Roses in the Tempest (6 page)

“You have yet to mention sincere devotion to God in these protestations,” she said.

There was truth in that, too, but I could not raise my eyes to acknowledge it. It was escape for me, but I did not wish to say so to the prioress. I did not think God would mind so much. I wondered then if the same could be said for the prioress.

“Do you freely give your obedience to those of this house?
Can
you?”

I bowed. “Yes, Madam.”

The prioress eyed me again, scrutinizing from head to foot. “Are you a virgin?”

I cursed myself for a guilty blush. “Yes, Madam.”

“There are tests. Do you wish to change your answer to me?”

Indignation drained the blush from my cheek, leaving it pale and flat. “I am a virgin, Lady Prioress. Perform any tests you like.”

“Unless you are widowed it is not fitting to become a bride of Christ in any other state… But I believe you, Mistress.” The prioress rose, took my arm, and walked me through the door. “You will need to exchange those clothes for a novice’s gown. I will take you to a place whereby you may do so.”

We emerged into the sunny cloister and were enveloped by the fragrance of roses lining the cloister path. It was a garden of herbs and tiny flowers, intersected by a cruciform gravel path.

“You have a garden,” I sighed. “I am good with gardens. And especially with roses.”

“Good. Then most assuredly, you shall work here.”

I allowed myself a moment of pleasure—the briefest—almost comforted by the prioress’ casual manner. But as the accustomed scent of the garden receded, and we entered the maze of rooms and halls, my bleak comfort was replaced again by fear.

Prioress Margaret guided me to a little upstairs room with two bedsteads. One had a featherbed and the other did not. She gestured to the latter. “This you will share with Dame Cristabell. The other I share with Dame Elizabeth. Store the clothes and any jewelry you are wearing now in one of these coffers. Should you choose to leave us, these things will be returned to you. If you stay, you may do with them what you like. Give them to the poor, for instance.” Out of the cupboard she took a wrapped bundle and handed it to me. Without further ado, she turned and left the room, her footfalls dispersing down the creaky steps.

Bathed with quiet again I stood alone, the black woolens still clamped between my two hands. I glanced at the smudged window. Several of the rectangular panes were cracked and one was replaced entirely with a wooden shingle. The room smelled musty and slightly smoky from the cold ashes in the hearth, but it was clean.

I sat heavily on the mattress and heard the crunch of fresh straw within.
There are worse places,
I thought, taking it in. Looking down at the folded clothes, I ran my hand over the dark wool. It was rough under my equally rough palm, but it seemed to suit.

Setting it down beside me, I slowly unlaced my bodice and peeled it away. The skirt came next and I let it fall to the floor. My nearly transparent linen shift—one I altered from one of my dear mother’s—was surely humble enough for Blackladies.

Shaking out the black gown, I looked it over. It, too, was patched and mended, altered many times for many different novices. Perhaps Dame Elizabeth and Dame Cristabell had each worn it at one time. Perhaps even the prioress herself.

After removing my coif I slipped the gown over my head and pulled it down into place. It was a bit short for my height but it would have to do, for there was little left of the hem to alter. Lastly I fitted the wimple over my face and the white novice’s veil over that, cinching the loose gown with a cord. There. The transformation is complete. From yeoman’s daughter to bride of Christ. I swallowed hard, ignoring the pain in my throat.

My thoughts must conform. I was here now, and here I intended to stay. Away from my poor inelegant father, and the prying eyes of Sir John. Away from painful reminders of what once was, and never was. Safely away.

Summer’s end, 1515

Greenwich Court

VI

It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.

–Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519

The candles blazed, shining the paneled walls in a familiar glow. Did the candles burn brighter because the king was there? Perhaps the physical world itself was just as enamored of King Henry as were his subjects. We fortunate few who served at court luxuriated under this perennial radiance. It was as if we, too, ruled the world with him. We were Englishmen, proud conquerors who feared no foreign enemy. Our king, King Hal—as only his fool referred to him before his person, and as his court called him in private—came from both common and regal lineage. Welsh, English, and French blood ran in his veins. He was England incarnate. While Henry sat on his throne, he was second only to God in our esteem.

It was a merry court in contrast to that of his father, the late Henry VII. I remember attending court as a child while the other Henry reigned, and I also remembered how restrained were the offerings at table and in purses. Father grimly complained of the few favors accorded him, and of the fewer coins to be pried from the late monarch’s thrifty fists.

But not this court. The wine flowed as dish after sumptuous dish paraded out from the kitchens; whole roasted animals, sliced and reconstructed on their platters; castles complete with moats devised from pastry and sugars; roast fowl dressed up in their feathers and arranged as if still in flight. No kitchen artisan lay sleeping in Henry’s court, for they were put to good work for the banqueting hall.

Dancers moved, spinning colorful ribbons to the beat of the court musicians strumming on their lutes, stroking their fiddles, and drumming their tabors, all filling the hall with melodious sounds, competing with the conversation of the diners, punctuated by the king’s loud bellows and guffaws. Such happy chaos!

Amid the cheer of our dinner, I glanced at Father. We sat not at the high table, but adjacent to it. We were both Gentlemen Ushers in Ordinary to the King, ready for any duty, be it amusement, or serving the meal, or even laying down our lives. Tonight, however, I doubted we should be called upon to defend the king from anything other than biliousness. Father himself ate heartily, and, between bites, exchanged warm glances with the handsome widow, now his wife. He had a right to smile. He was master of the monies and lands that she possessed. The Giffard name was now indelibly stamped upon that of Montgomery. Father plotted well.

Beside me sat Dorothy, my own bride. Stately, poised, fair. The match to any young courtier’s spouse. I resigned myself to accepting this arrangement, and I took care to show a proper face at court.

The king laughed again, and the ripple of laughter shook the hall. A shock of red hair flamed the top of his head, but his face was smooth and white, with a smattering of faint freckles. Henry’s childhood servant and friend Sir William Compton spoke, starting this eruption, and the king turned and made an affectionate and amused remark to Queen Catherine.

She listened demurely until her fair brows rose and she, too, laughed with gusto. Her earlier Spanish solemnity had given way to English good humor, and she was readily accepted by her subjects. She was, in fact, held in great estimation by the court, not only for her devotion to spiritual matters, but for her motherly attention to her adopted country. The king and queen were, as Erasmus said, a mother and father to the realm. She sat at the king’s right, while Compton—as well as his close friend Charles Brandon—sat at his left.

Compton and Brandon, older than the king by ten or so years, were ill-liked by the court at large, for they were common men. Brandon came to the king’s household as an orphan, and began his career as companion to the late Prince Arthur. He was soon given to Henry. But instead of leaving them in their place, Henry elevated them to Privy Council positions, favors beyond their deserts. They were naturally mistrusted. Oftentimes they and the king behaved like soldiers merrymaking in foreign territory, lawless and invulnerable.

“Perhaps our dear Cardinal does not find my story as amusing as does the king,” said Compton to a dour Wolsey, who also sat near the king’s left, though several chairs separated him from Henry.

With greasy fingers, Wolsey tore a leg from the stuffed hen on his trencher. I thought he might gesture with it, but he only tore it again, this time the thigh from the foreleg. He flicked his eyes toward Compton as he meticulously plucked the flesh from the bone. “Why so surprised, my lord? I seldom find your stories amusing.”

“Oh ho!” cried Henry, nudging Compton, whose smile faded under Wolsey’s contemptuous appraisal. “Our good Cardinal does not like your humor, Compton. What say you to that?”

Compton clutched his goblet too tightly. “I say that my lord Wolsey understands not my humor, else he would find it amusing.”

“Ribald humor on indelicate subjects,” countered Wolsey. “I understand them well, my lord. I simply do not find these common tales suitable to my tastes.”

“But he understands them well,” chuckled Henry, eliciting a wave of tittering amongst the diners, including my father and myself.

“Indeed,” said Wolsey, either ignoring the king or misunderstanding the source of the jape. “Though I am a chaste man and vowed to celibacy, I understand the matters of the bedroom, as must a cleric who counsels his fellow man. Even the basest of men surely need such counsel for the betterment of their souls.”

Compton scowled and looked as if he might rise. Henry pressed the back of his hand subtly against Compton’s chest, before patting his shoulder. “Base men or chaste,” said Henry, eyeing Compton, whose face flushed red, “we are men, and cannot stop ourselves from contemplating ‘bedroom matters,’ as you call it, my lord cardinal.” Henry’s gaze suddenly fell on me, and a smile parted his lips. “Here is a man who, no doubt, contemplates those very matters.”

The diners laughed at my surprise and subsequent blush. Dorothy lowered her eyes to her trencher and kept them there.

“Giffard. Have I heard rightly? Are you wed to this fine young lady?”

I stood and bowed to my sovereign. “Yes, your grace. To be a bachelor no more.”

They laughed again. Henry leaned forward, taking up his cup in bejeweled fingers. “Indeed. Bachelorhood is much to be praised.” Then he smiled and turned to his wife. “But the married state is also much to be praised. A good and obedient wife is worth kingdoms. I pray that your marriage will be as happy as my own.” He raised his goblet to me while pressing the queen’s hand with his.

The court saluted my nuptials, and Dorothy and I acknowledged them before we drank our draughts.

I glanced at my bride. What sort of wife was she to be to me? As I sat, I unexpectedly thought of Isabella. Not long ago, I disparaged Dorothy to her, but certainly she was a suitable wife for a Giffard. I saw how she managed those diners beside her, how her aplomb carried her through the japes and embarrassments of the king and his consorts. Yet even in that moment of satisfaction, I found myself with the strongest urge to ride madly to Beech so as to beg Isabella to come away with me and be my counselor once again. Dorothy and I did not impart the camaraderie that Isabella and I shared, though I supposed only time would grant that. Still, I was heartsick at the loss of our friendship. I wondered what Isabella was doing now on that humble grange. Perhaps sitting down herself to some pottage she made with her own hands, hands often dirty from her garden.

Looking at Dorothy and the delicate white hands that tore her meat apart with the dainty application of a knife, I decided that she had never made a meal, nor kneaded bread, nor milked a goat. In fact, the thought of my wife doing such a thing caused a smile, though it faded again upon contemplating Isabella. I knew I would miss her. No more to hear her clever words, her coarse laughter hidden behind impossibly long fingers. No more? Once I was wed and some time passed, surely I could get her to accede to my wishes again. We would still meet. She was not an unreasonable woman. And should she find herself also a bride, she and her spouse would be most welcomed in my household. Though…the thinking of it—Isabella as a servant in my employ and married to some coarse farmer—gave me an unsettling feeling, like standing on a rickety bridge that was about to fall.

I tried to turn my attention back to the colorful room and all its amusements, but the memory of a farmyard’s smell intruded over that of roast fowl and hart.

Isabella wed? Selfishly, I hoped it would not be so.

Autumn, 1515

Blackladies

VII

How good it is, how pleasant, where the people dwell as one!

–Psalm 133:1

Matins came far too early, though I was not the only one who delayed dragging herself from the warm covers to dress within the icy gloom of midnight. This was the first Divine Office of the day, where we, the cloistered, rise “even at night to praise Him.”

We shuffled down to the little chapel of St. Mary and, snug in the worn wooden settles of the quire, chanted our first prayers by the dim of two candle flames. We tried to keep ourselves awake, mumbling vulgar Latin we learned by rote.

Raising my eyes to the chapel’s roof, I hoped for the wherewithal to stay awake enough to finish our scant prayers before shuffling off to bed again, sleeping uninterrupted until six, where we were to rise again for Prime.

The chapel’s ceiling almost disappeared in the smoky gloom. Its timbers rose upward like imploring hands. Between the beams was a dim scoring of planks, just enough to hold the clay tiles that secured the roof from the weather, though none too well. Soot from years of candle smoke darkened its unpainted surfaces, while cobwebs draped long into the airy space, swaying with our chant.

I liked the chant. I found it soothing, and easy to lapse into the contemplation of a prayer. And what did I pray about? I prayed to understand my new life and my new sisters. I prayed that they should like me. And—selfishly—I prayed that I should be happy, for I was coming to realize that I had only leased a portion of happiness for most of the years of my life. It was never mine to keep.

But a selfish prayer is not easily answered.

Looking to my sisters whose faces fell into dim contours and deep shadow, I wondered what went through their minds. I soon learned to be a rigid surveyor of what I gleaned from their faces alone.

Stern but fair, Prioress Margaret no doubt prayed for enough food to feed us and our servants, for not only did we support the chaplain and bailiff, but also two women workers and four men, for there was far too much for four nuns to accomplish alone. The property boasted a brewhouse, bolting house, kilhouse, cheeseloft, stables, and fields, not to mention the mill and ponds. It was quite impossible to remain self-sufficient without help.

Cristabell, on the other hand, was unreadable under any pretext. Her wide, shiny forehead was smooth except for brows that lay in a flat, though expressive, line over the rims of dark green eyes. Her skin, too, was not pale but darker than most, like sage. Her family name was Smith, and I wondered if it was from these kinsmen she received her sharp upturned nose, pixie mouth, and mistrustful nature.

Dame Elizabeth Warde’s face was heart-shaped. A pale rose mouth always lay slightly ajar from the projection of rabbit-like teeth, and above that was a squat nose and gray-blue eyes, the color of gray horses in the rain. She was much older than either Cristabell or myself, and even, I suspected, the prioress.

When Elizabeth glanced in my direction I swiftly averted my eyes, angling my head toward the nard-rich aroma of our stalls.

What was at first frightening in its mystery and sanctity became comfortable by repetition. It was true: I only stepped out of one door and through another, giving up the servitude as a daughter for that of chaste “spouse.” I also discovered I was here at Blackladies for a noble purpose: to enrich my friendship with the Almighty, to feed my soul, to empty Isabella of herself. I did desire this. For with it, all the pain would be gone.

------

I jerked awake in the quire stall. Dame Cristabell jabbed her arm into my shoulder to make me rise with the others. It was back to bed until Prime.

I found it difficult laying my head on the pillow beside that of Cristabell’s night after night. Stiffly I lay abed, waiting for her to drift to sleep first before I could relax.

In the morning hours after the High Mass, when we were allowed recreation, she would eye me as I moved away from the study carrels to my own pursuit.

On the days that I scrubbed the hard cloister floor with a wide straw brush while on my knees, I could tell without looking up that Cristabell hovered in the shadows, watching me.
What is it about me
, I wondered,
that makes her so disagreeable? Was it my inexperience? My lack of education?
This latter seemed to plague all the nuns of Blackladies, for not one of them could read or understand Latin.

Sharing a bed night after night with Cristabell was no better than with my own sister Agnes, for the nun’s disapproval was just as weighty.

On the occasion of my second day at the convent—a month ago now—we four women sat together in the chapter house. My head was buzzing from weariness, for we rose so very early in the morning, I was unfamiliar with the chanted prayers, and I was desperately nervous of the others who did not warm to me. They sat in their stalls in the quire that first day while I sat apart. I understood that after I petitioned for admittance formally in Chapter that I, too, would be admitted to the quire.

“Isabella,” said the prioress in the chapter house, and my heart throbbed. I rose from my place and stepped before her, looking at the floor. “Kneel,” she whispered and I did so. She took my hands in hers and kissed my cheek. “Now prostrate yourself.”

She had told me of this earlier, and instructed me as to what I was to say, but in a panic, I suddenly forgot each of my replies!

“Dear daughter, what is it you are asking?”

And then the words formed in my head, and my white lips muttered them into the dust of the floor boards, “The mercy of God and yours.”

“What is that mercy that you ask?”

“To dwell in this place, to serve God, for the punishment of my sins, for amendment of my life, and finally for the salvation of my soul.”

“My daughter,” she replied. The others were quiet, save for coughing and the clearing of a throat. “This thing that you ask is hard, but to those whom God inspires He gives grace, will, and power to fulfill it. Stand stable in the purpose that you began. Listen carefully, for there are three things by which you must live: to forsake your own will and live under obedience to the prioress and the elders in the order. The second is willful poverty, taking nothing from your friends, neither gold nor silver nor jewels nor any other property, for if you hold such things without the knowledge of the prioress you shall forever stand cursed. Third: you must live chastely and take God as your spouse and forsake all lust and the liking of the flesh. You must take on abstinence and fasting; you must rise to the service of God when other men sleep; give prayer and devotion for to purchase grace. Say now before all the convent, what is your will?”

“The good purpose that I have taken I shall fulfill to my life’s end through the grace of God and your good wisdom.” To my life’s end. And why not? Though I said the words, I knew I did not have a longing for God as I should, for I still longed for earthly things. But I reckoned, perhaps naively, that I could come to long for Him, for I did indeed have till “my life’s end.”

The prioress blessed me, and then the other two prayed for me, and then we went to prayers in the little chapel.

But all the while, as the prioress spoke and I answered, my thoughts ran rampant like hounds on a hunt: Will I be good for You, Lord? Will I be able to serve You as I should? When I gazed into the prioress’ weary eyes when she spoke the rote words, I wondered if God would answer me swiftly, if I would hear His rumbling thunder, or if I would be struck down even there in the chapel. For the prioress said I must renounce all lust and give up my will, and I was not certain if such things were possible.

------

I gazed dazedly at the puddle of soapy water I had created on the cloister path. I dismissed that month-old event, and felt Cristabell’s eyes upon me with sharp annoyance. I thought I could maintain my silence and allow her whatever satisfaction she gathered by my seeming humility, but after what seemed like ages of quiet scrubbing, I could stand it no more. “Is there something you wish of me, Dame?” I said, raising my head.

My outburst did not seem to startle the shadow that lay in wait. Gradually, as if by her own thought, she emerged from the layers of dark, standing with her hands hidden under a frayed scapular. “I wish nothing of you, Mistress Launder.”

“The others call me Isabella,” I said. “Why will you not call me so?”

“I do not desire familiarity.”

At that, I set the brush down and angled my head up at her young face. Her cheek seemed as soft as powder within the confines of its wimple. I reckoned Cristabell was my own age, but she could easily be older. Within the boundaries of the cloister, the nuns appeared ageless, as if time stopped for them, like flowers pressed in a book. “But surely familiarity is expected of so small a house.”

“Yes,” she admitted, flicking her eyes away momentarily before piercing my gaze with her own bright green eyes. “But I see no reason in it when you will not be staying.”

“Not be staying?” Unfolding my legs I stood, standing taller than Cristabell. “Why would I not be staying? It is my sincerest desire to do so. I hope I am working toward the proper humility to be welcomed here.”

Something of a smirk teased the edge of Cristabell’s mouth. “You cry yourself to sleep.”

I clenched my teeth. “Why should that surprise you? Is this not a strange place to be a novice?”

“Only to those who do not wish to be here.”

“You enjoy your cruelty,” I said plainly, startling from her a look of surprise. “I am a frank woman, Dame Cristabell, and I always speak my mind.”

“Humility is what’s wanted here, Mistress.”

“I have seen little by way of humility here, Dame.”

“You think because you bring pouches of gold that we will conform to your will? Then I am glad of our poverty…if for nothing else than to protect us from the power of greed!”

“You know nothing of me, Cristabell. And I would tell you if only it would make a difference.”

“I will not be fooled by your innocent demeanor. You are no highborn lady.”

“And I never professed to be. Why do you mistrust me so?”

Cristabell maneuvered away from the puddle as if its reflection could contaminate. “Clearly you do not take this seriously, Mistress.”

I leaned against a chilled stone arch. I rubbed my reddened hands, chapped from wash water and morning cold. “I do take it all seriously,” I said to the floor. “You must help me, Dame, for I know not how to be a nun. I have only been a daughter and a poor sister to my own siblings. And I am a naïve woman. You must help me.”

Surprised wariness flickered in Cristabell’s eyes. “Help you? Seek your help in God.”

“But are you not my sister in Christ? May I not find help in you just as the holy apostles helped one another?”

“We are not apostles. Only women.” Cristabell turned, but I caught her arm.

“Surely it was difficult for you when you first came here. How…how long ago was that? Why did you come to Blackladies?”

Her brow lowered over her eyes. “You are too familiar for your own good, Mistress.” She pulled her arm free of me and moved down the cloister, disappearing behind a door.

I watched the bubbles form and pop along the edge of the puddle, and my mind wandered, drifting. Was it possible to seal the rift in my heart with God? I thought as much, for else why was I here?

To run from an arranged marriage by Sir John
, I admitted. But what was so wrong with marriage?

My toe nudged the puddle, touching off rings running to its outer edge. I inhaled Blackladies’ wet stone, its sweetly scented garden, and I felt its enclosing walls hover over me like a schoolmaster’s switch.

It was Thomas who stood in my way, of course. There was no use denying it. I could not see myself loving anyone but him. No one else but God.

I cleaned the rest of the floor before going to my other tasks. Each day became a new lesson in the worth of communal life. It seemed I was nothing but a chore to Cristabell, who made it her mission to correct my faults, making mention of them constantly at our daily chapter meetings. I kept to myself, as I was used to, for I never troubled myself with Robert’s acquaintances who were too rough for me, nor Agnes’ silly feminine pursuits and gossip. At home, I happily tended the garden and beehives alone, and so alone I did so at Blackladies.

“Good morning, Mistress,” greeted Meg Burre, our servant, as she did to me every morning. And every morning it startled me. I was used to solitude and the disregard of the nuns.

I nodded to her as I affixed my bee bonnet with its netting.

“Here, let me help you with that.” She straightened it, making certain the veil pooled over my shoulders. “My milking’s done. Shall I help you with the hives?”

Embarrassed for no reason I could fathom, I glanced swiftly at her in acknowledgement. With buckets and knives, we walked to the meadow near the mill pond where the woven domed skeps soon came into view mid the dying hogweed, nettles, and lavender. We smoked the tiny workers with a piece of smoldering linen wrapped around some straw inside a canister, and I lifted the woven skep while Meg pulled out the combs with a knife, and scraped the precious honey and beeswax into one of the buckets.