7 The Prioress' Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  Reynold spread his hands, grinning wryly, asking her to share the jest. “How else could I come by it?”

  “Pay for it, like everyone else!”

  “The way you’ve paid your masons?”

  “I’ll pay them! I’ve never meant to steal from them. There’ll be money for it and soon enough, too!”

  “From where?” Reynold mocked.

  He always turned to mocking when he thought he was going to win an argument without needing to lose his temper, but this time Alys had an answer and said triumphantly, “We had a miracle in the church this afternoon. Sister Thomasine cured a madman.”

  “So?” Reynold asked.

  She knew he was being deliberately thick and said, wanting to make him admit to what she had, “He was mute and witless and now he’s on his knees in front of the altar, praying.” Or he had better be. She had given orders for it to be seen to.

  “And?” Reynold asked.

  “Don’t be stupid, Reynold! Before Sister Thomasine touched him, he couldn’t speak, didn’t know where he was or what was happening to him. Now he’s cured! When word goes out there’s been a healing here and people start to come, there’ll be money enough for the tower and whatever else I want.”

  “If they come.”

  “They’ll come.” Of that Alys was positive. To doubt it after she had seen the miracle with her own eyes would be the same as doubting God.

  “They very well might,” Hugh agreed.

  “Be quiet!” Reynold snapped at him again.

  “Reynold,” Alys said, “the point is, the straightest way out is for you to go before you drag the priory into more trouble than you have.”

  “Than we have, Alys my girl,” Reynold said. “You’ve had most of the profit from my thieving, when all’s said and done and totaled up.”

  “But I didn’t know until now that that was what was happening!”

  “And so you’ll say, but will you be believed?”

  “I’m more likely to be believed if you’re not still here when sheriff and crowner come!”

  “And when the Fenners come?”

  The constriction in her chest came back, worse than before. She could not always tell when Reynold was jesting, but she knew when he was utterly serious. “Fenners,” she said.

  Reynold shrugged. “At least a few.”

  That was a jest. There was no such thing as “a few” Fenners. They were like crows—seen solitary sometimes and even sometimes quarreling among themselves but flocking loud and fierce together at any outward threat to one or any of them. There were no “few” Fenners. She looked desperately at Hugh. “It isn’t Fenners you’ve been raiding.” Silently she pleaded for him to tell her that, to tell her that Reynold had not been raiding Fenners and bringing what he stole back here and that he had not killed on Fenner property today.

  Hugh made no answer except a level stare directly back at her that was answer enough and too much.

  She slammed her hands down on her chair, facing Reynold in a rage. “You fool! What were you thinking of?”

  Reynold swung his scabbarded sword up to rest across his knees and leaned forward over it, not touched by her anger, saying earnestly, “Alys, Alys, think about it. It’s a quarrel that’s been shaping a long while. It was time to bring it to a head and be done with it.”

  What was he talking about? The quarrel they had with the Fenners had been in abeyance for years, with Godfrey properties finally left in Fenner hands when the legal fees looked to rise higher than the properties were worth.

  “That was over years ago,” she protested.

  “Not over,” Reynold said. “Only waiting to come to life again. It’s been long enough. It’s time they paid us back for all they cost us.”

  “I don’t recall they ever cost you a penny,” Hugh said.

  “Neither you nor your father were ever the ones who took it to court.” No, it had been Hugh’s father had done that, Alys remembered.

  Reynold ignored him, concentrating on her. “Alys, I’ve raided the Fenners and they haven’t been able to do anything about it. I’ve shown what can be done against them, that they’re vulnerable, and I’ve sent out word I’ve done it. In a few days more there’ll be at least a score more Godfreys here, satisfied I can do what I said I’d do, and then we’ll set a raid against the Fenners—one great raid that will pay back for everything and have back our lands for good measure at the end of it.”

  Alys shook her head, wanting to refuse what he was saying. “Why use me for that? Why use St. Frideswide’s?”

  “You’re not a place anyone would come looking first when trying to find out who was doing this to Fenner lands. That was a way to buy us more time. And you’re better walled than any of my properties, so a better defense when we’re found out. And even when we are, whoever finds us will think twice about attacking a nunnery and that buys us more time, for more men to join the game. And they will. There’ll be men in plenty and not just Godfreys who’ll come for this sport.”

  Alys came around her chair and sank slowly into it, her legs not able to hold up the weight of pain in her head, the weight of pain in her heart. That was why he was here? Because he needed her nunnery. And he expected her to let it go on happening?

  “Alys, listen.” He leaned farther forward, reached out to lay his hand on hers. She drew it away from him, refusing to look at him, staring past him into a shadowed corner of the room. He rested his hand on the arm of her chair and went on, “You see how you’ve made it possible to come this near to having at the Fenners? I can’t leave here now. It’s too late to break this off.”

  “Of course the dead Fenner villein ups the stakes,” Hugh said. “Thieving is one thing. Killing is another.”

  Reynold made an exasperated sound. “Forget the villein. If it ever comes to having to explain it, it was Godard killed him after he struck Godard, and now Godard is dead and there’s an end to it.”

  “Our men will go along with that, but I doubt the villagers will,” Sir Hugh said.

  “They will if they’re told what will happen to them if they don’t,” Sir Reynold snapped. “Don’t make trouble where there doesn’t have to be.”

  “You can’t stay here,” Alys said. She looked at Hugh. “Make him understand he has to leave.”

  “He won’t listen to me either.”

  “Don’t give me this!” Reynold said angrily. “You’ve been part of this every step of the way, Hugh. Don’t try slipping out of it now.”

  “You’ve pushed the thing too far, too fast. I’ve been telling you that,” Hugh answered.

  “And if we pull back now, what happens?” Reynold demanded.

  “If we don’t pull back now, what’s going to happen?” Hugh returned.

  “What happens to me, whatever you do?” Alys cried.

  “Nothing happens to you,” Reynold said impatiently. “When it comes to it, just keep insisting you didn’t know until it was too late and what could you have done then to be rid of us anyway? Have your nuns drive out my men? Set your nunnery folk to fight us?”

  “They’ll say I should have sent word the moment I knew what you were about.”

  “You didn’t know until now.”

  Hugh made a rude sound and said, “Try making anyone believe that.”

  Alys glanced at him, a little wild with knowing he was right, no one would believe her, but Reynold said, ignoring Hugh, “You couldn’t send word anyway. I’ve set guards. No one goes out or in from here without I know it from here on.”

  Alys started to rise, too caught between half-disbelieving outrage and outright rage to find words. Reynold, seeming not to notice except he put a hand on her knee to keep her down, went on easily. “No, you should be able to clear you and your nunnery readily enough.”

  “So long as it’s only words, she maybe can,” said Hugh, “but if it comes to us being attacked here…”

  “If you’ve lost your stomach for it,” Reynold said angrily, “leave.”

  �
��If I leave, my men go with me.”

  “All three of them,” Reynold scorned. “You’re a ways yet from being some great lord.”

  Hugh stood up from the table. “And so are you, cousin!”

  “I’m nearer to it than you are and at least I’ve the guts to try for it!”

  Beside the door Katerin whimpered, understanding the anger if nothing else of what was happening, and Alys could almost have whimpered with her, for once not seeing how she ought to go, afraid—unbelieving, she found she was afraid, a thing that, like uncertainty, she had no use for—afraid of what would happen if Reynold and Hugh broke and openly went for one another.

  Then Hugh gave way, drew back from both Reynold and his anger, and said, “Play it your way, Reynold,” sounding as if they had come to this end between them before and he no longer much cared. “I’m going to bed. You have this out with her on your own.” He started toward the door, then paused, looked back and said, “But, Alys, don’t let him talk you into this. From here on out, the way things are, you’re better off without him.”

  Chapter 18

  In summer the difficulty of rising at dawn came from the too few hours of night and rest. By late autumn, when the nights had lengthened and there were more hours for sleep, it was the cold waiting for her beyond her blankets that made Frevisse wish she could deny the dawn. In her young days as a nun, she had taken pride—God pardon her—and pleasure in making the sacrifice of rising at midnight and again at dawn for prayers; but although she thought—she prayed—that she had long since overcome the pride, lately she had noticed that her bones at least were taking less pleasure in the sacrifice. The spirit was still willing, but the body’s wish to cling to bed a little longer was becoming a problem.

  And yet once it was done, once she had forced her body out of bed’s comfort and hurriedly dressed in the darkness by feel and familiarity, warm woolen gown over the linen underdress she wore to bed, feet into soft-soled leather shoes to be off the chill rush matting, white wimple over her hair and throat and around her face, black veil pinned carefully into place over the wimple, then she was near enough to what she wanted to gladly leave her sleeping cell, join the others at the head of the stairs at the near end of the high-roofed dormitory, and go down in silence except for the hush of their skirts, shadows moving through shadows, their way lighted only by the small lamp kept burning through the night at the head of the dormitory stairs, into the cloister walk and along it by starlight or moonlight or with no light at all if it were cloudy, to the church, where, for Frevisse, the joy of prayer, of greeting God’s day as dawn began to fill the eastern window, more than balanced the discomfort of rising in the dark and cold.

  But this morning, at last, she would have no reluctance. This morning she was awake and waiting for the morning bell to release her from bed and her back. Dame Claire’s ointment had eased the pain to aching and she had managed to sleep, but in the throes of a dream she no longer remembered, she had rolled over on it and now was widely awake, lying very carefully still, willing the roused pain to subside, and hoping it was near dawn because she doubted she would be able to sleep again.

  The pain at least was easing to a separate throbbing of each welt across her back and she was able to turn her mind away from it, to begin repeating silently into the dark the psalms for this morning’s Prime, for her own comforting in their beauty and to make the dark less endless.

  Caeli enarrant gloriam Dei… Dies diei effundit verbum . . . The heavens tell the glory of God… Day pours out the word to day…

  Not that she was much looking forward to what this particular day was likely to entail.

  Quis ascendet in montem Domini, aut quis stabit in loco sancto eius? Who ascends into the mountain of the Lord, or who stands in his holy place? Innocens manibus et mundus corde, qui non intendit mentem suam ad vana… The innocent in hands and clean in heart, who does not strain his mind toward things empty, toward things vain, useless, false, conceited, unreliable, cruel…

  Frevisse clamped off that run of bitter words, taking her exactly back to where she did not want to go—to Domina Alys and Sir Reynold.

  She thought of rising and going to the church to pray. It was allowed and Sister Thomasine frequently did it, but thought of the madman—the once-mad man—held her where she was. He had been given a straw-filled pallet and blankets on the floor behind the altar and he was probably asleep there now. Or maybe he was awake and waiting for what the day would bring him, maybe wondering at the movement of thoughts in his mind where there had been only chaos or emptiness before. What must that be like?

  When the nuns had gone into the choir for Matins at midnight, he had been a featureless heap, huddled in the blankets on his bed, only the top of his now clean head and the glint of his eyes to be seen at the edge of the choir candlelight. He had not stirred while they were there. He had watched but made no move or sound and probably would do no more if she went in to pray; but even his simply being there made her uneasy. There were too many questions about him. How cured was he? Was the cure momentary or would it last? How much would he be able to tell them when Dame Claire said he could be questioned? Had it truly been Sister Thomasine’s doing? Did she even know whether it was or not, and what did she think of it? No one had been able to bring her to talk of it yesterday.

  Apart from all of that, what did Domina Alys mean to make of this seeming miracle laid into her hands? Because make something of it she surely meant to do. If nothing else, she was foreseeing pilgrims with money and gifts that would pay for that miserable tower of hers…

  Frevisse forced her mind away from that. Whoever ascended to the mountain of the Lord, it was not likely to be someone who interspersed her prayers with bitter thoughts against her prioress. Domini est terra et quae replent earn, orbis terrarum et qui habitant in eo. Of the Lord is the earth and that which fills it, the circle of the earth and those who live on it.

  Better to give herself over to prayer and God’s praise, as Sister Thomasine did, than sink into bitterness over things beyond her power to mend. Leave to God how the world would go.

  Unless, her mind suggested, the Lord meant for his faithful to see to his world the way worldly lords expected their men to see to their lands, with the lord holding sovereignty but his men responsible and answerable for how well or ill things went in their keeping.

  If that were the way of it, it was sin to leave things to go which way they would, and she…

  Frevisse shoved off the blankets. Lying there with her aching back and her thoughts for company was doing her no good at all. Madman or no, she would go to the church to pray. It could not be that far to Prime now.

  In fact, she saw as she arose that the small square of sky through the high window under the dormitory’s gable was pale with early light. That meant it was past time for the bell to have rung to Prime, and she began to dress with a haste pressed by curiosity. Being late was not Katerin’s way. Given any task that she could understand, she did it faithfully for always afterward.

  It crossed Frevisse’s mind to wonder why, if miracles were being done, it hadn’t been that poor woman’s wits that were given back instead of a stranger’s.

  She shook away that thought as yet another run of speculation that would do no good. There were stirrings now in the other cells as others began waking out of habit despite there was no bell. Dressed, Frevisse pushed aside the curtain that shut her cell off from the dormitory’s aisle as Sister Emma from behind her own set to murmuring increasingly loud questions about where the bell could be; and as Frevisse started down the stairs Dame Perpetua said back impatiently, sleepily, “We don’t know, do we? Just dress. We’ll go see.”

  Frevisse was nearly at the stairs’ foot when the bell broke into the morning’s stillness but not with Katerin’s evenly paced clanging. Instead it smashed into the quiet, clashing and banging. Frevisse startled to a stop, then flung herself forward, off the last steps and out into the cloister walk, where there was light enough now to se
e shapes if not colors clearly. Light enough to see it was Katerin at the bell pentice in the midst of the cloister garth, frantically jerking the bell rope with both hands.

  “Katerin!” Frevisse cried. “That’s enough! We’re up. You can stop!”

  Katerin looked over a shoulder at her, hearing her despite the clanging but not stopping. Frevisse crossed into the garth and to her, exclaiming, “It doesn’t matter you were late, Katerin! You can stop now. We’re awake!” Then she saw the terror on Katerin’s face and changed to urgent comforting, trying to lower and even her voice with “Katerin, stop it. There’s no harm done. You’re only a little late. It’s well enough. Stop now.” She caught her by the wrists, careful to be gentle but surprised at Katerin’s strength. “You can stop now, Katerin.”

  Words always took time to reach Katerin’s wits and she struggled to go on ringing, pulling against Frevisse’s hold, until abruptly, of her own will and not Frevisse’s force, she stood still and silence clashed down around them, momentarily as startling as the noise had been. The only sound was Katerin’s panting in the stillness, before Frevisse, making an effort to speak soothingly, said very quietly, “It doesn’t matter you were late, Katerin. It doesn’t matter. No one is angry at you.”

  “Dead!” Katerin sobbed.

  Frevisse stared at her, trying to guess what she was trying to say. Katerin wrested a hand loose and pointed across the garth toward the stairs to Domina Alys’ parlor. “Dead!”

  Suddenly cold around the heart, Frevisse let her go and started across the garth toward the stairs, not wanting to. Katerin could only think in simplicities. It had to be no more than that Domina Alys was ill. It was surely only that, not death.

  Domina Alys loomed out of the darkness of the narrow stairs to her parlor, dressed but still pinning her veil into place as she came, demanding at full voice, “Katerin, what do you think you’re doing? You’re supposed to ring the bell, not smash it to pieces!” Finding Frevisse instead of Katerin in front of her, she stopped on the last step, momentarily wordless, then shifted her attack. “And you! If you’re here, why didn’t you stop her sooner?”