The Prioress’ Tale (3 page)

This morning, as they sometimes did, Sir Reynold and his men had ridden out during Tierce’s prayers, with laughter and shouting and the clatter of their horses’ hooves on the cobbles of the yard, and though they would be back, Frevisse had taken the chance to have the disorder made by too many men living idle too many days cleared and cleaned before their return. She was going now to see if everything had been done as she had ordered, with the hope she would be back inside the cloister before they rode in. The less she had to see of Sir Reynold or any of his men, the better she was pleased.

Because there was no use in complaining, she had said nothing outside of chapter meeting of what was happening, but as she and Lady Eleanor paused together Lady Eleanor asked, “How much trouble have my nephew and his men made for you?”

Frevisse tried to answer lightly, as if there were no need to take much heed, “Enough.”

Quietly smiling—she had known her nephew Sir Reynold far longer than Frevisse had had the misfortune to—Lady Eleanor said, “If I were you, I’d see to there being a sleeping potion in his ale and all his men’s at supper every night. And mornings, too, come to that, until they grow so bored with being here they leave.”

“It would be a comfort if we had some notion of when they were going to go,” Frevisse said, and did not try to hide how much she meant it.

Lady Eleanor nodded. “I know. The only comfort I can offer, my dear, is that nothing goes on forever.” Her smile deepened, warm with sympathy as she added, “It only seems to, sometimes.”

Frevisse smiled back, agreeing there was comfort in perspective—not necessarily the comfort she wanted, but comfort nonetheless.

They parted, Lady Eleanor away to her room, Frevisse along the short length of the chill, shadowed passageway to the heavy outer door. Made of two thicknesses of wood, it was kept barred at night but during the day was only shut on the latch, and though according to the Rule, someone was supposed to watch at it all the day and through the night, St. Frideswide’s was too small for that to be worth the while. Someone was always near to hear if anyone came knocking, and with the inner yard and its gateway and then the outer yard with its clutter of buildings and workers to notice and question the coming of any stranger, and finally the gateway to the road all lying between the cloister door and the outer world, with the other way into the inner yard only through the busy kitchen yard and a small side gate, no one unwanted was likely to come so far as the cloister door unnoticed.

Some of Sir Reynold’s servants were passing the afternoon’s time at ease in the courtyard between the cloister and guest halls, stretched out on the steps up to the new guest hall or gathered around the well where the sunlight was presently warmest. Frevisse crossed to the older of the two guest halls without seeming to heed them, her head bowed enough to swing her veil forward to hide her face on either side, showing she was willing to ignore them if they would return the courtesy by ignoring her and they did.

Knowing she was hosteler only to keep her out of Domina Alys’ way did not give her any leave to slack her duties; nor did it mean she had any right to draw her work out beyond necessity. She went about what needed seeing to now as quickly as care made possible, pleased to find that the guest-hall servants had managed to put more to rights than she had hoped but finding, now that she had chance to check more carefully the guest-hall stores, that even more had been eaten and drunk away than she had guessed.

When Frevisse spoke of it to Ela, head of the guesthall servants, while poking at the few remaining bundles of onions hanging from the storeroom ceiling to be sure there was no rot, Ela said, “There was talk they’d bring something back with them today, like they’ve done those other two times. Nothing clear, mind you, so I’ll not be surprised if nothing comes of it, but that’s what some of them were saying, because what we have isn’t good enough for them, that’s why. They’re wanting better.”

“If they bring it, they’re welcome to it,” Frevisse answered shortly.

Ela saw to guesthall matters when Frevisse was not there, and neither of them made pretense to each other of how little they wanted Sir Reynold and his men on their hands, but neither did they bother to talk of it at length. There was no need; they had worked together long enough to understand each other’s mind.

The stores were the last thing Frevisse needed to see. That done, she was free to make her escape back into the cloister without having to deal with Sir Reynold, just as she had hoped. But the hope was blighted by the too familiar sound of Domina Alys’ voice railing at someone at the far end of the guest hall’s great hall as Frevisse came up the stairs from the kitchen. The words were unclear but the irk was plain, telling that someone had come under the prioress’ displeasure, and Frevisse flinched to a stop, then drew a deep breath and went on out into the high-roofed hall where meals were shared and most of their guests and servants slept. The trestle tables had not been set up yet for supper, so except for benches, the hall stretched open to its far end and the outer door, a generous space for Domina Alys to rant in, and she was taking full advantage of it, standing over Nell, one of the kitchen servants, declaring at full pitch of ire, “And don’t think I don’t know what you’re all at here! Helping yourselves to food and ale beyond what you’re given and then my folk blamed for eating us out! Fool who you can, I know better! And don’t think…”

Nell was taking the battering of words with bowed head and hunched shoulders, probably thinking of nothing except the likelihood that a blow would come with the words before they were over. Domina Alys had been hosteler in her time; the guest-hall servants knew as well as anybody else that she believed a hard slap would drive words into a thick head better than anything—and to Domina Alys all heads were thick but her own.

Frevisse, as afraid for Nell as Nell was and knowing the surest way to draw Domina Alys off one anger was to give her another, started up the hall toward them, saying far too loudly for respectful, “My lady, is there something I can help you with?”

As expected, Domina Alys turned on her. “Dame! Where were you when I was looking for you? I’ve seen what’s toward here, don’t think I haven’t.”

Frevisse made a small flick of one hand toward Nell, telling her to escape while she was forgotten. Hands knotted in her apron, shoulders still hunched, Nell slid away toward the kitchen stairs as Domina Alys closed on Frevisse, declaring, “I’ve seen enough to warn you here and now that your accounts had best be better than I expect them to be or you’ll be answering for it from now to Lent. And where’s my cousin gone to? Why’s he not back yet?”

Forcing her voice to hold level, lowering her eyes for some semblance of humility, Frevisse said, “I don’t know, my lady.”

“Well, he ought to be back by now!”

Frevisse was saved from finding a reply by the clatter of horses and a burst of men’s voices and laughter and shouting in the yard outside. Domina Alys swung toward the doorway. “And there he is!” she declared as triumphantly as if she had just proved some point on which Frevisse had been willfully troublesome.

With no other way to go, Frevisse followed her out of the hall to the head of the stairs and down to the yard, where the afternoon’s sun-warmed doze had turned to a loud crowding of mounted men and a scurry of servants among shifting horses, a confusion of movement and laughing exclaims, raucous as a roost of rooks. Domina Alys stopped at the top of the stairs and, hands on her hips, glared out at it all until she found whom she wanted and yelled to him across the seethe of men and voices, “Reynold, you dullard, hereafter leave your horses in the outer yard, thank you!”

“Cousin!” Sir Reynold yelled back at her, unoffended, taking off his riding hat and tossing it toward her over the heads of the men between them. Domina Alys caught it and flung it back at him, less true, but he reached out a long arm and caught it under the face of the man beside him while she shouted, “You heard me, Reynold! The outer yard after this!”

“Ever yours to command!” Sir Reynold called back, laughing, sweeping her a bow from his saddle. He was large-built, heavy-boned, well-muscled—so like Domina Alys, except that he was tall above the average, that he could as easily have been taken for her brother as her cousin. They were matched in tempers, too, Frevisse had found; she would not care to be near at hand if they should ever turn ill-tempered against someone at the same time or, probably worse, against each other.

But just now Sir Reynold was alight with laughter that took no heed of Domina Alys’ anger. He crowded his horse toward the foot of the stairs, asking, “What brings you out of your hole, Alys? Come to see the sun for a change?”

“Come to see you,” she snapped. “Did you bring back something more than your appetites this time or have you slipped your word again?”

Sir Reynold threw back his head, breaking into immense laughter. “No holding coy with you, my girl! Look you.” He pointed toward the yard’s gateway, crowded with a dozen mounted men with heavy bags slung either side, in back and front, of their saddles. “There’s enough of this and that to see us through a few days, surely, and something or two better than usual for you and yours, too, so don’t be looking to quarrel with me over it.”

Domina Alys, swinging her gaze around the yard to see if there were still more, drew her breath in harshly. “And
that?
she demanded, finger out accusingly. ”What is
that?“

“What?” Sir Reynold looked around where she was pointing, his face too elaborately casual for true innocence. “Ah, that.” He grinned like a boy who did not care he had been caught out at mischief. “Benet!”

Among the shift and clutter of men and horses, Frevisse had not particularly noticed anyone beyond Sir Reynold. Between them, he and Domina Alys took up most of any noticing wherever they were, and all Frevisse was truly interested in just now was returning to the cloister as simply as might be, but now she looked past him to the man whose head jerked around in answer to his call. A young man, not much beyond a boy but his face already strongly Godfrey in its bones and coloring and probably in pride and temper, too, to judge by the strong line of his dark brows, drawn together now as he turned toward his lord and Domina Alys. But Frevisse read alarm in his face, too, and well there might be, because in front of him on his saddle he was holding tight in the circle of his arm a girl who did not—to guess by the set of raw scratches scored down one side of Benet’s face from brow to chin and the closely wrapped cloak that pinioned her arms to helplessness—want to be there.

Her dark hair had fallen loose from whatever had once held it; it was tumbled now around her shoulders and to her waist, obscuring her face as she twisted angrily in Benet’s hold despite that she had no chance of breaking free, trapped as she was in the cloak and his tight hold. Cheerfully Sir Reynold called, “Don’t let her slip! Some of the taming you’re going to have to do yourself from here on.”

There was laughter among the men to that, though not from Benet, as the girl threw back her head, missing his chin with the back of her skull only because he ducked away from it. Domina Alys, finally finding words, demanded at Sir Reynold, “What have you done, you fool?”

Sir Reynold answered, grinning, “There’s naught wrong. Benet means to marry her.”

Her hair thrown back from her face at last, the girl cried out in open fury, “Not this side of hell he won’t! Help me!” She turned desperate eyes on Domina Alys and Frevisse.

“You’re nuns! I won’t marry him! Don’t let them do this to me!”

“No one is doing anything to anyone, marriage or otherwise, until I know more about what’s toward here,” Domina Alys said grimly. “Dame Frevisse, have her down from there. Take her into the cloister.”

Frevisse started down the stairs to obey, for once as openly angry as Domina Alys; but Sir Reynold backed his horse across her way and said over her head to Domina Alys, now above her on the stairs, “Alys, Alys, come on, my girl. It’s not so bad as all that. Benet means to
marry
her. Your priest can do it ere supper, if you like. She’s only merchant-get, but there’s money enough in it to make it worth the while. And better that Benet have her than that fool of a Fenner her people were planning to betrothed her to.”

“Fool or not,” the girl cried, still twisting in Benet’s hold, “he has friends at court and they’ll make you sorry for this!”

Without looking around, Sir Reynold said, “Benet, muzzle her.”

The girl instantly twisted her head around as far as it would go, to snap her teeth at Benet before he had made any move at all against her. Around him the other men were offering suggestions, none of them helpful, some of them lewd. Benet, tight-mouthed and intent, answered nothing, kept hold of her and clear of her head. Frevisse moved sideways to go around Sir Reynold, but again he backed his horse, still blocking her way, saying over her, “Call your nun off, Alys. The girl is Benet’s.”

“I’m not anyone’s!” the girl cried back.

“Dame,” Domina Alys snapped, “I said take her into the cloister.”

“Alys, don’t push this,” Sir Reynold warned.

“Don’t you push it, Reynold,” Domina Alys warned him back, fists on her hips, her face mottled red with temper in the white surround of her wimple. She had nothing to set against him but God’s displeasure and her own, and Frevisse doubted that either was likely to matter much to Sir Reynold. Worse, Father Henry had come out of his chamber door beside the gateway and was taking in what was happening. He was a burly man, almost a match in size for Sir Reynold, but with no complications in him. Direct to the point of simpleness in both his religion and his living, he would side without thought with Domina Alys once he understood what was happening here, even if it came to blows, as it all too readily could, given the tempers there were; and if it did, Frevisse doubted his priesthood would protect him from Sir Reynold or his men.

As he stood trying to decide what was going on in front of him, before Domina Alys saw him and demanded his help, Frevisse threw up her hands and her full black sleeves at Sir Reynold’s horse’s face. The animal startled backward, tossing its head aside out of her way, and more quickly than Sir Reynold could recover control, Frevisse ducked not only past him but between the two riders beyond him, to Benet’s side. Grabbing hold of the girl’s skirts as if laying a claim of her own to her, she ordered, “Give her to me, Benet. Now.”