The Servant's Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  “Better he be awake for it,” she said. “Better he knows about it.”

  “My prayers for him then,” Father Henry said. “Send someone for me anytime in the night you want me. My house is between the inner courtyard wall and the church.”

  He moved to leave, but Meg said with a sudden thought and rare daring, “Father, could you take Hewe, my younger here—” She pushed him a little forward, her hand on his resisting back. “And show him somewhere good he could pray for his Da?”

  “Mam—” Hewe began.

  Meg cut off his protest. “Father Clement taught him his letters and said he might, with work, become a priest. That’s my fondest hope, to see my Hewe a priest someday. If you could talk to him, teach him some of your prayers?”

  She did not know where her daring came from, to ask so bold a favor. But if Hewe got a look inside a priory priest’s house, he’d see how different it could be from a villager’s daily grubbing. For his sake she could be bold. For his sake—and Sym’s—she had nerved herself to ask for work at the priory, so they would have a little more between them and the disaster Barnaby was making of their lives.

  She kept her hand hard against Hewe’s back, warning him not to speak against her request.

  And, thanks be, not seeming offended at all, Father Henry said, “Assuredly. And he’s named Hewe? After our own St. Hugh of Lincoln, surely.” Meg nodded eagerly, not sure at all; Hewe had been her father’s name. But Father Henry went on happily, “In his travels St. Hugh was forever seeking out boys with the hope of priesthood in them, and helping them. So should a priest say no to a boy named Hewe? The church is cold this time of year but there’s a prie-dieu in my chamber, and a fire. We can pray there for your father.”

  Hewe cast a look of resentment at Meg, as he had spent the past year since Father Clement died happily forgetting all the old priest had taught him. But then he looked at his unconscious father, kept his mouth shut and went, albeit scuff footed and head down, with Father Henry.

  Meg nodded after Hewe, not caring how he felt about it, knowing what was best for him. The need to do things, to manage somehow, was bringing her out of shock. Making the decision about the last rites had set her mind moving again, and now she said to Sym, “There’s still the horse and cart we don’t know about. You’d best ask those folk who brought him in where this happened and how bad the cart is. The horse must have broken loose or those folk would have brought it in when they brought Barnaby. It’s probably gone back to Gilbey Dunn but we’ll rest easier if we know it has. Take you back to the village and ask. If the horse at least, pray God, is in good case, that’s one thing less we have to worry on. If it isn’t, we’ll never have the end of it from Gilbey.”

  Sym grimaced, acknowledging the threat of that. Relations with Gilbey had once been so good there had been talk of his daughter, his only child, marrying Sym. But the girl and her mother had died of a fever the spring before last and that had been the end of that.

  Sym rose and stood staring at the players. He was not as given to talk as Hewe was, but far more given to work than his father. It hurt Meg to see him coarsening under the load he was carrying, trying to do a man’s work already. The worst of it was, he was finding his escape the way his father had, at the alehouse. She watched him stride away toward the folk at the hall’s other end, then called belatedly after him, “Mind to thank them for what they did.”

  Dame Frevisse went to put another log on the fire, and stayed there. Meg, left to her own thoughts, looked down at Barnaby again, watching him breathe, listening to the broken sound of it, and worrying. Gilbey Dunn had only agreed to Barnaby using his cart and horse because the steward had made him, and let him off a day of spring field work in exchange. That was always the way of it: somebody else gaining because of Barnaby’s losses.

  Gazing at his slack face, unable to find anything of the brawny, pleasant youth her parents had arranged for her to marry, Meg shook her head to herself. “Barnaby not-so-bright,” she whispered. “Have you done for yourself at last, this time?”

  No matter what Dame Claire said, his hand was crippled past healing. And what if he were so crippled inside that even if he lived, he’d need her care of him all the rest of his life? Then she would have to give up her desperately needed place at the priory. And there would be the broken cart to repair, and money for the horse if it were injured or stolen. And how would she find the silver to make Hewe a priest? If only St. Hugh were still alive, with his blessed practice of taking promising boys and seeing to their education! She had not even the price of a candle to offer the saint for his help. Nothing but her prayers, which she was already saying. For Hewe, for Barnaby, for the horse to be all right, for the cart to be only a little broken.

  By the low waver of firelight she went on looking at her husband’s face, praying, waiting for whatever change might come, and hardly noticed when Dame Frevisse gently laid a blanket around her shoulders.

  Chapter

  5

  THE WINTER’S BLACK cold had set in about St. Catherine’s Day, snowless and bleak under overcast skies until by then, at December’s end, all the world’s chill gray seemed settled into the nuns’ very bones as thoroughly as the rheum was into their chests and their general mood into petty quarrelsomeness.

  Frevisse, huddled down into the several woolen and linen layers of her habit, was finding them poor comfort against that cold as she waited at the warming-room door for her sister nuns scurrying hunch shouldered and shivering along the cloister to join her for the morning chapter meeting. Their faces as they came were as red nosed and bleak as she knew her own to be. Morning Mass was finished and it was time for the daily chapter meeting, when the nuns gathered to discuss their priory’s business and grievances.

  St. Frideswide’s was small enough, and poor enough, not to have a separate chapter house for these meetings. Instead, chapter was held in the same rectangular room in the cloister that served as warming room in winter and summer gathering place for the nuns’ late-afternoon hour of recreation when the weather was too rainy for walking in the garden. It had one of the priory’s few fireplaces, and this bitter winter Domina Edith had given permission for its daily use.

  Frevisse opened the door to its warmth as the nuns reached her. They bustled through, hasty and out of step. Well behind them, coming at her own age-slowed pace, was Domina Edith, in company with Father Henry and Sister Juliana, this month’s chaplain, each holding her by a brittle elbow.

  The prioress was old and had been ill. Frevisse knew there could be no hurrying her and went on waiting patiently until, looking up, Domina Edith gave her an acknowledging and dismissive nod. Frevisse gratefully stepped back into the room, closing the door to keep in what warmth there was from the high-burning fire on the hearth.

  The other nuns were already gathered there, warming their hands and—by a stealthy lifting of black skirts—their shins, instead of taking their places on the eleven stools set in a double curve in front of the prioress’s chair facing the hearth.

  Frevisse slipped in among them gladly until the sound of a hand on the door latch brought them all quickly around to go stand before their stools where they were supposed to be. She had noticed that the hand that never otherwise fumbled often fumbled with that latch on chill winter mornings, just long enough to give them all a chance to take their places.

  Father Henry came in, Domina Edith still leaning on his arm, Sister Juliana behind them. He brought her to her chair and seated her.

  There was something more than the usual deep respect in the nuns’ curtsies as he did so. This was Domina Edith’s first attendance at chapter in almost two weeks, a longer absence than ever before in all her more than thirty years in office. The rheum that was only a severe nuisance to the others had settled into her lungs and nearly killed her. Dame Claire had fought against it with all her skill in herbs and pungent plasters, aromatic steams, and strengthening brews, and had won. So now Domina Edith was come back to sit in her accustomed p
lace, more pale and thin than she had been at winter’s beginning, wrapped in a warm furred robe, but her eyes reflecting her keen pleasure in returning to them.

  Frevisse’s pleasure was equally keen. During her illness, Domina Edith’s place had been taken by Dame Alys, as was her right and duty as cellarer. But Dame Alys even at her best was ill-tempered, and was presently much worse, aggravated out of her limited patience by her own coughing, blowing, and spitting.

  So in the few moments while the nuns seated themselves in a rustle of veils and skirts at Domina Edith’s gesture, Frevisse watched her prioress with relieved affection, then followed her gaze as it went past them to Sister Thomasine sitting in her chosen place as youngest and most determinedly humble of the nuns, at the far end of the stone bench built out from the lower courses of the wall, most distant from the fire.

  The shrinking humility that had been Sister Thomasine’s promise of worthiness when she was a novice had eased after she was safely and forever the spouse of Christ; but now and again Domina Edith saw need to remind her that humility and comfort were not mutually exclusive. She crooked a finger at the girl now. Obediently Sister Thomasine rose and came to curtsy low in front of her. Leaning forward to spare her voice, Domina Edith said, “You’ve not yet caught this winter sickness, have you?”

  “No, Domina,” Sister Thomasine whispered.

  “And it was your voice almost alone that carried us through the services this morning, was it not?”

  Sister Thomasine dared not lie, even in humility. “Yes, Domina.”

  “Then you will sit in the place designated for you, there on your stool, near the warmth, that you may continue in health to raise your voice in praise to God so long as He allows.”

  Sister Thomasine curtsied again, even more deeply, whispered, “Yes, Domina,” and went to her stool, head bowed.

  Irk twitched at Frevisse; so much insistent modesty wore at her nerves.

  “Now,” murmured Domina Edith. “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.”

  Crossing themselves along with her, her nuns all bowed their heads for the prayer to the Holy Spirit for guidance and blessing in this meeting. Then Father Henry read the chapter of St. Benedict’s Rule designated for the day, first in his stumbling Latin and then again in English. The Rule was short, only seventy-three chapters, and most chapters only a paragraph or two in length, so that with reading one chapter a day, it was heard in its entirety three times a year. Chapter 72, to be read on April 30, August 30, and this day, December 30, dwelt on the “good zeal” that nuns should have. “‘Thus they should anticipate one another in honor,’” read Father Henry, “‘most patiently endure one another’s infirmities, whether of body or of character; vie in paying obedience one to another—no one following what he considers useful for himself, but rather what benefits another.…’”

  At the end he did not offer his usual commentary. He was almost over his rheum but his deepening complexion as he read showed that the need to cough was still with him, and at the last he settled for blessing them quickly with hand and soundless lips before going out. When he was gone, Domina Edith looked at her nuns, noted that Sister Emma’s hand was up in request to speak, and nodded to her.

  Sister Emma stood up and Frevisse settled herself resignedly. Sister Emma was sure of her voice’s charm; she always went the longer way around to what she meant to say, and even today, rough with her cold, she was plainly going to be no different than usual.

  “We’re all—” Sister Emma cast a glance at Sister Thomasine sitting serenely without a handkerchief. “—almost all—of us most grievously suffering together with our aches and rheums. But rather than lessening our duty to be concerned and careful for one another, our mutual trial but increases the need for consideration. Time and again these past days I’ve passed in the cloister walk where someone has failed to tread out their sputum on the pavement. The treading out of sputum is a thing St. Benedict himself mentioned in our Rule, and so it seems surely a matter that needs speaking to now, that we may live in decency and good respect with one another. After all, ‘The wicked shall be cut off from the earth, and the transgressors rooted out of it.’”

  Only one proverb and fewer than three times the number of words necessary to make her point, Frevisse thought; Sister Emma’s cold must be troubling her sorely indeed to make her so brief.

  With all solemnity Domina Edith agreed on the necessity of good manners among themselves no matter how grievous their bodily discomforts were, and pronounced that good manners should prevail. Sputum should be promptly trod out by the spitter as provided for in the Rule. “And aught else?” she asked.

  And inevitably there was. This was the time when accusations and confessions of faults were to be made and discipline and penance given. There came the usual mentions of small rudenesses needing pardon, and confessions of minor lapses troubling consciences, interspersed with coughing and sneezing. Quietly, giving no space for little matters to spread into great ones by too much talking, Domina Edith judged and settled while Frevisse, her back near the fire, sank into a warm lethargy. All too soon she would have to bestir herself back to duties in the cold world, so for just now she was enjoying being able to be still and warm while the chapter meeting ran its way.

  The meeting shifted to reports on matters at the priory in general.

  Dame Alys stood up, snorted, hacked, and said, “The pig we’ve fattened for the villeins’ penny ale this Christmastide was slaughtered yesterday and dressed out at near to fifty pounds, more than we’d thought it’d be. Though whether there’ll be cider enough is another matter. Dame Frevisse has seen fit to be giving it to people in the guesthall without asking my leave or need in the matter and if that goes on, I don’t know where we’ll be.”

  Frevisse, roused from her comfort, cast quickly through her mind and realized Dame Alys was talking about yesterday when Meg had brought her some cider from the kitchen. She could make some sort of defense of that, but on the whole it was better that Dame Alys’s displeasure should fall on her rather than on Meg’s overburdened head.

  Domina Edith asked, “Have you answer for that, Dame Frevisse?”

  Frevisse rose. “No, my lady.”

  Domina Edith sighed and said, “We must observe the rules set down for all our good, especially for the kitchen since food is scarce this winter and costly, not even to be given to guests without Dame Alys being asked first and her permission given. In penance you shall go without your portion of cider at supper these next three days and apologize to Dame Alys for failing in courtesy to her.”

  Somewhat stiffly, Frevisse said, “I beg your pardon for my failure, Dame Alys.”

  Dame Alys, blowing her nose, nodded ungraceful acceptance and said to the room at large, “If there’s to be spiced cider for the villeins’ wassailing in the orchard on Twelfth Night, we must mend our ways. Even so there may not be enough to see us through to Lent.” She raised meaningful eyebrows at Frevisse.

  Dame Perpetua, as always, expressed her regret that such frivolity as wassailing continued to be encouraged by the priory among the villeins. No matter how old the custom, it seemed to have little to do with holy days from any Christian view she had read. Domina Edith, as always, agreed with her without providing for reform, and asked for the rest of her obedientiaries to report.

  One after another, they said omnia bene, all was well, except Dame Claire who was concerned that her supply of horehound for sore throats might not be sufficient for the winter.

  At the last it was Frevisse’s turn since her office of hosteler was least among the obedientiaries. Very briefly she reported that there were no people in the new guesthall and nine people in the old: Lord Lovel’s villein, Barnaby Shene, who was seriously hurt, his wife and two sons tending to him, and five travelers, including a sick child.

  “He awoke in the night with a sore throat and has a cough and fever this morning. They will be staying until he is well enough to travel, by your leave, Domina.”


  Domina Edith nodded her approval and looked at her nuns. “Is there aught else that must be said now?” she asked. After quick glances among themselves, they all shook their heads. She smiled. “Then let me only remind you that no matter how ill or well we are feeling—or sounding—we must remember before all else that what matters more than our feelings are our prayers and singing in the daily services, especially at this holy time of year. It is our souls’ grace and God’s worship we are supposed to be accomplishing. It is our inward being, not our outward seeming, that matters most to God. Remember that, rather than dwell on our imperfections.”

  She was more pale than when she had come in, her aged skin pulled thin over her face’s bones, her body sunk deeply into her cloak. Frevisse knew that Dame Claire was poised to go to her the moment she dismissed them to their day’s work.

  But a discreet knock at the door turned all their heads toward it, and Domina Edith said, “Enter.” Her voice had no strength behind it and she gestured to Dame Alys to call again.

  At Dame Alys’s booming croak, the lay woman who was supposed to keep watch at the outer door into the cloister put her head in to say, “It’s Roger Naylor, my lady, craving word with you as soon as might be.”

  A stir of curiosity passed among the nuns. Naylor was the priory’s steward, in charge of their properties and the other worldly matters necessary to sustain St. Frideswide’s spiritual life. Occasionally, as his duties necessitated, he came into the cloister to confer with Domina Edith. Now, at her nod, he entered the room.