Envy, since her childhood she had struggled with this sin. Her baby brother getting more attention than her from their wet nurse or her sister being praised for her embroidery. It was enough to make her green with envy. Aldreda thought that she had overcome her bad habit, when her fellow sisters in Christ had received chances she had not.
She was grateful when her cousin Mary had been accepted at the Barking Abbey even when she herself had not. Instead she became a postulant at the York nunnery, taking the name Agnes. For the last few years she had been good at keeping her envious nature under control.
Until Easter that was.
Sister Ethedred was chosen that day to be educated to become an illuminator of the holy texts. Sister Ethedred who had clumsily spilled ink over an almost finished page. The nun who had decorated the page had spent most of the day restoring the mistake, carefully scratching away each piece of damaged parchment.
Agnes knew deep down why Ethedred had been selected. Her family ties ran deep with the nunnery. But it did little to quell the little seed of poison from growing in her heart. It should have been her instead. She should be the one illuminating the pages instead of toiling away at a spinning wheel. But the financial rewards of sister Ethedred's family had been too tempting to pass up.
Agnes' hands were clasped so tight in prayer that her knuckles had turned white with force. The words of the bishop's sermon had left no mark in her memory, her complete focus had been on sister Ethedred and her ill-deserved position. Brusque Agnes turned her eyes away from her sister's back and towards the altar to focus on the proceedings of Ascension Day.
Gratitude… be grateful for what you got.
Agnes tried listing all the things in life for which she should be grateful to keep her mind of the one task she so desperately wanted to be assigned to. But to no avail Her mind kept returning to the beautiful illuminations on the parchment, the spilled ink and the contented smile on sister Ethedred's face. The injustice burned through her mind.
A ice piercing scream interrupted the sermon of the bishop and her stream of thought. Agnes whipped around looking for the source of the horrific sound. Her heart sank when her eyes found the cause of terror. Demons blocked the entrance of the church, letting no one past them but their own. Within moments their kind poured into the church, hacking and slashing with their axes at everyone in their path a way to the front.
Agnes wanted to scream. She tried to but her voice refused to obey her only letting out a pathetic whimper instead. She tried to move but her feet were as stuck as though she was standing in quicksand. Her eyes did not let her look away from the gory scene unfolding before her eyes.
A little babe was dropped from its mother's arms when she tried to fend of a slash of a axe only for the metal to be embedded in her lower arm. Agnes could not see the child behind the numerous figures already on the church floor but the lack of crying made her fear for the worst. Again her throat refused to voice her distress when she felt fingers encircling her wrist and pulling her away from the sight.
One of the demons, it flashed through her mind, he is going to drag me to hell.
But when her eyes met het assailant, she was shocked to see her sister Hildegard.
Sister Hildegard, the nun who had spend her first few years of her life living on a farm. It was rumoured that the farmer was not her father when a noble had paid for her to be accepted into the nunnery as an oblate. Those rumours were never voiced out loud near sister Hildegard as her temperament had more in common with a fishwife than a nun. But regardless of this her heart was in the right place. Again proven by her selfless action by dragging Agnes out of harm's way.
The look in sister Hildegard's eyes frightened Agnes. Her gaze was determined and unrelenting. She did not dawdle or hesitate when she placed the tip of the knife at her own stomach, sinking it deep into her flesh. Agnes stood by in abject horror when she realized her saviour had only give her an temporary reprieve from facing the wrath of these demons. Sister Hildegard had left her there alone! She froze anew, unable to decide or move.
The screaming of the congregation had continued as though it were the souls imprisoned in hell. But the voice of sister Ethedred cracking as she screamed for mercy was enough to draw Agnes' eyes away from Hildegard's lifeless form. Her sister was dragged down the altar steps by het ankle by one of the demons, hitting her head against one of the steps and colouring her veil a bright red. The immediate threat snapped Agnes out of her stupor.
On a whim and without thinking Agnes pried the knife from Hildegard's hands, feeling the still warm crimson droplets trickle down her skin as she put it at her wrist. She regretted it the moment she dragged the blade into her flesh, feeling her stomach churn at the sin she just committed.
''Thou shalt not kill''
But there was no way to mend her actions now. How childish it now seemed, her envy at some task just moments earlier. She feared the wrath of God, having defied Him with her last actions in life.
She could feel the blood draining out of her face, leaving her as white as the habit she wore. She was going to burn in hell, having forsaken eternal life out of fear what the demons would do to her. Instead of facing it with the strength of Christ she had taken the coward's way out by taking her own life.
Agnes could see one of the demons staring at her just down the steps, his eyes an unnatural shade of blue, waiting for his moment to snatch and drag her down to the hellfire. Her fingers grasped for the cross hanging around her neck but she was unable to find it in her panic.
A loud ringing had accompanied the horrific sounds around her while her field of vision was clouded by black spots. Burning in hell. Eternal damnation. A place where the warmth of Christ would be absent.
Her heart raced while her mind went blank. The last thing she saw in life was the demon pouncing on her, grabbing her to take her to her eternal torture.