The Apostate's Tale

Chapter 23

Domina Elisabeth came to Vespers but kept her head deeply bowed through the Office, and since the fading light of the overcast day was not yet thickened enough for the expense of candles, Frevisse had no chance to see if she bore the marks of tears until the Office was done. Only while Domina Elisabeth gave them her blessing at the end did Frevisse see that, yes, her eyes had the red rims of much crying and her face the tired sag of someone lately gone through a hard and wearying time.

What had been passing between her and her brother? Surely he had not spent the time scolding her over Sister Cecely? The time for that had been when Sister Cecely first fled. If anyone was to be scolded now, surely it was Sister Cecely.

Domina Elisabeth left them again after Vespers, returning to her rooms for supper to be taken up to her on a tray. This was no more her usual way than the rest of the day had been, and midway through her own supper the terrible thought came to Frevisse that perhaps Abbot Gilberd wanted to leave Sister Cecely here, for them to see to her punishment, and that Domina Elisabeth had been pleading against it, had gone even to the point of quarreling with him and, having lost, could not yet face her nuns with the ill news. The possibility of a quarrel between their prioress and their abbot was less frightening than the chance that Sister Cecely might become part of their life here again, and as supper finished, Frevisse tried to put the thought of it from her.

Although the rain was stopped, the evening was not an appealing one for spending the hour of recreation in the garden. Most of the nuns left the refectory for the warming room, but Frevisse did not join them. Her day had been very long, and last night very short of sleep. She would happily have said Compline right then and gone straight to her bed, yet she could not bring herself to quiet sitting in the warming room, instead chose to pace the square of the roofed cloister walk. She had spent many an hour of recreation walking there, often in easy talk with Dame Claire, often simply by herself. Its familiarity and quiet could be a balm on troubled thoughts or to a trying day’s weariness. This evening, though, it was a cheerless place, with twilight heavy under the cloud-thick sky, and the closed door to what was become Sister Cecely’s cell a too constant reminder of what Frevisse wanted not to think about for a time. Nor did Dame Claire join her. Instead it was Dame Thomasine likewise slowly pacing around the cloister walk, her head bowed as usual, her hands folded into her opposite sleeves just as Frevisse’s hands were into her own sleeves. But whereas Dame Thomasine was probably so far into prayers as barely to know anyone else was there, Frevisse was all too aware of the folded parchments still in her undergown’s left sleeve.

She did not know how much Mistress Petham had weighted her words toward making Edward give up the deeds and bill. When she told him he could keep his secret, she had maybe been even-worded, but equally she might have made it plain, under the words, what she thought he ought to do and thereby forced him to it. Still, he had given his own reason for doing it, Frevisse remembered. He had said his father had told him people should be good, and he had understood he should not have the parchments. So even if Mistress Petham had brought him to give them up, he had known why he should and, in the end, had done it willingly, Frevisse thought. Willingly and bravely.

Why did it have to take so much courage to do what was right?

Why was it that the ill-doers and liars seemed able to do wrong so much more easily, while those who did well and right seemed so often to have to fight themselves to do it? It was the ill-doers who should need the greater courage, going so far aside as they did from what was right. Yet they mostly seemed to do it with such ease.

It had been fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that Eve and Adam had eaten. Before then there had been no choice between right and wrong. There had been simply being. Frevisse found it difficult to imagine what life would be if it were simply being, living sure in the love of God without need of all the choices that knowledge had brought on mankind.

Maybe it was laziness that let people do wrong rather than right. Ignorance was easier than knowledge, and so they did not trouble themselves with knowledge of right and wrong, of good and ill, but simply settled for doing whatever came easiest to them in the moment, while despising anyone who tried to live for more than easy greed and shallow pride and momentary pleasures.

She had noted before now how often those who did ill despised those to whom they did it, being too cowardly to face the truth of their own actions.

If more people were willing to be as good and brave as small Edward had been today-were as willing to the truth as he had been-there would be far less hurt in the world, she thought sadly.

Of course he had hurt at doing what he did, but it was the brief hurt of pulling out a thorn, against the long hurt of leaving it in the flesh to rot.

It came to her then that in her thought-slowed pacing she had just passed Dame Thomasine for the second time, that Dame Thomasine was no longer walking, was simply standing at the low wall around the garth, looking across to Sister Cecely’s shut door. The door was almost gone from sight in the growing dusk, and even if there had been light, there was nothing to see there, not even someone sitting guard. For now the door was simply tied shut, because all the nuns were at the end of their day’s work, and all the cloister servants were at their end-of-day tasks. Whosever’s turn it was among the servants would come in a while with her bedding and settle across the door for the night, the door staying tied until morning, Sister Cecely alone behind it, no other company than her own thoughts through all the night hours. So from here in the walk there was nothing in particular to see, and Frevisse turned back to Dame Thomasine, stopped beside her, and asked quietly, “Dame, is aught amiss?”

The younger woman went on looking at the door, the smallest of frowns between her brows, and only after a long moment did she finally say, very low, still staring across at the door, “I’ve never wanted to be what she’s been. I’ve never had urge to give up everything to the desires of the flesh. I never have. Nor I don’t now. But I’m so…” She looked up at Frevisse with pleading eyes, as if confessing to a thing of shame. “I’m so tired.”

All unexpectedly Frevisse was reminded of a small child too worn out to know that what it needed was simply bed, and she took Dame Thomasine by the arm, turned her around, sat her down on the low wall there, sat beside her, and said gently, much the way she had spoken to Edward this afternoon, “Then rest a little.”

Dame Thomasine gave a small sigh, folded her hands in her lap, bowed her head, and seemed to shrink in on herself as she settled, huddling round-shouldered as if the weight of her habit were too much on her thin body.

After a moment of nothing else, only the cloister’s quiet, Frevisse said gently, finding the words as she went, “That you’re tired is no unlikely thing. You’ve burned with the fire of loving God for a good many years now. Have lived more fully in that love than anyone I’ve ever known. It would be no surprise if you’ve burned yourself away to nearly nothing inside your poor body.”

She did not know from where that thought had come. Dame Thomasine’s holiness was so much a part of St. Frideswide’s life that for a long time there had been small reason to think about it. It simply was, the way their whole pattern of life here was, without deep need to wonder about it. In truth, that someone as holy as Dame Thomasine lived there among them was even, perhaps, a small, secret source of pride to some. What that holiness might be doing to Dame Thomasine had never been a matter for thought. Except once, a long time ago, Domina Edith had said something about it, hadn’t she? But Frevisse did not remember what. Whatever comfort she could give Dame Thomasine had to come from what she could think herself, and she said, “You haven’t been kind to your body, you know.”

Dame Thomasine made a small shake of her head, refusing that.

“No,” said Frevisse, refusing in her turn. “Consider our poor bodies. They go through our lives burdened with all the necessities and longings of flesh, and then at the end, when our souls go free, the poor body goes into the ground to rot away.”

“Resurrection comes,” Dame Thomasine murmured, meaning the rising of all bodies from their graves when time’s end came.

“Yes,” Frevisse agreed. “But however that wonder is worked when Judgment Day comes, in the meantime our bodies rot. Whether they have served us well or ill in life, no matter if they’ve been indulged”-she gave a glance at Sister Cecely’s door-“or been denied, the soul goes free and they decay. And yet our bodies are God’s gift to us. Shouldn’t we treat them with at least a little pity, with a little kindness, in what little time they have to be alive? Not drive them early to the grave where, when all is said and done, they may be for a very long time?”

Dame Thomasine lifted her head, turned her face toward Frevisse, slightly frowning. That told that she had at least heard what Frevisse was saying, was even considering it, and very gently Frevisse went on, “You’re tired. Not in your soul, surely, but in your body. Have pity on it. Kind care for it isn’t sin or weakness. Be a little kind to yours.”

Dame Thomasine began another small, denying shake of her head, and with a sudden sternness that surprised herself, Frevisse said, “Our flesh is the vessel that carries the fire of God’s love. You have no right to break your body, either on purpose or through plain carelessness.” She softened her voice again. “Think on that, Dame Thomasine.”

The warming room’s door opened, letting out a momentary yellow lamplight with the shapes of nuns briefly black against it as they came from the room, before someone put out the lamp and there was only soft blue twilight in the cloister. Much of the year Compline was said simply in the warming room, but during Holy and Easter Weeks, in honor of the especially holy time, the nuns returned to the church for it each evening, and Dame Thomasine and Frevisse rose together from the wall to join the others going there, Frevisse both glad for reason to end her talk at Dame Thomasine and wondering if she had done any good at all.

She was surprised by how easily and well she slept, even with the folded pieces of parchment tucked between the mattress and the wooden edge of the bed. She left them there when she rose in the night for Matins and Lauds, but put them again into her sleeve when she rose for Prime, beginning the new day. They would soon become her guilty secret, she thought, if she did not give them to Domina Elisabeth at the first reasonable chance this morning.

It seemed, though, that she was going to be denied a reasonable chance. Domina Elisabeth had come to Matins and Lauds and she came to Prime, but after Prime she went again to her rooms, so that her nuns breakfasted without her, nor did she come to Mass, and when time came for the morning’s chapter meeting, she sent word by a servant that Dame Claire should take her place.

The nuns, already gathered in the warming room, all looked at one another, confused and uncertain. She was not ill, or she would have asked for Dame Claire to come to her, not given chapter over to her, and Dame Perpetua said aloud the question showing on the faces of most of them. “What’s amiss with her? This can’t all be Sister Cecely.” She looked directly at Dame Margrett who had been in the parlor so much yesterday. “What else is amiss?”

Looking miserable, Dame Margrett shook her head, refusing any other answer at all, which told she had been ordered to silence about whatever she had heard. “Dame Johane?” Dame Perpetua demanded, but Dame Johane shook her head against answering, too, leaving everyone unsatisfied, and chapter that morning was a shambling thing. Father Henry gave the blessing on it as usual, but quickly and not as if his mind was altogether there for it. As he left, Dame Amicia whispered that he had come from his time with Abbot Gilberd and Domina Elisabeth yesterday afternoon looking troubled. “Just as troubled as he still looks. Whatever it is, it’s not getting better,” she said.

Dame Claire uneasily took up the reading of today’s chapter of the Rule, but afterward no one had much heart for reporting on their duties or confessing any faults, nor did Dame Claire show much desire to hear them. Chapter meetings were a kind of anchor in each day. As the Offices were the nuns’ link to heaven, chapter meetings were their link to the world. The one with the other kept a balance between the two sides of their lives. Now that balance was wavering, and so were they, and so did Frevisse’s certainty that she must give the deeds and bill to Domina Elisabeth.

She came from the warming room with the others at chapter’s end to find Alson waiting in the walk to say that Dame Perpetua was to take Sister Cecely up to the prioress’ parlor now, that Abbot Gilberd would be there shortly. Since today was Dame Perpetua’s turn with Sister Cecely, this bidding could hardly be a surprise to Dame Perpetua, but she nonetheless cast a pleading look around, as if in hope of a rescue no one could give her. The most she got was an encouraging hand laid briefly on her shoulder by Dame Claire and, “At least now you’ll hear what is happening.”

Dame Perpetua looked only a little encouraged by that, but since she would surely be as enjoined to silence as Dame Margrett had been, none of the rest of them would be any the wiser, and Frevisse went away to the guesthall, feeling yet again forestalled from giving the deeds and bill to Domina Elisabeth.

Forestalled-or plain unwilling.

She faced it might well be the latter, then tried to tell herself again that burdening Domina Elisabeth with more just now seemed unfair. But if that was it, why not give them to Abbot Gilberd?

Because they were not his business.

That thought had come far too easily. She looked at it more closely. It stayed the same. Abbot Gilberd was here to determine what should be done with Sister Cecely. These other matters-the poisonings, the stolen deeds and bill, even Edward now he was under St. Frideswide’s protection-were arguably the priory’s to deal with.

Or-to be closer to the truth, Frevisse thought-they were hers to deal with, because she found she was indeed increasingly hesitant to give anything over to Domina Elisabeth just now. The way the prioress was presently slacking and forsaking all her duties, she might simply give any and all priory problems over to Abbot Gilberd, and that would not be to the priory’s good in the long run of things. Giving over power to someone was always easier than getting it back, and Frevisse was not minded to let Abbot Gilberd have more of a hand in St. Frideswide’s business than could be helped. If he took it into his mind that his hand was necessary here, getting his hand out again later might prove difficult.

So when, at the foot of the stairs up to the guesthall, she met Abbot Gilberd coming down, followed by one of his clerks with an ink bottle in one hand and a clutch of paper in the other, she made no effort to speak to him, merely stepped aside and sank in a low curtsy. He sketched a cross in blessing above her as he passed without pause, and she let him go his way to the cloister while she went up the steps and into the guesthall.

Ela was there, keeping an eye on matters. By this time on any usual day, the hall would have been fairly or altogether empty except for servants, with such travelers as had been there overnight gone on their way at first daylight, and Tom and Luce clearing and cleaning around such rare, few guests as were staying longer. But this past week and more had not been usual, and still was not. The hall was cluttered and loud with the abbot’s men, and Ela cocked her head to look up at Frevisse and asked, rather than waiting for Frevisse’s every-morning question of how things were, “What’s toward? Father Henry was closeted with Abbot Gilberd a long while yester-evening and looked none so happy when he came out. Nor he looks no happier today, and not Abbot Gilberd either.”

“Abbot Gilberd is going to speak with Sister Cecely this morning,” Frevisse said, keeping aside from a straight answer. “I suppose Father Henry will be there, too.”

“More patience to them both,” Ela said back, letting Frevisse know she knew an aside-answer when she heard it but letting it go. “The Lawsells purpose to leave this morning. Their man came in with their horses about Compline.”

Frevisse nodded. She would try to be present when they left, she thought, to bid Elianor farewell and encourage her mother to think of the girl’s return.

“They’re quarreling over it though,” Ela said. “They were loud about it a while ago. It’s why they’re not gone yet, I think.”

“Quarreling?” Frevisse asked. “The Lawsells?”

“Them. You should talk to them, maybe.” Meaning she thought Frevisse had better talk to them.

Frevisse held back from a sigh, because Ela was right, and went toward their chamber at the hall’s side, hearing as she neared their door Elianor’s young voice saying, low but angrily stubborn, “Once you have me back there, you won’t let me out again until I agree to marry someone. I know that’s what you mean to do. Don’t tell me it isn’t.”

“You know no such thing,” her mother answered with the edged patience of someone determined not to show how angry she was. “What I am saying is we need to go home and talk about it more. I am saying…”

“You don’t mean ‘talk about it.’ You mean ‘talk me into changing my mind.’”

Frevisse knocked firmly at the door and opened it. Mistress Lawsell turned toward her, and Elianor, who had been sitting on the edge of the bed with her arms folded across herself-to show she did not intend to move, Frevisse supposed-stood up. Before either of them could say or do anything more, Frevisse said, “I wish to speak alone with your mother. Please leave us, Elianor.”

Elianor, surprised, looked back and forth between her mother and Frevisse, then dropped a short curtsy more or less at both of them, and went out of the chamber. Frevisse turned back to Mistress Lawsell and said, “You do wrong to keep her from where her heart wants to go.”

“You would say that,” Mistress Lawsell snapped back. “Being a nun and in need of more nuns here.”

“And you would say otherwise,” Frevisse said evenly, “having come here in a lie.”

That direct attack caught Mistress Lawsell off her guard. “What?”

“You didn’t come here in the hope of turning your daughter toward becoming a nun. You hoped to turn her from it. What you want for her is a wealthy marriage, not the good of her soul.”

“Marriage isn’t damnation!”

“It can be, if someone’s heart is altogether elsewhere. Force someone into a pathway against their nature, and the chance of damnation is very great.” As Sister Cecely had been forced, Frevisse suddenly thought. She and Dame Johane had both come here by their family’s choice, not theirs, and Sister Cecely must have gone through with taking her final vows because it was expected of her, not from any true desire. Dame Johane, however it had been with her at the beginning, had found a place here, had found work she cared about and become happy. Sister Cecely had failed, had made her life instead on lust and lies and broken vows. And Frevisse said, with a sad sense that she was pleading as no one had pleaded for Sister Cecely, however opposite that pleading was, “Think on it, I pray you, Mistress Lawsell. Which will be better? A daughter forced to go a way she does not want to go and angry at you for it, or a daughter gladly become a nun and praying for your soul’s salvation all her days. Which will be better-for your daughter and for you?”

Mistress Lawsell’s jaw had set stubbornly while Frevisse spoke. There was no surprise in her answering, “We’re going home today. The matter can be discussed as well there as here.”

Frevisse guessed that Elianor had the right of it. Having failed of her purpose to put her daughter off thought of being a nun, Mistress Lawsell would put her under duress of one kind or another once she had her home, to force her to do as she was bid. There was nothing Frevisse could do about that. The girl was her mother’s. And somewhat more shortly than might be charitable, she said at Mistress Lawsell, “Very well. May God and St. Frideswide be with you both,” and left the room, leaving Mistress Lawsell to remember-or not-what St. Frideswide had done to those who had tried to come between her and her desires.

In her quick look around the hall, Frevisse did not see Elianor. Or Jack Rowcliffe. Elianor was very likely gone to the church again. Had Jack followed her despite Frevisse’s hinted warning yesterday?

But now that she thought about it, she had noted neither him nor his father when she first came into the hall. Maybe they were with Symond, or else had gone out somewhere-to see how their horses did or simply to stretch their legs. She was not so much concerned about where they were as with her desire not to have Jack to hand when she questioned Symond Hewet about the bill of obligation between them.

Breredon’s chamber was nearer than where Symond lay, though, and for duty’s sake, she went first to see how Breredon did, pleased to find him up and walking carefully back and forth in his room. To her inquiry he answered, “My guts still ache from the beating they took, but food and drink stay down me now. I’ll be ready to talk with your abbot or whoever else about having Edward out of here and away home with me in no more than a day or so, surely.”

He did not look nearly that near to being able to sit a horse, nor did Frevisse know if he was going to have his way about Edward when all was said and done, but not wanting to discourage him while he mended, she merely answered, “My lord abbot is seeing Sister Cecely even now,” and went on her way.

Fortune was with her. No one was with Symond except a man who must be his own servant among the men who had come with him and the Rowcliffes, and by the look of Symond, she judged it was surely a good thing he was not being left alone. He lay with his head barely raised on his pillow, his arms and hands slack along his body on the blanket over him, his skin the color and look of dough gone bad; and even though his eyes were open and he turned his head a little when she came in, she asked the servant instead of him if he was fit to talk a little.

“I am,” Symond answered for himself. His voice, though weak, was the strongest thing about him. “Does your infirmarian know what this is yet? Has anyone else fallen ill?”

“No one else is ill yet, no,” Frevisse answered. “Dame Claire is still trying to learn what it is. Or was. We hope it’s done.” All of which was true, without being all the truth, and she went straight on, to leave it behind her, “There’s something I must needs ask you, and you might want that I ask it to you alone.”

“Geffe is to be trusted to keep quiet if I say so,” Symond said. “What is it?”

For the seemliness of not being alone with a man-with two men-Frevisse had been standing in the doorway. Now, although no one was near enough to hear her if she kept her voice down, she took a single step into the chamber before saying, “It’s about the bill of obligation between you and Jack Rowcliffe.”

Symond made what passed, in his weakened state, as an effort to sit up. Geffe jerked forward to stop him, but there was no need. Symond’s weakness sank him flat again, even as he demanded with what strength he had, “How do you know of that?”

“I have it,” Frevisse answered evenly. “And the deeds that Sister Cecely stole.”

Symond closed his eyes and breathed, “Thank God and all the saints.” He opened his eyes. “Does John know?”

“I haven’t seen him yet, to tell him.”

“The bill. Don’t tell him of that. That’s between Jack and me.”

Geffe made a humph sound that Frevisse took for his comment on that.

Symond ignored him, and Frevisse said, “If the bill is only between you and Jack, then there’s no need his father know of it. But I would know what it’s about.”

“It was between him and me and Guy. It matters to no one else but us.”

Frevisse hesitated, then decided nothing would serve but the outright truth and said, very careful that her voice not carry out the doorway, “Dame Claire thinks neither you nor Master Breredon were honestly ill. She thinks that indeed someone gave you both some manner of poison.”

Symond stared at her, frowning, openly not understanding what that had to do with what he had said. Then understanding came. He startled with it, started to say, “Jack…” choked and began to cough dryly, so that Geffe came hurriedly forward, lifted him a little with an arm behind his shoulders, took up a cup from the small table by the bed, and held it for him to drink. When he was quiet, Geffe eased him down again, only then sending a reproachful look at Frevisse. She made a small shrug, silently saying that it was not her fault.

Eyes closed, Symond said, still somewhat breathlessly, “Not Jack. If anyone poisoned us, it was Cecely. Not Jack.”

“Why not Jack?” Frevisse said.

“No reason he should.” He looked at her to be certain she was listening. “He’s already paid back half the money, and neither Guy nor I would ride him hard to have the rest. He knows that. If he took fifty years, I wouldn’t ride him about it.”

“What was it for?”

“A woman, of course.”

Symond must have felt the weight of her disapproval bearing down on him because he gave a single short-breathed laugh and said, “Not that way, no. A widow in the village. A young and pretty widow in the village. He’d had some sport with her. Then she started to threaten him that she was going to claim he had promised her marriage. You know the tangles that can get into, if it comes before the church courts. Not adding on what his father would do to him for being so much a fool.”

“Had he promised her?”

“He swore to us he hadn’t and, knowing the widow, I’d take his word over hers. I don’t doubt he would have won clear of her in the end, but in the long run it would have cost him in more than money. So he begged Guy and me for help, to keep it all secret from his father. We helped him, and last she was heard of, the widow had used our money for a dowry, got a little shopkeeper to husband her, and is happy in Norwich.”

Needing to rest after all that, Symond closed his eyes but lifted the fingers of his nearer hand to tell Frevisse he wanted her to stay. After a few moments, without opening his eyes, he murmured, “It’s been to the good. Between the widow with him and Cecely with Guy, he’s learned the cost of sport with women.”

“And maybe that true dealing will cost him less in the end,” Frevisse said dryly.

Symond gave a single, silent laugh. He lay quietly a moment longer, then opened his eyes and said, frowning upward at the rafters. “Guy talked me into helping him. I wonder if that’s why Guy was so willing to help him-that Guy had learned his lesson but the hard way and was having to live it out, whether he would or no, and wanted to save Jack from the same.” He looked at Frevisse. “Poison?”

“Poison.”

“That would be Cecely.” He closed his eyes again. “Why she’d poison Breredon, I don’t know. But me…yes, she’d like me dead.”

Frevisse judged he was fading, would soon be to sleep, but she asked anyway, quietly, “Why?”

“Because I wouldn’t let her use Jack’s bill to extort money from me, maybe. She found it among Guy’s papers. Before he was dead or after, I don’t know. But after he was dead, she told me if I’d give her money, she wouldn’t tell John about it. Bitch.”

“But you didn’t pay her.”

Symond’s slack mouth twitched toward a smile. “I told her if she did anything of the kind”-His words had begun to slide apart as he slipped toward sleep-“I’d make trouble for her…like she’d never seen before.”

Frevisse took another step forward, trying to reach him for just a little longer. “You told her you knew she was a nun.”

But his breathing had evened into sleep. Geffe moved as if to warn Frevisse against waking him, but Frevisse knew better than to do that. She shook her head at Geffe to let him know his master was safe from questions for a while and started to leave, then turned back and, with no one but Geffe to see what she did, slipped the deeds and bill from her sleeve, took the bill, and held it out to him. He took it with a questioning look. Frevisse whispered with a small beckon of her head at the sleeping man, “For him. Tell no one else.”

Understanding sharpened in Geffe’s face. He was bowing in ready agreement as Frevisse left him.