The Apostate's Tale

Chapter 16

Frevisse wondered angrily why Mistress Petham had not gone-or at least sent Edward-the long way around the cloister walk to avoid just what his mother had done. But then who would think Sister Cecely was such a fool?

Impatiently, Frevisse answered that question for herself. Anyone who knew her-that was who would think Sister Cecely was such a fool!

At the same time, she knew what made her angrier was how frightened Edward had been. Whatever else he might have felt when his mother grabbed him, what had shown on his face was fear. Of what? His mother? Certainly he had not resisted being taken from her or looked back as Mistress Petham led him away. And anyway, even if he was not frightened by his mother, he was frightened because of her, and it was grievously unfair that, already in grief for his father, he had to be frightened, too, for whatever reason.

Abbot Gilberd’s man could not come soon enough to take all of this out of here and away into Abbot Gilberd’s hands.

But her own duties went on, and returning to the guesthall, she sent the servant Tom to tell Father Henry of what was toward and ask him to meet her shortly in the church. She took on herself the task of telling Rowcliffe that Edward would rather see Jack than him.

Rowcliffe accepted that better than she had thought he would, saying with a shrug, “If that’s what he wants, so be it. All we want is to know for a certainty how he is. Jack can do that as well as I can.”

So it was with Jack she crossed the yard toward the church, explaining as they went why Elianor had not brought word as intended. Tom overtook them on the way, to say Father Henry would be there shortly, and she left Jack to go by himself into the church by its west door while she went through the cloister door to fetch Edward.

He was waiting in Mistress Petham’s chamber, standing beside her bed where she was lying down again. His hand was in hers, and he looked freshly face-washed, with hair newly combed and tunic carefully straightened. Frevisse held out her hand to him and said, “Your cousin Jack is waiting to see you.”

Edward let go of Mistress Petham, took her hand instead, and left the chamber with at least outward willingness. For safety’s sake, they went the long way around the cloister walk, Frevisse keeping hold on him until they were in the church, only letting him go when she turned back to close the door behind them.

When she turned around, he had left her, was running with a quick patter of feet past the rood screen and down the nave to where Jack Rowcliffe now stood with Father Henry. Jack stepped forward to meet him, arms held out, and Edward flung himself into his cousin’s hold. Jack swung him up and around in a glad circle, and Edward laughed aloud. Nor did Jack put him down afterward but carried him aside and sat them both down on the stone bench along the wall, Edward on his knee, one of his arms around Edward and one of Edward’s around him.

Father Henry stayed where he was, beaming at them. Frevisse felt obliged to go closer, to hear what was said between them, not wanting to find out later that Jack had used the chance to persuade Edward to leaving the cloister or some other foolish thing. They were only talking of home, though, with Jack telling Edward that his little mare was safely at Rowcliffe’s stable. “She’s right there with my old girl Damsel,” Jack said. “I led her over myself. After all, I couldn’t ride her.” He stuck out his long legs and wiggled them. Edward laughed. Jack’s voice leveled and went kind. “I have your father’s chest, too. The dagger is there that’s to be yours when you’re older. And his red leather belt with the silver-gilt buckle and studs. And the prayer book with the pictures. You remember?”

“Of course I remember,” Edward said indignantly. “I’m not a baby.”

Frevisse guessed that, in truth, he remembered all too well. Tears had swollen into his eyes with the pain of his remembering, and Jack put both arms around him and held him close, tears suddenly in his own eyes, too, as he said, “Of course you remember. It’s very hard to have him gone, isn’t it?”

With his face now buried against Jack’s shoulder to hide the falling tears, Edward nodded.

“But do you remember,” Jack asked, his voice lightening, “the time when he went up on the roof to see how the thatchers were getting on? And what happened?”

Edward remembered. His shoulders shook but when he lifted his head, it was laughter on his face along with the tears. “He slid right off! He slid off into their pile of straw!”

Frevisse turned her back to them. She would go on listening but they did not need her watching them. Jack Rowcliffe meant Edward no harm. She was glad to see there was someone among his kin who seemed to like Edward for Edward’s own sake and that somewhere beyond Edward’s grief there was still a little boy who could be happy, the way he had been happy in the orchard with Dame Amicia and Sister Helen, the way he was happy here with a trusted cousin. Come to it, he seemed to be content with Mistress Petham, too.

Was it only his mother who brought that stiff silence on him?

Frevisse found that easy enough to believe. She also found it regrettable how readily she believed ill of Sister Cecely. Even if Sister Cecely was a fool, there had to be good somewhere in the woman, buried though it might be under the heavy layers of her betrayals and lies. Frevisse’s prayers for her would be the better, would be more than merely rote, if she could just find even a glimmer of that good.

The trouble was that she did not much feel like looking for any glimmer, and that was a regrettable thing to admit.

She gave Edward and his cousin as much time together as she could before she turned back to them and said, “Sext will be soon. I must needs return Edward to Mistress Petham now.”

Jack slid Edward to the floor, both of them standing up unwillingly. Jack freed his hand from Edward’s tight hold, put both his hands on Edward’s shoulders, and bent to kiss the top of the boy’s head, then said, “This won’t go on forever, Edward. We just have to be brave about it. This Mistress Petham, she’s good to you?”

Edward nodded. “She’s helping me with my reading,” he said, back to his usual half-whisper.

“Oh-oh,” said Jack. “You’ll be better than me at it if you keep that up.”

Edward looked up at him with a sudden return to laughter. “That won’t be hard, the way you read.”

Jack made a satisfactory sound of outrage and rumpled his hair. Frevisse held out her hand, and dropping his gaze to the floor, Edward took it. Over his bowed head, Frevisse said to Jack, “If you would be so good as to wait here, I’d speak to you after Edward is safely back to Mistress Petham.”

“As you will, my lady,” Jack said with a slight bow.

Frevisse walked Edward the long way around the cloister again and to the foot of the stairs to Mistress Petham’s chamber, watched him go up them and safely beyond the door at the top, then wondered why “safely” had come to mind. But the answer to that was easy enough. There were too many people-beginning with his own mother-with interest not so much in Edward himself but in what profit he could bring them, including Jack’s father, if not Jack. Edward should be safe enough here in the cloister, but Frevisse did not want to chance finding by the hard way she was wrong about that.

As she turned to circle the cloister walk again, Dame Perpetua joined her, going the same way, and said, nodding ahead, “This is become such a bother. I’m to take Alson’s place guarding Cecely. As if I’ve no work of my own to do.”

Frevisse looked ahead, was surprised to see Alson sitting on a stool beside the guest parlor, and said, “It was Malde before. And where’s Dame Thomasine? Shouldn’t she be there now?”

“Yes,” Dame Perpetua said disgustedly. “But Dame Claire needed her help with some medicine she’s brewing in the infirmary. An ointment and poultice for the man who was hurt yesterday, I think.”

“But where’s Dame Johane?”

“Taking her turn at duty in the kitchen, trying to better her skill at making pastry. I didn’t want to let her off it, so I shifted Alson so Dame Claire could have Dame Thomasine who has the next best skill with herbs. But now Alson is needed in the kitchen to cut vegetables, being better with a knife than I am anymore.” Dame Perpetua held up her right hand, where the arthritics that had come on her in the past few years were bending two of her fingers awry. “So I’m taking Alson’s place for the while.” Dame Perpetua sighed. She was not enjoying being presently cellerar and in charge of the kitchen and meals and the necessary servants, and plainly Sister Cecely was making her work no easier.

Frevisse made sympathetic sounds while, ahead, Alson stood up as they came and bobbed a curtsy. Dame Perpetua made a nod at the doorway and asked, “How does she?”

“She’s crying, poor lady. She’s frighted what those men mean to do to her and to her boy,” Alson answered, sounding worried.

“It’s Abbot Gilberd she’d best be frightened of,” said Frevisse.

“You can return to the kitchen now, Alson,” Dame Perpetua directed. “I’ll take your place for the while.”

Alson ducked her head in another bobbed curtsy and hurried off as if glad to be away. Frevisse gave Dame Perpetua a nod of her own and went on her way to the church where she was not pleased to find Jack Rowcliffe in talk with Elianor Lawsell in the middle of the nave. The girl did not seem pleased either, was backing away from him toward the rood screen, and although he was not threateningly close to her, he was undeniably following her, intent on whatever he was saying to her. At sight of Frevisse, though, he stopped still, and Elianor swung around with what looked to Frevisse like relief. As Frevisse went toward them, Jack stayed where he was while Elianor hesitated until Frevisse said, “I’ve come to speak with him alone, by your leave.” Elianor answered with a bright smile, gave Frevisse a hurried curtsy, and went on up the nave, leaving Jack to her.

He gave a bow as Frevisse reached him and said courteously, “You had something more to say to me, my lady?”

Letting go by the matter of Elianor, she answered, “You seem to have been a good friend of Edward’s father. I want to ask you about him.”

“About Guy? We were friends, yes,” he said willingly. “He and George and I. They treated me as somewhat the younger brother neither of them had.” Jack’s face and voice tightened, controlling apparent grief as he added, “The world seems emptier without them.”

“What of Guy’s marriage? How did that seem to you?”

“His marriage that wasn’t a marriage?” Jack said bitterly. “Guy could be a true idiot sometimes. He always was where Cecely came into it, that’s sure. We used to jibe at him for it.”

“He never gave any sign of the truth?”

“Never. Though I think that of late-”

He stopped.

“Of late?” Frevisse asked.

Jack sighed and said, as if resigned to the thought, “I think this past year or so he had begun to weary of her ways. She always wanted every bit of him, begrudged him any moment he wasn’t with her. I think he went on this trading voyage with George just to be away from her for a time.”

“Do you know why he told the truth about her to Symond Hewet?”

“Maybe because he wasn’t able to keep it to himself any longer? Maybe because if anything happened to him, someone would know and be better able to deal with her? If Symond knows why, he hasn’t said. You’ll have to ask him.” Jack shook his head as if to shake understanding of it all into his thoughts. “If he’d just said nothing, if he had just kept shut about it…”

“…she could have gone on living in the lie she and Guy had made,” Frevisse interrupted sharply.

Jack gave a wry twist of his mouth, acknowledging that, but then burst out, “But how could he have done it to Edward? It’s Edward who’s being most hurt by it!”

“Given the way Sister Cecely is,” Frevisse returned, “it may be Edward who’s most saved by it, too, if it frees him from his mother.”

Jack looked startled at that thought. Leaving him to be startled, she thanked him and went back up the nave. She would have preferred to escape beyond the rood screen, to the cloister’s somewhat-quiet, but there was no hope of pretending Elianor Lawsell was not there, turning around as Frevisse neared her.

Looking down the nave to where the west door was just thudding shut behind Jack, then back to Frevisse, she said somewhat desperately, “Domina Elisabeth sees no bar to my becoming a nun here. But she wouldn’t say when.”

“There’s your family to be thought about,” Frevisse offered. “It’s best if they can be reconciled to it first. If you…”

“I doubt my mother will ever be reconciled to it! What then?”

“If,” Frevisse repeated firmly, “you practice patience now, you’ll have begun to learn one of a nun’s first lessons.”

Elianor opened her mouth to continue with plea or passion, but stopped, stared at Frevisse, then very carefully closed her mouth, bowed her head, and said meekly, “Yes, my lady.”

Frevisse fought the smile trying at the corners of her mouth and kept it from her voice as she said mildly, “Jack Rowcliffe is showing inclination to you.”

Despite her head was still humbly bowed, Elianor said scornfully, “That’s because there’s no one else here for him to incline to.”

“He’s a comely enough young man and of good family and well-mannered,” Frevisse suggested.

Elianor raised her head sharply. “And that’s supposed to be enough, isn’t it?” she said hotly. “He surely thinks it’s enough.” She made an impatient gesture with both hands. “Why do they think we’re such idiots? Why do they think we should give up everything just for the sake of lust? Because lust is what it mostly is, no matter how much anyone throws the word ‘love’ around!”

Sternly, Frevisse said, “There are more kinds of love than one. A nun chooses to love beyond the world and the body, but that doesn’t gain her the right to despise all other loves there are.” She might pity them, Frevisse added silently to herself, but for the sake of her own soul she should never despise them. But that was more lesson than Elianor needed just now, and Frevisse went on, “Rather than spending effort in scorn of others, you should be looking inward at yourself, searching your own love and learning needed patience while you wait to have your will.”

“Why?” Elianor burst out. “Why should I be patient when what I want is so very right?”

“Because patience,” Frevisse said, sternly meeting the girl’s gaze, “can make the person you’re being patient at very, very irked.”

She watched as that thought took hold on the girl, first with the beginning of a frown, then with dawning delight and a spreading smile as Elianor began to understand the possibilities.

Having given her that to think on, Frevisse made a slight bow of the head to her and escaped into the choir.

No matter what she had said to Elianor, her true thought was that it would be good to have the girl for novice as soon as might be. She seemed to have the true longing that would readily take deep root if it were carefully tended. The fierceness would need quieting, of course. Not quenched, but quieted before it burned itself out with its very strength. Fierceness in itself was not ill, but there was need to contain and guide it, so that it burned away the dross of body and spirit to leave only the soul’s shining.

Or as much shining as the soul could do while still held in the world by the body.

With surely very little time until the bell would ring for the next Office, she went to her choir stall and knelt there, her forehead resting on her clasped hands. She could remember how carefully, all those years ago, Domina Edith had guided her fierceness, so that instead of blazing up and burning out, it had become a banked fire deep inside her, burning onward, strong and mostly steady through the years. Out of that memory, she made a prayer that Elianor, if her calling was true, might be guided as she had been, into the deep, high, wide places of the soul where true love and true freedom were.