7 The Prioress' Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  “As if all the priory didn’t hear you.” Reynold sat opposite her in the other chair with his own wine and leaned forward to nudge her hand. “Drink. It won’t do you any good in the goblet.”

  She drank. Ale was what they mostly had in St. Frideswide’s, wine only with Communion or when someone thought to give it as a gift. That was another of the things she meant to change when she had made St. Frideswide’s into what it ought to be. There would be wine every feast day then. Good wine. Bordeaux wine. Wine like this.

  But that solved no present problems, and she reached her free hand out to grasp Reynold’s wrist to make him hear her. “You have to make Master Porter finish my tower. He’ll listen to you where he won’t listen to me.”

  “He’ll finish it or he won’t leave here,” Reynold said simply. “I’ve told you that.”

  “Have you told him?” Alys demanded.

  Reynold turned his hand over in her hold to grasp hers in return, warmly smiling while he did and lightly laughing at her. “He’ll hear reason better if he’s not in a foaming fury. I keep waiting for a day when you haven’t driven him into a rage before I try to talk to him. So far you haven’t given me one.”

  There was no one else but Reynold she would let laugh at her, but she pulled free her hand and slapped at his arm anyway. “You just tell him, that’s all. You make promises, but so far I’ve seen small return on them.”

  Reynold leaned back in his chair, unoffended. “Little? Isn’t there food and wine here that wasn’t here two days ago?”

  “And a girl who wasn’t here two days ago either.” Reynold snorted dismissively. “That will all come right. Benet says it went well this morning. She’s coming around. Prickly but persuadable. Drink. It’s not a sin.”

  Alys drank. It was easeful to be able to obey sometimes, instead of always having to be the one who thought things through and gave the orders. Reynold was in the right of it; she gave herself these headaches by trying too hard. Her elbow propped on the chair’s arm, she rested her chin on her free hand and stared down into the goblet, thinking about the possibility that the pain was a little less. She prayed it was and prayed to St. Pancras to take it from her completely. A throb between her eyes was the only answer. She cringed, closed her eyes, and leaned her head back against the chair again.

  “Hasn’t your infirmarian anything to kill that for you?” Reynold asked.

  Her eyes still shut, hardly moving her mouth for fear of jarring the pain to worse, she answered, “Dame Claire is one of the ones who thought to be prioress instead of me. I’m not giving her the satisfaction of knowing I’m in pain.” No weakness in front of any of her nuns: that was how to keep control.

  “Then I’d find me a different infirmarian.”

  “It keeps her out of my way and that’s what I want.”

  “Find a different way to keep her out of your way.” As if she had not thought of that. “The only other office that would do for that is hosteler, and that’s keeping Dame Frevisse out of my way.”

  Reynold made a disgusted sound. “That one. She sours the whole hall when she comes in. Never a friendly look, never a smile. Long-faced as a dying dog. Don’t you have a kennel you could put her in?”

  “I wish I did,” Alys said bitterly. Then, despite the pain, she smiled. “But I’ve finally caught her out at something.”

  There had been one other good thing today, besides Reynold.

  “Have you?” Reynold roused to a mild interest. “What?”

  “She was seen talking with Benet in the cloister this morning…”

  “Oh, a great offense,” Reynold mocked.

  Alys barked a laugh back at him, ignoring the pain it cost her. “After I’d forbidden anyone to notice him when he was here.” But leave it to Sister Amicia to be watching out to see him and then tell what she saw. “So tomorrow in chapter meeting Dame Frevisse is in my hand, to punish as I choose.”

  “And you’ll surely choose to give her something she’ll remember,” Reynold said.

  “Oh yes.” Alys nodded with grim satisfaction. “Now she’s given me the chance, I mean to give her something to remember.”

  Chapter 10

  Frevisse had a brief thought that she might escape into the church for the while before Vespers to pray, to gather her thoughts, simply to be quiet once she had left the necessary orders for the madman’s food and alms clothing with someone in the kitchen; but in the cloister walk as she turned kitchenward, Lady Adela, limping down the steps from Lady Eleanor’s room, waved to her and whispered loudly, “Dame Frevisse!” Unhappily certain this was the end of any hope of escaping to the church, Frevisse went to meet her.

  “Joice needs to see you,” Lady Adela said eagerly. “That was a lunatic in the yard, wasn’t it? That you and Benet and the other man were saving from Sir Reynold’s men? We saw you from the window. Is he horribly mad?”

  “Only quietly mad. And, no, you may not go see him.” Frevisse answered what she knew Lady Adela was going to ask next. For someone so quiet with Dame Perpetua, Lady Adela had words enough otherwise. “I’m going to see to having him fed now and then he’ll be sent on his way. Tell Mistress Joice I’ll be with her shortly.”

  Lady Adela started to go, then paused and looked back at her, frowning. “I wouldn’t hate Latin if it wasn’t all church things,” she said reproachfully, turned away with offended dignity, and limped away up the stairs, dragging her lame leg more than necessary.

  Knowing she had been rebuked but not certain how, Frevisse went on to the kitchen, where there was no trouble about giving the first kitchen servant she happened on the needful orders. That done, she turned reluctantly back toward Lady Eleanor’s chamber and, as she went up the stairs, looked at her reluctance, trying to find the reason for it. Much of it had to come because of her worry over what would happen in tomorrow’s chapter meeting. Knowing what she had to do was not the same as actually facing whatever humiliation Domina Alys would delight in giving her. The rest of her reluctance…

  Joice met her at the open door in a swirl of scarlet skirts, grabbing her desperately by the hands and exclaiming without other greeting, “I can’t go on seeing him! How long do I have to do this? I can’t!”

  … was because she had nothing to tell Joice that Joice wanted to hear, nothing that would be of any comfort to her.

  “Joice.” Lady Eleanor spoke mildly from across the room, where she stood with Margrete by the window. “There’s no need for this.”

  “And no use either,” Frevisse said. She pushed the girl back into the room. This was not something the whole nunnery needed to hear. “Lady Adela, close the door.”

  Lady Adela, hovering bright-eyed near the bed with one of Lady Eleanor’s dogs in her arms—the other was curled where Lady Eleanor’s skirts spread on the floor around her feet—limped eagerly to obey.

  “Hasn’t anyone come yet?” Joice begged, still clinging to Frevisse’s hands. “No word from anyone at all?”

  “There hasn’t been time. It’s too soon.”

  “Joice, child,” Lady Eleanor said, still patiently, “this isn’t going to help.”

  “Nothing’s going to help!” Joice cried.

  Frevisse pulled free of Joice’s hand, seized her by the shoulders, and forced her down onto a stool, then leaned over her, still gripping her by the shoulders, and ordered, “Tell me what’s happened.”

  Joice tried to leap back to her feet. Frevisse forced her back down. “Tell me! I can’t help if I don’t know!”

  “Your prioress!” Joice all but spat the word. Fragile with fear an instant before, she was suddenly fiercely angry. “Your miserable, treacherous prioress!”

  Better pleased to have her angry rather than wild with fear, Frevisse drew a steadying breath and said evenly, “What’s she done?”

  Her hands in fists, beating at her skirts with rage, Joice exclaimed, “She’s ordered me to spend the evening with her! With her and Benet and Sir Reynold!”

  Frevisse looked arou
nd to Lady Eleanor who answered calmly, “Katerin came a while ago to tell us. I’ll be there, too. And Hugh.”

  And Joliffe. Frevisse remembered he had said he was summoned to play for Domina Alys this evening. She took hold of Joice’s hands, forcing them still and Joice to look at her. “It’s nothing,” she said, matching Lady Eleanor’s calm. “There’s a minstrel come today. That’s what’s put it in Domina Alys’ head. You only have to go and play out the game you’re already playing. Surely you can do that through one evening.”

  “You can talk with Benet, surely,” Lady Eleanor said. “You’ve done it easily enough this morning and again this afternoon.”

  “Not easily!”

  “But more easily than you could face what might happen to you if you don’t!” Frevisse said back at her.

  Joice, mouth open for more angry words, stopped, disconcerted into thinking; and when she had, she drew a deep, unsteady breath and said softly, “Your prioress wants me to marry him, doesn’t she? And I’m safe here only so long as she keeps me safe, aren’t I?”

  She was, but admitting to it would be of small use just now, and Frevisse said evenly, believing it, “She won’t let you be forced to anything.”

  “I’m being forced to be there tonight!”

  “She’s giving you more chance to come around to Benet of your own will,” Lady Eleanor said gently. “That’s all this is. That’s all she’s trying to do.”

  The trouble was that Domina Alys’ ways of trying were never subtle, and neither was Joice’s temper. If they came openly up against each, with Domina Alys’ only answer to anger being more anger…

  Frevisse did not want to think of it.

  From where she stood beside the window, looking down into the yard, Margrete said, “Sir Hugh is coming into the cloister.”

  “To here or Alys?” Lady Eleanor said. “Adela, see.”

  Lady Adela quickly set the dog on the bed and went out to the head of the stairs as Joice rose sharply to her feet, declaring, “I don’t want to see anyone!”

  “If he’s coming here, you have small choice,” Lady Eleanor said evenly. “Adela?”

  Lady Adela limped excitedly back into the room, shutting the door. “He’s gone past Domina Alys’ stairs. Sister Johane is bringing him here!”

  Joice started another protest. Frevisse did not wait for it but took her by the arm across to the bed and sat her down on its edge, ordering her, “Stop playing the fool and play with the dog. Lady Adela, come, too. Lady Eleanor, is he likely to be coming to see Mistress Joice?”

  “No,” Lady Eleanor said mildly. She had not stirred. “He’s likely coming to see me. Margrete.”

  Margrete had already crossed to the door and at her lady’s word opened it to Sir Hugh just as he reached it, Sister Johane apparently left at the foot of the stairs. Smiling at him, Margrete stood aside, curtsying to him as he entered. At Frevisse’s prod, Joice rose, the dog in her arms, to join Frevisse in curtsy to him, too, while Lady Adela merely bent her head toward him, as a lord’s daughter needing to do no more. Sir Hugh returned their courtesies with a bow of his own and, “My ladies,” before turning to Lady Eleanor with another bow. The dog that had been curled on her skirts came scampering to sniff at his boots, and Sir Hugh scooped him up, saying, “Furry rat,” as the dog writhed around happily in his hold, trying to lick at his chin, then letting himself be stroked down into the crook of Sir Hugh’s arm as if it were a thing they were both used to. Sir Hugh turned back to Frevisse.

  “Before anything else, my lady,” he said, “my apology for what happened in the yard with the madman. The men were in the wrong of it.”

  Inwardly surprised that he either knew of it or cared, Frevisse answered back with outward graciousness, “Worse might have come of it than did. Thank you.”

  “He took no harm?”

  “Fright was the worst of it, I think. He’s being fed and then he’ll be seen away from here.”

  “That’s likely for the best.”

  “Yes.”

  Sir Hugh bent his head to her, and to Joice and Lady Adela for good measure, and with the dog now nestled contentedly into the crook of his elbow, crossed to Lady Eleanor with, “And how is it with you, my lady mother?”

  Joice, the other dog clutched to her as tightly as she had held to good manners while Sir Hugh was facing her, gasped and looked disbelievingly at Frevisse. “His mother? Lady Eleanor is his mother?” she whispered.

  Frevisse’s surprise was as great, though she was trying to hide it better. Lady Eleanor had never mentioned that Sir Hugh was her son. But then—the realization startled her—she was not even sure how many children Lady Eleanor had, let be the names of any of them. There were sons and at least one daughter, but that was all she was sure of. How had she talked with Lady Eleanor so often and not learned more than that? By never asking questions, she realized. Because it had not interested her. What sort of friendship had she been giving Lady Eleanor, not to care about what must matter very much to her?

  It was equally disconcerting to have Lady Adela say easily, “He’s the third son. There’s Sir Geoffrey, who inherited, and then John, who’s in Abingdon Abbey. Sir Hugh has just the one manor and it’s small and he hasn’t managed any marriage yet, but now that he has Lady Eleanor’s dower manor, too, because she’s here, she hopes he’ll be able to marry after all.”

  “How do you know all this?” Frevisse asked.

  Lady Adela gave her a slightly cross look, as if wondering how she could be so stupid. “Lady Eleanor tells me.”

  “When?”

  “When we talk.” Lady Adela said it with an impatient undertone that told she was rapidly losing faith in Frevisse’s ability to grasp the obvious.

  And it was obvious. Or should have been. She knew that Lady Eleanor and Lady Adela kept company when Dame Perpetua was done with the girl. “It will be good for both of us,” Lady Eleanor had said when she first came. Dame Perpetua had been pleased because it meant Lady Adela would not be so much alone or in the company of only servants. Beyond that, Frevisse had given the matter no particular thought. No more thought than it seemed she had spent on Lady Eleanor, to know so little about her.

  Lady Adela, busy with either trying to take out a tangle in the white plumed tail of the dog Joke still held or else to put one in, was going on, “There are two daughters, too. Katherine and Elizabeth.” She looked up at Frevisse. “Lady Eleanor says she never talks to you about them because it seems unkind to talk much about children to someone who won’t ever have any of her own.”

  That was an aspect of it so far from Frevisse’s mind that she had no answer for it at all except a startled stare. It was Joice who said abruptly, following another thought altogether, “If that’s how it is, she may not be so much trying to protect me from Benet as hoping to bring me around to marrying Sir Hugh!”

  Lady Adela brightened at that. “Then I could marry Benet!”

  “You’d want to?” Joice asked disbelievingly.

  Lady Adela nodded. “He’s almost handsome. And I think he’s brave. And…”

  “Then you can have him,” Joice said fiercely.

  The bell began to ring to Vespers. Frevisse stood up in haste, more grateful than graceful, then paused to lay a hand on Joice’s arm and say quietly but forcefully when the girl looked up at her, “It doesn’t matter who wants what for you. Keep going at what you’ve started. Play it out. It’s your safest way.”

  Joice hesitated, verging on rebellion before finally her chin came up and she said in defiance of seemingly everyone, “I’ll even go tonight as if I wanted to and let them think they’re winning.”

  Margrete was still at the door and opened it as Frevisse moved to leave. Frevisse nodded thanks as she went out, but from beyond it, in the moment of Margrete shutting it after her, looked back at Lady Eleanor and Sir Hugh across the room. Deep in talk with one another, they had not noticed her going. They were leaned toward each other, small outward resemblance between them and yet a
familiarity in her hand on his knee, his nod to whatever she was saying, the way their eyes held, that Frevisse hoped would have told her something more about who they were to each other if she had seen them together like this before.

  Or did she see it now only because she knew?

  The door closed and she turned to answer the bell’s calling, but the thought of her own willed ignorance went with her, shaming and discomfiting her. She had chosen, when she chose to be a nun, the enclosed life that was meant to go with her vows, but the enclosure was supposed to be of the body, not of the mind or heart. What else of things around her had she not bothered to notice, to know?

  Chapter 11

  The nuns awoke to shivering cold at dawn, their breath in white clouds about them as they hurriedly slipped their outer gowns on over the underdresses they had worn to bed, arranged wimples around their faces, and pinned veils into place with stiff and uncooperative fingers by what little light there was from the lamp kept burning through the night at the head of the stairs.

  “She has to give us leave to change to our winter gowns,” Sister Amicia wailed from her sleeping cell. “We’ll all freeze before Allhallows if she doesn’t!”

  Frevisse wondered if Sister Amicia would ever grasp, once and for all, that when they had elected Domina Alys prioress, they had given her the right not to have to do anything she did not want to do where the priory was concerned.

  Hurried along by the chill, they were all dressed, even Sister Emma, and already going down the stairs in huddled haste, when the bell began to ring to Prime. The lamp threw their shadows past them, tangling the darkness as they went down the stairs, but their feet were too used to the way to be confused. In the cloister, dawn had only just begun to come, a softening at the edges of the dark. They passed along it in a whisper of skirts and soft-soled shoes and entered the deeper shadows of the church, where the altar light beyond the choir was the only brightness as they spread out to their places in the stalls.