The Maiden’s Tale (4 page)

Frevisse saw Sister Amicia was already looking hopeful of it falling to her and suggested quickly, “It should be Sister Thomasine.”

“Sister Thomasine?” Dame Juliana asked doubtfully.

They all looked at Sister Thomasine where she sat aside from the firelight and warmth, rapt in her prayers, still smiling to herself, as removed from their talk as if in another room. Or another world. “Sister Thomasine?” Dame Juliana repeated with increased doubt.

But Frevisse had had the chance to know more about Sister Thomasine than most of them did and said, “Yes.”

And Dame Claire who, from Sister Thomasine helping her in the infirmary, had had, like Frevisse, the chance to see more of her possibilities, added, “Let her do it. She can.”

“Well…” Dame Juliana said. “I’ll think on it a little…” And chose to turn the talk by asking Dame Perpetua and Frevisse, “Do you both have all you’re sure you’re going to need for tomorrow? It’s going to be a cold journeying. Will those cloaks I gave you out of stores be warm enough?”‘ And they were away on practicalities for the morrow’s travelling.

Chapter
3

The four days’ ride from northern Oxfordshire brought them down from the Islington hills early in a Monday’s afternoon, to curve eastward through the last of the open countryside and south toward London by way of the Bishopsgate road; and though St. Paul’s spire had been sharp against sky and distant Surrey hills for miles, London itself did not begin to close in on them until they were almost to its walls and even then, from St. Mary Spital on to Bedlam hospital, the houses were only scattered along the way, with fields and pasturing between them until almost to St. Botolph’s monastery, but finally there was nothing but London’s wall and Bishopsgate’s broad stone face ahead of them and Frevisse at least was glad to be so near to done with riding.

They had journeyed dry but cold, the winter-pale skies wind-scoured of both clouds and warmth until this afternoon there was a gray bank of clouds in the east and Abbot Gilberd had said as they reached the Bishopsgate road, “It seems we’re in good time. The weather looks likely to change and probably to snow when it does.”

He had been austere in his dealings with the nuns the while he was at St. Frideswide’s but once away from the priory’s problems he had proved more gracious, not only to little Lady Adela whose father was a lord, but to Dame Perpetua whose family were country knights and to Frevisse; as considerate toward them as if they were his particularly favored guests, making certain they were well accommodated at the various monasteries they stayed at on the way and conversing with them while they rode. As Frevisse had suspected from what she had seen of him at St. Frideswide’s, he was learned; but his opinions were so usual in most matters that on the whole she found it better mostly to leave the talk to Dame Perpetua, with Lady Adela’s eagerness serving to fill up any slack there might have been. Unfortunately today, ever since St. Paul’s spire first came in sight, Dame Perpetua had been making small, worried murmurs over London’s size and the chance of plague and the danger of crowds and crime, and now as their road closed into Bishopsgate she was doing it again, so that Abbot Gilberd said in pleasant reassurance, “It’s none so bad as stories make it out. In most ways it’s only Northampton grown larger, that’s all.”

“But I’ve never been to Northampton,” Dame Perpetua murmured a little plaintively.

“I’ve never been anywhere,” Lady Adela put in, all eagerness. For her everything about their journey had been adventure and London was the crown of it. She was a fair-haired, pretty child and clever in the bargain, making it a particular pity that she had a crippled hip because Lord Warenne had other children so her marriage was not needful to him and likely she would end up a nun to save him having to trouble over her. Frevisse suspected that part of the agreement that had allowed Dame Elisabeth to leave St. Helen’s for St. Frideswide’s had included Lady Adela—and Lady Adela’s likely dowry—being given in her place. What Abbot Gilberd had said to win Lord Warenne’s approval of the change Frevisse did not know and thought it better not to ask. Lady Adela, at least, seemed only pleased at it. Or maybe she was simply glad to be out of St. Frideswide’s and into the world, however briefly.

Certainly she had taken advantage of every possible enjoyment of their journey. Because of her hip she rode sideways in a lady’s fashionable box saddle rather than astride but was constantly twisting around to see everything, untiring in her efforts to miss nothing, until now as the road narrowed into Bishopsgate itself, shadowed and shut in with stone walls and vaulting, she faced forward, staring ahead with wide eyes as if she meant to see all of London at once the instant they were through the gateway.

Frevisse, for her part, had been to London enough in her girlhood to know it somewhat well and was expecting to feel nothing in particular about being there again but found she was smiling, looking forward much like Lady Adela, with rising pleasure and excitement as they rode into Bishopsgate. After all, this was London, stretching along the Thames in a miles’ long, mile-wide welter of streets, houses, churches, shops, markets, monasteries, nunneries, with its Tower massive at one end and St. Paul’s reaching toward heaven at the other, its Bridge a wonder of the world, and its port filled with ships from all the coasts of Europe and much of the Mediterranean. This was London, the like of it seen in few places of Christendom since the fall of Rome a thousand years ago; and smiling at Lady Adela’s pleasure and her own, Frevisse reached out and patted Dame Perpetua’s arm in reassurance and comfort that she would find it better than she thought to.

And then they were through the gateway and into Bishops-gate’s wide, paved street, with its tall houses rising on both sides, so many of them three, even four storeys high, thrusting out to overhang themselves, making sheltered walking along their fronts for when the weather was foul but the street broad enough that though there were people in plenty there—market-basketed women with daughters and servants in tow, men importantly on their ways to other places, apprentices and servants out on errands for their masters, a pack of boys who were probably supposed to be in school—they drew back out of the way of Abbot Gilberd’s foreriders without need to crowd, turning cheerfully to see who was coming in hopes it was some great noble with a rich show of livery, men, and horses but having to settle for an abbot, nuns, and a score or so of soberly dressed household men since that was all there was.

Lady Adela, as if it were all a show set up for her, laughed out loud and waved to the schoolboys, who waved and shouted something back so that she laughed again. Dame Perpetua, other worries forgotten in the face of impropriety, straightened in her saddle to say reprovingly, “My lady, that’s not how you should do.” And then forgot herself with, “Oh, look at that!” at an array of cloths laid out on a counter swung down from the front of a shop under the eaves of one of the houses. Most of the houses were shops on their street floor, their wares set out to be seen, and first Dame Perpetua and then Lady Adela began to point them out to one another as they rode past, until Lady Adela noticed delightedly the elaborately carved wooden beams and patterned plasters of the house fronts; and looking up at those, Dame Perpetua with her head craning farther and farther back breathed in wonder, “And the glass! There’s glass in so many of the windows!”

“This is London, my lady,” Abbot Gilberd said, as if that explained it all.

Frevisse was looking as eagerly, though less obviously and without exclaims. Was it really fully twenty years since she had been to London? But she recognized where ahead of them the street divided into two and remembered that it was Bishopsgate that curved away to the left while rightward Thread-needle Street would lead to Poultry and Cheapside and the City’s heart around St. Paul’s. But the priory of St. Helen’s was already to hand; the foreriders were turning aside to it, one of them leaning from his saddle to ring the bell for the porter so that the gates were swinging open as Frevisse and the rest rode up, to let them through into a large, cobbled courtyard closed in by buildings on all sides, with in its center a carved stone cross raised on steps and on its far side St. Helen’s church.

Men were coming from the stables for the horses as the porter came around to Abbot Gilberd’s stirrup to say with a bow, “You’re to go straight in, if it please you, my lord. Will you and all your men be staying?”

“The women will be staying. The rest of us will be going on in a while.”

The porter nodded understanding and turned to give necessary orders for the men to be taken into the guesthall for something to drink and to warm themselves at a fire and the horses to be wiped down and watered and kept ready for Abbot Gilberd to ride on to his abbey’s inn elsewhere in the city.

Kept for its abbot’s use when business brought him to London, it was rented out for profit the rest of the time and presently its renter was having to make other arrangements of where to live while Parliament was being held and Abbot Gilberd was there.

The cloister lay to the north of the church. At Abbot Gilberd’s word, Frevisse, Dame Perpetua, and Lady Adela rode with him the little way across the yard to there, two of the stablemen running ahead to warn the porteress they were coming and wait to take the women’s horses and the abbot’s mule off to the stables after the others.

Outside the door Abbot Gilberd, dressed in a split gown for riding, swung down easily while Frevisse and Dame Perpetua had to fuss their skirts clear of their saddles, but while he came to hand Dame Perpetua down by way of a stone dismounting block, Frevisse swung down by herself and went to Lady Adela, surprised to find the child had lost her bright pleasure somewhere between St. Helen’s gateway and here. Pale beyond her ordinary paleness, she leaned stiffly forward into Frevisse’s hands to be lifted to the ground, and when Frevisse turned from her, she did not go to Dame Perpetua as was her usual way but took tight hold of Frevisse’s cloak as if she meant to keep with her no matter what.

Frevisse looked down at her, even more surprised. The child had been Dame Perpetua’s charge at St. Frideswide’s; Frevisse had never had a way with children nor any wish to, and had had little to do with Lady Adela at the priory, but now the child stood staring straight in front of her at no one, ignoring Dame Perpetua’s hand held out to her as she joined them and with an expression that said she would fight if anyone tried to make her let loose of Frevisse’s cloak.

By then two nuns were poised beside the open cloister door, to welcome them and see them in, and Abbot Gilberd was waiting. Frevisse and Dame Perpetua exchanged a look over Lady Adela’s head and made silent agreement that here and now was not the time to make anything of Lady Adela’s stubborness, so long as she came with them at all. And she did, following to the door, still holding to Frevisse’s cloak while the nuns greeted them and led them through the doorway and along a passage, asking the expected questions about their journey and the weather that Frevisse, dropping behind, left Abbot Gilberd and Dame Perpetua to answer. Lady Adela was now pressed so close to her as to make walking difficult and Frevisse with a hand on her shoulder moved her a little away, for both their sakes; falling down in a tangle of feet, skirts, and cloaks would make no useful impression on anyone here. But she also felt Lady Adela’s rigid fear and kept the hand on her shoulder for a kind of comforting. It was strange but she had never thought of Lady Adela being afraid.

Having brought them to another door, one of the nuns said she would tell Dame Elisabeth they were here and hurried away, disappearing around a corner ahead of them while the other nun ushered them into a large room clearly meant for the reception of the priory’s guests. There were cushioned chairs and a carved bench, a table covered by a pattern-woven cloth, and thick rush matting for comfort underfoot, with two of the walls enriched with tapestries. One was of the foolish virgins with their burned-out lamps, the other of the wise virgins awaiting their bridegroom Christ, but though the former were sufficiently downcast to make the point, the latters’ overly complacent expressions somewhat marred the triumph of their virtue. At least to Frevisse’s eye.

“If you’d care to sit?” the nun suggested to them all.

Abbot Gilberd and Dame Perpetua cared to. Back inside the familiarity of convent walls, even one so much larger and obviously more wealthy than St. Frideswide’s, Dame Perpetua was confident again, already joining easily in the talk between Abbot Gilberd and the nun, first in more detail about the journey—long but not difficult—and then the weather—cold, wasn’t it?—and, inevitably, the poor harvest there had been this year. Frevisse, with Lady Adela still clinging to her, chose to go aside, as if to show her the tapestries more closely, giving them both excuse to turn their backs on the room so that Frevisse, gently prying Lady Adela’s fingers from her cloak but then holding the little girl’s hand between her own, was able to say to her low-voiced for no one else to hear, “Don’t be afraid. It’s going to be far better than you think.”

Lady Adela’s lower lip thrust out, not much but dangerously; heretofore that lower lip had meant temper rather than tears. “I’m not afraid. I’m angry.”

She was afraid, too, but Frevisse could see the anger now as well and asked, disconcerted, “Why? At what?”

“At being here. I don’t want to be.”

Frevisse tried to find a temperate answer to that with, “Given how things are at St. Frideswide’s now, Abbot Gilberd thought.

“He didn’t think to ask me.”

Matching her preemptory tone, Frevisse said back at her, “It wasn’t for you to decide.”

Lady Adela turned her gaze from staring at the woven tuft of grass beside the hem of the virgin’s skirt in front of her to stare at Frevisse instead, demanding better answer.

There were, of course, all the proper answers—about children and duty and respecting their elders’ decisions—but Frevisse suspected they would be useless, and said instead, though no less firmly, “There’s a very good chance you’ll be happy here. If nothing else, there’ll surely be more to do than there was in St. Frideswide’s and probably other girls to be with and…”