Roses in the Tempest (16 page)

Slowly, she inhaled and expelled a great sigh. “Thank you, Thomas. Bless you. And now,” she said, gazing at me fondly, “you must quit this room before the others return. You should not even be here. But you already know that.”

“Yes, I do.” Still tightly wimpled, still draped in her dark veil, she seemed to blend into the shadows encroaching from the darkness. She watched me like a raven curiously watches the doings over the next wall. “Be well, Isabella. I will pray for you.”

“And I for you, Thomas.” But as she said the last, she dropped her face, seeming embarrassed by the saying of it.

EARLY SUMMER, 1526

Blackladies

XVII

He who pleased God was loved…

–Wisdom 14:10

I swung the hoe hard into the dusty soil and shuffled the weeds away from the green stalks. Dame Alice worked beside me. The workmen tilled farther away. It was hard work, but I enjoyed it, for from this harvest many were fed. The work satisfied.

“You have the strength of Moses,” huffed Alice, resting an arm on her hoe. She watched me work for another moment before I, too, stopped to rest.

“‘To pray is to work and to work is to pray’,” I told her. “I am most fond of these words of St. Benet’s.”

“Yes, I agree.” She glanced to the trees lining the boundaries of Blackladies’ fields, and how they waved and glittered in shades of yellow green. “I received a letter from my mother yesterday.”

I stole a glance at Alice’s pinched expression. “Oh? What news has she?”

“My grandsire is dead. She took as much caring in the telling of it as when she told of your father, Lady Prioress.”

I becrossed myself. “God have mercy. Yes, I remember.”

“She says she and Father have moved to the farm at Swynnerton. She says she also hopes the Church is boxing some sense into me. She never did like my choosing it.”

“Why did you?”

She took her time. So long, in fact, that I wondered at her reticence at something that happened years ago, and I turned an inquiring brow toward her.

“May I be frank, Madam?”

“Of course, Alice. Always you may be so with me.”

“When my mother was trying to talk me out of coming here, she would tell me things. About you.”

“Oh?” I picked up the hoe and brushed the blade carelessly across the ground. “What sort of things?”

Alice’s sigh was tinged with a note of embarrassment. “She said you were always insolent and that you lorded your company of Lord Giffard over her while she lived at Grandsire Launder’s grange.”

I spun on her. “Lorded it over her? By the mass! What must she be thinking?”

“So she used to say, Madam. That you expected to be the wife of…of Thomas Giffard, and your disappointment brought you here.”

“Agnes!” I rasped, thinking of my sister and all her envious affronts. “Alice, I tell you true, I never expected to be the wife of Thomas Giffard. The notion is ludicrous.”

“I told her as much, but she persisted. She said…well, she said all manner of ill things against you.”

“None of it—whatever it is—is true, Alice. You must know me well enough by now to reason that.”

“Yes, Madam. I did not believe it. Still…” She nosed the hoe into the soil. “Lord Giffard does spend time here within the cloister, and I always wondered at it.”

“Agnes never understood me,” I went on. “In her jealousy of my long friendship with Lord Giffard, your mother no doubt misinterpreted my need for solitude. After all, she went to the feasts and celebrations in the village when I did not. She took it for haughtiness when it was only…only my reserve at being with others who did not want my company. Look at me, Alice. I am not a beauteous woman. I never had a suitor.”

“Was Thomas Giffard a suitor?” Her eyes were wide with anticipation.

“No, child. We were friends.” I felt a twinge at this half-truth.

“It does not surprise me that she should have said what she said about you. I knew there was more to her words. I sensed she was envious of something about you. I thought it was your sanctity and love of God that she could not understand.”

“And now?”

“That was partially true. But now I see she was also jealous that Lord Giffard paid you any attendance…and her none at all.”

Nodding, I cut at the weeds.

“So…why does he attend to you, Lady Prioress?”

Squinting at the sky, I gazed deeply into its endless blue, swept at the horizon by curls of white clouds, awaiting their afternoon drizzle. “It was a friendship borne of my candor. He likes my honesty.”

Alice laughed. “That is something my mother never would have liked!”

I desperately hammered at the soil, groping for any change in the subject. “Does she say how your Uncle Robert fairs?”

“No. But I am certain she would put such information into the letter in her blunt way if anything tragic occurred to them.”

I smiled, turning it from Alice. It was not good to agree so heartily on another’s faults, especially when they were one’s own kin, though Alice seemed to understand her mother well. “Do you ever regret your coming here?” I asked, curious at her reply.

“No. But sometimes I wonder what sort of mother I would have been. What children I would have borne.”

“I saw you with Jane and Mary,” I offered, thinking of Thomas’ letter regarding their care. “And also with the sick of this parish, Alice. You are a mother, you see. A kind one. When you minister to them and they look at you, it is the Blessed Mother they see. That is who we are: reminders of what is to come.”

“I never thought of it in that way. Thank you, Lady Prioress. Bless you for that.” Cheered, she raised her hoe, but froze, catching sight of something behind me. I turned, and saw it, too, and rested my hoe in the soil.

Cristabell ran toward us. Dame Elizabeth had taken to her bed, and each day we expected that she should go to the Lord. My heart thumped against my chest as Cristabell neared, a look of strange discomfort on her face. Winded, she came to me at last, and I clutched the hoe, awaiting her expected words.

“There is someone at the gate, Madam…Lady Giffard.”

Lady Giffard?
I becrossed myself and dropped the hoe. What could she want of me? Everything passed through my mind, from the smallest detail to the greatest scandal. Rolling down my sleeves, I tried to summon a prayer as I made my way from the radiant fields into the cool of the cloister.

When at last I reached the gate, I spied her standing patiently and sedately, striped by the shadows of the bars. She was a small woman in velvet and furs. Her attendant—arrayed almost as fine as she—stood behind her mistress, keeping an ear tuned to any sound that might affect her charge.

The sunlight seemed to shimmer off of the bright folds of her skirts and headdress, while I moved through shadow, dark in my nun’s habit.

I reached the gate and stood with iron bars between us. “Peace be with you,” I said with a bow. Raising my head, I looked into sky blue eyes, fair lashes, and even fairer hair parted down the middle and framing her forehead under its headdress.

She stared at me, her brow wrinkling. “Are you the prioress Isabella Launder?”

I inclined my head. “Yes. I am Isabella Launder, Prioress of Blackladies.”

“You?” She looked once at her attendant and shook her head. “There must be some mistake.”

“No mistake, Lady Giffard. What may I do for you?”

Another long moment passed while she studied me most insolently from head to foot. “This is Isabella Launder?”

I frowned. “I have already told you that, madam. What more may I do?”

“I would speak with you. Is there a place without these bars?”

With unsteady hands I unlocked the gate and pulled it open. “This way, Lady Giffard. May I offer you and your lady some refreshment? The day is hot.”

“No, thank you. This will not take long.”

With leaden feet, I preceded through the cloister and to the garden where I offered Lady Giffard a seat on a bench. She whispered to her attendant who then wandered to the other side of a hedge, allowing us privacy.

“A most pleasing garden,” she said, almost more to herself than to me. “So tranquil. So lush. One would scarce believe such a place was in a convent. So merry and diverting. It is more akin to the gardens of court. Have you ever been to court, Lady Prioress?”

“No, my lady. I have never ventured from Staffordshire.”

“No? A pity. You would like the gardens of Greenwich.” My throat was dry as Lady Giffard adjusted her voluminous skirts before finally looking up. Her head gently tilted toward me. Her white skin never changed from its alabaster hue to a blush, even as her eyes squared on mine, like a hawk stooping. “So you are the one who so captures my husband’s heart.”

My own heart jolted, and I clutched my fingers to keep them from shaking. “Did he say so?”

“No. Not in so many words. But a wife can tell.” She smiled. “And your own blush tells me more than his sparse words on the matter.”

“M-madam,” I began, “I am guilty of nothing! We have been friends for half our lives. There is no more than that.”

“But a man allowed into a convent? Surely this is unusual.”

“Lord Giffard has always been an unusual man and used to his own way.”

“Indeed. He is patron of this house.”

“As is Sir John.”

“Yes. True.” She cocked her head at me, her expression similar to Cristabell’s many bold appraisals. “You are not what I expected. Quite frankly, I thought you would be young and beautiful.”

My cheeks and ears burned. “As you can see, madam, I am neither.”

“It is most perplexing. How many nuns reside here, Dame?”

“Four, including myself. It is a small and humble house. Rustic, some would say. And far from private.”

“Implying?”

“Implying that nothing could happen as you suspect it might have done. What did you hope to gain from such an interview?”

“Let me be frank, Lady Prioress. I want my husband to know that he is no longer welcomed here. I want him to be told that he has no further congress with you. In short, Dame, I want my husband back.”

“You have him, lady.”

“No. I never possessed him since the day he discovered you were here. It is because of the capering he does here with you—”

“Madam!” I raised my hands to my veil, trying to cover my ears from such condemning words. “We are not lovers, Lady Giffard. Never were we.”

“You expect me to believe this? Year after year he comes to this convent to merely talk with you? Does your bishop know of this? Does the king?”

I whirled on her, my blood running cold from my face. “The king? Do what you will to me, madam, but do not put him at the mercy of the king!”

“So.” She rose, glaring at me with narrowed eyes. “‘Do what I will with you?’ Yes, Dame. My will is to see that you are punished for your whoring.”

I did not will it. I did not expect it. Unwittingly my hand struck out at her, slapping her face. Immediately, I put that guilty hand to my mouth in horror.

Her attendant jerked toward us, but stayed as she was with one subtle gesture from Lady Giffard. Smoothly, Lady Giffard touched her own cheek marked red from my hand, all the while gazing at me with a triumphal smile. “The prioress awakens.”

“You…you wrong me, madam, by such a name. I am innocent. I am a maid.”

“Nevertheless, the king should hear about his own courtier and how he uses his convents for treachery, abusing his own wife.”

I did not hear the gate bell chime, or the heavy bootfalls tromping through the cloister, but we both turned at once upon hearing the masculine voice roar, “Madam!”

“Thomas!” we cried as one, but it was to Lady Giffard he marched, taking her roughly by the arm.

“What mischief is this? What evil are you doing here?”

“I came to inspect the object of such wanton desire. I was weary of being left to myself, not treated as a wife.”

“Then act like a wife!” Thomas’ face reddened with unsavory anger. Never have I seen him such like before. He turned to me, and I shrunk from him. “Did she threaten you? What did she say?” Silent, I shook my head, but he only chuffed a sneering laugh. “Do not protect her! She is not worth it.”

“She is your wife, Thomas. She deserves your respect.”

“Do you hear that, madam?” He shook Lady Giffard’s arm. “Even as abused as she surely was by your razor tongue, she defends you. This is the woman you would destroy.”

“She says she is a maid. Is she?”

He choked on his rage, but swallowed it, finally casting her arm aside as if it burned him. “Yes. As chaste a woman as was ever born.”

“Is it because you could not summon your flesh with her either, husband?”

The tart moue of her mouth might have been charming in another context, with other words. Such words! I feared Thomas would strike her, and I moved to place myself between them.

“Get you home, Dorothy,” he said darkly. “Get you home now.”

“Yes.” She moved away from us, ticking her finger to her attendant. “I will go home. To Caverswall. I leave you to your… friend.”

“You will speak to no one of this. Do you hear me? No one. No bishops. No courtiers. And not to the king. For as I live, madam, I will see that you never benefit from such treachery. Is it you want me in prison? Yes, I can see that much vindictiveness in your eyes. But there is much a man can do from gaol with his friends on the outside. You think your life a misery now? See how my wrath changes all. Get you home, madam!”

Icily, Lady Giffard swept us with those chilled eyes, and strutted down the cloister, followed by her frightened attendant, until they both disappeared past the wall.