Novice’s Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  “Yes, my lady,” Frevisse answered quickly. Then she made the mental leap to overtake the prioress’s mind and said, startled, “Surely not!”

  “Surely not,” Domina Edith agreed firmly. “There was nothing wrong with any of it, but the crowner will be here, asking questions, and there will be talk. There is always talk when someone dies without obvious cause. I would like the answers known before the questions begin. Who made the milksop?”

  “Thomasine was sent for it. I don’t know if she or Dame Alys or one of the lay workers made it. It might have even been Martha herself.”

  “Do find out, please. And what particularly went into it. The wine she drank was Sir John’s?”

  “He brought it because it’s Lady Ermentrude’s favorite. It was to hand and easier to use than gathering the keys to the priory’s supply just then.” •

  “Very reasonable and thoughtful. The herbs?”

  “Dame Claire sent Thomasine for them. She was very specific which box she wanted, and was satisfied with what Thomasine brought.”

  Domina Edith drew a deep sigh and let it out heavily. “That all seems reasonable. It is only a pity that Dame Alys makes so great a matter of the quarrel between her family and the Fenners, and her wishing she could have a hand in it, since the food came from her kitchen.”

  “True. But she may have had no hand in the milksop.”

  “But Thomasine surely did. And with the medicine. She had both of them at one time or another, and everyone knows how plainly terrified her aunt had made her.

  “Not terrified enough to kill,” Frevisse protested.

  “That is what must be made clear to Master Montfort when he comes. Thomasine is strung too high for her own health and an accusation of murder could destroy her.”

  Frevisse, frowning, said, “You don’t think—”

  “No. She has been here long enough for me to take her measure. She could not hide such a deed, if she had done it.”

  “No,” Frevisse agreed.

  Domina Edith nodded her bobbing nod that sometimes led off into sleep, and her voice after a pause was dreamy. “She has a holiness sometimes alarming to behold. Men have been killed in mishandling holy relics, you know.”

  Frevisse hesitated, having lost the prioress’s path of thought, wondering how far toward sleep she was. “Yes?” she said, prepared to slip away if there was no reply.

  But Domina Edith looked up shrewdly from under her wrinkled eyelids, not sleepy at all. “I would be more afraid man pleased to have a living saint on my hands. And if I’m afraid of so much holiness, how must she feel, finding God working within her? It’s small wonder she looks half-sick with dread so much of the time. And now there’s her talk of demons. What happens when Master Montfort begins questioning her?”

  “I don’t know, Domina.”

  “I want you with her as much as may be through these next few days. Where is she now?”

  “With Lady Ermentrude. I gave her leave to stay. She wants to spend the night there, in penance for her anger at Lady Ermentrude and Martha.”

  Domina Edith smiled a small smile. “People who cause such anger so deliberately should be the ones to do the penance for it. Which I daresay Martha is doing now, wherever she is, may I be wrong.” She crossed herself. “And Lady Ermentrude—but Dame Claire thinks she will live.”

  “It seems likely.”

  “And enjoy recovering her health among us, doubtless.” Domina Edith quieted the grumble in her voice. “But may she live a good long while yet, she and her monkey and her parrot and her dogs, and visit us many more times after this, amen.”

  “Amen,” Frevisse replied.

  “You mean for Thomasine to keep watch all night?”

  “Some of Lady Ermentrude’s women will keep it in turns with her. Otherwise I think she’d spend the night on her knees in church and this seemed a better choice. By your leave.”

  “My leave is given. But bring her to Compline. And see that she eats. Holiness is no excuse for mortifying a body God has already seen fit to make so weak.”

  Lady Ermentrude still slept, to Thomasine’s heartfelt relief. The crucifix lay on her pillow, ready to hand if needed; the goblet, with fresh wine and a new infusion of Dame Claire’s quieting medicine, sat on the table along the wall. There was nothing she need do except pray. All the women had gone to the hall for supper and she was alone. The prie-dieu waited in its corner, but Thomasine stood at the foot of the bed, watching Lady Ermentrude’s sleep and trying to form the words that, for once, disconcertingly, did not want to come. It was a relief rather than interruption when a small scratching at the door was followed by Isobel looking cautiously in and then entering, closing the door softly behind her. She came to stand by Thomasine and asked, “How does she?”

  “Still sleeping. I think it’s sleep. She breathes evenly and hardly stirs.”

  “What does your Dame Claire say?”

  “That if she sleeps quietly the whole night, she will probably mend.”

  “You look as if you could sleep yourself. You’ve had a wearying day,” Isobel said.

  Thomasine shook her head. “I couldn’t sleep. She needs my prayers. I need my prayers,” she amended softly, then turned her wide eyes fully on her sister and said, “We all need everyone’s prayers.”

  Taken aback, Isobel said, “What?”

  Thomasine looked to Lady Ermentrude again. “Death struck at her, you know. Meant to take her but missed, and Martha was taken instead. Didn’t you feel it?” She was very careful to keep her voice calm, but the calm was stretched taut over a hysteria she was unsure of holding. She looked again at her sister, who looked desperately anxious to understand. They had never been much together, never particularly close, but they were sisters and there ought to be a bond between them. “I keep watching her, wanting to see what it looks like to escape Death so narrowly.”

  “Thomasine!” Isobel breathed, with a kind of horror.

  But Thomasine needed to say the words, was too wrought into her own feelings to stop, and continued despite Isobel’s stare. “And I’m afraid Death will try again. I tried not to hate her but I did. I maybe still do, even after watching her suffer so horribly. It. was ugly and awful, the way she suffered, but I had no pity at all for her. She’d been awful to me and I had no pity. I’m so wicked, there was no pity in me at all and I still don’t think there is! Oh, Isobel, what am I going to do?”

  Tears came then, with the last wailing question, and Isobel, who understood the tears if nothing else, put her arm around her shoulders and drew her backward to the bench under the window. “Sit,” she urged. “Sit here with me.”

  Willing to be told what to do, Thomasine obeyed. They sat down together, and letting go completely, Thomasine buried her face in her sister’s lap and sobbed.

  Isobel patted steadily at her shoulder until the tears eased and Thomasine made to sit up again. “You’ll need this,” Isobel said, offering a handkerchief.

  “I have my own,” Thomasine sniffed,- pulling a bit of cloth from her sleeve.

  Isobel, noting it and the frayed edge of the sleeve, asked, “Do you have to wear so poor a habit? We sent you good cloth; did they take it away from you?”

  “No, of course not. But this suits me well enough. I gave my good handkerchiefs to Domina Edith. The ones we made before I came, remember? She said they were as fine as any she had seen.” Sharing the memory strengthened the frail bond and steadied Thomasine. She had dried both nose and eyes when Isobel said, “Did Lady Ermentrude truly say she meant to take you away from here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she say why, among all her other ravings?”

  “No. She was too drunk, I believe, to think. She had the one idea and she kept saying it. But I’ve told her again and again that I want to be here.”

  “Again and again? She’s threatened this before?”

  “Not truly threatened. She’s only teased me, very meanly. But this time…” Thomasine’s eyes widened with
memory. “This time she truly seemed to mean it. And what if she still means it when she wakens? Oh, Isobel, I was so frightened!”

  “There now,” Isobel said firmly. “You needn’t be. She was just stupid with drink, and has no rights over you, whatever she means. She can’t have you out of here if you mean to stay. Thomasine, do you mean to stay here?”

  Thomasine firmed her mouth. “You never have to ask that, Isobel. I want with all my heart to be here forever.”

  “I trust you don’t mean in this particular room,” Dame Frevisse said from the doorway, “because Domina Edith has sent me to bid you come to Compline now.”

  Thomasine and Isobel startled at seeing her there, and the bell for the office began its sweet small chiming into the evening air. Thomasine convulsively gripped Isobel’s hand, as if she would refuse to go, then let her loose, and, sighing, rose to her feet. Obedience came before inclination. With what might have been sympathy in someone else, Dame Frevisse said, “You also have Domina Edith’s permission to return here afterwards and stay the night, just as you wished.”

  Supper in the guest hall was just ending, with only a few beginning to rise from their benches as Thomasine followed Frevisse out. Outside, at the head of the stairs, was the quiet-eyed youth who had helped Thomasine with Lady Ermentrude. He had not heard them coming, was standing with his face turned upward to the darkening sky, drawing a deep breath of the evening air, but was quickly aware of them and stepped aside from their way with a light bow.

  Thomasine thought Dame Frevisse would have passed him with only an inclination of her head, but he asked in his warm and pleasant voice, “How does Lady Ermentrude?”

  Dame Frevisse stopped and said, “Better, I think. She’s sleeping deeply now and is likely to recover if all goes no worse.”

  “God be thanked.” His tone matched his words, pleasing Thomasine because, though she doubted anyone had any great affection for Lady Ermentrude, it was good he knew his duty. Then she saw his gaze had gone from Dame Frevisse to herself. She stiffened, but he said gently, so careful with respect she loosed a little of her wariness, “And I hope you’re none the worse for the fright she gave you and for the other woman’s dying, my lady?”

  Her eyes wide on his face, Thomasine stared at him for a breathless moment, then looked hastily down at her hem and whispered, “Well enough, if it please God, thank you.”

  Before he could answer, if he meant to, Dame Frevisse said, “We do not have a name to thank you by,” in an inquiring voice.

  He bowed. “I’m Robert Fenner, if it please you, my lady.”

  “Thank you, Robert Fenner, for your quick help today. Now, by your leave.” She went down the stairs, and Thomasine perforce followed her, stifling her urge to glance back to see if he stayed to watch them go.

  Late twilight was deepening past blue to night as they crossed the courtyard to the cloister gate. Once inside, the rule of silence took hold and they could not speak aloud except to God. The nuns gathered in the common room for Compline instead of in the church. Frevisse, with too many other things to think on, including Robert Fenner’s face when he had looked at Thomasine, was a little bewildered to find that the office’s three psalms were finished and that she was singing with the others, “Before the last of light, we pray that in your mercy you will watch over us this night.” Then they were through, and she gathered Thomasine up before she could be away to the guest hall and guided her firmly to the refectory.

  Leaving her seated in the hall’s echoing loneliness, Frevisse went on to the kitchen. The lay servants were still there, finishing the day’s work and preparing for tomorrow’s, still quieter than usual, visibly aware of the gap where Martha Hayward had been a few hours ago. They looked up a little warily when Frevisse entered, but she only nodded to them and went about her business. She returned to Thomasine with not only the pittance of cheese and apples that were properly supper, but warmed milk and a honeyed crust of bread. Thomasine began to gesture in protest, but Frevisse raised one hand in a silent asking for obedience. A stubbornness began to pout across Thomasine’s face, but her young body’s hunger won over her mind’s demands, and with more haste than grace she took the food and ate. Having watched to be sure she finished, Frevisse gestured she would go to bed now, and that Thomasine was free to return to the guest house. Thomasine gestured that she had an errand to do first.

  Perplexed, Frevisse raised an eyebrow.

  Thomasine gestured a bowl in the air, stirred it, and made the sign for bread.

  Another milksop, guessed Frevisse, and nodded permission. It was well thought of and would comfort Lady Ermentrude if she woke in the night.

  Thomasine smiled her thanks, made a little bow, and went out.

  Chapter 6

  Frevisse was awake. Somewhere the last faint tendrils of a dream drifted and faded from a far corner of her mind, leaving no memory of what it had been. The hour was past Matins but still far from dawn, she thought. She raised her head a little, looking for the small window in the high pitch of the dormitory’s gable end. By St. Benedict’s Holy Rule all who lived in nunnery or monastery should sleep together in a single room, the dorter. But the Rule had slackened in the nine hundred years since St. Benedict had taken his hand from it. St. Frideswide’s was not the only place where the prioress slept in a room of her own, and the dorter had been divided with board walls into small separate rooms that faced one another along the length of the dorter. Each cell belonged to one nun, and sometimes each had a door, or, as at St. Frideswide’s, curtains at the open end.

  There, in a privacy St. Benedict had never intended, each nun had her own bed, a chest for belongings, often even a carpet, and assuredly more small comforts than the Rule even at its laxest allowed. In Frevisse’s, one wall was hung with a tapestry come from her grandmother’s mother, its figures stiff, their clothing strange, but the colors rich and the picture a rose garden with the Lover seeking his Holy Love. Across from it, beside her bed, there was a small but silver crucifix her father had brought from Rome.

  It was all lost in near-darkness now. Through each night the only light for all the dorter was a single small-burning lamp at the head of the stairs down to the church, and sometimes moonlight slanting through the gable window.

  As a novice, Frevisse had slept badly. She had been uncomfortable with the hard mattress and with sleeping in her underclothing as the Rule required, disturbed by the water gurgling through the necessarium at the dorter’s other end, and at being roused at midnight to go to the church for Matins and Lauds.

  Finally, over the years, she had learned to use her lying awake for prayer, or meditation, or remembering, or simply thinking. Now, waking in the night was no longer a burden but a gift for which she was often grateful.

  Now with the last whisper of the dream drifted out of her mind, she lay looking at the high gable window, trying to judge the time, but there was no familiar star or any moonlight, only the rich darkness of sky, so different in its satin gleam from the dead black of the dorter’s night. She pulled herself more closely into her blankets’ warmth, settling into her mattress’s familiar lumps. And found she could not settle. Whatever hour of the night it was, not only sleep but quietness had left her.

  She stirred restlessly, realizing she was fully awake. Why? She roamed through her mind and found she was wanting—for no good reason—to go see how Lady Ermentrude was doing. And Thomasine.

  Not Thomasine, her mind protested wearily.

  Ever since the girl had come to St. Frideswide’s, the talk had been of how near to sainthood she already seemed to be; even Domina Edith felt the child’s holiness enough to be in awe of it. And surely it was a rare enough thing, especially in this less-than-holy time when women came all too often into the nunnery more because they were unfit for life outside it than because they longed for God’s life within it.

  For Thomasine, pretty and well-dowered, the nunnery was no necessity. She was here by her own plain choice, and there was no denying—
no way to avoid seeing—how she flung herself at her devotions and duties with utter earnestness.

  The fact that so much earnestness wore on Frevisse’s nerves was her own failing, not Thomasine’s. But that did not change the fact that she had avoided the girl as much as might be this past year. Now her conscience was telling her that she was awake and not likely to sleep again and so ought to go see how Lady Ermentrude and, yes, Thomasine were faring in these low-ebb hours before dawn.

  Clinging to her bed’s warmth a few moments more, Frevisse thought regretfully of how very rarely a sense of responsibility was convenient. Her own devotion to it came from her rarely convenient childhood. Carried along by her parents on their wanderings, she had learned responsibility as a kind of defense against their habitual lack of it, until now it had long since become a habit too strong to break. With a sigh for a virtue she often wished she did not have, she pushed her blankets away and rose into the darkness.