Yet here she was, and despite she had thought she was braced and ready for the sudden shrinking of the world into this little place where everything was walls, she was finding more and more by every moment that she was not ready after all. Was not ready at all.
Chapter 4
The rule of silence that had held when Frevisse first came to St. Frideswide’s had slipped from use over the years. The quiet she had so valued was now only sometimes part of nunnery life, but should have been most especially part of this week, when Lent’s solemnity and silence should be deepening toward the darkness of Good Friday and Holy Saturday, the better to be ready for Easter Sunday’s joy.
Instead, in these few hours that Sister Cecely had been here, the cloister was a-seethe with talk among the nuns and the servants, too, and if Frevisse had been so simple as to think the news of an apostate nun’s return might not spread beyond the cloister walls, she would have lost that thought when she went to the guesthall in the afternoon. Every Benedictine house was required by the Rule to receive and care for anyone who asked for shelter. Since Frevisse was presently hosteler, the guesthall was her duty, taking her in mornings and late afternoons out of the cloister and across the courtyard, this afternoon to make sure all was well for such guests as were already there and whatever travelers might still come before the day’s early, rainy dark set in.
Because the office of hosteler went turnabout among the nuns, in many ways it was old Ela, a guesthall servant longer than Frevisse had been in St. Frideswide’s, who knew best how things were there. Over the years she had risen to be head of the guesthall servants until, in her increasing age, she had been allowed to let go her duties and settle into ease, expected by everyone to live out her days in the nunnery’s care there in the guesthall. For now, though, the guesthall was hers again while the woman who had taken her place was healing at a daughter’s house in the village from a broken leg got in a fall on an icy step in mid-Lent, and because it was not old Ela’s wits but her body-bent-backed and shuffling-that was worn out, Frevisse was ready for Ela’s sharp question at her, “It’s true then, is it? Sister Cecely’s come back after all this while and brought a child with her?”
“It’s true,” Frevisse granted. “How far has the talk gone, do you know?”
“If it’s not gone to the village already, it’ll be there with such as go home to supper.” The village of Prior Byfield being only a quarter mile away, there were nunnery servants who went daily back and forth rather than nighting at the nunnery. They also went visiting relatives in neighboring villages and some went to the weekly market in Banbury. Scandal being scandal no matter how old it was, Frevisse supposed word of Sister Cecely’s return would spread until it thinned away among folk who knew neither St. Frideswide’s nor anyone here. Or until a better scandal overtook it.
Her back so bent, she had to cock her head sideways to look up at Frevisse, Ela said, “Master Naylor,” the nunnery’s steward, “has told Peter to ready himself to ride to Abbot Gilberd with whatever message Domina Elisabeth sends. Not today surely? There’s no point in risking him and a horse this late in a bad day, I’d say.”
“I doubt she’ll send before morning,” Frevisse said. “Weather and roads are all so bad, it will likely be a three-day ride to Northampton no matter when he leaves.”
“He’ll be glad to hear it’s not today, anyway.”
“I’m not saying that’s how it will be,” Frevisse said quickly. “I’m only guessing.”
“You’re good at guessing,” Ela said. “She’s not gone all fretful and foolish at this then? Domina Elisabeth?”
“Of course she hasn’t,” Frevisse said. Domina Elisabeth was-had always been-a steady woman. Why would Ela think she would not be now?
But Ela nodded as if pleased over something that had been worrying her and said, “That’s to the good. Best there be a few calm heads when the henhouse goes into a flutter.”
Quellingly, Frevisse said, “Ela.”
“I’m only saying.” She slipped back to business. “Mistress Turnbull and Mistress Wise came in an hour ago.”
They were two widows from near Oxford, who had taken to coming twice a year to St. Frideswide’s-at Eastertide in the spring and at All Hallows in the autumn-to make their devotions, with dispensation to make their Lent’s-end confessions to Father Henry, the priory’s priest and Mistress Wise’s nephew. They were kindly ladies who never made trouble for either the nuns or guesthall servants and always brought a ham in the spring and two fat Michaelmas geese in the autumn as guest-gifts to the nunnery, and Frevisse was pleased to hear they were safely here.
“There’s Mistress Lawsell come, too,” Ela went on. “With her daughter. She sent word ahead, remember.”
“The one who hopes her daughter will be a nun,” Frevisse said.
“That’s the one, aye.”
The woman’s letter had come last week, along with a gift of pickled salmon that had made a feast of Palm Sunday’s meal. It had been perhaps too fine a food for Lent, but Domina Elisabeth had ruled it would have been ungrateful to both God and Mistress Lawsell to dishonor such a gift, the more so since Mistress Lawsell was bringing her daughter to St. Frideswide’s for Easter’s high holy days in the hope of stirring the girl’s devotion, and God knew that the priory could do with another novice. Since Dame Emma’s death at Shrovetide, they were a house of only nine now, and that was counting Sister Helen who had not yet taken her vows.
Their need, though, did not mean they would take whoever came, and Frevisse asked, “Have you seen enough of the girl to think anything about her?”
Ela sniffed a little. “All I can tell of her so far is she looks healthy enough, nor she wasn’t making moan over the weather and hard riding.”
That was something, anyway, Frevisse thought. Larger, better-endowed nunneries might be able to take on the burden of nuns unfit to bear a full share of nunnery duties, but St. Frideswide’s was too small, was too constantly near the edge of poverty to be taking on off-casts whose families could find no other use for them.
“Not that there’s much would count against her if her family offered enough to make Domina Elisabeth think it worth the while of having her,” Ela said glumly, her own thoughts clearly going somewhat the same way as Frevisse’s but not so favorably.
Because in a small, disquieting corner of her own mind she too fully understood Ela’s doubt, Frevisse asked briskly, as if she had not heard her, “What of little Powlyn? How does he?”
Ela brightened. “Better than when he came, that’s certain. His parents have begun to smile sometimes.”
They were a young couple who had come five days ago from Banbury, carrying their only child who had been sick most of the winter, they said, with a harsh cough that was not easing though spring was come. Unable to afford a long pilgrimage, even so far as St. Frideswide’s great shrine and church in Oxford, they had brought their child and their prayers to here, into Dame Claire’s and Dame Johane’s care. To the good, it now seemed.
“Dame Claire has told them they must stay through Easter,” Ela said, and added with a look at Frevisse as if it were her fault, “That means we’ve seven people to see to and feed tonight and for at least these four days to come. Let be what others may come that the weather has held up. Or are just slow.” Years of seeing to guests had not given Ela a high opinion of mankind.
All mischievous piety, knowing what Ela would answer, Frevisse said, “We’ll simply have to pray that God will provide. Remember the loaves and fishes.”
“Which is more than we’ll have left by Monday if God doesn’t provide,” Ela returned.