The Apostate's Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  Frevisse, who had seen her in time not to be taken by surprise, cast a longing look at the bell under its pentice in the middle of the garth. Through these days of Tenebrae it would not be rung to call them to the Offices. Until Easter, it was joined in the mourning. Only with the Resurrection would it ring out clear and sweet again and be all the more welcome for the while they had gone without it.

  For longer than anyone remembered, St. Frideswide’s had made do with an ill-made, dull-throated bell, one that clanged rather than rang. Then, something like a year and a half ago, Frevisse had given help to her cousin in a dark time and afterward parted from her in anger. No word had passed between them since, but last summer this bell had come as her cousin’s gift to the priory.

  That had been well-witted on her cousin’s part, knowing as she must have that Frevisse would have refused any gift to herself. This way, Frevisse’s thanks had been included perforce in the general thanks the nunnery had sent, but she had somewhat sharply refused Domina Elisabeth’s offered permission to write to her cousin with message of her own. The sharpness of her refusal had warned her that her anger was gone too deep, that she needed to do more than simply wait for it to fade, and through this past autumn and winter she had fought to quell and cure it, had failed, and at Shrovetide had finally confessed both her anger and her failure to Father Henry, the nunnery’s priest.

  Whether it was that Father Henry had grown in the years he had been in St. Frideswide’s or that she had become better able to see his virtues, the time was long past when she thought him too slight a man in spiritual matters to be of much use. He had heard her out with kindness, had not been able to give her absolution for a sin she was still in but had set her prayers meant to help her grow free of it. She had labored at those prayers all through Lent, and labor was precisely what it had been until, just a week ago, she had found with surprise that she was come out on the far side of her anger—that it was worn away and left behind her and she was able to look back at it as one looked back on an illness, feeling—as one did after illness—the lighter for being done with it. Lighter, and whole again, and glad to be cleansed of the ugly burden that her anger—like an illness—had been.

  Father Henry had warned her, though, when first setting her the task, that her penance, when she was done, would be to ask Domina Elisabeth for permission to write to her cousin and then to write not only with thanks for the bell but to ask her cousin’s forgiveness.

  “You might as well have any anger at that out of the way along with the rest and be done with it,” he had said. “Then you won’t have to do penance for that in its turn.”

  That had been well-forethought on his part, because it was going to be hard to ask Alice’s forgiveness. Not as hard as if she had tried to do it while still lost in her anger, but hard enough.

  That was what made it penance.

  Closing Showings and rising to her feet, Frevisse smiled to herself. What made the penance of true value was accepting it with a glad heart. Able to do that now, she found that the freedom it gave her was worth every hour of the struggle it had been.

  The struggle to get through the rest of the day was another matter, but she made it and at her end-of-day visit to the guesthall learned from Ela that three more guests had come—one Master Breredon and his two servants.

  “He means to stay through Easter,” Ela told her, sounding happier about it than Frevisse would have expected. “His servants, they’re a married couple. Seems the wife is poorly, and so this Master Breredon has brought her for her to pray for healing and so on. Her husband’s already had word with Father Henry. I thought you could say something to Dame Claire.”

  “Or Dame Johane,” Frevisse said. “Yes. Not tonight but tomorrow surely.”

  She briefly wondered why Master Breredon had chosen here instead of a shrine known for its healing. Surely his circumstances were better than little Powlyn’s parents if he had two servants.

  Ela went on, “He’s given dried fruit, some flour, and a large ham for guest-gift.” Which explained why she was not unhappy at him being here. “I hope you’ll leave it all to us and not need it in the cloister,” she added pointedly.

  Frevisse assured her that the guesthall could keep it all, relieved but keeping to herself the unworthy fear she had had that the nuns might have to give up some of their Easter feast to their guests. If it had come to that, she and the others would have given thanks that they had something to give, but being thankful to have enough to give and being glad at having to give it were not necessarily the same, and shameful though it was to admit it, Frevisse would not care to say how little glad she would have been. Lent had gone on a very long time.

  She was privately laughing at herself for her weakness until Ela asked, her words more polite than the scorn in her voice, “How’s that run-back Sister Cecely doing, if there’s no trouble in my asking?”

  “She’s doing well enough,” Frevisse said quellingly. Even if there was no way to stop talk of Sister Cecely, neither was there need to encourage it by saying much.

  “Early days yet,” Ela said. “Even when she was here before, pretending to be a nun, she was never anything but trouble. That her own boy she brought with her?”

  Starting to leave, Frevisse answered even more quellingly, “Yes.”

  Behind her, Ela sniffed.

  That, at least, Frevisse could let go unanswered and did, but she took Ela’s “pretending to be a nun” away with her.

  She had been trying to put off thinking more than need be about Sister Cecely until Easter was done, but some thoughts would not stay away, and Ela’s words were a prod to them. Sister Cecely could never have been deeply rooted in her nunhood or she would not have fled from it. That being true, Frevisse could not help wondering how truly ready was she now to take on the full burden of penance for her apostasy.

  But why else would she have returned if she was unready for that penance?

  Why else indeed?

  Because if it was not for penance she was come back…then for what?

  Chapter 7

  Every memory Cecely had willingly put away from her over the years had been returning on her like heavy vengeance ever since she had walked through the cloister door. She had begun to choke on them even before she knelt again in front of the altar or put on the heavy dreariness of the black gown. Now she was finding that among the worst of the things she had forgotten was time’s terrible tediousness here, and there were no days more tedious than these at Lent’s end, when the prayers went on forever—hours of praying every day and for what seemed more than half of every night.

  How did these women keep from going mad?

  Or had they already all gone mad, and that was how they could bear it?

  And how long would it take for her to go mad, trapped in this narrow world among these narrow women all horribly alike in their Benedictine black gowns and Benedictine black veils, their faces tightly surrounded by their white wimples as if they needed one more thing to bind them from the world. How did they bear being tied and bound and in-held against everything their womanhood should demand was theirs? How could they bring themselves to forget so much of what it was like to be alive?

  Even Johane, her own cousin, in those first moments in the cloister walk had stood staring at her as if she was a ghost or, at best, a stranger never seen before. But then Cecely had hardly known her either, she was so changed—not just older but looking as if she had gone flat, gone stale, with nothing left of her except the part that could be called “nun.” Cecily had more than half-hoped to find Johane an ally, but the little fool was keeping even more widely away from her than the others did. They all acted as if she had a disease and they might take it from her; all of them too stupid to see they were the diseased ones, with Johane as diseased as the rest and no use to her at all.

  Still, and despite her own old sickness at this death-in-life that was worse with every hour she was here, she thought she was doing well enough. Maundy Thursday was pas
t, anyway, and she had not broken into laughter when she had been sat down with the others along the cloister garth’s wall, and Domina Elisabeth had knelt in front of them, one by one, and washed their feet as Christ had washed the Apostles’ feet. She had even washed Cecely’s feet and that had been when Cecely had had to fight to hold in laughter, wanting to dabble her bare toes in the basin and flick water at the woman who had surely been hating every moment of that humiliation.

  She had had altogether another urge when Father Henry—saints in heaven, even the same dull-witted priest was still here—had told her he would not give her Communion. She should have foreseen that, but she had not. This was the one time in the year when someone besides the priests were given Christ’s Body and Blood—the one time—and she was refused it because Father Henry was unwilling, he said, to “take on the burden” of her confession and penance. He said they were too much, that it was for Abbot Gilberd, not him, to deal with, her sin was so great.

  The size of her resentment at his refusal had surprised Cecely. She could only hope her disappointment had masked her fury at him. She had wanted to shout into his face, “I was in love! You don’t even know what love is! You and all these withered women! I loved Guy!” Instead, she had bowed her head very low, whispered acceptance of his stricture, and kept her head bowed, hiding her face while he signed a cross over her and went away.

  Still, she had got something a little her own way, she thought as she followed Dame Claire up the stairs to Mistress Petham’s chamber where poor Neddie was being kept, the sickly woman apparently willing for him to share her chamber. Yesterday Cecely had had to spend her time with him there and been able to drag only a few words out of him. It seemed he was being fed and that Mistress Petham was being kind to him, but the poor little mite had hardly talked except to answer what she asked him. He had just kept his head down and shook or nodded it for answer when he could, while across the chamber Dame Juliana fussed over the sick woman.

  Two old women with one foot in their graves and their heads in the charnel house, Guy would have said, and he and Cecely would have laughed together, the way they had at his old aunts more than once.

  No. Don’t think of Guy. Not now.

  Think instead how she had got her own way about Neddie, making certain Dame Juliana saw how poor Neddie had hardly talked to her there in Mistress Petham’s chamber, so that afterward she had been able to ask humbly, with deeply bowed head, if he might be allowed alone with her in their time together. “In the church, perhaps?” she had asked softly. “Outside the rood screen, where we’d trouble no one. It might help him, too, when…when…he’s gone away to be a monk?” she had wavered. Dame Juliana had made a great matter of having to ask Domina Elisabeth about it. Then Domina Elisabeth, granting leave for it, made plain that Cecely should understand it was a great favor she was being given, for the child’s sake, not hers, and that she should be hugely grateful for it.

  Hiding her bitterness, Cecely had humbly thanked her, but it was with hidden triumph she now followed Dame Claire into Mistress Petham’s chamber again. Neddie must have heard them coming. He was standing ready with his cloak. Cecely held out her hand to him, and he came to take it as Dame Claire, her guard today, said, going toward the bed, “I want to see briefly how Mistress Petham does. Go on to the church. I’ll soon be there.”

  Cecely murmured, “Yes, my lady,” and with a flare of hot triumph at gaining even those few moments of “freedom,” she grasped Neddie’s hand and pulled him out the door.

  Then came her next piece of good fortune.

  Alson was coming up the stairs, carrying a covered cup of something meant for Mistress Petham.

  There were so few moments to be alone and unwatched in this place. To meet Alson in one of them was almost un-hoped for luck.

  Except it was not luck, Cecely realized, as Alson said hastily, looking past her, up the stairs, “I had hope she’d linger with the old woman. They’re keeping close hold on you, aren’t they?”

  Cecely let go of Neddie, caught hold of Alson’s free hand with both her own, and whispered gladly, “Alson! You have the only friendly face in this whole place. They never found out you helped me, then?”

  Alson let go her worried uncertainty and whispered back as gladly, “They found out I’d taken your place in the kitchen, that’s all. You never saw such a to-doing as there was when you were found gone and well away. It’s been well with you, then? Worth it and all?”

  Gladness drained out of Cecely. Bleakly she said, “Until now. Now everything is…” Without she meant it to, her voice broke.

  Alson squeezed her hand and said, “I know. We’ve all heard. Poor lady, to have lost him. He was such a goodly man to look on.”

  Cecely nodded, momentarily wordless with her grief.

  Alson looked up the stairs again. “We can’t be caught talking. But maybe later?”

  “Today,” Cecely said, not about to waste this chance she had hoped for since she first saw Alson was still here. “At recreation time. In the necessarium.” There was somewhere the nuns let her go alone.

  Alson’s eyes and mouth went “Oh,” with surprise, but she gave a ready little nod, and they went their separate ways.

  Only at the foot of the stairs did Cecely pause to lean close over Neddie and say in his ear, “Never tell anyone that Alson and I spoke together,” giving a jerk on his hand to be sure he understood.

  Chapter 8

  While the Offices of these holy days were longer, daylight was not. The dark rigors of Good Friday were nearly done, but only because their supper had been so slight did the nuns have time at all for what should have been their hour of recreation before Compline and bed. Still, Frevisse welcomed even that little while and was come out with those nuns who were free to it into the fading twilight to walk the graveled paths of the cloister’s high-walled garden.

  It was a needed respite for those who had it. Ahead were tonight’s prayers, then the long mourning of Holy Saturday, and finally the night of vigil and prayers that would bring them at last to Easter. This pause in the effort of Holy Week’s prayers, this time of simply walking in the garden, gave minds and bodies chance to rest and ready themselves for the more that was to come. But Domina Elisabeth and Dame Claire were not there. From now until Easter two nuns would be constantly at vigil in the church, turn and turn about. This was their time.

  Dame Margrett was absent, too, allowed to spend this time with her mother, but Dame Thomasine was there, standing alone beside the pear tree, her face lifted to the pale sunset sky as if she were watching the last soft yellow drain away, so thin in her black nun’s gown and so still that she might have been another tree rooted there beside the path. Dame Juliana was, as usual, bent over the very young plants in one of the beds she so lovingly tended, while Dame Amicia and Dame Johane were walking together, their talk keeping pace with their brisk steps although their voices were too low for words to carry. Sister Helen usually walked with them when she did not walk with Dame Margrett, but this evening she was walking alone, her hands tucked into the opposite sleeves of her novice’s gown, her head bowed in thought or prayer.

  For her part, Frevisse was standing just outside the gate, not free to go into the garden yet. Her turn at watching Sister Cecely had begun, and as the nuns had come along the slype—the narrow passageway from the cloister walk to the garden—Sister Cecely had said suddenly and somewhat desperately, “I must go,” and turned aside to the stairs up to the necessarium. Frevisse had let her go. The only two ways to the necessarium were this one and a door to the nuns’ dorter. Not believing Sister Cecely was going to flee from the necessarium to the dorter and from the dorter down its stairs to the cloister walk and away, Frevisse had felt no need to follow her, was simply lingering in sight of the door, waiting for her and watching the others.

  Or, now, was watching Sister Helen in particular, who was come to a stop not far from Dame Thomasine and was standing watching her watch the sky. This was Sister Helen’s fir
st Eastertide in the nunnery, and Frevisse suspected that, as was usual with novices, she was seeking to match the high holiness of the days by working over-hard at her prayers and penances. Only experience and maybe the careful guidance of others would teach her that zeal was best balanced by consideration of the body’s need for reasonable rest from the rigors of prayer, lest both prayer and body suffer and fail together. Silently, Frevisse hoped that Domina Elisabeth was having quiet words with the girl on the side, guiding her. Or, if nothing else, was warning her that Dame Thomasine’s holiness was beyond the ordinary and not for a novice to copy but only to grow toward, the way that Dame Thomasine had grown toward and into it. As Dame Margrett not long after taking her final vows had told Frevisse, a little sadly, “Domina Elisabeth told me we can’t seize holiness out of God’s hand by force. She said we have to grow to where we can receive it from him. Is that what you’ve found?”