The Hunter's Tale

Chapter 5

Although dawn’s cobweb-gray shadows were barely gone from the cloister walk, the day was already warm and promised to be warmer and Frevisse made no more haste than the other nuns as they left the cool inside of the church after Mass to go the short way along the roofed walk to their morning chapter meeting.

St. Frideswide’s was neither a large nor wealthy nunnery. It maintained itself but barely more and the room used in the mornings for the daily chapter meeting, where a chapter of St. Benedict’s Rule was read and matters of business and discipline were discussed, was a plain place, like nearly everywhere in the nunnery, with plastered but unpainted walls, a chair for Domina Elisabeth, stools for her nuns, a small wooden worktable, and nothing more. In wet or cold weather it served for the nuns’ evening hour of recreation before Compline’s prayers and bed, and in winter it was their warming room, having the nunnery’s only fireplace save for those in the kitchen and the prioress’ parlor.

Presently, though, the hour of recreation was a long summer’s day away and there was most definitely no need for warming. Instead, the door stood open and someone had already lowered the shutter from the window, letting in the soft-scented morning air and a long-slanted shaft of richly golden light from the newly risen sun. Nuns whose joint stools were in its way shifted aside and turned their backs to it with a scrape of wooden legs on stone, except Sister Thomasine went to stand directly in its brightness, her eyes shut, her face held up to the light. Sister Thomasine had always lived her nun’s life more intently than most did. Given her choice, she would have been in the church praying on her knees at the altar more hours of the day and night than not. There was even sometimes whispered hope among some of the nuns that she might prove to be a saint, and Frevisse-who only slowly over the years had come to accept her as other than merely annoying-granted to herself that for Sister Thomasine the touch of the sunlight was probably like the touch of God’s hand in blessing on her.

But then it was God’s blessing, Frevisse thought. All of life was God’s blessing, forget it though mankind might and ill-use it as mankind surely did. Sister Thomasine’s skill-or gift-was that she did not forget but lived her life in certainty of the blessing.

It made her very hard to endure sometimes.

“Sister Thomasine, sit, please,” Domina Elisabeth said. Already seated herself in the tall-backed chair that had served all of St. Frideswide’s prioresses through the hundred years since the priory was founded, she did not wait to be obeyed but leaned forward to say something to Dame Claire, the priory’s infirmarian, about an ache she had in her back. Sister Thomasine, with the same quietness she had given to the sunlight, sat down on the remaining stool, clasped her hands on her lap, and bowed her head to pray through the wait for Father Henry to put off his vestments and join them. Around her, the other nuns went on in steady talk. The rule of silence-that there be only necessary words within the cloister save for each evening’s recreation-had slackened in the years since Frevisse had entered St. Frideswide’s. She missed the quiet it had enforced but saw no sign that anyone else did. Dame Emma was explaining to Sister Margrett the value of cutting the kitchen garden’s green onions fine when for a salad while Sister Amicia tried to convince Dame Juliana there was no need to weed any herb bed today and Dame Perpetua and Sister Johane discussed some copying work they meant to begin.

Content to keep her own silence, Frevisse followed Sister Thomasine into prayer for the little while until Father Henry hurried in, rumpled and flushed with heat and hurry, his fair hair in unruly curls around his tonsure. In his time as the priory’s priest he had grown from young manhood into middle age and a certain stoutness of girth that came with the aging of a burly body rather than from sloth or self-indulgence. He never slacked his priestly duties to the souls in his keeping but he was not a deep-minded man; Frevisse had never found any spiritual challenge in him, only the challenge of putting up with the unfailingly simple goodness he brought to everything he did, until finally experience had taught her how deeply difficult “simple” goodness could be.

She rose to her feet with the other nuns and bowed her head willingly to receive his blessing for the day and found herself smiling to remember how she had struggled against that lesson. Humility, she too well knew, was a virtue to which she was coming only very slowly. Her smile, kept to herself by bowed head and the fall of her veil to either side of her face, went wry as she considered how much easier everything would have been if she could have started out wise and been done with it, instead of having to learn by effort and errors how far she still had to grow.

He finished the blessing.

Domina Elisabeth said, “Dominus vobiscum.” The Lord be with you.

They answered, “Et cum spiritu tuo.” And with your spirit.

They sat again, the opening prayer was made, and Father Henry read the day’s chapter from St. Benedict’s Rule, first in Latin, then in English, followed it with a short homily easily listened to-or not, in Frevisse’s case, despite her best intent. Then he blessed them and left and from there the chapter meeting went its usual way, with such complaints as any nun deemed necessary and the officers’ reports and confession of faults and giving of warnings or penance as Domina Elisabeth saw fit. Sister Amicia, presently Cellarer and therefore bound to worry over food, said someone had eaten so carelessly at dinner yesterday that they had wastefully left bread crumbs on the refectory floor. Domina Elisabeth gave warning that no one should eat so carelessly again. Sister Thomasine as Sacrist murmured that the silver polish was running low; Domina Elisabeth gave leave for Dame Claire to make more. Sister Margrett confessed to nodding to sleep during Lauds last night; Domina Elisabeth bade her say twenty-five mea culpas on her knees in front of the altar as soon as chapter was done.

When there seemed no other business to report or deal with, Domina Elisabeth looked around at them all and asked, “What of Lady Anneys and Ursula then? They’ve been with us a week and, so far as I know, have given no trouble. Is that so?”

Everyone looked at everyone else and there was a general shaking of heads that, no, neither Ursula nor her mother had been any trouble. “In truth,” Dame Perpetua said, “Lady Anneys has eased my work. She gives Ursula some of her lessons and has helped with the mending.” She frowned a little. “Although Ursula’s sewing has not improved.”

“She keeps to herself,” Dame Emma said. “Lady Anneys, I mean. She comes to the Offices, of course-all but Matins and Lauds and Compline, of course, and that’s understandable-and she brings Ursula with her, which is good, it spares one of the servants the task. But she doesn’t talk. I’ve tried with her more than once but she ‘saves her breath to cool her fingers,’ as the saying goes. I don’t think I’ve had more than ten words with her at a time…”

And if anyone could get away from Dame Emma with less than ten words, they had accomplished something indeed, Frevisse thought.

Domina Elisabeth raised a hand, stopping Dame Emma’s present outpouring, and smiled on them all. “I shall take it, then, that all is well there. There’s nothing else? Then it’s time to tell you that because today is St. Swithin’s holy day and because we well deserve it, too, we will have holiday this afternoon. Not merely holiday from duties either. I’ve provided for something altogether different for us.”

Sister Margrett forgot herself so far as to clap her hands and exclaim, “Oh! What, my lady?” with such delight that rather than rebuke her excess, Domina Elisabeth smiled and said, “You’ll see when the time comes,” but that was all she would say.

Morning tasks were not so well attended to as they might have been and at each Office of prayer-Tierce, Sext, Nones-only Domina Elisabeth’s sternest looks stopped the whispers running among Dame Emma, Sister Amicia, and Sister Margrett before the Office could begin, and when finally at their midday dinner’s end Domina Elisabeth bade them gather in the cloister walk, there was an unseemly hurry of scraping benches and fluster of skirts. Dame Emma’s stiffening joints kept her behind the younger nuns’ rush out the refectory door, but even among the older nuns who chose to put on a front of more dignity, no one lingered. Most days in the nunnery were much like other days. The most constant change was in the Offices themselves as their prayers circled through the seasons of the Church-Whitsuntide just past, then the summer and autumn holy days, on to Advent and Christmastide, Lent and Lady Day and Easter, and around to Whitsun again. The promise of something other than the ordinary was welcomed by nearly everyone, save maybe Sister Thomasine, who had to be almost shooed ahead by Sister Johane to have her out the door quickly enough.

They found Lady Anneys and Ursula waiting in the cloister walk, Ursula bouncing a little on her toes with impatient delight. Frevisse had expected a solemn little girl to return from her father’s funeral but she had not; nor had Lady Anneys shown any signs of deep grief, only a grave willingness to keep to her own and Ursula’s company. Today, though, they plainly both knew something of what Domina Elisabeth purposed because they were dressed for some kind of work, their gowns plain, Lady Anneys with simply a veil pinned over her hair, and Ursula’s long hair fastened up around her head instead of hanging down her back. But whatever Domina Elisabeth had in mind for them she did not yet say, merely nodded to Lady Anneys to walk beside her and, taking Ursula’s hand, led the rest of them along the cloister walk and through the slype, the narrow passage leading out of the cloister toward the nuns’ high-walled garden. Coming out at its far end, she turned not toward the garden’s gate but leftward along the garden wall to the usually locked back-gate into the orchard. Enclosed by a steep earthen bank, the orchard was nearly as shut away from the world as the cloister, and sometimes the nuns were allowed to have their recreation among the apple, pear, and cherry trees and the peaceful unmarked graves of former nuns under the long grass; but today Domina Elisabeth led them through the fruit-burdened trees to the always-locked gate in the short length of board-made fence closing the gap between the church’s north wall and the orchard’s earthen bank. There, as Domina Elisabeth brought out a key, even Dame Emma’s chatter stopped. Whatever else of nunnery life had eased under Domina Elisabeth’s rule, she still held her nuns to strict enclosure. To go outside the cloister walls was a rare adventure for most of them, and in silence they watched her unlock the gate. Only when she started to open it did Dame Perpetua say, faint-voiced, “We’re going out, my lady?”

“We’re going out,” Domina Elisabeth said and set the gate wide open.

Sister Thomasine started to drift backward and away. The times Sister Thomasine had been outside the nunnery since she had taken her vows could probably be counted on less than one hand, and given her own choice, she would never go at all; but Domina Elisabeth pointed at her and said firmly, “This includes you, Sister Thomasine.”

Ursula slipped away from her mother and around Dame Juliana to take hold of Sister Thomasine’s sleeve, looking up at her and saying with earnest assurance, “You can walk with me.”

One way and another, Frevisse had learned that Sister Thomasine did not lack courage to go out, merely inclination, but to Ursula it must have seemed like fear and her offer was a kindness that Sister Thomasine solemnly accepted by taking hold of her hand and following with the rest, the more eager nuns crowding to follow Domina Elisabeth and Lady Anneys through the gate into the board-fenced alley, the back way for the going and coming of carts and workers between the priory’s foreyard, with its byres and barns and all the business needed to sustain the nunnery’s life of prayer, and the nearer fields outside the nunnery’s walls. Domina Elisabeth went right, away from the foreyard and toward altogether outside, and the other nuns’ laughter and talk began to rise with excitation. Even Thomasine, drawn on by Ursula, was not last out the gate. Frevisse and Dame Claire were.

But they caught up to the others at the alley’s outer end where almost everyone’s eagerness faltered and they slowed and bunched together, some of them even stopping, discomfited after months of the closeness of cloister walls by the sudden distance of low-grown green fields of beans and peas stretching away to far-off hedgerows, with more sky all at once than could ever be seen above cloister roof or garden walls. But their uncertainty was only momentary. As Domina Elisabeth and Lady Anneys went on unbothered and Ursula pulled Sister Thomasine forward, everyone else’s pause turned to a rush to follow them along the cart-track running there, Sister Margrett asking delightedly where they were going, Dame Emma and Sister Amicia making guesses, and Domina Elisabeth smilingly refusing any answer.

It was Ursula who could not bear her own excitement. “Fishing!” she exclaimed. “We’re going fishing!”

“Fishing?” Sister Johane exclaimed with almost disbelief, and Domina Elisabeth said, laughing, “Yes. Fishing.”

To meet the nunnery’s constant need for fish for fast days, feast days, and every day, two square ponds had been made beyond near fields, with a stream diverted to feed them and alder planted around their banks for shade. Because their upkeep and expenses were matters discussed and dealt with in chapter meetings, all the nuns knew of them in detail, whether they had ever seen them or not, and because fish-ponds were part of almost every manor and therefore part of most of the nuns’ lives before they entered St. Frideswide’s, they knew about fishing, too. More, perhaps, than Domina Elisabeth did, Frevisse thought, because early afternoon under a high summer sun was hardly the best time for catching fish.

But actually catching fish was hardly the point, she soon decided. Village boys were waiting with rods, lines, hooks, and bait in the shade among the alder trees along the first pond, and the first squealing and protests over worms on hooks from some of the nuns and laughter from most of the others led on to elbowing and nudging each other toward the water, until finally shoes and short hosen came off and skirts were hitched above ankles and soon thereafter the inevitable happened and Sister Amicia was standing in the water, grimacing at the mud between her toes and laughing at the water’s coolness. Ursula, Sister Johane, Sister Margrett, and finally Dame Emma followed her, while those determined to fish went farther along the bank where their chances were hardly bettered by their flailing rods and jerking lines.

Faced with all of that, the village boys’ first stiff respect crumbled, and when Sister Johane and Sister Margrett began a splashing battle against each other and anyone else in reach, Colyn, the reeve’s younger son, gave up to laughter, rolling on the grass and holding his sides. So they splashed him, too.

Then Lady Anneys drew her skirts up through her belt and waded in, too, only barely avoiding her daughter’s fate when Ursula, leaning to splash water at Sister Johane, overbalanced and sat down with a great splash. Lady Anneys, backing away from her, stumbled and grabbed hold of one of the boys to keep from falling, both of them laughing as Ursula rose dripping and muddied to the waist, laughing, too.

Not long after that, Sister Thomasine, finally persuaded to cast a line since she would not wade, somehow and against all likelihood hooked a fish and even-with help from the boys-landed it, a large carp. Domina Elisabeth, paying one of the boys a farthing to run it to the nunnery kitchen, said,“’Tis not our Lord’s miracle of the loaves and fishes but assuredly a miracle nonetheless.” Which brought on more laughter.

The alders’ afternoon shadows were stretching long across the water and weariness was overtaking merriment when Domina Elisabeth called an end. While the boys set to gathering the fishing gear for going home, the nuns sat on the grassy bank to put on stockings and shoes again before beginning a slow walk back toward the nunnery, a very bedraggled Ursula holding to her mother’s hand and no one’s tired legs able to make haste despite the time for Vespers was nearing. The church’s gray-lead roof showed dully above the orchard’s trees, reminder that the cloister was waiting to close them in again, and as they reached the outer gateway, Frevisse saw Sister Margrett look back across the green fields toward the deeper green of distant trees under the richly blue, high-arching sky, her young face showing a mixture of longing and puzzlement that Frevisse understood. They had taken pleasure in that world today but now were going to shut themselves away from it again, away from all its possibilities-away from the places they would never have chance to go and people they would never have chance to meet.

That was a thing a girl or woman understood when she chose to become a nun, and by the time she came to take her final vows, she understood it even better; but no one ever fully understood it until she had lived in it, year around into year after year, knowing it was for all the rest of her life. For a very few, like Sister Thomasine with her desire for nothing except God, the life absorbed them utterly. Others were content enough, accepting where they were and willing to be satisfied with it. Most, alas, were never so easily one way or the other and sometimes old longings would return, whether wanted or not. Frevisse was, mostly, past them herself, but she understood Sister Margrett’s momentary longing. And then Lady Anneys, probably to help Ursula’s dragging feet along, began to sing, swinging her daughter’s hand, “Hand and hand we shall us take, And joy and bliss we shall us make…” And in ones and twos the nuns joined in until they were all singing, some more tunefully than others but with no one’s feet quite so heavy as they had been and Sister Margrett as happily as everyone else, all sign of other longing gone.

They were to the orchard gate when a boy came running along the alleyway from the priory’s foreyard and Dame Juliana said, “It’s Sim from the guesthall. Sim, is there trouble?”

Flushed with hurry and the importance of bearing a message, he said, “There’s a man been waiting this while at the guesthall, my lady. My lady,” he added with a bow to Domina Elisabeth. “Ela said to tell you he’s someone come to see Lady Anneys. Ela said…”

Lady Anneys took a quick step forward, anxiously asking, “One of my sons?”

“Mistress Ela said to say he’s John Selenger?” the boy said questioningly.

The mingled hope and worry in Lady Anneys’ face changed to something less easily read. “Yes,” she agreed. “John Selenger. He’s our neighbor’s steward.”

“You’ll see him?” Domina Elisabeth asked.

“I’d best.” Though by her look she would rather not. Then she added with deliberately lightness, “He’s probably brought some word from home. That’s all.”

“Bid Ela see him to the guest parlor,” Domina Elisabeth told Sim, adding as he made to dart away, “There’s no need for haste. We’ll be making none.”

Nor did they. Indeed, Domina Elisabeth, having seen everyone through the gate and on their way across the orchard, followed only slowly, somewhat behind them all when Lady Anneys gave Ursula’s hand to Dame Perpetua and fell back to her side to say, “By your leave, my lady?” in a quick, low voice that Frevisse heard only because she was side by side with Dame Claire a little ahead of them.

“Yes?” Domina Elisabeth said.

“May one of your nuns be with me in the parlor while I talk with Master Selenger?”

Domina Elisabeth was quiet a moment, then began, “If you’re afraid of this man…”

“No,” Lady Anneys said quickly. “Not that. I’m not afraid of him. Only I’d rather not… see him alone.”

Frevisse had only time to begin to wonder why not when Domina Elisabeth said, “Dame Frevisse, come here, please you.”

Thus, simply because she had been near when Domina Elisabeth had need of someone, Frevisse went with Lady Anneys-once they were inside again and had washed hands and faces and straightened veils-around the cloister walk with Lady Anneys to the small, bare room near the outer door where nuns met any visitors they might have; and while they went, Lady Anneys said, “This man. This Master Selenger. I’ve nothing against him. But… since my husband’s death he’s… shown interest in me. I don’t want his interest. That’s… why I want someone with me.”

“Of course,” Frevisse murmured, readily able to suppose that in all likelihood this Master Selenger was too old or too young or too ill-favored or too obviously intent on Lady Anneys’ dower properties, and that Lady Anneys had yet to find a way to turn him away without giving offense; but when she followed Lady Anneys into the parlor, the man standing there in the middle of the room was neither aged nor ill-favored and his deep bow to them was both graceful and gracious.

That left only the likelihood that he was ambitious rather than amorous, Frevisse thought dryly, as Lady Anneys answered his questioning look with, “It’s hardly suitable I talk alone with a man inside the cloister, Master Selenger.”

Since Lady Anneys was under no vows, that was not true, nor had there been any reason except her own choice for not seeing him in the guesthall, and by his slight frown Frevisse guessed Master Selenger knew as much. But then, very likely, Lady Anneys had known he knew it and this was simply her quiet way of saying she did not want to see him alone while leaving him no choice but to accept that or else to argue with her. He chose to accept it, slightly bowing his head to Frevisse, who bowed hers in return while Lady Anneys asked, “Is everyone well at home? You’ve brought no ill news?”

“Everyone’s well. There’s no ill news, my lady. Will you sit?”

The room had only a small square table, a bench, and three stools. Master Selenger gestured toward the bench. Lady Anneys refused with a curt shake of her head and insisted, “Everything’s well?”

Her curtness was just barely short of unmannerly but Master Selenger kept his smile and assured her, “Very well, save that Lady Elyn and Lucy don’t go on as well together as they might.”

Lady Anneys gave a tight laugh. “They haven’t gone on well together since Lucy was born. I only insisted she stay with Elyn because she’d trouble her brothers even worse. Has there been any word from the crowner?”

Her change from Elyn and Lucy left Master Selenger behind her. “The crowner?” he repeated blankly, then caught up with, “No, no word. Nothing has been found out.”

“Nor anyone?” Lady Anneys said.

“Nor anyone.”

“Nor any word when the escheater will come?”

“No word of that either. There won’t be any trouble over it, whenever it’s held, though.”

“I’m not supposing there will be. Haven’t you brought me any messages from anyone?”

Master Selenger paused at his answer before finally saying, “I didn’t tell anyone I was coming here.”

Lady Anneys stared at him in surprise and coldly, and said nothing.

Master Selenger ended the uncomfortable silence with, “You could ask me how I come to be here.”

“I could,” Lady Anneys answered, cold as her look. “I presumed you had business this way.”

Master Selenger hesitated, his eyes flickering toward Frevisse still standing in the doorway. She had deliberately taken her “I’m not here” stand beside the doorway, her hands tucked out of sight into her opposite sleeves and her head bowed-though not so far that she could not see, with a little upward look through her lashes, everything happening there. She saw Master Selenger make up his mind and return his gaze to Lady Anneys to say, “My only business this way was with you.”

His directness gave Lady Anneys pause. She might even have wavered, between one heartbeat and another, in her sharpness at him; but if she did, it was for no longer than that and she said, still sharply, “My thanks for letting me know that all’s well and may you fare well on your ride home. Dame Frevisse and I have to ready for Vespers now. God go with you.”

She was drawing back from him, turning toward the door as she spoke. Master Selenger put out a hand to stop her, protesting, “My lady…”

Lady Anneys kept going, repeating more firmly, without looking back, “God go with you, Master Selenger.”

As taken aback by the suddenness as Master Selenger was, Frevisse stepped aside, out of her way. Master Selenger moved as if to follow her out the door but with a quick gathering of her wits Frevisse stepped back into his way and said, “I’ll see you out, sir, if you will.”

He stopped, looking past her with confusion and an edge of understandable anger, but Lady Anneys was already out of sight, heading along the cloister walk toward the room she shared with Ursula; and he gathered himself and answered Frevisse with at least outward good grace over whatever else he was thinking, “If you would be so good, my lady, yes, I’ll go now.”

Frevisse led him in silence to the door to the guesthall yard. Only as she opened it for him did she ask, very mildly, “You’ll stay the night and leave in the morning?”

Gone somewhere in his own thoughts, her question seemed to take him by surprise and he answered with something of Lady Anneys’ sharpness. “What? Yes.” He recovered and said more evenly, “Yes. I suppose so. In the morning. Thank you, my lady,” and went out.

And yet the next morning at Tierce, when he might have been supposed to be well on his way homeward, he was still there.

Frevisse, intent on readying her mind for the Office as the nuns settled into their choir stalls, half to either side, facing each other across the choir, would not have known it except Sister Johane whispered rather too loudly to Sister Amicia, “He’s there again. I told you he would be. Look. He’s watching her.”

A slight clearing of Domina Elisabeth’s throat stopped anything Sister Amicia might have answered, but Frevisse slightly turned her already bowed head and slid her eyes sideways to look past the edge of her veil down the length of the church. The nuns had mentioned among themselves at chapter meeting that neither Lady Anneys nor Ursula had been at Prime or Mass this morning. Frevisse, after supposing to herself that Lady Anneys had probably chosen not to chance meeting Master Selenger again before he left, had forgotten it. Now her careful look told her both Lady Anneys and Ursula were there in the nave, standing not far beyond the choir with the few of the nunnery servants that came now and again to Offices. And that Master Selenger was standing not far behind them.

Domina Elisabeth set the Office firmly on its way by saying in her clear, determined voice, “Pater noster, qui es in caelis…”-Our father, you who are in heaven…-and her nuns obediently followed her into the prayer.

Domina Elisabeth took a workmanlike approach to the Offices and every other service due to God and his saints, believing-as nearly as Frevisse could tell-that God and his saints would in return see to the priory’s well-being-fair pay for fair work, as it were-and indeed St. Frideswide’s was prospering compared to what it had been; but there were still times when Frevisse greatly missed Domina Edith, prioress when she first entered St. Frideswide’s. For Domina Edith, the Offices’ beauty and passion had been a way to deepen her own and her nuns’ devotion, a way to bring them nearer to God. There had been none of the “I give you thus and you give me so in return” that seemed to be Domina Elisabeth’s way. Instead Domina Edith had tried for as full a giving of herself as was possible, in the hope of growing to be worthy of God’s great love.

Much of what Frevisse understood of nunhood had come from her, but Domina Edith had been dead these twelve years, and at least it could be said that under Domina Elisabeth’s careful governance no one was allowed to scant their prayers. The chant rose, “Nunc, Sancte, nobis, Spiritus, Unum Patri cum Filio…”-Now, Holy Spirit, one with the Father, with the Son…-and Frevisse gave her full heed to that and for the while forgot all else, until at the ending Amen Domina Elisabeth promptly closed her breviary and rose to her feet.

Her nuns did likewise and, two by two, made procession from the choir and out the church’s side door into the cloister walk in a busy bustle. There Domina Elisabeth briefly blessed them and left them to scatter to whatever tasks they might do in the while before Sext. The day was bright and dry and warm again, and minded to work at her copying, Frevisse went the little way along the walk to the desk she used among the five set endwise there to the church’s wall for the sake of the best light. The half-filled page she had been working on before Tierce was waiting for her, but rather than sitting down, she stood looking back to the church door, waiting to see Lady Anneys come out.

The servants came. And Ursula, led by Malde from the kitchen, whose grip on her hand was just short of an open struggle as Ursula twisted to pull free.

“Malde,” Frevisse said. “What’s the matter?”

Not letting go of Ursula, Malde stopped and started to say something. But Ursula said fiercely past her, still pulling to be loose, “He gave her money and told her to take me away so he could talk to Mother. Mother doesn’t want to talk to him. Let me go.”

She wrenched hard and it might have turned to tussling but Frevisse said, moving toward them, “I’ll see to it, Ursula. Go on with Malde. Malde, I’ll talk with you later about this.”

Malde looked suddenly uncertain she had been paid enough for that, but Frevisse went past her and Ursula to the door still standing open into the church. Yesterday Lady Anneys had made it plain to Master Selenger she had no wish to talk with him anymore. If she had changed her mind today, then Frevisse would discreetly withdraw but…

She was not even a single pace inside the door before she knew Lady Anneys had not changed her mind. Standing much where she had been during Tierce, she was turning away from whatever Master Selenger had said to keep her there, saying at him angrily, “There’s no use to this. Leave me alone.”

He reached out and caught her by the arm. “Lady Anneys, listen…”

“Sir?” Frevisse said, bland as if blind to what was happening. “My lady?”

Master Selenger let go his hold so suddenly that Lady Anneys, still pulling back from him, stumbled. He caught her arm again to steady her, but as fierce as Ursula had been against Malde, she jerked free again, turned her back on him, and said with open anger to Frevisse, “Master Selenger was just making his good-byes. He’s leaving now.”

“I’m certain he is,” Frevisse agreed, staring coldly at him as she moved forward to Lady Anneys’ side. “The Lord’s blessing on your going, sir.”

She made that more of a command than a blessing, and Master Selenger’s face was flamingly red and stiff with things unsaid as he bowed rigidly first to her, then to Lady Anneys’ back still turned firmly to him. He opened his mouth as if to speak, decided against it, swung around, and left, going at a swift walk down the nave and out the church’s west door to the guesthall yard without looking back.

Frevisse and Lady Anneys stayed where they were. Only when the heavy door had thudded shut behind him and the church was safely empty did Lady Anneys turn to Frevisse. A tear was sliding down one cheek and her voice shook a little as she said, “This mustn’t be talked about. I pray you, Dame Frevisse, say nothing about it to anyone. If anyone-anyone-asks if anything passed between Master Selenger and me, tell them what you saw. That he wanted to keep me here against my will and I was trying to leave. That yesterday I encouraged him to nothing.”

“I will,” Frevisse promised, since all that was nothing more than the truth.

Lady Anneys wiped at the tear, seeming angry it was there; shut her eyes and pressed her fingers to them to stop more from coming.

Carefully, Frevisse said, “Cry if need be. There’s no one here to mind.”

Lady Anneys dropped her hands and opened her dry eyes, refusing both the offer and more tears. “I would mind.”

“It’s sometimes best to cry and be done with it.”

“If once I started,” Lady Anneys said, “I might never be done. There are too many in me that I never shed. My late, damned husband would have treasured every one he ever forced from me, so even now I won’t give them to him.”

Frevisse had long since judged that Lady Anneys was hardly in mourning for her husband, but the hatred naked in Lady Anneys’ words and voice surprised her enough she showed her surprise, and Lady Anneys said bitterly, “Oh, yes, I hate him. I didn’t dare while he was alive, but now that he’s dead and I’m free of him, I hate him very, very much. That’s one of the reasons I needed to be here, away from everything. I need this time to pray and purge myself of him.”

She had said “one of the reasons,” Frevisse noted but did not ask the others, only offered, “Do you want I should leave to your prayers now?”

Lady Anneys looked uneasily the way Master Selenger had gone.

“I’ll see that he’s left or that it’s understood he’s to go before I do anything else,” Frevisse said. Under St. Benedict’s Rule, the priory was required to receive such guests as God might send them. That did not mean they had to put up with those who spoiled their own welcome by making trouble.

“Yes,” Lady Anneys said. “Yes. Thank you. If I know he’s gone… yes, I ’d like to pray for a while. But…” She hesitated, then asked, “No questions? No wanting to know anything else?”

“I may want to know,” Frevisse said in all honesty, “but I don’t think you want to tell me.”

That surprised a half-unwilling laugh from Lady Anneys. “I don’t, no. Thank you.”

“But if sometime you do, I’ll listen. And still not ask questions if you don’t want them.”

Lady Anneys regarded her in searching silence for a moment, then slightly bowed her head in thanks again. “If the time comes, I’ll remember.” She drew back a step, looking toward the altar. “For now, though, I think prayer will suffice. By your leave, my lady.”