7 The Prioress' Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  Nor did she have time to change her mind and dismiss them before he came. He must have been waiting barely beyond the door, because Katherin hardly disappeared before she was back with him, standing aside to let him enter, making a quick curtsy to Domina Alys and shutting the door behind her as she retreated. Master Naylor crossed to Domina Alys and bowed, first to her and then to the rest of them before looking her full in the face.

  He was never a man much given to smiling, but today he looked more grim than usual. Although stewards were proverbially said to be greed-ridden, Frevisse had always found him a fair-minded man, careful of both St. Frideswide’s well-being and of the people under him. Now her unease roused toward alarm as he straightened from his bow and said abruptly, “Good day, my lady. Could you give me some guess as to how long your cousin and his men are going to be here?”

  “As long as need be,” Domina Alys returned as abruptly. “Beyond that it’s none of your concern, Master Naylor.”

  “It is if their score and more of horses are eating up the priory’s hay at a rate that will leave us beggared of it before Lent and some of the cattle having to be slaughtered because of it while our own horses starve.”

  “God will provide,” Domina Alys snapped.

  “God helps those who help themselves,” Master Naylor returned curtly.

  Frevisse could not stop her own indrawn gasp at his discourtesy, and she was not alone. A ripple of alarm passed among all the women while Domina Alys stared at him, momentarily wordless, before she surged to her feet and thrust her face toward his own as she spat back, “You’d best remember, Master Naylor, that you’re here to do what I tell you to do and keep your mouth closed unless I tell you to open it! My cousin and his men and what they do is my concern, not yours!”

  “Then you had best be more concerned about them than you are!” he answered.

  There were more gasps among the women, and Domina Alys, in fury beyond words, swung a hand up and back for a blow at his head. Master Naylor, not flinching, flung up his arm to block it and they froze in mutual glare and rage.

  No one dared stir either, in fear of what would happen if they did, until Domina Alys pulled her mouth into an angry, ugly smile and let drop her hand. “You’ve overstepped your duty, Master Naylor. Be out of St. Frideswide’s and nowhere on my lands by midday today or I’ll loose my cousin on you. Nor don’t come begging back for me to recommend you elsewhere because I’ll tell them exactly what you are and see you ruined. You’re finished here and everywhere. Go!”

  He was breathing hard, his face rigid, his anger cold in his eyes, but he gave no more response to her order and threat than to turn without a bow and leave, jerking the door open and not bothering to close it after him, so that they heard his footsteps going away along the cloister, going and then gone, and no one moving in the long-held silence until finally Domina Alys heaved a deep breath and said, grimly pleased, “Good. That needed doing. I’ve wanted to be rid of him.”

  Maybe too shocked to realize she was saying it aloud, Dame Juliana quavered, “But now we need a steward.”

  It was true enough, although not the best of times to say it. There was no way any of them could deal with all the worldly matters of St. Frideswide’s outside the cloister while seeing to the duties they already had and all the hours of prayer, too, even if any of them had had the competence for it.

  Domina Alys waved the problem aside. “Sir Reynold will recommend me someone who’ll serve us better than Naylor ever did. Someone who’ll know his place, for one thing.” The blessing she should have given them for the day forgotten, she gestured them away. “Now go on about your duties, all of you. This has gone on long enough.”

  Frevisse stood up as readily as the others, no more willing than they were to remind Domina Alys of what she had left out and with an urgent need to reach Master Naylor. It was against her vows to send word to anyone outside the nunnery without her prioress’ knowledge and permission, and until now she had been able to tell herself that matters in St. Frideswide’s were not so ill that she should break them, even if she had been sure of a safe way to send a message to Abbot Gilberd at St. Bartholomew’s; and without a safe way, she was afraid of what would surely happen to her if she tried and failed and Domina Alys found her out.

  But matters had changed, were worsening, with no likelihood of being better, and Master Naylor was leaving. He was no longer bound to the priory by any duty or loyalty, and if she could manage to see him before he left, say even half a dozen words to him, tell him…

  “Dame Frevisse,” Domina Alys said.

  Frevisse’s heart lurched heavily up toward her throat and she stopped the single pace she had taken forward. Quickly, in hopes her face had not shown something she wanted hidden, she bowed her head and said, “My lady?”

  “Before you go to the guest halls, tell Lady Eleanor and that girl that Benet is coming to talk with her this morning. Tell her she’s to see him and why. Make it clear to her. We want to have this over with.”

  “Yes, my lady.” Frevisse kept her voice unshaded and her frustration in check. The delay would not matter. Master Naylor would not be away upon the instant; he had wife and children to slow his going. She had time.

  She also had a chance, with the other nuns crowding out the door, to be alone, briefly, with Domina Alys, not something she generally wanted, but she took the chance this time to say, “She’ll want to know if word’s been sent yet to her people that she’s here and safe. Has it?”

  A moment too late and too tersely, as if in haste to be past a lie, Domina Alys answered, “It’s being seen to. Now go on.”

  Frevisse doubted that was an outright lie. An outright lie was a thing Domina Alys could not help but admit, even to herself, was a sin. What it was, probably, was a forestalling of the truth, a going around it. Word was going to be sent—sometime. It would be “seen to” but had not been yet—and would not be for as long as Domina Alys could possibly delay it.

  Chapter 6

  Joice had had the night now to think on what had happened to her and on what might happen to her and on her own helplessness, and she listened to Domina Alys’ message silently, standing very still and straight, her fine-boned face as white and frozen as it had been flushed and alive with anger yesterday. When Frevisse had finished, she went on standing still a moment, then turned her head to Lady Eleanor across the room, sitting behind her embroidery frame where the light through the window fell most strongly, and asked, “Do I have to?”

  Gently, Lady Eleanor said, “It would probably be best.”

  “For whom?” Joice asked sharply. She might have quieted but she was not quiescent.

  “For you. It will buy you time.”

  “Time?” Joice exclaimed with vast indignation.

  Lady Eleanor’s mouth twitched with the smallest of smiles but her head was turned toward her embroidery, so that only Frevisse saw it, which was as well. Joice would not have understood, was too young yet to have learned that time, well used, could be more than an impediment between her and her desires, it could be an ally. There was much to be said for not being that young anymore, and Lady Eleanor looked at her with a sympathy that Frevisse understood, to say gently, “So long as Benet and Sir Reynold think you’re about to be won over with words, they’re unlikely to turn to force to persuade you.”

  Joice flinched and stiffened, then swung around to Frevisse. “Who thought of this?”

  “Domina Alys gave the order in chapter meeting just now. That’s all I know of it.”

  “But who thought of it?” Joice insisted. “Is she trying to help me or is there something else they have in mind?”

  “It might have been Benet who thought of it,” Lady Eleanor suggested quietly. “It sounds more his way than what happened yesterday. Yesterday was more Sir Reynold’s doing than Benet’s, I’m sure.”

  Joice’s face tightened with anger. “All I know of Benet is that he agreed to it. More than that about him I don’t need to know. I d
on’t want to see him or hear him or have him near me!”

  “But for your own sake, it might be best for you to at least listen to him,” Lady Eleanor insisted, still gently.

  Joice paced away from them the little distance the room allowed for pacing. Lady Eleanor’s small dogs were curled together at the foot of the bed, an occasional twitch of a furry ear and a bright gleam of eyes under their shaggy fringe of creamy fur betraying they were watching every move made in the room. When Joice came near, they raised their heads and she stopped her pacing to scoop one of them up. Her back to Frevisse and Lady Eleanor, she cuddled it to her, her face against its furry back.

  “We won’t leave you alone with him. Margrete and I will be here all the while he is. Nothing will happen,” Lady Eleanor assured her.

  Joice faced them again. The dog tried to lick her chin with a quick flick of pink tongue past its own black nose, but she avoided it while asking Frevisse, “Is word gone to my people about my being here? Do they know where I am?”

  “I don’t know.” It was a careful answer, meant neither to curb nor raise her hopes, and it was fully true. Frevisse only suspected, she did not know what had been done.

  Joice was not interested in careful. “I need to know how much time I have to play for!” Still holding the dog close to her, she came toward Frevisse, her desperation showing. “And even when my uncle knows, he won’t come here himself. He’ll go to Father. Or send word to him. It will be Father who comes. But that means not until tomorrow at the very best and probably not until the day after that!”

  Frevisse thought even that was optimistic but did not say so. Joice needed what hope she could make for herself.

  “You can deal with Benet that long,” Lady Eleanor said encouragingly.

  “I don’t want to deal with Benet at all!” Joice cried and swung away from them both, past Lady Eleanor to the window. She stood there, her back to them, her chin sunk in the dog’s ruff, and they waited while she worked through the thing, finally raising her head and turning around to say defiantly, “He can come, but I won’t listen to him.”

  Lady Eleanor smiled and held out a hand. “You only need to look as if you are. That’s a useful thing to be able to do with any man, no matter how you feel about him.”

  With a bravery that was very essentially her, Joice smiled back and put her hand into Lady Eleanor’s. “As long as that’s all I need do,” she said firmly.

  “That’s all,” Lady Eleanor assured her.

  Relieved that she would not have to take a refusal to Domina Alys, glad that Joice had seemingly found a friend as well as a protector in Lady Eleanor, Frevisse excused herself, curtsied to Lady Eleanor, and left, certain that between them, Lady Eleanor and Joice would manage Benet well enough.

  She went out of the cloister without other trouble. At this hour it was usual for her to go out to the guest halls, so no one remarked her going; but once into the courtyard, she crossed not to either of the halls but to the wide-arched gateway to the outer yard.

  As she went she tried to assess where she might most quickly find Master Naylor. The outer yard was crowded from the walls inward with the stables, byres, workshops, and people needed for the nunnery’s life, and she knew Master Naylor’s dwelling was somewhere near the outer gate, across the yard. He might well be there even now. Breaking word of his dismissal to his wife and quieting her afterward would have taken time, and there was the need to see to the hurried gathering up of such belongings as they could manage to take with them in the little while he had been given to be away. There were three half-grown children, too, but those and the gathering of things he might leave to his wife while he saw to horse and cart to carry them away. So he might be at the stable now, and the stable was close to hand beyond the gateway. It would be worth her while to go there first, because if he was there—please God he would be—it would save her having to go farther astray from where she ought to be and lessen the likelihood that Domina Alys would come to hear of it.

  Except, inevitably, Domina Alys would hear of it, because Frevisse herself would have to tell her tomorrow in chapter meeting.

  Frevisse had not thought that far ahead until now, but what she was doing was a willfully committed fault and under obedience she would have to confess it. She shrank a little, inwardly, at the thought and could not stop the one that came treacherously after it: why should she confess it? If Domina Alys saw fit to treat all rules—even the Rule itself—as things to be ignored or shifted as suited her own purpose, why shouldn’t she do the same?

  She had the answer even as she asked the question. The Rule and the lesser rules that hedged it about were what bound St. Frideswide’s into a whole instead of leaving it disparate pieces. If everyone came to think themselves free to go when and how and whatever way they chose away from the Rule or even the rules, and to declare themselves free of the consequences, there would be no whole in St. Frideswide’s. Its gathered strength would be broken and gone, the heart of their life here dead; and without heart, the body would be pointless. There was no use saying hers was a small fault, done for a greater good. It was not the size but the fault that mattered. She would not lie by silence or wait cowardwise to see if she was discovered. Tomorrow in chapter she would confess it and by her own choice take the consequence.

  So, she thought wryly, she had better make the most of her fault while she had the chance.

  There seemed far more men and some women—mostly priory servants but some of Sir Reynold’s, too, clustered in small groups around the outer yard and buildings—than there should have been this early in the day when surely there were tasks enough they could have been doing. Talk dropped away as she was seen, a nun unexpectedly there. Some began to fade away from whomever they had been talking with, disappearing into doorways or around corners. Others tried to shift into looking as if they were in the midst of going somewhere. Frevisse, seeming not to notice, closed on the nearest clot, three men with buckets and a pitchfork, before they could find somewhere else to be. Trapped, they threw disconcerted glances at each other and bent in quick, awkward bows. Simply glad to find someone to question so readily, Frevisse ignored their guilty unease and asked, “Where’s Master Naylor?”

  They traded more uncertain glances before one of them made bold to say, bobbing his head to show he meant nothing disrespectful, “Gone, my lady.”

  “Gone?” she said more sharply than she meant to. “Gone where?”

  The man flapped a hand toward the outer gateway. “Gone. Left. Like he was told to. Gone.”

  He couldn’t be, Frevisse wanted to say. He couldn’t be gone that quickly. “His wife and children?” she asked with feigned quiet. “Did he leave them behind, then?”

  “Oh, nay,” another of the men said. “He sent them away nigh to a month ago. Just after Michaelmas.”

  “Michaelmas?” Frevisse repeated blankly. Almost a month ago at September’s end? No word of Master Naylor sending his family away had come into the cloister. But why should it? If he did not choose to mention it, no one else was likely to; it would not have seemed that great a matter.

  “Gone to relatives somewhere,” the third man put in, seeming to decide it was safe to be helpful. “For a visit, like. Only it looks to be for longer now.”

  “So he’s gone?” Frevisse repeated, not willing yet to believe it.

  “Oh, aye.” The third man’s confidence was growing. “He came out from in there”—he nodded back toward the cloister—“looking like whey, only I couldn’t tell if ‘twere from anger or what, he didn’t say above a dozen words beyond ordering his horse saddled and he didn’t stop for naught then, just threw his pack behind the saddle and was out of here.” He sounded faintly envious of so easy an escape.

  “His pack?” Frevisse said. “He had his pack ready to go?”

  “Aye.” The second man took her up quickly on that, understanding, as she did, what it meant. “It was waiting just inside his house door. He didn’t even have to go in, just swing down,
pick it up, sling it behind the saddle, mount, and be off. We saw him, didn’t we?”

  The other men nodded, agreeing. “Aye, that’s true.”

  “Makes you wonder,” the first one said.

  It made Frevisse more than wonder. Master Naylor had sent his family away almost a month ago, and he had been ready to leave before ever he came into chapter this morning.

  He had known what was going to come of his confronting and defying Domina Alys and he had made ready for it.

  He had more than made ready for it. He had caused it.

  Thinking of what he had said and how he had said it, she was sure of that. Which left her with the question of why.

  “Who do you think will be taking his place, my lady?” the third man made bold to ask.

  “I don’t know.” Just now it was enough that Master Naylor was gone beyond her reach and she had put herself in peril of Domina Alys’ wrath to no gain at all. “There’s been no time to think on it,” she said vaguely, then gathered her mind back to what was to hand, raised her voice, and said, “But for this morning anyway, you all must know what needs doing and you’d best be doing it, whether Master Naylor is here or not.”

  It was more order than hint. The three men backed off from her with hasty bows, the few others who still lingered within hearing suddenly seemed to remember where else they should be, and Frevisse, to follow her own advice, turned back to the guest halls and her morning’s duties.

  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.