Now some of the nuns clung together and sobbed in their affright, and some were silent.  Only Rosamund drew herself to her full height, and spoke proudly.

“My Mother,” she said, “I am a newcomer among you, but I have seen the slaughter of Hattin, and I know what befalls Christian women and children among the unbelievers.  Therefore I ask your leave to say my say.”

“Speak,” said the abbess.

“This is my counsel,” went on Rosamund, “and it is short and plain.  When we know that the Saracens are in the city, let us set fire to this convent and get us to our knees and so perish.”

“Well spoken; it is best,” muttered several.  But the abbess answered with a sad smile: 

“High counsel indeed, such as might be looked for from high blood.  Yet it may not be taken, since self-slaughter is a deadly sin.”

“I see little difference between it,” said Rosamund, “and the stretching out of our necks to the swords of friends.  Yet, although for others I cannot judge, for myself I do judge who am bound by no final vows.  I tell you that rather than fall into the hands of the Paynims, I will dare that sin and leave them nothing but the vile mould which once held the spirit of a woman.”

And she laid her hand upon the dagger hilt that was hidden in her robe.

Then again the abbess spoke.

“To you, daughter, I cannot forbid the deed, but to those who have fully sworn to obey me I do forbid it, and to them I show another if a more piteous way of escape from the last shame of womanhood.  Some of us are old and withered, and have naught to fear but death, but others are still young and fair.  To these I say, when the end is nigh, let them take steel and score face and bosom and seat themselves here in this chapel, red with their own blood and made loathsome to the sight of man.  Then will the end come upon them quickly, and they will pass hence unstained to be the brides of Heaven.”

Now a great groan of horror went up from those miserable women, who already saw themselves seated in stained robes, and hideous to behold, there in the carved chairs of their choir, awaiting death by the swords of furious and savage men, as in a day to come their sisters of the Faith were to await it in the doomed convent of the Virgins of St. Clare at Acre.*

[* Those who are curious to know the story of the end of those holy heroines, the Virgins of St. Clare, I think in the year 1291, may read it in my book, “A Winter Pilgrimage,” pp. 270 and 271—­author.]

Yet one by one, except the aged among them, they came up to the abbess and swore that they would obey her in this as in everything, while the abbess said that herself she would lead them down that dreadful road of pain and mutilation.  Yes, save Rosamund, who declared that she would die undisfigured as God had made her, and two other novices, they swore it one by one, laying their hands upon the altar.