The Light That Did Not Wait For Us

The candle guttered and went out while her hand was still cupped around it. Smoke lifted in a thin uncertain line. The room kept its shape. The light did not return.

Isabel Catherine Norwood remained where she was with the wick cooling beneath her fingers. The smell of tallow mixed with damp stone and old books. Outside the abbey bell rang the hour without apology. She closed her eyes once and opened them again as if expecting something to have changed.

She walked into the cloister where the stones held the nights cold. Her footsteps echoed and then learned to soften. The garden beyond the arches carried herbs gone sharp with autumn. She touched rosemary and thyme and let the scent stay on her skin. The day waited for her to choose it.

At the edge of the grounds a man worked among the graves resetting a marker that had leaned too long. He moved with care as if each stone could hear. When he straightened he brushed soil from his hands and nodded. His attention returned to the ground without demand.

Daniel Robert Whitcombe was named later by the steward who asked after the progress. The name landed and remained distant. Isabel watched the way the earth darkened where it had been turned and the way it accepted what was placed back into it.

She returned the next morning and the next. Daniel worked. Isabel walked. They exchanged weather and small necessary words. He said the frost would come early. She said the herbs would not mind. The garden listened and kept its counsel.

Winter arrived thin and bright. Snow lay without commitment. Isabel brought bread wrapped in linen and set it on a stone. Daniel ate and thanked her and did not ask why she came. The restraint felt like a kindness practiced over years. She felt it as a steadying hand she did not see.

They began to speak of other things when the cold eased. Daniel told her of a childhood spent moving between parishes and the relief of staying long enough to learn the ground. Isabel spoke of vows taken and the quiet that followed them like a shadow. Names softened and fell away. The work between them grew familiar.

At night she dreamed of candles and rooms where light refused to hold. She woke with smoke in her throat and the smell of herbs on her hands. The garden steadied her. It asked only attention.

Spring came late. The stones warmed. One afternoon Daniel stood with his cap in his hands and said there was an offer to tend land farther south where the soil ran deep and the work was his alone. He said it would be wrong to refuse. He did not ask her to speak.

They walked the cloister where the light broke into squares. Isabel felt the old loss answer the new one. She said it sounded right. The words were accurate. They cost her.

On the last day she brought the spent candle stub and placed it on the marker he had set first. Daniel watched and said nothing. He touched her shoulder once and stepped back. The garden continued its work.

Years later Isabel Catherine Norwood returned with slower steps. The abbey bell rang the hour. A letter carried a name from a place of sun and dust. Daniel Robert Whitcombe had died where the land did not wait. She stood in the cloister and smelled rosemary. The light moved on without her.