“You can talk with Benet, surely,” Lady Eleanor said. “You’ve done it easily enough this morning and again this afternoon.”
“Not easily!”
“But more easily than you could face what might happen to you if you don’t!” Frevisse said back at her.
Joice, mouth open for more angry words, stopped, disconcerted into thinking; and when she had, she drew a deep, unsteady breath and said softly, “Your prioress wants me to marry him, doesn’t she? And I’m safe here only so long as she keeps me safe, aren’t I?”
She was, but admitting to it would be of small use just now, and Frevisse said evenly, believing it, “She won’t let you be forced to anything.”
“I’m being forced to be there tonight!”
“She’s giving you more chance to come around to Benet of your own will,” Lady Eleanor said gently. “That’s all this is. That’s all she’s trying to do.”
The trouble was that Domina Alys’ ways of trying were never subtle, and neither was Joice’s temper. If they came openly up against each, with Domina Alys’ only answer to anger being more anger…
Frevisse did not want to think of it.
From where she stood beside the window, looking down into the yard, Margrete said, “Sir Hugh is coming into the cloister.”
“To here or Alys?” Lady Eleanor said. “Adela, see.”
Lady Adela quickly set the dog on the bed and went out to the head of the stairs as Joice rose sharply to her feet, declaring, “I don’t want to see anyone!”
“If he’s coming here, you have small choice,” Lady Eleanor said evenly. “Adela?”
Lady Adela limped excitedly back into the room, shutting the door. “He’s gone past Domina Alys’ stairs. Sister Johane is bringing him here!”
Joice started another protest. Frevisse did not wait for it but took her by the arm across to the bed and sat her down on its edge, ordering her, “Stop playing the fool and play with the dog. Lady Adela, come, too. Lady Eleanor, is he likely to be coming to see Mistress Joice?”
“No,” Lady Eleanor said mildly. She had not stirred. “He’s likely coming to see me. Margrete.”
Margrete had already crossed to the door and at her lady’s word opened it to Sir Hugh just as he reached it, Sister Johane apparently left at the foot of the stairs. Smiling at him, Margrete stood aside, curtsying to him as he entered. At Frevisse’s prod, Joice rose, the dog in her arms, to join Frevisse in curtsy to him, too, while Lady Adela merely bent her head toward him, as a lord’s daughter needing to do no more. Sir Hugh returned their courtesies with a bow of his own and, “My ladies,” before turning to Lady Eleanor with another bow. The dog that had been curled on her skirts came scampering to sniff at his boots, and Sir Hugh scooped him up, saying, “Furry rat,” as the dog writhed around happily in his hold, trying to lick at his chin, then letting himself be stroked down into the crook of Sir Hugh’s arm as if it were a thing they were both used to. Sir Hugh turned back to Frevisse.
“Before anything else, my lady,” he said, “my apology for what happened in the yard with the madman. The men were in the wrong of it.”
Inwardly surprised that he either knew of it or cared, Frevisse answered back with outward graciousness, “Worse might have come of it than did. Thank you.”
“He took no harm?”
“Fright was the worst of it, I think. He’s being fed and then he’ll be seen away from here.”
“That’s likely for the best.”
“Yes.”
Sir Hugh bent his head to her, and to Joice and Lady Adela for good measure, and with the dog now nestled contentedly into the crook of his elbow, crossed to Lady Eleanor with, “And how is it with you, my lady mother?”
Joice, the other dog clutched to her as tightly as she had held to good manners while Sir Hugh was facing her, gasped and looked disbelievingly at Frevisse. “His mother? Lady Eleanor is his mother?” she whispered.
Frevisse’s surprise was as great, though she was trying to hide it better. Lady Eleanor had never mentioned that Sir Hugh was her son. But then-the realization startled her-she was not even sure how many children Lady Eleanor had, let be the names of any of them. There were sons and at least one daughter, but that was all she was sure of. How had she talked with Lady Eleanor so often and not learned more than that? By never asking questions, she realized. Because it had not interested her. What sort of friendship had she been giving Lady Eleanor, not to care about what must matter very much to her?
It was equally disconcerting to have Lady Adela say easily, “He’s the third son. There’s Sir Geoffrey, who inherited, and then John, who’s in Abingdon Abbey. Sir Hugh has just the one manor and it’s small and he hasn’t managed any marriage yet, but now that he has Lady Eleanor’s dower manor, too, because she’s here, she hopes he’ll be able to marry after all.”
“How do you know all this?” Frevisse asked.
Lady Adela gave her a slightly cross look, as if wondering how she could be so stupid. “Lady Eleanor tells me.”
“When?”
“When we talk.” Lady Adela said it with an impatient undertone that told she was rapidly losing faith in Frevisse’s ability to grasp the obvious.
And it was obvious. Or should have been. She knew that Lady Eleanor and Lady Adela kept company when Dame Perpetua was done with the girl. “It will be good for both of us,” Lady Eleanor had said when she first came. Dame Perpetua had been pleased because it meant Lady Adela would not be so much alone or in the company of only servants. Beyond that, Frevisse had given the matter no particular thought. No more thought than it seemed she had spent on Lady Eleanor, to know so little about her.
Lady Adela, busy with either trying to take out a tangle in the white plumed tail of the dog Joke still held or else to put one in, was going on, “There are two daughters, too. Katherine and Elizabeth.” She looked up at Frevisse. “Lady Eleanor says she never talks to you about them because it seems unkind to talk much about children to someone who won’t ever have any of her own.”
That was an aspect of it so far from Frevisse’s mind that she had no answer for it at all except a startled stare. It was Joice who said abruptly, following another thought altogether, “If that’s how it is, she may not be so much trying to protect me from Benet as hoping to bring me around to marrying Sir Hugh!”
Lady Adela brightened at that. “Then I could marry Benet!”
“You’d want to?” Joice asked disbelievingly.
Lady Adela nodded. “He’s almost handsome. And I think he’s brave. And…”
“Then you can have him,” Joice said fiercely.
The bell began to ring to Vespers. Frevisse stood up in haste, more grateful than graceful, then paused to lay a hand on Joice’s arm and say quietly but forcefully when the girl looked up at her, “It doesn’t matter who wants what for you. Keep going at what you’ve started. Play it out. It’s your safest way.”
Joice hesitated, verging on rebellion before finally her chin came up and she said in defiance of seemingly everyone, “I’ll even go tonight as if I wanted to and let them think they’re winning.”
Margrete was still at the door and opened it as Frevisse moved to leave. Frevisse nodded thanks as she went out, but from beyond it, in the moment of Margrete shutting it after her, looked back at Lady Eleanor and Sir Hugh across the room. Deep in talk with one another, they had not noticed her going. They were leaned toward each other, small outward resemblance between them and yet a familiarity in her hand on his knee, his nod to whatever she was saying, the way their eyes held, that Frevisse hoped would have told her something more about who they were to each other if she had seen them together like this before.
Or did she see it now only because she knew?
The door closed and she turned to answer the bell’s calling, but the thought of her own willed ignorance went with her, shaming and discomfiting her. She had chosen, when she chose to be a nun, the enclosed life that was meant to go with her vows, but the enclosure was supposed to be of the body, not of the mind or heart. What else of things around her had she not bothered to notice, to know?