She had noted before now how often those who did ill despised those to whom they did it, being too cowardly to face the truth of their own actions.
If more people were willing to be as good and brave as small Edward had been today-were as willing to the truth as he had been-there would be far less hurt in the world, she thought sadly.
Of course he had hurt at doing what he did, but it was the brief hurt of pulling out a thorn, against the long hurt of leaving it in the flesh to rot.
It came to her then that in her thought-slowed pacing she had just passed Dame Thomasine for the second time, that Dame Thomasine was no longer walking, was simply standing at the low wall around the garth, looking across to Sister Cecely’s shut door. The door was almost gone from sight in the growing dusk, and even if there had been light, there was nothing to see there, not even someone sitting guard. For now the door was simply tied shut, because all the nuns were at the end of their day’s work, and all the cloister servants were at their end-of-day tasks. Whosever’s turn it was among the servants would come in a while with her bedding and settle across the door for the night, the door staying tied until morning, Sister Cecely alone behind it, no other company than her own thoughts through all the night hours. So from here in the walk there was nothing in particular to see, and Frevisse turned back to Dame Thomasine, stopped beside her, and asked quietly, “Dame, is aught amiss?”
The younger woman went on looking at the door, the smallest of frowns between her brows, and only after a long moment did she finally say, very low, still staring across at the door, “I’ve never wanted to be what she’s been. I’ve never had urge to give up everything to the desires of the flesh. I never have. Nor I don’t now. But I’m so…” She looked up at Frevisse with pleading eyes, as if confessing to a thing of shame. “I’m so tired.”
All unexpectedly Frevisse was reminded of a small child too worn out to know that what it needed was simply bed, and she took Dame Thomasine by the arm, turned her around, sat her down on the low wall there, sat beside her, and said gently, much the way she had spoken to Edward this afternoon, “Then rest a little.”
Dame Thomasine gave a small sigh, folded her hands in her lap, bowed her head, and seemed to shrink in on herself as she settled, huddling round-shouldered as if the weight of her habit were too much on her thin body.
After a moment of nothing else, only the cloister’s quiet, Frevisse said gently, finding the words as she went, “That you’re tired is no unlikely thing. You’ve burned with the fire of loving God for a good many years now. Have lived more fully in that love than anyone I’ve ever known. It would be no surprise if you’ve burned yourself away to nearly nothing inside your poor body.”
She did not know from where that thought had come. Dame Thomasine’s holiness was so much a part of St. Frideswide’s life that for a long time there had been small reason to think about it. It simply was, the way their whole pattern of life here was, without deep need to wonder about it. In truth, that someone as holy as Dame Thomasine lived there among them was even, perhaps, a small, secret source of pride to some. What that holiness might be doing to Dame Thomasine had never been a matter for thought. Except once, a long time ago, Domina Edith had said something about it, hadn’t she? But Frevisse did not remember what. Whatever comfort she could give Dame Thomasine had to come from what she could think herself, and she said, “You haven’t been kind to your body, you know.”
Dame Thomasine made a small shake of her head, refusing that.
“No,” said Frevisse, refusing in her turn. “Consider our poor bodies. They go through our lives burdened with all the necessities and longings of flesh, and then at the end, when our souls go free, the poor body goes into the ground to rot away.”
“Resurrection comes,” Dame Thomasine murmured, meaning the rising of all bodies from their graves when time’s end came.
“Yes,” Frevisse agreed. “But however that wonder is worked when Judgment Day comes, in the meantime our bodies rot. Whether they have served us well or ill in life, no matter if they’ve been indulged”-she gave a glance at Sister Cecely’s door-“or been denied, the soul goes free and they decay. And yet our bodies are God’s gift to us. Shouldn’t we treat them with at least a little pity, with a little kindness, in what little time they have to be alive? Not drive them early to the grave where, when all is said and done, they may be for a very long time?”
Dame Thomasine lifted her head, turned her face toward Frevisse, slightly frowning. That told that she had at least heard what Frevisse was saying, was even considering it, and very gently Frevisse went on, “You’re tired. Not in your soul, surely, but in your body. Have pity on it. Kind care for it isn’t sin or weakness. Be a little kind to yours.”
Dame Thomasine began another small, denying shake of her head, and with a sudden sternness that surprised herself, Frevisse said, “Our flesh is the vessel that carries the fire of God’s love. You have no right to break your body, either on purpose or through plain carelessness.” She softened her voice again. “Think on that, Dame Thomasine.”
The warming room’s door opened, letting out a momentary yellow lamplight with the shapes of nuns briefly black against it as they came from the room, before someone put out the lamp and there was only soft blue twilight in the cloister. Much of the year Compline was said simply in the warming room, but during Holy and Easter Weeks, in honor of the especially holy time, the nuns returned to the church for it each evening, and Dame Thomasine and Frevisse rose together from the wall to join the others going there, Frevisse both glad for reason to end her talk at Dame Thomasine and wondering if she had done any good at all.
She was surprised by how easily and well she slept, even with the folded pieces of parchment tucked between the mattress and the wooden edge of the bed. She left them there when she rose in the night for Matins and Lauds, but put them again into her sleeve when she rose for Prime, beginning the new day. They would soon become her guilty secret, she thought, if she did not give them to Domina Elisabeth at the first reasonable chance this morning.
It seemed, though, that she was going to be denied a reasonable chance. Domina Elisabeth had come to Matins and Lauds and she came to Prime, but after Prime she went again to her rooms, so that her nuns breakfasted without her, nor did she come to Mass, and when time came for the morning’s chapter meeting, she sent word by a servant that Dame Claire should take her place.
The nuns, already gathered in the warming room, all looked at one another, confused and uncertain. She was not ill, or she would have asked for Dame Claire to come to her, not given chapter over to her, and Dame Perpetua said aloud the question showing on the faces of most of them. “What’s amiss with her? This can’t all be Sister Cecely.” She looked directly at Dame Margrett who had been in the parlor so much yesterday. “What else is amiss?”
Looking miserable, Dame Margrett shook her head, refusing any other answer at all, which told she had been ordered to silence about whatever she had heard. “Dame Johane?” Dame Perpetua demanded, but Dame Johane shook her head against answering, too, leaving everyone unsatisfied, and chapter that morning was a shambling thing. Father Henry gave the blessing on it as usual, but quickly and not as if his mind was altogether there for it. As he left, Dame Amicia whispered that he had come from his time with Abbot Gilberd and Domina Elisabeth yesterday afternoon looking troubled. “Just as troubled as he still looks. Whatever it is, it’s not getting better,” she said.
Dame Claire uneasily took up the reading of today’s chapter of the Rule, but afterward no one had much heart for reporting on their duties or confessing any faults, nor did Dame Claire show much desire to hear them. Chapter meetings were a kind of anchor in each day. As the Offices were the nuns’ link to heaven, chapter meetings were their link to the world. The one with the other kept a balance between the two sides of their lives. Now that balance was wavering, and so were they, and so did Frevisse’s certainty that she must give the deeds and bill to Domina Elisabeth.