Sentence The Second

Dr Daphne Dumbiedykes, Emeritus Professor of Late-Early Mediaevalism and Romance Studies at St Sebastian's College, stood stock still for a moment, deep in thought, while in her hand she held Sister Evadne Eglantine's wimple which that dying nun had transformed into an opisthograph by writing, on both sides, an ancient herbal remedy some seven centuries ago, and her mind raced as her gaze swept across the walls of Sister Evadne's last and fatal imprisonment, the victim of a dastardly plot by the debauched Sir Parlane MacFarlane – seducer of young virgins, the man who fathered seven children by as many Duchesses and who boasted that the most virtuous of nuns could not withstand his amorous advances – as part of a complex scheme through which - carried away by his own brio, that fantastical self-confidence and chutzpah that had earned him his devastating reputation as lover, poet, statesman and King-maker – he thought to make himself King of Scots, until her eyes alighted on a short inscription, in a shaky hand, which caused a spasm to course through her body and leave her feeling totally drained of blood, so dehydrated as to experience utter desiccation, her parched brain trying desperately to make some other sense of the words than that writ plain before her sight – she closed her eyes and let out a soft moan, before dropping to her knees on the filthy rock floor and burying her face in Sister Evadne's last testament.