“Don’t I?” she challenged.
“That I…that Symond was…that I…” He still could not find the words and finally settled for, “No!”
“There’s good chance someone sickened him of a purpose, yes,” Frevisse said steadily. “And Master Breredon before him.”
“No!”
Believing him more with every protest he made, she relented enough to point out, “Better than that there be disease spreading among you all.”
“Yes,” he said uncertainly. “Maybe.”
“But better yet that no one knows the truth while we’re still trying to learn who did it.”
“Yes,” he agreed again, still doubtful.
“So you won’t say anything about it, even to your father,” she ordered. “Not before I’ve talked with Symond.”
Jack nodded slow agreement to that, too, before asking, “But if it’s tried again?”
“After two failures? I think they’ll be careful for a time.”
She prayed so, anyway-there being nothing else she could do about it for now.
Jack looked past her, toward Elianor, she supposed. Firmly gentle, she said, “She means to become a nun.”
Jack’s gaze snapped back to her. “Oh. But…her mother…”
“Is on the hunt for a husband for her. To her mother, you are no more than prey.”
That way of looking at it had plainly never crossed his mind before. At the change in his face as the thought took hold on him, Frevisse had to hold back a smile while ordering quietly, “Go back to the guesthall now.”
He bowed and went. She waited until he would have reached there and been there for a few minutes before she went herself for her end-of-day visit, to be sure all was as well there as it might be.
Thankfully, it was. At Mistress Lawsell’s inquiry after Elianor, she murmured that she had left her in prayer in the church; and when Mistress Lawsell showed sign of alarm and intent to go there to fetch her out, Frevisse said that the church was chill and damp and Elianor surely uncomfortable by now and she meant to go herself to send Elianor back to the guesthall.
That Elianor would be uncomfortable in the church satisfied Mistress Lawsell into leaving her daughter to Frevisse, and finished in the guesthall, Frevisse did return to the church, into the choir to Elianor kneeling at the foot of the two steps up to the altar. The girl’s hands were clasped, her eyes lifted to the cross, and she did not stir until Frevisse laid a hand on her shoulder and said, “Best you go now.”
Elianor looked up at her, blinking somewhat dazedly. Frevisse knew the feeling of coming back from some far place. It came from being deep into prayer, well beyond the bonds and boundaries of the world, and she waited patiently while the girl gathered herself back to here, to now, and stood up shakily, to make a deep curtsy to the altar and a lesser one to Frevisse before going slowly, silently away.
Frevisse herself went to her seat in the choir and sat gratefully down, there being small point in going elsewhere; the bell would surely soon ring for Vespers. She thought briefly of how Elianor’s deep quiet after prayer was a better sign toward nunhood than her high excitement had been. Then she let go of that thought and all others, not even trying to pray but simply sitting in stillness, giving both her mind and body respite from the need to think and the need to do, if only for this little, little while.
Chapter 23
Domina Elisabeth came to Vespers but kept her head deeply bowed through the Office, and since the fading light of the overcast day was not yet thickened enough for the expense of candles, Frevisse had no chance to see if she bore the marks of tears until the Office was done. Only while Domina Elisabeth gave them her blessing at the end did Frevisse see that, yes, her eyes had the red rims of much crying and her face the tired sag of someone lately gone through a hard and wearying time.
What had been passing between her and her brother? Surely he had not spent the time scolding her over Sister Cecely? The time for that had been when Sister Cecely first fled. If anyone was to be scolded now, surely it was Sister Cecely.
Domina Elisabeth left them again after Vespers, returning to her rooms for supper to be taken up to her on a tray. This was no more her usual way than the rest of the day had been, and midway through her own supper the terrible thought came to Frevisse that perhaps Abbot Gilberd wanted to leave Sister Cecely here, for them to see to her punishment, and that Domina Elisabeth had been pleading against it, had gone even to the point of quarreling with him and, having lost, could not yet face her nuns with the ill news. The possibility of a quarrel between their prioress and their abbot was less frightening than the chance that Sister Cecely might become part of their life here again, and as supper finished, Frevisse tried to put the thought of it from her.
Although the rain was stopped, the evening was not an appealing one for spending the hour of recreation in the garden. Most of the nuns left the refectory for the warming room, but Frevisse did not join them. Her day had been very long, and last night very short of sleep. She would happily have said Compline right then and gone straight to her bed, yet she could not bring herself to quiet sitting in the warming room, instead chose to pace the square of the roofed cloister walk. She had spent many an hour of recreation walking there, often in easy talk with Dame Claire, often simply by herself. Its familiarity and quiet could be a balm on troubled thoughts or to a trying day’s weariness. This evening, though, it was a cheerless place, with twilight heavy under the cloud-thick sky, and the closed door to what was become Sister Cecely’s cell a too constant reminder of what Frevisse wanted not to think about for a time. Nor did Dame Claire join her. Instead it was Dame Thomasine likewise slowly pacing around the cloister walk, her head bowed as usual, her hands folded into her opposite sleeves just as Frevisse’s hands were into her own sleeves. But whereas Dame Thomasine was probably so far into prayers as barely to know anyone else was there, Frevisse was all too aware of the folded parchments still in her undergown’s left sleeve.
She did not know how much Mistress Petham had weighted her words toward making Edward give up the deeds and bill. When she told him he could keep his secret, she had maybe been even-worded, but equally she might have made it plain, under the words, what she thought he ought to do and thereby forced him to it. Still, he had given his own reason for doing it, Frevisse remembered. He had said his father had told him people should be good, and he had understood he should not have the parchments. So even if Mistress Petham had brought him to give them up, he had known why he should and, in the end, had done it willingly, Frevisse thought. Willingly and bravely.
Why did it have to take so much courage to do what was right?
Why was it that the ill-doers and liars seemed able to do wrong so much more easily, while those who did well and right seemed so often to have to fight themselves to do it? It was the ill-doers who should need the greater courage, going so far aside as they did from what was right. Yet they mostly seemed to do it with such ease.
It had been fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that Eve and Adam had eaten. Before then there had been no choice between right and wrong. There had been simply being. Frevisse found it difficult to imagine what life would be if it were simply being, living sure in the love of God without need of all the choices that knowledge had brought on mankind.
Maybe it was laziness that let people do wrong rather than right. Ignorance was easier than knowledge, and so they did not trouble themselves with knowledge of right and wrong, of good and ill, but simply settled for doing whatever came easiest to them in the moment, while despising anyone who tried to live for more than easy greed and shallow pride and momentary pleasures.