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

by Frazer, Margaret

  Heads were turning among the nuns, everyone looking at everyone else in wordless wonder at what sort of woman was being put among them. Only Sister Thomasine stood with bowed head, probably in prayer for the woman.

  “She is here not as servant but as penitent,” Domina Elisabeth said. “Her relatives harbor hope that in the fullness of time she may find it in her heart to become a nun among us.”

  At that, the woman turned her head to stare at Domina Elisabeth.

  “For her better keeping, she will sleep in the dorter with you, eat in the refectory but apart from us, and attend all the Offices.”

  Cristiana went back to staring away at nothing.

  “During the Offices she will lie on the floor before the altar in penitent fashion, facedown and arms wide. When she has no tasks in hand, she is to be here in the church, on her knees before the altar, that she may pray for her salvation from her grievous sins. She is never to go out of the cloister. Ever. Sister Margrett, you’ll see to the servants being informed of all of this.”

  Sister Margrett, presently the nunnery’s cellarer, charged with overseeing the cloister’s servants among many other duties, nodded wide-eyed agreement.

  “That she never go out is most especially important,” Domina Elisabeth said. “Make sure they understand that. I will so inform Master Naylor”—the nunnery’s steward, who saw to the outward matters that supported the nunnery’s inward life—“that he may likewise order and warn all his folk that if ever she is seen abroad, she is to be brought back. We can talk more of this in chapter meeting tomorrow morning, if need be. For now, she will begin her penance, kneeling here until Vespers.” Domina Elisabeth took the woman by one shoulder, turned her around, and pushed her downward. The woman sank to her knees and bent her head, maybe relieved just then to be facing God instead of so many staring nuns. “You may all return to your duties,” Domina Elisabeth said.

  Most of the nuns obeyed in a hurried bustle, though probably less in ready obedience than in desire to be out of the church, away from Domina Elisabeth and free to burst into talk. Unable to wait even that long, Dame Emma exclaimed as she went, inapt as ever with a proverb, “Didn’t the vile woman ever hear how it’s a great virtue to abstain from pleasant things?”

  Not joining the rush, leaving more slowly, Frevisse saw that Sister Thomasine still stood with bowed head, then paused in her own going to watch Dame Claire, ignoring her prioress’ order, go forward, past Domina Elisabeth to the kneeling woman and lean over her, looking at something. Then she said something to Domina Elisabeth, who looked, too, and after a moment gave a terse nod of agreement.

  Dame Claire came briskly away then, and Frevisse joined her but waited until they were in the cloister walk, heading toward the infirmary, before asking, “What is it?”

  Dame Claire was openly furious. “Her wrists. She’s been tied with a rope and must have fought it. Her wrists are rubbed raw. They’ve even bled. There are new sores on top of some several days old and no one has done anything for any of them. It’s a wonder they haven’t festered. I think she was gagged, too. There are sores at the corners of her mouth. Didn’t you see? She must have fought the gag, too. I’m going for water to clean them, and an ointment.”

  Frevisse stopped, letting Dame Claire go on alone. On the other side of the cloister walk, most of the nuns were tightly gathered in busy talk that barely faded as Domina Elisabeth came from the church, going the other way, around to the stairs to her own rooms. She would have passed Frevisse but Frevisse did not wait to meet her, instead went into the passage toward the outer door. It was time to see that all was ready in the guesthall should any travelers come to stay, but she took with her irk at herself for not having seen the hurts on the woman. This Cristiana had not come quietly to her penance. She was quiet now, but she had struggled against it hard enough to hurt herself. How much trouble was this woman going to make here?

  Chapter 3

  The stone-paved floor was cold under Christiana’s cheek; cold under her hands laid flat against it at the full outstretch of her arms; cold under the whole length of her body through the linen of her chemise and gown.

  She had not known how painful it would be to lie facedown like this for so long. The arch of her back was wrong; it ached. Her breasts, pressed against the stone, hurt. By most careful holding of her neck at a certain angle she could keep it from pain but the effort was mortally tiring and six times a day she had to lie like this in front of the altar, through the Offices of Prime, Tierce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline; and then again in the middle of the night, through the two long Offices of Matins and Lauds. She ached with the need for more sleep as well as with the pain of lying there, but even when abed, she slept too little. Her narrow cell was like all the nun’s cells in the long dorter, wide enough for a washtable and a bed with a blanket that must have been new fifty years ago, a lean pillow, and a mattress so barely stuffed with straw she could feel every strand of the rope strung through the bedframe to hold it up. She was only allowed there at night, but it was the one place she was ever alone, unseen, able to grieve, and it was there, with the bed’s thin pillow pressed to her face to stifle the sounds of her weeping, that she cried all the tears she held in through every day. If anyone heard her crying, no one ever spoke of it. Probably because they thought her misery was well-deserved, Cristiana bitterly supposed.

  She shifted her neck slightly, trying for ease that was not there. Over her head the nuns’ chant went on, untroubled. “Clamavi in toto corde meo. Exaudi me, Domine. Clamavi. “ The sweetness of voices utterly at variance with everything else in this horrible place. Cristiana neither understood the words nor cared. How long had she been here? The days lurched past so senselessly, one into another, that she could recognize Sunday only by the Offices’ greater length, by the drawing out of her pain, and she was not sure how many Sundays there had been. Several, she thought.

  With a soft and downward grace, the nuns ended the Office. “Fidelium animae per misericordiam Dei requiescant in pace. Amen.” May the souls of the faithful through the mercy of God rest in peace. That much Latin she knew and began stiffly to lift her aching body to its knees even before the nuns—and most of them were quick enough about it—had risen to their feet. They would go about their work now but she was expected to stay here the while until dinner for more penance. Just as she stayed on her knees during the nuns’ morning Chapter meeting; and again at midday between Nones and dinner; and again through the nuns’ hour of recreation between supper and Compline, until finally she was allowed to bed.

  Between those whiles, the nuns kept an unrelenting distance from her, no one speaking to her except to give an order and no word wanted from her at all. They talked about her, though. She knew that by things she sometimes heard in talk broken off when she came near, and she could guess more by the looks some of the nuns had given her in her first days here—divided between horror and vast curiosity. What she didn’t know was how much more of Laurence’s lies their prioress had told them when she was not there to hear them. Or maybe they’d been told nothing else and were making things up to suit themselves. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was how she would escape from here, but thus far she had seen no way. Her one poor hope was Gerveys—that somehow he had heard she was disappeared, no one knew where; that he was searching for her and would somehow find her. That, rather than for any forgiveness of sins, was what she prayed for desperately in the painful hours of supposed penance.

  The nuns were filing from their choir stalls now. Slowly, with difficulty, Cristiana finished raising herself to her knees, pulled to her the small pad lying nearby, and eased it under her knees. On her second day here, a thin little nun with a young-old face and almost perpetually downcast eyes had brought that pad to her after her morning penance; had held it out without looking at her and said, “Domina Elisabeth says I may give you this,” and hurried away as soon as Cristiana had taken it from her.

  That was the one kindness anyone had gi
ven Cristiana here. She was still grateful for it, but she had to wonder at that nun—someone had called to her once as Sister Thomasine—who, Cristiana had since seen, spent much of her time in the church praying, seemingly of her free will, on her knees with no pad at all. That was a degree of piety Cristiana neither understood nor desired, as with head bowed over her clasped hands, she listened to the nuns leaving the church. Because sometimes someone would come to be sure of her, she had to keep up the semblence of prayer, but lying flat on the floor always roused the pain in her breastbone and she huddled her shoulders forward to lessen it the little that she could until it faded into its usual dull ache again. She had strained the muscles along the bone there, she told herself. Probably while struggling against Laurence and the others. Her hatred-hurt she called it and knew she should pray to be freed from both the hatred and the pain; but the hatred and the pain kept the fear at bay and she did not dare to lose them. She feared that without them her fear for Mary and Jane would drive her mad. Better the pain and the hatred than madness, because someday, somehow, she would be free of here, able to come at Laurence and Milisent. That and her daughters’ safety and Gerveys’ return were the things for which she did pray with her whole heart.

  And for Edward’s soul. Always and always for Edward’s soul.

  From May Day onward he had steadily faded out of life, in no pain but less alive each day. For as long as she could, Cristiana had pretended his dying was not happening. Only almost too late had she finally faced it; had sat beside his bed—their bed, except that by then she was sleeping on a servant’s truckle bed beside it at night, that he might rest better—and held his hand, he being too weak to hold hers, and gazed and gazed upon his face, wanting to beg him not to go, not to leave her. She had had the courage not to trouble him with hopeless words, had simply let all her love for him show in her eyes, there for him whenever he awakened and looked at her; and at the last he had found somewhere the strength to say, “I’ll be there. Waiting. When you come. In heaven.” His eyes had closed then, but his last whisper was clear. “My dear-heart.”

  He did not open his eyes or speak again, though it was another day more before he altogether ceased to breathe, so gently that Cristiana did not know when it happened despite she was sitting at his side. She had simply, slowly, come to know he was no longer there; had lifted her gaze to the priest whose murmuring on the other side of the bed broke off at the same moment with the same knowing. Then Gerveys and Ivetta had come from the far side of the room and between them lifted her from the chair and led her away as she began to sob.

  She had of course drawn herself together and done what needed to be done about the funeral and the funeral feast and all. There had been help from everyone around her— Gerveys quiet and unfailing in his strength; Beth Say best among the neighbor women at giving help without making a burden of it; Ivetta seeing to Mary and Jane—and through it all she had kept hold of her sense that it was all unreal. Even the burial in the Broxbourne churchyard had seemed to have nothing to do with Edward. She had done all the necessary things without letting herself think about why. Only afterward, when all was over and she went alone to their bed that was now only hers, had the completeness of Edward being gone swept over her. He was not simply gone for a time. He was gone. Completely. Never again in all her life would she s’ee him, touch him, hear his voice.

  When her crying was at its worst that night, Ivetta and Gerveys had come quietly into the room, unasked and unbidden. They had probably been waiting for her grief to finally break free, afraid for her while it did not. Ivetta had sat on the bed holding her the way she would have held Mary or Jane, rocking and rocking her while she wept. And when Cristiana had worn out at last, Gerveys had sat with his arm around her while Ivetta had washed her face with cool water, then tucked her into bed and sat beside her until she slept.

  Four days later he had left to join York’s household in Wales on their way to Ireland.

  And four days after that, early in an afternoon, Laurence and Milisent had come.

  Cristiana had been in the parlor with Mary and Jane. Through the past days she had found comfort in comforting their own bewildered grieving and they had been sitting all together on the floor, choosing bits of cloth from her cloth-scraps bag to sew into gowns for their two dolls, the little heaps of reds and greens and blues and even some expensive saffron-dyed linen—“We’ll share that for collars and decorating hems,” Cristiana had ruled before there could be a quarrel about it—a pleasure to the eyes against their own black mourning gowns.

  She and Mary had been planning a gown half of red and half of blue and Jane simply playing happily with all the colors when, with a single short knock at the door, Laurence had walked in, Milisant behind him, Master Colles behind her, and lastly Ankaret, who closed the door and stayed beside it while the other three crossed the room to Cristiana. Too surprised and offended by their abrupt appearance to do them the courtesy of rising to her feet, Cristiana had demanded at then, “Why are you here? Go away.”

  Laurence had thrust a folded paper at her, a wax seal hanging from it. “We’ve come to show you this.”

  She had taken it, opened it, read it. Had needed to read it again, then slowly stood up, a vast, cold pit opening in her stomach. Lifting her gaze from the paper, she found them all watching her: Laurence with harsh satisfaction; Milisent with much the pleasure of a cat with a trapped mouse; Master Colies with his usual blankness; Ankaret both excited and uncertain.

  “What,” Cristiana asked, “is this?”

  “It’s what it says,” Laurence snapped. “A grant to me, their uncle, of the wardships of Mary and Jane Helyngton, heiresses of Edward Helyngton, along with keeping of their properties and the right to determine their marriages. A royal grant, as you can see, sealed with the king’s own signet ring.”

  “But …” Cristiana had been barely able to find air enough to speak. “Edward’s will. He gave all that to me in his will.” Taking hold on her stumbling wits and beginning to be angry, she lifted her chin and held the paper out at Laurence. “Besides, Edward didn’t hold any lands from the king. The king has no say in my daughters’ wardships or marriages.”

  “Not to judge by this,” Laurence said with a hard gleam of triumph.

  The same triumph, cruel with a pleasure, was in Milisent’s smile and even in Master Colies’ narrow stare.

  Cristiana let the paper go. It fell with the wax seal’s heavy thud to the floor. “It’s worthless,” she said.

  “Then there’s this.” Milisent held out another folded paper, hung with a seal like the first one.

  Cristiana did not take it, demanded instead, “What is it?” Smiling, the document still held out toward her, Milisent said, “It says that because of the breakdown of her wits upon her husband’s death, making her a danger to herself and her husband’s heiresses, the keeping of Edward Helyngton’s widow is given into my hands and those of my brother Laurence Helyngton until such time as Cristiana Helyngton may be found to be in her right mind again.”

  “No.” Cristiana heard her voice rise with protest, disbelief, and sudden, sharp fear. Mary and Jane, surely did not fully understand what was happening but frightened by her fear, scrambled to their feet on either side of her. She reached out and put her arms around their shoulders, pulling them close to her. “That’s all a lie! You can’t have me and you can’t have my daughters! Go away!”

  Not raising his voice, Laurence said, “Ankaret.”

  Ankaret immediately opened the door and there were men—four men Cristiana did not know—on the other side. “Now,” said Laurence, and they came in, two of them straight at Cristiana, two to either side of her. The first two grabbed hold of her even as she started to draw back from them. The other two grabbed Mary and Jane away, picked them up and were carrying them from the room before Cristiana fully understood what they were doing and began to scream and struggle to follow them. Mary began to scream, too, but the men went out and Ankaret followed them, sla
mming the door shut behind herself as Laurence said, “There,” pointing to Edward’s tall-backed, heavy chair.

  Cristiana’s struggle against the two men holding her was as wasted as if she never made it. They shoved her to the chair and into it and one of them held her there, ignoring her cries for Mary and Jane while the other took a rope from his belt and tied her by her arms to the armrests and around her waist to the back. Then they stood aside and Milisent came forward and began to unpin Cristiana’s heavy widow’s veil. Cristiana twisted and tried to keep her head away, but tied as she was, that was as useless as her struggle against the men. Milisent stripped off first her veil and then her wimple, baring Cristiana’s head and neck in a way she had not been exposed before so many men since she was married. It brought her to gasping silence. But she drew breath and would have started to scream again for Mary and Jane because someone had to hear her, the house was full of servants, why didn’t someone—

  “Shut her up,” Laurence ordered.

  Milisent was already taking a long cloth out of her sleeve. Cristiana instantly understood what it was for and tried to turn her head away, but Milisent forced it into her mouth like a bridle into a horse’s, gagging her outcry even before Milisent twisted the ends behind her head with a jerk and said, tying it tightly, “You can’t know how long I’ve wanted to do this.”