8 The Maiden's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  With the words finally said, they had all bowed their heads, awaiting his decision. In the usual way of things they would have elected their own prioress from among themselves, then asked their abbot’s approval of her and he would probably have given it, comfortably distant in his St. Bartholomew’s Abbey in Northampton. But things were not as usual and Abbot Gilberd had, as was his right, taken the question into his own hands. “With everything considered, both past and likely to come, I cannot in all conscience see fit to choose any of you to the place.”

  Though they had more or less expected that, there had been some slight stirring of disappointment among the younger nuns, while Frevisse had inwardly let loose a tight-wound tension, because among the many things she did not want in life was the responsibility of being prioress. That much, at least, no longer hanging over her, she had waited in silence with the others while Abbot Gilberd continued, “Having thought on it at length and had answer yesterday to a letter making inquiry, I tell you now my choice has fallen on Dame Elisabeth of St. Helen’s Bishopsgate in London.”

  The nuns had exchanged quick looks among themselves around the edges of their veils without raising their heads, silently asking if anyone knew who this was. None of them did but it had not mattered because Abbot Gilberd had gone on, “She is my sister in the world and so I know her well enough to have ample belief that she will serve both you and St. Frideswide well as your prioress.”

  “Not to mention being willing to go tale-telling to him if we don’t do just as she tells us to,” Sister Cecely had later complained, when Abbot Gilberd was not there to hear her. Dame Claire had promptly pointed out with quelling mildness, “We’re bound to obey our prioress, whoever she is. We take oath on it.” To which Sister Cecely had said back, “Well, we’ll certainly have to obey this one.”

  But at the time no one had said anything and Abbot Gilberd had gone on, “Dame Elisabeth and her prioress have both agreed to the choice and it would be best, I think, for her to take up the office as soon as might be. Toward that end and to help her welcome here, when I leave tomorrow I purpose Dame Perpetua and Dame Frevisse will go with me, to meet her at St. Helen’s and escort her back here.”

  Startled, Frevisse had raised her head to stare at him, then turned to look at Dame Perpetua just turning to look at her, both of them silently asking each other why them?—before discipline faced them forward again and their heads humbly down, murmuring almost together, “Yes, my lord.”

  Because what else had there been for them to say?

  But it meant that this evening, that should have been in some ways a little pleasurable with the certainty of Abbot Gilberd’s going, was instead, for Frevisse, edged with disquiet. It was not as if she had never left the nunnery in the years since taking her vows. She had and more than once, for various reasons as good as this one. It was simply that, in this matter, she did not understand why the choice had fallen on her, and she was never comfortable with things she did not understand.

  They were all beginning to be warm enough now to think of other things than how cold they were. Sister Thomasine had already gone aside to sit by herself on one of the joint stools, her beads in her hands, her eyes shut, her lips moving silently, quietly smiling at her prayers. The disquiet of the past days had never seemed to touch her very much; her prayers were always more to her than anything else, even the cold. The rest of them kept closer to the hearth, with other things than prayers on their minds, though it was Dame Juliana who actually said aloud, “We don’t know anything about her!” Meaning Dame Elisabeth. “At least we knew Domina Alys.”

  “And we elected her anyway,” Dame Claire answered tersely. That their late prioress’ election had been an accident was neither here nor there now. However it had happened, it had cost them their right to choose who would be over them next, and Sister Johane said regretfully, “We should have asked Abbot Gilberd about her, there in chapter meeting, while we had the chance.”

  “So why didn’t you then?” Sister Cecely demanded.

  Sister Johane poked her in the side with an elbow; they were cousins and the youngest nuns, free with rudeness between themselves, and she had no need to better answer Sister Cecely’s demand because it had taken no one very long to learn the uselessness of questioning Abbot Gilberd. He questioned and he ordered and all anyone else was expected to do was answer and obey.

  “She may not be like him,” Dame Perpetua suggested, vaguely hopeful. Then added, less hopefully, “Or then again she may be.”

  “We’ll know soon enough,” Dame Claire said. “And you and Dame Frevisse sooner than the rest of us. How long do you suppose you’ll be before you’re back with her?”

  “No one has said,” Frevisse answered. “By Advent, hopefully.”

  Sister Amicia turned an alarmed look on Dame Perpetua. “You won’t be here this month!”

  Momentarily puzzled looks at her changed with various speeds on everyone else’s faces to alarm matching her own. Dame Perpetua was presently sacrist and precentress, and so she had the duty of seeing that everyone’s memories were fresh on the changes that came in the services through the year, of rehearsing them ahead of time so that in the actual saying of the offices all went without trouble, for God’s greater praise and the good of their souls. The complexities of All Hallows’ and All Souls’ psalms and prayers were just ended; that meant it was time to begin thinking of Advent’s and Christmastide’s that went on for more than a month, through Advent and Christmas into the new year to Epiphany, with everyone needing practice on them beforetimes, and some of the nuns needing—Frevisse kept from looking toward Sister Emma and Sister Cecely—more than most.

  “I can see to it,” Dame Claire said, but uncertainly. She was infirmarian, charged with the health of the nuns, all their servants, and the neighboring villagers. With winter now well begun, she would be constantly needed for one thing and another and busy between times making medicines; and Dame Juliana was already doing as much and more as could be hoped for from her. That left the younger nuns, with Sister Johane and Sister Cecely too new to be of use and Sister Emma too foolish…

  Frevisse saw Sister Amicia was already looking hopeful of it falling to her and suggested quickly, “It should be Sister Thomasine.”

  “Sister Thomasine?” Dame Juliana asked doubtfully.

  They all looked at Sister Thomasine where she sat aside from the firelight and warmth, rapt in her prayers, still smiling to herself, as removed from their talk as if in another room. Or another world. “Sister Thomasine?” Dame Juliana repeated with increased doubt.

  But Frevisse had had the chance to know more about Sister Thomasine than most of them did and said, “Yes.”

  And Dame Claire who, from Sister Thomasine helping her in the infirmary, had had, like Frevisse, the chance to see more of her possibilities, added, “Let her do it. She can.”

  “Well…” Dame Juliana said. “I’ll think on it a little…” And chose to turn the talk by asking Dame Perpetua and Frevisse, “Do you both have all you’re sure you’re going to need for tomorrow? It’s going to be a cold journeying. Will those cloaks I gave you out of stores be warm enough?”‘ And they were away on practicalities for the morrow’s travelling.

  Chapter 3

  The four days’ ride from northern Oxfordshire brought them down from the Islington hills early in a Monday’s afternoon, to curve eastward through the last of the open countryside and south toward London by way of the Bishopsgate road; and though St. Paul’s spire had been sharp against sky and distant Surrey hills for miles, London itself did not begin to close in on them until they were almost to its walls and even then, from St. Mary Spital on to Bedlam hospital, the houses were only scattered along the way, with fields and pasturing between them until almost to St. Botolph’s monastery, but finally there was nothing but London’s wall and Bishopsgate’s broad stone face ahead of them and Frevisse at least was glad to be so near to done with riding.

  They had journeyed dry but cold, the
winter-pale skies wind-scoured of both clouds and warmth until this afternoon there was a gray bank of clouds in the east and Abbot Gilberd had said as they reached the Bishopsgate road, “It seems we’re in good time. The weather looks likely to change and probably to snow when it does.”

  He had been austere in his dealings with the nuns the while he was at St. Frideswide’s but once away from the priory’s problems he had proved more gracious, not only to little Lady Adela whose father was a lord, but to Dame Perpetua whose family were country knights and to Frevisse; as considerate toward them as if they were his particularly favored guests, making certain they were well accommodated at the various monasteries they stayed at on the way and conversing with them while they rode. As Frevisse had suspected from what she had seen of him at St. Frideswide’s, he was learned; but his opinions were so usual in most matters that on the whole she found it better mostly to leave the talk to Dame Perpetua, with Lady Adela’s eagerness serving to fill up any slack there might have been. Unfortunately today, ever since St. Paul’s spire first came in sight, Dame Perpetua had been making small, worried murmurs over London’s size and the chance of plague and the danger of crowds and crime, and now as their road closed into Bishopsgate she was doing it again, so that Abbot Gilberd said in pleasant reassurance, “It’s none so bad as stories make it out. In most ways it’s only Northampton grown larger, that’s all.”

  “But I’ve never been to Northampton,” Dame Perpetua murmured a little plaintively.

  “I’ve never been anywhere,” Lady Adela put in, all eagerness. For her everything about their journey had been adventure and London was the crown of it. She was a fair-haired, pretty child and clever in the bargain, making it a particular pity that she had a crippled hip because Lord Warenne had other children so her marriage was not needful to him and likely she would end up a nun to save him having to trouble over her. Frevisse suspected that part of the agreement that had allowed Dame Elisabeth to leave St. Helen’s for St. Frideswide’s had included Lady Adela—and Lady Adela’s likely dowry—being given in her place. What Abbot Gilberd had said to win Lord Warenne’s approval of the change Frevisse did not know and thought it better not to ask. Lady Adela, at least, seemed only pleased at it. Or maybe she was simply glad to be out of St. Frideswide’s and into the world, however briefly.

  Certainly she had taken advantage of every possible enjoyment of their journey. Because of her hip she rode sideways in a lady’s fashionable box saddle rather than astride but was constantly twisting around to see everything, untiring in her efforts to miss nothing, until now as the road narrowed into Bishopsgate itself, shadowed and shut in with stone walls and vaulting, she faced forward, staring ahead with wide eyes as if she meant to see all of London at once the instant they were through the gateway.

  Frevisse, for her part, had been to London enough in her girlhood to know it somewhat well and was expecting to feel nothing in particular about being there again but found she was smiling, looking forward much like Lady Adela, with rising pleasure and excitement as they rode into Bishopsgate. After all, this was London, stretching along the Thames in a miles’ long, mile-wide welter of streets, houses, churches, shops, markets, monasteries, nunneries, with its Tower massive at one end and St. Paul’s reaching toward heaven at the other, its Bridge a wonder of the world, and its port filled with ships from all the coasts of Europe and much of the Mediterranean. This was London, the like of it seen in few places of Christendom since the fall of Rome a thousand years ago; and smiling at Lady Adela’s pleasure and her own, Frevisse reached out and patted Dame Perpetua’s arm in reassurance and comfort that she would find it better than she thought to.

  And then they were through the gateway and into Bishops-gate’s wide, paved street, with its tall houses rising on both sides, so many of them three, even four storeys high, thrusting out to overhang themselves, making sheltered walking along their fronts for when the weather was foul but the street broad enough that though there were people in plenty there—market-basketed women with daughters and servants in tow, men importantly on their ways to other places, apprentices and servants out on errands for their masters, a pack of boys who were probably supposed to be in school—they drew back out of the way of Abbot Gilberd’s foreriders without need to crowd, turning cheerfully to see who was coming in hopes it was some great noble with a rich show of livery, men, and horses but having to settle for an abbot, nuns, and a score or so of soberly dressed household men since that was all there was.

  Lady Adela, as if it were all a show set up for her, laughed out loud and waved to the schoolboys, who waved and shouted something back so that she laughed again. Dame Perpetua, other worries forgotten in the face of impropriety, straightened in her saddle to say reprovingly, “My lady, that’s not how you should do.” And then forgot herself with, “Oh, look at that!” at an array of cloths laid out on a counter swung down from the front of a shop under the eaves of one of the houses. Most of the houses were shops on their street floor, their wares set out to be seen, and first Dame Perpetua and then Lady Adela began to point them out to one another as they rode past, until Lady Adela noticed delightedly the elaborately carved wooden beams and patterned plasters of the house fronts; and looking up at those, Dame Perpetua with her head craning farther and farther back breathed in wonder, “And the glass! There’s glass in so many of the windows!”

  “This is London, my lady,” Abbot Gilberd said, as if that explained it all.

  Frevisse was looking as eagerly, though less obviously and without exclaims. Was it really fully twenty years since she had been to London? But she recognized where ahead of them the street divided into two and remembered that it was Bishopsgate that curved away to the left while rightward Thread-needle Street would lead to Poultry and Cheapside and the City’s heart around St. Paul’s. But the priory of St. Helen’s was already to hand; the foreriders were turning aside to it, one of them leaning from his saddle to ring the bell for the porter so that the gates were swinging open as Frevisse and the rest rode up, to let them through into a large, cobbled courtyard closed in by buildings on all sides, with in its center a carved stone cross raised on steps and on its far side St. Helen’s church.

  Men were coming from the stables for the horses as the porter came around to Abbot Gilberd’s stirrup to say with a bow, “You’re to go straight in, if it please you, my lord. Will you and all your men be staying?”

  “The women will be staying. The rest of us will be going on in a while.”

  The porter nodded understanding and turned to give necessary orders for the men to be taken into the guesthall for something to drink and to warm themselves at a fire and the horses to be wiped down and watered and kept ready for Abbot Gilberd to ride on to his abbey’s inn elsewhere in the city.

  Kept for its abbot’s use when business brought him to London, it was rented out for profit the rest of the time and presently its renter was having to make other arrangements of where to live while Parliament was being held and Abbot Gilberd was there.

  The cloister lay to the north of the church. At Abbot Gilberd’s word, Frevisse, Dame Perpetua, and Lady Adela rode with him the little way across the yard to there, two of the stablemen running ahead to warn the porteress they were coming and wait to take the women’s horses and the abbot’s mule off to the stables after the others.

  Outside the door Abbot Gilberd, dressed in a split gown for riding, swung down easily while Frevisse and Dame Perpetua had to fuss their skirts clear of their saddles, but while he came to hand Dame Perpetua down by way of a stone dismounting block, Frevisse swung down by herself and went to Lady Adela, surprised to find the child had lost her bright pleasure somewhere between St. Helen’s gateway and here. Pale beyond her ordinary paleness, she leaned stiffly forward into Frevisse’s hands to be lifted to the ground, and when Frevisse turned from her, she did not go to Dame Perpetua as was her usual way but took tight hold of Frevisse’s cloak as if she meant to keep with her no matter what.

&
nbsp; Frevisse looked down at her, even more surprised. The child had been Dame Perpetua’s charge at St. Frideswide’s; Frevisse had never had a way with children nor any wish to, and had had little to do with Lady Adela at the priory, but now the child stood staring straight in front of her at no one, ignoring Dame Perpetua’s hand held out to her as she joined them and with an expression that said she would fight if anyone tried to make her let loose of Frevisse’s cloak.

  By then two nuns were poised beside the open cloister door, to welcome them and see them in, and Abbot Gilberd was waiting. Frevisse and Dame Perpetua exchanged a look over Lady Adela’s head and made silent agreement that here and now was not the time to make anything of Lady Adela’s stubborness, so long as she came with them at all. And she did, following to the door, still holding to Frevisse’s cloak while the nuns greeted them and led them through the doorway and along a passage, asking the expected questions about their journey and the weather that Frevisse, dropping behind, left Abbot Gilberd and Dame Perpetua to answer. Lady Adela was now pressed so close to her as to make walking difficult and Frevisse with a hand on her shoulder moved her a little away, for both their sakes; falling down in a tangle of feet, skirts, and cloaks would make no useful impression on anyone here. But she also felt Lady Adela’s rigid fear and kept the hand on her shoulder for a kind of comforting. It was strange but she had never thought of Lady Adela being afraid.

  Having brought them to another door, one of the nuns said she would tell Dame Elisabeth they were here and hurried away, disappearing around a corner ahead of them while the other nun ushered them into a large room clearly meant for the reception of the priory’s guests. There were cushioned chairs and a carved bench, a table covered by a pattern-woven cloth, and thick rush matting for comfort underfoot, with two of the walls enriched with tapestries. One was of the foolish virgins with their burned-out lamps, the other of the wise virgins awaiting their bridegroom Christ, but though the former were sufficiently downcast to make the point, the latters’ overly complacent expressions somewhat marred the triumph of their virtue. At least to Frevisse’s eye.