Matrix

Book 2 has no divisions but is one long chapter that takes place over almost 30 years. Marie is 21 when the chapter begins and is almost 50 and entering menopause by the time the chapter ends.

In her new role as prioress, Marie must navigate the patriarchal hierarchy of the church. Her “diocesan superiors” make constant demands on her time (54). She gradually learns to manipulate them through a combination of attention and avoidance: “She must train her superiors in the community like dogs or falcons, with rewards, and slowly, so they don’t know they’re being trained” (56).

She also must manage the lands around the abbey. When some peasants on the abbey’s land are sickened by bad winter barley, Emme and Marie decide to burn and sanctify the barley field. They do this to save their reputations, knowing that as a group of women they are viewed with constant suspicion. Marie is impressed by Emme’s fierce demeanor during the sanctification, which lasts an entire night. Emme later tells her that she made up the ritual chant herself: “Ritual creates its own catharsis, Marie. Mystical acts create mystical beliefs” (59).

As a prioress, Marie resolves to emulate Eleanor’s machinations at her court: “She [like Eleanor] will build around herself walls of wealth and friends and good clear reputation, she will make her frail sisters safe within” (60). She takes the veil, going from novice to nun. When a nun in the abbey dies of scrofula, a disease of glandular swellings, Marie remembers the deaths of her aunts Euphémie and Honorine during the crusades; both died not through fighting, but from accidental infections. When she receives a letter that Empress Matilde is ill, she recalls being sent to her in Rouen after her mother’s death, before being sent on to Eleanor. She remembers Matilde as vain and shallow but also strong-willed.

Marie decides to give the nuns daily chores that are more appropriate for their talents and learns how to attract more gifted oblates (child monks or nuns) and novices to the abbey. She also begins a sexual life at the abbey. She has regular encounters with Nest, an infirmatrix (nurse) at the abbey. These encounters are detached and friendly, as is another encounter that she has with a nun named Elgiva. Despite her new erotic life, she continues to love Eleanor from a distance: “For Marie’s rigid heart, there can be no entanglements but those she has entered into long ago with Eleanor, impossible and distant” (91). She hears that Eleanor, having left the King of England, was kidnapped in revenge and is being dragged by her captors to different secret houses.

The chapter ends with Marie experiencing hot flashes during a church service. Although hot flashes are normally painful for her, this time she experiences them as revelatory. She sees the girls and women around her in different colors: a pale gold for the child oblates, a “red flame” for the novices, and a deeper gold for the older nuns (92). She also sees Emme, who is now on her deathbed, as “a tallow candle that shines against the dark” (93).