Your earliest memories are of the church on your family’s land, just a few miles down the road from Whitwood. Kneeling in front of the rood screen, with the rustic paintings of familiar saints, you knew a peace and wonder that have marked your life and deeply felt faith forever. Your family were traditionally religious; their bequests had paid for the fine candlesticks of the church’s Lady Chapel, but they lived the life of the secular gentry, and you never saw yourself following your mother’s path. You and your sister grew older; she got married, and you pushed for admission to an abbey. Your eye was always on Whitwood: your family has had a close connection with it since its foundation. Your ancestor Isabeau de Harcourt granted the Montacutian Order the grounds on which the Abbey was built. There you hoped you could once again explore those beautiful feelings you experienced as a child in the presence of God. Your parents were happy enough to oblige.

You passed your novitiate well enough, but as the years have gone by at the abbey, discomfort has crept in. No matter how hard you pray or how closely you stick to the Rule, you have failed to regain that feeling of closeness to God that you desperately crave. Some of the other sisters, even leaving aside Margery the visionary, seem to communicate directly with the divine, and you are secretly jealous of them. Others who exercise disobedience, or are casual in their relationship with God, seem to you to be wasting the chance for a perfect spiritual life like you had planned for yourself. You wish for one thing above all—a fervent, intense, personal connection with God. Your confessor calls this the sin of ‘acedia,’ but no matter how hard you berate yourself for it, you have not found a way to change.

You have tried nearly everything you can think of - fasting, a hair shirt, night-long vigils. You pushed your body to the limits. The only thing you haven’t been able to try is a pilgrimage. Last month, you fell sick, and you were granted permission to return to your family home to recover. However, you found the chaos of your childhood house completely overwhelming, packed with sticky, over-exuberant children who wouldn’t leave you alone. You were desperate to return to Whitwood, but once back, you again found yourself lacking the spiritual nourishment you so desperately require. Sadly you are not completely free of your relatives - your sister, Parnell Harcourt, is pregnant with another child and has told you she will come to the abbey to borrow the precious birthing girdle held in the sacristy, as she has before. You got on well with Parnell when you were children, but now she is married and a mother you seem to have great difficulty finding a way to connect, not least because she seems very comfortable with her place in life while you struggle with yours.