The Apostate's Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  Frevisse had startled at that. She had named no names, but Dame Emma, with a busy mind that did not run deeply, had a way, when she was not thinking about something else during an Office, of throwing herself at the psalms with a vast eagerness that had no heed for what the words meant, only for saying them as vigorously as she could, and while she was not the only nun with ways that irked Frevisse, she had indeed been Frevisse’s undoing this morning. Domina Edith had leaned a little toward her and said, as if imparting a deep secret, “She wears worse than anyone else on me, too.”

  Frevisse was so relieved not to be alone in her fault that she had burst out, “If only she prayed as if she understood what she was saying!”

  With a hint of laughter in her voice, Domina Edith had answered, “We’re commanded to sing joyfully in the Lord’s name. The psalm says nothing about being a delight to the ears of others while we do it.” While Frevisse paused with surprise at that way of seeing it, Domina Edith had sat back in her chair and added, “Now, there is your fault to be mended.”

  Frevisse had stirred restlessly at that. No matter what her intent, she had still found it hard to think of her irk at discordant prayer as a fault.

  Probably easily reading that thought, Domina Edith had said, “There is, of course, the matter of penance for your anger and for losing your place in the prayers, but I suspect that learning a quiet-hearted acceptance of others ‘flaws’ will serve best as both your penance and your cure together.” She had smiled. “I would tell you, as our Lord told the adulteress, to go and do no more sin, as if that would settle your trouble, but I know, as surely our Lord knew, that it isn’t as simple as that.”

  Unable to keep her dismay to herself, Frevisse had exclaimed, “No, it isn’t!” She had wanted Domina Edith to somehow make things better, not lay a task on her that she had instantly and deeply doubted she could do.

  But very quietly Domina Edith had said, “Child, it’s not in having our own way in everything that we come to God. It’s in giving up ourselves that we free our souls to grow.”

  “I’ve never understood…” Frevisse had started but found herself already discouraged enough that she had been unable even to finish the sentence.

  Gently, Domina Edith had said, “It’s among the hardest of things to understand. We’re too wrapped and led by our bodies and our thoughts to understand easily the freedom there is in going free of both our body’s and our mind’s demands. Nor is it an effort you will succeed at once and be done with.” She had smiled. “Not unless you become a saint. Although I gather holiness doesn’t always sit easily on even a saint. No, child, you will not find this quest an easy one, unless by God’s mercy you are particularly blessed.”

  Frevisse had not been particularly blessed. With more failures than a few in her long struggle toward quiet-hearted acceptance, there were times when she did not feel blessed at all; but in those times what helped the most was the last thing Domina Edith had said that day. After bidding her to rise and making a small, dismissing movement of one hand, she had said while Frevisse curtsied to her, “Remember, too, when next your impatience rises, that you don’t know how well or ill your own voice accords among your sisters. You may be as much a trial to someone of them as Dame Emma is to you.”

  These years later, Frevisse could laugh at how that thought had startled her young self, but then it had discomforted her enough to let her begin the long work of learning that Domina Edith had set her. And a long learning it was, nor yet completed, she feared. One thing she had come to understand, though, was that holiness need not include outward loveliness at prayer. For an instance, Dame Thomasine was more removed from the world and probably closer to God than anyone Frevisse had ever known; it had not made difference to her thin and reedy voice in the Offices. But with her wider understanding, Frevisse had come to accept—which was a step further than merely knowing—that all the nuns’ voices were part of the pattern of prayer that was the heart of the priory’s reason to be at all, and it had been with an unexpected ache this Lent that Frevisse found she missed the part that had been Dame Emma’s, now that Dame Emma was no longer with them but buried in a quiet grave in the nunnery’s orchard.

  Domina Edith had been right—she was larger souled for being less wedded to demanding how the world should be for her.

  At least she hoped she was larger souled.

  But if nothing else, she was able now, most of the time, to give herself up fully to the Offices’ prayers and psalms, to the heart-easing, mind-lifting pleasure of letting go the world’s weight and going into mindfulness of all there was beyond the passing matters of every day. As she and the others were now saying, “Domine, non superbit cor meum…Immo composui et pacavi animam meam. Sicut parvulus in gremio matris suae; ita in me est anima mea.” Lord, my heart is not prideful…Rather I have settled and quieted my soul. As a little child on the lap of his mother, so in me is my soul.

  Here was the reason for all else. All the duties and rules and limits of her life were for this—these times of prayer when she could reach beyond life’s limits toward God and joy and the soul’s freedom.

  But Vespers came to its end, trailing into quietness, and for once Domina Elisabeth did not immediately rise but stayed seated, her head bowed in thought or further prayer for a long moment more. Beyond the rood screen, such folk as had come to the Office from the guesthall and among the servants rustled and shuffled into movement, away to their suppers and, for the servants, what evening duties they might have. The nuns, perforce, waited for their prioress.

  Such a wait was unusual. Domina Elisabeth brought to the Offices the sense that they were owed to God much like a business debt, a repeated daily payment for his blessings. Seeing it that way, she always saw to it that her nuns made their payments on time and well, and when the payment had been made, she always promptly moved herself and them on to their next duties. That was why there was now a moment of poised waiting and then, when she did not stir, a slight head-turning among her nuns, enough to look past the edge of their veils, first toward Domina Elisabeth, then at each other.

  Frevisse, finding herself doing it, stopped and set her gaze firmly on her hands folded together on her closed breviary. Of all weeks, this one before Easter, with the wonder of Christ’s sacrifice of his earthly life for the sake of mankind’s eternal souls and then his resurrection in promise of mankind’s resurrection into God’s forgiveness and love, was the one most likely to draw extra prayer from even the least prayerful, and Domina Elisabeth was far from being that. Still, whatever prayer—or thought—holding Domina Elisabeth now was brief. Only Dame Amicia had actually begun to shift restlessly in her place before Domina Elisabeth lifted her head, put out the candle beside her, came briskly to her feet, and stepped from her place to lead them from the choir and to their supper.

  Chapter 5

  While the nuns filed out, Cecely stayed on her knees in the choir stall but dropped her hands from the slanted ledge and breviary in front of her to hide how tightly they were clenched together. Of all the weeks to come back here, this one had to be the worst. Not that she had had much choice in the matter. This was how things had played out and here she was, but she had forgotten how long the Offices were in Holy Week. Long enough on ordinary days, they were hideously longer now. Add that to the hours Domina Elisabeth looked likely to keep her kneeling penitent in front of the altar and she was likely to die of the tediousness, if not of her knees’ pain and her back’s ache, before this was over.

  Now the church was empty, dark except for the small glow of the lamp above the altar and what slight gray light came through the small, high windows. Everyone else was gone. That meant she was freed to go, too. Domina Elisabeth’s order had been plain: when the nuns were gone to supper, then she could go, too. Her stomach growled at her as she climbed to her feet. She stepped from the stall, made a low curtsy to the altar, and left the choir, going out into the cloister walk where, as she expected, a nun was waiting for her. Dame Juliana, she thoug
ht. Older than Cecely remembered her and grown more grim with her years in this place, the way they all seemed to have done. She did not even nod to Cecely, just turned and walked away, expecting Cecely to follow her, as if Cecely could not find her own way to the refectory. St. Frideswide’s was too small a place for anyone to forget where anywhere in it was, no matter how long they had been gone, but after all Dame Juliana was her guard, not her guide, and Cecely followed her silently through the deepening gray twilight, around the cloister walk to where the refectory door stood open to a yellow glow of candlelight.

  Dame Juliana paused to wash her hands in the waiting bowl of water on the stand beside the door and dry them on the towel there, then stood aside while Cecely did the same. The water must have been hot when it was first set here. It was barely tepid now, chilling quickly in the evening air. It chilled her already cool hands, too, so that she barely dried them in her haste to tuck them under her arms and against her body to warm them. Dame Juliana’s look at her reminded her that was unacceptable, and Cecely grimly folded them together humbly in front of her and bowed her head. Satisfied, Dame Juliana led her finally into the refectory.

  Did nothing ever change in this place? This room, too, was the same as it had been nine years ago. Open-raftered to the roof and with plain-plastered walls, it was hardly different from a well-made barn except for the nuns’ long table stretched down the room’s middle with benches along both sides and a stool at one end for the prioress to over-watch what were laughably called meals. Single candlestubs burned at either end of the table, casting a deceptive sheen over the tabletop’s scrubbed boards, while in a far corner a taller candle was set at an upper edge of a long-legged, slant-topped desk where a nun stood alone, waiting to read aloud while the other nuns ate. The rest of the nuns were standing with bowed heads at their places along the table. No one looked around at Cecely as she followed Dame Juliana into the room, though Cecely thought there was here and there the glint of an eye shifted toward her, curious.

  They should be curious, she thought. They had never dared anything but being here. She had dared to go out into the world, had loved, been loved, and even if she was back here now, she had all that to hold to and remember, while all they had was a bare-roomed, comfortless nunnery, each other’s dull company, and their prioress’ heavy hand over them.

  Dame Juliana led her to a dark corner at the far end of the room from anyone and with a small gesture silently bade her stand and stay. Discomfited that she was not going to be allowed to sit and knowing she would not be allowed to lean against the wall either, Cecely tried to keep her irk hidden as Dame Juliana joined the other nuns along the table. Not that anyone was looking at her now. They were all thinking too hard toward their supper as Domina Elisabeth gave thanks for what they would receive.

  It was excessive thanks for not much, Cecely thought. This being Lent and food scant, every meal was desperately looked forward to. Not that there were that many meals, or what could be called meals. Something to silence the stomach in the morning, one true meal at midday, then a slight something for supper. Her own stomach was growling again. She could only hope she wasn’t going to be made to watch them all eat before she was given food, too.

  Domina Elisabeth finished thanks, the nuns sat down, and two servantwomen came in with laden trays, to set a cup of something and a portion of dark, unbuttered bread before each nun, with Domina Elisabeth’s no larger than anyone else’s, Cecely noted. What was the point of being prioress if you couldn’t have more or better than your nuns? But very likely she would have something else in her room, with no one to know it, Cecely thought resentfully.

  Her stomach roiled more, and she had the frightened thought that maybe she was going to have no supper at all but be made to fast until tomorrow; but when everyone else had been served, had begun to eat and the reader to read, one of the servantwomen came back silent-footed from the kitchen, bringing to Cecely a thick-cut piece of heavy, dark bread and a wooden cup. Cecely took them eagerly, but the servant kept hold, so that Cecely looked at her and found her looking back with both worry and question. More than that, Cecely knew her and said on a breath that was barely a whisper, “Alson!” She held back from a smile only because someone might be watching but knew what Alson was silently asking and shook her head in a small “no.” Alson, with her back to the room, dared a small smile at her before ducking her head and hurrying out, leaving Cecely not quite so barren with loneliness as she had been. She after all wasn’t without a friend in this place. That was more than she had dared to hope for.

  What Alson had given her to eat, however, was miserable. The bread was dry and stiff. It had to be yesterday’s, and she would swear it was more chaff than flour, while the cup held ale so thin it might as well have been water. Penance was one thing. Starvation was another. How long did Domina Elisabeth mean to keep her this little fed? She hoped Neddie was better seen to than this, poor little mite. The church had been so shadowy that, with the rood screen in the way, she hadn’t been able to see if he had been brought to suffer through Vespers, and she could not guess when she’d be allowed to see him again. Domina Elisabeth might decide that to be separated from him should be part of her punishment.

  But no. No matter what the nuns did to her, Cecely didn’t think they would be that cruel to a small child. Let him cry for his mother, or even ask for her piteously enough, and they would be merciful. She had told him that and was certain she could depend on him to do that much.

  If nothing else, Alson would surely help her. Cecely said a quick and general little prayer of thanks for her good fortune in finding Alson still here.

  That did not help her to choke down the miserable bread, though, nor did she dare take time to soak it much in the ale. When the nuns finished eating, she would be expected to be done, too, she supposed, so she chewed at it and, to take her mind from it, listened to the nun reading aloud at the room’s other end, only after a while realizing that what she was hearing was the same sermon for Tenebrae, the dark days before Easter, that had been read at them all this same way in her last Lent here. Dear saints above, did nothing ever change in this place?

  She was washing down the last of the bread with the last of the poor ale when Domina Elisabeth rose from her place to show the meal was done. All of her nuns rose like shadows with her, and grace was said again—little though there was to be thankful for, Cecely thought. Maybe they were giving thanks there hadn’t been less.

  Now came the one hour of recreation they were allowed each day. Given the cold and wet, they would probably go straight to the warming room, Cecely supposed, and supposed, too, that she should simply stay where she was until told to do otherwise. The nuns left, save for Dame Juliana. Cecely looked at her, and she pointed at the table for Cecely to put the cup there. When Cecely had, Dame Juliana signed for her to follow her, and they went from the refectory and around a corner of the cloister walk to, as Cecily had expected, the warming room.

  With its fireplace it was one of the more comfortable places in the cloister, but not very. A fire was usually allowed there only from October’s end until April’s, and it was as plain a room as the refectory but far smaller, the nuns’ retreat in poor weather and where they sat through the daily chapter meetings where nunnery business was dealt with, confessions made of common faults, and penances given for them. Cecely had expected she would be dealt with in the morrow’s meeting, but found that the nuns, rather than at ease and in talk and at the various light pastimes allowed in this while of recreation, were seated on their joint stools in a partial circle facing the prioress’ chair, and as she followed Dame Juliana into the room every one of them looked toward the doorway. Toward her.

  Her heart sinking a little, Cecely stopped on the threshold, looking back at them. Not in the morning, then. Now. Tonight. While she was still tired with travel, still chilled from the rain and the church. Still hungry.

  She straightened her shoulders and lifted her head. So be it, she thought defiantly.


  Then she remembered she was supposed to be humbly contrite in her disgrace, and bowed her head and let her shoulders slump. Not soon enough, it seemed, as Domina Elisabeth, standing at her chair, said sternly, “Come forward to me and kneel here, facing your sisters.”

  Head down, Cecely went. Behind her, Dame Juliana shut the door and went quiet-footed to sit in the place left for her among the other nuns. Cecely had had enough of a cold floor under her knees when she was in the church, but she knelt where Domina Elisabeth had pointed beside her chair, keeping her head down but feeling all their stares. Let them stare. They had little else in their lives, so let them enjoy her infamy, her shame. Their staring would never give them as much pleasure as she had had.

  That thought briefly warmed her, might almost have brought her to silent laughter if the next thought had not come swiftly, bitterly—that her Guy was gone and all the pleasure and love there had been between them would never be again. Resentful tears rose so suddenly in her eyes that she could not stop them swelling and spilling over. Well, let them spill, she thought, making no move to wipe them away. These women would think they were tears of contrition, acknowledgement of her shame.

  They would likely think, too, that tearful contrition was only the beginning of what she deserved if the unalloyed coldness in Domina Elisabeth’s voice was anything to judge by, saying at the others, “By now you know from talk among yourselves all that need presently be known about our Sister Cecely’s return. Nine years ago she fled with a man. He is now dead and she has returned to us, bringing her child. More than that you do not need to know about her apostasy, and it will be to everyone’s good if talk about her among you ceases hereafter, at least until Easter is done.” Downward, at Cecely now, she went on, “You have come at a goodly time for your own soul, not at so good a time for us.”