Novice’s Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  She paused to draw breath. Into the momentary lull Martha Hayward said, without looking up from a mixing bowl and whatever she was beating in it. “That would be enough to start a real feud between the Godfreys and the Fenners.”

  “What say you?” Dame Alys said indignantly. “There’s been no bloodshed as yet, but there’s a feud all right. And the blood will come soon, too, if they don’t stop pushing to take our property away from us!”

  Martha, bold to grin at Dame Alys, said, “And meanwhile the lawyers’ cost enough to break both families. Aye, lawyers love a good quarrel between great families.”

  “Never you mind lawyers! It’s Lady Ermentrude who is the heart and soul of the Fenners’ wanting to grab what isn’t theirs. And may their souls be damned to hell for it and hers to the hottest part, amen. She’s a Fenner who married a Fenner and bred Fenner brats and that makes her thrice as bad as any of them and now she wants her dinner, la-de-da. Ha!”

  “She’s no worse than many another great lady,” Martha Hayward said stubbornly. She was shorter than Dame Alys but nearly as broad, bulked out in fat from taking a serving size instead of a taste of anything that she judged in need of sampling. Along with her kitchen duties, she had collected little responsibilities such as seeing to the prioress’s greyhound, and so gave herself such airs that she felt secure enough to be rude to nearly everyone, save Domina Edith herself. Only three things kept her from being sent away: her light hand with pastry, her skill in drawing the maximum of flavor from a minimum of costly spices, and the fact that she was there at Lady Ermentrude’s request, as she was always glad to mention, given the chance. “I was in her service most of my life and only left it because she lessened her household after her husband died, God rest him, and she was going to be a lady-in-waiting to the Queen. I’m here because she asked me to be, God bless her. So let me tell you if you don’t know already…”

  They did know already. Anyone who ever came within ear’s reach of Martha Hayward for any time at all knew everything about her and all she knew of Lady Ermentrude and every great personage who had ever crossed her path.

  Dame Alys slammed the spoon down again, this time onto a pot lid, which now would need a tinker to mend it, and said loudly over Martha’s flux of words, straightening the spoon as she did, “So why are you standing there all baa-eyed, child? What’s her ladyship wanting to eat this time? St. John’s bread and fresh-whipped cream?”

  “She’s ill,” Thomasine said hurriedly. “Dame Frevisse wants warm milk and sops with honey for her.”

  “Ill’s a nice name for it,” Dame Alys snorted. “The word that reached the kitchen was ‘drunk.” So go on! You know how to do that much, don’t you? No, not my new bread,“ she added as Thomasine moved toward the rows of cooling loaves that would go into the refectory for the nuns’ dinner. ”Here, never mind, it will be quicker to do it myself.“

  Talking half to herself, Dame Alys went to a shelf beside a cabinet and took down a half loaf of bread. “Last week’s will do more than well enough for someone too ‘ill’ to know the difference. It’ll soften in the milk anyway. And where’s that pitcher of milk— Ah.” The small pitcher was on the hob, staying warm. Dame Alys took a clean pottery bowl from a shelf of them. She broke the bread into it and poured the warm milk over it. The honey was in another cupboard; she spooned a dollop into the mix and stirred it until the bread began to soften.

  All the while, she and Martha Hayward traded comments about whether or not there was a feud and how seriously Lady Ermentrude had involved herself in it. Just as she picked up the bowl to hand it to Thomasine, they both stopped. “Listen,” Dame Alys said.

  But they were already listening, heads turned and mouths open. Because somewhere someone was screaming. Thinned by distance and stone walls, a high and drawn out cry wavered, fell and rose again in agony.

  “Stand where you are!” Dame Alys slashed sideways with her spoon at the kitchen staff as they began a surge for the door. “Whatever that racket is, it’s no cbncern of yours, and they’ll not be needing a gaggle of loons getting in their way! There’s plenty of work to keep you all right here!”

  The cooks and scullions halted—except for Martha Hay-ward. Already near the door, she kept going, with a speed and grace surprising for one of her bulk, not slowing even when Dame Alys shouted after her to return. Thomasine, the bowl with its warm milk, bread, and honey clutched in her hands, stood fast near a table, not daring to move—or wanting to, either. She had had enough of noise and madness this day.

  But Dame Alys, glaring around, said to her, “Well, why do you stand there as if you’ve grown roots? Didn’t they send you here to fetch that bowl of sops? Begone! If that unholy noise is from Lady Ermentrude, and likely it is from the ugliness of it, they’ll be wanting something to stop her mouth.”

  She underlined her orders with a thrust of the spoon, sending Thomasine out of the room in haste. But out of Dame Alys’s sight she immediately slowed. She could hear voices shouting in the courtyard beyond the cloister and slowed her pace more, but too soon she was at the door into the courtyard. It was wide open, with Martha Hayward standing just outside in happy admiration of the press of servants pushing among themselves toward the guest-hall steps, yelling their excitement or shouting an apt paternoster for salvation of the soul that was obviously being torn untimely from its mortal host. A half dozen of Lady Ermentrude’s dozen small dogs, doubtless let go by someone’s start of surprise, had tangled their leashes around legs in their flight and were now joyously fighting among themselves or yipping with pain at repeated kicks.

  An angry groom was trying to bring Isobel’s and Sir John’s horses out of the sudden mob, and there would have been injuries if the frightened animals had not been too exhausted to do more than swerve and half-rear. Sir John and Isobel, whose presence might have brought order, were not in sight.

  And over all the surge of noise and movement, from inside the guest hall scream after scream tore from a throat bursting with terror.

  “Lord!” marveled Martha Hayward. “She’s set them up right enough. Come, my lady, let’s see what it’s about this time.”

  Thomasine wanted to refuse, but had no excuse ready to hand. Besides, Dame Frevisse had told her to bring the milksops, and obedience was the one certain choice in this chaos. Clutching the bowl to her breast with both hands, she followed after Martha, a small boat in a barge’s wake. Martha pushed her way easily through the tangled crowd of servants, who would have blocked the way of anyone smaller and less determined. Her heavy shoves broke open a clot that blocked the guest-hall steps, giving her and Thomasine clear passage up to where someone in Lady Ermentrude’s livery was deliberately obstructing the doorway.

  Around Martha’s bulk, up the stairs, Thomasine recognized the youth who had helped her with Lady Ermentrude. Now he was refusing to let anyone in. Flushed with his efforts, his blue eyes bright with the challenge, he said, “Hold!” to Martha Hayward’s wordless thrust. He looked determined to stand his ground, but Martha turned and took Thomasine by the shoulder, bringing her forward and saying, “No, see, I’ve brought Thomasine, your lady’s favorite niece. Dame Frevisse bid her bring a milksop for Lady Ermentrude and here it is. Let us by.”

  The youth frowned, then nodded and stepped aside with a reluctant bow. Martha surged by w
  Around the hall were scattered some few of Lady Ermentrude’s servants, frozen in listening positions. More were gathered gabbling at a far door leading to the hall’s best chamber. The screaming came from there but was broken now, as if breath or strength was failing.

  With no pretense of politeness, Martha bullied her way to the door and opened it. Thomasine tried to draw back then, not wanting to see whatever was beyond it, but Martha’s arm was strong from her years of kitchen labor, and Thomasine a good deal lighter than a barrel of salt herring. She found herself dragged helplessly in to where she least wanted to be.

  They must have brought Lady Ermentrude int
o the room with some thought of putting her to bed. Her shoes and stockings, hat and veil were off, her gown open at the throat. But they had gotten no further before the fit came on her. She was on the bed, her back against the high wooden headboard. Her face was purple with her mad effort and lack of breath as she flailed with arms and legs at anyone trying to come near her. And this close to her there were words caught in among the screaming, words pulled out of shape and torn to pieces, but it seemed she was ranting of fire and burning and her soul.

  Dame Frevisse to one side of the bed and one of her ladies-in-waiting to the other were stretched forward in a desperate attempt to take and control her arms, but they had no chance against a strength gone past sanity. Their occasional graspings seemed only to send her into a worse frenzy. She wrenched a hand free of Frevisse’s grasp to point wildly across the room at nothing.

  “T’ave coooom! Ear’s flaaaame!” she howled. Her eyes distended, her head thrown back to show the cords of her throat, she gagged for air, her wail raw with despair. She drew a fragment of breath and suddenly the words were clear: “God help! Save me!”

  Frevisse, aware of someone coming into the room, looked up, and her eye was then caught by the large carved crucifix on the wall. She broke away from Lady Ermentrude to grab it down. The crucifix was painted in raw colors, heavy in her hands. She went back to the bed to thrust it before Lady Ermentrude’s distended eyes. “My lady, look here!”

  Lady Ermentrude, mouth gaping in a desperate attempt to both scream and draw breath for another scream, choked. Her unfocused eyes glimpsed the crucifix, recognized it, and her hands fumbled out for it, grasped it, and dragged it to herself. Awkwardly, desperately, she pressed it to her lips, kissing it. It slid sideways onto her cheek, but she went on clinging to it as air whistled through her nostrils in a long-delayed need to simply breathe.

  In the trembling silence, with everyone around her frozen, waiting, Lady Ermentrude rolled her eyes sideways to Frevisse. Her jaw worked. In a barking whisper, she forced out, “Hell… fire… stop… it.”

  “It’s stopped,” Frevisse said. “We’ve stopped it.” She kept her voice low, pitched for reassurance, but Lady Ermentrude’s eyes remained frantic, demanding. Without changing tone, Frevisse said, “Someone tell Dame Claire to hurry. And find Father Henry.”

  Neither Lady Ermentrude’s lady-in-waiting nor the maid, cringed back against the wall beside the bed, moved, probably in fear of setting off the screaming again. Frevisse understood the fear; she was standing quite still herself. But she risked looking away, toward Sir John and Lady Isobel. They had been trying to help bring Lady Ermentrude to bed when the frenzy started. Now they were standing against the far wall, Lady Isobel pressed close to her husband, held in the protective circle of his arms though his own face was strained with shock.

  Beyond them, in the doorway, were Martha Hayward—of course, Frevisse thought—and Thomasine. Neither of them had had sense enough to close the door; staring faces crowded behind them, no one looking as if they had the wit to help.

  “Martha,” she said, still careful of her tone. “I need Dame Claire and Father Henry. Go now.”

  “Demons,” Thomasine interrupted in a loud whisper. “She was seeing demons.”

  “She wasn’t,” Frevisse said firmly, her attention quickly back to Lady Ermentrude, who was still clinging to the crucifix, her eyes now tightly shut.

  “Demons,” Thomasine repeated and came nearer, still clutching the bowl, her pale face narrow and intent in the frame of her white veil. “She’s evil and demons have come for her soul.”

  Lady Ermentrude began to whimper. All though the room and in the doorway hands moved, crossing themselves.

  Frevisse said forcefully, “They have not.”

  Lady Ermentrude’s maid gave a dry, terrified sob. “But she was seeing hellfire. She said so. And-she couldn’t stop screaming until you gave her the crucifix. We saw it!”

  Lady Ermentrude began to wail softly, and Frevisse said, fiercely now, “If there were demons here the cross would keep them at bay! Martha, I told you, we need the priest and Dame Claire!”

  Martha nodded wordlessly and backed out of the door. But they must have been already in the guest hall; she was hardly out of sight when Father Henry’s voice was heard saying, “Yes, yes, Martha, you wait out here.” And a moment later, spreading the crowding servants aside, he came in, tall and comforting, already wearing his priestly stole and carrying the small box that held all the articles needed for the Last Sacrament. Dame Claire, small behind him, carried her own box of medicines, and Frevisse could not have said which of them she was more pleased to see.

  Father Henry closed the door on the avid faces, including Martha’s. Lady Ermentrude’s wail subsided into a faint moan, and Frevisse said slowly, smoothly and low-voiced, to Dame Claire, “She’s drunk. She came riding in drunk a half hour or so ago and then fell into the screaming and raving.”

  “It’s demons,” Thomasine said.

  “If you say that again, I’ll see Domina Edith has you on bread and water from now to All Hallows,” Frevisse said in the edged monotone she used when at the end of her patience.

  Dame Claire, ignoring both of them, came to the bed, silently assessing Lady Ermentrude.

  .“She’s m-mad,” said Lady Isobel, the second word drawn out, thinned and broken. She hid her face against her husband’s shoulder.

  “Perhaps,” Dame Claire answered in her deep voice. She reached out to feel Lady Ermentrude’s face. “It is true that those who have drunk for years often come to be bothered with evil visions. She has a fever, too.”

  She touched the backs of her hands. Lady Ermentrude flinched, her knuckles whitening as her grip on the crucifix tightened.

  “No, here, on her hands, she’s clemmed with cold.” Dame Claire looked at Frevisse. “Was she like this when you tried to undress her?”

  Frevisse nodded. “Hot as new baked bread, cold as autumn earth.”

  Dame Claire looked to the lady-in-waiting beyond the bed, a handsome woman, probably, when not terrified. “Have you ever seen her this way before?”

  The woman shook her head. “No, madam, but I’ve been with her this past week only.” She was one of the women who had ridden in with Lady Ermentrude the half hour ago. Though plainly frightened, she was calming a little at the need to answer Dame Claire’s questioning. Her wits come somewhat back to her, she continued, “She had a single bottle of wine with her on the road this morning. I don’t know how much she’d drunk when she dropped it and broke it on a stone.”

  Martha, her head around the opened corner of the door, spoke up. “I was with her for seven years, and I can say she could drink several bottles at a sitting, but it was usually of an evening, at her own fireside. And she might grow boisterous at it, but I never saw her taken like this. When I heard that shrilling start and my heart went up into my mouth, I knew my lady was taken in pain like she’s never been before.” But she was staring at Lady Ermentrude with ghoulish satisfaction.

  Frevisse caught her eye and frowned a hush at her. Martha frowned back, but retreated, pulling the door shut.

  Dame Claire looked at Lady Isobel and Sir John. “She was with you last night? Was she drinking then? What did she eat? Was she drinking before she left you this morning?”

  “She drank a cup of wine at supper, and she ate very little of what we all had,” Sir John answered. “She was in a rage, too busy ranting at us to eat or drink much. She left without breaking her fast this morning, only took some wine and rode off.”

  “We were afraid for her,” Lady Isobel said. She spoke rapidly, eyes shining with unshed tears. “She kept talking at us, not listening to our replies. She said wild, impossible things. Ugly things.” Her head sank, and Sir John held her more closely, looking at the listeners as if his lady wife’s trouble was their fault. Taking courage from his embrace, she lifted her chin and continued, “We tried to quiet her—the servants, you know; they will gossip, repeating all the
y overhear. But it was no use. She went at us until late in the night and again this morning. I doubt she slept much if at all, because she was in the same fury this morning. We tried to have her stay but she rode off still furious at us. We were afraid for her, John and I, riding off like that. Afraid she might be taken ill on the road…” Isobel gestured vaguely. “Her heart. Or a fall. She can be cruel to a horse when she’s in a temper. She’s not young, and not always careful of herself.. We followed after her as soon as might be. And now Thomasine says she came here swearing she’d have her out of the nunnery. I saw a madman once. It was awful. It was like—” She looked toward Lady Ermentrude and fell eloquently silent.

  “Whatever this is, she’s very ill with it,” Dame Claire said with flat calm. “And not in her mind only.” She had gone on examining Lady Ermentrude as far as she properly could with men in the room. Now she gently urged her to straighten and lie flat, to be covered. “It’s not her heart or she’d not be so violent. Or apoplexy because that leaves its victims helpless, and that she obviously is not. It may be a fever. But it’s a strange fever that leaves the hands and feet cold.” Dame Claire was clearly thinking aloud.