Novice’s Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  “Perhaps she is only drunk then,” Sir John suggested hopefully.

  “Drink can take people in different ways.” Dame Claire nodded. “ ”This could well be one of them. But whatever it is, she’s quiet now and needs to be kept that way lest she make worse whatever is already wrong. Thomasine.“ She looked to where Thomasine still stood at the bed’s foot.

  Slowly Thomasine drew her eyes away from her great-aunt, to look at the infirmarian. “Thomasine,” Dame Claire repeated, “I want the box from the far shelf in the infirmary. The gray one with the borage flowers painted on its lid. You helped me make the compound, remember? Valerian for nerves and borage for melancholy. Bring it. And it needs to be given with wine. There’s none left in the infirmary so you’ll need all three keys to the wine chest. You’ll have to ask Domina Edith for hers, and then Dame Alys, and Dame Perpetua.”

  Lady Isobel stirred in her husband’s arms. “We have some malmsey with us. We brought it on the chance we could make peace with her. It’s one of her favorites. I’ll go for it.”

  But Sir John said with a gesture, “Wait. Malmsey may not be right for this.”

  “It should be fine, and save us time,” Dame Claire said. “My thanks. Only the box then, Thomasine. What’s that you’re holding?”

  “A milksop, my lady.”

  “Good. Leave it; we may want it. Now go. Be quick.”

  Frevisse reached out to take the bowl from Thomasine’s stiff hands. Thomasine made the correct curtsey to Dame Claire, then backed away from the bed as if afraid to turn her back to Lady Ermentrude. Not until she bumped into the door frame did she turn to fumble the door open and leave so quickly she seemed as much in flight as in obedience.

  Frevisse set the bowl carefully on the table along the wall. Father Henry, who had been standing to one side of everyone this while, praying under his breath, now lifted his head and asked, “Will she live?”

  “I don’t know. She’s very ill,” Dame Claire answered. “But blood and heart and breathing are all strong. And she’s quiet now. That’s to the good, if her mind stays unconfused.”

  Lady Ermentrude made a small moan and turned her head toward the sound of Father Henry’s voice, keeping her eyes closed. “Az devil ‘rhongst us,” she croaked.

  “Then you want our priest’s prayers,” said Frevisse sensibly.

  Father Henry came to stand by the bed, fumbling his way into anxious Latin as he gestured a cross over it. “ In nomini Patris, et Filios, et Spiritu Sanctos, amen,”‘ he intoned.

  Frevisse flinched at his inaccurate Latin, but Lady Ermentrude, with a deep, spasmed effort, broke one hand’s grip from the crucifix and reached out to him, groping until she found his arm and dug her fingers into his sleeve. Her mouth worked, the cords of her neck stretching with tension, but all she managed was a gargling croak. Her eyes bulged with her effort and panic. The gargling changed to a hiss. Dame Claire moved as if to quiet her, but something in the sound made sense to Father Henry. Leaning toward Lady, Ermentrude, he said, “Sin. It’s sin that frightens you?”

  Lady Ermentrude’s head twitched in agreement. Her throat worked, straining.

  “We all live in fear of that, my lady,” Father Henry said. He patted her hand where it clung to him. “But I’m praying for you. Do you wish to make confession?”

  “Sssinsss,” Lady Ermentrude hissed. “Wwwwurrsss sssinns…” Anger darkened her face, and her gaze crawled around the the room. Her hand twitched away from Father Henry to claw at her throat. “… thannn müine,” she whined, high off the back of her mouth. “‘Wwwurrss thannn müine.”

  There was fear mixed with the anger. It glistened in her eyes as she brought them back to the priest. She let him take her hand into his own as he said soothingly, “All sins come to God in time, and there are none that can’t be forgiven, if we but ask. It’s your own we need to care for now. Would you have me give you absolution?”

  Unsteadily, Lady Ermentrude jerked a nod. Father Henry opened his wooden box and took out two small beeswax candles already in silver holders. He put them on the table, flanking the bowl of milksops, and Frevisse brought a scrap of kindling from the fireplace to light them while he took a small glass bottle of chrism, another of blessed water, and a fist-sized wad of fresh bread, his practiced movements somehow reassuring. In the few years Father Henry had been at St. Frideswide’s, Frevisse had found that neither his mind nor faith went very far, but were strong so far as they went; and it was strength Lady Ermentrude needed just now.

  Quietly Frevisse gestured to Lady Ermentrude’s women, and Lady Isobel and Sir John, that they should go now. None of them seemed willing, until Dame Claire took Lady Isobel gently by the elbow and urged her toward the door. Sir John, his arm still tenderly around his wife, went with them, the maid close at their heels. Only the dark-haired lady-in-waiting continued to hesitate, until Frevisse made a sharper, demanding gesture at her. With a sidelong look at her mistress, she went. Frevisse followed to make sure no one lingered within eavesdropping distance.

  The cluttering knot of servants outside the door drew back reluctantly, leaving them a little space. Dame Claire said to the lady-in-waiting and the maid, “She will not need you for a while. Go reassure the others that she’s alive and quiet now, that she was in a nightmare, nothing else. We don’t need foolish rumors running through all the priory.”

  The maid curtsied, but the lady-in-waiting said firmly, “I’m the lady of her chamber today. I’d best stay and go in again when we’re able. You do as the lady bids,” she added to the maid.

  Clearly glad to obey, the maid walked away, immediately surrounded by the other servants. A little wave of low-voiced questioning followed after her, and Frevisse knew that despite Dame Claire’s words, by dark word would have run all the way to the village that Lady Ermentrude had been surrounded by dancing demons and the flames of Hell and that Father Henry had driven them away with prayers and holy water.

  Dames Claire and Frevisse started away from the door. Sir John stopped, putting his hand to his jaw and wincing. He asked, “She’ll live?” in a voice stiff with pain.

  Dame Claire thought before answering slowly, “There seems no reason why she shouldn’t. Her heart and pulse are strong. It’s her mind that seems gone most awry, and that will mend of itself if it’s only drunkenness.”

  “Then she’ll be all right?” Lady Isobel insisted.

  “I think there’s a goodly chance, though we may not know until morning Or later. Thomasine, bless you for your speed.” She held out her hand for the box Thomasine handed her, a little breathless with her haste. “There is this at least to bring on sleep, and that can be a better cure than most.”

  “The wine, I nearly forgot.” Lady Isobel drew away from her husband. “I’ll bring it.”

  “No, I will,” he offered quickly, but winced again, and she placed a hand on his arm and smiled up at him.

  “You don’t want the outside air on that tooth. Besides, I know where in the saddlebags it is. You wait here, love.”

  Beyond the cloister walls the bell began to ring for late afternoon’s Vespers. Dame Claire said, “You go, Dame Frevisse. Let Thomasine stay to help me. When Father Henry is through I want to give her the medicine and see if she will eat some of the milksop. We’ll come when we can.”

  “I’ll stay, too, by your leave,” Martha Hayward put in, thrusting her way into the knot around Dame Claire. “I know her ways as well as any and can fetch things for her from the cloister better than her present people. That’ll save Thomasine’s feet a bit.”

  “And when I’ve brought the wine, I’ll bide with her, too,” Lady Isobel said. “Or we can be with her in turns. Whatever is the matter, she’s my aunt and we owe her that much. If you think it all right?”

  “Assuredly,” Dame Claire said. “And good.”

  Frevisse, with the thought that they seemed to have the matter well in hand without her, nodded her own agreement and left for the church.

  Vespers was o
ne of each day’s longer Hours, with four psalms to be sung among its prayers. In her first months in the nunnery, as a novice with ideals but little knowledge, Frevisse had resented its intrusion into the routine of every afternoon. All the other offices had made sense and been a gladness to her, even Matins and Lauds, the twin service that dragged her from bed at midnight. Prayer then in the dark watches of the night, the church seeming full of otherworldly shadows, lurking around small hollows of gold candlelight beside the altar, and her mind withdrawn by sleep from everything but the need to chant the office and prayers, was a wondrous time, with God present all around them.

  But Vespers came in busy late afternoon, with the nuns hurrying in to it from all parts of the priory and Frevisse almost always having to leave some task half-done behind her, and needing to go back to it, distracted, later. She had done silent penance for her resentment, but when that did not cure it, she had been finally forced to admit her feeling to Dame Perpetua, newly come then to being mistress of novices.

  “It intrudes,” she had complained. “It’s in the way of whatever I’m about.”

  “But isn’t prayer what we’re supposed to be about?” Dame Perpetua had asked. She had an instinctive talent for knowing the best way to teach, based on a novice’s needs and strengths. Some needed leading, others prodding. A very few could be challenged. “You have some business for being here other than serving God perhaps?”

  Frevisse, goaded into looking at her mind and its habits, had come—less than graciously at first—to admit there were reasons for Vespers at the busy end of afternoons: a need to remember there were matters more important to the undying soul than the passing needs of everyday.

  “A solis ortu usque ad occasum, laudabile noman domini.”‘ From the dawn of the day until sunset, praised be the Name of the Lord.

  They sang the words in Latin, but Frevisse turned them to English in her mind, partly from the little Latin that she knew but mostly from her much-treasured Bible, an object forbidden because it was a Wycliffe English translation. Still, she felt, understanding the glory of the words as she chanted them could not be sinful, no matter how she came by that understanding. She wove her voice with the other nuns into a curtain of praise, familiar and practiced, warm in the gray shadows of the afternoon church.

  She knew when Dame Claire joined them, her surprisingly sweet, clear alto as precise on every note as she was precise with her medicines.

  “Non nobis, Domine, non nobis: sed monini tuo da gloriamo.”‘ Not to us, Lord, not to us, but glory to your name, for your true love. Amen.

  The last of the office sounded softly among the raftered roof and stone walls, then fell away to silence. Slowly, with the stiffness of age and sitting, Domina Edith rose, and they rose after her and in a hush of skirts and slippered feet made a procession out into the cloister. There would be supper soon, a familiar pittance of cheese and apples, with any bread saved from midday dinner, then a chance to rest or walk in the little garden or the orchard, to reflect on the day, and, by a relaxation of the Rule, to talk among themselves. Though today Frevisse would go back to the guest halls, seeing to what needed doing there. The day’s last office, Compline, came after that, and then bed.

  In the cloister walk they all knelt together for Domina Edith’s blessing. She had raised her hand, had begun to speak, when the door to the courtyard slammed, startling them all in their places. Footsteps sharp with running came, and a woman in Lady Ermentrude’s livery burst into the cloister walk’s far end.

  “She’s choking!” she cried. “She’s dying! The priest said come. Come quickly.”

  Frevisse caught Domina Edith’s raised eyebrows giving her leave to go. She left her place in line, but Dame Claire had not waited even for that and was already running down the cloister walk. The others started to rise, confused, but Domina Edith with a single gesture felled them and silenced them. Age had not lessened her authority.

  Frevisse overtook Dame Claire at the cloister gate. They came out into the courtyard together, wasting no time on anyone as they crossed the yard. In the guest hall most of Lady Ermentrude’s people had sat down to supper at the trestle tables. Heads turned as Frevisse and Dame Claire passed through, not running now but moving too fast to go unnoticed. Frevisse glimpsed Sir John rising from beside his wife at the head of the tables as she and Dame Claire reached Lady Ermentrude’s door.

  Dame Claire’s sharp stop in the doorway forced Frevisse to sidestep to avoid her. Then she stopped as sharply, too.

  Father Henry was rising from his knees beside the bed, shaking his curly head with dazed disbelief. Lady Ermen-trude lay propped up on her pillows, head rolled to one side, her hands still holding the crucifix, her mouth open, her harsh breathing filling the room. On the floor between her and Father Henry sprawled Martha Hayward, her legs straddled wide, her mouth agape and clogged with foam, her hands looking like claws in the rush matting, her eyes bulging, blood-suffused, in the strangled, dead purple of her face.

  Chapter 5

  Frevisse stopped where she was, as much in disgust as horror, then crossed herself as much in penance for the disgust as for the repose of Martha’s soul. Dame Claire, recovering from her own reaction, went to kneel where Father Henry had been.

  Frevisse, almost as quickly, went to stand between sight of Martha’s body and Thomasine, who was crouched too near it, whimpers crawling up from her throat and her face pressed against prayer-clasped hands. Carefully, not wanting to bring on hysterics, she took Thomasine by the shoulders and said as gently as she could, “Stand up out of Dame Claire’s way.”

  The infirmarian was feeling for pulse and breath, looking for life where very surely there was none.

  “Stand up,” Frevisse repeated, wanting to get her away from the temptation to look again at Martha.

  Thomasine responded, letting herself be helped to her feet. With an arm around her shoulders, Frevisse turned her away from both Martha and Lady Ermentrude.

  “It was awful,” Thomasine whispered, shaking in Frevisse’s hold. “It was horrible. She had a… fit. She—”

  Firmly across her rising voice Frevisse said, “It’s over. She’s not hurting anymore. It’s finished.”

  Dame Claire sat back from her fruitless search for signs of life and looked up at Father Henry still standing above her. “What happened?” she demanded.

  Dumb-faced and stunned, perspiring freely, he shook his head. “We were sitting here, the women and I. The others were gone to supper. Lady Ermentrude was dozing, all quiet. Martha was at her stories again, about Lady Ermentrude and what a willful woman she was. I was, God pardon me,” he crossed himself fervently, “hard put not to be laughing at what she had to tell, until she grew too bold and Thomasine was beginning to be offended and went away to pray.” He pointed to the prie-dieu in the far corner. “I asked Martha then to speak more seemly.”

  There was a growing murmur at the doorway, and they turned to see a clot of people come to gape. No more were they noticed than they were pushed aside as Sir John came through, with Lady Isobel behind him. “What is it?” he asked. “What’s happened?”

  Frevisse cut across his questions, pushing Thomasine toward Lady Isobel. “My lady, please, your sister has need of you.”

  “Why, what’s happened?” Lady Isobel’s question was sharper than her husband’s. “Is my aunt all right?” She came to take Thomasine’s arm as she spoke and over her sister’s shoulder saw what lay on the floor. Her face went curd-pale. In a choked voice she said, “Martha Hay ward.”

  “Help Thomasine,” ordered Frevisse, shifting the girl into Lady Isobel’s arms. “Take her away from here.” Lady Isobel nodded distracted agreement, her sickened gaze still on Martha’s body.

  “She’d dead?” Sir John croaked the word disbelievingly, his gaze averted.

  Frevisse thought dryly that he must not have received his knighthood for skill in battle if he were squeamish over so bloodless a death; she firmly pushed both Thomasine and Lady Isobel a
way to the side of the room, turning back as Dame Claire told Father Henry, “Go on.”

  The priest, uneasy at his growing audience and still shocked, obeyed. “She said she was thirsty, all dry from so much talking, and missing her supper in the bargain, and the sops were going to waste and,” he gestured helplessly toward the empty bowl on the table, “she just ate them. She said she’d have a taste and then she ate them all.”

  “I dare say,” Frevisse said with subdued irony.

  Father Henry nodded vigorously. “She ate the sops, talking all the while, and then without my having any chance to stop her, she drank a great draught of the wine. I told her then it was meant for Lady Ermentrude and had medicine in it, so she made a face and stopped and went to talking again. In a while she said she was hot and opened the window, though I told her not to, and took to walking up and down the room. She was drunk then, I think, taking so much wine at once, for she wasn’t making much sense. I tried to have her sit down lest she rouse Lady Ermentrude but—”