The Apostate's Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  They finished taking their places but went on staring at their prioress and abbot. Frevisse wondered if the others felt the same sick worry and wondering what came next that she suddenly did, but giving them little time to wonder, Abbot Gilberd said, “A parting of the ways has come, my ladies. After long talk and much prayer together these past days, I have granted your prioress’ request to relieve her of her office and allow her to return to the nunnery from whence she came.”

  Domina Elisabeth did not stir, but while Frevisse, Dame Claire, and Dame Thomasine stayed silent, there were exclaims among the others and heads turning and accusing looks at Dame Perpetua and Dame Margrett because they must have heard something of this while keeping their prioress company in her parlor.

  “They were under my order to say nothing, hint at nothing,” Abbot Gilberd said, bringing instant quiet and all the nuns’ attention back to him. “As for your prioress, she came to you in your need twelve years ago. She has made well what was ill. She has made strong what was weak. The good to you has been great. The cost to her has been heavy. She is weary and has asked for rest. That I have granted her. In two days’ time you will hold election for your new prioress. I bid you pray well between now and then, that your choice be acceptable in the eyes of God.”

  Or, more to the immediate point, acceptable in the eyes of Abbot Gilberd, thought Frevisse. His was the final word on who became prioress in a nunnery under his care, unless things went so badly that the bishop himself had to settle matters, God forbid. It had been the disasters brought on St. Frideswide’s by a very ill-chosen prioress that had forced the abbot to use his authority and bring his sister from a London nunnery to be their prioress, trusting none of them to the place. Now he was saying he trusted them again to make their own choice. What he did not need to say was: And woe to them if they chose ill again.

  Mercifully, the bell rang for Vespers, silencing them all. Abbot Gilberd took his hand from his sister’s shoulder. Head still bowed, she went to an empty stall at the bottom of the choir, slipped into it and to her knees. Abbot Gilberd signed the cross toward her bowed head and then at them all. Then he left, disappearing into the shadows of the nave, and after an uncertain moment Dame Juliana unsteadily began the Office. The other nuns unevenly followed her.

  The familiarity soon steadied them, but they went forward at an almost gabbled haste, so that Frevisse, who would have preferred to make the Office last as long as might be, found no peace in the prayers and psalms and all too soon was leaving the church with the others. Supper was next, with no chance to talk then either, only for long looks and wondering head-shakes at the head of the table where Domina Elisabeth was not, having stayed in the church when they left.

  Frevisse was not looking forward to recreation’s hour, when talk would burst out freely. The talk about Cecely and Alson and all of that was going to be bad enough, but now it would be mixed with exclaims over Domina Elisabeth. Frevisse was not ready to face all that, and by the time the nuns rose from their places along the refectory table and rapidly said final grace, her set intent was to escape directly from the refectory to the church.

  She was forestalled as she reached the refectory door by Malde coming to her and saying in an almost frightened, too loud voice that she was wanted in Domina Elisabeth’s chamber. The others all turned to stare at her. She walked away from them quickly and walked faster as the gabbling started up behind her, aware that she would now be among the things they exclaimed over.

  Her way took her past the closed door of Cecely’s cell, now guarded by one of Abbot Gilberd’s men. It was unsettling to see a man simply sitting there in the cloister, neither coming nor going. He stood up respectfully as she approached. She gave him a nod as she passed, but her thought was on Cecely in that lightless room beyond the shut door. Under the clouded sky, night was coming fast; even what little light let in through the slit of a window would soon be gone and then she would be alone in unrelieved darkness with nothing but her thoughts and maybe prayers, although Frevisse had doubt about the prayers of someone who had tried to kill a man because of her hurt feelings. Without prayer, all that Cecely had were her memories—now mostly of losses—and her anger. And even anger must be a cold comfort in that room.

  Frevisse slowed as she reached the prioress’ stairs and unwillingly went up them to scratch at the door and enter at Domina Elisabeth’s bidding. Domina Elisabeth was standing near the small fire burning on the hearth; Abbot Gilberd was seated in the tall chair that was usually hers. The shutters had been closed across the window against the on-coming night, but several lighted candles showed the remains of their supper on the table, and Luce from the guesthall standing in the shadows beside the door. The abbot must have brought her with him from the guesthall, that Domina Elisabeth not be alone with him, but he said now, “You may go, woman,” and Luce dropped a curtsy and slipped behind Frevisse and out the door with a quickness that said she was grateful to leave.

  “Come forward, dame,” Abbot Gilberd said. “Join us.”

  Retreating into her nunhood, tucking her hands into her opposite sleeves and bowing her head, Frevisse obeyed, going forward to stand beside Domina Elisabeth.

  “In our haste to bring an end to these poisonings,” Abbot Gilberd said, “there are some questions that have gone unanswered. Master Rowcliffe has ceased to go on at me about his stolen deeds. Do you know why that is?”

  Toward the floor but firmly, Frevisse said, “Because they’ve been returned to him, my lord.”

  “By your doing?”

  “Yes, my lord.” As he had surely known before he asked the question because he must have overheard her in talk with Cecely.

  “Your explanation for doing so without asking my leave or word for it?”

  Not trying to judge either his displeasure or anything else, she answered straightly, “Sister Cecely had hidden the deeds with her son. He gave them up to me because he understood that neither he nor she had any right to them. Because they are Master Rowcliffe’s, I returned them to him. To make an end of at least one of the troubles.”

  “You did not see fit to consult with either your prioress or myself about it. You simply did it.”

  Her gaze still on the floor, Frevisse said, “Yes, my lord.”

  As Abbot Gilberd’s silence drew out, she wished she had tried for humble rather than firm in her answer. She also wished she had not bowed her head quite so deeply; she could not see either his face or Domina Elisabeth’s, to read between them what they might be thinking. All she could do was wait, and only finally and slowly did Abbot Gilberd say, “That was, probably, well done. With his deeds returned, he should be satisfied to leave Sister Cecely to us. It might have been better to keep them, until we were sure he’ll make no trouble over our claim on the boy, but what’s done is done.”

  Frevisse forgot humble and looked at him. “The boy? Our claim on him?”

  “I believe there is property that comes with him, and that his mother intends to give him to the Church,” Abbot Gilberd said.

  “I believe she intends no such thing,” Frevisse said, just barely keeping sharpness from her voice. “That was simply another of her lies, and now that she’s been thwarted in everything she intended here, she will surely never consent to such a thing.”

  “Her consent has no part in this. By all her vows, she is the Church’s. That makes whatever she has gained likewise the Church’s.”

  Did that include her shame and the burden of her sin? Frevisse wondered sharply, and with her gaze unlowered, she said back at him, “I think it likely that, insofar as Edward is concerned, there are lawyers enough to contest that as would drag the matter through the courts for years. His little manor is not worth that much.”

  She was guessing. She did not know that much about either Edward’s manor or the church’s law in such a matter, but she was offended by thought of Edward being wrenched even more hither and thither for no better reason than whatever use people could make of him. So she looked at A
bbot Gilberd as if she knew whereof she spoke and waited to see if he knew better.

  If he did, he did not say so, only looked back at her through a long moment’s silence and finally said, “Something must be done with him. He cannot be left with her, the more especially where she is going.”

  Frevisse flashed a look at Domina Elisabeth who had been standing with statue-stillness through all this exchange, but it was Abbot Gilberd who answered her unspoken question with, “My sister has persuaded me, yes, that to leave Sister Cecely here would be too great a burden on St. Frideswide’s. She will be removed elsewhere. But neither do I think you wish to have the boy left on your hands.”

  “Let him go back to his family. That is where he belongs. Enough of ‘the sins of the father’ have been visited on him,” Frevisse said. “Let him be done with the sins of the mother, too.”

  Abbot Gilberd regarded her in silence through another long moment, then nodded slowly. “Yes. Sometimes the simplest way is the best way.”

  Frevisse held back from saying that usually the simplest way was the best way. And in this matter, anyway, the simplest way was also the kindest. It was unkindness and the tangles that people made in their lives that led to misery, and with thought of misery, she asked, “What of Alson and Tom Pye?”

  Abbot Gilberd looked to Domina Elisabeth. “We have been considering them,” he said, in a way that suggested they had been disagreeing, too.

  Speaking for the first time since Frevisse had come in, Domina Elisabeth said, her voice tautly controlled but threatening to break, “I don’t want the trouble of law brought on them and all that will come from that. I just want this all to be over and done with.”

  Beyond the words Frevisse heard the weary strain that must have been behind much of what Domina Elisabeth had said and done these past months. When she had sent her plea for help with Cecely to her brother, she must have likewise sent word of her own plight. That had been why Abbot Gilberd had come himself—in answer to his sister’s plea for herself, rather than for the small, sad matter of an apostate nun.

  But the small, sad matter had grown into something large and ugly with the poisonings of two men, and for all that she must have been holding herself together by plain force of her will for who knew how long, her will was beginning to break apart under the threat of yet more trouble when all she wanted was an end to it all, and Abbot Gilberd did not help by saying, “I doubt that Symond Hewet or Master Breredon will be willing to simply let the matter end. Not with what they’ve suffered.”

  Domina Elisabeth looked as if she were about to burst out that she did not care what they had suffered, but before she could, Frevisse said, “You might ask it of them, my lord. It could be pointed out to them that Master Breredon came here falsely, ready to do grave wrong in helping Sister Cecely away. And Symond Hewet, too, did no little wrong in keeping his cousin’s secret.”

  “That they were poisoned could very likely be counted to outweigh both those matters,” Abbot Gilberd said.

  “Then you could point out to them,” Frevisse returned, “that any prosecution of the Pyes would require both Master Breredon and Symond Hewet, as well as the Rowcliffes as their witnesses, to return here or to wherever else the trials were held for who knows how many times or when. Upon thought, they may well find that the inconvenience of that and the open telling of their own guilts that would come with any trial outweigh their need for justice against the Pyes. Since, if there is no trial, the Church is willing to forego its rights against them in the matters.”

  “Is the Church willing to forego its rights?” Abbot Gilberd challenged.

  “That would be the simplest way to have this done and over with, my lord.”

  Abbot Gilberd regarded her with narrowed eyes and the fingers of one hand drumming on the wooden arm of the chair for a discomfortable length of time before he finally said, “Yes. Again, the simplest way may very well be the best.”

  Determined to return to humility, Frevisse bowed her head and murmured, “Yes, my lord.”

  Her hope was that he would now dismiss her. Her fear was that he would not. Nor did he but after another pause asked, “Why, dame?”

  Keeping her eyes down and truly not understanding his question, she said, “‘Why,’ my lord?”

  “Why do you care what happens to this Tom Pye and his sister?”

  She paused over her answer before saying carefully, “Because what they did was done more from foolishness than evil.”

  “What they did was evil. If either man had died, it would have been more evil,” Abbot Gilberd said.

  “But it was evil from foolishness, not evil from the heart. Alson is small-witted. For all she says now that she was forced to it by threats, she may have truly thought she was doing Sister Cecely good service in making Master Breredon ill, to have the threatening Rowcliffes sent away so Sister Cecely might have chance at flight again. Having done that, she probably thought herself trapped into doing more. Nor does her brother being persuaded to it, too, surprise me. He doesn’t see things further than what he’s told.”

  “He did the poisonings skillfully enough,” Abbot Gilberd said sharply.

  “I never said he was a fool.” Just barely Frevisse kept sharpness from her own voice. “The poisonings—those were done with what he has—low cunning.”

  That was the trouble with all this tangle, she thought bitterly. There had been low cunning in plenty but a grievous lack of good sense.

  She remembered to add, “My lord,” and lowered her head again.

  That meant she did not know where Abbot Gilberd was looking through the long silence that followed, but it ended with him saying, apparently to Domina Elisabeth, “This will suffice? That I see to everything, save you deal with the Pyes as you see fit, if I persuade the Rowcliffes to forego the law?”

  “Yes,” Domina Elisabeth said wearily. “I’ll deal with them if you see to all the rest. And to Mistress Lawsell.”

  “Ah. Mistress Lawsell.” Abbot Gilberd sounded no happier at thought of her than Frevisse felt, but it seemed he accepted her along with the rest of the burden Domina Elisabeth was setting down, because he next said, “Yes. Her, too.” He rose from the chair. “Now I shall leave you to your rest, dear sister. Dear sisters,” he added, including Frevisse.

  He murmured a benediction over them both while making the sign of the cross in the air, then left, and Domina Elisabeth moved toward the chair where he had been, the prioress’ chair, where every prioress of St. Frideswide’s through the years had sat in her turn; but her step was so unsteady—as if merely moving was almost too much to ask of her body—that Frevisse put a hand under her arm and helped her the few steps until she could sink gratefully onto the chair’s cushion.

  She gestured toward the room’s only other chair for Frevisse to sit, too, and Frevisse did, wishing Domina Elisabeth had dismissed her instead, but Domina Elisabeth, with her head leaned against the tall back of the chair and eyes closed, said, “What am I to do with the Pyes? Even if the Rowcliffes don’t demand the law on them, I’ll have to send them away. Alson stole from us and suborned her brother. He poisoned two men. How could they be such fools? They can’t stay here, and I can’t give them a good word to take with them. What could I say?”

  “That they’ve been good workers,” Frevisse offered. “That much would be true about them.”

  “That they’ve been good workers but will follow any stupid plan that’s offered them?” Domina Elisabeth shot back with a little anger-fueled sharpness.

  “If all you write is that they’ve been good workers, whoever thinks to hire them will wonder, then, why you’ve let them go, but at least you’ve not turned them off with nothing for all the years they’ve served well here.”

  “And it will let them say they left by their own choice if they want to lie further and…” Domina Elisabeth broke off, made a frustrated gesture with both hands, and gave up, saying with all her weariness returned on her, “It just goes on and on. It never stops. O
ne trouble after another. I am so tired of it all. So tired.”

  She was; but she was also being rescued by her brother and would soon have her longed-for rest. Frevisse wondered whether, if it had been someone other than his sister who made the plea, Abbot Gilberd would have agreed to her resignation and all else she wanted.

  But she was still prioress for now, still bound by duty, and Frevisse asked, “What of Elianor Lawsell? Where is she? Gone back to the guesthall for the night?”

  “On the abbot’s word, she’s been given a bed in the infirmary.” Domina Elisabeth shut her eyes. “One more trouble.”

  Frevisse looked at her tired face and how slackly her hands lay on the arms of the chair. There was no doubting how near to the end of her strength Domina Elisabeth was, and Frevisse brought herself to say, “I shall regret your going from us. You’ve served St. Frideswide’s well.”

  The faintest of smiles curved Domina Elisabeth’s mouth. “I’ve sometimes thought you did not approve of me, dame,” she murmured.

  Sometimes Frevisse had not, but she answered honestly, “That doesn’t mean you’ve not done well. Only that I was wrong.”

  Her eyes still closed, Domina Elisabeth gave a single small laugh. In the silence then the fire whispered among its coals and there was the tat of rain at the window glass beyond the shutters. Frevisse was waiting to be dismissed or for Compline’s summons, whichever would let her leave here, but into the quiet Domina Elisabeth said softly, “There is strong likelihood that you’ll be elected prioress in my place. You know that, don’t you?”

  Frevisse strangled back her instant, urgent need to refuse even the thought, able only after a long moment of struggle to say evenly, “No. Nor do I wish it.”

  Domina Elisabeth held silent, letting the knowledge lie there between them that once a nun’s vow of obedience was given, “wish” had nothing to do with “duty” except insofar as a nun should wish to do whatever duty was given her. Instead, finally and far too quietly, Domina Elisabeth asked, “On which of your sisters, then, would you rather lay the burden?”