The Boy's Tale Read online

  But St. Frideswide's—especially the cloister, to which they were confined—was small. Let free, which they almost never were, they could have been into every corner of it their first day here. As it was, working around Jenet and others, it had taken them not quite these three days.

  They had not known people would live so comfortless on purpose. There were so few rooms, and they were all cramped in around the little cloister walk and cloister garth, with few windows to the outside, and those mostly so high they were no use for looking out. And all the walls were plain plaster, without paintings or tapestries even in the church. And where the floors weren't bare boards or stone, there were only woven rush mats.

  Their own room, where they were supposed to stay for most of each day, had only a table where their ewer and basin for washing sat, one joint stool, and the narrow bed. And on the bed were a straw-stuffed mattress, coarse linen sheets, and plain blankets, nothing like the wide, curtained bed that was theirs at home, with a deep feather mattress and soft, fine-woven sheets and blankets.

  Their second morning here they had been taken to meet—"Be shown to, like curiosities," Edmund had said afterwards—the prioress, who had asked them their names and bid them kneel by her bed while she blessed them, her bone-ridged hand light as a leaf on their heads, first Edmund and then Jasper. She had a room that was better than the others they had seen, with glazed windows and even a fireplace, but it was quite clear they were not to go there again.

  This morning, slipping away from Jenet, they had finally managed to creep up the stairs they had been strictly told to stay away from and peered around a door's edge into the nuns' dormitory. But they crept down disappointed because there had been nothing much there, either, only a high-roofed room divided by many head-tall walls into each nun's sleeping cell. Afterwards, in the cloister garden's bright sunlight, Edmund had said they should have gone right in since there weren't any nuns there then, and explored each cell, but Jasper pointed out that a nun could have come at any time and caught them. Edmund had said he didn't care, what could they do but give the two of them back to Jenet and she wouldn't do anything, all sopping with tears the way she was ever since they came here.

  "Well," Jasper had felt obliged to say, because despite her crying Jenet had done what she could to make them feel better about being here, "she's sorry Hery Simon is dead."

  "So am I, but he died fighting to save us," Edmund had said indignantly. "She ought to be glad he died that way."

  "But they liked each other. She misses him, I think."

  "We miss Mother and Father, but we're not weeping all over the place."

  "Yes, but they're not dead and we will see them again," Jasper had answered; and then had had the awful thought, but what if we don't? And maybe the same thought went through Edmund's mind, too, because his face had twisted up with either anger or holding back tears and he had flung himself at Jasper. Jasper had grabbed at him gladly and they had gone down in a tangle of kicks and blows that drove out the urge to cry.

  Unluckily it had not been Jenet who broke up their fight but the nun named Dame Frevisse. She had dragged them apart and upright by their doublets' necks and jarred them down onto their feet. Jasper had already noticed she had uncomfortable eyes; they seemed to see into a person more deeply than other people's did. She had fixed them with those eyes then, fierce as one of their mother's hunting hawks, and pointed toward their room, not speaking because mostly the nuns weren't supposed to. She hadn't needed to; they had scurried as if for shelter from a thunderstorm.

  At first all the nuns had looked alike in their black Benedictine gowns and veils, with their white wimples around their faces and throats, but he and Edmund had quickly learned to know one from the other. They had learned to stay clear of large, loud Dame Alys, who was still angry at their being here at all and always seemed to have something in her hand to shake at them whenever they happened to come in her way. And they wished they could avoid soft, cushion-plump Sister Emma, who cooed every time she saw them, which was often, for she came twice a day to see if there was anything Jenet needed for them. She patted their heads and pinched their cheeks while she was there and offered tangled bits of advice. Once, while exclaiming over what handsome boys they were, she said dotingly, "There's many a fine colt come from an addled egg." And though Jasper guessed she had probably meant it well he had been offended anyway.

  The nuns who only smiled at them and nodded and went on about their business were much less trouble, and Dame Claire in the kitchen had become by far their favorite. She did not dote or pat heads but smiled as if she thought it rather pleasant to see them, and when they had slipped in there yesterday afternoon, she had given them each a fat slice of buttered bread and let them eat it at their leisure before suggesting they had better go find Jenet, who must be worried about them.

  They had found Jenet along the cloister walk that time, talking with bright-faced Sister Amicia, who had gestured eagerly for them to come be cuddled, just as she always did when she saw them. Edmund and Jasper had backed off with hasty bows and retreated to their room.

  They were always having to go to their room. There was nowhere else for them to be, except when Jenet took them to Dame Perpetua to do lessons, or to prayers in the church. Praying was everyone's need and duty, but the nuns seemed to be forever going to prayers. Jenet thought it would be good for them to go, too, though not so often as the nuns. They were spared the midnight and dawn and bedtime offices but went to the other three and daily Mass, and that was altogether too much.

  Mistress Maryon had said before she left them to Jenet's care, "You must pray for Sir Gawyn. For his own sake, and because the sooner he mends, the sooner we can go on to Wales." God knew how hard they had prayed at first after that, thanking God that Sir Gawyn was alive and not forgetting the souls of the men killed defending them. But this was the fourth day now, and their prayers were less eager. As Edmund put it, "We're not any less grateful. It's just they've either been saved or not, and Sir Gawyn looks as if he's going to live now, and I don't suppose God wants us going on at him more than we need to."

  So now there was nothing interesting left to do. Even the lessons were of no use or interest. For an hour every morning and another hour every afternoon they had to sit in one of the bare nunnery rooms with Dame Perpetua and that useless girl Lady Adela and pretend to learn things. But they had had lessons enough in manners that they did not need Dame Perpetua teaching them. And they already knew French far better than Lady Adela, even though she was a year older than Edmund and half a head taller, which Edmund did not like and Jasper resented on behalf of both of them. In fact, their mother was French, so their French was better than Dame Perpetua's; though she did not know it because though she often said words wrongly, she thought Edmund and Jasper did not understand her because their French was poor and they must learn to speak it as well as Lady Adela did.

  But nonetheless she would tell them how clever they were and how good it was for Lady Adela to have someone her own age here. Edmund and Jasper quite understood they were clever, but to their minds Lady Adela was too good. She sat with her eyes down and her hands in her lap and never said anything except to answer Dame Perpetua or read aloud in a soft, smothered voice when she was told to.

  It didn't help that Dame Perpetua had found out early on that they knew Latin and so had set them to memorizing prayers from the Psalter while she taught Lady Adela her sewing.

  At least they weren't expected to learn to sew. But that didn't change that there was nothing interesting to do and no one to talk to except each other, and that everything was discomfortable and strange. Though neither of them had said it aloud, they both wished they were home again.

  Jasper stopped kicking the rush matting and kicked Edmund instead.

  "Stop it," Edmund said. "I'm putting my name in this stupid bed leg."

  "Jenet won't like it."

  "Nobody will like it. Except me."

  Jasper knew this mood of Edmund's. It
meant somebody had better find some amusing task or game for him soon or there would be trouble. But Jasper had nothing to offer. In fact, if he had still had his dagger, he would have been carving his name on the other bed leg. Or maybe the table, just to be different. And maybe just his initial; he wasn't all that good with printing yet, usually blotting his letters when he struggled with pen and ink, so he might do even worse with wood and knife. He'd never had a chance to try his dagger even once before Hery Simon had taken it, and now Hery Simon and his dagger were both gone.

  "I'll tell," he said. It was an idle threat; neither of them ever told anything on the other. Edmund went on carving. Jasper kicked him again.

  Edmund shifted away to be out of reach without giving up his work, and Jasper was considering shifting down the bed to be in reach when someone else said, "I shall tell."

  He and Edmund both looked to see Lady Adela in her plain gray gown watching them from the doorway.

  "I shall tell," she repeated.

  "You won't," said Edmund definitely. He had discovered he could sometimes change people's minds if he said things definitely enough.

  "Not if you come out to play," Lady Adela returned with equal assurance.

  "There's no place to play here," Edmund said and went back to his carving.

  "Outside the cloister there is."

  "We can't go outside."

  "Into the garden."

  "That's outside."

  "It isn't."

  "It is."

  "It isn't. The nuns go there all the time."

  'They don't."

  "They do. There's a passage right from the cloister into it. It's called the slype," she added, to give her assertion authority.

  Jasper knew the passageway she probably meant, a dark, narrow opening on the far side of the cloister walk from their room. Jenet had said it was a back way to the kitchen and they should stay out of it. Since they knew the front way to the kitchen, it had been easy enough to agree to obey Jenet in this one thing at least and so they had never gone all the way to its farther end. But Jenet was one of those people who thought it all right to lie to children to make them do what she wanted, so maybe the slype did go where Lady Adela said it did.

  But Edmund was shaping to quarrel about it just for the pleasure of quarreling, and once he started they'd never be out of here. Jasper jumped to his feet. "Show us," he said, moving toward the door. Behind him, Edmund scrambled to his feet. If they were going instead of staying to quarrel with him, he might as well go with them. Lady Adela put her finger to her lips and led the way.

  There was no one in the cloister walk. With the speed and silence of accomplished fugitives, they reached the slype without being seen and dodged into its shadows, Lady Adela still leading. Its far end opened into a wide walk between the back of the cloister buildings and a high wall running to the children's left. Rightward the nunnery thrust out a room's width further, with a door into it just beyond the slype's end.

  Adela peeked out with elaborate care. Edmund demanded, "Where's that door go?"

  "The stairs up to the necessarium."

  "Not the kitchen? Jenet lied," Edmund said with great satisfaction.

  "From the other end there are stairs down into the kitchen and others up into the dormitory," she said impatiently.

  That would be why they had not been shown the necessarium; it went too many places they weren't supposed to go—including out. Adela led them leftward, away from the necessarium, toward a gate in the wall that blocked their view of what lay beyond. It was a wicker gate, chin-high on Jasper if he went on tiptoe to see over it, and as Lady Adela had promised, there was a garden beyond it. He could see at a glance there was no one there and that it was only an ordinary garden, with neat little paths and proper little flower beds, an arched green arbor along one side, and turf benches built against the tall stone wall that closed off all view of the world beyond. It was far smaller and plainer than any of his mother's gardens, without even a fountain.

  Impatiently, Edmund reached for the gate's latch. Lady Adela said, "Oh, let's not go here. They'll find us too soon. I know something better."

  Without waiting for their agreement or argument, she flitted away along the garden wall, quick on her feet despite her limp, to another gateway closed by a solid wooden door that gave no hint of what might be beyond. Beside it, Lady Adela squatted down on her heels to scrabble at a large stone beside the path. It was heavy, and Jasper crouched beside her to help. Over them Edmund reached to try the gate's handle.

  "It's locked," he said indignantly.

  "Of course it's locked," Lady Adela answered. To their pulling, the rock rolled up on one side and, quick with triumph, she snatched out a big, rusty key from underneath it. "This is a back gate to the cloister. People aren't supposed to just go in and out of a back gate. They have to use the ordinary gate."

  "Then what are we doing?" Edmund demanded.

  "Going out."

  Edmund and Jasper looked at one another. They both knew the answer they had to make to that. But matters of conscience tended to weigh more heavily with Jasper than Edmund, and he said for both of them, "We aren't supposed to go out of the cloister. Mistress Maryon said so."

  "Nuns aren't supposed to go out. Nuns aren't supposed to do anything. But we're not nuns."

  Edmund and Jasper looked at each other again, unable to argue that.

  Lady Adela elbowed Edmund aside to come at the lock. The key was very large; she needed both hands to manage it into the keyhole.

  "We shouldn't," Jasper said doubtfully.

  "No," Lady Adela agreed cheerfully, wrestling with the key to turn it. It yielded with a mild screech. "We shouldn't. But I'm going to anyway."

  Chapter 7

  It would soon be time for the small service of None. Set between midday's Sext and late afternoon's Vespers, None's interruption of whatever work she had in hand had annoyed Frevisse in her early days at St. Frideswide's, but she had long since come to value it for its reminder that the heart of her life was here and not in whatever worldly duties each day required. Since she was presently sacrist, with her duties mostly confined to the care of the church and its furnishings, it was of late easier to hold to that knowledge.

  Today, having already done what was needed to ready the church, she had come to sit in her choir stall for a quiet time of thought before the bell rang. This near midsummer the sun rode so high it only shone directly into the church at earliest morning and latest evening. In the early afternoon now, the church was gray with soft shadows and coolness, a world apart from the warm, busy day outside. A goodly place for thought as well as prayer, Frevisse felt, and she was in need of both.

  What she truly wanted to do was go to Domina Edith and talk through again the problem of the boys. Not that there was anything new to say; she only wanted it for her own comfort, and that was hardly fair to Domina Edith, so deep in her own necessity now.

  She had written the letter to Alice as Domina Edith had told her to, and given it over to Master Naylor the same day. It was gone by messenger to find Alice wherever she might be; and of course Frevisse could now, when there was no help for it, think of better, more subtle, more politic ways she should have asked about matters that ought to be none of her concern.

  She tried to keep it from her mind. A more reasonable worry—and still nothing to talk to Domina Edith about—was that the sheriff and Master Montfort, the crowner, would be here sometime this afternoon, according to their forerider who had come this morning. It all went well, they would make their inquiries and simply go away, perhaps as soon as tomorrow. If things went ill—if servants were questioned too closely and mentioned the boys and if some word had reached the sheriff about certain boys being missing and sought . . . But there was no reason the sheriff or crowner should talk to any of the servants. They would speak to witnesses of the attack. That meant to Sir Gawyn, Mistress Maryon, the two men, and possibly Jenet. Frevisse hoped they would all tell the same story and, as planned, l
eave the children out of it. If they did not, there could well be trouble, but Frevisse could think of nothing more to protect against it than what had already been done.

  At least the children had been no great bother so far. Or at least not so great a bother as they might have been. Even if they did not stay completely out of the way, their manners were charming, they were quiet, and among the nuns at recreation it was generally agreed they were very sweet, handsome little boys. Only Dame Alys professed to find their presence intolerable, but Dame Alys would have found the presence of the archangel Gabriel intolerable if it suited her.

  Frevisse had noted that the boys found ways to avoid Dame Alys when they could, which showed they had intelligence as well as charm, and if she had had to choose, she preferred intelligence to both charm and handsomeness because more could be done with it in the long run.