Roses in the Tempest

by Jeri Westerson

  They silenced at last, and we completed our prayers in proper order, but when off to our business about the convent, I heard them pick up their conversation where it left off. Only Cristabell was unnaturally silent as she walked with me to the fields.

  “You say nothing,” I said to her.

  She merely blinked and looked back once over her shoulder to the other two busily talking. “These matters do not concern us.”

  “Even so. We must pray for their speedy and just resolution.”

  “Do you think our prayers will do any good?”

  “Well, if no good than no harm.” I chuckled, until I realized her earnestness. “Why, Cristabell, of course our prayers do good. If they did not, then what is the point of our being here at all?”

  “But how do you know?”

  “I know by my faith. How do we know God exists?” I pursed my lips into a small smile at her scandalized reaction. “We know it by our faith. Did not our Lord give the very same to the apostles before He ascended into Heaven? He could have stayed with us in the flesh, but He chose instead to be with us in our faith. How does a child know that his mother will not drop him? He has learned to have faith.”

  “Many of us were ‘dropped’, as you say, by our parents, Dame. The faith of which you speak is harder come by for some of us.”

  “Surely you have faith in God, Cristabell.”

  She shook her head and whispered, “I know not.”

  “But I see it in you, in your work, in your sincerity.”

  She eyed me sidelong. “How can you be so certain of what is in my mind when I am not?”

  “We know the tree by its fruit, Cristabell. Though it is true that occasionally we have received sour apples from you, most of them have proved quite sweet.”

  I felt her stare at me a long time before she unexpectedly raised a hand to her mouth to hide a smile. She took an extra moment to compose herself. “Your faith is greater than mine. Perhaps it always has been.”

  “Yet you stay when I thought you might not.”

  She turned a surprised expression on me. “Did you think I would leave?”

  “You told me as much many years ago.”

  She shook her head with a rueful smile. “Why, Lady Prioress. It appears, after all has been said, you have little faith in your own good works. For you yourself convinced me to stay.”

  “How did I do that?”

  Cristabell stopped and she threw her head back with a laugh. “Your honesty, Dame. Your brutal honesty. If you could stay at Blackladies in all its poverty and distemper, even when the eminent Lord Giffard offered you much more than this, then so could I.” She measured me. “I also know,” she said quietly, “that you would sooner die than denounce me for all that I did… For all that I might have done. I know you have never told a soul. What I do not understand, is why.”

  I gazed at her like a mother hen. “I knew the good in you, Cristabell. You have learned to love this life despite your feelings. Despite anything I could have told you.”

  “That is true. I do not know how you knew this, but I am grateful for it.” She bowed to me with a solemnity she generally reserved for the crucifix or the bishop, and then she walked away to her duties.

  I stood looking after Cristabell and thought of our bold Felicia and tame Alice. Such a colony of unlike temperaments! It put me in a mood, and I could think of no better course but to return to the chapel to pray.

  Raising my eyes to the rood in its golden light, I knelt and becrossed myself. “You have been generous to us, Lord. We have suffered little, have wanted for little. Even those who have crossed our path seem to have been the better for it. Even our Cristabell.” I nodded, eyes closed in acknowledgment of something greater than I, before resting my eyes again upon the familiar wooden corpus. “But I do worry over the sake of our good queen, that she should suffer so when she has been so loyal to You.” It made me shiver, that sudden thought, that loyalty could be so rewarded. It was said that Queen Catherine became a professed sister of the third order of St. Francis, even wearing a habit under her gown, though it was not known for certain if this were true. She was nothing but a gracious lady and generous queen. If she, in her piety and loyalty should suffer so, than what was our lot?

  Father William told us that we are servants of God, and throughout the history of the Church, it was God’s most loving servants who suffered the greatest: all the apostles, St. Paul, St. Catherine, and so many other martyrs. He said it kindly to me, and kindly did I take it, but after a time, it was not so much a compliment. If only true servants suffer in order to come into the glory of God, then perhaps we have not served the Lord as we should, for our lot was neither great nor suffering. Poverty is not so much if there is enough to eat with shelter above our heads, even if that shelter leaks from the rain.

  For not the first time, I contemplated the nails piercing our Lord’s precious body on the crucifix. He, too, suffered for our many and continuous sins. “Your greatest servant, Lord,” I whispered to God the Father. Why should we enjoy such prosperity while others suffered? I thought selfishly of myself, and dismissed it. This was not true suffering. Though Thomas still plagued my thoughts at odd times, it was a foolish obsession, as foolish as his was now for me. Or did he outgrow his childishness? It pleased me to think he might have done, but almost with the same breath, I found myself unhappy. The prospect that he could finally devote himself to his wife should gladden my heart. But I, in my utter pride, still wanted a keepsake of him, a portion of his love to prove that it was possible. I was the same Isabella outwardly, tall, slim, plain if not plainer by the etching of fine lines across my forehead and at the edge of my mouth. But I was somehow made finer by the fact of Thomas’ love.

  “How you sin, Isabella,” I admonished myself before the witness of the crucifix. “How you sin with dishonesty. Can you never be washed clean of it? Will I die with this upon my conscience and my soul?”

  “Surely you do not sin, Isabella.”

  I whirled, appalled. “Thomas!”

  THOMAS GIFFARD

  SUMMER, 1531

  Blackladies

  XX

  Oh thrice and four times happy those who plant cabbages!

  –François Rabelais, 1548

  I saw her kneeling when I entered the chapel. Though the shadows were smoky by means of snuffling wicks, and the light from the windows was dim from clouds, I knew it was her, for there was no other nun as tall nor as rigid as Isabella. She was praying aloud, and with her words, I experienced an intimacy with her that I had no right to feel. After all, she was not speaking to me, and would not have said as much had she known I was there. But when she spoke of sin, I could not—seeing her as I did, as I always did in my dreams with perfect graciousness—imagine her capable of sin!

  “Surely you do not sin, Isabella,” I said aloud.

  Plainly, I had startled her. She leapt up and stared at Thomas the Ghost, for she had not seen me in the flesh for some years now.

  “Thomas!”

  “Forgive me, Lady. I did not mean to frighten you so. As you see, I have crossed your forbidden threshold again. In truth, it was a miracle.” I strolled forward, narrowing the gap between us. “‘Today,’ I told myself, ‘I will go to Blackladies, and I will beg to be let in. I will humble myself with sackcloth and ashes, and the doors will open.’ And so. ‘Twas true. Without the ashes or sackcloth.”

  “How?”

  “Cristabell was at the gate. She said nothing to me, asked nothing of me, and opened the portal. Did you tell her?”

  “No,” she said, turning away. “But I think…it was her way of telling me.” She smiled secretly and turned, measuring me with those hazel eyes. “But since you are here at last, I welcome you back. It is good to see you. Enough time has passed, I think. You have been sorely missed here, Thomas. The others often ask about you.”

  I chuckled at her blush. “The ‘others’? Shame on you, Prioress, for sinning with a lie.”

  Her blu
sh turned to a furious crimson. “It is not a lie! They have asked after you… Well, Dame Alice, at any rate. Cristabell is, well…”

  “Cristabell is Cristabell.” We shared a laugh, and I warmed to see her smile. The years fell away, and it was as if we never parted. She appeared no different, except for perhaps a harder complexion. “I have so missed you,” I whispered, ducking my head so as not to frighten her with my emotion.

  She did not shy from me, but she did walk a few paces to put the font between us. “Please, Thomas. Now that you are here… There has been so much transpiring at court, and so little trustworthy news reaches us. Will you tell me? We must know.”

  “This…is not what I have come for, Isabella,” I said softly.

  “Please, Thomas…”

  I ran my hand along the font’s rim. Its coldness awakened me to its solid nature, its permanence. Court matters did occupy me, as they did all the nobles, but with her I wanted to think of court no more. “Very well. If ill-rumor you heard, then all I can tell you is that it is all true. The king desires to put aside his queen and marry that Boleyn woman. He wants sons, and to that end he convinced himself—with the help of that carp Cromwell—that he is not, nor has he ever been, lawfully wed to Queen Catherine.”

  “But how can such a thing even be entertained?”

  “My dear, he is the king. He will not be naysaid when his mind is made up on the matter. He will have his whore and his sons.”

  “Thomas…” She lifted her head to the crucifix behind her, and I absently becrossed myself in contrition for my infelicitous words.

  “Even the king’s own confessor as well as Thomas More cannot seem to intercede,” I said.

  “But as chancellor, cannot More appeal to Parliament to vouchsafe for the marriage?”

  “These are complicated matters, Isabella. It is more than Parliament can undertake, or even wishes to. It is more a matter for the Church.”

  “The pope, then. Will he not intercede?”

  “The pope.” I eased against a pillar, toying with the laces of my dark blue doublet. I made the effort to keep disdain from my voice. “How can I explain this to you so that you will understand? It is not so much that the king’s conscience is injured—though it may well be treason for me to utter so to the contrary.” I glanced behind reflexively, searching for any prying shadows. “The king fancies he is in love, and he does so because he needs an heir, and what more pleasant way to beget one than within the disguising of courtly love? The politics of an heir is seen as an English matter, not for Rome, not for the Emperor, not even for Parliament, and no longer for the good queen, who is well past her prime. It is a matter between Henry and his realm. It is power, Isabella. Can you see that? The pope, too, is a prince, and he, too, must invoke his own power, or fear to lose it. Such a chess game is played, Isabella! Oh, you are blessed to be a woman, and free from such disguisings!”

  Pushing away from the pillar, I walked slowly down the nave and stood at the foot of the crucifix, looking up at its crude carving. “For his part, the pope abhors what is being done in England in the name of conscience, but I fear more than that. Isabella, you know I am no friend to religion. I think this game of cloisters is oft too self-serving.” Her brow changed, and she opened her mouth to speak, when I raised a hand and bowed to her. “Present company excluded, Lady Prioress. I have always scorned the Church’s politics and its heavy hand in enforcing it. But. I am a true believer and dearly love the sacraments, for I know they were instituted by Christ for His Church on earth, and that this same Church we call Catholic is the very same to whom Jesus gave unto Peter, and all the popes who followed—be they villain or saint.”

  “It cheers my heart to hear you confess it—no matter how mischievous. You do not know how much!”

  Her face glowed with honest euphoria, and it gave me pause. “Does it?” Her smile unsettled me, and I frowned. “Then be warned, Isabella. This selfsame Church, which I grudgingly admit I love and in which you have put much store, is under siege.”

  “What? Thomas, truly your histrionics are getting the better of you.”

  “Listen to me!” I grabbed her arms and shook her. “It is not histrionics! There is too much to explain. You know not what I know, what I have seen, what I have heard. I cannot see into the future, but I like not what I see now.”

  She asked no more. Indeed, I could tell her no more. She only nodded, eyes blinking. Gazing at her thus, my collar grew too tight, and I released her to loosen it. I stepped back, nervous for the first time in her

  presence. I eased my palm over my sword hilt. “And so. As I said, I have other matters to discuss with you.” She pushed back her distress behind a radiant smile. How lovely she looked, veiled and virginal. Lovely in her own way. As of old, my heart fluttered.

  “Isabella,” I whispered. “My tidings…well.” My gaze wandered up into the rafters of the little chapel, following the sway of cobwebs and the play of light and shadow. When I lowered my eyes, they fell upon Isabella’s sedate, gray irises, their dark flecks as enthralling as the glints in an opal. “Six months ago, Dorothy…my wife…fell ill. A long illness. To each of us such things must happen. At the end of it, God chose to take her.”

  “Oh, Thomas!” Her instinct propelled her toward me, and she laid her long fingers upon my arm. I looked down at their reddened joints and tapered nails.

  “Yes. I grieved for her. It took some years, but we did become comfortable together, despite our differences. Afterwards…well, it was a lonely time.”

  “May God have mercy on her soul.”

  “Amen.” I becrossed myself and moved away from the rood again, kicking softly at the tiled floor. “So. For six months, you see, I have been a widower, perplexed at my next move. My fellows urged me to remarry.

  It has been some fifteen years since I was free to do so.”

  “Free at last from your father’s choice? Yes, Thomas. I suppose there is no sin in that reckoning.”

  “Yes. Free. To marry whom I choose. Isabella…” I took up her hand, pressing it between my own before bringing her fingers to my lips. Gazing into her hazel eyes, I rested that precious hand at last to my breast. “I am a very wealthy man, heir also to my father’s estates. I have no more need for alliances and dowries. All that is past. Today is a different day. Isabella, at long last…I am free to choose you.”

  Her eyes, so kind, so gentle before, all at once sprung wide. “What?”

  “Isabella, my heart, my beloved. I am free. There is no more impediment. I told you I would find a way without sin. Marry me! Be my wife. Be Lady Giffard. Imagine it, Isabella. Lady Giffard!”

  Before she could speak, I dragged her forward and grasped her body against mine. I lowered my mouth over her dainty lips before they could open to object. I wanted to press my case to her first, to convince by these deeds of love before she could deride me with words. Where did words get us before? Now was the time for passionate deeds, for wooing, for kissing.

  To hold her! To touch her thus! I was afire! My flesh awakened, and I crushed her closer, kissing her mouth deeply, tasting her lips’ sweetness. I breathed my passion upon her open mouth. “Isabella. My love.” I kissed them again, those swollen lips, savoring so intimate a touch. I kissed her cheeks, her eyes, her forehead—but I was confounded by that damned wimple, and with both hands I pushed it back, running my fingers through her hair—

  “Isabella, your hair!”

  Her face was opened in horror, her wet mouth askew and trembling. But it was her hair from which I could not tear my eyes. Her long hair had been bluntly sheared, right up to the bottom of her ears: her maiden’s sacrifice to Christ. Unprepared for the sight of it, I stumbled back, aghast.

  Like a soldier who lost a limb in battle, she grasped clumsily for the lost wimple and veil behind her back, trying to retrieve the missing. Distressed at the sight, I knelt myself to reclaim it for her. She affixed the wimple unsteadily, but held tightly to the veil, her long fingers white with fear.


  Her face contorted. It was the face of maidens ravished after battles. It was the torn and sundered witness of the weakest and most vulnerable. I recognized it from my youth in France, from my carousing days.

  Never did it accost me as it had at this moment.

  May God forgive me. I did not realize how selfish, how boorish I was in my arrogant assumptions. There might still be the kind of love I desired behind those frightened eyes, but more likely I would find horror at my actions. I prayed she would not be revolted, that she would not banish me again as I was for all those years for this same conceit.

  All at once, I fell to my knees before her and wept like a child, for the lost years, for the lost hope, for the Thomas Giffard that could never be again, and the Isabella I refused to recognize. “Forgive me, Isabella. Forgive me!”

  For so long, she said nothing, at last wiping a tear from her stoic face. “I forgive you, Thomas. Please. Arise.”

  I shook my head. Too miserable was I. “We are tied together, you and I,” I said feebly, choking on my tears. “Some invisible binding hangs between us. In my foolishness, I could not help but feel we were divined for one another.”

  “Thomas,” she sighed, managing a forced laugh before kneeling to pick me up. “Divined? That, I do not know. Perhaps not as spouses, eh? Thomas.” Her brow creased again in consternation. “How I would have welcomed those words fifteen years ago! But how much has happened since. This is my life now. I had hoped you would have realized it.”

  “You are truly happy?”

  “You ask it with such disdainful disbelief! That one could be happy behind cloister walls in this habit. Is that such a foreign notion? That one’s life could be happily directed toward God alone?”

  “You know my mind on cloisters. It is bad enough you reject me twice, but for this place!”