The apostate's tale (2 page)

The guest parlor, where nuns could talk with any visitors permitted them, was there, beside the passageway to the outer door and the stairs to the prioress’ rooms, and Frevisse said more to the boy than Sister Cecely because even looking at her was difficult, “If you please to go in.” Gesturing for him—for them—to go ahead of her. “The wait shouldn’t be long.” Then she called to Sister Helen, nearest among the departing nuns, “Sister, have someone bring bread and warm milk for the child, please.”

Sister Helen bobbed her head, put up a quick hand to the white veil that marked her for a novice among the nuns, her final vows not yet taken, stooped quickly to pick up from the stone paving the pin that had fallen out, and hurried her leaving.

Her hand still held out toward the parlor door, Frevisse said, this time at Sister Cecely, “Go in,” no please about it.

A
mong everything Cecely had willingly forgotten about St. Frideswide’s was Dame Frevisse. Always one of the older nuns, the woman had a way of never showing on her face what she was thinking. Even when the irksome rule against talking in the cloister had begun to ease while Cecely was a novice, Dame Frevisse had mostly kept to a forbidding silence that always made Cecely certain that, whatever the woman was thinking, it was unkindly.

Yet now, having seen her and Neddie into the guest parlor as if Cecely were a stranger who had never been there before, she looked down at Neddie and asked, as if it mattered to her, “Is he chilled? Should he go to the kitchen to be dried and warmed?”

Cecely instantly put out an arm, drew Neddie to her, and said, “He was under my cloak. He stayed dry, didn’t you, Neddie? And he isn’t cold either, are you, Neddie?” Neddie had been goodness itself these last difficult days, doing what he was told to do and making no more trouble than he could help. Now, never mind that Cecely could feel him a little shivering against her—but that was probably more from fear than anything—he obediently shook his head that, no, he was not cold. Cecely had told him over and over these past days that he had to be a brave boy for her. Now, as Dame Frevisse reached out and laid a hand on his shoulder, he proved his bravery by not flinching away from her touch.

For her part, Cecely glared at the woman, defying her to say his cloak was damp and that he was shivering, but before Dame Frevisse could or could not, Dame Claire said from the doorway, “Dame Juliana says Domina Elisabeth will see them. We’re to bring them up. Both of us,” she added in answer to a swift look from Dame Frevisse.

Cecely remembered where the prioress’ parlor was. Seeing no reason to wait to be taken, she pulled Neddie away from Dame Frevisse’s hand and started out of the chamber. Dame Claire, as if afraid the touch of Cecely’s skirts might taint her, stepped well aside. Pleased at that, Cecely turned toward the prioress’ stairs. Dame Juliana was standing on the lowest one, but to be out of the way she scurried back up them, nimble for so old a woman, Cecely thought, following her with firm hold on Neddie’s hand. He stumbled a little on the steepness, and she jerked to keep him on his feet. At the stairs’ top the door to the prioress’ parlor stood open. Dame Juliana was just saying, “She’s come, my lady,” when Cecely swept past her into the room. Or would have swept if Neddie had not stumbled yet again, this time on the threshold, so that she had to pause to pull him firmly upright again.

That done, she took in the room with a single quick look, judging both it and Domina Elisabeth standing beside the table in the room’s middle. Seeing it still all the same both reassured and sickened her. St. Frideswide’s prioress lived better than her nuns. They made do with no more than a narrow sleeping cell for each of them in the dorter and a shared, rarely lighted fireplace in the warming room. The prioress had this parlor, its fireplace, and a bedchamber all to herself, and because sometimes she had to receive visitors who were maybe important to the nunnery’s good, the parlor was better furnished than anywhere else in the cloister, with two chairs where otherwise everyone had only stools, a woven Spanish carpet over the table, and embroidered cushions on the bench below the wide, glassed window overlooking the guesthall yard.

When Cecely’s aunt had been prioress, there had been other comforts in the room, and a bright sense of life happening. Those and that were all gone. Everything still here simply looked older and faded and over-used. Including Domina Elisabeth, Cecely thought savagely. Her ten years as prioress had aged the woman. In the white surround of her wimple, her face was far more lined than Cecely remembered, and she looked tired.

Would that help or hinder? Cecely wondered. Had she softened or hardened with years?

It was too soon to tell, and Cecely did as she had planned, ended her swift forward movement halfway between the doorway and the prioress by pushing Neddie to his knees by a hand on his shoulder and following him down, falling to her own knees, her hands lifted prayerfully as she entreated, “My lady, I beg forgiveness! I’ve sinned and been sinned against, and I beg shelter and sanctuary for my poor child and for me the penance and punishment that are my due. In Christ’s name and in Christ’s mercy, I beg it of you!”

Tired though Domina Elisabeth might be, her voice was crisp enough as she ordered, “We kneel on both knees only to God and Christ.”

Cecely immediately struggled with her wet skirts until she was only on one knee, then clasped her hands together again, ready to renew her plea, but Domina Elisabeth demanded, “Who is the child?”

Cecely immediately put her arm around Neddie’s shoulders and drew him to her, to make plain how precious he was while saying, “The son of my shame. His father was the man I fled with. It was with his father I’ve been all of this time. If not in mercy to me, then in pity for him, I pray you…”

Behind her, Dame Frevisse said, “He’s wet and he’s shivering and he should be beside the fire.”

“He is and he should be,” Domina Elizabeth agreed. “What’s his name?” she asked Cecely with no particular kindness.

“Neddie,” Cecely returned in kind, then forced herself to say more humbly, “Edward, if it please you, my lady.”

Kindly to him at least, Domina Elisabeth said, “Edward, take off your cloak and go stand near the fire while we talk.”

Taking her arm from him, Cecely said, “Do as my lady says,” as he looked questioningly at her.

Moving as if he were sore or stiff, he stood up and went to the red-glowing coal fire on the hearth. Cecely would not have minded being there with him but Domina Elisabeth was asking sharply, not interested in her comfort, “Where is his father now?”

“He’s dead.” Cecely did not try to stop her voice’s tremble. “He died at sea two months ago. Now his cousins have taken everything and cast us out.”

Beside the fire, Neddie was fumbling with his cloak’s clasp, unable to loose it one-handed while still holding the saddlebags. Cecely was about to tell him to set them down, when Dame Claire crossed the room to take them from him, laid them on the floor, and was undoing the clasp for him as Domina Elisabeth went on coldly, “So you’ve come back to us not in repentance for your sins and your broken vow to Christ, but because you have nowhere else to go.”

Cecely knew she would have done best to bow her head to that, but she could not, could only answer steadily, “I’ve known my sin all this time, but while he lived, I wasn’t free to return.”

“He held you prisoner all these nine years?” Domina Elisabeth asked, more with scorn than honest question.

“There’s more than one kind of binding.” Cecely jerked her head toward Neddie standing close to the fire with his hands held out to its warmth while Dame Claire carefully spread his cloak over the back of the prioress’ chair to begin drying. Bitter that no one offered her like comfort, Cecely went on, “There were other babies besides Neddie. Three others. But they died. All my babies but Neddie have died. For my sins,” she added, her voice threatening to break. She struggled to hold it now, wanting to be believed on this next part. “So I want to give Neddie to the Church. He’s all I have left. I want him safe. I want him to live. While I suffer the penance that I’ve earned by my sins.”

Only after a long moment and somewhat more gently, Domina Elisabeth said, “You would have done best to go to your bishop with that wish and your repentance.”

Cecely shook her head hard against that. “Here is where I betrayed Christ. Here is where I needed to come. Your brother is an abbot. He can speak better than I can pray to the bishop for Neddie’s sake. He would even take Neddie into his abbey, wouldn’t he? If you prayed it of him?”

Whatever Domina Elisabeth was thinking she kept behind her stiff face, only finally saying, after a long pause, her level voice giving away no more than her face did, “All that is to be thought on. There are other questions for you to answer, but not now. For now, you will begin your penance on your knees in the church before the altar, begging for the forgiveness you so deeply need, while we arrange matters for your keeping and your son’s. Dame Frevisse, see her to the church. Set someone to watch her and come back to me. Dame Claire and Dame Juliana, I’d have you stay here.”

T
he boy made to follow his mother as she moved to leave, but she said quickly, “Stay warm there beside the fire, dear-heart. If Domina Elisabeth allows?”

With a short jerk of her head, Domina Elisabeth allowed, and Frevisse turned away to lead the way down the stairs. Behind her Sister Cecely said tenderly, “All will be well, dear-heart. You’ll see,” then followed her. At the stairfoot, Malde, one of the cloister servantwomen, was just coming with a cloth-covered tray that had to be the bread-in-warm-milk that Dame Claire had ordered, and she paused, looking uncertain what to do, meeting them there.

“Take it to my lady’s parlor. It’s for the boy,” Frevisse said. Malde slightly curtsied and stood aside for them to pass. Frevisse thought she heard a small sigh of longing from Sister Cecely behind her, passing by the food, but ignored it. Sister Cecely would be going without more than warm milk in the days to come. Day-old bread and cold well-water were the best she would likely have for most of the time, with just enough of other food sometimes to keep her in health. Frevisse could only guess how long a penance a bishop would give to an apostate nun after nine years of sinning in the world, but penitential fasting would be part of it. Still, for a woman to have sworn herself to Christ for life and then to have abandoned him for an earthly passion, for bodily lust…What penance could ever be enough?

But then outward penance in itself was never going to be enough, Frevisse thought as she led Sister Cecely around the cloister walk to the church. The true cleansing of a soul had to come from within—from the grieving, broken heart and the last crumbling of the mind’s pride into a full and final surrender of its failure. Only then could true healing come and Frevisse suspected that for Sister Cecely the way between here and there would be both hard and long, with much prayer not only by her but by all of them
for
her.

Frevisse silently admitted her hope that Abbot Gilberd would see fit to take Sister Cecely elsewhere, because Frevisse could see nothing but trouble coming from her being here. Abbot Gilberd had seen to his sister becoming prioress of St. Frideswide’s and, because of that, had shown the priory favor over the years. Surely at Domina Elisabeth’s asking he would take an apostate nun off their hands.

But that could only come later. For now, Sister Cecely was here, and that was very probably far harder for her than for any of them. Or if it was not, it should be, Frevisse thought tartly. How much from the heart had been Sister Cecely’s plea to Domina Elisabeth of her shame and her need for penance? To Frevisse, it had seemed planned and practiced, but as they came to the wide wooden door from the cloister walk into the church, Frevisse made herself ashamed of that thought. Sister Cecely
should
have been thinking on her shame and need for penance long before now, and so she could well have had those words burned into her and ready.

With a small prayer for forgiveness at her uncharity toward a penitent, Frevisse opened the door into the chill, shadowed silence of the church. There was nothing like Lent for bringing on much praying over every thought and feeling, and here was the place best to pray. Here, in the church, was the nunnery’s heart. All else in the priory existed so that the nuns might come to pray, in the way the Rule required of them each day, the Offices of psalms and prayers that wove through Benedictine life in an ever-changing, ever-returning pattern. For Frevisse those Offices were her life’s core and joy. Or usually they were. Sometimes—there was no point to pretending otherwise—the effort to drag her mind through an Office was as much dull work as scrubbing dishes in the nunnery’s kitchen could be.

In truth, there had been times when she had preferred the scrubbing of dishes, and in her young days in the nunnery she had worried when those times came on her and taken her worry to her then-prioress, Domina Edith, who had been so old when Frevisse first came to St. Frideswide’s that she hardly seemed to grow older through the years that followed. Then with seeming suddenness—but her nuns should have seen it coming long before they did—she had faded away and died, and Frevisse had felt the loss of her ever since.

But long before then there had been the day she had knelt in front of Domina Edith and told of her plight with the Offices, and Domina Edith had laid a hand on the veil of her bent head and said far more kindly than Frevisse had expected, “It comes to all of us, those times when prayer seems a useless thing and our souls a dry place in a comfortless world.”

Because it had seemed impossible it could ever be that way for Domina Edith, Frevisse had echoed doubtfully, “To all of us?”

“To all of us,” Domina Edith had assured her, kindly. “The thing to remember in the midst of that desolation is that, true as it is while it is, its opposite—the joy you’ve had in prayer—is also true. Because you are not in joy does not mean joy does not exist, only that you are not in it. But since joy is a true thing, you can find your way back to it. And you will, and will be the stronger for having gone through the darkness. But remember that you have to go
through
the darkness, not sit down in it and wail about being there.”

Despite all the years since then, Frevisse could still hear the gentleness of laughter there had been behind Domina Edith’s words. The laughter of someone who had faced that bitter inward battle and won and knew how good the victory is, even while knowing more battles would almost surely come.

Although perhaps, for Domina Edith, they had not. Frevisse was finding her own times of darkness were fewer as the years went by. When they did come, they were as dark as ever, but at least they did not come as often, and she knew now that on the far side of each one of them she would find she was changed to the better, more than she would have been without she had had to find her way through the darkness into light again.

She would have to pray, she supposed, that it would be the same for Sister Cecely.

No, she did not “suppose.” She
knew
she would have to pray it would be the same.

Still, while she held the door open for Sister Cecely to come past her into the church, she had a brief hope of seeing something of Sister Cecely’s feelings on her face as she returned at last to the place she had so wrongfully abandoned, but Sister Cecely’s head was bowed too low and, unsatisfied, Frevisse closed the door, shutting them into the church.

The priory’s church was a long, narrow, unpillared space under a bare-raftered roof. A carved wooden rood screen separated the choir—the nuns’ part of the church—from the nave where everyone else might worship, and there in the choir was the only place in the nunnery, besides her sleeping cell, that a nun might think of as particularly her own. In the two rows of high-backed seats facing each other longwise up the choir, each nun had her own place all her years in St. Frideswide’s. Only death or becoming prioress would take her from it.

Or flight out of the priory altogether.

Sister Cecely’s place had been kept empty, partly for shameful remembrance of her apostasy, partly because St. Frideswide’s had had only two novices come to it in the years since she had gone and there was no dearth of other seats for them, the priory never having grown as its founding widow had hoped it would. So Sister Cecely would still have her place. Not that she would have need of it immediately, Frevisse supposed. For the time being she would probably not be sitting in the choir but kneeling at the altar, and for more hours than simply those of the Offices.

At least she would not be often alone in her kneeling the next few days. Through these last days before Easter, the nuns set aside as many usual duties as they could, instead making a great cleaning of the nunnery in a glad readying for Christ’s resurrection. Everything that could be swept, scrubbed, polished, or laundered, was. At this end of Lent, with hunger everyone’s constant companion, the work was especially hard and therefore especially a gift to God, with the reward that as each task was ended, a nun was free to go to church and pray until she had to begin another. That made Holy Week a more-than-usual weaving of the work and prayer that St. Benedict had intended in his Rule, and presently there were two nuns kneeling at the altar, heads bowed, hands prayerfully clasped. Sister Helen was easily known by her novice’s white veil, and Frevisse did not need to see the other’s face to know she was Dame Thomasine. Even from the back and despite all the nuns, save Sister Helen, were in matching black gowns and veils, there was no mistaking Dame Thomasine’s thin-boned body nor the way she knelt, not settled back on her heels but staff-straight up from her knees, as if the longing for God and heaven pulled more strongly on her than on anyone else. Perhaps it did. From her first days in St. Frideswide’s—more than twenty years ago now, which Frevisse found startling to think on—she had always been in prayer in the church at almost every chance, not merely at Eastertide.

Frevisse stopped a few yards behind the two of them, looked at Sister Cecely who had finally raised her head, and pointed at the floor. Sister Cecely opened her mouth toward saying something, then must have understood that Frevisse was keeping silence here and so should she, because she closed her mouth and knelt where Frevisse had pointed. Frevisse watched while she settled back on her heels, grasped her hands together, and stiffly bowed her head over them. It was all the outward seeming of prayer, and all Frevisse could presently do was hope it went deeper than seeming.

They
had not even let her dry her cloak, Cecely thought bitterly. They could at least have let her dry her cloak and warm herself before putting her here. Was Domina Elisabeth hoping she would die of cold and lung sickness? If
that
was what the woman wanted, she would have to go on wanting it, because Cecely did not intend to oblige her.

But, lord, try though she had through the years to forget this place, everything about it was just and too much the way she remembered it, and with its familiarity her old sick outrage at it all was come back on her. She had not known how terrible it would be to come into the cloister again, to pass through that doorway into that low, dark passage, knowing what was at its end—the church and cloister buildings closed in their tight square around the square cloister walk around the square cloister garth that was the only place there was to see the sky in here, except for narrow glimpses through little slits of windows high in walls in one cold, bare room or another. Yes, there were the garden and the orchard where the nuns could sometimes walk, but only with permission, and no nun ever supposed to go beyond them, so nowhere to go from them but back into the cloister. How did these women endure it year after year, their lives withering away?

How was
she
going to endure it?

Heaven was said to be changeless, but why would anyone want to live their
lives
that way, the way these women did? Oh, certainly she knew how it was supposed to be: better to live in Hell on Earth so you could live for Eternity in Heaven. But the priests insisted that repentance and the last rites washed the soul clean at the moment of death, so what was the point of all this misery while alive?

Certain Dame Frevisse had truly gone, was not spying on her from behind, Cecely unclasped her hands and, moving carefully so the nuns in front of her would not know what she was doing, made a pad of her cloak’s long hem under her knees that were already beginning to ache on the unforgiving stone floor. She had to ease them, even at risk of “disturbing” the nun and the novice so they tattled to Domina Elisabeth. She remembered how she and Johane had been good at tattling on other nuns. Until lately it had been years since she had thought of Johane. The two of them had been sent to become nuns here because their aunt had then been prioress, and while their aunt was prioress they had made the best they could of the bad business. Only when Domina Elisabeth took her place had everything become past bearing.

Then Guy had come.

Dame Perpetua had been teaching her the hosteler’s duties that summer. Tedious though the lessons had been, they had at least taken her out of the cloister every day, and that was how she met him. Guy Rowcliffe. Tall and well-featured. Carrying himself like a young prince among the general dross of travelers that sometimes claimed Benedictine hospitality for a night or two.

Because his horse had picked up a stone in its hoof and lamed itself a little, he had stayed three nights, and that had made all the difference in what had happened then. Afterward, she knew that he had caught her heart from the first moment she saw him, but at the time all she had wanted was more chance to look at him and so she had found reasons to go to the guesthall without Dame Perpetua. Then seeing him had not been enough. She had needed to talk with him. Just to talk—that was all she had meant to do. Have him look at her, see her—see
her
instead of a blank nothing in nun’s clothing.

So she had watched for her chance and it had come on his second morning there, when she had come on him sitting idly in the sunlight on the guesthall steps, watching the doves strut and flutter around the well across the yard. It had been bold of her to speak to him when no one else was there, but she had found he was as willing to talk as she was. More than that, they had talked again later in the day, when she made another reason to be out of the cloister. That had been when they planned for a true time alone together, and when the hour came for recreation, between supper and Compline, she had told the other nuns she would spend the time in the church. She had not said “in prayer” but of course that had been what they thought, making her laugh to herself while she refused Johane’s offer to come with her. They were cousins, but she had not been about to trust Johane with her secret. It was only a little secret. She had meant to keep it all to herself for the little while she would have it.