Frevisse stopped a few yards behind the two of them, looked at Sister Cecely who had finally raised her head, and pointed at the floor. Sister Cecely opened her mouth toward saying something, then must have understood that Frevisse was keeping silence here and so should she, because she closed her mouth and knelt where Frevisse had pointed. Frevisse watched while she settled back on her heels, grasped her hands together, and stiffly bowed her head over them. It was all the outward seeming of prayer, and all Frevisse could presently do was hope it went deeper than seeming.
They had not even let her dry her cloak, Cecely thought bitterly. They could at least have let her dry her cloak and warm herself before putting her here. Was Domina Elisabeth hoping she would die of cold and lung sickness? If that was what the woman wanted, she would have to go on wanting it, because Cecely did not intend to oblige her.
But, lord, try though she had through the years to forget this place, everything about it was just and too much the way she remembered it, and with its familiarity her old sick outrage at it all was come back on her. She had not known how terrible it would be to come into the cloister again, to pass through that doorway into that low, dark passage, knowing what was at its end-the church and cloister buildings closed in their tight square around the square cloister walk around the square cloister garth that was the only place there was to see the sky in here, except for narrow glimpses through little slits of windows high in walls in one cold, bare room or another. Yes, there were the garden and the orchard where the nuns could sometimes walk, but only with permission, and no nun ever supposed to go beyond them, so nowhere to go from them but back into the cloister. How did these women endure it year after year, their lives withering away?
How was she going to endure it?
Heaven was said to be changeless, but why would anyone want to live their lives that way, the way these women did? Oh, certainly she knew how it was supposed to be: better to live in Hell on Earth so you could live for Eternity in Heaven. But the priests insisted that repentance and the last rites washed the soul clean at the moment of death, so what was the point of all this misery while alive?
Certain Dame Frevisse had truly gone, was not spying on her from behind, Cecely unclasped her hands and, moving carefully so the nuns in front of her would not know what she was doing, made a pad of her cloak’s long hem under her knees that were already beginning to ache on the unforgiving stone floor. She had to ease them, even at risk of “disturbing” the nun and the novice so they tattled to Domina Elisabeth. She remembered how she and Johane had been good at tattling on other nuns. Until lately it had been years since she had thought of Johane. The two of them had been sent to become nuns here because their aunt had then been prioress, and while their aunt was prioress they had made the best they could of the bad business. Only when Domina Elisabeth took her place had everything become past bearing.
Then Guy had come.
Dame Perpetua had been teaching her the hosteler’s duties that summer. Tedious though the lessons had been, they had at least taken her out of the cloister every day, and that was how she met him. Guy Rowcliffe. Tall and well-featured. Carrying himself like a young prince among the general dross of travelers that sometimes claimed Benedictine hospitality for a night or two.
Because his horse had picked up a stone in its hoof and lamed itself a little, he had stayed three nights, and that had made all the difference in what had happened then. Afterward, she knew that he had caught her heart from the first moment she saw him, but at the time all she had wanted was more chance to look at him and so she had found reasons to go to the guesthall without Dame Perpetua. Then seeing him had not been enough. She had needed to talk with him. Just to talk-that was all she had meant to do. Have him look at her, see her-see her instead of a blank nothing in nun’s clothing.
So she had watched for her chance and it had come on his second morning there, when she had come on him sitting idly in the sunlight on the guesthall steps, watching the doves strut and flutter around the well across the yard. It had been bold of her to speak to him when no one else was there, but she had found he was as willing to talk as she was. More than that, they had talked again later in the day, when she made another reason to be out of the cloister. That had been when they planned for a true time alone together, and when the hour came for recreation, between supper and Compline, she had told the other nuns she would spend the time in the church. She had not said “in prayer” but of course that had been what they thought, making her laugh to herself while she refused Johane’s offer to come with her. They were cousins, but she had not been about to trust Johane with her secret. It was only a little secret. She had meant to keep it all to herself for the little while she would have it.
That God was not against her having this little pleasure was assured when even dreary Sister Thomasine had gone to the garden with the others. With the church to themselves, she and Guy had talked in a shadowed corner, worried every moment that someone would come in, would see them, and truly she had meant only to talk. She would give oath even today that that was all she had meant to do. But somehow talk had become not enough. She had wanted to touch Guy and she had. Had laid her hand on his arm. Very lightly. That was all. Then he had touched her. Had just laid his warm fingers against her cheek. That was all. But it was the first time a man had touched her since she had taken her nun-vows, and fire like she had never known had blazed up hot and fierce in her, and she had wanted more than his touch on her cheek and had found the same blaze of desire was in him, too, and when he rode away from St. Frideswide’s the next morning, she had gone with him.
Not openly, of course, but quietly, between Tierce and Sext. Had gone by the back path along the garden and into the orchard instead of to the kitchen to cut vegetables for the nuns’ midday dinner, and in the orchard she had bundled her skirts to her knees and gone over the earthen bank around the orchard. After that had been the most perilous part, because anyone seeing her would have known she should not be where she was. But Guy had been waiting, and no one saw them. He had put his cloak around her to hide her nun’s habit and lifted her up behind his saddle and ridden away with her.
They had ridden a long way that day, avoiding anywhere they might be seen and remembered if there was hunt for her afterward. Only that night, blessed miles away from cloister walls, on the grass in the shelter of a hedge, had they finally, fully made love for the first time, and the joy of giving way to her desire and his had been everything and more than she had ever dreamed of. It was as if all the dross of her nunnery days fell away from her like a dirty gown that she had never meant to put on again.