The Prioress’ Tale (15 page)

Sister Amicia, more than willing to stand there talking than go in to Tierce, chimed in, “At least Lady Adela favors you. She talks about you to everyone.”

Visibly embarrassed, Benet said, “I know. Joice told me.”

“And Lady Adela is telling everyone else,” Sister Amicia assured him cheerfully.

“We’ll be late,” said Frevisse, partly out of pity for Benet but mostly because what interested her most just now was the coming chance to sit down in the shelter of her choir stall; and she went on into the cloister, Sister Amicia following her, leaving Benet to go his own way.

Neither her choir stall nor Tierce’s prayers were the refuge she had hoped for. The pain had subsided into a pervasive ache, deep and ready to rouse to pain again if she moved incautiously. That and awareness of the other nuns’ constant looks and sidelong glances toward her through much of the office kept her from losing herself in the prayers and psalms as she had hoped to do. And when, at the end, she went to lie down outside the door, she found her back had stiffened enough there was no way to lie down either gracefully or without pain, nor an easy way to rise when everyone had gone past her. Domina Alys was again the only one to strike her, and again Sister Thomasine was there at the end to help her up, but Dame Claire was not. Illogically angry at her for going on and at Sister Thomasine for waiting, angry, too, at her body for its treachery in stiffening and, more logically at Domina Alys for everything, Frevisse accepted Sister Thomasine’s help because she had to and managed to say, when it was done, “Thank you.”

Sister Thomasine, starting away after the others, paused to look back shyly around the edge of her veil. “You’re welcome,” she whispered.

“But you’d best not do it again or she may turn on you next.”

Sister Thomasine lifted her head, surprise on her pale face where her overfasting showed in the shadows under her hollowed cheeks. “Oh no,” she said as if disbelieving Frevisse could say so strange a thing. “She won’t do anything to me.” Her shy smile swiftly came and went, and before Frevisse could think of any answer to such certainty, she had lowered her head and was gone after the others.

Frevisse should have gone, too. Dame Juliana was giving out the heavier woolen winter gowns now, something Frevisse would have been eager for this time yesterday. But now, today, even more than being warmer, she wanted to be alone, if only for a little while. There were a few places for that in the cloister. To go to any of them would have looked as if she were hiding. And she would have been. Hiding was exactly what she wanted. But she would not give Domina Alys the satisfaction of knowing it or the chance to have her hunted out if it were guessed what she was doing, so instead she turned back to the surest refuge, into the church.

It was where she always went by preference when she had the chance or need, usually to her choir stall or else to kneel at the altar in prayer. Today, when she had shut the door between her and the cloister, she simply stayed where she was, leaning against the heavy wood, not even bothering to take her hand from the handle, her eyes thankfully closed now that finally she had no need to move or seem any particular way for anybody. She was alone, with time to gather her strength—not her thoughts, she was tired of trying to think; and not her courage, she was nearly out of that—just her strength to face the rest of the day.

She had been standing there, she did not know how long, sunk as near to mindless as she could come, when Joliffe said close behind her, “Dame Frevisse,” concerned.

She had not heard him come, but she was past having strength to be startled. And it had been illogical to hope no one beyond the nuns would come to know what had been done to her. Word had surely gone by way of servants out of the cloister to everywhere in the priory by now; but that did not mean she had to deal with questions, curiosity, sympathy, or anything else that might be offered. Most particularly it did not mean she had to deal with Joliffe, and she said, not moving, not even opening her eyes, “Go away.”

“Now, that’s unfriendly.” He sounded aggrieved and mocking together. “How do you know I haven’t come like Sir Orfeo, daring dangers to rescue his lady?”

“I’m not in need of rescuing. And as I recall, he failed.”

“Only according to Boethius.”

“ ‘Only according to Boethius’?” Frevisse turned around.
“Only
Boethius?” A man held, these hundreds of years past, to be an authority on anything he had chosen to write about?

Joliffe shrugged away her indignation. “He was a philosopher. He only talked to make a point and the points he could make were the only ones he talked about. No, I believe the other way the story is told, that Sir Orfeo won Heurodis free of Faerye. It’s much the better story.”

“What has ‘better’ to do with truth?”

“What has truth to do with a good story?”

“And since when,” Frevisse said, abruptly changing direction, “did I ever think Sir Orfeo and Heurodis were real, for me to be arguing about them so earnestly?”

“I don’t know,” said Joliffe lightly.

Frevisse looked at him consideringly and, finding at least the ache in her mind had lessened, said, “Thank you.”

Simply, with no trace of his familiar mockery, Joliffe answered, “You’re welcome.” And then, “Tell me what she did.”

Frevisse moved her head slightly side to side, refusing. She did not want to say the words, did not want even the feel of them ugly in her mind. If she could bury the thought of what had been done to her deep enough, it would somehow take the pain away with it. That was not logical, but the pain seemed to leave little room for logic; all she could do was refuse him an answer.

“Say it,” Joliffe insisted.

Frevisse turned away from him. Too quickly. The pain caught her to rigid stillness and she had to stand, breathing in short gasps between her teeth, while it subsided. When it had, she turned carefully back to him and said curtly, resenting both him and her own cowardice, “Along with the other punishments of humiliation and losing my place as hosteler, she whipped me.”

She was daring him to pity her, ready to be angry if he did; but his level, unreadable look told her nothing, and she added with bitter-edged lightness, “But after all she only used a birch rod on me and it was only twenty strokes, so I suppose I should be grateful for the mercy.”

“Only it doesn’t feel like mercy, does it?” Joliffe asked, level-voiced.

“No. It feels like pain!”

But as she said it, unable to stop the anger and a surge of too many other feelings, something in Joliffe’s face stopped her, held her quiet before she said in a voice that matched his own, “It’s been done to you, too, hasn’t it?”

Joliffe’s eyes widened in openly mocking surprise. “To me? A wandering player now turned minstrel? Someone no more than half a step off the devil’s tail to most people’s -way of thinking?” He raised his hands at her ignorance. “Why, I’ve found there are people who seem to feel an absolute obligation to it.”

He was laughing at himself and inviting her to laugh with him, but Frevisse no more believed his laughter than she believed his surprise, and did not want to join in it. “What do you do?” she asked.

He shrugged the question away. “Avoid it when I can.”

“And when you can’t?”

“Like everything else. Endure it. The way you were enduring trying to teach mat cow-eyed nun in the guest hall just now.”

It was a deft, firm-handed change of topic, and Frevisse let him make it. “St. Frideswide’s new hosteler, yes,” she said. “I’ve lost my office, among other things, for my sins.”

“A sorry thing, your fall from grace. They were talking of you last night. Your prioress and her cousins in the parlor. At least there was mention of a nun who was forever giving trouble, and I assumed it was you.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“How was it with the girl?” If he could change subjects, so could she.

Joliffe frowned slightly. “My fear would be she’ll break just when she most needs her wits about her.”

That was Frevisse’s thought, too, and she had no answer to it.

“But she kept close in talk with that young Benet last night,” Joliffe said. “Is she possibly warming to him?”

“It would help if she did,” Frevisse said, and would have said more but behind her the door opened and Dame Perpetua entered, followed by Lady Adela, come to ready things for Sext. She stopped short at sight of Joliffe, a man and someone she did not know; but the nave of the church was open to the priory’s guests and Dame Frevisse was still somewhat hosteler, so after her first surprise, she bowed her head to him slightly and went on.

Lady Adela stayed where she was and announced firmly, “You’re the minstrel.”

Joliffe swept her a low bow, one hand on his heart, the other flung wide as if in surrender to her. “You have it in a word, my lady.”

Lady Adela laughed and most improperly dropped a curtsy back to him, so deep he might have been an earl. “I’ve seen you from Lady Eleanor’s window, but they wouldn’t let me come to listen to you last night.”

“A lady fair in durance vile,” said Joliffe. “Shall I sing your plight abroad so your knight may find and rescue you?”

“I don’t have a knight,” she said regretfully.

“Then I’ll sing your beauties everywhere and find you one.”

“Lady Adela,” Dame Perpetua called.

Lady Adela’s brightness disappeared. With the solemness she mostly wore, as if life required a great deal of concentration, she leaned a little toward Joliffe to say, as if Frevisse were not there, “You don’t have to find a knight. Just tell Benet Godfrey.”

“He’ll do?” Joliffe asked as solemnly. He might have been as eleven-years-old as she was.

Lady Adela nodded. Laughter glimmered in her again. “And he’s already here, too.”

“Lady Adela,” Dame Perpetua insisted from the choir.

Lady Adela heaved a sigh seemingly from her toes, called dutifully, “Yes,” and went.

Joliffe turned back to Frevisse. “Are they thinking to make a nun of that one?”

“Some are. I’m not.”

“Sensible of you.” Joliffe made her a bow, far less elaborate than what he had lavished on Lady Adela. “I’ll go now.”

Frevisse put out a hand, not touching him but stopping him before he turned away. “Thank you for…” Drawing her mind aside from her hurting? For making her say what she had not wanted to say? For not overtly pitying her? “… For Boethius.”

The slightest of smiles curved his mouth. Quietly, devoid of mockery, devoid of everything but understanding, he said, “I know how it bruises the mind along with the body. Both need tending when it happens.”

Frevisse nodded, understanding with him. He bowed again and she bent her head to him, and did not watch him go but turned toward the choir, ready to pray now; and after Sext she would go to Dame Claire and let her see to her back and then bespeak a winter gown from Dame Juliana before taking Sister Amicia back to the guest halls.

The west door groaned on its hinges with Joliffe going out—why hadn’t she heard him coming in?—and she wished too late that she had thought to ask him if he knew where Sir Reynold and his men had been bound for today.

Chapter 13

Frevisse drew her body’s ache slowly up from the cloister walk outside the refectory, letting herself be glad of Sister Thomasine’s help. Dame Claire’s ointment had eased the hurting and some of the stiffness but not sufficiently that lying down and standing up again were any pleasure. Only twice more today, she thought, nodding her thanks at Sister Thomasine who nodded back and left her. After Vespers and again for Compline. Then there would finally be the relief of going to bed, temporary though it would be and doubtful how easily she would lie. Dame Claire had said she would give her something to help her sleep, but Frevisse was unwilling to risk failing Matins and Laud at midnight, though she anticipated no pleasure in rising for them, or again tomorrow morning, when she had had time truly to stiffen.

She turned her mind away from all that. Those troubles were for later. Just now there was the rest of today to be gone through. She looked toward Sister Amicia waiting nearby and asked, “You’re ready to go out again?”

Sister Amicia came forward. “Oh yes.” She hesitated, then said worriedly, “I’m not sure I’m remembering all you’ve told me.”

Frevisse doubted it, too, but Sister Amicia was nonetheless proving better at grasping matters than she had hoped and she said encouragingly, “When the time comes you need it, you’ll remember more than you think you do, and what you don’t remember, Ela will know and help you with.”

Sister Amicia brightened. “Yes. She likes me, I think.”

That was more than Frevisse thought, but she was saved from even a noncommittal answer by Lady Eleanor and Joice coming toward her along the walk, Margrete behind them. So far today, since Sext, Frevisse had managed to keep from having to talk to anyone except in the way of her duties, but sympathy was not something she could avoid forever, so she gave in with what she hoped passed as graciously to Lady Eleanor’s gentle questioning of how she was, smiled with what conviction she could manage, and answered, “Well enough. Better. And you?”

“Well, thank you. Nothing beyond the ordinary.”

Margrete muttered something behind her.

Lady Eleanor, without looking back, said, “That’s eased.”

“For now,” Margrete said in a carrying murmur that Lady Eleanor chose to ignore.

Tactfully, Frevisse did, too, asking Joice instead, “And with you? Did it go well last night?”

There was need to be circumspect, with Sister Amicia there to hear everything and too likely to talk of it later. Joice said, “It was pleasant,” almost as if she meant it, but to Frevisse she seemed drawn, tense, and Frevisse wondered how much longer she would be able to keep up this game of pretense.

In an excited whisper Sister Amicia said, looking past Lady Eleanor, “Oh, here’s your Benet again!”

Joice stiffened with scorn-edged anger and snapped, “He’s not
my
Benet.”

But he was there nonetheless, coming into the cloister walk from the outer door. He saw them, his eyes going first to Joice, then to Frevisse, and he hesitated with distressed uncertainty at sight of her. So he had heard, too. To make it easier for him, Frevisse bent her head courteously to Lady Eleanor and said clearly enough for him to hear both what she said and that she said it without anger, “We’ll leave you, then. There are things we have to see to in the guest halls.”