Chapter 11
The nuns awoke to shivering cold at dawn, their breath in white clouds about them as they hurriedly slipped their outer gowns on over the underdresses they had worn to bed, arranged wimples around their faces, and pinned veils into place with stiff and uncooperative fingers by what little light there was from the lamp kept burning through the night at the head of the stairs.
“She has to give us leave to change to our winter gowns,” Sister Amicia wailed from her sleeping cell. “We’ll all freeze before Allhallows if she doesn’t!”
Frevisse wondered if Sister Amicia would ever grasp, once and for all, that when they had elected Domina Alys prioress, they had given her the right not to have to do anything she did not want to do where the priory was concerned.
Hurried along by the chill, they were all dressed, even Sister Emma, and already going down the stairs in huddled haste, when the bell began to ring to Prime. The lamp threw their shadows past them, tangling the darkness as they went down the stairs, but their feet were too used to the way to be confused. In the cloister, dawn had only just begun to come, a softening at the edges of the dark. They passed along it in a whisper of skirts and soft-soled shoes and entered the deeper shadows of the church, where the altar light beyond the choir was the only brightness as they spread out to their places in the stalls.
They rustled and coughed and settled as Dame Perpetua lighted the rushlights set along the choir stalls’ railing with the small taper she had brought from the lamp by the dorter stairs and carried shielded behind her hand from the draft of her walking until now. As the soft golden light bloomed around them Frevisse found her place in her prayer book for Prime’s familiar beginning. She hardly needed the words in front of her anymore, the complex weave of prayers and daily changing psalms through the circle of the Church’s seasons had become so much a part of her, but the feel of the book was familiar and therefore comforting.
Now all they lacked was their prioress, but they were becoming used to her being late, both at midnight’s prayers and Prime, and Frevisse huddled down over her prayer book, trying to will her body to warmth and quietness instead of shivering while they waited. She wondered how it had gone with Joice last night. And despite her resolve not to think of it until it happened, she wondered how it would go with herself this morning.
She was afraid.
She faced that. She had done what would be seen as wrong and she was very certainly going to suffer for it. Whatever good she had meant by what she had done, she would have to endure the bad that was going to come from it. And not only endure but not let anger and defiance corrode her while she did.
Firmum est cor meum, Deus, firmum est cor meum. Firm is my heart, God, firm is my heart. Cantabo… Excitabo auroram… I will sing… I will rouse the dawn…
She loved the courage of Prime’s prayers. They promised that there had been days before this one and that there would be days after it, and if there was ill, there was also good, and that though the two were inextricably conjoined in this day, in every day, in all of life, it was not the good or ill that mattered but the firm heart that could turn to God and sing.
Today was only this one day. It was not all of her life. She would endure it. Firmum est cor meum, Deus. Firmus est cor meum.
A slump and thump and complaining murmur from Sister Cecely told she had not held firm against the pull of sleep. Someone laughed softly. Sister Cecely whispered, “It’s not fair, our being here in the cold and dark when she isn’t.” Dame Juliana whispered back, “Hush,” and there was quiet again.
Beyond the east window, the darkness was easing into the gray of gathering day as, with a rush and thrust of shadows and heavy footfalls, Domina Alys appeared from the darkness and mounted to the prioress’ stall, sat down, slapped her prayer book open, squinted at the page as if her eyes were not so awake as the rest of her, and said loudly, “Laus tibi, Domine.” Praise to you, Lord.
She sounded more as if she were ordering him to take it than humbly offering it and set a brisk pace afterward, but for once she passed over nothing and slurred very little, and because it was too early, too little light, for the masons to be at work, there were no interruptions. They reached the end with its closing prayer for the souls of the faithful departed. Domina Alys slapped her prayer book shut, rose to her feet, and led the way out of the church.
It was dawn light now and they could see as they crowded shivering at her heels that a heavy rime of frost lay along the stone of the low wall between the cloister walk and the garth, and that in the garth every leaf, petal, stem, the paths, and bare earth were crusted white, with Katerin’s footprints to the bell showing black where she had come and gone. It was the last small corner of summer ended, but Dame Juliana was the only one who paused to look and mourn a little over the year’s last-dead flowers. The rest of the nuns were too eager to be out of the cold.
The day had grown to full light in the short while it took to break their fast with warmed cider and bread. Frevisse was willing to draw out time then, but Father Henry set a cold-hastened pace through Mass, and then there was nothing left between her and chapter meeting but the brief walk from church to warming room. There the others crowded close to the fire, excepting Sister Thomasine, who went, as always, aside to the farthest stool and stood there with bowed heads and hands tucked in opposite sleeves, waiting. Frevisse hesitated and then went to stand by the stool nearest her in like pose if not in like quiet of mind. Sister Thomasine brought humility to everything she did, and in the corner of her mind not taut with apprehension of what was coming, Frevisse knew that if she were able to accept whatever punishment and penance Domina Alys chose to lay on her with humility anything near to Sister Thomasine’s, then the humiliation of it would not be able to touch her.
Domina Alys entered and took her place. Reluctantly leaving the fire, so did the other women. Father Henry came, made his familiar, dogged attack on the Latin and the lesson, and left. Now there was no more time to be ready, no more waiting to be lived through, as Domina Alys asked, according to form, “Are there any faults to be confessed or revealed here today?”
Frevisse, her eyes kept to the floor until then, raised her head to reply-and found Domina Alys looking at her, waiting with open satisfaction and anticipation.
It was the sight of the satisfaction that brought Frevisse to her feet, humiliation and fear forgotten. Confession was to be made with eyes humbly lowered, and Frevisse forced hers down when she was standing, but it was through a seethe of anger-all of this was happening because of Domina Alys and she dared sit there being pleased about it-that she forced out, “I sinned against your word yesterday by speaking to the man Benet in the cloister.”
An excited stir and rustle passed among the nuns. Frevisse raised her eyes to see Domina Alys nodding in satisfaction. So that was what she had been waiting to hear, or else to accuse her of if she had held silent. That meant she did not know the rest, and defiantly, with a satisfaction of her own, Frevisse went on, “More than that, yesterday morning I went alone, without permission and in neglect of my duties, to the outer yard to speak with Master Naylor.”
Domina Alys’ face gave away that she had not known that, and with rousing anger she leaned forward in her chair to demand, “What business did you have with Master Naylor after I’d dismissed him, Dame? What did you have to say to him?”