The Widow's Tale (Sister Frevisse Medieval Mysteries Book 14)

by Frazer, Margaret

  More because it mattered to him than because she fully understood, Cristiana vowed by St. Anne to obey him. Gerveys gave his own oath more reluctantly but sealed it past breaking with, “By Christ’s body and St. Martin.”

  Satisfied, Edward said, “Thank you,” and closed his eyes again.

  Gerveys leaned toward him. “But where is it? You haven’t told us that.”

  Eyes still shut, Edward said, “I’ve given it to someone who doesn’t know what it is, only that it’s to be kept until you or Cristiana gives him the right words to recover it. I’m going to tell you who has it, Gerveys. Later I’ll tell Cristiana the words.” With effort he opened his eyes. His breathing was shallow and rapid, but he forced out, struggling against his own weakness, “Swear to me, on your oaths already given, not to tell each other what the other knows until the time comes you’re both agreed on the necessity of having this thing.” Willing to do anything so that Edward would let them put him to bed, Cristiana readily gave her promise again and so did Gerveys; but then he asked, “What if one of us, God forbid it, dies? Have you thought of that, Edward?”

  “The man who has this thing will hear if either of you dies. He’s charged, in that need, to find out the other of you who lives and give the thing over to you.”

  “But if there’s after all no need to use it against Laurence, can I have it to give to York?”

  Edward gazed at him a long moment, considering, then answered in a whisper so faint that Cristiana barely heard him. “Yes.” He gathered strength, drew himself a little straighter, and said, “Now, Cristiana, leave us, please, so I may tell Gerveys what he must know.”

  Cristiana obediently let go of his hand, leaned to kiss his cheek, rose, and left the room. Not until she had shut the door behind her and was crossing down the empty hall, alone, with no one to see her, did she let the tears at last scald down her face.

  Chapter 2

  The day had started well, clear-skied and warm after two days of rain. The Oxfordshire fields around St. Frideswide’s nunnery were in the full flourish of a fine summer, green with thick-grown peas and beans and full-headed wheat and rye and barley and oats, with the hayfields’ yellow stubble and high haycocks telling that midsummer was prosperously past. There was a month yet to the beginning of harvest but everything promised a good year for the nunnery, and Dame Frevisse—taking her turn again as hosteler, in charge of the nunnery’s guesthall and guests—took pleasure in the days going simply past in a quiet flow of duties and the eight daily Offices of prayers and psalms. By the Benedictine Rule, the nunnery was required to give food and shelter to any traveler who asked for them, but St. Frideswide’s was a small priory, well away from everywhere, and travelers were not so frequent as to be a burden or much bother. Last night there had been only a franklin who often came this way with a servant, stayed the night, and rode off in the morning after Mass, always leaving a coin in thanks-gift that more than repaid the nunnery’s cost of his brief keep.

  “If they were all so good, we could turn a pretty profit at this,” old Ela, head of the guesthall servants, had said when she gave the coin over to Frevisse.

  “If they were all so good,” Frevisse had answered, “we would hardly be doing the charity the Rule requires of us. Unless we claimed,” she added thoughtfully, “that we did them charity by giving them the chance to do their souls good by alms to us.”

  Old Ela had said, “Humph,” and limped away.

  Frevisse, smiling to herself, had gone back across the cobbled yard to the cloister. In expectation she would not be needed at the guesthall again until late afternoon when she would go to be sure all was in readiness for any wayfarers who might wish shelter and supper tonight, she had settled contentedly to her other work, presently the copying out in a fair hand the Livre de chevalrie. The nunnery’s small scrivening business, taken up to help pay off debts, had thrived of late; this book was wanted by a landowning squire as a gift to one of his sons, while Dame Juliana and Sister Johane were working on a prayer book for a cordwainer’s wife in Banbury, and Dame Perpetua was copying out a translation of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy for Abbot Gilberd of St. Bartholomew’s near Northampton.

  These pleasant summer afternoons they were usually able to work at their desks in the cloister’s north walk for an undisturbed hour or more, with no more than the scratch of pens on paper and sometimes the soft soled footfall of another nun passing along the cloister walk to stir the quiet. So the sudden rapping at the cloister’s outer door broke in unwelcomely, and because St. Frideswide’s was so small, with no porter kept at its door, Sister Johane rose from her desk muttering something that was probably not a prayer and went to answer it. Frevisse, determined not to be disturbed, kept at her work, not looking up at the following busyness of footsteps as Sister Johane hurried back from the door and up the stairs from the cloister walk to Domina Elisabeth’s parlor, then shortly came down again and to the door, only to return a moment later with—to guess from their heavier tread—two men she led up the stairs to the prioress.

  That was not unusual. People often came with need to see Domina Elisabeth, but it meant Sister Johane would not be back to her desk soon, would have to stay with Domina Elisabeth and her guests, it being unseemly for any nun to be alone with a man or men. Frevisse, quite happy it was Sister Johane and not her trapped to that duty, was less happy a moment later to hear old Ela’s limping shuffle along the cloister walk and—resigned—had already stoppered her inkpot and was cleaning her penpoint when Ela bobbed a curtsy beside her desk and whispered, “I think you ßmight best come to the guesthall, my lady, if it please you.”

  To leave Dame Perpetua and Dame Juliana undisturbed, Frevisse waited until she and Ela were outside the cloister, crossing the courtyard toward the guesthall, to ask why Ela wanted her, but Ela only answered, “Something’s not right. I don’t like it. There’s two women come with those men. You’ll see. There’s that, too.”

  She jerked her chin toward a curtained litter at the gateway into the nunnery’s outer yard, the two horses between its forward and rear shafts standing with the head-lowered weariness of having come far and hard. A travel-dressed man, standing much like the horses, was holding six other saddled, equally wearied horses nearby. Since there were priory servants who would have seen to watering them at least, even if the travelers did not intend to stay, why were they all standing there like that? Added to Ela’s dislike of whatever was going on, the question brought so many possibilities to Frevisse’s mind—ranging from unpleasant to unlawful— that she held off asking anything more.

  The priory’s guesthall, though it had a few rooms kept for travelers of the better sort, such as last night’s franklin, was mostly a wide, long, open-raftered room where trestle tables could be set up for meals, then taken down and set against the wall at night, clearing the floor for bedding to be laid out for lesser guests and poorer travelers. At this mid-hour of the afternoon neither tables were set up nor bedding laid out and certainly there was no fire in the fireplace at the near end of the hall, but one of the low, backless wooden benches was set beside it, and on it sat the two women. Two men stood a little beyond them, obviously travel fellows to the one waiting with the horses but only servants, and Frevisse no more than noted them, then ignored them. It was the women who were—as Ela had sideways given her to understand— troubling.

  One of them was dressed in a dark green, low collared riding gown of summer-weight linen, her headdress a light veil over a close-fitted coif to cover her hair. She would not have been unlovely, save for the hard set of her mouth and her hawk stare at the woman beside her, as if daring the other to move or speak.

  There seemed small likelihood that the other woman would do either. She was altogether a slighter person, pale and huddled in on herself in a way that made Frevisse think of ill-health and utter weariness. To judge by the black veil over the white wimple that tightly circled her face and completely covered her hair and throat, and the starkly plain, black
, sleeveless, open-sided gown she wore over an equally stark, gray, straight-sleeved undergown, she was a widow. It was hardly clothing in which to travel, though, not even in that waiting litter. She looked to have slept in her gown, too, and more than once.

  A prisoner with her guard, was Frevisse’s thought in looking at her. The way the two men stood watchfully behind them made the thought stronger, but Frevisse approached the women showing no more than a mild smile of greeting and in a voice mild to match asked, “My ladies, have you been made welcome? May I ask someone to bring you something to drink, or are you hungry? You or your men?”

  The huddled woman made no move, did not look up from her hands clasped tightly in her lap. One of the men shifted from foot to foot, looking like he would not mind something to eat or drink, but the hawk-yyed woman said curtly, “No.” Only belatedly adding, still curtly, “Thank you.”

  “My lady,” Frevisse started to the other woman, “would you—“

  “She needs nothing,” the first woman cut in dismissively. “Thank you.”

  Frevisse did not dismiss that easily. Still mildly, as if noting nothing amiss, she asked, “Have you been long on the road? Have you come far?”

  The first woman looked more than ready to send her bluntly away, then seemed to think better of it and said with tolerable politeness, “Not far today, but we’ve been several days on the road, yes.”

  “The weather has been good for travel,” Frevisse suggested. “Very good, yes.”

  “For where are you bound?”

  “Here,” the woman just short of snapped. And added before Frevisse could ask, “We’re not staying though. We’ll be leaving shortly.” She gave the woman beside her a hard glance. “Most of us.”

  A small tremor passed through the huddled woman and still she did not raise her head. The other woman, looking past Frevisse, said, “Henry,” and stood up. “Is it settled?” Frevisse looked back over her shoulder to see a burly man entering the hall, as well-dressed for long travel as the woman and his fleshy face as hard-set as her own. Ignoring Frevisse as thoroughly as if she had not been there, he closed on the women, saying, “All’s settled. I’m to take her in.” He grabbed the huddled woman by one upper arm and hauled her to her feet, ordering at her, “No trouble, you. There’s no one to care if you make it, so don’t.” He added, “This won’t take long,” to the first woman and shoved the other woman roughly away with him, gone before Frevisse could think of anything to say. The harsh-faced woman suddenly smiled, sat down, and said, “I should very much like something to drink now, thank you. And to eat, if that’s possible. Will you join me, my lady?”

  Not liking her any the better for her sudden change, Frevisse nodded to Ela to bring something from the guesthall kitchen, sat down at the bench’s end, and said with a very feigned mildness, “Your companion seems an unfortunate creature.”

  “She’s not my ‘companion’. She’s my charge. Though I suppose she would say she was my prisoner. My late cousin’s widow. It’s all very regrettable.” She did not feign so well as Frevisse did; she sounded less regretful than very satisfied. “Even before our cousin died, we had our suspicions of her, my brother and I and my husband. That was my husband who took her just now. We feared several things, and since our cousin’s death, they’ve all come to pass. She was never stable. She went half-mad with grief when he died. She wept and screamed and wouldn’t eat. We feared she’d do herself harm. She couldn’t be trusted alone, nor did we dare let her near the children, she so frightened them. Two sweet little girls. And then, well, then …”

  Ela had wasted no time in the kitchen. She was back already with a tray with four mugs of ale. She offered them to Frevisse first, then to the woman. Though it would have been more courteous to do it the other way around, Frevisse did not chide her, not feeling particularly courteous to the woman herself. While the woman took a deep drink, Ela served the two waiting men and would have lingered but the woman began again.

  “Well, there are things she did that a nun shouldn’t hear and I won’t tell you,” but she was going to, and Frevisse waved Ela away, out of hearing. Ela made a face and shuffled away, while the woman went on, “Believe me, I daily, hourly pray that my cousin in heaven, God keep his soul, doesn’t know what she’s done. You’ve heard of ‘wanton widows’? Wanton hardly touches it.”

  Frevisse put aside any thought of trying to stop her; put aside, too, any thought of simply believing her. The woman was too much enjoying her tale, going on, “She was so openly beyond all seemliness that we appealed to the bishop and anyone else we could think of, for help in curbing her. It was even being said she and her brother were, well, what sister and brother shouldn’t be together. But that I will not believe,” she said in a way that said she very much did believe it. Or else that she wanted Frevisse to.

  Frevisse stood abruptly up, ready to excuse herself, but the man Henry reappeared at the guesthall door, said across the hall, “We’re done. Let’s go,” and disappeared again. Setting her emptied mug on the bench, the woman rose, saying, “That’s done, then. Thank you for your hospitality, my lady.” She said that with a scorning curl of her lip, and admittedly it had been scant hospitality and very weak ale—a sign that Ela had taken dislike to the woman, nor did Frevisse mean to chide Ela for that and did no more herself than bend her head in token courtesy and make no haste after the woman as she swept out of the hall, her two servants behind her, so that by the time Frevisse reached the guesthall doorway, the woman’s husband was helping her into her saddle while another man, already mounted, was saying something at them and gathering up his reins. Then, with a clatter of hoofs on cobbles, they were all gone—woman, men, servants, horses, and horse-litter—and afternoon quiet came back to the courtyard. The whole business had taken hardly the time it took to say the short Office of Compline, and not once had any name, save Henry’s, been given. Even the bishop had been nameless. Nor had any place been mentioned. They had come nameless from nowhere and were now gone back there, leaving an allegedly wanton widow behind them.

  Frevisse admitted to herself that she very much looked forward to hearing what Domina Elisabeth would tell the nuns about it all, and was pleased, when she came out of the passage from the cloister’s outer door into the cloister walk, to find she did not have to wait. Along the leftward side of the cloister the desks were deserted and there were several nuns crowding eagerly through the door into the church. Nearer to hand, Dame Claire, the nunnery’s infirmarian, and Sister Johane were coming from the direction of the infirmary. Sister Johane nearly stumbling over her own feet in her eagerness to get on but held back by Dame Claire’s more deliberate pace, until at sight of Frevisse coming from the doorward passage, Dame Claire freed her with, “Go ahead,” and the younger woman hurried on, leaving Frevisse to fall into step beside Dame Claire, matching her longer stride to the shorter woman’s with the unthinking ease of long familiarity as she asked, “What’s toward?”

  “Domina Elisabeth wants to tell us something about someone who’s come. Do you know anything about it?”

  “Not enough to guess what she’ll say.” Unwilling to repeat what she had been told in the guesthall—the more especially because repeating it was probably what the woman had wanted her to do.

  “We’ll hear soon enough,” Dame Claire said, resigned. “Just so it takes only a little while. I want to finish hanging the feverfew to dry.” A much greater matter to her than whyever they were called to the church. “If we have much in the way of rheums and coughing come winter, we’ll need it, the horehound is growing so poorly this year.”

  The door from the cloister walk brought them into the church’s south side, near the choir stalls where the nuns sat for the Offices, facing each other in a double row. The nuns were standing now, though, in the open space between the stalls, looking toward the altar where Domina Elisabeth stood with the widow. St. Frideswide’s presently had only nine nuns and no novices, but clustered together, a dark gathering in their Benedictine
black gowns and veils, they were probably daunting enough to the woman standing slight and pale beside Domina Elisabeth’s firm presence. Her wimple and veil and outer gown had been taken from her since Frevisse first saw her, leaving her in only her plain gray undergown and with a simple headkerchief tied to hide her hair the plain way a servant would. Despite that shame, she was no longer huddled but standing stiffly straight, her hands behind her, her head raised, her wide eyes staring blankly into nothingness far away and over the heads of the women all looking at her and murmuring to each other.

  “This,” Domina Elisabeth said in her clear, certain voice, “is Cristiana. She has Christ in her name but not in her behaving. She has been brought to us that we may keep her safe from her sins and, if God wills, bring her into her right mind and heart.”

  The woman jerked slightly, as if a lash had been laid across her back, and began to tremble.

  Quelling with voice and gaze the stir and murmurs rising again among her nuns, Domina Elisabeth went on, “What her sins have been need not concern you. Let it suffice that they were sufficient that at our Abbot Gilberd’s request I have agreed to have her here in our keeping.”

  Because St. Frideswide’s was only a priory, not an abbey, it was under the care and protection of St. Bartholomew’s Abbey near Northampton, whose present abbot was Domina Elisabeth’s own brother, making more tight the tie between the two houses. That meant that Abbot Gilberd’s “request” carried the same weight as an order. Domina Elisabeth’s “agreement” had been beyond question, but she did not show that as she went on, “Because of the depth of corruption in her, none of you are to speak with her except on the most immediate of matters. To give her direction at her tasks or to warn her when she is in the wrong. You are not to ask who she is or from where she came. If she tries to speak to you without you speak to her first, you are to warn her to silence and tell me of her disobedience.”