It was where she always went by preference when she had the chance or need, usually to her choir stall or else to kneel at the altar in prayer. Today, when she had shut the door between her and the cloister, she simply stayed where she was, leaning against the heavy wood, not even bothering to take her hand from the handle, her eyes thankfully closed now that finally she had no need to move or seem any particular way for anybody. She was alone, with time to gather her strength-not her thoughts, she was tired of trying to think; and not her courage, she was nearly out of that-just her strength to face the rest of the day.
She had been standing there, she did not know how long, sunk as near to mindless as she could come, when Joliffe said close behind her, “Dame Frevisse,” concerned.
She had not heard him come, but she was past having strength to be startled. And it had been illogical to hope no one beyond the nuns would come to know what had been done to her. Word had surely gone by way of servants out of the cloister to everywhere in the priory by now; but that did not mean she had to deal with questions, curiosity, sympathy, or anything else that might be offered. Most particularly it did not mean she had to deal with Joliffe, and she said, not moving, not even opening her eyes, “Go away.”
“Now, that’s unfriendly.” He sounded aggrieved and mocking together. “How do you know I haven’t come like Sir Orfeo, daring dangers to rescue his lady?”
“I’m not in need of rescuing. And as I recall, he failed.”
“Only according to Boethius.”
“ ‘Only according to Boethius’?” Frevisse turned around. “Only Boethius?” A man held, these hundreds of years past, to be an authority on anything he had chosen to write about?
Joliffe shrugged away her indignation. “He was a philosopher. He only talked to make a point and the points he could make were the only ones he talked about. No, I believe the other way the story is told, that Sir Orfeo won Heurodis free of Faerye. It’s much the better story.”
“What has ‘better’ to do with truth?”
“What has truth to do with a good story?”
“And since when,” Frevisse said, abruptly changing direction, “did I ever think Sir Orfeo and Heurodis were real, for me to be arguing about them so earnestly?”
“I don’t know,” said Joliffe lightly.
Frevisse looked at him consideringly and, finding at least the ache in her mind had lessened, said, “Thank you.”
Simply, with no trace of his familiar mockery, Joliffe answered, “You’re welcome.” And then, “Tell me what she did.”
Frevisse moved her head slightly side to side, refusing. She did not want to say the words, did not want even the feel of them ugly in her mind. If she could bury the thought of what had been done to her deep enough, it would somehow take the pain away with it. That was not logical, but the pain seemed to leave little room for logic; all she could do was refuse him an answer.
“Say it,” Joliffe insisted.
Frevisse turned away from him. Too quickly. The pain caught her to rigid stillness and she had to stand, breathing in short gasps between her teeth, while it subsided. When it had, she turned carefully back to him and said curtly, resenting both him and her own cowardice, “Along with the other punishments of humiliation and losing my place as hosteler, she whipped me.”
She was daring him to pity her, ready to be angry if he did; but his level, unreadable look told her nothing, and she added with bitter-edged lightness, “But after all she only used a birch rod on me and it was only twenty strokes, so I suppose I should be grateful for the mercy.”
“Only it doesn’t feel like mercy, does it?” Joliffe asked, level-voiced.
“No. It feels like pain!”
But as she said it, unable to stop the anger and a surge of too many other feelings, something in Joliffe’s face stopped her, held her quiet before she said in a voice that matched his own, “It’s been done to you, too, hasn’t it?”
Joliffe’s eyes widened in openly mocking surprise. “To me? A wandering player now turned minstrel? Someone no more than half a step off the devil’s tail to most people’s -way of thinking?” He raised his hands at her ignorance. “Why, I’ve found there are people who seem to feel an absolute obligation to it.”
He was laughing at himself and inviting her to laugh with him, but Frevisse no more believed his laughter than she believed his surprise, and did not want to join in it. “What do you do?” she asked.
He shrugged the question away. “Avoid it when I can.”
“And when you can’t?”
“Like everything else. Endure it. The way you were enduring trying to teach mat cow-eyed nun in the guest hall just now.”
It was a deft, firm-handed change of topic, and Frevisse let him make it. “St. Frideswide’s new hosteler, yes,” she said. “I’ve lost my office, among other things, for my sins.”
“A sorry thing, your fall from grace. They were talking of you last night. Your prioress and her cousins in the parlor. At least there was mention of a nun who was forever giving trouble, and I assumed it was you.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“How was it with the girl?” If he could change subjects, so could she.
Joliffe frowned slightly. “My fear would be she’ll break just when she most needs her wits about her.”
That was Frevisse’s thought, too, and she had no answer to it.
“But she kept close in talk with that young Benet last night,” Joliffe said. “Is she possibly warming to him?”
“It would help if she did,” Frevisse said, and would have said more but behind her the door opened and Dame Perpetua entered, followed by Lady Adela, come to ready things for Sext. She stopped short at sight of Joliffe, a man and someone she did not know; but the nave of the church was open to the priory’s guests and Dame Frevisse was still somewhat hosteler, so after her first surprise, she bowed her head to him slightly and went on.
Lady Adela stayed where she was and announced firmly, “You’re the minstrel.”
Joliffe swept her a low bow, one hand on his heart, the other flung wide as if in surrender to her. “You have it in a word, my lady.”
Lady Adela laughed and most improperly dropped a curtsy back to him, so deep he might have been an earl. “I’ve seen you from Lady Eleanor’s window, but they wouldn’t let me come to listen to you last night.”
“A lady fair in durance vile,” said Joliffe. “Shall I sing your plight abroad so your knight may find and rescue you?”
“I don’t have a knight,” she said regretfully.
“Then I’ll sing your beauties everywhere and find you one.”
“Lady Adela,” Dame Perpetua called.
Lady Adela’s brightness disappeared. With the solemness she mostly wore, as if life required a great deal of concentration, she leaned a little toward Joliffe to say, as if Frevisse were not there, “You don’t have to find a knight. Just tell Benet Godfrey.”
“He’ll do?” Joliffe asked as solemnly. He might have been as eleven-years-old as she was.
Lady Adela nodded. Laughter glimmered in her again. “And he’s already here, too.”
“Lady Adela,” Dame Perpetua insisted from the choir.
Lady Adela heaved a sigh seemingly from her toes, called dutifully, “Yes,” and went.
Joliffe turned back to Frevisse. “Are they thinking to make a nun of that one?”
“Some are. I’m not.”
“Sensible of you.” Joliffe made her a bow, far less elaborate than what he had lavished on Lady Adela. “I’ll go now.”
Frevisse put out a hand, not touching him but stopping him before he turned away. “Thank you for…” Drawing her mind aside from her hurting? For making her say what she had not wanted to say? For not overtly pitying her? “… For Boethius.”
The slightest of smiles curved his mouth. Quietly, devoid of mockery, devoid of everything but understanding, he said, “I know how it bruises the mind along with the body. Both need tending when it happens.”