Or as much shining as the soul could do while still held in the world by the body.
With surely very little time until the bell would ring for the next Office, she went to her choir stall and knelt there, her forehead resting on her clasped hands. She could remember how carefully, all those years ago, Domina Edith had guided her fierceness, so that instead of blazing up and burning out, it had become a banked fire deep inside her, burning onward, strong and mostly steady through the years. Out of that memory, she made a prayer that Elianor, if her calling was true, might be guided as she had been, into the deep, high, wide places of the soul where true love and true freedom were.
Chapter 17
Through Easter Week—the beginning of Paschaltide—the nuns’ ordinary tasks were kept as slight as might be, to give rest from the rigors of Holy Week and Easter and time for their own prayers outside the Offices, but thus far in the week Frevisse had not found much chance for either rest or her own prayers, aside from that brief while before Tierce this morning. So when a pause in her duties came early in the afternoon, she returned to the church, somewhat hurrying in hope she could reach the shelter of her stall in the choir before someone needed her for something.
She succeeded, was a little surprised but nothing more to find no one else there except Sister Helen, huddled down on her knees in front of her own seat. The first sharp stab of wariness only came as the girl looked up at her, face pale and strained, and pleaded, “Please, will you talk with me?”
Frevisse’s first urge was to tell the girl it was to Domina Elisabeth she should talk, that it was the prioress’ place to comfort and guide St. Frideswide’s nuns, but despite an inward quailing, she found herself saying evenly, “Assuredly,” and came to sit in the stall beside her while Sister Helen shifted backward from her knees onto the narrow wooden seat of her own stall.
There, she seemed to lose whatever she had wanted to say. She sat looking down at her hands twisting together in her lap, bit her lower lip for a moment, looked sideways to Frevisse, looked back to her hands, and only finally brought herself to whisper, “I’m frightened.”
That was so far from anything Frevisse had thought to hear that she said blankly, “What?”
“It’s Sister Cecely,” Sister Helen said desperately.
It would be, thought Frevisse.
“What if…” Sister Helen faltered. “She took her final vows and yet she…What if I…”
“Become as faithless as she did?” Frevisse said bluntly. “That you’ve the good sense to fear it gives good hope you won’t.”
“But what if…” Sister Helen turned her head and looked full at Frevisse, despair naked on her face, and desperately and in a rush, she said, “It’s not her. Not really. It’s that I don’t feel what I felt when I first came here. Not always. Sometimes I don’t feel it at all. Sometimes there’s no joy in anything. Sometimes I have to drag myself to Offices, they’re such a drudge. Sometimes I can hardly pray at all. I have to force myself. That can’t be right!”
“Right or not, it comes to all of us,” Frevisse said.
Sister Helen’s eyes widened. “Even to you? Even now?”
Frevisse did not understand the “even to you” and let it pass, answering instead, very firmly, “Even now. The only difference between what you’re suffering and what I sometimes suffer is that now I know that sooner or later I’ll come out the far side of it, into the joy again.”
“You do? Will I?” Sister Helen asked with mingled hope and hopelessness.
“You will if you have the courage to go on despite the darkness and even despair that comes,” Frevisse said steadily, hoping to steady her. “They do come. The darkness and the despair. And more than once, I promise you. But it’s not what you’re feeling at the moment that will make the difference. The difference lies in your willingness to go on despite of it.”
“What if I can’t go on?”
“The only thing that can stop you going on is your choice to turn aside. Or else death. If it’s Sister Cecely you’re thinking of, she turned aside. That will be the great difference between you. Or the great likeness,” she added in all fairness.
Sister Helen stared at her. Frevisse stared back, not knowing what else to say, until finally Sister Helen said, “Thank you,” looked away, slipped forward onto her knees again, and bowed her head onto her clasped hands resting on the breviary there.
Frevisse’s own urge to pray was gone, but she rose and went quietly to her place, sat, closed her eyes, bowed her head over her hands resting together on her lap, and wondered whether she had done well. By rights she should have sent the girl to Domina Elisabeth with her doubts and fears. She knew that. Sister Helen had turned to her simply because she was there, and she had answered the girl’s fear simply because she had an answer, that was all. But why hadn’t Sister Helen gone to Domina Elisabeth with her doubts? Why hadn’t Frevisse sent her there?
And yesterday there had been Dame Johane, equally worried and questioning, again someone Frevisse should maybe have sent to Domina Elisabeth.
This was Sister Cecely’s doing, Frevisse thought bitterly. Had the woman ever been anything but troublesome? That’s what she had been when trying to be a nun here, had made more trouble by running off, then had been a troubling—but fading—memory.
That had been Sister Cecely at her best—as a fading memory. Now, by returning, she was making trouble all over again, not least by this stirring of doubts and unease among the younger nuns. Not that unease and doubts need be bad. Frevisse had had her full share of both over the years and knew now that, fairly faced and fully dealt with, they had strengthened her in ways she would not have been without them. Her unease and doubts and the need to deal with them had deepened and widened her faith.
Unfortunately, knowing that did not necessarily make either unease or doubts any easier to bear when they came.
And not everyone came out the far side of them. However passing the trouble of Sister Cecely was—and it would pass—there was no knowing yet what would come of the unease, the doubts, the fears she had stirred up—unease, doubts, and fears that might have come at one time or another, but instead were all come at once. And at a time when Domina Elisabeth seemed least ready to take on their burden and steady her nuns.
Frevisse shied from that last thought, then made herself look at it straightly because it had to be faced. In some unclear way, Domina Elisabeth had become remote of late. Lent’s necessities seemed to have worn beyond the usual on her, leaving her deeply weary. To burden her just now with troubles beyond those come with Sister Cecely seemed unnecessarily unkind. Yet she had to be told. She was as bound by her vows as any of her nuns. It was her place, not Frevisse’s, to comfort and guide them, and sooner or later Frevisse would have to answer for the wrong of usurping her place if she went on doing so.
Better, then, not to go on doing it. Better that Domina Elisabeth be told now and be done with it, Frevisse thought, and she quietly left the choir, trying to disturb Sister Helen as little as might be.
She carried her decision as far as the foot of the stairs to Domina Elisabeth’s rooms and would have carried it up the stairs except Luce from the guesthall came hurrying down them. Suddenly confronted with each other, they both came to sudden stops, Luce saying, “Oh!” then bursting out, “I was just sent to find you! My lady wants you! Peter is come back from Abbot Gilberd. He’ll be here tomorrow. The abbot. The abbot himself! Domina Elisabeth wants to see you!”
With hidden dismay and sinking heart, Frevisse thanked her and went on up the stairs. Domina Elisabeth met her in the doorway at their head, fretted and unsettled, exclaiming, “Come in! Luce told you. I heard her. What are we going to do? How can we be ready?”
Frevisse could have matched her for unsettled. To have one of Abbot Gilberd’s officers here would have been one thing. As the abbot’s man, he would have needed to be shown something of the courtesy due his master and St. Frideswide’s could have done that well enough. To have Abb
ot Gilberd himself here was a far more difficult thing, and if giving way to alarm as open as Domina Elisabeth’s would have done any good, Frevisse would have joined her in it. Since it would not, she said with an outward assurance that she inwardly lacked, “Very little needs to be done to be ready, my lady. Master Breredon will have to move into one of the lesser chambers. He can be shifted as soon as I say.” And that would serve him rightly, she thought. She would likewise put fresh wariness of Abbot Gilberd into both him and the Rowcliffes, and that would be to the good, too. “There’ll be time enough this afternoon to have the room cleaned and readied for my lord abbot.”
Her steadiness had somewhat steadied Domina Elisabeth but, “What of food? What are we going to feed him?”
Frevisse refrained from saying, Let him eat what we eat, why should he eat better? Neither Domina Elisabeth nor Abbot Gilberd would see it that way, so more usefully, she offered, “Someone in the village should still have at least one ham they’ll be willing to sell.” She knew for a certainty that there were villagers who lived better than the nuns did. “Master Naylor can be sent to buy what he may. There’ll have to be a lamb from the flock, no matter what. We still have honey and sufficient dried fruits, I think. Dame Perpetua will be best able to tell you what’s to hand and what can be done with it. I think we’ve still a little white flour left.” Domina Elisabeth seemed about to protest something—probably that none of that sounded enough—but Frevisse added very firmly, “Beyond that, why should my lord abbot think we live more richly than we do?”
That stopped whatever Domina Elisabeth had been about to say. She did not look so much reassured as too distracted to carry it further and said rather desperately, “Yes. We can only do what we can do. I’ll leave the guesthall to you. Have Dame Perpetua come to me, please. Dame Juliana, too. The church will have to be readied.”
“My lady,” Frevisse said, made a curtsy, and left.
At least, with Easter just past, little would need doing in the church, but she suspected that Domina Elisabeth would nonetheless have them all scurrying from task to task from now until Abbot Gilberd arrived. Yet more trouble to be laid to Sister Cecely’s account.
In the cloister walk again, she found that Luce’s news had already spread; she was hardly away from the stairfoot when Dame Juliana and Dame Amicia passed her on their way to Domina Elisabeth without need for summons, and in the cloister’s kitchen she found Dame Perpetua in the midst of laying a firm hand upon the flutter the news had caused there. Frevisse shared her thoughts on what was to be done about feeding the abbot, and Dame Perpetua agreed with her but said, “He’d better bring his own wine with him, though. Do we know how many men he’s bringing with him?”
“It seems not. I would guess at least ten.”
“Blessed Saint Frideswide. He’d better bring some food with him, too, then. Will you talk with Master Naylor or should I?”
“I will,” said Frevisse. “This is going to fall mostly on the guesthall, after all.”
“But feeding the abbot is going to fall mostly on me,” Dame Perpetua said grimly. “He’ll be dining with Domina Elisabeth in her chamber probably. I’d better see to our napery, too, I suppose.”
Leaving Dame Perpetua to her share of the trouble, Frevisse went to the guesthall. Here old Ela was waiting for her just inside the door but blessedly not in any kind of fret or flutter, saying without the bother of any greeting, “I’ve already warned Master Breredon you’ll be asking him to shift. You’d best send someone to the village to see what food is to be had there, and I’m going to need more help here, what with the abbot’s men added to the lot we already have.”
“Master Naylor will see to what can be had from the village. Hire who you need for help. Thank you for warning Master Breredon,” Frevisse said but with a smile that old Ela matched. They understood each other. Between them, they would make all go well here—or someone else had better have good reason why it did not.
Master Breredon made no trouble over having to shift into one of the smaller chambers, cramped though he would be there with his two servants. At Frevisse’s direct demand at him and then at the Rowcliffes, they all swore they would keep their quarrel quiet, abiding the abbot’s arrival. Mistress Lawsell in her own chamber said she was content for herself and her daughter, unworried at it all. For Elianor, standing behind her mother, Frevisse said, “There is always the church. You can spend time there if the hall here becomes too busy for you. That might be best for Elianor, given your hope she becomes a nun.”
“Yes. Of course,” Mistress Lawsell said without convincing force, while Frevisse pretended not to see Elianor’s smile.
Admitting to herself her cowardly desire to avoid whatever upheaval was going on in the cloister, Frevisse stayed busy at the guesthall as long as she could, only leaving when the bell summoned her to Vespers. After that the needs of supper, recreation’s hour, and Compline filled the time until welcome bed. It was only in the morning after Prime and breakfast, as the nuns were on their way back to the church for Mass, that Luce came at them in the cloister walk, pale with sleeplessness and fear, exclaiming at Dame Claire, “It’s Master Breredon! He’s been sick all the last half of the night! Heaving and purging! Ela says you have to come. Come quick!”
Chapter 18
He looks like to die,” Luce cried. “I swear he does! He won’t stop heaving up, but there’s nothing left in him to heave. Or go the other way either. He’s been doing it for hours. It’s terrible!”
Breaking away toward the infirmary, Dame Claire demanded, “Why didn’t you come for me before this?” Adding, “Sister Johane, come with me.”
“Ela didn’t think it would last so long. He’d be sick and then he’d be done. That’s what she thought. But he isn’t.” Luce scuttled a few steps after Dame Claire, then back to Frevisse, wringing her hands. “Ela says you have to come!”
“Of course,” Frevisse said with far more outward calm than she felt inwardly. If this was some contagion broken out in the guesthall…
She looked to Domina Elisabeth for permission to forego Mass and, “Yes,” Domina Elisabeth said. “Go. Go, of course.” She pressed both her hands distractedly to her forehead below the edge of her wimple. “Why now? Why must this happen now?”
Having no answer to that and supposing none was expected, Frevisse made barely a curtsy and went around the cloister walk the other way from Dame Claire’s, toward the outer door, Luce following her.
Outside the cloister, the morning was cool and fresh, with dawn colors still soft in the clear sky, though there was suggestion in the light wind of rain maybe not too far away. Inside the guesthall there was neither cool nor calm. The hall was shadowed, its air close, with a whiff of stinking sickness to it that told Frevisse more than she wanted to know of how bad Breredon’s night had been. As she headed toward the chamber he had been given yesterday, she ordered at the nearest man—one of Rowcliffe’s, as it happened—“It’s morning outside. Open the shutters,” but kept going without seeing if he obeyed.
Even if she had not known which of the lesser rooms opening off the hall Breredon had been given, she would have guessed it from Ela shuffling unhappily from foot to foot in its doorway. The night had not been good to Ela. She was more than ever bent and huddled in on her old body, her head cricked hard to one side so she could look up to Frevisse instead of only at her feet. More than that, she was the sickly pale of someone underslept and over-worked, and guilt panged in Frevisse, because she had done this to Ela, had willingly let Ela take the guesthall in charge again because it was so familiar and easy to work with her. But Ela was old, and while her mind was willing to much, her body was not; Breredon’s illness looked to have served her almost as badly as it served him, and Frevisse said quickly, “How is it with him? Tell me, and then do you go to bed.”
Time was that Ela would have scorned the latter part of that order; but then time was that it would not have been needed. Here and now she only ducked her head in an accepting
nod to it while answering, “It was about halfway from Matins to dawn it took him. Maybe somewhat before. His man Coll came for me, said his master was taken with cramps in the belly, was in a cold sweat and likely to vomit. So up I got and came, and that’s what he’s been doing ever since. Only he’s not thrown up for a time. He’s maybe past the worst, but it’s left him poorly and weak.”
To Frevisse’s eye it had left Ela poorly and weak, too, and she said, “Dame Claire will see to him from now, and I’ll see to everything else here. Luce.” She turned to the hovering woman. “See Ela to her bed and tend on her. Food. Drink. Another blanket or pillow if she wants. See she stays there until Dame Claire or I say otherwise.”
It was sign of Ela’s weariness that she made no complaint at that nor protested at all when Luce stooped to put a hand under her elbow and an arm around her to help her away. Only belatedly Frevisse asked, “Where’s Tom?”
“Here, my lady,” he said from Breredon’s doorway.
In his own way, by rumpled hair, untucked shirt, and eyes red-rimmed with sleeplessness and worry, he showed as plainly as Ela did what a bad night it had been, but he was young and upright and hearty enough that he would take no lasting harm from it. What worried Frevisse was what he and the rest of them might take from Breredon, because if this was not something simply in the man’s own belly, if it was something that could spread, the priory was in for a worse time than they presently had.
And Abbot Gilberd, almost here, would have to be warned away.
She wanted to join Domina Elisabeth in clutching her head and moaning, Why now? But she settled for asking Tom as she went forward, “How does he?” Then could see for herself as soon as she was in the room, with no need for Tom saying, “Not good, I’d guess.”
The room stank of sickness, and Breredon lay curled on his side on the very edge of the bed, probably to be in ready reach of the basin on the floor near his head should the need come on him again. Just now he was lying quietly, eyes closed, but with a tautness to his stillness that said he was neither asleep nor at ease. He was pale-faced, too, his hair lank with old sweat while new sweat was beaded on his forehead. The only bold thing left of the confident and prospering man of yesterday was the black stubble of his beard against his pale flesh, and from where she stood near the bed his servant Ida pleaded, “Are you going to do something for him, my lady?”
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