Eleanor decides Marie is unsuited for court life and sends her to serve as prioress at a remote, impoverished abbey.

Marie arrives at the abbey and is received by the welcoming Abbess Emme and the resentful subprioress Goda.

Marie writes a series of lais to Eleanor hoping to be recalled to court but never receives any response.

Marie resolves to embrace her role as prioress and begins improving the abbey's farming, food supply, and income.

Abbess Emme dies after a long illness and Marie is consecrated as the new abbess in an elaborate feast.

Marie sees a vision of the Virgin Mary surrounded by swirling rose petals and resolves to build a labyrinth around the abbey.

Eleanor visits the abbey, warns Marie that church authorities have heard about the labyrinth, and departs leaving Marie a personal matrix seal.

Villagers launch a planned attack on the abbey but are repelled, though a peasant mother of six dies from her wounds.

Marie has a vision of women and girls flowering on a metallic tree and begins building a new stone abbey.

A fire destroys much of the nearby town including its clergy, prompting Marie to begin saying mass as priest herself.

Eleanor dies and Marie's grief is intense and almost deranged.

England falls under papal interdict forcing church closures, and Marie struggles to maintain spiritual order at the abbey.

After Wulfhild's death, Marie sees a vision of a stone eagle dissolving in a storm and recognizes her own destructive pride.

The elderly Cecile, Marie's former servant and first love, arrives unexpectedly at the abbey as Marie weakens from cancer.

Marie dies with a final vision of heaven as a golden vineyard and of God as a singular, female being.

Marie is sent by Eleanor of Aquitaine to a remote, poverty-stricken abbey in 12th-century England. Initially resistant and homesick, she gradually transforms the abbey through practical reforms and fierce management. As she rises from prioress to abbess, she begins receiving divine visions that inspire ever more ambitious building projects. She faces constant opposition from church authorities, villagers, and even her own nuns, while her complicated bond with Eleanor remains a constant. After Eleanor's death and a papal interdict, Marie enters her final years weakened by cancer but reconciled with her first love Cecile. She dies holding a private vision of a feminine God, and her successor Tilde destroys the notebook preserving her visions.

The rise of Marie from exiled outsider to transformative abbess.

As a child on crusade, Marie witnesses a magic trick of a beautiful woman being repeatedly stabbed in a box.

Marie overhears novices gossiping about her illegitimate Plantagenet origins through a hole in the abbey floor.

Marie is punished for leaving the abbey without permission while trying to intercept a letter from Eleanor's court.

A hawk kills Marie's pet merlin and she falls into deep despair before finding renewed purpose in prayer.

Marie confronts peasants on abbey land who have failed to pay rent and forces them to pay or face eviction.

Marie and Abbess Emme spend an entire night burning and sanctifying a field of blighted barley to protect the abbey's reputation.

Marie begins a detached and friendly sexual relationship with Nest, the abbey's infirmatrix.

Marie receives word that Eleanor has been kidnapped and is being moved between secret houses by her captors.

Marie experiences hot flashes during a church service and perceives each nun surrounded by a distinctive colored light.

An oblate is killed when a tree falls on her during the labyrinth construction work in the forest.

Marie rides through the completed labyrinth at night on horseback and nearly loses her way in the dark forest.

A young novice named Avice, who resembles young Eleanor, arrives at the abbey and repeatedly causes trouble before becoming pregnant.

Avice and her baby both die during labor and are buried together outside the consecrated abbey grounds.

An unknown saboteur breaks the reservoir lock, flooding the sheep field, killing several animals, and contributing to Wulfhild's death.

The abbey's cooks and servants debate after Marie's death whether she was a saint, a witch, or both.

These events illuminate the texture of Marie's daily life at the abbey, from her earliest days as a reluctant prioress through her decades of leadership. Beginning with a childhood memory of a magic trick witnessed on crusade, the moments track her gradual adaptation to abbey life, her quiet sexual relationships, and the practical crises she must navigate. Eleanor's kidnapping and the constant threat of illness and death frame the harsh medieval world surrounding the abbey. The construction of the labyrinth brings both purpose and tragedy, including the death of a young oblate in the forest. The story of the ill-fated novice Avice and the catastrophic flooding of the sheep field mark the human costs of Marie's ambitions, and her death prompts her community to render a divided but affectionate verdict on her legacy.

The vivid secondary moments shaping Marie's long journey through the abbey.

A young Marie sneaks into Eleanor's tent at night during a crusade with a knife and is immediately captivated by her.

Marie sees a miraculous white doe with antlers while hunting with her Aunt Ursule, an early sign of her religious calling.

During prayers, Marie has a revelation comparing the nuns' voices to captive birds — clearer and stronger for their confinement.

Marie takes the veil, completing her formal transition from novice to professed nun.

Abbess Emme confesses to Marie that she invented the entire sanctification chant used during the blighted barley field ritual.

As Marie becomes abbess, her menopausal symptoms suddenly end and she gains what she experiences as a new, far-sighted clarity.

Marie wakes four trusted confidantes at midnight to share her Virgin Mary vision and reveal her plan to build a labyrinth.

Marie has a second vision of Eve and the Virgin Mary standing united, overturning a division she understands as a deliberate church lie.

Marie delivers the wounded surviving attackers to the cathedral ossuary overnight to terrify and punish them.

Marie blesses Avice and her child at their unconsecrated grave, openly defying the disapproval of many of her nuns.

Marie hears confession for the first time as self-appointed priest and recoils at the tales of abuse and sexual violence she receives.

A visibly weakened Eleanor makes a final visit to the abbey and Marie sees through her former overwhelming radiance.

Tilde reads a church official's letter over Marie's shoulder and openly challenges Marie's claim to spiritual authority.

Cecile tells the bedridden Marie that her unconventional origins and appearance were precisely what inspired her to achieve great things.

Tilde senses Marie's ghost in the chapel before finding and burning Marie's notebook of visions in the fireplace.

These events trace the decisive moments of insight, revelation, and choice that shaped Marie's spiritual and personal identity. Beginning in childhood, her first encounter with Eleanor and her vision of a white doe with antlers hint at both her lifelong devotion and her hidden religious vocation. As a prioress, she is transformed by a moment of clarity during prayers and by Abbess Emme's candid confession about an invented ritual, revealing that spiritual power can be self-created. Becoming abbess unlocks a sequence of divine visions that override church doctrine and drive Marie's most radical acts. Key confrontations — blessing Avice in unconsecrated ground, hearing confession as a self-appointed priest, and facing Tilde's challenge to her authority — show Marie repeatedly choosing her own spiritual judgment over institutional obedience. The pool closes with the intimate final exchanges between Marie and Cecile, and with Tilde's momentous decision to destroy the written record of Marie's visionary life.

The revelations, visions, and turning points that define Marie's spiritual path.