of your grandmother - a widow with substantial lands in Buckinghamshire. You tried desperately to gain her affection, but although she was not cruel, she always hid you away. You asked her to arrange a marriage. She sent you with a substantial dowry to the double abbey of Saints Barbara & Maurice in Grantham (a double abbey with communities for men and women).

Your decade at Grantham was strict, but over time, you found that your sisters gave you more love and understanding than you had experienced at home. When you joined, you were decades younger than the others, and as time went by, no new sisters joined as novices. Abbot Gilbert couldn’t attract many donations and your numbers dwindled as the older sisters died. By the end, the female community of just four nuns was declared economically unviable. A little over ten years ago, the late Cardinal Wolsey dissolved the Abbey and used its remaining assets to found Cardinal School for boys. To your chagrin, people have gossiped ever since about their imagined moral impropriety of the house, which you feel is deeply unfair. The sisters were sent their separate ways, and you ended up at Whitwood. The experience was heart-breaking for you: you have not seen any of the sisters of Grantham again, and there are others you miss too.

Role:

As Sacrista, you are responsible for the care and maintenance of the Abbey’s sacred objects, including the chalices, censers, and vestments. It is your duty to ensure that the Abbey’s religious services are conducted with reverence and that the sacred items are treated with the respect they deserve. You oversee your sisters to prepare the chapel for services, and you maintain the small inventory of the Abbey’s relics and treasures. You also have a close working relationship with the Chamberlain, coordinating to ensure that the choir always has a good supply of candles.

Among the items in your care is a holy girdle: a long strip of parchment with prayers, which is rented out to women to give them protection in pregnancy and childbirth.

Connections:

You’re a bit isolated…

Although it’s now more than eight years since you arrived from Grantham, your relationships with the other sisters at Whitwood still seem a little superficial to you. You got on neither badly nor well with Bess when she was your Novice Mistress. You are plainly trusted by Joan since she made you Sacrista, but she does not pay any particular attention to your work. Phillippa is always letting herself in and out of the sacristy without even coming to greet you. Now, with a big problem, you need to find someone to turn to, but are unsure who to trust.

Secrets:

You are pregnant

Grantham was home to both an abbey for women and another for men. The double abbey held to the ancient tradition of the nuns arranging the repair of the monks’ vestments, and throughout your time at Grantham, you would travel every other week between the houses to collect things for mending. This brought you into frequent contact with the Sacristan of the men’s house, Ralph Carson. The two of you became friends - perhaps a little closer than was proper, but nothing more than that. After you came to Whitwood, you were able to exchange a letter or two, but it was infrequent. The men’s abbey survived a few years longer than the women’s, before being itself dissolved. Ralph had stayed at the side of former-Abbot Gilbert, caring for him in his old age. Of course, all letters outside pass through the hands of Alice, the Chamberlain.

Then, a few months ago, late one evening, Ralph appeared. Quite how he snuck into the grounds, you do not know, but he quietly woke you with little stones tapping on your window and took you out into the Abbey gardens. There, he told you that Abbot Gilbert had recently died, and all the abbey’s property would now pass to the King. He could not accept that, and had taken Grantham’s most precious and ancient possessions and fled. Impossibly, he had been told that he was now no longer a monk but a layman. Afraid of capture, he begged you, as his only friend in the world, to save and protect the relic from the King. You felt unable to refuse. A nun only shares the kiss of peace with her sisters, never any man, but in that moment, you felt overwhelmed with worry, affection, and perhaps something else. As you leant in to give the kiss of peace, Ralph turned his head, and your lips met. Overtaken with emotion, the two of you took things further and lay together in love amidst the sweet-smelling blossoms of the Garden.