The Novice’s Tale (10 page)
Authors: Margaret Frazer
They sang the words in Latin, but Frevisse turned them to English in her mind, partly from the little Latin that she knew but mostly from her much-treasured Bible, an object forbidden because it was a Wycliffe English translation. Still, she felt, understanding the glory of the words as she chanted them could not be sinful, no matter how she came by that understanding. She wove her voice with the other nuns into a curtain of praise, familiar and practiced, warm in the gray shadows of the afternoon church.
She knew when Dame Claire joined them, her surprisingly sweet, clear alto as precise on every note as she was precise with her medicines.
“Non nobis, Domine, non nobis: sed monini tuo da gloriamo.”‘
Not to us, Lord, not to us, but glory to your name, for your true love. Amen.
The last of the office sounded softly among the raftered roof and stone walls, then fell away to silence. Slowly, with the stiffness of age and sitting, Domina Edith rose, and they rose after her and in a hush of skirts and slippered feet made a procession out into the cloister. There would be supper soon, a familiar pittance of cheese and apples, with any bread saved from midday dinner, then a chance to rest or walk in the little garden or the orchard, to reflect on the day, and, by a relaxation of the Rule, to talk among themselves. Though today Frevisse would go back to the guest halls, seeing to what needed doing there. The day’s last office, Compline, came after that, and then bed.
In the cloister walk they all knelt together for Domina Edith’s blessing. She had raised her hand, had begun to speak, when the door to the courtyard slammed, startling them all in their places. Footsteps sharp with running came, and a woman in Lady Ermentrude’s livery burst into the cloister walk’s far end.
“She’s choking!” she cried. “She’s dying! The priest said come. Come quickly.”
Frevisse caught Domina Edith’s raised eyebrows giving her leave to go. She left her place in line, but Dame Claire had not waited even for that and was already running down the cloister walk. The others started to rise, confused, but Domina Edith with a single gesture felled them and silenced them. Age had not lessened her authority.
Frevisse overtook Dame Claire at the cloister gate. They came out into the courtyard together, wasting no time on anyone as they crossed the yard. In the guest hall most of Lady Ermentrude’s people had sat down to supper at the trestle tables. Heads turned as Frevisse and Dame Claire passed through, not running now but moving too fast to go unnoticed. Frevisse glimpsed Sir John rising from beside his wife at the head of the tables as she and Dame Claire reached Lady Ermentrude’s door.
Dame Claire’s sharp stop in the doorway forced Frevisse to sidestep to avoid her. Then she stopped as sharply, too.
Father Henry was rising from his knees beside the bed, shaking his curly head with dazed disbelief. Lady Ermen-trude lay propped up on her pillows, head rolled to one side, her hands still holding the crucifix, her mouth open, her harsh breathing filling the room. On the floor between her and Father Henry sprawled Martha Hayward, her legs straddled wide, her mouth agape and clogged with foam, her hands looking like claws in the rush matting, her eyes bulging, blood-suffused, in the strangled, dead purple of her face.
Chapter
5
Frevisse stopped where she was, as much in disgust as horror, then crossed herself as much in penance for the disgust as for the repose of Martha’s soul. Dame Claire, recovering from her own reaction, went to kneel where Father Henry had been.
Frevisse, almost as quickly, went to stand between sight of Martha’s body and Thomasine, who was crouched too near it, whimpers crawling up from her throat and her face pressed against prayer-clasped hands. Carefully, not wanting to bring on hysterics, she took Thomasine by the shoulders and said as gently as she could, “Stand up out of Dame Claire’s way.”
The infirmarian was feeling for pulse and breath, looking for life where very surely there was none.
“Stand up,” Frevisse repeated, wanting to get her away from the temptation to look again at Martha.
Thomasine responded, letting herself be helped to her feet. With an arm around her shoulders, Frevisse turned her away from both Martha and Lady Ermentrude.
“It was awful,” Thomasine whispered, shaking in Frevisse’s hold. “It was horrible. She had a… fit. She—”
Firmly across her rising voice Frevisse said, “It’s over. She’s not hurting anymore. It’s finished.”
Dame Claire sat back from her fruitless search for signs of life and looked up at Father Henry still standing above her. “What happened?” she demanded.
Dumb-faced and stunned, perspiring freely, he shook his head. “We were sitting here, the women and I. The others were gone to supper. Lady Ermentrude was dozing, all quiet. Martha was at her stories again, about Lady Ermentrude and what a willful woman she was. I was, God pardon me,” he crossed himself fervently, “hard put not to be laughing at what she had to tell, until she grew too bold and Thomasine was beginning to be offended and went away to pray.” He pointed to the prie-dieu in the far corner. “I asked Martha then to speak more seemly.”
There was a growing murmur at the doorway, and they turned to see a clot of people come to gape. No more were they noticed than they were pushed aside as Sir John came through, with Lady Isobel behind him. “What is it?” he asked. “What’s happened?”
Frevisse cut across his questions, pushing Thomasine toward Lady Isobel. “My lady, please, your sister has need of you.”
“Why, what’s happened?” Lady Isobel’s question was sharper than her husband’s. “Is my aunt all right?” She came to take Thomasine’s arm as she spoke and over her sister’s shoulder saw what lay on the floor. Her face went curd-pale. In a choked voice she said, “Martha Hay ward.”
“Help Thomasine,” ordered Frevisse, shifting the girl into Lady Isobel’s arms. “Take her away from here.” Lady Isobel nodded distracted agreement, her sickened gaze still on Martha’s body.
“She’d dead?” Sir John croaked the word disbelievingly, his gaze averted.
Frevisse thought dryly that he must not have received his knighthood for skill in battle if he were squeamish over so bloodless a death; she firmly pushed both Thomasine and Lady Isobel away to the side of the room, turning back as Dame Claire told Father Henry, “Go on.”
The priest, uneasy at his growing audience and still shocked, obeyed. “She said she was thirsty, all dry from so much talking, and missing her supper in the bargain, and the sops were going to waste and,” he gestured helplessly toward the empty bowl on the table, “she just ate them. She said she’d have a taste and then she ate them all.”
“I dare say,” Frevisse said with subdued irony.
Father Henry nodded vigorously. “She ate the sops, talking all the while, and then without my having any chance to stop her, she drank a great draught of the wine. I told her then it was meant for Lady Ermentrude and had medicine in it, so she made a face and stopped and went to talking again. In a while she said she was hot and opened the window, though I told her not to, and took to walking up and down the room. She was drunk then, I think, taking so much wine at once, for she wasn’t making much sense. I tried to have her sit down lest she rouse Lady Ermentrude but—”
Father Henry stopped, embarrassment and uncertainty on his face.
“She pushed him,” Thomasine said a little shrilly. “She laid hands on him and pushed him aside and kept on walking back and forth and Maryon said we’d best do something.”
“Maryon?” Dame Claire asked.
The dark-haired lady-in-waiting stepped forward from beside the door. Frevisse realized she had been there all the while but so still she had gone unnoticed. “I’m Maryon,” she said.
“And you were here the while?”
Maryon bent her head in acknowledgment. “I thought to be of service, if my lady should need me.”
“What seemed the matter with Martha to you?”
“Too much drink,” said Maryon succinctly. “I went to the door to send someone for some of my lady’s men to have her out of here but while I was speaking to the woman, Martha behind me started making… sounds.”
“Awful sounds!” Thomasine cried, and they turned to stare at her. “And, and clawing at herself.” She made a feeble gesture at her chest and throat.
Her calm a decided contrast to Thomasine’s edge of hysteria, Maryon said, “I told the woman to run find the infirmarian, that she would be in the church somewhere. When she was gone, Martha fell down and we couldn’t help her.”
“She was lying on the floor, kicking, thrashing…” Thomasine’s eyes were full of desperate misery. “Father Henry went to help her, and I tried to pray, but it didn’t help. It didn’t help.”
Father Henry said, “There was nothing I could do, but give her the Last Sacrament. There was time, barely. Just a general absolution and the anointing.” He held out the small wad of bread that he had correctly used to wipe the last of the chrism from his fingers. His hand was trembling. He looked at it with surprise and then put it behind his back.
“But she just went on and on, kicking and choking!” Thomasine cried. “She couldn’t stop. Until she—died.”
“A fit,” Lady Isobel said quickly, firmly, hugging Thomasine close. “A fit. Her heart, I would think. So fleshly a person easily might die like that. Here.”
She moved Thomasine toward the table where a goblet sat beside the empty bowl of milksops. She pushed the goblet toward Thomasine’s hands. “Drink this. It will steady you, child.”
Thomasine’s hands fluttered back, warding it off. “No. That’s the wine with Great-aunt’s medicine in it.”
“Yes, but medicine for quieting nerves,” said Frevisse, remembering. Which would do Thomasine no harm just now. “It’s all right,” she said reassuringly. “Dame Claire can mix more. Go on.”
Obediently Thomasine reached to take the goblet from Lady Isobel. But her hands were shaking far worse than Father Henry’s; there was an instant’s mistiming and the goblet fell, spattering the edge of Lady Isobel’s gown and splashing the wine across the rush matting in a bright stain.
Isobel exclaimed in annoyance and backed away, shaking out her dress as Thomasine, wringing her hands, began a shaky litany. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—‘’
“Enough!” Frevisse said sternly. “The dress will wash and there was hardly any wine in the cup. Crying over spilled wine is as useless as crying over milk.” She shifted her attention to Lady Isobel.
But she was already recovered, her dress forgotten as she came back to Thomasine’s side. “It’s all right. Come sit down. You’re trembling so.” She led her away to the bench at the window. Sir John followed them and put his arm around his wife’s shoulders, holding her close while she held Thomasine. They were not moved so much by a servant’s death, Frevisse thought, as by the bare fact of Death itself, and a dreadful one, unexpected, a hard thing to face so young as they were. Thomasine, apparently recovering a little, began to draw slightly away from her sister and averted her eyes. Frevisse, reassured by so typical a gesture and feeling the girl would do well enough for the time being, turned her attention back to Dame Claire, who had closed Martha’s eyes and was straightening her limbs.
“It would seem it was her heart,” Dame Claire pronounced, gazing on Martha’s face. She crossed herself and rose to her feet.
“How does my lady aunt?” asked Lady Isobel.
Dame Claire turned and felt Lady Ermentrude’s face and hands, and listened to her breathing before answering, “She seems to be doing well enough.”
Coming near, Frevisse asked in a quiet voice, “Is it the medicine you gave her makes her sleep so deeply?” She was thinking that perhaps it was as well Thomasine had spilled it.
“She never had any of the medicine. I wanted the food in her, to act against the drunkenness, and managed to make her eat a little, but by the time she’d finished being fed she was nearly stupored into sleep already and wouldn’t drink. She just went to sleep without it.”
“What should we do?”
