The Apostate's Tale

Chapter 13

Unhappily, there was little peace to be had either during Vespers or afterward. During the Office, questions beyond those already asked kept coming into Frevisse’s mind, pulling her away from where she wanted to be, and although at supper Domina Elisabeth’s stern eye from the table’s head kept them all in proper silence, those nuns who could barely wait for the recreation hour ate with unseemly haste, then had to sit restlessly while the others-Frevisse, Dame Claire, Dame Thomasine, and Domina Elisabeth-finished more deliberately, giving the blessing of food the honor it deserved. Only finally did Domina Elisabeth say grace and nod that they were free to go. “Slowly,” she added and more sternly, “Seemly,” at particularly Dame Amicia.

That got them from the refectory and into the cloister walk with no one tripping over anyone else, but from there, with Domina Elisabeth momentarily out of sight, there was a scurrying of the younger nuns away to the slype on their way to the garden, their voices rising in talk as they went. Dame Perpetua and Dame Juliana followed almost as quickly, only a little more aware of dignity, leaving Frevisse, Dame Claire, and Dame Thomasine behind with their prioress, who said as they all moved toward the refectory door together, “Dame Frevisse, would you keep watch on them, please, and as much ward as you can on their tongues? Dame Claire…”

“My lady,” Frevisse said, “there’s something else you have to know.”

Domina Elisabeth looked at her. “Please, not more trouble.”

“I fear so, yes,” Frevisse said and told what had passed between Rowcliffe and Breredon in the guesthall.

Domina Elisabeth heard her out in increasingly stern, strained silence and at the end said, “Then she never meant anything except to use us.”

“It seems so, my lady,” Frevisse agreed.

Domina Elisabeth stood considering that, weariness etched on her face, then said, “Dame Claire, I’d have you come with me. Dame Thomasine-”

Dame Thomasine lifted her head, her face pale and quiet in the white surround of her wimple. She did not speak, only looked at her prioress from whatever place she lived in, aside from them all.

“Dame Thomasine,” Domina Elisabeth said as quietly as Dame Thomasine’s look, “I’d have you pray for all of us, if you would.”

Dame Thomasine bowed her head in a small accepting nod and without raising her head again went quiet-footed away toward the church.

Domina Elisabeth watched her for a moment, then said, “Dame Claire, if you would,” and would have started away except Frevisse said, “By your leave, what’s been done with her?”

There was no question which “her” was meant. Domina Elisabeth gave a sharp glance away across the cloister garth. “She’s in the guest parlor. It’s where she can be kept and guarded with least trouble in the cloister. I’ve set Malde to guard the door for now, but we’ll all have to take turns at it until Abbot Gilberd says what else is to be done with her.”

She spoke crisply, with open anger that it had come to this, then walked away. Dame Claire followed her and, alone, Frevisse went slowly out to the garden.

The clear weather that had blessed Easter Day and most of the day was gone under a thickening overcast, but there was no rain yet and certainly the lowering sky had not lowered the nuns’ readiness to talk. They were all standing in an eager cluster just inside the garden, words whipping among them, and Dame Perpetua shifted to let Frevisse join them, with immediately more than one of them asking what had passed with Master Rowcliffe in the prioress’ parlor and then in the guesthall.

Frevisse told them something of it all, and an appalled silence fell among them briefly, before Sister Margrett said, almost whispering, “Then she’s lied to us.”

“In everything she’s done and almost everything she’s said, she’s been lying to us, yes,” Frevisse agreed.

Dame Perpetua said with horrified wonder, “It makes me feel so…unclean, just having been near her.”

Some heads nodded at that, but Frevisse did not feel unclean, only angry. Angry at Sister Cecely for her deceits. Angry at Breredon for his. Angry at the Rowcliffes for less reason but just as surely. Wanting to keep her anger from the other nuns, needing time to work through her own clutter of thoughts and feelings and questions, knowing there would be no keeping curb on their tongues, no matter what Domina Elisabeth had charged her to do, she walked away. With all the new fodder for talk she had given them, the others let her go, their voices rising behind her, and she did not know that Dame Johane had followed her until at the path’s turn at the garden’s far end the younger nun said behind her, uncertainly, “Dame Frevisse?”

Surprised, Frevisse stopped and turned around. Dame Johane stopped, too, still several yards away, as if unsure she should be there but so openly troubled that Frevisse said with an effort at kindliness, “Yes?”

Still uncertainly, Dame Johane came forward a few steps, stopped again, and said, “Please, may I talk to you?”

“Assuredly,” Frevisse said.

“It’s Cecely.”

“There’s little you can do for her now except pray she amends in her soul.”

“I have been. Ever since she left. It’s just…” Dame Johane dropped her voice to barely a hush. “It’s just…is she a heretic?”

In her surprise, Frevisse said somewhat curtly, “No. A heretic is someone who’s troubled to think about his faith. Has come to wrong conclusions but at least has thought about it. Sister Cecely-” She stopped short. What she had been about to say was maybe too unkind to say straight out to Sister Cecely’s own cousin. Then she decided she did not care and finished bluntly, “I doubt Sister Cecely thinks much about anything at all. She just ‘feels,’ and lets what she feels serve her in place of thought.”

“I feel, too,” Dame Johane said in a half-whisper, with enough torment in her voice that Frevisse paused over answering her, before finally saying carefully, “We all feel. There’s never a way not to feel. Nor should there be. We were given hearts for a reason. But when our judgment of what’s good or bad comes down to what we ‘feel’ about it, with no thought behind it, then that’s wrong and weak.” She paused again, to be sure of her thought, then went on, “It’s even, possibly, evil. If not in its beginnings, then in what grows from it. Because something grows from everything we do, and we were given minds as well as hearts, that we could judge what we do as well as merely feel it.”

She was not aware of ever having thought that through before now. Her own surprise at it kept her silent when she had done, and Dame Johane was silent, too, before finally saying softly, “She’s so changed. Cecely. She’s older.”

Despite that seemed to be away from what they had been saying, Frevisse knew it was not and answered, softly, too, “Her feelings have cost her dearly these past years.”

Dame Johane gave a sudden, despairing sigh. “What troubles me is that I don’t know how much better I am than she is. Even after my years here, I’m so very far from being holy, and now there’s Cecely come back, and despite how very wrong she’s been, she’s making me look at how far from grace I am, too.”

“No one is ever far from grace,” Frevisse said quickly. Long years ago she had had very much this same talk with Domina Edith of blessed memory, except she had been the one tormented by her failures and Domina Edith offering answer to her-answer that had stayed a comfort to her in even the driest of spiritual times through all these years afterward. Now she offered it readily to Dame Johane, saying, “What we’re too often far from is willingness to open our self to grace. From willingness to let grace come to us. We keep our minds between it and our hearts.”

“But it’s giving way to her heart that’s ruined Cecely,” Dame Johane protested.

“Was it her heart she gave way to, or her lusts?” Frevisse returned. “There is a difference.”

Dame Johane stared past her with a gaze turned inward, looking at that thought.

Frevisse found herself going on, “As for our becoming holy-” and stopped, wishing she had not started; but Dame Johane’s look had come back to her, expectant, and so she went on slowly, “I don’t think we have to become ‘holy’ to succeed in our life here. I’m not even certain what ‘holy’ would be for us.”

“Dame Thomasine.”

“Yes,” Frevisse granted, still slowly. “But it seems more a gift given to her than something she ‘became.’ I haven’t been given it. I know that. My hope isn’t for holiness, only that I grow enough-can set my roots of faith and belief and love deep enough-that like a deep-rooted plant growing taller than a shallow-rooted one, I finally come as near to God in my mind and soul and heart as I can, no matter how much in the world my body has to be.”

She stopped. There should have been more to say than that. From the way Dame Johane went on looking at her there was surely need of more, but Frevisse did not know what it was and ducked her head as low as Dame Thomasine so often did, said rather desperately, “Benedicite,” and feeling very insufficient, walked away.