And it would be like that from now on, Frevisse thought bitterly. Maybe no one but Domina Alys would strike at her, but neither would anyone approach her, now or any other time through the days to come. They would avoid her out of fear of Domina Alys’ displeasure turning on them as fiercely as it had turned on her, leaving her almost as isolated as if locked away into a room.
As sick with that thought as from the whipping, she gathered her will to face the pain of rising to her feet again. But as she started to rise hands took her under each elbow, helping her. Startled into sudden movement and then wincing from the pain of it, she looked to find Sister Thomasine holding her on one side, Dame Claire on the other. Carefully they helped her to her feet and made sure she was steady before they let her go. Then Sister Thomasine simply-the way that she did everything: prayers and duties and dangerous kindnesses, Frevisse thought-bent her head, tucked her hands into her sleeves, and went away.
Dame Claire, with an expression of rigorous disapproval on her face but not, Frevisse hoped, for her, said, “You’d best come to the infirmary now. I have an ointment that will help your back.”
Frevisse shook her head. “I have to see to the guest halls.” She looked around. Sister Amicia was standing at the corner of the cloister, nervously shifting from foot to foot, waiting for her.
“They’ll keep,” Dame Claire said briskly, taking her by the arm again. “You need to have your back seen to.”
Frevisse pulled free of her hold. Her precariously begun acceptance of her pain and of what she still had to face was already unbalanced by Dame Claire and Sister Thomasine’s unexpected kindness. More kindness might undo her completely, and that she could not afford. If once she gave way, if once she began to bend out of the pride that was keeping her upright and moving, she might collapse into her misery, might break as completely as Domina Alys wanted her to, and so she said, abruptly and ungraciously, “No. Not now. I have to go,” and turned her back on Dame Claire’s protest, refusing to hear it. She passed Sister Amicia without speaking or looking at her but knew she turned and followed her as behind them Dame Claire said quietly, “When you’re ready, then.”
The pain in her back and the effort to hide it made it difficult to concentrate on telling Sister Amicia even the simplest things she would need to know and deal with as hosteler. Frevisse had small hope that good would come of Domina Alys’ choice. Sister Amicia had never shown strong inclination toward anything but talk and finding reasons to leave the priory on visits to her family. While Domina Edith was prioress, she’d had small indulgence in either, but things had bettered for her under Domina Alys. Silence in the priory no longer burdened her and she had managed to go home twice a year the past two years-and been late by a day or more in returning to St. Frideswide’s each time.
Frevisse also saw, with a weary premonition of trouble, how often sister Amicia followed with her eyes, though careful not to turn her head, men as they passed by.
She also noticed how often some men managed to return that notice.
What surprised her was that Sister Amicia seemed actually to hear what she was being told. Once she even asked a sensible question, about how count of the linens was kept. Ela, who at Frevisse’s request had been explaining the linen press to her in the unemotioned monotone Ela saved for people with whom she did not want to deal, fixed her with a considering look, answered her, and went on with slightly less constraint.
It was better when after their breakfast Sir Reynold and his men, dressed and armed for riding, left, taking their noise and insolence with them to the outer yard and presumably away. With fewer men around, mostly servants who knew better than to be in Frevisse’s way, Sister Amicia’s concentration was marginally better, but by then Frevisse was near the end of what she could endure for now. She only barely managed to keep on until the bell began for Tierce, and when she heard it, stopped in mid-sentence a detailing of when and how the hall rushes were changed, to say, “Enough. We’ll do more after Sext,” hoping that by then she might have found a way to cope with her back’s aching and the rest of the day.
As they crossed the yard back to the cloister, Benet overtook them, went past them to reach the door ahead of them and hold it open with a smile. In her surprise at seeing him and with bitter remembrance that there was no injunction against speaking to him outside the cloister, Frevisse said, “You didn’t go with Sir Reynold, then.”
Benet smiled, rueful. “He thought I might profit more by staying here and seeing Mistress Joice again. It went so well last night, you see.” He was reddening. “With Joice.”
Bound up in her own worry, Frevisse had hardly thought of Joice since yesterday, but it seemed the girl must have carried the evening through. With a pang for Benet, she brought herself to ask, “You have hope, then?”
Benet’s expression mixed a number of things, none of them very clear except, at the end, uncertainty. “I don’t know,” he said lamely.
Sister Amicia, more than willing to stand there talking than go in to Tierce, chimed in, “At least Lady Adela favors you. She talks about you to everyone.”
Visibly embarrassed, Benet said, “I know. Joice told me.”
“And Lady Adela is telling everyone else,” Sister Amicia assured him cheerfully.
“We’ll be late,” said Frevisse, partly out of pity for Benet but mostly because what interested her most just now was the coming chance to sit down in the shelter of her choir stall; and she went on into the cloister, Sister Amicia following her, leaving Benet to go his own way.
Neither her choir stall nor Tierce’s prayers were the refuge she had hoped for. The pain had subsided into a pervasive ache, deep and ready to rouse to pain again if she moved incautiously. That and awareness of the other nuns’ constant looks and sidelong glances toward her through much of the office kept her from losing herself in the prayers and psalms as she had hoped to do. And when, at the end, she went to lie down outside the door, she found her back had stiffened enough there was no way to lie down either gracefully or without pain, nor an easy way to rise when everyone had gone past her. Domina Alys was again the only one to strike her, and again Sister Thomasine was there at the end to help her up, but Dame Claire was not. Illogically angry at her for going on and at Sister Thomasine for waiting, angry, too, at her body for its treachery in stiffening and, more logically at Domina Alys for everything, Frevisse accepted Sister Thomasine’s help because she had to and managed to say, when it was done, “Thank you.”
Sister Thomasine, starting away after the others, paused to look back shyly around the edge of her veil. “You’re welcome,” she whispered.
“But you’d best not do it again or she may turn on you next.”
Sister Thomasine lifted her head, surprise on her pale face where her overfasting showed in the shadows under her hollowed cheeks. “Oh no,” she said as if disbelieving Frevisse could say so strange a thing. “She won’t do anything to me.” Her shy smile swiftly came and went, and before Frevisse could think of any answer to such certainty, she had lowered her head and was gone after the others.
Frevisse should have gone, too. Dame Juliana was giving out the heavier woolen winter gowns now, something Frevisse would have been eager for this time yesterday. But now, today, even more than being warmer, she wanted to be alone, if only for a little while. There were a few places for that in the cloister. To go to any of them would have looked as if she were hiding. And she would have been. Hiding was exactly what she wanted. But she would not give Domina Alys the satisfaction of knowing it or the chance to have her hunted out if it were guessed what she was doing, so instead she turned back to the surest refuge, into the church.