1318 AD. Yorkshire, England. 

If ever there was someone more unsuited to the life of a nun it’s Our Joan. She was one of those people who radiated intelligence and a caustic wit that brought the house down. Full of faux conversational brutality chased out by throaty giggles that endeared her to everyone. She seemed to be genuinely high on life and her position in a strict convent in the 1300s was like trapping an eagle in a match box. 

We had been seeing each other on the sly for some time. The ultimate friends with benefits situation where she snuck out or I snuck into the nunnery (hot af) where she lived. 

One day she told me she’d hatched an ingenious plan to escape ‘God’s cold clutches and run full heartedly into his warm embrace’. 

The plan was brilliantly simple. She would fake her own death by feigning illness and creating a fake ‘Joan’ mannequin which would then be buried by the other nuns who were in on it and only to happy to aid her escape. 

I picked her up from St Clements in the dead of night and we rode off as fast as two partially blind horses could carry us! The horses got so carried away that we literally flew over a bridge, with the cart parting ways with the road and flying into the clouds of the early morning sky for a few seconds. 

We got to a place called Beverley in Yorkshire where we got rid of the cart and went into hiding. We went our seperate ways after a while, splitting up to throw her pursuers off the scent. 

I’ve no idea what happened to Joan after that. I did hear later that a lady called ‘Claire’ that sounded very much like Our Joan, had settled in London and married the son of a tallow chandler. I hope it was Joan and I hope she lived the long, happy and very free life that she had imagined for herself.