The Prioress' Tale

Chapter 4

Vespers was a welter of inattention and whispering, betraying how many of the nuns knew at least something about what had happened this afternoon. With more on her own mind than prayers, Alys made no attempt to hold them. Arguing had given an edge to her appetite and the sooner they were to supper and done with it the better, not least because she was supposed to see Reynold afterward. The matter of this girl was not settled between them, not by a long way, but they had both judged it best to finish their arguing somewhere besides in the yard for everyone to hear. Her nuns seemed to have heard enough about it as it was. Their minds were no more on the office than hers was, and the final “amen” was as much a relief as a conclusion. Released by it, Alys surged to her feet and out of the choir, headed for the refectory with the others crowding at her heels, but she turned at the door into the cloister to glare over her shoulder, warning them back and to less talk. She did not mean to listen to their chatter all through supper, either. Magpies and crows, the lot of them. Sister Thomasine was the only holy one in the lot. And if Dame Frevisse and Dame Claire thought she had not noticed them back there behind the others, their heads together, talking her down, they were wrong.

She knew what they were saying, too, and ill thanks to Reynold for it. What had he been thinking of, snatching mat girl and then bringing her here?

For that matter, what had the girl been thinking of, to let herself be carried off like that?

Nor was there any use in pretending that it would be enough, when her people came for her, to show, even on Aunt Eleanor’s witness, that no harm had come to her. They would want more recompense than words, and if they wanted it from both Reynold and St. Frideswide’s, then she would have the priory’s share out of Reynold’s hide.

More problems. More expenses.

She took her place at the head of the long refectory table and bleakly watched her nuns, still jay-jabbering among themselves, ease into their places along benches down both sides. The dull ache that seemed to be always at the back of her skull of late had a noticeable throb to it now, and not wanting their voices keeping it company through supper, she impatiently whacked her spoon on the tabletop, startling them to silence.

According to the Rule, they were supposed to be read aloud to at meals, something holy, to better their souls when they might otherwise be too concentrated on their bodies, with each of them taking a week’s turn at it, turn and turn around. No one much listed anymore. They had all heard the priory’s few books too many times already, could have recited them without looking if they put their minds to it, probably, but tonight, for a change, they could actually pay heed and keep their mouths for chewing instead of talking.

“Dame Perpetua,” she said. “Read.” Making it both an order to Dame Perpetua and a warning to the rest.

Sister Cecely, already leaning toward Sister Emma, mouth open to speak, jerked upright in her place, startled. The others cast warning glances at each other and held silent, even Dame Perpetua, until Alys jerked a hand at her to get on with it. Nervously, with an uneasy glance at the silent faces turned her way, Dame Perpetua did, taking up the Life of St. Katherine where she had left off at dinner’s end, with yet another of the emperor’s threats against her life if she did not marry him. Alys, satisfied, rang the small bell at her place to tell the serving women to bring in the meal.

The first of them to come, apparently disconcerted by the sound of only Dame Perpetua’s voice, hesitated uncertainly on the threshold. Alys gestured sharply to set her in motion again and the rest followed quickly enough, some setting the bowls of white pottage and the last third of each nun’s daily bread loaf at their places, others pouring warmed ale into the waiting goblets.

As they began to eat, Dame Perpetua reached the saint’s defiance of the emperor’s last offer to let her live. “ ‘No! Do not delay my dying further, king, but command it speedily! It is not appalling to see a thing fall that will rise a thousand times fairer, ascend from sorrow to everlasting laughter, from grief to every joy, from death to undying life!”“

Mopping a piece of bread into the pottage, Alys nodded in full agreement. St. Katherine had been a woman able to show men up for the fools they were and refuse their stupidities to their faces. The end had been what could be expected-they had killed her to stop her because nothing else would. But that was how martyrs were made, and by St. Katherine’s blessed bones, it was a better way to go than giving in to them and all their kind-the folly-ridden cousins and pushing abbots and bullying master masons.

Alys’ head gave a deeper throb. In her rage at Reynold she had managed to forget that Master Porter, the master mason, had been at her again this afternoon about when his men would have their money, but he would not stay forgot, unfortunately.

Or stay unpaid. Unfortunately.

She had set his ears back flat against his head right enough this time, demanding back at him what use had he and his men for money out here at the priory, away from everywhere, anyway? Pay them now and they would likely be off to Banbury and into trouble. Let them finish what they had started and then they would have their money in hand and be off to wherever they wanted and welcome riddance to them, but she’d have the work done first, by blessed St. Frideswide she would! And if he did not think so, let him remember she had her cousin and his men to change his mind for him.

He had backed off right enough then, and well for him that he had, but she doubted he would stay backed off, and most certainly he would not if she lost Reynold.

For that reason and several more she could not afford to lose Reynold, but he was making it difficult, with his half-kept promises and now this girl. What she truly needed was more money. With money enough, every problem would give way, from Master Porter right down to her silly women. The trouble was that there was not more money.

And even if there had been, she had no true wish to be rid of Reynold.

Grimly she chewed her way through the rest of the meal. While St. Katherine went to her joyful martyrdom, a bowl of apples, still crisp from the harvest, was passed down the table; and while a soldier was severing her holy neck, Alys watched Sister Cecely take open pleasure in peeling her apple in one long strip. Since waste was unallowed, she always ate the peel afterward, so why did she bother? But at least she ate it, unlike Sister Thomasine, who, when she bothered to come to meals at all, left half of whatever she was given to be handed off as alms to whoever showed up at the priory gate for it. That was piety but one that Alys understood no better than she did Sister Cecely’s apple peeling. Food was for eating, and how did it help if two went hungry when one of them had no need to? But that was how it was with saints. Pious but impractical, every one of them, and where were they then?

“ ‘And so the blessed maiden Katherine went crowned to Christ,”“ Dame Perpetua read reverently, ” ’in the month of November, on the twenty-fifth day, a Friday, near the hour our Lord gave up his life on the cross for her and for us all. Amen.“”

That was the familiar end. Dame Perpetua fell silent, then sighed, closed the book, and rose from her place with it clasped to her breast, to curtsy to Alys and then go away to the kitchen for her own meal. Alys, having contained impatience that long, rose to her own feet, the rest of the nuns with her. She ran them through grace, then stood eyeing them unfavorably, knowing what they wanted.

There was an hour’s recreation now, between supper and the day’s last prayers at Compline, and they were all eager to be off to make the most of it, to crowd around the fire in the warming room and let their tongues run away from their wits over everything they thought they knew about this afternoon, with Dame Frevisse to lead them on.

Briefly, bitterly, Alys considered ordering them to silence for the evening-or forbidding them their fire. That would curb their ways a little, give them something else to think on.

But suddenly they were not worth the bother. What she really wanted, besides to be rid of her throbbing head, was to not be looking at their foolish faces anymore and that was easily managed.

“Tell Dame Perpetua she’s to lead you in prayers at Compline,” she said curtly, and ignoring everything but the need to hide how much her head was hurting, left them with stiff dignity.

Outside, in the almost dark of the cloister walk, she let her shoulders slump and increased her stride so that she was well away toward her rooms before they came out of the refectory behind her, heading the other way for the warming room, already in low-voiced, eager talk.

Alys paused at the foot of her stairs, listening but not able to make out the words across the darkening cloister. She supposed she did not need to. They would be on about her and none of it to the good, likely.

Discouraged by the thought, she climbed the stairs to her rooms with heavy-legged weariness and the relief of escape.

She had not known when she became prioress how greatly she would come to depend on her rooms. The other women-just as she had all her years after coming to the nunnery, until she became prioress-slept in the dormitory across the cloister, each in her own cell, closed in by thin wooden walls and a curtain for a door, with a bed and not much else, but the prioress had two rooms for herself- bedroom and parlor all her own-and even a fireplace, the only one in the cloister except for those in the kitchen and the warming room. It gave her somewhere all of her own, somewhere away from all the endless demands and needs and envies turned on her for being prioress.

Envy. That was the sin that drove Dame Claire and Dame Frevisse on and on against her. They had both wanted to be prioress, had been counting on it being one of them when Domina Edith died, and could not forgive that the election had gone against them, that God had chosen her instead.

That was the thing she clung to at the end of days like this one. God had chosen her.

Standing in her darkened doorway, peering into the parlor’s gloom, where there should have been at least lamplight and, better yet, a fire on the hearth and wine set out, she demanded, “Katerin!”

A scrabbling near the fireplace showed Katerin was there. Alys took a step into the room.

“Katerin, where’s my fire?”

“Nearly,” Katerin piped a little desperately from the darkness. “Nearly.” The scrabbling went on, steel struck flint, and there were sparks and then small flames in dry tinder on the hearth, with Katerin’s earnest face leaning over them, red-cast in the dark as she blew gently on the flames, urging them alive, with a hand poised to the side with more tinder for when they were strong enough.

Alys had stayed where she was but now went forward to stand beside her, near the warmth that would soon reach out as the fire grew. Katerin glanced up with a pleased smile. Alys nodded back reassuringly. Katerin’s brain had been burned out by a fever when she was a child; she had spent much of her nearly thirty years following her mother around the village like a toddling infant, until, when the woman came to die, she begged, by way of Father Henry, the nuns to take Katerin into the priory.

“She’s cleanly kept and good at simple tasks. She’ll earn her keep,” Father Henry had said on Katerin’s behalf. “And it would be a mercy to her mother to know what’s going to become of her.”

For no good reason that Alys remembered now, except maybe to spite the distaste some of her nuns had shown at the thought of having a half-wit among them, she had agreed. As it had turned out, although Katerin had little to work with in the way of wits, what little she had was given over entirely to trying to please. Finding that if only an order was simple enough for Katerin to grasp, she never questioned or hesitated over it, Alys had very shortly made her entirely into her own servant. The only troubles were that an order had to be very simple, and that if Katerin felt she had failed or someone was angry at her, she panicked into complete incompetence. On the whole, it was easiest not to panic her by showing any anger, so Alys said nothing about her being late with the fire, only nodded to show it was all right and waited until Katerin had nursed the fire past kindling into flames licking along logs before saying, “That’s a good fire, Katerin. Very good.”

Katerin stood up, wiping her hands on her apron, smiling widely, and made a curtsy with much of the gladness a puppy would have shown for being patted.

“There’s something else I want you to do for me,” Alys said. Katerin bobbed her head eagerly, to show she was ready. She rarely spoke unless she had to, but she was always ready to do whatever was asked of her, if only she could understand it.

“I need you to go to Father Henry and Sir Reynold,” Alys said with careful slowness, giving time for the names to take hold in Katerin’s head. “You remember Sir Reynold?”

Katerin nodded willingly. It was a chancy thing what would stay in her mind and what slip away, but she always remembered Father Henry and Reynold seemed to stay more often than not.

“I want you to go to them and tell them I’m ready for them to come here. To come here now. You understand?”

Katerin’s nodding increased in eagerness to show she did.

Alys found she was nodding along with her, and stopped herself before saying, still carefully, “Go on, then. Go find Father Henry and Sir Reynold. Tell them to come here.”

Katerin curtsied, smiling with gladness for something else to do, and scurried away. Alys, with a sigh for her aching head and weary legs, sank into the tall-backed chair beside the hearth leaned her head back and shut her eyes.

Because there was occasionally need for the prioress to entertain guests apart or see to business better not dealt with in chapter meetings, her parlor was more richly furnished than anywhere else in the priory, with not only the fireplace and chair but another chair besides, almost as good, and a table covered by a richly woven Spanish cloth, and brightly embroidered cushions on the seat below the long window overlooking the guest halls’ yard.

And when the evening was done, there was her bedroom. Domina Edith had kept it sparsely furnished, with a plain prie-dieu and a straw-mattressed bed. Alys had been rid of the prie-dieu her first day as prioress, moving in her own that had been kept cramped in her cell until then. Elaborately carved to pleasure the eyes, thickly cushioned to ease the knees, it was to her mind much more the kind of prie-dieu a prioress should have. And the straw mattress had been replaced by a feather one as soon as might be, too.

Alys opened her eyes, not aware until then that she had closed them. This was not the time for being tired. The flames had good hold on the kindling now, feeding along its slender lengths and up into the larger wood above. Watching them, her elbow on the chair’s arm and her chin leaned into her hand, Alys tried to decide how she should handle Reynold and found she was thinking instead of Domina Edith, sitting here through all those years she had been prioress, watching other fires through other evenings, just as Domina Geretrude had done before her and Domina Hawise before that, back to the priory’s founding; all of them probably in this same chair, just as Alys now was and just as the prioresses who came after her would do.

Alys had had that thought before, other evenings, sitting here, and mostly took a kind of comfort from it that she never troubled to look at too closely. Looking too closely at things tended to lead to muddled thinking, she had found, and she did not need her thinking muddled. What she needed was a way to deal with Reynold tonight, and find more money for her priory soon.

They had always understood each other, she and Reynold; had always seen things straight on and from the same angle, with none of this wrongheaded fumbling about that most people called thinking. Most people could not think at all, needed their thinking done for them-or undone for them after they had made a mess of it-but it had never been like that for her or Reynold. They thought their way through to what they wanted and then went after it.

So why wasn’t he seeing how impossible a thing he was expecting of her about this girl?

And he wasn’t charming her into changing her mind. He always thought he could manage that whenever they disagreed, but this wasn’t a thing she could be charmed into and that was something she would have to have into his head before they had finished tonight.

The difficulty lay in doing it without losing him. She could not afford to lose him. She had told him the second or third time he had come to visit her this summer how much in need of him St. Frideswide’s was.

“Other places have patrons to benefact them. Why shouldn’t St. Frideswide’s?” she had said. “It’s for the good of the givers’ souls, and the better they give, the better for their souls.”

Reynold had laughed. “And next you’ll tell me that my soul needs all the bettering I can buy it.”

“You know about that better than I do,” she had answered austerely and he had laughed at her again, but he was the only person in the world who could laugh at her without rousing her anger and she had simply pressed on. “But yes, for the good of your soul, among other things, it wouldn’t harm you to help us.”

He could afford it. He had been a younger son without much to inherit, but he had found an heiress to marry and through her had come into property enough that he could lord it over the dozen or so knights and squires he liked for company. Alys, being a third daughter in a large family, had not had his chances, but she had won the gamble she had made in choosing St. Frideswide’s instead of marriage-she was prioress. But that was not going to be the end of it. There was more she wanted and she needed help to see her ambitions through to the end. Reynold’s help.

“But there won’t be an end to your ambitions,” Reynold had pointed out. “A tower now. A tiled floor later. A fountain for the garden after that. I know how it goes.”

She had not thought of a fountain until then, but all she had said was, “And is that so much when set against your soul safe in heaven instead of sent to hell?”

He had made her talk a great deal more, teasing her along, but come around to admitting she was right, that he needed heaven’s favor as much as she needed his help.

Not that it had come to much so far. So far he and his men had cost her more than he had brought in, and now he had saddled her with the problem of this girl; but at least he had brought food in today, too, as he had promised. He had done it last week, too, and once before that. It was a beginning. All she had to do was be patient at him.

She heard his laughter from below and Father Henry saying something and Katerin’s quick footfalls on the stairs as she hurried ahead to open the parlor door. Alys straightened in her chair. She would have preferred to deal with Reynold alone, but for decency’s sake Father Henry and Katerin would have to be here. By rights so should at least one of her nuns, but Dame Frevisse was undoubtedly telling them enough of what had happened in the yard this afternoon to keep their tattling tongues busy without one of them here to gather more for them.

Katerin came in smiling and stood aside to hold the door open. She did not need to but it was a skill she was proud to have and Alys let her. Reynold followed her, concentrating on carrying a fat, green-glazed pitcher with a linen towel laid over it.

“Spiced wine, cousin mine,” he said cheerfully. “To take the chill off both the evening and your humor.” He set it down on the table, crossed to her, and took her hand to kiss.

Trying to be gracious in return-you caught more flies with honey than vinegar-Alys let him and found as he stepped back with a grin, freeing her hand, that he had left a small leather purse in it.

“To show I’m sorry I’ve upset things for you,” he said.

She could feel the coins through the leather. A lot of them and goodly sized. Not gold surely?

“Only some of them,” Reynold said, as sure of her mind as if she had asked it aloud. “But some is better than none!” He swung away to the table. With Father Henry safely in, Katerin had left the door and was hurrying to fetch three of the priory’s six silver goblets from the carved aumbry against the far wall. She reached the table with them as Reynold did and he rewarded her with a smile that she returned, round-eyed and gazing up at him in a way that told Alys that even an idiot could go more idiot for a man’s smile. Why did women do that? Pleasurable it might be to have a man smile on you, but it was hardly worth giving up your wits for, though women did-even when they had no wits to give, like Katerin.

Reynold poured the wine with the same deft-wristed skill he had shown as a squire serving at her father’s table, raising and lowering the pitcher so the wine fell in long curves, ruby-glinting in the firelight. The goblets filled, he set down the pitcher, and taking up two of them, turned to Alys, asking as he held one out to her, “Will you drink with me, cousin? Despite you’re angry with me?”

She knew what he was doing-trying to buy her off with gold and charm. It would not work, she knew him too well. But that did not mean she would turn down the coins or good wine either, and she held out her hand, saying grudgingly, to show she was not giving ground, “I’ll drink with you.”

“There’s my girl!” said Reynold. “Angry but not unforgiving.” He came to hand her a goblet, and she took it, saying at Father Henry, “Take yours and go sit at the window, Father. Katerin, you stand by the door.” They were here for propriety’s sake, but they did not need to be near enough to hear what passed between her and Reynold. Father Henry understood as much and went where he was told. Katerin had no thought about it at all and obeyed as simply. Reynold pulled up the other chair to hers and the fire but did not sit, instead raised his goblet to her and declared, “To us, whatever comes of it!”

That was none so bad a wish and Alys drank to it, only to find when she lowered the goblet that he was looking down at her with a semblance of solemnity but a dimple showing beside his mouth, betraying him the way it always had when they were young and he was trying to deny a mischief.

“So, I’m forgiven?” he asked.

“Not yet nor by a long way,” Alys snapped. “Sit down.” Her head still ached. She refused to think about it, but that did not mean she wanted to crane her head back looking at him.

He sat and they eyed each other, their wine-warmed goblets between their hands, until Reynold leaned back in his chair with a deep sigh she did not believe came from as near the heart as he made it sound, and said, “So, what can we agree on about this girl?”

“Probably very little,” Alys returned without hesitation.

“It could be simple, if you’ll just let it be.”

“Simple for whom?” She did not wait for his answer but gave him her own. “She’s made clear she doesn’t want Benet, and beyond that she’s asked the priory’s protection. I can’t give her over to you or him.”

Reynold leaned forward earnestly. “Alys, be reasonable. If you keep her, there’s going to be trouble when her people and the Fenners find she’s here.”

“And that’s the real way of it, isn’t it? It’s not helping Benet to a bride you’re interested in, so much as doing down the Fenners.” But that was something she could understand and, more than understand, agree with. The Fenners had given the Godfreys trouble more than once over the years. Lord Fenner still held Godfrey property he had seized ten years ago, and neither force of arms nor law had been able to pry him loose from it. “It isn’t what you’ve done but that you’ve caught me in the middle.” She set her goblet down on the chair’s wide arm with exasperated force. “You shouldn’t have brought her here!”

“But I have brought her here.” Reynold spread his hands, appealing to her to see it his way. “Now let’s take the simple way out of it. If she’s fully married to Benet past redress before they find her here, there won’t be any trouble worth mentioning, from the Fenners or her family.”

“But she doesn’t want to marry Benet and I’ve given her the priory’s protection,” Alys repeated with what she meant for him to understand was dangerous quietness.

He did not. “The priory’s protection is yours to give or take as you choose, and what’s her wanting or not wanting Benet have to do with anything? She’s rich, Benet wants her, and if she’s married to him, no Fenner can have her. Give her over to Benet tonight-let your priest even marry them first, if you want-and I warrant you that come the morning, she’ll be thanking you for it.”

Alys’ face probably showed him he had taken the wrong way there because even as she started to open her mouth to answer him, ready to bludgeon such a quantity of stupidity out of his head-with words or otherwise-he rapidly shifted ground, leaned forward, and put his free hand on her knee, his voice dropping into warmth and urging. “Alys, let’s not quarrel over it. That won’t help anything. But what else is there to do? Because I’ve already sworn that she’s not coming out of here until she’s married to him.”

“Let him court her.”

“Court her?” Reynold echoed. He drew slightly back with surprise. “Court her?”

The way you do every woman that crosses your path, even so slight-brained a thing as Katerin, Alys thought but did not say it. “Court her,” she repeated firmly, enjoying his surprise.

Reynold made a short, disbelieving laugh. “Why? Why waste the time? Why not simply let him have her and be done with it?”

“Because I say so.”

They had neither of them ever lacked a temper and Alys could see Reynold’s rousing now, his face darkening with it as he said warningly, “Alys, I can have that girl out of here anytime I choose and there’s no way you can stop me, say what you want to.”

He could, and would care nothing for the consequences. Not her threats of God’s wrath, of fines, penance, episcopal displeasure, even excommunication if she forced him to turn the matter violent enough-and by St. Frideswide’s blessed veil she would before he had the girl that way. Alys had her temper, too, and was only holding it back because she was remembering one thing more than Reynold was. She laid her hand over his knee and squeezed it with what might have been affection but was hard enough to be a warning, too and said, “You could,” she agreed, “but you won’t.” And before he could ask why not, she answered, “Because Aunt Eleanor has taken her in charge, and whatever you might do against me or God, I doubt you’ll do anything against Aunt Eleanor.”

Reynold stopped, his mouth half-open, staring at her. They sat still long enough, in silence deep enough, for a log to pop and roll a little on the fire and Father Henry to grow nervous and clear his throat and Katerin to shuffle a little in the restless way she had when she did not understand what was happening.

Then a smile ticked at the corners of Reynold’s mouth. He tried to hold it in check, but it grew, forcing both his dimples into view, and he gave way to it, grinning openly. “You have me there, my lady. Of all things in the world, I don’t think I would care to go against Aunt Eleanor.” He pulled free his hand and sat back in the chair, still smiling but less widely, with a light frown of thinking between his eyes. More to himself than not, he said, “I wonder what she’s playing at?”

Before Alys could think of an answer, Reynold rose with abrupt grace, turning toward the table and the wine. “All right, then. Benet will come courting. Just don’t be blaming me if her folk and the Fenners come ranting to your gate and nothing has been accomplished. Now, about this mason of yours you’ve been complaining of. Is he still giving you trouble?”