The apostate's tale (22 page)

Jack’s gaze snapped back to her. “Oh. But…her mother…”

“Is on the hunt for a husband for her. To her mother, you are no more than prey.”

That way of looking at it had plainly never crossed his mind before. At the change in his face as the thought took hold on him, Frevisse had to hold back a smile while ordering quietly, “Go back to the guesthall now.”

He bowed and went. She waited until he would have reached there and been there for a few minutes before she went herself for her end-of-day visit, to be sure all was as well there as it might be.

Thankfully, it was. At Mistress Lawsell’s inquiry after Elianor, she murmured that she had left her in prayer in the church; and when Mistress Lawsell showed sign of alarm and intent to go there to fetch her out, Frevisse said that the church was chill and damp and Elianor surely uncomfortable by now and she meant to go herself to send Elianor back to the guesthall.

That Elianor would be uncomfortable in the church satisfied Mistress Lawsell into leaving her daughter to Frevisse, and finished in the guesthall, Frevisse did return to the church, into the choir to Elianor kneeling at the foot of the two steps up to the altar. The girl’s hands were clasped, her eyes lifted to the cross, and she did not stir until Frevisse laid a hand on her shoulder and said, “Best you go now.”

Elianor looked up at her, blinking somewhat dazedly. Frevisse knew the feeling of coming back from some far place. It came from being deep into prayer, well beyond the bonds and boundaries of the world, and she waited patiently while the girl gathered herself back to here, to now, and stood up shakily, to make a deep curtsy to the altar and a lesser one to Frevisse before going slowly, silently away.

Frevisse herself went to her seat in the choir and sat gratefully down, there being small point in going elsewhere; the bell would surely soon ring for Vespers. She thought briefly of how Elianor’s deep quiet after prayer was a better sign toward nunhood than her high excitement had been. Then she let go of that thought and all others, not even trying to pray but simply sitting in stillness, giving both her mind and body respite from the need to think and the need to do, if only for this little, little while.

D
omina Elisabeth came to Vespers but kept her head deeply bowed through the Office, and since the fading light of the overcast day was not yet thickened enough for the expense of candles, Frevisse had no chance to see if she bore the marks of tears until the Office was done. Only while Domina Elisabeth gave them her blessing at the end did Frevisse see that, yes, her eyes had the red rims of much crying and her face the tired sag of someone lately gone through a hard and wearying time.

What had been passing between her and her brother? Surely he had not spent the time scolding her over Sister Cecely? The time for that had been when Sister Cecely first fled. If anyone was to be scolded now, surely it was Sister Cecely.

Domina Elisabeth left them again after Vespers, returning to her rooms for supper to be taken up to her on a tray. This was no more her usual way than the rest of the day had been, and midway through her own supper the terrible thought came to Frevisse that perhaps Abbot Gilberd wanted to leave Sister Cecely here, for them to see to her punishment, and that Domina Elisabeth had been pleading against it, had gone even to the point of quarreling with him and, having lost, could not yet face her nuns with the ill news. The possibility of a quarrel between their prioress and their abbot was less frightening than the chance that Sister Cecely might become part of their life here again, and as supper finished, Frevisse tried to put the thought of it from her.

Although the rain was stopped, the evening was not an appealing one for spending the hour of recreation in the garden. Most of the nuns left the refectory for the warming room, but Frevisse did not join them. Her day had been very long, and last night very short of sleep. She would happily have said Compline right then and gone straight to her bed, yet she could not bring herself to quiet sitting in the warming room, instead chose to pace the square of the roofed cloister walk. She had spent many an hour of recreation walking there, often in easy talk with Dame Claire, often simply by herself. Its familiarity and quiet could be a balm on troubled thoughts or to a trying day’s weariness. This evening, though, it was a cheerless place, with twilight heavy under the cloud-thick sky, and the closed door to what was become Sister Cecely’s cell a too constant reminder of what Frevisse wanted not to think about for a time. Nor did Dame Claire join her. Instead it was Dame Thomasine likewise slowly pacing around the cloister walk, her head bowed as usual, her hands folded into her opposite sleeves just as Frevisse’s hands were into her own sleeves. But whereas Dame Thomasine was probably so far into prayers as barely to know anyone else was there, Frevisse was all too aware of the folded parchments still in her undergown’s left sleeve.

She did not know how much Mistress Petham had weighted her words toward making Edward give up the deeds and bill. When she told him he could keep his secret, she had maybe been even-worded, but equally she might have made it plain, under the words, what she thought he
ought
to do and thereby forced him to it. Still, he had given his own reason for doing it, Frevisse remembered. He had said his father had told him people should be good, and he had understood he should not have the parchments. So even if Mistress Petham had brought him to give them up, he had known why he should and, in the end, had done it willingly, Frevisse thought. Willingly and bravely.

Why did it have to take so much courage to do what was right?

Why was it that the ill-doers and liars seemed able to do wrong so much more easily, while those who did well and right seemed so often to have to fight themselves to do it? It was the ill-doers who should need the greater courage, going so far aside as they did from what was right. Yet they mostly seemed to do it with such ease.

It had been fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that Eve and Adam had eaten. Before then there had been no choice between right and wrong. There had been simply being. Frevisse found it difficult to imagine what life would be if it were simply being, living sure in the love of God without need of all the choices that knowledge had brought on mankind.

Maybe it was laziness that let people do wrong rather than right. Ignorance was easier than knowledge, and so they did not trouble themselves with knowledge of right and wrong, of good and ill, but simply settled for doing whatever came easiest to them in the moment, while despising anyone who tried to live for more than easy greed and shallow pride and momentary pleasures.

She had noted before now how often those who did ill despised those to whom they did it, being too cowardly to face the truth of their own actions.

If more people were willing to be as good and brave as small Edward had been today—were as willing to the truth as he had been—there would be far less hurt in the world, she thought sadly.

Of course he had hurt at doing what he did, but it was the brief hurt of pulling out a thorn, against the long hurt of leaving it in the flesh to rot.

It came to her then that in her thought-slowed pacing she had just passed Dame Thomasine for the second time, that Dame Thomasine was no longer walking, was simply standing at the low wall around the garth, looking across to Sister Cecely’s shut door. The door was almost gone from sight in the growing dusk, and even if there had been light, there was nothing to see there, not even someone sitting guard. For now the door was simply tied shut, because all the nuns were at the end of their day’s work, and all the cloister servants were at their end-of-day tasks. Whosever’s turn it was among the servants would come in a while with her bedding and settle across the door for the night, the door staying tied until morning, Sister Cecely alone behind it, no other company than her own thoughts through all the night hours. So from here in the walk there was nothing in particular to see, and Frevisse turned back to Dame Thomasine, stopped beside her, and asked quietly, “Dame, is aught amiss?”

The younger woman went on looking at the door, the smallest of frowns between her brows, and only after a long moment did she finally say, very low, still staring across at the door, “I’ve never wanted to be what she’s been. I’ve never had urge to give up everything to the desires of the flesh. I never have. Nor I don’t now. But I’m so…” She looked up at Frevisse with pleading eyes, as if confessing to a thing of shame. “I’m so tired.”

All unexpectedly Frevisse was reminded of a small child too worn out to know that what it needed was simply bed, and she took Dame Thomasine by the arm, turned her around, sat her down on the low wall there, sat beside her, and said gently, much the way she had spoken to Edward this afternoon, “Then rest a little.”

Dame Thomasine gave a small sigh, folded her hands in her lap, bowed her head, and seemed to shrink in on herself as she settled, huddling round-shouldered as if the weight of her habit were too much on her thin body.

After a moment of nothing else, only the cloister’s quiet, Frevisse said gently, finding the words as she went, “That you’re tired is no unlikely thing. You’ve burned with the fire of loving God for a good many years now. Have lived more fully in that love than anyone I’ve ever known. It would be no surprise if you’ve burned yourself away to nearly nothing inside your poor body.”

She did not know from where that thought had come. Dame Thomasine’s holiness was so much a part of St. Frideswide’s life that for a long time there had been small reason to think about it. It simply
was
, the way their whole pattern of life here
was
, without deep need to wonder about it. In truth, that someone as holy as Dame Thomasine lived there among them was even, perhaps, a small, secret source of pride to some. What that holiness might be doing to Dame Thomasine had never been a matter for thought. Except once, a long time ago, Domina Edith had said something about it, hadn’t she? But Frevisse did not remember what. Whatever comfort she could give Dame Thomasine had to come from what she could think herself, and she said, “You haven’t been kind to your body, you know.”

Dame Thomasine made a small shake of her head, refusing that.

“No,” said Frevisse, refusing in her turn. “Consider our poor bodies. They go through our lives burdened with all the necessities and longings of flesh, and then at the end, when our souls go free, the poor body goes into the ground to rot away.”

“Resurrection comes,” Dame Thomasine murmured, meaning the rising of all bodies from their graves when time’s end came.

“Yes,” Frevisse agreed. “But however that wonder is worked when Judgment Day comes, in the meantime our bodies rot. Whether they have served us well or ill in life, no matter if they’ve been indulged”—she gave a glance at Sister Cecely’s door—“or been denied, the soul goes free and they decay. And yet our bodies are God’s gift to us. Shouldn’t we treat them with at least a little pity, with a little kindness, in what little time they have to be alive? Not drive them early to the grave where, when all is said and done, they may be for a very long time?”

Dame Thomasine lifted her head, turned her face toward Frevisse, slightly frowning. That told that she had at least heard what Frevisse was saying, was even considering it, and very gently Frevisse went on, “You’re tired. Not in your soul, surely, but in your body. Have pity on it. Kind care for it isn’t sin or weakness. Be a little kind to yours.”

Dame Thomasine began another small, denying shake of her head, and with a sudden sternness that surprised herself, Frevisse said, “Our flesh is the vessel that carries the fire of God’s love. You have no right to break your body, either on purpose or through plain carelessness.” She softened her voice again. “Think on that, Dame Thomasine.”

The warming room’s door opened, letting out a momentary yellow lamplight with the shapes of nuns briefly black against it as they came from the room, before someone put out the lamp and there was only soft blue twilight in the cloister. Much of the year Compline was said simply in the warming room, but during Holy and Easter Weeks, in honor of the especially holy time, the nuns returned to the church for it each evening, and Dame Thomasine and Frevisse rose together from the wall to join the others going there, Frevisse both glad for reason to end her talk at Dame Thomasine and wondering if she had done any good at all.

She
was surprised by how easily and well she slept, even with the folded pieces of parchment tucked between the mattress and the wooden edge of the bed. She left them there when she rose in the night for Matins and Lauds, but put them again into her sleeve when she rose for Prime, beginning the new day. They would soon become her guilty secret, she thought, if she did not give them to Domina Elisabeth at the first reasonable chance this morning.

It seemed, though, that she was going to be denied a reasonable chance. Domina Elisabeth had come to Matins and Lauds and she came to Prime, but after Prime she went again to her rooms, so that her nuns breakfasted without her, nor did she come to Mass, and when time came for the morning’s chapter meeting, she sent word by a servant that Dame Claire should take her place.

The nuns, already gathered in the warming room, all looked at one another, confused and uncertain. She was not ill, or she would have asked for Dame Claire to come to her, not given chapter over to her, and Dame Perpetua said aloud the question showing on the faces of most of them. “What’s amiss with her? This can’t all be Sister Cecely.” She looked directly at Dame Margrett who had been in the parlor so much yesterday. “What else is amiss?”

Looking miserable, Dame Margrett shook her head, refusing any other answer at all, which told she had been ordered to silence about whatever she had heard. “Dame Johane?” Dame Perpetua demanded, but Dame Johane shook her head against answering, too, leaving everyone unsatisfied, and chapter that morning was a shambling thing. Father Henry gave the blessing on it as usual, but quickly and not as if his mind was altogether there for it. As he left, Dame Amicia whispered that he had come from his time with Abbot Gilberd and Domina Elisabeth yesterday afternoon looking troubled. “Just as troubled as he still looks. Whatever it is, it’s not getting better,” she said.

Dame Claire uneasily took up the reading of today’s chapter of the Rule, but afterward no one had much heart for reporting on their duties or confessing any faults, nor did Dame Claire show much desire to hear them. Chapter meetings were a kind of anchor in each day. As the Offices were the nuns’ link to heaven, chapter meetings were their link to the world. The one with the other kept a balance between the two sides of their lives. Now that balance was wavering, and so were they, and so did Frevisse’s certainty that she must give the deeds and bill to Domina Elisabeth.

She came from the warming room with the others at chapter’s end to find Alson waiting in the walk to say that Dame Perpetua was to take Sister Cecely up to the prioress’ parlor now, that Abbot Gilberd would be there shortly. Since today was Dame Perpetua’s turn with Sister Cecely, this bidding could hardly be a surprise to Dame Perpetua, but she nonetheless cast a pleading look around, as if in hope of a rescue no one could give her. The most she got was an encouraging hand laid briefly on her shoulder by Dame Claire and, “At least now you’ll hear what is happening.”

Dame Perpetua looked only a little encouraged by that, but since she would surely be as enjoined to silence as Dame Margrett had been, none of the rest of them would be any the wiser, and Frevisse went away to the guesthall, feeling yet again forestalled from giving the deeds and bill to Domina Elisabeth.