The Prioress' Tale

Chapter 16

As Frevisse led Joliffe out of the church, willingly leaving Domina Alys to make whatever she would of the madman, Sister Amicia was already fending off Sister Emma and Sister Cecely’s attempt to go in with, “You can’t. I told you. She said no one. She’d be angry.”

Probably reminded by sight of Frevisse what Domina Alys’ anger could lead to, they passed quick looks among them and fell to an embarrassed silence that Frevisse gave no sign of noticing; nor sign that she saw their looks change again as Joliffe came out behind her, merely bent her head to them slightly as she passed. But behind her Joliffe said in a deliberately deepened, mellowed voice, “Good day to you, my ladies,” bowing low without losing stride as he passed.

Knowing too clearly what effect that would have, Frevisse walked faster, leaving Sister Cecely’s beginning giggles behind, saying at Joliffe without turning her head, “You’re not helping things here.”

“Of course I am. Now they’ll have something new to talk on.”

“They have something new to talk on. We have a madman in the church.”

“A cured madman,” Joliffe pointed out.

Frevisse was not ready to think about that yet. The complications that would come if it were true were too many. “I thought you were going to see him out of here and away yesterday.”

“I did. I thought I had. He must have come back on his own.” The protest was real, but then Joliffe shifted his voice to profound piety and added, “It has to be God’s will he’s here.”

Goaded, Frevisse swung around to tell him what she thought of people who invoked “God’s will” whenever they did not want the responsibility of dealing with things gone ill, but the sharp movement startled pain across her back and she went very still, waiting for it to subside.

Joliffe froze with her then said quickly, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”

She managed something toward a smile. “It was my own doing.”

“Then is it safe to mention that I think I’d rather not go out this way?” He nodded ahead of him toward the door into the guest-hall yard. “There are likely to be men out there who aren’t too happy with me at present.”

Chagrined she had not thought of that, Frevisse said, “The kitchen yard instead,” and started to go on around the cloister walk, meaning to let him out through the kitchen passage, but stopped short again-more carefully-to ask, “Your lute. Your other things. Are they somewhere the men could come at them?”

“There’s nothing of mine they can come at,” Joliffe said cheerfully. “Master Porter asked me last night if I would prefer his masons’ company to Sir Reynold’s, and the choice wasn’t hard. My lute and all are in the masons’ lodge and very safe.”

“Then you’d do better to go out through the orchard rather than the kitchen yard,” Frevisse said, thinking aloud.

“A quiet walk in an autumn orchard with a lovely lady,” Joliffe said. “Yes, that will do well.”

“I’ll go so far as to take you to the gate and see you out,” Frevisse said dryly, not to be drawn again. “You’ll have to do your walking on your own.”

They had come almost around the cloister to the slype, the narrow passage out to the walled path that ran along the gardens to the orchard gate. The other nuns’ voices were rising shrill, with Sister Johane come from somewhere to join the excited talk outside the church door, and Frevisse turned down the passage with relief. Joliffe followed her without comment or question, still a few proper paces behind her, through the slype and along the path to the gate, where she turned to face him again, saying, “The gate is locked and Domina Alys has the key, but I don’t suppose it will bother you to climb the wall.”

“Not in the slightest,” he assured her, his face alight with silent laughter. “Only tell me before I go, are those the women you’re penned in with all the time? Is it always like this?”

“It can’t be always like this,” Frevisse pointed out. “We’ve not had a madman in the church before and it seems to me that that was your doing.”

“But your prioress isn’t. God’s mercy, how did you come to vote her into office?”

“I didn’t,” Frevisse answered curtly.

Suddenly unlaughing, Joliffe agreed, “No. I don’t suppose you did.”

They regarded each other silently for a moment, before Frevisse said, “You’ll take word to Mistress Southgate’s people and our abbot when you leave here?”

“Assuredly.”

“I’ve no way to pay you for it,” she began.

Joliffe dismissed that with a hand over his heart and a deep bow. “I’ll do it for nothing else than the pleasure of thwarting your prioress. And Sir Reynold, too, come to that.” He eyed the wall, gauging its height. “This wall must be meant only for keeping nuns in, because there’s hardly enough of it to keep anyone out.” He stretched up a hand, easily reaching its top, then turned to her again. “If you need to see me before I’ve gone…”

“There won’t be any way for me to talk with you after this. Sister Amicia has to be with me whenever I leave the cloister, and after tomorrow I won’t be allowed out of it at all, and from now on, for a time at least, Domina Alys will surely keep the church door to the yard barred to protect her madman. You won’t be able to come in.”

Joliffe dismissed all that with a gesture. “There’s always the tower.”

“Yes,” Frevisse agreed. “There’s the tower. I can go to its top and call across the rooftops for you. Except there’s no way in for me.”

For a grown man, Joliffe’s smile could take on all of a small boy’s mischief. “Secrets, my lady. There are always secrets. You know those boards covering the doorway into the choir? If you take good hold of them on one side, lift a little, and pull, they swing open just wide enough for someone not too broad to go through into the tower. Then all you need do is go up the stairs inside and down the scaffolding outside and there I am.”

“Oh, yes,” Frevisse said, covering her alarm and sudden speculations-who else knew that, had used it, for what, and how had Joliffe come to know of it?-with mockery. “I’m likely to do that. Why isn’t there a secret door directly through the tower’s outer wall, too, and save the trouble of stairs and scaffolding?”

“Secret doors through stone are so difficult to manage,” Joliffe said, matching her mockery. “I gather the masons aren’t being paid enough to take the trouble of making one.”

“They weren’t paid to take the trouble of making this one!”

“From what Master Porter says,” Joliffe returned, turning away to gauge how much a scramble he needed to reach the top of the wall, “they’re not being paid at all for anything.”

“What?” Frevisse asked sharply.

Surprised by her surprise, Joliffe turned back to her. “You didn’t know?”

“That they aren’t being paid? No, I didn’t know. Surely they haven’t done all this building unpaid?”

“Assuredly they’ve been paid something or you’d not have as much of a tower as you do. But you’re not going to have much more. Wages aside, they’re nearly out of stone and your prioress doesn’t seem inclined to pay for more.”

Inclined-or able to? It was two Sundays since Domina Alys had allowed them their weekly afternoon walk in the orchard to admire how the tower went. It had been nearly to the church’s eaves then, a bulk of stone crowned by a network of scaffolding, and Frevisse had understood the plan was for it to be finished and roofed before freezing weather could bring an end to the work. But they had not been allowed near it that day or out to see it since; and now that Frevisse came to think about it, Domina Alys no longer said anything about the work except when forced to it.

“If they’re nearly out of stone and they haven’t been paid,” she said, inadvertently thinking aloud, “then-” She heard herself and stopped.

“Then you’re going to end up with an unfinished tower and some very angry masons,” Joliffe finished for her.

They regarded each other silently a moment, both of them considering what could come of that, before she said, subdued, “You’d best go.”

He nodded, made a small leap to grab the top of the wall, and with a deft-footed scramble was over and gone.

Frevisse stayed where she was, trying to sort into sense what Joliffe had told her and what had happened in the church and everything else she was becoming afraid of in St. Frideswide’s. But it would not sort to sense and finally, no nearer to quiet of mind, she walked slowly back along the garden wall and through the slype, into the cloister walk just as Katerin began to clang the bell for Vespers.

The day was almost finished. Vespers, supper, an hour’s recreation, Compline prayers, and it was done.

It was a day she was desperately ready to have end, and her impatience stirred at finding her way into the church blocked by other nuns clustered just inside the door, apparently more interested in being in her way than going to their places in the choir. But beyond them Domina Alys’ voice was raised, sorting them out in no uncertain terms, so that abruptly they were shifting aside, and Dame Claire and Bess from the kitchen were coming out, holding up the shambling madman between them, on their way to somewhere with him.

Moving out of their way, Frevisse asked, “Where are you taking him? Has Domina Alys given up on him? He can’t just be turned loose again.”

The madman raised his loosely hanging head and looked at her, the first time she had ever had chance to see his face clearly. Its lack of the unnatural childness so many of the wandering mad carried with them startled her. Instead, it was the face of a man who had had some sort of life worth living before the madness came on him; a young man’s face but marked by years lived, rather than wandered through unthinkingly. And there was more sanity in the eyes that looked out at her from under the strong-boned line of his brows than could have been there an hour ago; but only for an instant. Then they lost focus again, the brief sense in them blurring, and his head fell loosely forward as Dame Claire said, “Domina Alys has ordered he’s to have a bath, be fed, and cleanly clothed.”

“And then?” Frevisse asked.

“Then he’s to be brought back into the church.”

She and Bess had kept him moving, were past Frevisse by then, and she turned to go into the church. If he was to be brought back here to stay, it had to mean that Domina Alys was seriously thinking there had been a miracle. Frevisse wished she could feel some warmth of pleasure at that possibility, but just now all that rose up in her was a weary contemplation of the complications there could be from it. A miracle was not something simply to be accepted and exclaimed over. A seeming miracle had to be judged, considered, proven. There would have to be explanations to the abbot, even to the bishop, if it went that far, and then intense investigations by churchmen from outside St. Frideswide’s. Was Domina Alys seriously considering opening them up to all of that, particularly given everything else that was presently so wrong?

She was following the other nuns toward the choir when a smother of noise from the yard warned that Sir Reynold and his men were returned. She shut her mind to it as another thing she could do nothing about. Mercifully she was done with them for today, and after tomorrow she would not have to deal with them again. But as she passed Lady Eleanor, Lady Adela, and Joice, standing together with Margrete a little behind them in the nave waiting for Vespers, a heavy-handed pounding started on the west door and everyone swung in confusion to face it, with small shrieks among the nuns and Joice shrinking a wild step backward, except Domina Alys who stormed down from her choir stall, ordering, “Margrete, go open it!”

Used to being given orders, Margrete hurried to obey, with Lady Adela following her, as Lady Eleanor put a steadying hand on Joice’s arm, and Domina Alys snapped, “The rest of you, into your places! Whoever’s doing that had better pray he has a good reason or he’ll still be sorry a week from now!”

The nuns were still sorting out their exclamations and not yet in their stalls as Margrete swung the bar aside and Lady Adela pulled open the door. A wide swathe of golden afternoon light swept down the nave, startling the church’s shadows, then was broken as a man burst into the doorway, a dark shape against the light, crying out before Domina Alys could yell at him, “There’s a man hurt! Sir Reynold wants your infirmarian!”

“Is it Sir Reynold?” Domina Alys demanded, starting for him.

“Sir Hugh?” Lady Eleanor asked with equal urgency.

“Not them, no.” The man was short of breath with urgency. “It’s Godard. They’re taking him into the guest hall. He’s bad hurt.”

“Sister Amicia.” Domina Alys chose the nun nearest her. “Go tell Dame Claire she’s wanted.” She swung to find Frevisse. “You, hie to the guest hall and see to what needs doing there. You.” She pointed at the man. “Tell Sir Reynold we’re coming.”

The man was hurriedly bowing as he retreated. Frevisse, following him, heard Domina Alys say behind her, “There’s still Vespers to do, the rest of you. Dame Juliana, see to it. And no scanting!”

There were fewer men and horses in the yard than Frevisse had expected, but the servants, crowded at the top of the guest-hall stairs, trying to see in or go in all at the same time, slowed her. She gave orders that cleared them out of her way, sending some for hot water and to be sure the kitchen fire was kept up for more, another for towels, another for rags, the rest simply to stand aside, and all the while she was hoping this was not as bad as the man had made it sound.

It was.

Inside the hall, near the hearth, a half dozen of Sir Reynold’s men were gathered apart from Sir Reynold and Sir Hugh who were supporting a man between them more as if he were a deadweight than a live one. There was blood on the man’s right side and on Sir Hugh holding him there, and as a hall servant dragged one of the straw-filled pallets that served as beds for the servants and lesser guests on the hall floor at night to lay it in front of them, Sir Reynold and Sir Hugh looked at each other over Godard’s head, made silent agreement, and in a single concerted motion shifted their holds, Sir Reynold loosing him to bend and take him behind the knees and lift while Sir Hugh caught him by both shoulders from behind, so that together they swung him sideways and down onto the mattress. Godard cried out and his body spasmed with pain, but he was down and Sir Reynold let him go and stepped back, wiping sweat from his own face. Sir Hugh stayed where he was, kneeling with Godard leaning back against him, saying, “We have to have your doublet off. It’s better we do it now before we lay you down than have to lift you up again.”

Godard, his eyes shut, his face clay gray, groaned acceptance, and Frevisse turned away to find something, anything, that needed her across the hall.

Beyond telling Ela to have wine ready-“Dame Claire will want it to mix with what she’ll give him for the pain”-there was nothing except shifting the servants with naught to do clear of the doorways and well aside from Sir Reynold’s men and back from what was happening. There was no point in sending them away, but they did not need to crowd in on it.

By then Domina Alys was come, was standing with Sir Reynold away from his own men and the servants both, and Godard, with Sir Hugh holding his head, was stretched out flat on the pallet, the bloody leather doublet thrown aside but the wound still hidden by a wad of blood-bright cloth that had maybe been someone’s shirt. Sir Hugh was bent over him, saying something that was lost under Godard’s racked breathing, but Godard was still conscious enough to twitch his head in slight answer to it.

“Where’s Dame Claire?” Domina Alys said at no one in particular, then looked around, saw Frevisse, and demanded, “Where is she?”

Frevisse went forward, about to answer pointlessly that Dame Claire was surely coming, when Dame Claire was there, flushed and short-breathed with haste, carrying her box of medicines. With heed for nothing else, she passed servants, Frevisse, and Domina Alys to kneel beside Godard who opened his eyes and turned his head toward her with a desperate look. She laid a hand on his shoulder as if in reassurance she was truly there, spoke to him, then to Sir Hugh, asking questions. As she began, still questioning Sir Hugh, to loose the wadded cloth from his side, Godard shut his eyes and turned his head away.

Domina Alys, not heeding or else not minding that Frevisse and probably the hall servants were near enough to hear, asked at Sir Reynold, “What happened? Was it a fall? His horse went down on him?”

Sir Reynold made a disgusted sound. “It was some fool of a villein with a shovel. His side is all smashed in.”

“One of our people?” Domina Alys asked, sounding somewhere between disbelief and anger. “One of our villeins? Why? If it was one of ours, I’ll make the fool sorry…”

“There’s no making him more sorry than I have,” Sir Reynold said grimly. “I left him dead on his doorstep.”

Frevisse’s gasp was covered by Domina Alys‘, before, too disbelieving for anger yet, Domina Alys demanded, “You killed him? You killed him?”

Sir Reynold shrugged. “He struck Godard and I struck him. He’s dead.”

Disbelief was going to anger now. “You’ll have the crowner and the sheriff on your neck before you can turn around, if that’s what you’ve done! You’ll have them on my neck! And if he isn’t one of ours, he’ll have to be paid for!”

“No one is paying anything for his filthy carcass,” Sir Reynold answered harshly. “I gave him what he had coming.”

“He’s maybe not dead.” That Domina Alys was searching for a better side to it betrayed she knew exactly how much trouble this could be.

“He’s dead. I laid his guts open.”

Domina Alys tried a different way at it. “Why did he attack Godard? What was he doing? Where was this?”

“Some village. I don’t know.” Sir Reynold shrugged off the questions.

“One of our villages?” Domina Alys persisted.

Frevisse knew what she was trying for. St. Frideswide’s had property in more than one place. If the dead villein belonged to the priory, the whole thing could maybe be handled without the worst that could come of it, so far as Domina Alys was concerned.

“Not one of yours,” Sir Reynold answered impatiently. “Why would we be taking from one of yours? Where would be the sense of that?”

“Taking?” Dame Alys repeated blankly.

Sir Reynold flung a hand toward the outer door. “The carts are somewhere. They’re coming. That’s where most of the men are, guarding them. We brought Godard on ahead but they’ll be here. Food. Fodder. What you’ve been asking for. What I promised.”

Domina Alys grabbed his arm and jerked him around to face her. “What do you mean ‘taking’?”

Sir Reynold jerked loose from her hold. “They’re not likely to give it, are they?”

“Nor sell it,” said Master Porter from their other side, “because what good is money if there’s no food to buy with it once yours is sold?”

Frevisse had seen the master mason come in, sidling behind the gathered servants near the door and joining Sir Reynold’s men without drawing anyone’s particular notice. He was a short man, squared and solid as one of his own stone blocks and looking the shorter among the tall Godfreys around him, still wearing his coarse workman’s apron and with stone dust graying his hands, hair, and clothing to set him more apart, but he showed no sense that he was less than anyone there as he looked assessingly at Sir Reynold and added with what came perilously near contempt, “Not that you likely offered to pay.”

“There’d have been no point in my offering, would there?” Sir Reynold returned. Frevisse guessed that they had confronted each other before and not enjoyed the encounter. “And why pay when they give readily enough if they’re left no choice? Besides, it was only the one fool that gave trouble. Fifteen armed men in his yard and he tells us no. What did he think was going to happen when he did for Godard?”

“Eh, well,” Master Porter said, cocking his head, “people tend to take it badly when you go stealing from them when they don’t have enough to start with.”

“If they can’t hold on to it, why should they keep it?” Sir Reynold asked back sharply.

“So they can be alive come next spring to grow you some more! The starved dead won’t work. Or the unpaid,” he added at Domina Alys.

She started to answer, chewed air a moment, bit down on whatever she had been about to say, and turned on Sir Reynold instead, snapping at him, “That’s none of it to the point now. There’s no way we can keep the crowner and the sheriff out of this, and once they’re in it, the abbot will know and then the bishop, and what am I supposed to say about you being here and that girl and everything else?”

“There are ways around a thing like this,” Sir Reynold said dismissively. “Money does it. Your crowner in these parts is fond of it and probably your sheriff is, too.”

“Do you have money?” Domina Alys demanded. “I’d be pleased to hear it if you do, because I surely don’t!”

“If you’re so set on thieving,” Master Porter put in, “why don’t you thieve me some stone? Likely folk will part with that readier than food. As it is, this tower of yours is going no higher, that’s sure.”

Sir Reynold looked at him with sudden interest. “There’s building going on in Banbury. We could maybe-”

“No!” Domina Alys cut him off. “No more thieving! No more killing! There’s going to be trouble enough without more.”

From where he still knelt with Godard’s head in his lap, Sir Hugh said low-voiced, angry and showing it, “Take it outside if you can’t keep it down!”

Godard groaned. Only the men’s grip on him kept him from writhing away from Dame Claire. Domina Alys cringed and drew slightly back, looking away, then, as Godard subsided, she snarled at Sir Reynold, “There’s no good my being here. I’ve things to see to elsewhere. Tonight, when this is done…” She looked sideways at Godard as if she were caught somewhere between resentment and being sickened-or maybe she was resenting the sickened feeling, Frevisse disconcertingly thought; disliking weakness in others, maybe she hated it in herself. “… you come see me. We have to talk.”

“Alys, my girl,” Sir Reynold started, not pleased.

“You come,” Domina Alys said and left no space for him to answer by turning sharply around and shoving her way out among the men, giving them no chance to move aside.

Godard seemed only partly conscious now. There was blood at the corner of his mouth, and Dame Claire leaned back from him, holding up her reddened hands. In the white encircling of her wimple, her face was set with the tight-mouthed anger and grief she always had when someone in her care was beyond her help, when someone was going to die and she could not stop it. “Where’s Father Henry?” she asked tersely. “We need him.”

“Here, Dame,” the priest gasped, short-breathed with hurry, his black robe tucked up into his belt to clear his hosened legs, and the curls around his tonsure in more disarray even than usual as he pushed in among the men. They pulled aside to make way for him, going down on their knees, one after another, as they realized he was carrying cradled against his breast in his large hands the small gilt box that held the pax and other things needful for the safeguarding of the soul of a man closing in on the death. “We were out hunting, Benet and I,” he explained as he came. “We’re only just back.” He was not listening to what he said, too intent on reaching Godard to care whether anyone heard. Frevisse glimpsed Benet behind him, rough-dressed for hunting afoot, with a bulging game bag still slung over his shoulder. He stopped at the inner edge of the gathered men, carried that far in Father Henry’s wake but able to see now there was nothing for him to do except kneel with everyone else. Someone must have found him and Father Henry as they were coming in, and Father Henry had turned aside only long enough to fetch the pax from his room.

Already on her knees, Dame Claire was turned aside, washing her hands in one of the waiting basins as Father Henry joined her beside Godard. He looked at the torn hopelessness of the wound and drew in his breath. Dame Claire made a small gesture of helplessness and rose to her feet, saying, “There’s nothing else I can do except mix something for the pain.” She looked at Frevisse, who understood and rose to her feet to go and give the necessary order to Ela.

When that was done, there seemed no more purpose to her staying in the guest hall; she slipped away behind the servants and out.

Evening had come far on while she was inside. The yard was shadowed and far colder than it had been. A rich smell of distant fresh-turned earth told that the winter plowing had been started in the priory’s harvested fields, and she breathed it in deeply, trying to find comfort in the thought of harvest, of the year’s end and quiet turning of the seasons, each one bound around and through by work and prayers as ordered and unending as God himself. That was the right way of things. That was how a life should be lived and ended, with simple inevitability.

Not in anger and on a sword’s blade.

She bent her head in prayer. Not for Godard yet. What could be done for his soul was being done, and Dame Claire was readying what small ease there could be for his body. For him, beyond that, there was only the waiting. It was the other man who needed prayers, the man Sir Reynold had killed, the man who had died with all his sins still on him and no chance of priest or prayers.

Someone went past her, down the stairs, and she looked to see it was Master Porter, headed back to his men, she supposed. Without thinking, she called quietly after him as he reached the foot of the steps, “Why did you goad Sir Reynold and Domina Alys like that just now? You did it of a purpose, didn’t you?”

He faced around to her. They were alone in the yard; everyone else was in the hall, but he glanced around to be sure of it, then came two steps back up toward her and said quietly, “You’d be Dame Frevisse then, wouldn’t you?”

She nodded.

“Master Joliffe said you were too clever to be comfortable with and out-of-ordinary to be trusted.”

How very like Joliffe to make what could have been a compliment sound like something else, Frevisse thought.

“He says you’d no thought we’d not been paid this while.”

“No, none of us knew,” she said.

Master Porter nodded grimly. “That sounds like what I know of her. And that cousin of hers. I was goading them, right enough, hoping one of them would turn angry enough to order me gone. If she ends the contract, it looks better for me than if I have to do it.” He lifted his heavy shoulders in a resigned shrug. “But it didn’t work and I’m not waiting around for the trouble that’s coming next, that’s sure. We’ll be out of here tomorrow if we can.”

“Sir Reynold may try to stop you,” Frevisse warned.

“Aye. He might,” Master Porter agreed with a solidity that suggested it would be better for Sir Reynold if he did not, and with a bow went on his way.

Thoughtful about a man who seemed to see Sir Reynold more as an inconvenience than a threat, Frevisse went on across to the cloister. She could hear that Vespers was not yet over, but rather than go in to it, she chose to sit on the low wall between walk and garth, waiting for Dame Claire, who came soon, carrying her box of medicines, and did not question Frevisse being there but crossed the walk to set her box on the garth wall beside her. Because there seemed nothing useful to be said about Godard, Frevisse asked instead, “How was it with the madman? Was he badly hurt?”

“Only a bare scratch that bled too much, in the way of head wounds. If it doesn’t infect, he’ll not have trouble with it.”

“And his madness? How clear of it does he seem to be?”

Dame Claire made a weary movement of her head that meant nothing. “I didn’t see him before. I don’t know how he was.”

“He was mute and near to completely witless.”

“He speaks now and has at least some wits.” Dame Claire slowly drew in and let out a deep breath. “Domina Alys thinks it’s Sister Thomasine’s doing, that she’s made a miracle.”

Frevisse did not want to hear that. To have to deal with the abbot, even the bishop, if it went that far, over a possible miracle as well as with everything else now so wrong… It was more than she wanted to think about just now. She could see why a miracle would well suit their prioress at present, but it would mean questionings, investigations, doubts, and-from the readily satisfied- passions and even hysteria-all of it turning on Sister Thomasine, and how would she, unworldly and forever lost in prayers as she was, endure all that?

“It’s Sister Thomasine I don’t understand,” Dame Claire said, paralleling Frevisse’s thought.

“She’s frightened?” Frevisse asked.

“Not even slightly, so far as I can tell. But when Domina Alys told her to pray for the madman, she said she wouldn’t.”

“Sister Thomasine refused to pray?” Sister Thomasine was always praying. For her to refuse to… Frevisse found nowhere to follow that thought.

“Well”-Dame Claire sighed-“that’s probably the least of our troubles at present. Prayers or no prayers, miracle or no miracle, we’ll have the sheriff here before we have the abbot.”

Frevisse shut her eyes and, in trying to avoid that thought, said aloud what she had only meant to think. “Besides that-or maybe it’s part of it-she’s lied to us about the tower.”

“Lied? Who’s lied? Domina Alys?”

“There isn’t enough money to finish it. There was maybe never enough money to finish it. The masons are planning to leave because they haven’t been paid in weeks.”

“She wouldn’t lie,” Dame Claire said.

Frevisse opened her eyes and looked at her in unconcealed disbelief. “She wouldn’t lie? Why not, with everything else she’s done?”

“Lying is a sin. She wouldn’t do it.”

“She wouldn’t sin?” Frevisse said sharply. “Wrath and pride are sins and she indulges in them readily enough, you’ve surely noticed.”

“She doesn’t see wrath as wrath. For her, I think it’s rightful anger against our failings, the way God is angry at our sins.”

Shying away from equating Domina Alys with God, Frevisse asked, “And her pride? What’s that if it isn’t pride?”

“Love,” Dame Claire said simply.

“Love?” Frevisse stood up, her voice rising in protest. “Love?”

Dame Claire made a hushing motion at her. “You never try to see her without loathing anymore, but I do, if only for my soul’s sake. I’ve tried to see her as she sees herself and she loves St. Frideswide’s, she truly does. I think everything she does, she thinks she’s doing for the priory.”

“Sir Reynold is done for the priory?” Frevisse mocked savagely.

“She doesn’t willfully sin,” Dame Claire insisted. “She doesn’t knowingly sin.”

“And therefore she hasn’t lied to us over the tower because lying is a sin and she wouldn’t do that,” Frevisse said bitterly. “So let’s just say instead that she’s managed to leave a great deal of the truth out of what she’s told us!”

Before Dame Claire could answer, silence fell from inside the church, telling Vespers was ended, and with a shake of her head because there was no time for saying more, she took up her box of medicines and went away toward the infirmary, leaving Frevisse to go resignedly the other way and lie down, aching, beside the church door.