The Prioress' Tale

Chapter 7

The morning went on with an outward calm that did not match the disquiet of Frevisse’s thoughts. Near time for Sext, as she passed along the east side of the cloister walk with a book Dame Perpetua had asked her to fetch from the book chest in the storeroom above the sacristy, she glimpsed Benet following Margrete along the cloister’s other side, toward the stairs to Lady Eleanor’s chamber. She could not clearly see his face, but he walked more like someone being led where he did not want to go than like a hopeful lover.

She wondered what he thought of the choices being made for him and waited until he and Margrete were gone before she went on around to the small room that Dame Perpetua used as her schoolroom and was not surprised to be met at the door by Lady Adela’s bright face looking up at her eagerly and not, Frevisse suspected, because of the book she carried.

As the priory’s precentress as well as sacristan, Dame Perpetua was charged with tutoring their novices, when they had any, and any children boarded with them, which presently was only one, little Lady Adela, Lord Warenne’s daughter. She had been in St. Frideswide’s four years now, was ten years old-or was she eleven?-and aside from reasonably regular payments toward her keep, there was no sign her father had thought about her at all since sending her there. He had sons and another daughter, and so little Lady Adela, perhaps unmarriageable because of a malformed hip, was not a vital matter to him. There was an occasional murmured hope by Dame Perpetua and others that he would decide she should become a nun, but Frevisse had never seen any great turn toward devotion in Lady Adela despite her years in St. Frideswide’s. Not that that would matter- except to Lady Adela-if her father decided on nunhood for her, but assuredly just now a prayerful life was the farthest thing from the child’s mind as she asked eagerly, leaning out the door to look along the walk the way Benet had gone, “Is that who carried off Mistress Joice? Is that him?”

“Is that he?” Frevisse corrected without thought.

Lady Adela did not care. “It was, wasn’t it?” she insisted.

“It was,” Frevisse agreed.

“Lady Adela,” Dame Perpetua said from behind her, “you were told to stay in here. The young man is no concern of yours. Of ours.”

“I’m in,” Lady Adela protested. “Most of me.”

Most of her except her head and shoulders and almost down to her waist as she craned out the doorway, still looking along the empty walk in the clear hope of another glimpse of Benet.

“Lady Adela,” Dame Perpetua repeated.

“He’s gone,” Frevisse said firmly.

Lady Adela sighed and regretfully straightened back into the room.

Frevisse followed her in. Dame Perpetua was beginning to find it difficult to keep the child sufficiently occupied. Lady Adela’s reading and conversation in both English and French were as good as almost anyone in St. Frideswide’s. Dame Perpetua had reached the end of what she could teach her of mathematics. Dame Claire’s lessons on herbs and healing were only occasional. She could not be kept at needlework or spinning all day, every day, or be left out to play in the garden. Dame Perpetua had turned to Latin.

She had already given the child the rudiments of it, sufficient for her to find her way through the breviary and prayers. Now she had decided to go further and asked Frevisse to bring her the priory’s one collection of Latin works, a volume of extracts from the most profound of the church fathers. Frevisse had sometimes labored at that particular book over the years and she felt a momentary sympathy for Lady Adela as she laid the fat, dull-bound book on the table in front of her. Then, seeing the set look of loathing on Lady Adela’s face as she looked at the book, she thought that possibly her sympathy should go to Dame Perpetua because the girl’s narrow-eyed look did not bode well for her dealings with St. Augustine and the other church fathers, or anyone who tried to force them on her. Lady Adela was a sweetly featured, rose-and-cream-fair child who rarely gave overt trouble. She was mostly biddable but only, Frevisse had discovered in the past, to a point, and it seemed that Dame Perpetua might have reached that point.

Happily oblivious, Dame Perpetua directed, “Say thank you to Dame Frevisse.”

“Thank you, Dame Frevisse,” Lady Adela obligingly echoed but her eyes strayed to the door, betraying what interested her more as she said wistfully, “I wouldn’t mind being carried off by him.”

“Yes, you would,” Dame Perpetua corrected her.

Frevisse left them to it.

During Sext she nearly managed to escape the troubled turning of her thoughts, losing herself in the lovely complexity of the prayers and psalms that even Domina Alys seemed almost concentrating on for once; but as they neared the end there was a wild shout of men’s voices from above and then the thunderous crash of stone falling inside the tower and shattering as it hit bottom close behind the boarded doorway.

With screams and exclaims, all of the nuns except Sister Thomasine sprang to their feet. Sister Emma began to sob and Domina Alys slammed her prayer book shut. “That’s it for them! I’m not paying them to smash my stone to bits. Sit down!” she directed as she lunged out of her own choir stall and toward the boarded doorway. With both fists she pounded on its reverberating wood and yelled upward, “You come down and meet me in the orchard, Master Porter, and I mean now! Don’t think you’ll hide by perching up there on your undone, worthless, miserable tower like some broody-minded bird! You come down now! To the orchard!”

Without so much as a glance back at her nuns, she stormed down the church toward the shortest way around into the orchard. Overhead men’s shouting still mixed with curses but without the desperate yelling there would have been if anyone had been hurt. In the choir, no one had sat down at her command. Sister Emma’s sobbing was straggling away to silence, but Sister Amicia and Sister Cecely were tentatively beginning to giggle.

Sister Thomasine, unmoving until then, stood up and in her clear, light voice took up the office where it had been broken off. “Domine, exaudi orationem meam.” Lord, hear my prayer.

She should have been answered then by the nuns across the choir from her with the next line of the prayer. Instead Sister Emma hiccuped on a final sob and began to giggle, too.

Frevisse, staring across at Sister Amicia and Sister Cecely and belatedly following Sister Thomasine’s lead, declared forcibly, “Et clamor meus ad te veniat.” And let my cry come to you.

Sister Thomasine promptly answered; and unevenly Dame Claire, Dame Perpetua, Dame Juliana, and even, at the last, Sister Johane joined in, carrying the office through the short way to its end, over the other nuns’ now smothered but unstoppable laughter. They had reached, “… per miseri-cordiam Dei requiescant in pace. Amen”-through the mercy of God rest in peace-when shouting that was unmistakably Domina Alys’ and certainly Master Porter’s erupted from somewhere near outside. Mercifully, the words were incomprehensible, but Sister Emma, Sister Amicia, and Sister Cecely lost their little remaining control over their laughter. It pealed out despite their hands over their mouths, and hastily Dame Juliana, exercising her duty in the prioress’ absence, closed the office, exclaiming rapidly, “Et ne nos inducas in tentationem.” And do not lead us into temptation.

Dame Claire, Dame Perpetua, Frevisse, Sister Thomasine, and Sister Johane followed hurriedly with, “Sed libera nos a malo”-But free us from evil-and crossed themselves in an uneven flurry.

Outside, Domina Alys and Master Porter’s voices rose into a greater height of rage. Sister Emma, Sister Amicia, and Sister Cecely, giving up completely to their laughter, collapsed into their seats. Frevisse and the others escaped the choir and then the church with more haste than grace, stood briefly together in the cloister walk looking at each other with nothing to be said, and then went their ways.

Frevisse, with a curiosity she admitted to, went to learn how it had fared between Joice and Benet but realized as she paused outside the open door to Lady Eleanor’s room that he was still there, saying earnestly, “… three manors. They’re none of them large, but all of them are good. You’d have one for your dower…”

Wooing her with properties, Frevisse guessed. Something he should have tried first, instead of yesterday’s stupidity.

She scratched lightly on the door frame and Margrete came to let her in as Lady Eleanor, Joice, and Benet all turned to look at who had come. Lady Eleanor was seated in one of the chairs, her embroidery frame in front of her and turned a little toward the window, away from the room in a polite pretense of leaving Joice and Benet alone, while Joice was seated in the other chair, across the room from her, with Benet standing uncomfortably in front of her. She might be willing to listen to him but she was not going to make it easy for him.

Seeing him there, quite obviously scrubbed and neatened, Frevisse thought what a pity it was he had not troubled to let Joice see him this way before: a not uncomely young man with a very real longing to win her liking.

“Should I come back later?” she asked.

“No!” Joice sprang to her feet before Lady Eleanor could say anything. “Please stay. Sit here!”

“Thank you but no,” Frevisse declined graciously. It was not her place to come between them and Domina Alys’ purpose. “I’ll keep Lady Eleanor company instead. Pray, go on,” she urged.

Neither of them much looked as if they wanted to go on, but she passed them to join Lady Eleanor beside the window and they had no choice. Warily they faced each other again, trying to find another thread of conversation to follow.

Lady Eleanor, watching them circumspectly from the corner of her eyes, smiled. “She isn’t making it easy for him.”

“Nor for herself,” Frevisse said. Equally trying to seem she was not watching them, she sat down on the window seat.

“If she did, he’d likely be suspicious. He’s not a fool, is young Benet.” Lady Eleanor’s smile deepened. “Only foolish. And weren’t we all when we were young, one way or another?”

“Too true,” Frevisse agreed. To her surprise she found she was wishing Benet well, however his present foolishness turned out. “If nothing else, he’s learning now that more than liking goes into love. Unfortunately, it’s at Joice’s cost.”

“Unfortunately for both of them,” Lady Eleanor said mildly.

With a smile and nod of agreement, Frevisse turned a little away, toward the window, to stop watching them. In the yard below, a goodly number of Sir Reynold’s men were idling on guest-hall steps and around the well. She looked to be sure there were no priory servants idling among them, then looked more intently at the group beside the well, half rising to her feet to see them better. The whorled glass of the small panes blurred what she saw, but someone was there who did not seem to be either one of Sir Reynold’s men or anyone of the priory. As she looked, there was a burst of laughter and scattered clapping among the men around him, and he rose to his feet and bowed with a wide sweep of his arm, acknowledging them. Frevisse stood completely up.

“Is something wrong?” Lady Eleanor asked.

“No. Only there’s someone new come down there. I should go see he’s been taken care of.”

Joice looked around at her sharply. Frevisse made a small, refusing shake of her head, telling her it had nothing to do with her.

“I’ll come with you,” Benet said.

She nearly told him she was forbidden to have aught to do with him, that even being seen with him could cause her trouble, but his voice had an edge to it she could not read and she held back, waiting by the door while he made his farewells to Joice and Lady Eleanor, then going out ahead of him and halfway down the stairs, as private as they were going to be, before she stopped and turned to ask him, “Is there something I should know?”

He had the solid Godfrey build but not the thrusting arrogance that was so usually a part of Godfrey blood, and no longer hiding his urgency, he said, “It didn’t go well with her.”

“Could you expect it to, this first time?”

“Not after yesterday, no.”

Mindful it was not his success she should be concerned for but to win time for Joice, she asked encouragingly, “But you’ll go on trying?”

“As long as may be,” Benet said fervently. “As long as she’ll let me. To keep her safe, if nothing else.”

Frevisse tensed. “Safe?”

“I couldn’t tell her, it would frighten her too much, but it’s Sir Reynold. He doesn’t mean for any Fenner to have her. He says her dowry is for the Godfreys. If I can’t bring her to marry me and I don’t…”-he flushed red from his collar up to his dark hair but forced out anyway-“and I don’t take her, I’m afraid he’ll force someone else on her.”

“He’s told you that?”

“Not the last part, but it’s there behind what else he’s said. You have to make sure she goes on seeing me, no matter how much she hates me. It’s the only way I have to keep her safe.”

He was right: Joice should not be told that while she was protecting herself from him, he was protecting her from Sir Reynold. She was already holding too close to one fear to need another added to it. But at the same time Frevisse realized she could not tell him that Joice was deliberately using him with no intention of ever giving way to his suit. Better he go on believing he had some hope.

“I’ll do all that I may,” Frevisse said, then added for her own sake, “but Domina Alys has forbidden any of us to notice you coming and going through the cloister. I’ll be in trouble for speaking to you now, so after this, if there’s aught you think I ought to know, tell Ela in the guest hall, and I’ll send word to you the same way.”

“Ela,” Benet repeated. “Ela. I’ll remember.”

“Good. Now go, please.”

He made her a bow and left her, loping away down the stairs and out of sight along the cloister walk, an overgrown boy who was going to be in worse trouble than he probably deserved if he went on with the company he presently kept. She waited until she heard the outer door close behind him with a muted thud before she followed him. Though it hardly mattered if they had been noticed or not. Tomorrow in chapter she would have to confess, along with other disobedience, that she had spoken to him. It was only a small comfort that her other confession would put her so far in trouble that this one was hardly likely to make matters much worse.

And in the meanwhile there was the matter of the man she had seen beside the well.

When she came out into the yard, the men who had been gathered around him were drifting off toward the guest halls but he was still seated on the top step of the well curb, head bent over the lute he held as he made some adjustment to its strings. Frevisse stopped a ways away from him and asked, “Joliffe?”

He looked up. Merriment and recognition danced into his eyes, and snatching off his cap, he stood up to sweep her an excessively deep bow. “Dame Frevisse!”

He had been part of a company of players the only time they had ever met-five years ago? six?-so slender and fair-faced then that he had played the woman in whatever plays they did, though there had been nothing womanly about him when he dropped the roles and was himself. Or as much of himself as he had ever shown to her. He could slip from one seeming to another more easily than most folk changed clothing, with the only constant thing about him the easy air of mockery behind almost everything he said and did.

“The others. Where are they?” Frevisse asked as he straightened from his bow. “Are they here?”

They had been a small band of players, come on hard times but closely bound to each other, so that in all the years since they had been so briefly at St. Frideswide’s, sheltering through a bitter Christmastide, she had never thought of Joliffe as anywhere but with them.

Joliffe struck a momentary pose of heart-stricken grief. “No, alas. Never no more.”

Hearing the familiar warm edge of Joliffe’s mockery there, Frevisse did rise to alarm, only asked shortly, “Then where?”

Joliffe raised his head and said simply, all flourish gone, “Rose decided a few years past that Piers should have something more than what a player’s life would give him, so she and Evan have settled down to run an inn in Oxford for a man they know while Piers is supposed to be learning to be a pewterer.”

Remembering the little rogue of a boy who had fretted at being kept to one place for too many days together, Frevisse said, “He must hate that.”

“With a passion, but he comforts himself with the hope that he can turn the skill to forgery someday.”

So Piers was still himself. “And Thomas?” He had been the oldest of them and their leader. How had he taken Rose’s decision to quit and take Ellis and Piers with her, effectively finishing what little there had been of their band?

But Joliffe said cheerfully enough, “I think he was relieved to have the choice of going on or quitting taken away from him. He’s set up as a grammar teacher in some grocer’s charity day school for poor boys, and as he says, he now has an audience who can’t escape him.”

“And no matter what they think of the performance, he’s paid anyway,” Frevisse said.

Joliffe laughed. “You have it to the core. Besides the fact he has the added pleasure of being free to grumble to his heart’s content that he was torn from the life he was meant to live by a mean-spirited woman’s weakness.”

“And when he does, Rose tells me what she thinks of that.”

“In clear and unmistakable terms.”

“And you?”

Joliffe stepped back and spread his arms as if to invite applause. “As you see.”

He was dressed in doublet and hosen that must have been gaudy once but were muted now by weather and much wear. His high leather boots were rubbed and darkened with long use; he was slightly in need of a shave. The years had edged in on him; he would not pass in a play as a fair-faced maiden anymore, and though he was as slender as he had been, it was with a man’s lean strength now instead of a boy’s.

Frevisse eyed him, decided he still showed no more than what he wanted to be seen, and said, “It doesn’t tell me much except that whatever you’re doing, it keeps you clothed and fed.”

“Clothed and fed and sometimes with a penny in my purse. What more can a wandering minstrel ask?”

“I shouldn’t care to guess or even ask.” She matched his mockery and laughter with her own. “But for the sake of knowing something of the guests within our walls, I have to ask what it is that brings you here. Besides your feet.”

Joliffe, his mouth already opening to reply, stopped, then protested, “I wasn’t going to say that.”

“Then you were going to say it was for the pleasure of seeing me again.”

“What better reason could I give than that?”

“The true one.”

“What if I say I’ve taken to minstrelsy and my wanderings have happened to bring me this way?”

“That is a thing I’m willing to believe.”

He swept her another bow. “Your ladyship is most gracious.”

“My ladyship is also bound to find how it is with others of our guests. If you’ll pardon me?”

“Of everything and anything, my lady,” he declared, hand over his heart. “And hope you’ll do as much for me should chance arise.”

“That,” she said dryly, “is probably another matter,” and went on her way.