The Apostate's Tale

Chapter 14

In the next morning’s chapter meeting, Domina Elisabeth told them more fully of Sister Cecely’s treachery and that they must endure with grace until this matter was ended. Then, for a mercy, she added a stricture against talk of Sister Cecely in the cloister.

“We’ll say what needs to be said and nothing more. If you need to speak of her, the hour of recreation will suffice. Otherwise, let there be nothing said.”

There was restless shifting by some of the nuns at that, thwarted of how they had meant to spend the day, but Frevisse was grateful. Her own hope was that with Sister Cecely now shut away, the days and Offices would take their right shape again, or as near to a right shape as might be, until whomever Abbot Gilbert sent took Sister Cecely away.

And, please God, he would take her away.

Unfortunately, although talk was curbed in the cloister, Frevisse had to go to the guesthall where there would be no escape from the matter of Sister Cecely, and admitting cowardice, she went first down to the kitchen, wanting to hear from Ela how things had been, before she dealt with anyone else.

“They’re not giving trouble. That much I’ll say for them,” Ela told her. “Master Breredon and his folk keep to his chamber, except when his man comes out to fetch their food or empty the pot. The Rowcliffes leave it at that. For now anyway.”

“What of Mistress Lawsell? Has she thought of going early? To have her and her daughter away from this?”

“Can’t. She sent their horses home with a servant. He’s not to be back until week’s end. Odd, though,” Ela said. “She’s not carrying on like I thought she might. Not bothered at all by there being so many men about and only her and her daughter. Doesn’t even keep the girl to their chamber.”

“Ah,” said Frevisse somewhat shortly. That would most certainly be strange in a mother who wanted her daughter to become a nun, but then, according to Elianor, a nun was not what Mistress Lawsell wanted her to be. In truth, it seemed she wanted it so little that she was willing to set Elianor deliberately among men, assuredly not with intent that anything happen here but probably in plain hope of stirring the girl’s blood, that the body’s lust might persuade where a parent had not.

It would be interesting, Frevisse thought, to see how that went with Elianor.

“Now,” said Ela, “about what we’re supposed to feed these folk.”

All Frevisse could tell her was that when she had raised the matter of feeding their guests in chapter this morning, Domina Elisabeth had said she would send to learn if there was chance of lamb or mutton from the nunnery flocks and if anyone in the village might be willing to sell flour. Until something came of that, Ela would have to do with what was on hand, with green cheese and brown bread and stretching the oat-pottage to last as best she could.

That settled, Frevisse gave herself up to the next necessity, sighed heavily, and went up to the hall. The trestle table had been left standing after breakfast, and Rowcliffe and the man Symond were seated on the benches there, the nunnery’s battered old chess set between them. By the captured pieces at his side of the board, Symond was rather thoroughly winning. Neither Jack nor either of the Lawsells was in sight, and the door to Breredon’s room was shut. Other than the guesthall’s Tom clearing ashes from the fireplace, with wood waiting for him to lay a fire ready for tonight’s chill, she had Rowcliffe and Symond to herself and she went, however unwillingly, to stand beside Rowcliffe while he finished moving a bishop to a square that she saw would do him no good against the attack Symond had ready against him. Seemingly not seeing it, Rowcliffe said “There!” in a satisfied voice and followed Symond in rising to his feet to bow to her.

She gave them both a slight bend of her head in return, but before she could say anything, Rowcliffe demanded, “Have you heard from your abbot yet?”

With more outward mildness than she inwardly felt, Frevisse answered, “It’s somewhat early in the day for that.”

“I want to see Edward.”

“I’ll tell Domina Elisabeth your desire,” Frevisse answered stiffly.

“This morning. I want to know he’s as well as you say he is.”

“Ease back, John. She’s God’s servant, not yours, for you to be ordering her to anything,” Symond said half-laughingly, his gaze on Frevisse so that possibly he was reading a-right how near she was to snapping back at Rowcliffe.

Rowcliffe blew out his breath impatiently but seemingly at himself rather than anyone else for he next said, sounding abashed, “I ask your pardon, my lady. It’s not you I’m angry at. It’s Cecely and maybe Breredon. I want to be mourning my nephews, not having to waste time forestalling that woman’s idiot-doings.”

Frevisse accepted that apology with another slight bow of her head and said, “We’re as willing as you to have this matter settled and be done with her.”

Symond laughed outright at that.

Frevisse looked at him and said, “Please, sir, no one has said what your part in this is, or even your name.”

He looked surprised. “My part? I’m cousin to all of them.” He nodded at Rowcliffe. “My mother was older sister to John’s father. I’m Symond Hewet, but count as a Rowcliffe in all of this.”

So she had been right about that, Frevisse thought. They were all Rowcliffes and together “in all of this.”

“It was to Symond that Guy told his secret,” Rowcliffe said. He gave his cousin a hard stare while adding bitterly, “Then he kept it to himself until she disappeared with Edward.”

“Guy swore me to secrecy before he told me,” Symond said simply, not noticeably bothered by Rowcliffe’s unspoken but very clear accusation. “He said someone should know the truth, on the chance something ever went to the bad. Then things did go to the bad, and so I told.”

“Fool of a woman,” Rowcliffe muttered.

“Wasn’t there something you wanted to do when next you saw-” Symond paused, looking at Frevisse.

“Dame Frevisse,” she obliged.

“When next you saw Dame Frevisse?” Symond finished.

“Ah. Yes.” Frevisse could not tell whether Rowcliffe was relieved to be reminded or irked, but he reached with seeming willingness to the leather purse hung from his belt, brought out several silver coins, and held them out with, “A guest-gift. To help against the cost of all our being here.”

While the Benedictine Rule required the receiving of guests without asking payment from them, even to the impoverishing of a house, it did not require the impoverishment, and Frevisse took the coins with true thanks, then said, as much to Symond Hewet as to Rowcliffe, “I promise you we’re doing the most we can toward making an end to all this.”

“Keeping close hold on Cecely the while, I hope,” Symond said with a smile.

“Very close,” Frevisse said grimly.

“Good,” snapped Rowcliffe.

Frevisse suspected his dislike of his cousin’s “wife” went back far further than her present treachery. Maybe it had even underlain Sister Cecely’s choice to flee rather than deal with him. She could never have thought they would find her here, not knowing her flight would bring worse trouble on her by loosing Symond Hewet to tell her secret.

Leaving the Rowcliffes to their game, she went to knock at Breredon’s shut door. His man opened it warily, then widely when he saw her there. As she entered, Breredon rose from where he had been sitting at the window and bowed to her. The manservant’s wife likewise stood up, sewing in her hands, from where she had been sitting on a stool, to curtsy, and Frevisse asked her, “How are you?”

“Much bettered, my lady,” the woman said softly, with downcast eyes. She was altogether a soft little woman but cleanly kept in a plain gown and apron and headkerchief, just as her husband looked the proper servant in his plain doublet.

He had stayed beside the door, and his wife edged away to join him there as Frevisse went toward Breredon. Since yesterday it had crossed her mind to doubt the woman had been truly ill. At the same time she had doubted that Dame Claire would have been deceived, but as somewhere to begin, she said at Breredon, quietly, to keep their talk between themselves, “So, was your servant’s wife truly ill? Or was that another lie to serve your ends here?”

Openly surprised by the attack, Breredon answered, “No. She was ill. She’s better but not well yet, your infirmarian says.” He dropped his voice even lower than Frevisse’s to add, “She miscarried a child last autumn. It left a shadow on her mind. A melancholy. Then this spring she began to sicken. When I needed a woman with me, to keep an honest front to my dealings with Mistress Rowcliffe…”

“Sister Cecely,” Frevisse said coldly.

Breredon acknowledged the correction with a slight bow of his head and continued, “…my man Coll and I thought to make a double purpose in bringing Ida, both for my need and to ask help for her.” He smiled. “For Ida at least it’s gone better than we hoped. Your infirmarian has given her something that seems be easing the melancholy. I think she said something about borage? Would that be it?”

“Very likely.”

“Besides, it seems Ida is with child again. That was what had her ill these past three months. But Coll isn’t going to tell her that until he has her safely home again. So,” Breredon shrugged, still smiling, “however it goes with my business here, it’s been to the good for them.”

“About your ‘business’ here.”

Breredon’s smile left him. “Ah. That.”

“That,” Frevisse agreed.

“I do owe you-your priory and St. Frideswide-my apology.”

“You do. Both for lying to us and for what you meant to do.”

He admitted that with another slight bow of his head but said, “Still, I refused to steal her out of here on Easter day, which she first demanded of me. That should count something in my favor.”

Frevisse immediately saw how Sister Cecely would have purposed that, thinking they would all be too deep into the day to keep close watch on her. She had not counted on Domina Elisabeth taking her in charge. Even had Breredon agreed, there would have been no chance of Cecely’s escaping the prioress’ keeping, but neither she nor Breredon had known that when he refused her, and Frevisse asked bluntly, “Why didn’t you help her away then, as she wanted?”

“On Easter?” Breredon’s surprise was open. “I’d not do such a thing on that holy of a day.”

Frevisse held back from asking why he thought any day was acceptable for helping an apostate nun escape into sin again, because she thought she could guess his reason well enough-that if the only way to some worldly gain was through a spiritual wrong, he was willing to it. Or maybe he simply thought that Sister Cecely was so far gone into sin that he would be hardly adding to it by helping her away, and that whatever sin he did in doing it, he could be rid of later by some manner of payment to his priest or church.

As if a man’s dealings between himself and God were a merchant’s matter of debt and payment.

Was it so hard to remember whom Christ had driven from the temple, and why?

But all that was not to the present point, and she asked curtly, “To where were you to steal her away?”

“Simply out of here. When I had her well away, then I was to pay her a goodly sum of money and she would hand Neddie over to me with the deed to his manor and warrant to have him in ward and the right of his marriage, and that would be that. What she meant to do afterward she never said.”

So much for Sister Cecely’s desperate claim to care for her son above all things. If Breredon said true, she had meant to sell the child like merchandise for the sake of her own ends. But, “Did she ever say why she came back here, of all places she might have run to?” Frevisse asked. She meant to ask that of Sister Cecely, too, no more trusting her answer than she meant to trust Breredon’s but hoping that, together, their answers might tell enough.

Not that Breredon’s answer amounted to much. He made a vague gesture with hands and head and said, “We needed somewhere to meet that wasn’t too near to Wymondham for any search to cross our path. Somewhere no search would think to come, some place well out of the way but somewhere we’d be sure of finding each other and at the same time somewhere she and Neddie would be safe until I came. She said the Rowcliffes would never know to look for her here.” His voice took on a bitter edge. “Fool of a woman.”

Frevisse did not trouble to tell him that, for all Sister Cecely had known, the Rowcliffes had never heard of St. Frideswide’s, should not have been able to find her here. Instead she said flatly, “It was not chance you were in talk with Sister Cecely in the church the other day.”

“It was not.”

“How did you know when she would be there?”

He smiled friendliwise. “That would be telling.”

Frevisse snapped, not friendly at all, “Yes. It would be. And you should.”

She waited, but although his smile faded under her stare, he said nothing, and after a long moment Frevisse said curtly, “Very well,” turned sharply away from him and left, ignoring the bow he started toward her.

Her thought, as she passed through the hall, was that he would not say who had served between him and Sister Cecely because he still held hope of winning to his end. Let him hope. There was no chance of Sister Cecely being trusted enough now for her to have chance of escape, no matter who had helped her. Nor was anyone outside the nunnery going to lay hand on Edward until matters were far more clear than they presently were.

But poor Edward.

Whatever he had been told or come to understand of the use his mother had meant to make of him and whatever he knew or did not know about everything happening around him, he was the one innocent in all of this and yet likely to be the one who would suffer the most from it. Frevisse could hope he would be kept from more hurt than he already had, but she ruefully admitted to herself that hoping was all she could do for him. Or hoping while trying to do something toward curbing all the wrongs intended around him.

And there, she thought as she came out onto the guesthall steps and saw across the yard Jack Rowcliffe in talk with Elianor Lawsell and her mother beside the well, was maybe another wrong in the making. Young Jack’s heed was all too openly on Elianor rather than her mother, and all too openly Mistress Lawsell was not minding that, was even drifting back a step, as if about to make excuse to leave them alone together; and Frevisse called, going down the steps, “Mistress Lawsell, may I ask the use of your daughter for a few moments?” Adding to Jack as she went toward them, “Your father wants to see Edward. I’m going to ask our prioress about it.” And to Mistress Lawsell as she reached them, “If your daughter comes with me, she can bring word back to the guesthall when I’ve done and thereby spare me that much more walking.”

A shadow of displeasure passed over Mistress Lawsell’s face but her hesitation was minute before she answered, courteously enough, balked of any reason to refuse, “Of course. Elianor, make yourself useful to the nun.”

Elianor made a slight curtsy of obedience to her mother, kept her eyes downturned from Jack who was bowing to her, and wordlessly followed Frevisse away. Only when they were into the cloister passageway, with Frevisse closing the door between them and the yard, did she give way and say with with open delight, “I’ve been praying for chance to be in here! Thank you!”

Level-voiced, not acknowledging the girl’s pleasure, Frevisse said, “We’ll go to Domina Elisabeth first. Her permission is needed before anything else is done.”

Elianor accepted that with an eager nod and followed Frevisse along the passageway until, as they came from it into the cloister walk, her steps slowed. Glancing back, Frevisse saw she was looking all around, eyes bright. Not letting her linger, Frevisse started up the stairs to the prioress’ parlor. Elianor was forced to follow but paused to look out the narrow window that gave the stairway light and a view over the roof of the guesthall to the world beyond the nunnery’s walls, then had to hurry to catch up as Frevisse scratched at the prioress’ closed door. Beyond it, Domina Elisabeth called, “Benedicite,” and Frevisse went in, Elianor now crowding on her heels.

Frevisse had thought to find Domina Elisabeth at work at her desk beside the window, and indeed she was sitting there but with no sign she had been working. Instead, she had one hand idle in her lap and the other stretched out to the nunnery cat presently curled and comfortable on the window seat beside her. She looked with surprise at Elianor sinking in a floor-deep curtsy and then at Frevisse. Frevisse had reported in chapter what had passed between her and Elianor in the church; Domina Elisabeth had to know what was coming, but if that was why her look at Frevisse was somewhat pleading, almost as if asking to be spared this just now, Frevisse saw no way to help her. Talk with the girl and then her mother would have to come sooner or later. Best to start now and have it done, she thought, and perhaps Domina Elisabeth did, too, because she said graciously enough as the girl straightened, “I’ve meant to speak with your mother and you, now that matters have eased a little with Easter’s passing.”

“I’ve hoped to speak with you, too, my lady,” Elianor said eagerly.

First, though, there was the matter of Rowcliffe’s demand about Edward, and Frevisse told it, then added her outward reason for bringing Elianor, saying at the end, “I thought, too, it would give her the needed chance to talk with you.”

“Of course,” said Domina Elisabeth steadily. “As for Master Rowcliffe’s desire to see the child, I think it should be Edward’s choice, not his mother’s. Ask Edward his desire in this and use your own judgment on it thereafter.”

“I think Edward should go no farther than the church,” Frevisse said.

Domina Elisabeth nodded agreement to that. “It might be well to have Father Henry there, too, that the Rowcliffes understand we’ll have no tolerance of trouble.”

“Yes, my lady,” Frevisse said, with the thought that Father Henry’s broad shoulders together with the authority of his priesthood would probably be sufficient to keep Rowcliffe from attempting anything foolish, should Rowcliffe have anything foolish in mind.

Domina Elisabeth gestured for Elianor to sit on the window seat near her and said, “Let us talk now, since we have this chance.”

Frevisse willingly took that for dismissal, made curtsy, and left.

To reach Mistress Petham’s chamber, she had to go down to the cloister walk again. Passing along it, she passed Sister Thomasine sitting her turn at guard outside the guest parlor where, for the sake of better light and air, the door presently stood open, and Frevisse had glimpse of Sister Cecely pacing in the small room’s shadows. Sister Cecely had been a restless, unhappy girl here. Now she was a restless, unhappy woman. Was she simply that way always, inside the nunnery and out, or only here in St. Frideswide’s, Frevisse wondered as she went up the stairs to Mistress Petham’s chamber. However it had been for Sister Cecely, much of it had come by way of her own choosing, but Edward had had no choice in anything, and Frevisse inwardly admitted she was interested in how he would take this offer of chance to see his near kin again.

In the moment before she knocked at the frame of the open door, she saw him sitting cross-legged on the end of Mistress Petham’s bed, reading aloud with somewhat labored slowness from a book laid open on his lap while Mistress Petham lay against her pillows, watching him with a kindly smile. When Frevisse knocked, he broke off, and they both looked toward her, Mistress Petham’s smile changing to welcome but Edward’s ease gone to wariness even before Frevisse said why she had come; and when she had told him, he stayed unmoving and unanswering, staring at her, much like a small animal gone frozen-still in the hope a passing hawk will fail to see it, until Mistress Petham prompted, “Edward? Do you want to see your cousin?”

Edward flinched a look toward her, then back at Frevisse, and hardly above a whisper, asked, “What does my mother say?”

“She’s not been asked,” Frevisse said, carefully quiet. “This is for you to say. No one else.”

Edward ducked his head over the book still open on his lap. “I don’t want to see him.”

Frevisse could not tell whether that was from fear of John Rowcliffe or because he knew his mother would not want it. Trying for more answer, she asked, “Is there someone you would rather see instead?”

This time Edward’s answer was a whisper that neither she nor Mistress Petham heard, and Mistress Petham leaned forward and asked, “What, Edward? Who is it you’d rather see?”

Edward did not raise his head, only his voice a little. “My father.”

That silenced both women for a long moment, until Frevisse said very gently, “You know your cousins Symond and Jack are here. Would you like to see either of them instead of Master Rowcliffe?”

They waited again, until finally Mistress Petham said, “Edward?” and he lifted his head a little to say to Frevisse, “Jack.”

She smiled at him. “Then you shall. Jack and no one else.”

Someone began to ring the cloister bell, calling to the morning’s Office of Tierce, and she went instantly silent and bowed her head in farewell to Mistress Petham. Mistress Petham bowed her head in return while holding out her hand to Edward. “Come,” she said. “Let’s follow Dame Frevisse to the church.”