1 The Novice's Tale Read online

  Frevisse had not anticipated facing the full rigors of her attention so soon. She sank quickly in a curtsey, bracing herself for whatever was coming. But Lady Ermentrude waved a dismissive hand at her and said briskly, “My plans have changed. I’m riding on to my great-niece Lady Isobel’s today. It’s hardly a three-hour ride. I’ll be there before full dark if I leave now.”

  “But—” A variety of protests went through Frevisse’s mind. She chose the simplest of them and said, “Your people are half unpacked by now and settling in. Surely—”

  Lady Ermentrude was already going out the door, forcing Frevisse to follow her. “And they can go on unpacking. I want haste, not a clutter of idiots slowing me down. A few men-at-arms, two of my women, that will do. I expect to be back tomorrow. You there!” She beckoned demandingly at a groom nearby.

  Frevisse, with the thought that Lady Ermentrude’s going would leave her free to set straight certain matters concerning the guest halls and dogs and monkeys, contented herself with murmuring, “As you think best, my lady. We’ll await your return.”

  “And have all in readiness, I’m sure,” Lady Ermentrude agreed sharply. The groom was bowing in front of her now, and she told him peremptorily, “I want my horse saddled. Now. At once. Go on.” Smothering a look of bewilderment, the man ran off. “Sheep-face,” Lady Ermentrude snapped, and began shouting, “Maryon! Bess! Bertram!”

  The courtyard shifted from disorder to chaos, but more quickly than Frevisse had thought possible, Lady Ermentrude was mounted and riding out the gateway with a small cluster of her people behind her.

  In the intense gap of quiet left by her going, Frevisse drew a deep breath and turned away to the tasks next to hand.

  Chapter 3

  The next day was as fair as the days before had been, mild with September warmth and quiet in its familiar pattern of prayers at dawn, then breakfast and Mass, and afterward the varied, repetitious business that was the form and shelter of everyday security for Thomasine.

  But she had stayed in the church after the long midnight prayers of Matins and Lauds, kneeling alone at St. Frideswide’s altar in the small fall of lamplight, meaning only to give thanks for yesterday’s gift of courage against Lady Ermentrude and then return to bed. Then she had lost herself in the pleasure of repetition, murmuring Aves and Paters and simple expressions of praise over and over until all knowledge of Self melted away, and suddenly there was the sharp ring of the bell, startling her, because it meant the whole night had fled. She went as quickly as stiff knees and sticky mind allowed to the church’s cloister door, there to join the nuns in procession to their places in the choir to greet the sunrise with the prayers of Prime.

  Now, as the warm day wore away, she was finding her temper uneven and her frequent yawns a distracting nuisance. There seemed to be constant errands to be run, few chances of just sitting at a table in the kitchen pretending to peel apples, and every time she went out into the cloister the sound of her great-aunt’s people lofted over the wall. Heavy male laughter and the higher pitch of chattering women’s voices had no place in St. Frideswide’s cloister. They bruised the quiet and made Thomasine wish for a way to bundle them into silence.

  As she hurried along the cloister walk to fetch ink for Dame Perpetua, the little bell by the door to the courtyard jangled at her, saying someone wanted in. Thomasine halted, exasperated, and looked around with impatient anger for a servant to signal to the door—then caught herself and offered a swift prayer of penitence. Anger was one of the seven Deadly Sins, and its appearance marked a severe departure from the holiness she was so desperate to attain.

  The bell rang again, there was no servant in sight, and misery replaced her anger. Why were patience and courage always called for when there was the least supply of them available? She went to the door and opened the shutter that closed the small window at eye level. Peering through its bars, she saw no one, and the ends of her temper unraveled a little further. Then the curly top of a head bounced barely into view, and a child’s voice cried, “Oh, please! Open, please open! I need help!”

  The cry was piteous and Thomasine’s annoyance dissolved into her quick sympathy. She unlatched and opened -the door.

  The little girl standing there wore a less-than-clean dress in Lady Ermentrude’s livery of brown and cream. She was near to tears. “Please, m’lady, is Dame Claire within? I must’s-speak to her!”

  Dame Claire was the priory’s infirmarian, tending not only to the nunnery’s sick but anyone who came there asking help. Thomasine tilted her head inquiringly, asking to be told more without breaking the silence that properly held her.

  “Please, it’s little Jacques!” the child cried. Her tears had begun to spill now that there was someone to hear her. “He’s‘s-sick like to die, and oh, m’lady, you don’t know, it’s my life if something happens to him! Dame Frevisse said to ask for Dame Claire.”

  Thomasine had had no idea there was a baby traveling with Lady Ermentrude. Or perhaps her great-aunt had acquired a dwarf since she was last here. Poor unhappy thing, to be sick in a strange place. Her sympathy for anyone hurting was as swift as her urge to pray for them, and she signed the child to follow her.

  Dame Claire was, as nearly always, in her small workroom-storeroom off the infirmary, counting sheets this morning. She looked up as Thomasine tapped on the door frame, began to smile at seeing her, then saw the child’s tearful face beside her and came quickly. Dame Claire was small and neatly made, precise in all her movements, with a quiet dignity that belied her scant inches, as deeply quiet in her ways as her voice was when she asked, bending down to the child, “What is it, lamb?”

  “It’s little Jacques,” the girl sobbed. Met with such open kindness, she felt free to cry as fiercely as her fear demanded. “I fell asleep and he fooled his way into a box of my lady’s sweetmeats and overate them and now he’s sick and he’s going to die and if he does, I will too, because my lady will kill me!”

  “We have very good things for bellyaches,” Dame Claire said soothingly. “I doubt he’ll die. Come tell me about him.”

  She went to her worktable below the shelves of stored herbs and compounds and salves. The girl followed her, her sobs already fading as she looked around at the various bowls and pestles, the grinding slabs, baskets, and boxes that were outward signs of a high and esoteric knowledge that had always fascinated Thomasine, too, whenever she was permitted to help Dame Claire here.

  Now she yearned to display some of her own little learning to the child, but instead remembered the rule about unnecessary conversation and held her peace.

  “Tell me Jacques’s size. How big is he? How old?”

  The child, already calmer and beginning to hope, answered Dame Claire a little doubtfully. “A year?” She held up her hands perhaps a foot-and-a-half apart. “This big. I can carry him, he’s not very heavy. But you have to be careful because he scratches. And bites. His tail is as long as he is.”

  Dame Claire’s face froze in astonishment, but horrified realization broke on Thomasine. Before she could stop herself, she cried out, “It’s Lady Ermentrude’s monkey that’s sick! Oh, I wouldn’t have brought her if I’d known it was only that horrible monkey!”

  Dame Claire swallowed her shock, then looked at Thomasine reprovingly. “Suffering is suffering and if I can ease it I will.” Behind the reproof, amusement sparkled in her eyes, and Thomasine stifled further apologies. Claire turned back to the child and said gravely, “You’ve told me what I needed to know. Now here, you have this while I mix my powders and everything will be all right.”

  She gave the child a horehound drop to quiet her and turned to her shelves of herbs. “Angelica, perhaps,” she murmured. “Or betony. Tansy surely.” Then to the child, “Do you know when the monkey was born? It helps to make a cure if you know your patient’s astrological sign at birth.”

  Eyes wide at such a notion, the child shook her head dumbly.

  Dame Claire touched and crumbled into a bowl d
ried leaves from several hanging bunches, ground them to a mixed powder, and poured the mixture carefully into a little cloth bag. Tying it shut with a triple strand of tough grass, she said, “There now. That will be remedy for even a monkey’s well-earned bellyache.” She gave it to the girl. “It has to be mixed with wine. Does the monkey drink wine?”

  “Oh, yes, my lady. Lady Ermentrude likes to make him drunk. He’s very funny then.”

  “I daresay,” Dame Claire said. “Then mix this powder with half a small cup of wine and give it to him to drink.”

  The girl reached to hand the bag back. “Oh, no, m’lady, I daren’t feed it! I was given strictest orders. All I must do is watch it. And this isn’t even food but medicine! You must come and give it.” Again she held out the bag.

  But Dame Claire turned to Thomasine. “I’m not yet finished with my morning duties and this is hardly something I can leave them for. You take the powder and see to its coming to Dame Frevisse with my instructions about the wine. Warn her it will make the monkey sleep, but this will secure the cure.”

  Thomasine raised her own hands in protest. To reach the guest hall she would have to cross a yard full of noisy, horrid, common menfolk. Why, they might speak to her!

  But Dame Claire took the bag from the child and handed it to Thomasine, and she, automatic in obedience, took it. Dame Claire, as if the task were already completed, returned to her sheets, leaving Thomasine facing the upturned, expectant face of the child and the plain fact that she had no choice but to go.

  Necessity was a poor substitute for courage, but all her months at St. Frideswide’s and her own will had been set to training herself to trust God and obey orders. Twisting her mind into a semblance of willing obedience, she went.

  There were perhaps a dozen of Lady Ermentrude’s men and a few of her women in the courtyard, most of them gathered at the well. With her head up, feigning the dignity Dame Perpetua insisted every nun should show to the world’s eye, but her face already burning with shame, she took her first mincing steps across the cobbles toward the guest-hall stairs. The child trotted at her side, chattering happily, her tears forgotten now that it seemed the creature was going to be cured.

  As they passed the well, one of the men there made a kissing sound and called, “Hey, pretty one, stop and keep us company!”

  Thomasine stiffened an already stiff spine and threw him a frightened sideways glance before trying to shrink further into her gown. The child said blithely, “Oh, that’s just Hob. He’s lickerous as a rooster, Catherine says. I think he’s a calf brain.”

  Thomasine walked faster, her eyes now so far down she was in danger of running into something. Someone sang a few lines about Alison who was a nun but not a very proper one, and another voice called, “Ask your sisters when they’re coming out of their nest to us! If they’re pretty as you, they’ll be worth the waiting for.”

  A woman’s voice said disgustedly, “Stop it, the lot of you!” but there was only laughter at her and more kissing sounds. Thomasine, caught between a swirl of anger and an urge to sob, endangered herself further by speeding up her walk. Cheeks flaming, she was nearly running, and only her youth’s quick reflexes stopped her from tripping when the bottom guest-house step was suddenly within her gaze.

  She heard the door at the top open and behind her an immediate deep silence fell.

  Thomasine looked up to see Dame Frevisse standing tall and stern-eyed in the doorway, staring over her head toward the well. A quick glance backward showed everyone suddenly very busy and looking anywhere but at her.

  The little girl announced happily, “She’s brought the medicine for Jacques,” and slipped past Dame Frevisse into the hall.

  Resisting an urge to point but forgetting the rule of silence, Thomasine gasped accusingly, “Those men—”

  Dame Frevisse held out an arm to bring her into the hall. “—are too bored and stupid to amuse themselves otherwise than by teasing you. They thought it funny to see how frightened they could make you. You responded splendidly.”

  “But what they said—”

  “Can no more harm you than the monkey’s jabbering does.”

  The warmth of Thomasine’s cheeks deepened from embarrassment to dull-burning resentment. “I was frightened,” she said sullenly.

  “Of course you were. But they’re only men, not lions. They know who you are and where they are. They won’t touch you. They know the strength of this place.”

  “But what they were saying…” She hesitated, looking for words.

  “… was only words. Thomasine, you must stop seeing men as monsters or devils. A nun must learn to live aside from the world, not hide from it.” Dame Frevisse clipped her words, very clearly in no mood for trifling. “Ignorance breeds fear. If you decide to be ignorant of men, you’re going to be afraid of them, too. And so long as we must butcher, reap, sell our wool, pay our taxes, and repair our buildings, we must deal often with those fearsome creatures. Give me the medicine.”

  Thomasine closed her mouth over further protest. Her tiredness had betrayed her into the sin of anger again, and she would have to confess it along with other things in Chapter tomorrow. Now, ducking her head to hide her expression, she held out the little cloth bag and said with outward meekness enough, knowing the importance of a. correct dose and correct instructions, “This in half a small cup of wine. Dame Claire said not to worry if the monkey sleep’s. It’s supposed to.”

  “There’s a mercy. The idiot thing deserves every pain it has in its idiot belly but it’s been repenting of its foolishness at the top of its lungs.” The feeling in Dame Frevisse’s voice offset her terseness of a moment before. “Thank you for bringing this and, pray, pardon my short temper. Between the monkey and expecting Lady Ermentrude’s return, this isn’t a pleasant morning.”

  Thomasine, daring to look up, began a hesitant smile, but Dame Frevisse was already not looking at her, saying past her in greeting, “Father Henry,” to the priory priest just coming in the door.

  He was a burly, deep-voiced young man, built more for swinging a quarterstaff than a priestly censer. His black gown fit close to his muscled shoulders, and his golden hair curled up so vigorously around his tonsure it was nearly hid. He was not at all what Thomasine thought a nunnery’s priest should be, and once she had dared to murmur to Dame Perpetua that he did not seem very learned. Dame Perpetua had replied that truly he was not among the scholarly but he did his duties well. “And there’s no real harm in him. We’re blessed to be in his keeping,” she had finished, so firmly that Thomasine had never presumed to mention him again.

  Now Dame Frevisse said, “Thomasine needs escort back across the yard to save her from rude attentions. Will you do it?”

  Father Henry grinned, shifting his shoulders inside his Benedictine habit as if he would be pleased for an excuse to use his strength on someone. “Gladly, Dame.”

  Dame Frevisse, with a pleasant nod, went away, and he turned his companionable grin on Thomasine. “Now, then,” he said and started down the steps.

  Thomasine, with only a faint quiver of alarm, followed at his gown’s hem, but no one seemed to see them at all as they crossed the courtyard back toward the cloister. Certainly no one said a single word at them. They were halfway to safety and she was beginning to feel its welcome reach when someone beyond the gatehouse to the outer yard yelled, “She’s coming! She’s riding in!”

  There seemed no uncertainty about who “she” was. The quiet of the yard suddenly swarmed with men and women scattering to look busy or be out of sight. Thomasine hardly had time to grab Father Henry’s sleeve before Lady Ermentrude’s horse came at a staggering canter through the open gateway. Her two ladies, their veils and wimples disarrayed, and her .escort of men-at-arms, sweat-stained through their gambesons, were behind her, all dust-marked with rough travel. Everyone’s horse showed signs of a hard journey, and Lady Ermentrude’s stumbled as she jerked it to a halt at the foot of the guest-hall steps. She was not wearing yest
erday’s finery but a more closely cut dress, her padded headroll tightly fastened by a veil whose dusty whiteness made sharp contrast to the red, clenched fury of her face.

  She threw her reins at a man standing there, the lather from her horse’s neck spattering his startled face with wet. Not waiting for any help, she flung herself from the saddle, swayed on her feet, clutched at a stirrup leather for support, and glared up the stairs as if seeking a foe to challenge. Finding none, she twisted away and lurched toward the cloister door across the yard.

  She seemed not to see Father Henry until nearly to him. Finding his bulk in her way, she stopped, blinking, then put her hands on her hips and shouted into his face, “You! I mean to see your prioress! I want her on the instant and no feebleminded excuses! Tell her that! D’ye hear me! Go on!”

  Father Henry fell back, not trying to hold his priestly dignity against her fury. “At once, my lady. Of course, my lady,” he gasped, and made for the cloister door on the instant, leaving Thomasine with nothing to hide behind.

  Lady Ermentrude blinked and grimaced at her—it might have been a smile but looked more a mix of pain and fury. Before Thomasine’s sudden thought that she should also retreat had reached her legs, Lady Ermentrude caught hold of her arm. Thrusting her face at Thomasine, she exclaimed, “Out here alone, are you? By God’s breath, that’s a blessing and their mistake. Confident they are, with your time so near, but they’re wrong. You’ll be free of this place now. I’ll see to that!”

  The words and the strong stink of wine were spat into Thomasine’s flinching face. Lady Ermentrude leaned closer, as if to share a secret, but her voice was loud enough to carry across the yard. “God alone knows what payments above the dowry they’ve offered to this sinkhole of corruption to have you here, but I’ve found their game! I’ll have you out within the hour. You’ll be safe. I’ll see to it. You’d be better off with the Queen and her scandals than here, I promise you.”

  Thomasine tried to pull free, but Lady Ermentrude’s fingers dug more deeply into her arm. Thomasine looked around, seeking a friendly face. There was no one in the yard but Lady Ermentrude’s people, and of them, the only one who seemed to be taking sharp interest in the struggle was the prettier of the two ladies in waiting who had ridden in with her, and she made no move to help. Thomasine gasped, “My lady, you’re hurting—”