The days, taken one by one, were not unbearable.
Meribel knew this, and she was honest with herself about it. She was not unhappy. She was also not fulfilled in any grand, luminous sense. Most days existed somewhere in between, steady and unremarkable, like a road worn flat by many feet. Each morning resembled the last closely enough that they blurred together, distinguished only by small, harmless variations—a different psalm emphasised, a task swapped, the weather leaning slightly colder or warmer.
The sisters were kind. Not demonstrative, not indulgent, but kind in the quiet ways that endured. A loaf of bread set aside because someone knew you favoured the crust. A shawl left on the back of a chair without comment. A hand briefly touching another in the corridor, neither seeking nor refusing comfort.
Sometimes, rarely, there were jokes.
They arrived unexpectedly, slipping through the strict lines of the day like water through a crack. Sister Agnes once whispered that the porridge was better suited to mortar than breakfast, and Meribel had laughed—truly laughed—before she could stop herself. The sound startled her more than it did anyone else. It came out too loud, too sudden, and for a brief moment, she felt exposed, as if she had revealed something private.
But the others smiled. One of them laughed too. Even Mother Superior's mouth had twitched, almost imperceptibly, before she resumed her composure.
Moments like that stayed with Meribel longer than prayers.
The convent, she thought, was a quiet, decent place. The walls held more peace than threat. The routines were strict, yes, but they were also sheltering. Within them, she did not have to choose. She did not have to weigh possibilities or imagine consequences stretching out into the future. Decisions were already made, arranged neatly by those above her.
Responsibility rested elsewhere.
Mother Superior decided. Mother Superior answered for the convent. Meribel obeyed. There was comfort in that division. Obedience was clean. It asked for effort, not judgment. It allowed her to move through the days without carrying their full weight on her own back.
For a long time, that had been enough.
She had believed, sincerely, that this was what peace felt like—not happiness, not sorrow, but a sustained absence of turmoil. A life where nothing was demanded beyond what one could reasonably give. A life where the days did not surprise you.
And then there was the knock.
It did not bruise the days all at once. It was subtle, patient. One sound, one moment, each morning. Easy to dismiss, easy to explain away. But it had changed something all the same. It had introduced an uncertainty where there had been none.
Now, when she lay in bed before the bell, she waited.
Not actively. Not fearfully. But she waited, the way one waits for a familiar ache to announce itself. The knock had given the morning an edge. It had taken that small, precious stretch of time where nothing intruded and made it conditional.
She could no longer say that she knew exactly what the day would bring.
The rest of the convent still moved as it always had. The sisters still smiled. The jokes still appeared, rare and welcome. The prayers were unchanged. The walls stood firm. Only her days had shifted, tilted slightly off their careful balance.
Meribel did not know what the knock wanted. She did not know if it wanted anything at all.
She only knew that it had reached into a life built on repetition and taken something simple from it: the certainty that tomorrow would be no different from today.
And that, somehow, unsettled her more than fear ever could.
But, with the knock came a question, and with the question came something Meribel had not felt in a long time: occupation.
It was not fear that settled in her mind, nor dread. It was curiosity—quiet, persistent, and surprisingly durable. Someone, or something, was making the sound. The certainty of that, however fragile, refused to leave her. Once the question took shape, it filled the empty spaces of her day with a gentle pressure, the way a stone in the shoe makes itself known with every step.
Who—or what—was above her?
The thought followed her through prayer and work, through silence and song. It did not disrupt her duties. If anything, it softened them, gave them a second layer. Her hands still scrubbed and folded and planted, but her mind wandered alongside the rhythm.
A ghost, she thought once, almost absently.
The idea did not frighten her. Ghosts, if they existed, were not creatures of malice in her imagination. They were remnants. Leftovers of routine and habit, unwilling or unable to loosen their hold on a place that had shaped them too completely. The convent was old. People had lived and died within its walls for generations. It would have been stranger, perhaps, if nothing remained.
She remembered the story of the sister who had died in her sleep. It had been told without drama, the way such things often were. Old age, they had said. A quiet passing. She had gone to bed as usual and had not woken. No alarm. No final words. Just an absence, discovered in the morning.
There had been sadness, Meribel was sure of it, though she had not witnessed it herself. A muted grief, contained and orderly. The convent did not linger on death. It acknowledged it, prayed over it, and continued.
But what if that sister had woken?
What if she had opened her eyes one last time, one minute before the bell, already prepared for the day ahead? Unlike Meribel, who lay staring at the ceiling, gathering herself slowly, reluctantly. What if preparation had been so deeply carved into her that even death could not interrupt it?
That, Meribel thought, would explain the timing.
The knock, then, would not be a warning or a threat. It would be a habit. A body remembering what it had always done. A signal sent out of instinct rather than intention.
Throughout the day, her thoughts returned to the imagined sister. She pictured her moving through the convent with ease born of decades. Was she stricter than Mother Superior, or gentler? Had her voice been sharp with discipline or worn smooth by patience? Had the younger sisters feared her, or sought her approval the way one seeks warmth near a fire?
She must have been older than Meribel. That much seemed certain. Old enough to have lived long within these walls, old enough to have seen changes come and go without being moved by them. Meribel wondered what her face had looked like—lined, perhaps, but calm. Or maybe severe. Age could sharpen as easily as it softened.
And her faith.
That was the question that lingered longest.
Had it been certain? True in the way stone was true—solid, unquestioned, immovable? Or had it been like Meribel's, steady but quiet, with spaces where doubt could sit without being named? Had she ever lain awake before the bell, staring at the ceiling, wondering whether devotion was something one arrived at or simply endured?
The thought did not trouble Meribel. It accompanied her. It gave shape to the hours, something to carry beside fatigue.
She found herself looking at the ceiling not with wariness, but with something close to familiarity.
If someone was there, she thought, then perhaps they were not alone.
And if something remained after a life spent in obedience and routine, then perhaps the days she lived now were not as empty as they sometimes felt.
She lay back, hands folded, and waited—not for the bell, not even for the knock—but for the thought to finish unfolding.
It did not.
And that, too, was new.