6 The Murderer's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  One more small put paid to Lionel.

  Chapter 2

  The garden was still sweet from the late afternoon rain. A band of saffron-colored sunset showed below the westward clouds, and the light lay long and golden over the garden wall, gilding where it touched. Along the paths crystal droplets patterned from low leaves, swept clear by the nuns’ long skirts as they walked past in their evening recreation, two of them pacing side by side, hands folded into their sleeves, the third alone, her rosary in her hands. Above them, silhouetted against the yellow sky on the high arch of the pear tree’s branch beyond the wall, a thrush sang to the world. The garden was hushed to the soft sound of their walking, the rain droplets’ patter, the thrush’s evening singing.

  Loud laughter jarred into the quiet from the cloister beyond the garden wall. Frevisse and Dame Claire paused in their walking, their heads turning toward the noise, as if the gathering of the priory’s other nuns could be seen, there in the warming room where they had chosen to spend the recreation hour in talk over the spiced, warm wine the prioress had allowed them against the April day’s damp and alleged chill. Under Prioress Domina Alys’ disapproving eye but allowed it by the Rule, Frevisse, Dame Claire, and Sister Thomasine had chosen instead to go out into the garden, forgoing both the wine and crowded talking for the quiet of the rain-sweet April evening.

  But there was no real escape. The other nuns’ jollity pursued them at least by ear, and at the end of recreation they must needs rejoin them for evening prayers and then to bed in the long dormitory, where often and often anymore the rule of silence did not hold, as it should by St. Benedict’s Rule that ordered silence all through the day except at need and in the hour of recreation. Instead the talk went on with giggling and whispering through the walls of the sleeping cells, keeping everyone awake and making it hard for them to rouse for the midnight prayers of Matins and Lauds.

  Frevisse, turning away from the laughter, momentarily envied Sister Thomasine’s serene detachment from it all. Untouched by the laughter, St. Frideswide’s youngest nun stood below the garden’s outer wall, gazing up raptly at the thrush still singing to the heavens. In this spring of God’s grace 1437, Sister Thomasine had been in St. Frideswide’s Priory seven and a half years, a nun for over five of those, and with no desire in her heart except to go on as deeply into worship of her Lord as she could manage, with no apparent thought at all of the tensions growing daily greater under the priory’s newly fissured peace.

  Time was when Frevisse had found the child very tedious, but an unworldly maturity as well as womanhood had grown on Sister Thomasine through the years. Her mind always bound to God and her prayers, she nonetheless went about her duties through the nunnery with a quiet efficiency, made probably more quiet and efficient, Frevisse admitted, because she was so detached from them. Quite against her inclination Frevisse had come to—not affection, Sister Thomasine’s earnestness still wore at her nerves too frequently—but an acknowledgement of her deep though different worth and, lately, her envied ability to live untouched beyond the changes Domina Alys as prioress had wrought in St. Frideswide’s these past seven months.

  Dame Claire sighed and walked on. Frevisse went with her, shortening her stride to match Dame Claire’s lesser with the ease of long familiarity.

  “You know what she thinks of our being out here,” Dame Claire said.

  There was no question of whom she meant. Domina Alys was too much in their minds just as she was too much in their lives. “That we’re talking of her,” Frevisse said. “Which we are.”

  “More than that. Worse than that. She thinks that we’re plotting against her. Sister—” Dame Claire stopped, her hesitancy telling a great deal about the wariness now become part of the priory’s life. “That’s what someone told me. That she thinks whenever we come out and the others stay in, we’re plotting against her.”

  “Plotting what? She’s prioress, God help us all. What can we do?”

  Frevisse did not try to conceal her irritability. Forbearance was not among the virtues she had sufficiently cultivated yet in her life, and Domina Alys’ overbearing ways were an unceasing trial to her, most simply because under obedience to the vow she had taken almost twenty years ago when she became a nun, she was pledged to obey without hesitation or grudging those whom God put over her. Until last summer that vow had been no trouble to her because Domina Edith had been prioress when she made it. Domina Edith who had been kind and wise with years, with a knowing eye and a steadying discipline on the women given into her care—women as different from one another as any group of women anywhere despite their common bonds of avowed nunhood, their shared hours of prayer seven times a day, their enclosure within St. Frideswide’s walls, and their black Benedictine habits and veils, the white wimples encircling their faces, that gave them an outward sameness. While Domina Edith was their prioress, a balance had been kept, with no overt favorites, no choosing one nun over another for this duty or that privilege except as they had deserved or earned it, and a fair, strict keeping of St. Benedict’s holy Rule for everyone.

  But Domina Edith had died quietly of old age and her body’s weariness last summer, and matters were different now. Dame Alys—Domina Alys—had a very different way of governing. Frevisse readily admitted the title still stuck in her throat, even now, seven months after the election. An election whose outcome had been a mistake, Frevisse still felt. If God allowed mistakes in such matters, she conscientiously added, and she rather thought He did, so that human pride and certainty might learn the lesson of their own fallibility.

  It had been understood among the nuns, when Domina Edith was dead and they were bound to elect her successor from among themselves, that then-Dame Alys dearly coveted the honor and the power that went with it. Domina Edith’s own choice had been Dame Claire, known to be steady, fair-minded, given to deep concern for those in her care when she was the priory’s infirmarian and later its cellarer. Frevisse thought that very likely Dame Claire would have had the election if matters had gone sensibly, but Dame Alys had a temper that boiled quickly and held on to wrongs long, and so near as Frevisse had been able to sort out, most of the nine nuns had been wary, if not plain afraid, of Dame Alys’ temper and memory. None wanted her as prioress, but some of them had been fearful of what would have to be endured if she received not even a single vote on the first ballot. Frevisse herself had not cared; she had cast her vote willingly for Dame Claire, and so had Sister Thomasine, she thought, because Sister Thomasine was not swayed by such worldly troubles as fear of Dame Alys’ wrath. Frevisse herself had received one vote—from Dame Claire, she knew—and had been glad to have no more. But the other six votes had all gone to Dame Alys, because Dame Alys had, of course, voted for herself and each of the other five nuns had thought to give her just one vote on the first ballot to appease her after-wrath a little. Instead, out of their cowardice, they had given her the election and now, for the length of her life, she was prioress of St. Frideswide’s.

  More laughter broke across the evening’s quiet. Most of the nuns had made a kind of peace with what had been wrought. Frevisse had to admit that. It was undeniable that so long as Domina Alys had her own way, she could be pleasant to those under her. But her own way often went astray from the Rule toward indulgence and slackness. A little sleeping late and prayers delayed on cold winter mornings. Small, needless luxuries of food on non-feast days. Warmed, expensively-spiced wine for no good reason except she felt like it.

  Little things. Always little things, but more and more of them and beginning to be bigger things. Today in the morning’s chapter meeting, Sister Amicia had asked if they could not all be allowed to stroll abroad, outside the nunnery, that afternoon. “Just a little way. It’s spring,” she had said wistfully.

  Sister Amicia was known for having more the worldly inclinations of a merchant’s wife than the holy interests of a nun. A gentle but unrelenting hand needed to be kept on her, to keep her as she was supposed to be, and strolls abroa
d to see the world would, in the long run, do her more harm than good. Besides all that, her request was flat against what the Rule allowed for cloistered nuns. But Domina Alys had been on the edge of agreeing to it, encouraged by the eager nodding of most of the nuns to Sister Amicia’s words, until Frevisse had stood up and pointed out the impropriety of their going out for no better reason than their amusement. She knew afterward that she had been less diplomatic than she might have been, and very likely Domina Alys would have overborn the objection in the high-handed way she favored in settling any problem, but Sister Thomasine had also, very uncharacteristically, risen to her feet and in her soft but, on this occasion at least, definite voice said that, let the rest of them do as they would, she would never, not now or any other time, God keep her soul, go with them into such sin. Then, having not given a challenge but merely stated what she felt, she had sat down again, eyes lowered, hands folded in her lap, as inward-drawn and meek as usual. What the others did was now their own concern. But so pale, frail, unworldly it was hard to imagine she had ever lived outside the nunnery, she was thought among the nuns to be a saint in the making, and her words, rather than Frevisse’s protest, had given Domina Alys pause, so that her eventual, grudging decision had been that for today at least there would be no unseemly going abroad.

  But what could be forgiven—or at least ignored—from Sister Thomasine remained an offense from Frevisse. She had felt the blunt edge of the prioress’ displeasure through the day and knew, from past experience, that when Domina Alys had had time to think of something sufficient, she would be paid fully back for her temerity in so overtly interfering.

  But how could she not when such a wrong was about to be done? Irritable with helplessness, she repeated, “What can we do?”

  “Keep quiet?” Dame Claire asked.

  “How can I? How can you?”

  “I don’t know. But have you thought that maybe the problem doesn’t completely lie with her?”

  “No, I hadn’t thought that.”

  “She feels we disturb her rule by doubting her.”

  “Her rule is something to be doubted.”

  “She’s done the priory some good, you know.”

  Frevisse intensely disliked it when Dame Claire insisted on seeing the other side of a matter whose nearer side offended Frevisse so greatly. But Dame Claire was right. Through Domina Alys’ influence with her large family, St. Frideswide’s now had two novices, which was two more novices than the priory had had in five years. Besides, her family, pleased with her new position, had given the priory a goodly gift of money on Lady Day and talk was lively on how it should be used, with feelings running strongly several ways but mainly pleasure in the fact that there was spare money to be talked of at all.

  So, yes, Domina Alys had done the priory some good. “But—”

  “And she’s right in feeling that we—you and I—disturb her rule.”

  “We don’t do anything beyond sometimes question what she does,” Frevisse protested. “You can’t say I was wrong this morning.”

  “No. Nor yesterday when you asked why she meant to rent the Northampton messuage to her cousin at a lesser rate than we had been receiving for it.”

  “It was a needed question. Someone had to ask it.”

  “Undoubtedly. But it was you who did.”

  “Because no one else dared.”

  “Exactly.”

  Dame Claire looked sideways up at Frevisse to see if she had taken the point. After a moment, Frevisse smiled wryly in return. “And it doesn’t help that I don’t always question her in the mildest way possible.”

  “Nor does it help that you do it so often.”

  Frevisse made a small gesture of helplessness, and Dame Claire said, “I know. You tend to see matters more clearly than most do, and for good measure you think about them, and then, beyond that, you have the courage—more courage than I have—to speak out when you think you should.”

  “The courage or the stupidity.”

  “That, too, upon occasion,” Dame Claire agreed equitably. “But whether you speak out or not, she assumes that you disapprove of whatever she does, and sometimes the look on your face shows all too clearly that you do. I, on the other hand, annoy her simply by being here at all.”

  And that, Frevisse knew, was true enough, too. Dame Claire’s mere presence was reminder of what everyone knew Domina Edith had intended for the priory; and to Domina Alys’ choleric mind, Dame Claire’s presence was an ongoing rebuke.

  “And it doesn’t help,” Frevisse said, “that we keep each other company at recreation time.”

  “It makes her more suspicious of both of us,” Dame Claire agreed.

  “I’ll try to bridle my tongue. That may eventually help.”

  Dame Claire did not answer. Their walking had brought them back to the bottom of the garden, a little way from where Sister Thomasine still stood, her face lifted to the thrush still singing in the pear tree. By unspoken accord, they both stopped to listen, too, though Frevisse’s mind stayed more on what they had been saying then on the beauty of the evening. And so did Dame Claire’s, apparently, for shortly she said, quite bravely, “I have an idea that might help.”

  Frevisse gave a small sideways movement of her head to show she was listening without looking away from the bird above them. Dame Claire went on, “I’m going to confess in chapter that I’ve been guilty of proud and sinful thoughts and of failure to keep a vow.” She slightly raised her hand to stop Frevisse’s startled, disbelieving response. “Last year I was so afraid Domina Edith would have pain in her dying and that there would be nothing I could do for it that I vowed to St. Frideswide that if she would give her a quiet death, free from pain, I’d make a pilgrimage on foot to her shrine in Oxford.”

  “Dame Claire!” Frevisse said in distress. A nun was not supposed to make vows beyond the limits of her obedience to her prioress, vows she could not possibly keep without her prioress’ permission.

  “I know. But I thought then, God forgive me”—she crossed herself—“that I would be prioress after her so there was no problem. I simply wanted her to die peacefully. I never imagined I would have to ask Dame Alys’ permission to keep the vow. So I’ve added to my sin by waiting this long to ask it.”

  “And you’d tell all that in chapter? In front of everyone?” She did not add, though it was the strongest thought she had: To Domina Alys’ face?

  “It’s the only way. It will clear my soul and give her enough satisfaction at my humiliation she may no longer feel I’m such a threat to her.”

  “But do you think she’ll actually give you leave? She could simply release you from the vow and give you heavy penance here.”

  “I think to have me out of here awhile—and to show how generous-spirited she is—she’ll give me leave. I’m nearly sure of it. But I want you to be the one who goes with me.”

  No nun could go abroad beyond the nunnery walls alone. At very least another nun had to keep her company, and Frevisse immediately grasped what Dame Claire was asking of her.

  “You want that I should make confession in chapter, too, when you do. Of my prideful thoughts against her. And ask to be sent on foot with you, for my penance.”

  “Yes.”

  Frevisse stared at the ground in front of her without seeing it. “It won’t work,” she said. “She’ll never allow it.”

  “She will,” Sister Thomasine said. Her voice despite its softness startled them; they had forgotten she was there. She turned to face them. “She’ll gladly let you go if you give her the chance.”

  “How do you know?” Dame Claire asked gently. Unlike Frevisse for whom patience with Sister Thomasine was too often an effort, Dame Claire was always willing to listen to her.

  Sister Thomasine tilted her head a little, as if she found the question puzzling. “She will. That’s all.”

  The sunset was far faded toward darkness, and Sister Thomasine’s face was only a pale blur within the circle of her white wimple, i
ts expression unreadable, but her voice in all its gentleness was completely assured, beyond any question of might be or maybe. Frevisse shivered and told herself that it was only from the chill that was creeping in now the last of the light was going. She turned to Dame Claire and said with more firmness of purpose than she felt, “I’ll do it, and God have mercy on us,” and was glad that the cloister bell began to ring then, calling them in to Compline and putting an end to any chance of further talk.

  Chapter 3

  Stretched out on his back on the sun-wanned grassy bank, his hands under his head and all at ease, Giles watched the oak leaves lightly moving on the branches high between him and the clear sky. Around him the easy talk of folk met by chance on the road went quietly on without need for him to listen to its pointlessness. Since they would easily be at Minster Lovell before nightfall, no one was making any haste over their midday meal here in the oak’s wide shade on the grassy verge of the road. The weather had held mostly dry and warm these past few days of their journeying so they could afford this sort of leisure along the way. Giles supposed that was something to be thankful for, even if there was not much else.

  They had already been to Winchcombe Abbey and three of the other Kenelm churches. And Winchcombe at least had been tolerable. Barely. The abbey’s purpose might be holy—though the monks were making a pretty penny off their saint, vows of poverty notwithstanding—but the town grown up outside the abbey gates had more worldly pleasures to offer those who, like Giles, had something other than prayers in mind. But the rest of the Kenelm shrines were proving to be paltry places, scattered long thwart and thitherward around the countryside in one-street villages miles from anywhere worth being, with inns not worth the name or food worth the eating. And now there was the company Lionel was choosing to keep.

  They had set out from Knyvet with eleven in their company: he and Edeyn and Lionel, no trouble there, and seven servants to see to them and the horses and the baggage, and Martyn, of course, damn him. A manageable lot, but leave it to Lionel to take up along the way with a handful of chance-met strangers, none of them worth the bother to spit on. The franklin alone with his great gut-laugh was enough to hold against Lionel until doomsday, and they had only been in his company since mid-morning. The man claimed to be bound on business somewhere but was in no apparent haste about it, willing to amble the day away with them and now lingering over his wayside dinner with the rest. By his own boast—and, God, could the man boast—he had been as far as Exeter to the south, Worcester to the west, and Oxford to the east, and seemed to think that meant he had seen the world. So far as Giles was concerned, the very set of his regrettable hat proclaimed him a lout-wit.