The Prioress’ Tale (13 page)

“You can talk with Benet, surely,” Lady Eleanor said. “You’ve done it easily enough this morning and again this afternoon.”

“Not easily!”

“But more easily than you could face what might happen to you if you don’t!” Frevisse said back at her.

Joice, mouth open for more angry words, stopped, disconcerted into thinking; and when she had, she drew a deep, unsteady breath and said softly, “Your prioress wants me to marry him, doesn’t she? And I’m safe here only so long as she keeps me safe, aren’t I?”

She was, but admitting to it would be of small use just now, and Frevisse said evenly, believing it, “She won’t let you be forced to anything.”

“I’m being forced to be there tonight!”

“She’s giving you more chance to come around to Benet of your own will,” Lady Eleanor said gently. “That’s all this is. That’s all she’s trying to do.”

The trouble was that Domina Alys’ ways of trying were never subtle, and neither was Joice’s temper. If they came openly up against each, with Domina Alys’ only answer to anger being more anger…

Frevisse did not want to think of it.

From where she stood beside the window, looking down into the yard, Margrete said, “Sir Hugh is coming into the cloister.”

“To here or Alys?” Lady Eleanor said. “Adela, see.”

Lady Adela quickly set the dog on the bed and went out to the head of the stairs as Joice rose sharply to her feet, declaring, “I don’t want to see anyone!”

“If he’s coming here, you have small choice,” Lady Eleanor said evenly. “Adela?”

Lady Adela limped excitedly back into the room, shutting the door. “He’s gone past Domina Alys’ stairs. Sister Johane is bringing him here!”

Joice started another protest. Frevisse did not wait for it but took her by the arm across to the bed and sat her down on its edge, ordering her, “Stop playing the fool and play with the dog. Lady Adela, come, too. Lady Eleanor, is he likely to be coming to see Mistress Joice?”

“No,” Lady Eleanor said mildly. She had not stirred. “He’s likely coming to see me. Margrete.”

Margrete had already crossed to the door and at her lady’s word opened it to Sir Hugh just as he reached it, Sister Johane apparently left at the foot of the stairs. Smiling at him, Margrete stood aside, curtsying to him as he entered. At Frevisse’s prod, Joice rose, the dog in her arms, to join Frevisse in curtsy to him, too, while Lady Adela merely bent her head toward him, as a lord’s daughter needing to do no more. Sir Hugh returned their courtesies with a bow of his own and, “My ladies,” before turning to Lady Eleanor with another bow. The dog that had been curled on her skirts came scampering to sniff at his boots, and Sir Hugh scooped him up, saying, “Furry rat,” as the dog writhed around happily in his hold, trying to lick at his chin, then letting himself be stroked down into the crook of Sir Hugh’s arm as if it were a thing they were both used to. Sir Hugh turned back to Frevisse.

“Before anything else, my lady,” he said, “my apology for what happened in the yard with the madman. The men were in the wrong of it.”

Inwardly surprised that he either knew of it or cared, Frevisse answered back with outward graciousness, “Worse might have come of it than did. Thank you.”

“He took no harm?”

“Fright was the worst of it, I think. He’s being fed and then he’ll be seen away from here.”

“That’s likely for the best.”

“Yes.”

Sir Hugh bent his head to her, and to Joice and Lady Adela for good measure, and with the dog now nestled contentedly into the crook of his elbow, crossed to Lady Eleanor with, “And how is it with you, my lady mother?”

Joice, the other dog clutched to her as tightly as she had held to good manners while Sir Hugh was facing her, gasped and looked disbelievingly at Frevisse. “His mother? Lady Eleanor is his mother?” she whispered.

Frevisse’s surprise was as great, though she was trying to hide it better. Lady Eleanor had never mentioned that Sir Hugh was her son. But then—the realization startled her—she was not even sure how many children Lady Eleanor had, let be the names of any of them. There were sons and at least one daughter, but that was all she was sure of. How had she talked with Lady Eleanor so often and not learned more than that? By never asking questions, she realized. Because it had not interested her. What sort of friendship had she been giving Lady Eleanor, not to care about what must matter very much to her?

It was equally disconcerting to have Lady Adela say easily, “He’s the third son. There’s Sir Geoffrey, who inherited, and then John, who’s in Abingdon Abbey. Sir Hugh has just the one manor and it’s small and he hasn’t managed any marriage yet, but now that he has Lady Eleanor’s dower manor, too, because she’s here, she hopes he’ll be able to marry after all.”

“How do you know all this?” Frevisse asked.

Lady Adela gave her a slightly cross look, as if wondering how she could be so stupid. “Lady Eleanor tells me.”

“When?”

“When we talk.” Lady Adela said it with an impatient undertone that told she was rapidly losing faith in Frevisse’s ability to grasp the obvious.

And it was obvious. Or should have been. She knew that Lady Eleanor and Lady Adela kept company when Dame Perpetua was done with the girl. “It will be good for both of us,” Lady Eleanor had said when she first came. Dame Perpetua had been pleased because it meant Lady Adela would not be so much alone or in the company of only servants. Beyond that, Frevisse had given the matter no particular thought. No more thought than it seemed she had spent on Lady Eleanor, to know so little about her.

Lady Adela, busy with either trying to take out a tangle in the white plumed tail of the dog Joke still held or else to put one in, was going on, “There are two daughters, too. Katherine and Elizabeth.” She looked up at Frevisse. “Lady Eleanor says she never talks to you about them because it seems unkind to talk much about children to someone who won’t ever have any of her own.”

That was an aspect of it so far from Frevisse’s mind that she had no answer for it at all except a startled stare. It was Joice who said abruptly, following another thought altogether, “If that’s how it is, she may not be so much trying to protect me from Benet as hoping to bring me around to marrying Sir Hugh!”

Lady Adela brightened at that. “Then I could marry Benet!”

“You’d want to?” Joice asked disbelievingly.

Lady Adela nodded. “He’s almost handsome. And I think he’s brave. And…”

“Then you can have him,” Joice said fiercely.

The bell began to ring to Vespers. Frevisse stood up in haste, more grateful than graceful, then paused to lay a hand on Joice’s arm and say quietly but forcefully when the girl looked up at her, “It doesn’t matter who wants what for you. Keep going at what you’ve started. Play it out. It’s your safest way.”

Joice hesitated, verging on rebellion before finally her chin came up and she said in defiance of seemingly everyone, “I’ll even go tonight as if I wanted to and let them think they’re winning.”

Margrete was still at the door and opened it as Frevisse moved to leave. Frevisse nodded thanks as she went out, but from beyond it, in the moment of Margrete shutting it after her, looked back at Lady Eleanor and Sir Hugh across the room. Deep in talk with one another, they had not noticed her going. They were leaned toward each other, small outward resemblance between them and yet a familiarity in her hand on his knee, his nod to whatever she was saying, the way their eyes held, that Frevisse hoped would have told her something more about who they were to each other if she had seen them together like this before.

Or did she see it now only because she knew?

The door closed and she turned to answer the bell’s calling, but the thought of her own willed ignorance went with her, shaming and discomfiting her. She had chosen, when she chose to be a nun, the enclosed life that was meant to go with her vows, but the enclosure was supposed to be of the body, not of the mind or heart. What else of things around her had she not bothered to notice, to know?

Chapter 11

The nuns awoke to shivering cold at dawn, their breath in white clouds about them as they hurriedly slipped their outer gowns on over the underdresses they had worn to bed, arranged wimples around their faces, and pinned veils into place with stiff and uncooperative fingers by what little light there was from the lamp kept burning through the night at the head of the stairs.

“She
has
to give us leave to change to our winter gowns,” Sister Amicia wailed from her sleeping cell. “We’ll all freeze before Allhallows if she doesn’t!”

Frevisse wondered if Sister Amicia would ever grasp, once and for all, that when they had elected Domina Alys prioress, they had given her the right not to
have
to do anything she did not want to do where the priory was concerned.

Hurried along by the chill, they were all dressed, even Sister Emma, and already going down the stairs in huddled haste, when the bell began to ring to Prime. The lamp threw their shadows past them, tangling the darkness as they went down the stairs, but their feet were too used to the way to be confused. In the cloister, dawn had only just begun to come, a softening at the edges of the dark. They passed along it in a whisper of skirts and soft-soled shoes and entered the deeper shadows of the church, where the altar light beyond the choir was the only brightness as they spread out to their places in the stalls.

They rustled and coughed and settled as Dame Perpetua lighted the rushlights set along the choir stalls’ railing with the small taper she had brought from the lamp by the dorter stairs and carried shielded behind her hand from the draft of her walking until now. As the soft golden light bloomed around them Frevisse found her place in her prayer book for Prime’s familiar beginning. She hardly needed the words in front of her anymore, the complex weave of prayers and daily changing psalms through the circle of the Church’s seasons had become so much a part of her, but the feel of the book was familiar and therefore comforting.

Now all they lacked was their prioress, but they were becoming used to her being late, both at midnight’s prayers and Prime, and Frevisse huddled down over her prayer book, trying to will her body to warmth and quietness instead of shivering while they waited. She wondered how it had gone with Joice last night. And despite her resolve not to think of it until it happened, she wondered how it would go with herself this morning.

She was afraid.

She faced that. She had done what would be seen as wrong and she was very certainly going to suffer for it. Whatever good she had meant by what she had done, she would have to endure the bad that was going to come from it. And not only endure but not let anger and defiance corrode her while she did.

Firmum est cor meum, Deus, firmum est cor meum.
Firm is my heart, God, firm is my heart.
Cantabo… Excitabo auroram
… I will sing… I will rouse the dawn…

She loved the courage of Prime’s prayers. They promised that there had been days before this one and that there would be days after it, and if there was ill, there was also good, and that though the two were inextricably conjoined in this day, in every day, in all of life, it was not the good or ill that mattered but the firm heart that could turn to God and sing.

Today was only this one day. It was not all of her life. She would endure it.
Firmum est cor meum, Deus. Firmus est cor meum.

A slump and thump and complaining murmur from Sister Cecely told she had not held firm against the pull of sleep. Someone laughed softly. Sister Cecely whispered, “It’s not fair, our being here in the cold and dark when she isn’t.” Dame Juliana whispered back, “Hush,” and there was quiet again.

Beyond the east window, the darkness was easing into the gray of gathering day as, with a rush and thrust of shadows and heavy footfalls, Domina Alys appeared from the darkness and mounted to the prioress’ stall, sat down, slapped her prayer book open, squinted at the page as if her eyes were not so awake as the rest of her, and said loudly,
“Laus tibi, Domine.”
Praise to you, Lord.

She sounded more as if she were ordering him to take it than humbly offering it and set a brisk pace afterward, but for once she passed over nothing and slurred very little, and because it was too early, too little light, for the masons to be at work, there were no interruptions. They reached the end with its closing prayer for the souls of the faithful departed. Domina Alys slapped her prayer book shut, rose to her feet, and led the way out of the church.

It was dawn light now and they could see as they crowded shivering at her heels that a heavy rime of frost lay along the stone of the low wall between the cloister walk and the garth, and that in the garth every leaf, petal, stem, the paths, and bare earth were crusted white, with Katerin’s footprints to the bell showing black where she had come and gone. It was the last small corner of summer ended, but Dame Juliana was the only one who paused to look and mourn a little over the year’s last-dead flowers. The rest of the nuns were too eager to be out of the cold.

The day had grown to full light in the short while it took to break their fast with warmed cider and bread. Frevisse was willing to draw out time then, but Father Henry set a cold-hastened pace through Mass, and then there was nothing left between her and chapter meeting but the brief walk from church to warming room. There the others crowded close to the fire, excepting Sister Thomasine, who went, as always, aside to the farthest stool and stood there with bowed heads and hands tucked in opposite sleeves, waiting. Frevisse hesitated and then went to stand by the stool nearest her in like pose if not in like quiet of mind. Sister Thomasine brought humility to everything she did, and in the corner of her mind not taut with apprehension of what was coming, Frevisse knew that if she were able to accept whatever punishment and penance Domina Alys chose to lay on her with humility anything near to Sister Thomasine’s, then the humiliation of it would not be able to touch her.

Domina Alys entered and took her place. Reluctantly leaving the fire, so did the other women. Father Henry came, made his familiar, dogged attack on the Latin and the lesson, and left. Now there was no more time to be ready, no more waiting to be lived through, as Domina Alys asked, according to form, “Are there any faults to be confessed or revealed here today?”