The Apostate's Tale Page 3

  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.

  That God was not against her having this little pleasure was assured when even dreary Sister Thomasine had gone to the garden with the others. With the church to themselves, she and Guy had talked in a shadowed corner, worried every moment that someone would come in, would see them, and truly she had meant only to talk. She would give oath even today that that was all she had meant to do. But somehow talk had become not enough. She had wanted to touch Guy and she had. Had laid her hand on his arm. Very lightly. That was all. Then he had touched her. Had just laid his warm fingers against her cheek. That was all. But it was the first time a man had touched her since she had taken her nun-vows, and fire like she had never known had blazed up hot and fierce in her, and she had wanted more than his touch on her cheek and had found the same blaze of desire was in him, too, and when he rode away from St. Frideswide’s the next morning, she had gone with him.

  Not openly, of course, but quietly, between Tierce and Sext. Had gone by the back path along the garden and into the orchard instead of to the kitchen to cut vegetables for the nuns’ midday dinner, and in the orchard she had bundled her skirts to her knees and gone over the earthen bank around the orchard. After that had been the most perilous part, because anyone seeing her would have known she should not be where she was. But Guy had been waiting, and no one saw them. He had put his cloak around her to hide her nun’s habit and lifted her up behind his saddle and ridden away with her.

  They had ridden a long way that day, avoiding anywhere they might be seen and remembered if there was hunt for her afterward. Only that night, blessed miles away from cloister walls, on the grass in the shelter of a hedge, had they finally, fully made love for the first time, and the joy of giving way to her desire and his had been everything and more than she had ever dreamed of. It was as if all the dross of her nunnery days fell away from her like a dirty gown that she had never meant to put on again.

  Yet here she was, and despite she had thought she was braced and ready for the sudden shrinking of the world into this little place where everything was walls, she was finding more and more by every moment that she was not ready after all. Was not ready at all.

  Chapter 4

  The rule of silence that had held when Frevisse first came to St. Frideswide’s had slipped from use over the years. The quiet she had so valued was now only sometimes part of nunnery life, but should have been most especially part of this week, when Lent’s solemnity and silence should be deepening toward the darkness of Good Friday and Holy Saturday, the better to be ready for Easter Sunday’s joy.

  Instead, in these few hours that Sister Cecely had been here, the cloister was a-seethe with talk among the nuns and the servants, too, and if Frevisse had been so simple as to think the news of an apostate nun’s return might not spread beyond the cloister walls, she would have lost that thought when she went to the guesthall in the afternoon. Every Benedictine house was required by the Rule to receive and care for anyone who asked for shelter. Since Frevisse was presently hosteler, the guesthall was her duty, taking her in mornings and late afternoons out of the cloister and across the courtyard, this afternoon to make sure all was well for such guests as were already there and whatever travelers might still come before the day’s early, rainy dark set in.

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nbsp; Because the office of hosteler went turnabout among the nuns, in many ways it was old Ela, a guesthall servant longer than Frevisse had been in St. Frideswide’s, who knew best how things were there. Over the years she had risen to be head of the guesthall servants until, in her increasing age, she had been allowed to let go her duties and settle into ease, expected by everyone to live out her days in the nunnery’s care there in the guesthall. For now, though, the guesthall was hers again while the woman who had taken her place was healing at a daughter’s house in the village from a broken leg got in a fall on an icy step in mid-Lent, and because it was not old Ela’s wits but her body—bent-backed and shuffling—that was worn out, Frevisse was ready for Ela’s sharp question at her, “It’s true then, is it? Sister Cecely’s come back after all this while and brought a child with her?”

  “It’s true,” Frevisse granted. “How far has the talk gone, do you know?”

  “If it’s not gone to the village already, it’ll be there with such as go home to supper.” The village of Prior Byfield being only a quarter mile away, there were nunnery servants who went daily back and forth rather than nighting at the nunnery. They also went visiting relatives in neighboring villages and some went to the weekly market in Banbury. Scandal being scandal no matter how old it was, Frevisse supposed word of Sister Cecely’s return would spread until it thinned away among folk who knew neither St. Frideswide’s nor anyone here. Or until a better scandal overtook it.

  Her back so bent, she had to cock her head sideways to look up at Frevisse, Ela said, “Master Naylor,” the nunnery’s steward, “has told Peter to ready himself to ride to Abbot Gilberd with whatever message Domina Elisabeth sends. Not today surely? There’s no point in risking him and a horse this late in a bad day, I’d say.”

  “I doubt she’ll send before morning,” Frevisse said. “Weather and roads are all so bad, it will likely be a three-day ride to Northampton no matter when he leaves.”

  “He’ll be glad to hear it’s not today, anyway.”

  “I’m not saying that’s how it will be,” Frevisse said quickly. “I’m only guessing.”

  “You’re good at guessing,” Ela said. “She’s not gone all fretful and foolish at this then? Domina Elisabeth?”

  “Of course she hasn’t,” Frevisse said. Domina Elisabeth was—had always been—a steady woman. Why would Ela think she would not be now?

  But Ela nodded as if pleased over something that had been worrying her and said, “That’s to the good. Best there be a few calm heads when the henhouse goes into a flutter.”

  Quellingly, Frevisse said, “Ela.”

  “I’m only saying.” She slipped back to business. “Mistress Turnbull and Mistress Wise came in an hour ago.”

  They were two widows from near Oxford, who had taken to coming twice a year to St. Frideswide’s—at Eastertide in the spring and at All Hallows in the autumn—to make their devotions, with dispensation to make their Lent’s-end confessions to Father Henry, the priory’s priest and Mistress Wise’s nephew. They were kindly ladies who never made trouble for either the nuns or guesthall servants and always brought a ham in the spring and two fat Michaelmas geese in the autumn as guest-gifts to the nunnery, and Frevisse was pleased to hear they were safely here.

  “There’s Mistress Lawsell come, too,” Ela went on. “With her daughter. She sent word ahead, remember.”

  “The one who hopes her daughter will be a nun,” Frevisse said.

  “That’s the one, aye.”

  The woman’s letter had come last week, along with a gift of pickled salmon that had made a feast of Palm Sunday’s meal. It had been perhaps too fine a food for Lent, but Domina Elisabeth had ruled it would have been ungrateful to both God and Mistress Lawsell to dishonor such a gift, the more so since Mistress Lawsell was bringing her daughter to St. Frideswide’s for Easter’s high holy days in the hope of stirring the girl’s devotion, and God knew that the priory could do with another novice. Since Dame Emma’s death at Shrovetide, they were a house of only nine now, and that was counting Sister Helen who had not yet taken her vows.

  Their need, though, did not mean they would take whoever came, and Frevisse asked, “Have you seen enough of the girl to think anything about her?”

  Ela sniffed a little. “All I can tell of her so far is she looks healthy enough, nor she wasn’t making moan over the weather and hard riding.”

  That was something, anyway, Frevisse thought. Larger, better-endowed nunneries might be able to take on the burden of nuns unfit to bear a full share of nunnery duties, but St. Frideswide’s was too small, was too constantly near the edge of poverty to be taking on off-casts whose families could find no other use for them.

  “Not that there’s much would count against her if her family offered enough to make Domina Elisabeth think it worth the while of having her,” Ela said glumly, her own thoughts clearly going somewhat the same way as Frevisse’s but not so favorably.

  Because in a small, disquieting corner of her own mind she too fully understood Ela’s doubt, Frevisse asked briskly, as if she had not heard her, “What of little Powlyn? How does he?”

  Ela brightened. “Better than when he came, that’s certain. His parents have begun to smile sometimes.”

  They were a young couple who had come five days ago from Banbury, carrying their only child who had been sick most of the winter, they said, with a harsh cough that was not easing though spring was come. Unable to afford a long pilgrimage, even so far as St. Frideswide’s great shrine and church in Oxford, they had brought their child and their prayers to here, into Dame Claire’s and Dame Johane’s care. To the good, it now seemed.

  “Dame Claire has told them they must stay through Easter,” Ela said, and added with a look at Frevisse as if it were her fault, “That means we’ve seven people to see to and feed tonight and for at least these four days to come. Let be what others may come that the weather has held up. Or are just slow.” Years of seeing to guests had not given Ela a high opinion of mankind.

  All mischievous piety, knowing what Ela would answer, Frevisse said, “We’ll simply have to pray that God will provide. Remember the loaves and fishes.”

  “Which is more than we’ll have left by Monday if God doesn’t provide,” Ela returned.

  It was an old half-jest between them, but only half a jest, since it cut too near a constant truth. The odd thing—or not so odd a thing—was that God always did provide, if not bountifully, at least enough that as yet no guests had ever been turned away unfed or the nuns starved.

  Had gone somewhat hungry sometimes, but never starved.

  Someone began to ring the bell in the cloister’s garth, calling to Vespers, a summoning that enjoined immediate silence as well as immediate obedience. Willing to both, Frevisse nodded her farewell to Ela and left the guesthall. The rain had stopped but the clouds still lowered. Dark would come early this evening, she thought as she crossed the cobbled yard, making her way between puddles. Coming almost dry-footed to the cloister door, she let herself in, shut the door firmly between her and the world until tomorrow, and followed the dark passageway into the lesser shadows of the cloister walk. Dame Claire was just passing hurriedly toward the church, a faint, trailing odor of mint telling she had been at work with her herbs. Frevisse followed her, finding herself last into the church. Curtsying to the altar before slipping into her own place in the choir stalls, she saw Sister Cecely had after all been allowed to shift into what had been—and was now again—her stall. Kneeling there after all these years, did she feel relief, even gratitude, that the circle of her life had brought her back here? Frevisse wondered, then let go thought of her as Domina Elisabeth began the Office.

  The waning afternoon’s gloom was enough that the candles had been lighted along the choir stalls, making a softly golden glow along the two lines of heads bent over their breviaries open on the slanted ledges in front of them. The varied voices—Domina Elisabeth’s firmly leading, Dame Perpetua’s light and confident, Dame
Juliana’s lately beginning to waver with age, Dame Claire’s deep and determined, Dame Thomasine’s thin but completely given over to the pleasure of prayer, Dame Amicia’s wandering in search of her note and rarely finding it, Dame Johane’s steady as a watchman’s tread, Sister Margrett’s richly weaving through the words.

  What her own voice was and how it seemed to others, Frevisse did not know. For humility’s sake, she reminded herself of that now and again, because in her early years in St. Frideswide’s she had been too often distracted from the Offices by annoyance at others’ ways and voices, had known it for a fault and struggled to overcome it, sometimes strangling it down but never being rid of it, until finally in her third or maybe fourth year of nunhood she had found herself so angry during Prime that she lost her own place in the second psalm of the Office and, in her confusion, broke the pattern of the prayer. For that, at the Office’s end, while everyone else remained seated, she had had to rise from her place, go and kneel before the altar, and kiss the hem of the altar cloth in sign that she humbly admitted her fault.

  Truly humbled, she had asked leave later that morning to speak alone with Domina Edith, and kneeling in front of her in her parlor, had confessed her trouble—had even been able to bring herself to name it a fault without being prompted—and asked for help. Domina Edith had laid a thickly veined old hand on her shoulder and said, kindly, “You are not the only one to whom Dame Emma is a trial.”