The Apostate's Tale

Chapter 15

Sitting on the bench, her back against the wall, Cecely scuffled her bare feet in the loose rushes covering the guest parlor’s floor and stared at the room’s far wall. It wasn’t even that far a wall. A few yards away, no more, and the other walls hardly farther off on either side. It was a small room, a hateful room. A prison room. Just as it always had been. She hated it now the same way she had hated it when she was a nun here and had feared it was as near as she would ever come to the outside world again. Even then, she had only been allowed in here when she had a visitor or visitors, and because those had almost always been kin of one sort or another, Johane had almost always been with her here because they shared so many kindred that a visitor to one of them had usually been a visitor to them both.

Johane had used to laugh that they came in hope some of the nunnery’s piety would wear off on them. Now did Johane even remember how to laugh anymore? Or had that been worn out of her along with every other memory of what pleasure life could be?

In those whiles of visitors, there had been talk and something to eat and drink besides the nunnery’s usual dull fare, so that for that little while it would hardly matter that the room was small and bare and miserable. But it was small and bare and miserable, and she had been in it since yesterday with nothing to do but pace its little space or sit and stare at the bare walls, the ugly rafters, the dry rushes, or else try to sleep and mostly fail to do so. At least they had brought down the miserable mattress and pillow from her bed in the dorter, even if they’d only put them on the floor in the corner, and the door still stood open, but probably only to give her light enough to read the breviary Domina Elisabeth had given to her.

“Use it,” the prioress had said coldly yesterday. “Look into your heart and see the wrong you’ve done to God and yourself. At least begin the search to find your way back to God’s love.”

Cecely had nearly spat at her feet.

They made her want to scream, these women. They had found nothing better to do with their lives than shut themselves up in here to die before they were dead. What did they know of love or anything else? She had had love. She knew everything they did not, and one of the things she knew was how useless God’s “love” was when she was lonely or frightened or in need of a man’s warmth. God’s “love” and God’s “care” and God’s “comfort.” Where were they? What use were they? It hadn’t been God there in her bed at night when she put out a hand, needing someone. It hadn’t been God who had laughed with her and pleasured her and made life bright around her. It had been Guy.

And where had God been when Guy died? If God “loved” and “cared” and “comforted,” where had he been then?

Oh, they all had answers. The priest at home had had answers, and if she asked these women here, they’d have answers. But their answers were only words. Words weren’t Guy’s arms around her, holding her warm and safe. Words weren’t what she wanted. What she wanted was Guy holding her against the miseries of this awful place.

Except she wouldn’t be here if God hadn’t taken Guy from her. He had taken Guy, and what use was his “love” and “care” when she ached for someone to be holding her? God was no use for that. There was no one to hold her, no one to put their arms around her and make her feel safe. She was alone and no words about God’s “love” and “care” were going to change that.

Angrily needing to destroy something, she twisted at the skirt of her hated black gown. She wanted the pleasure there would be in tearing the ugly thing into rags. That would show these women what she thought of them and their “penance.” But the wool’s strength defeated her, had been defeating her for hours. She couldn’t tear it with her bare hands and there was nothing else to use here. Even the water she was given with her bread came in a wooden cup. If it had been pottery she would have broken it and used the edge to cut with. Without even that, she was left with nothing, and she pitched to her feet and started the pacing that was her only other occupation. The few yards forward that was all the room allowed, and then around the table and around the table and around the table.

Someone started to ring the cloister bell for whatever Office was next in the dreary day. The nun sitting guard on a stool just outside the parlor’s open doorway stood up, and Cecely froze, tense and staring at the woman’s back. Even knowing she had no hope of going far, stripped as she was of everything except the coarse black gown, she still had the urge to run. Just let them give her any chance at all and see how fast and far she’d go!

But the nun stayed where she was. Whichever nun she was. Cecely had been unable to tell. From behind they were simply black-clothed shapes of somewhat different heights. How did they bear it?

The long skirts and soft-soled shoes of other nuns hushed along the cloister walk’s stone paving, going toward the church from whatever tasks they had been at, and finally the nun outside the door went, too, but only because a servant had replaced her, some aproned woman from the kitchen.

Not Alson. Still not Alson.

Cecely dropped heavily onto the bench again. She had prayed last night for Alson to be the servant left to sleep outside the closed door, but it had been some other woman, who had snored and grunted when she turned over and been as much at fault for keeping Cecely awake as the thin mattress and the hard floor under it had been.

So she had prayed for it to be Alson sometime today but still it was not. So much for prayers.

But sooner or later Alson would have her turn. There weren’t that many servants in the cloister. Which Office was this anyway? Sext? Were they that far through the day yet? Maybe it was only Tierce. Along with everything else, the day was overcast, giving no shadows sliding along the cloister walk by which to tell the time. There were only the Offices to break the day’s long tediousness into worthless pieces.

But she was not yet reduced to reading or even opening the breviary she had been given. Not by a long way was she come to that. In truth, she had long since shoved the book angrily off the table and kicked it away somewhere among the rushes. Did Domina Elisabeth truly think that, now she was spared sitting through the Offices in the choir, she was going to do them here and alone?

She stood up abruptly from the bench. Was she hearing something happening in the guesthall yard? She grabbed up the joint stool, set it under the room’s single, small window high in the outer wall, and stood on it, not in hope of seeing out-she already knew the window was too small and high for sight of more than the ridge of the guesthall roof and a bit of sky-but to hear better what was happening. It was beyond hope that the Rowcliffes would take their rotten selves away, but surely Master Breredon wouldn’t desert her. They couldn’t have forced him to leave, could they? He wanted that manor and Neddie too much.

Or was it someone arriving? As bad as Master Breredon leaving would be someone from the abbot arriving.

Hooking her fingers over the windowsill, she pulled herself higher on her toes, straining to see out despite she knew it was no use.

It was all supposed to have been simpler than this. How had John found her out? He wasn’t supposed even to know she had ever been a nun. If he hadn’t come, everything would have all been the way she had planned it to be. Master Breredon would have fetched her and Neddie away and given her the promised money for Neddie’s wardship and marriage, and with Neddie safe, she would have been on her way to somewhere. London, she thought. No one could have found her there among so many people. Or maybe Bristol, clear away to the other side of the country, if she’d heard a-right. Somewhere, anyway, with no way for the Rowcliffes to pick up her trail and follow her. That was how it was all supposed to have gone. Now they had spoiled it all by finding her.

Whatever was happening in the yard, it was not much. She could hear a cart’s wheels on the cobbles, so it was not anyone riding in or riding out and couldn’t be Master Breredon or the Rowcliffes.

She stepped down from the stool, shoved it away with her foot so it fell over with a satisfying thud, and went back to the bench, glaring at the back of the servant sitting like a lump outside the door. Her prayer for Alson to be there was just another prayer unanswered. These fools of nuns lived believing that cold prayers mattered. Let them. She had had Guy, and if she could have any prayer at all answered, it would be to have him back and everything the way it had been. But that was another prayer that God would only answer with his great, unmerciful No.

Whatever the Office had been, it ended. Nuns went quiet-footed along the cloister walk again, some of them talking in low voices that paused as they passed her door. Did they think they would be defiled if she so much as heard their voices? They were talking about her, surely. Let them. She didn’t care what they said. Let them say whatever they wanted to say about her.

She stood up and took the two steps from the bench to the doorway, keeping enough aside that she could hear without being readily seen, but the nuns were all past. No one had come to relieve the servant, though, and Cecely lingered because there might be others who would come talking.

Yes. Here came slow footsteps and a woman saying something.

Except it was not a nun who answered her but Neddie. Neddie’s dear little voice. Someone was bringing him right past her door, and she could not help herself. She darted out and there he was, walking with that Mistress Petham holding his hand, and before the servant could even exclaim at her, she had snatched Neddie to herself, fallen to her knees, and clutched him close. For a startled moment he seemed almost to pull back from her. Then he flung his arms around her neck and clung to her in return, and she whispered in his ear, “Do you still have it all safe and hidden?”

His head moved against hers in the smallest of nods. She kissed him. Her dear, warm, clever little boy. She would have smothered him with more kisses except someone had her by one arm, was pulling her to her feet, while Mistress Petham laid a hand on Neddie’s shoulder, drawing him back from her. Poor, brave little boy, he didn’t even cry out or struggle. He just stared up at her one last moment with large, frightened eyes, and then Mistress Petham was hurrying him away along the walk, and Cecely was being turned around to face a very angry Domina Elisabeth saying at her, “You can’t obey even the simple order to stay in that room. Have you no sense at all?”

Her hold on Cecely’s arm was hard and hurting, and behind her was Father Henry, not doing anything to stop her, and Cecely wrenched free, took a step back, and flared out with matching anger at both of them, “He’s my son! He’s all that’s left of everything I had!” Tears of rage and grief burned her eyes. “God took all my others and then their father and now you want to keep even Neddie from me!”

Domina Elisabeth did not try to take hold on her again, instead took a step back from her as Father Henry came forward, saying, “Mind yourself, sister, and thank God for his mercy instead of blaming him. It could have been you who died, still in your sin, instead of your children in their innocence. They were spared the sins of the world. You’ve been spared to make good your sin.”

Cecely’s breast heaved as she tried for air enough to answer that arrogance and ended by turning her fury on Domina Elisabeth again with, “Why was Neddie in the church at all? You’re supposed to be protecting him, but you let him in the church where anyone could snatch him! John Rowcliffe could grab him from there and there’d be nothing you could do! Who’d stop him? Any of you?” She rounded on Father Henry in raging scorn. “You?”

Like everyone and everything else in this place, the priest had grown older in the years she had been gone. When she had tried, all those years ago, to tell him what she was suffering, he had only told her she must endure in patience and pray for God’s grace. From anything he had said to her since her return, he was grown no wiser. He had even tried to tell her of his guilt at having failed her all those years ago. He said he had been bearing the burden of it ever since. Was she supposed to care? Now he was saying, “What if Domina Elisabeth agreed to give you leave to attend the Offices again, would…”

Together she and Domina Elisabeth said back at him, “No!”

And with Father Henry startled into silence, Domina Elisabeth said at her, “Get back into that room. If ever you step over its threshold again without my leave, I’ll have you tied to keep you there, I swear it!”