The apostate's tale (13 page)

But poor Edward.

Whatever he had been told or come to understand of the use his mother had meant to make of him and whatever he knew or did not know about everything happening around him, he was the one innocent in all of this and yet likely to be the one who would suffer the most from it. Frevisse could hope he would be kept from more hurt than he already had, but she ruefully admitted to herself that hoping was all she could do for him. Or hoping while trying to do something toward curbing all the wrongs intended around him.

And there, she thought as she came out onto the guesthall steps and saw across the yard Jack Rowcliffe in talk with Elianor Lawsell and her mother beside the well, was maybe another wrong in the making. Young Jack’s heed was all too openly on Elianor rather than her mother, and all too openly Mistress Lawsell was not minding that, was even drifting back a step, as if about to make excuse to leave them alone together; and Frevisse called, going down the steps, “Mistress Lawsell, may I ask the use of your daughter for a few moments?” Adding to Jack as she went toward them, “Your father wants to see Edward. I’m going to ask our prioress about it.” And to Mistress Lawsell as she reached them, “If your daughter comes with me, she can bring word back to the guesthall when I’ve done and thereby spare me that much more walking.”

A shadow of displeasure passed over Mistress Lawsell’s face but her hesitation was minute before she answered, courteously enough, balked of any reason to refuse, “Of course. Elianor, make yourself useful to the nun.”

Elianor made a slight curtsy of obedience to her mother, kept her eyes downturned from Jack who was bowing to her, and wordlessly followed Frevisse away. Only when they were into the cloister passageway, with Frevisse closing the door between them and the yard, did she give way and say with with open delight, “I’ve been praying for chance to be in here! Thank you!”

Level-voiced, not acknowledging the girl’s pleasure, Frevisse said, “We’ll go to Domina Elisabeth first. Her permission is needed before anything else is done.”

Elianor accepted that with an eager nod and followed Frevisse along the passageway until, as they came from it into the cloister walk, her steps slowed. Glancing back, Frevisse saw she was looking all around, eyes bright. Not letting her linger, Frevisse started up the stairs to the prioress’ parlor. Elianor was forced to follow but paused to look out the narrow window that gave the stairway light and a view over the roof of the guesthall to the world beyond the nunnery’s walls, then had to hurry to catch up as Frevisse scratched at the prioress’ closed door. Beyond it, Domina Elisabeth called, “Benedicite,” and Frevisse went in, Elianor now crowding on her heels.

Frevisse had thought to find Domina Elisabeth at work at her desk beside the window, and indeed she was sitting there but with no sign she had been working. Instead, she had one hand idle in her lap and the other stretched out to the nunnery cat presently curled and comfortable on the window seat beside her. She looked with surprise at Elianor sinking in a floor-deep curtsy and then at Frevisse. Frevisse had reported in chapter what had passed between her and Elianor in the church; Domina Elisabeth had to know what was coming, but if that was why her look at Frevisse was somewhat pleading, almost as if asking to be spared this just now, Frevisse saw no way to help her. Talk with the girl and then her mother would have to come sooner or later. Best to start now and have it done, she thought, and perhaps Domina Elisabeth did, too, because she said graciously enough as the girl straightened, “I’ve meant to speak with your mother and you, now that matters have eased a little with Easter’s passing.”

“I’ve hoped to speak with you, too, my lady,” Elianor said eagerly.

First, though, there was the matter of Rowcliffe’s demand about Edward, and Frevisse told it, then added her outward reason for bringing Elianor, saying at the end, “I thought, too, it would give her the needed chance to talk with you.”

“Of course,” said Domina Elisabeth steadily. “As for Master Rowcliffe’s desire to see the child, I think it should be Edward’s choice, not his mother’s. Ask Edward his desire in this and use your own judgment on it thereafter.”

“I think Edward should go no farther than the church,” Frevisse said.

Domina Elisabeth nodded agreement to that. “It might be well to have Father Henry there, too, that the Rowcliffes understand we’ll have no tolerance of trouble.”

“Yes, my lady,” Frevisse said, with the thought that Father Henry’s broad shoulders together with the authority of his priesthood would probably be sufficient to keep Rowcliffe from attempting anything foolish, should Rowcliffe have anything foolish in mind.

Domina Elisabeth gestured for Elianor to sit on the window seat near her and said, “Let us talk now, since we have this chance.”

Frevisse willingly took that for dismissal, made curtsy, and left.

To reach Mistress Petham’s chamber, she had to go down to the cloister walk again. Passing along it, she passed Sister Thomasine sitting her turn at guard outside the guest parlor where, for the sake of better light and air, the door presently stood open, and Frevisse had glimpse of Sister Cecely pacing in the small room’s shadows. Sister Cecely had been a restless, unhappy girl here. Now she was a restless, unhappy woman. Was she simply that way always, inside the nunnery and out, or only here in St. Frideswide’s, Frevisse wondered as she went up the stairs to Mistress Petham’s chamber. However it had been for Sister Cecely, much of it had come by way of her own choosing, but Edward had had no choice in anything, and Frevisse inwardly admitted she was interested in how he would take this offer of chance to see his near kin again.

In the moment before she knocked at the frame of the open door, she saw him sitting cross-legged on the end of Mistress Petham’s bed, reading aloud with somewhat labored slowness from a book laid open on his lap while Mistress Petham lay against her pillows, watching him with a kindly smile. When Frevisse knocked, he broke off, and they both looked toward her, Mistress Petham’s smile changing to welcome but Edward’s ease gone to wariness even before Frevisse said why she had come; and when she had told him, he stayed unmoving and unanswering, staring at her, much like a small animal gone frozen-still in the hope a passing hawk will fail to see it, until Mistress Petham prompted, “Edward? Do you want to see your cousin?”

Edward flinched a look toward her, then back at Frevisse, and hardly above a whisper, asked, “What does my mother say?”

“She’s not been asked,” Frevisse said, carefully quiet. “This is for you to say. No one else.”

Edward ducked his head over the book still open on his lap. “I don’t want to see him.”

Frevisse could not tell whether that was from fear of John Rowcliffe or because he knew his mother would not want it. Trying for more answer, she asked, “Is there someone you would rather see instead?”

This time Edward’s answer was a whisper that neither she nor Mistress Petham heard, and Mistress Petham leaned forward and asked, “What, Edward? Who is it you’d rather see?”

Edward did not raise his head, only his voice a little. “My father.”

That silenced both women for a long moment, until Frevisse said very gently, “You know your cousins Symond and Jack are here. Would you like to see either of them instead of Master Rowcliffe?”

They waited again, until finally Mistress Petham said, “Edward?” and he lifted his head a little to say to Frevisse, “Jack.”

She smiled at him. “Then you shall. Jack and no one else.”

Someone began to ring the cloister bell, calling to the morning’s Office of Tierce, and she went instantly silent and bowed her head in farewell to Mistress Petham. Mistress Petham bowed her head in return while holding out her hand to Edward. “Come,” she said. “Let’s follow Dame Frevisse to the church.”

S
itting on the bench, her back against the wall, Cecely scuffled her bare feet in the loose rushes covering the guest parlor’s floor and stared at the room’s far wall. It wasn’t even that far a wall. A few yards away, no more, and the other walls hardly farther off on either side. It was a small room, a hateful room. A prison room. Just as it always had been. She hated it now the same way she had hated it when she was a nun here and had feared it was as near as she would ever come to the outside world again. Even then, she had only been allowed in here when she had a visitor or visitors, and because those had almost always been kin of one sort or another, Johane had almost always been with her here because they shared so many kindred that a visitor to one of them had usually been a visitor to them both.

Johane had used to laugh that they came in hope some of the nunnery’s piety would wear off on them. Now did Johane even
remember
how to laugh anymore? Or had that been worn out of her along with every other memory of what pleasure life could be?

In those whiles of visitors, there had been talk and something to eat and drink besides the nunnery’s usual dull fare, so that for that little while it would hardly matter that the room was small and bare and miserable. But it
was
small and bare and miserable, and she had been in it since yesterday with nothing to do but pace its little space or sit and stare at the bare walls, the ugly rafters, the dry rushes, or else try to sleep and mostly fail to do so. At least they had brought down the miserable mattress and pillow from her bed in the dorter, even if they’d only put them on the floor in the corner, and the door still stood open, but probably only to give her light enough to read the breviary Domina Elisabeth had given to her.

“Use it,” the prioress had said coldly yesterday. “Look into your heart and see the wrong you’ve done to God and yourself. At least begin the search to find your way back to God’s love.”

Cecely had nearly spat at her feet.

They made her want to scream, these women. They had found nothing better to do with their lives than shut themselves up in here to die before they were dead. What did they know of love or anything else?
She
had had love.
She
knew everything they did not, and one of the things she knew was how useless God’s “love” was when she was lonely or frightened or in need of a man’s warmth. God’s “love” and God’s “care” and God’s “comfort.” Where were they? What use were they? It hadn’t been God there in her bed at night when she put out a hand, needing someone. It hadn’t been God who had laughed with her and pleasured her and made life bright around her. It had been Guy.

And where had God been when Guy died? If God “loved” and “cared” and “comforted,” where had he been then?

Oh, they all had answers. The priest at home had had answers, and if she asked these women here, they’d have answers. But their answers were only words. Words weren’t Guy’s arms around her, holding her warm and safe. Words weren’t what she wanted. What she wanted was Guy holding her against the miseries of this awful place.

Except she wouldn’t be here if God hadn’t taken Guy from her. He had taken Guy, and what use was his “love” and “care” when she ached for someone to be holding her? God was no use for that. There was no one to hold her, no one to put their arms around her and make her feel safe. She was alone and no words about God’s “love” and “care” were going to change
that
.

Angrily needing to destroy something, she twisted at the skirt of her hated black gown. She wanted the pleasure there would be in tearing the ugly thing into rags. That would show these women what she thought of them and their “penance.” But the wool’s strength defeated her, had been defeating her for hours. She couldn’t tear it with her bare hands and there was nothing else to use here. Even the water she was given with her bread came in a wooden cup. If it had been pottery she would have broken it and used the edge to cut with. Without even that, she was left with nothing, and she pitched to her feet and started the pacing that was her only other occupation. The few yards forward that was all the room allowed, and then around the table and around the table and around the table.

Someone started to ring the cloister bell for whatever Office was next in the dreary day. The nun sitting guard on a stool just outside the parlor’s open doorway stood up, and Cecely froze, tense and staring at the woman’s back. Even knowing she had no hope of going far, stripped as she was of everything except the coarse black gown, she still had the urge to run. Just let them give her any chance at all and see how fast and far she’d go!

But the nun stayed where she was. Whichever nun she was. Cecely had been unable to tell. From behind they were simply black-clothed shapes of somewhat different heights. How did they bear it?

The long skirts and soft-soled shoes of other nuns hushed along the cloister walk’s stone paving, going toward the church from whatever tasks they had been at, and finally the nun outside the door went, too, but only because a servant had replaced her, some aproned woman from the kitchen.

Not Alson. Still not Alson.

Cecely dropped heavily onto the bench again. She had prayed last night for Alson to be the servant left to sleep outside the closed door, but it had been some other woman, who had snored and grunted when she turned over and been as much at fault for keeping Cecely awake as the thin mattress and the hard floor under it had been.

So she had prayed for it to be Alson sometime today but still it was not. So much for prayers.

But sooner or later Alson would have her turn. There weren’t that many servants in the cloister. Which Office was this anyway? Sext? Were they that far through the day yet? Maybe it was only Tierce. Along with everything else, the day was overcast, giving no shadows sliding along the cloister walk by which to tell the time. There were only the Offices to break the day’s long tediousness into worthless pieces.

But she was not yet reduced to reading or even opening the breviary she had been given. Not by a long way was she come to that. In truth, she had long since shoved the book angrily off the table and kicked it away somewhere among the rushes. Did Domina Elisabeth truly think that, now she was spared sitting through the Offices in the choir, she was going to do them here and alone?

She stood up abruptly from the bench. Was she hearing something happening in the guesthall yard? She grabbed up the joint stool, set it under the room’s single, small window high in the outer wall, and stood on it, not in hope of seeing out—she already knew the window was too small and high for sight of more than the ridge of the guesthall roof and a bit of sky—but to hear better what was happening. It was beyond hope that the Rowcliffes would take their rotten selves away, but surely Master Breredon wouldn’t desert her. They couldn’t have forced him to leave, could they? He wanted that manor and Neddie too much.

Or was it someone arriving? As bad as Master Breredon leaving would be someone from the abbot arriving.

Hooking her fingers over the windowsill, she pulled herself higher on her toes, straining to see out despite she knew it was no use.

It was all supposed to have been simpler than this. How had John found her out? He wasn’t supposed even to know she had ever been a nun. If he hadn’t come, everything would have all been the way she had planned it to be. Master Breredon would have fetched her and Neddie away and given her the promised money for Neddie’s wardship and marriage, and with Neddie safe, she would have been on her way to somewhere. London, she thought. No one could have found her there among so many people. Or maybe Bristol, clear away to the other side of the country, if she’d heard a-right. Somewhere, anyway, with no way for the Rowcliffes to pick up her trail and follow her. That was how it was all supposed to have gone. Now they had spoiled it all by finding her.

Whatever was happening in the yard, it was not much. She could hear a cart’s wheels on the cobbles, so it was not anyone riding in or riding out and couldn’t be Master Breredon or the Rowcliffes.

She stepped down from the stool, shoved it away with her foot so it fell over with a satisfying thud, and went back to the bench, glaring at the back of the servant sitting like a lump outside the door. Her prayer for Alson to be there was just another prayer unanswered. These fools of nuns lived believing that cold prayers mattered. Let them.
She
had had Guy, and if she could have any prayer at all answered, it would be to have him back and everything the way it had been. But that was another prayer that God would only answer with his great, unmerciful
No
.

Whatever the Office had been, it ended. Nuns went quiet-footed along the cloister walk again, some of them talking in low voices that paused as they passed her door. Did they think they would be defiled if she so much as heard their voices? They were talking about her, surely. Let them. She didn’t care what they said. Let them say whatever they wanted to say about her.

She stood up and took the two steps from the bench to the doorway, keeping enough aside that she could hear without being readily seen, but the nuns were all past. No one had come to relieve the servant, though, and Cecely lingered because there might be others who would come talking.

Yes. Here came slow footsteps and a woman saying something.

Except it was not a nun who answered her but Neddie. Neddie’s dear little voice. Someone was bringing him right past her door, and she could not help herself. She darted out and there he was, walking with that Mistress Petham holding his hand, and before the servant could even exclaim at her, she had snatched Neddie to herself, fallen to her knees, and clutched him close. For a startled moment he seemed almost to pull back from her. Then he flung his arms around her neck and clung to her in return, and she whispered in his ear, “Do you still have it all safe and hidden?”

His head moved against hers in the smallest of nods. She kissed him. Her dear, warm, clever little boy. She would have smothered him with more kisses except someone had her by one arm, was pulling her to her feet, while Mistress Petham laid a hand on Neddie’s shoulder, drawing him back from her. Poor, brave little boy, he didn’t even cry out or struggle. He just stared up at her one last moment with large, frightened eyes, and then Mistress Petham was hurrying him away along the walk, and Cecely was being turned around to face a very angry Domina Elisabeth saying at her, “You can’t obey even the simple order to stay in that room. Have you no sense at all?”

Her hold on Cecely’s arm was hard and hurting, and behind her was Father Henry, not doing anything to stop her, and Cecely wrenched free, took a step back, and flared out with matching anger at both of them, “He’s my son! He’s all that’s left of everything I had!” Tears of rage and grief burned her eyes. “God took all my others and then their father and now you want to keep even Neddie from me!”

Domina Elisabeth did not try to take hold on her again, instead took a step back from her as Father Henry came forward, saying, “Mind yourself, sister, and thank God for his mercy instead of blaming him. It could have been you who died, still in your sin, instead of your children in their innocence. They were spared the sins of the world. You’ve been spared to make good your sin.”

Cecely’s breast heaved as she tried for air enough to answer that arrogance and ended by turning her fury on Domina Elisabeth again with, “Why was Neddie in the church at all? You’re supposed to be protecting him, but you let him in the church where anyone could snatch him! John Rowcliffe could grab him from there and there’d be nothing you could do! Who’d stop him? Any of you?” She rounded on Father Henry in raging scorn. “
You
?”

Like everyone and everything else in this place, the priest had grown older in the years she had been gone. When she had tried, all those years ago, to tell him what she was suffering, he had only told her she must endure in patience and pray for God’s grace. From anything he had said to her since her return, he was grown no wiser. He had even tried to tell her of his guilt at having failed her all those years ago. He said he had been bearing the burden of it ever since. Was she supposed to care? Now he was saying, “What if Domina Elisabeth agreed to give you leave to attend the Offices again, would…”

Together she and Domina Elisabeth said back at him, “No!”

And with Father Henry startled into silence, Domina Elisabeth said at her, “Get back into that room. If ever you step over its threshold again without my leave, I’ll have you tied to keep you there, I swear it!”