The Prioress’ Tale (11 page)

Remembering the little rogue of a boy who had fretted at being kept to one place for too many days together, Frevisse said, “He must hate that.”

“With a passion, but he comforts himself with the hope that he can turn the skill to forgery someday.”

So Piers was still himself. “And Thomas?” He had been the oldest of them and their leader. How had he taken Rose’s decision to quit and take Ellis and Piers with her, effectively finishing what little there had been of their band?

But Joliffe said cheerfully enough, “I think he was relieved to have the choice of going on or quitting taken away from him. He’s set up as a grammar teacher in some grocer’s charity day school for poor boys, and as he says, he now has an audience who can’t escape him.”

“And no matter what they think of the performance, he’s paid anyway,” Frevisse said.

Joliffe laughed. “You have it to the core. Besides the fact he has the added pleasure of being free to grumble to his heart’s content that he was torn from the life he was meant to live by a mean-spirited woman’s weakness.”

“And when he does, Rose tells me what she thinks of that.”

“In clear and unmistakable terms.”

“And you?”

Joliffe stepped back and spread his arms as if to invite applause. “As you see.”

He was dressed in doublet and hosen that must have been gaudy once but were muted now by weather and much wear. His high leather boots were rubbed and darkened with long use; he was slightly in need of a shave. The years had edged in on him; he would not pass in a play as a fair-faced maiden anymore, and though he was as slender as he had been, it was with a man’s lean strength now instead of a boy’s.

Frevisse eyed him, decided he still showed no more than what he wanted to be seen, and said, “It doesn’t tell me much except that whatever you’re doing, it keeps you clothed and fed.”

“Clothed and fed and sometimes with a penny in my purse. What more can a wandering minstrel ask?”

“I shouldn’t care to guess or even ask.” She matched his mockery and laughter with her own. “But for the sake of knowing something of the guests within our walls, I have to ask what it is that brings you here. Besides your feet.”

Joliffe, his mouth already opening to reply, stopped, then protested, “I wasn’t going to say that.”

“Then you were going to say it was for the pleasure of seeing me again.”

“What better reason could I give than that?”

“The true one.”

“What if I say I’ve taken to minstrelsy and my wanderings have happened to bring me this way?”

“That is a thing I’m willing to believe.”

He swept her another bow. “Your ladyship is most gracious.”

“My ladyship is also bound to find how it is with others of our guests. If you’ll pardon me?”

“Of everything and anything, my lady,” he declared, hand over his heart. “And hope you’ll do as much for me should chance arise.”

“That,” she said dryly, “is probably another matter,” and went on her way.

Chapter 8
There was an unexpected quiet to the rest of the morning and the early afternoon. Domina Alys, come back from quarreling with Master Porter, went to her chamber, gave order for the steward’s accounts to be brought to her and, when they had, closed herself in with them, sending word by Katerin that Dame Perpetua should see to the offices when they came. She did not come down to dinner either but had Katerin fetch it to her, and Katerin afterward would answer no questions of how she was except with a shake of the head that told no one anything.

The day had moved into the drowsy warmth of afternoon when Frevisse went out to the guest halls again, to see how things went and if all was well in hand for supper. As she crossed the yard she had the regretful thought that it was a pity these bright, dry days had waited for October instead of blessing them at harvest. They would have made no difference then. Now they were hardly better than illusion, their brief warmth gone as soon as the day began to fade, the cold returning with the sunset shadows that in these shortening days came ever earlier.

In the guest halls there was nothing beyond the expected.

In answer to Frevisse’s asking, Ela answered, “It’s as well as may be. Bad when they’re here, good when they go, worse when they come back.” With small hope, she asked in her turn, “Be there any sign of it ending?”

Frevisse gave no false comfort. “For all that’s been said about their leaving, they could be here for the winter.”

“Then they’ll be starving with the rest of us by Martinmas.”

It was too slight an exaggeration for Frevisse to contradict.

She was taking her discouragement back across the yard and the lengthening shadows when she was loudly hailed, “Hai! Nun!” and she jerked around, offended, to see Joliffe coming toward her from the gateway to the outer yard. She had wondered where he was when she had not seen him in the guest halls or yard. Now she wondered how angry he meant to make her, hailing her thus; but even as she wondered it she knew that whatever else Joliffe was, he was never casually ill-mannered. If he was rude, there was a purpose to it, so she kept her immediate frown but not her anger at him as she answered with rudeness equal his own, “What is it?”

Fists on his hips, irritation in his voice pitched to carry well beyond her to the hand count of men and servants scattered around the yard, he stopped in front of her and said, “The way you keep your guests here. Where am I supposed to sleep and is supper going to be as scant as dinner was?”

His arrogance was easy to respond to in kind. Her own voice sharp with apparent impatience and almost as loud as his, Frevisse answered, “If you don’t like what we offer, you’re welcome to be on your way.”

“You don’t offer much at all, leave by whether I like it or not!”

“The Rule requires us to give. Your liking it or not is never mentioned. And if you mean to go on speaking to me, you will do it in a lesser voice!” He might be able to keep this up, but she could not.

He dropped back a pace from her, one hand flying to his breast as if he had taken a blow. Then he bowed. “At your behest, my lady.”

“And courteously,” Frevisse added for good measure.

As if a little curbed, he stood with slightly bent head and said low-voiced, for only her to hear, “How long have all these men, horses, servants been here?”

“Two weeks and looking to be longer,” Frevisse answered. “Why?”

“Not for choice, surely?”

“Our prioress likes their company,” she said bitterly. “The rest of us aren’t asked.”

“And they’re all Godfreys?”

“Godfreys or their followers.”

“Can the priory afford them?”

“We can hardly afford ourselves, the way this year has gone.”

“So how do you manage them?” Joliffe asked.

“Sir Reynold has brought in something toward their keep and I gamer he’s promised more, but we’ve not seen it yet. Why so great an interest?”

“An idle brain invites the devil.”

“And curiosity has killed more than cats.”

Joliffe smiled warmly and leaned toward her. “I’m trying to convey the impression that I’m charming you. Could you look slightly more charmed?”

“This is as charmed as I become.”

“I feared as much. What about this girl?”

“Why are we feigning an argument?”

“Because anyone friendly with you is unlikely to be friended by the Godfreys and it’s the Godfreys who are likely to pay me something, not you. What about the girl? She’s not here willingly, I take it?”

“No.” It was difficult to force questions on him when he was shoving them at her, and now mention of Joice diverted her to a sudden hope. Holding out an eager hand toward him, she asked, “Joliffe, could you take word to her people in Banbury that she’s here? And to our abbot in Northampton of what Domina Alys is letting happen with us? If you could…”

He seized her hand in an apparently ardent grip, as if she had bestowed a favor on him. “Gladly but not soon.”

Frevisse pulled her hand free. “Stop that!”

Joliffe bent his head with a tremulous sigh but went on evenly, “I’ve already said to people I’d stay two nights and maybe more.” He lifted his head enough to look at her with what she supposed he meant to be a melting gaze. The laughter behind it spoiled the effect. “It’s not often a minstrel can find so great an audience in a country priory. All the Godfreys, a herd of masons, and I’m bid tonight to play for your prioress.” He came a step nearer to her, playing his part out for anyone who was watching. “If I go too soon, there might be suspicions I don’t want to risk rousing.”

Frevisse had opened her mouth to ask, “What suspicions?” when a rabble of noise from the gateway distracted them both to look around to where a clot of Sir Reynold’s servants were shoving at what Frevisse first took to be a heap of dirty clothing on the cobbles, until it scrambled onto hands and feet and tried to scuttle away from them, almost succeeding but only because they let him before someone kicked his legs from under him and he went heavily down again.

“Ah,” Joliffe said. “One of the few things we’ve been lacking. A scabrous beggar or a madman.”

Frevisse supposed it was the latter; even beggars were in better condition than that poor creature looked to be. Mostly the mad were poor, harmless creatures, kept and cared for, if not by their relatives, then by the church out of charity. But there were always those who were not kept, either deliberately turned out or else wandering off, making their way—usually a brief way for the most witless ones—by chance and happenstance through a world that could be cruel or kind as fortune and people’s humors took them. Some of them were hardly worse than vague, like strayed dogs in need of feeding and an occasional friendly pat to keep them going. Others lived with their bodies in this world but their minds in places strange and often horrible. Frevisse had encountered enough of both kinds in her childhood on the road with her parents to want nothing to do with any of them, ever. They frightened her, all of them, the greatly mad and the lesser, because madness was a black reft in the reason of God’s world, an all-too-clear reminder of how near hell was to mankind’s soul.

Unfortunately, what she wanted had nothing to do with her duty in the matter, and she and Joliffe moved in the same moment toward the men and their sport. Whomever they had, madman or not, he was in St. Frideswide’s now, and if they thought they had some right to be tormenting him, she knew she had a greater one to stop them.

How she would do it was the problem. The half dozen or so men were well into it now. The open-handed blows at his head, so poorly shielded by his tangled arms, and the kicks at his undefended backside as they tried to make him run again so they could pull him down, would shortly turn more vicious. He was a new game to be played and they were bored enough not to give him up easily, to her or anyone.

Joliffe, laughing, shoved in among them, some of their blows and kicks finding him instead of the madman as he fended them off, exclaiming, “Here now! What are you doing to my servant?”

The men fell back. “Your servant?” one of them protested. Another pointed disbelievingly at the dirty, crouching thing at their feet. “That?”

“My servant,” Joliffe insisted, and laid a proprietary hand on the madman’s filthy head. “I pay him good wages for the privilege of beating him. Why should you do it for free?”

“That’s not your servant,” someone scoffed.

“It is!” Joliffe sounded immensely offended anyone could doubt it. “I sent him on ahead of me to ready my lodgings.”

“But you were here first!”

“Ah.” Joliffe held up an admonitory hand. “Do you expect things to make sense between a madman and a fool?”

“Not when it’s so hard to tell one from the other,” Frevisse said, cold-voiced with apparently offended authority. “Are you all quite finished cluttering up this gateway?”

Her fear just then was not for the madman but for Joliffe. He had come between the men and their game and they could as easily turn on him as not. Some of them looked already near to doing it, preferring their own kind of jest to his, and what she would do then she did not know.

Behind her, curious, Benet asked, “So why
are
they cluttering your gateway?”

“For this!” Joliffe made a dramatic gesture toward the huddled madman.

“For that?” Benet came nearer to take a closer look, first at the madman, then, apparently deeply puzzled, around at the men. “No, I don’t think they’d be cluttering a gateway for that. I think they were just going by and it was in their way.”

“Oh!” Joliffe swept off his cap and bowed while spinning around on one foot, making apology to them all. “I’m sorry. I mistook your purposes. I’m sorry
she
mistook your purposes.” He pointed at Frevisse as if the whole thing, if they really thought about it, were probably her fault.

“Then since that’s straightened out, we’ll be going and leave that”—Benet nodded dismissively at the madman— “to you.” He dropped an arm across the shoulders of the man nearest him and strolled away, taking the man with him, the others following, some a little confusedly as if not sure what had happened to their sport, others sauntering to show they’d finished there anyway and did not care, others grumbling below their breath and with an unfriendly glance or two, until Joliffe called after them, “How, if for more apology, I sing you a song at supper tonight? About the madman and the nun!”

That brought laughter and a shout that they would see he kept his promise.

Watching them scatter across the yard, some of them crowding around Benet, poking at him friendly-wise and him jabbing good-humoredly back at them, Joliffe said quietly, “He did that very well. Clever boy.”

“That clever boy is the reason we have a stolen girl on our hands,” Frevisse said. “But yes, out of the lot of them, he’s probably the best.”

“So he’s the thwarted lover, is he?” Joliffe said with interest. “Any hope for him?”

“Not at present. Joice would rather see him hanged. A song about a madman and a nun? You have one like that?”

Joliffe shrugged. “Not until I’ve changed a word here and there in ‘The Priest and the Nun.” Probably you’d best not hear it when I have, though,“ he added thoughtfully.