“What happens to me, whatever you do?” Alys cried.
“Nothing happens to you,” Reynold said impatiently. “When it comes to it, just keep insisting you didn’t know until it was too late and what could you have done then to be rid of us anyway? Have your nuns drive out my men? Set your nunnery folk to fight us?”
“They’ll say I should have sent word the moment I knew what you were about.”
“You didn’t know until now.”
Hugh made a rude sound and said, “Try making anyone believe that.”
Alys glanced at him, a little wild with knowing he was right, no one would believe her, but Reynold said, ignoring Hugh, “You couldn’t send word anyway. I’ve set guards. No one goes out or in from here without I know it from here on.”
Alys started to rise, too caught between half-disbelieving outrage and outright rage to find words. Reynold, seeming not to notice except he put a hand on her knee to keep her down, went on easily. “No, you should be able to clear you and your nunnery readily enough.”
“So long as it’s only words, she maybe can,” said Hugh, “but if it comes to us being attacked here…”
“If you’ve lost your stomach for it,” Reynold said angrily, “leave.”
“If I leave, my men go with me.”
“All three of them,” Reynold scorned. “You’re a ways yet from being some great lord.”
Hugh stood up from the table. “And so are you, cousin!”
“I’m nearer to it than you are and at least I’ve the guts to try for it!”
Beside the door Katerin whimpered, understanding the anger if nothing else of what was happening, and Alys could almost have whimpered with her, for once not seeing how she ought to go, afraid-unbelieving, she found she was afraid, a thing that, like uncertainty, she had no use for-afraid of what would happen if Reynold and Hugh broke and openly went for one another.
Then Hugh gave way, drew back from both Reynold and his anger, and said, “Play it your way, Reynold,” sounding as if they had come to this end between them before and he no longer much cared. “I’m going to bed. You have this out with her on your own.” He started toward the door, then paused, looked back and said, “But, Alys, don’t let him talk you into this. From here on out, the way things are, you’re better off without him.”
Chapter 18
In summer the difficulty of rising at dawn came from the too few hours of night and rest. By late autumn, when the nights had lengthened and there were more hours for sleep, it was the cold waiting for her beyond her blankets that made Frevisse wish she could deny the dawn. In her young days as a nun, she had taken pride-God pardon her-and pleasure in making the sacrifice of rising at midnight and again at dawn for prayers; but although she thought-she prayed-that she had long since overcome the pride, lately she had noticed that her bones at least were taking less pleasure in the sacrifice. The spirit was still willing, but the body’s wish to cling to bed a little longer was becoming a problem.
And yet once it was done, once she had forced her body out of bed’s comfort and hurriedly dressed in the darkness by feel and familiarity, warm woolen gown over the linen underdress she wore to bed, feet into soft-soled leather shoes to be off the chill rush matting, white wimple over her hair and throat and around her face, black veil pinned carefully into place over the wimple, then she was near enough to what she wanted to gladly leave her sleeping cell, join the others at the head of the stairs at the near end of the high-roofed dormitory, and go down in silence except for the hush of their skirts, shadows moving through shadows, their way lighted only by the small lamp kept burning through the night at the head of the dormitory stairs, into the cloister walk and along it by starlight or moonlight or with no light at all if it were cloudy, to the church, where, for Frevisse, the joy of prayer, of greeting God’s day as dawn began to fill the eastern window, more than balanced the discomfort of rising in the dark and cold.
But this morning, at last, she would have no reluctance. This morning she was awake and waiting for the morning bell to release her from bed and her back. Dame Claire’s ointment had eased the pain to aching and she had managed to sleep, but in the throes of a dream she no longer remembered, she had rolled over on it and now was widely awake, lying very carefully still, willing the roused pain to subside, and hoping it was near dawn because she doubted she would be able to sleep again.
The pain at least was easing to a separate throbbing of each welt across her back and she was able to turn her mind away from it, to begin repeating silently into the dark the psalms for this morning’s Prime, for her own comforting in their beauty and to make the dark less endless.
Caeli enarrant gloriam Dei… Dies diei effundit verbum... The heavens tell the glory of God… Day pours out the word to day…
Not that she was much looking forward to what this particular day was likely to entail.
Quis ascendet in montem Domini, aut quis stabit in loco sancto eius? Who ascends into the mountain of the Lord, or who stands in his holy place? Innocens manibus et mundus corde, qui non intendit mentem suam ad vana… The innocent in hands and clean in heart, who does not strain his mind toward things empty, toward things vain, useless, false, conceited, unreliable, cruel…
Frevisse clamped off that run of bitter words, taking her exactly back to where she did not want to go-to Domina Alys and Sir Reynold.
She thought of rising and going to the church to pray. It was allowed and Sister Thomasine frequently did it, but thought of the madman-the once-mad man-held her where she was. He had been given a straw-filled pallet and blankets on the floor behind the altar and he was probably asleep there now. Or maybe he was awake and waiting for what the day would bring him, maybe wondering at the movement of thoughts in his mind where there had been only chaos or emptiness before. What must that be like?
When the nuns had gone into the choir for Matins at midnight, he had been a featureless heap, huddled in the blankets on his bed, only the top of his now clean head and the glint of his eyes to be seen at the edge of the choir candlelight. He had not stirred while they were there. He had watched but made no move or sound and probably would do no more if she went in to pray; but even his simply being there made her uneasy. There were too many questions about him. How cured was he? Was the cure momentary or would it last? How much would he be able to tell them when Dame Claire said he could be questioned? Had it truly been Sister Thomasine’s doing? Did she even know whether it was or not, and what did she think of it? No one had been able to bring her to talk of it yesterday.
Apart from all of that, what did Domina Alys mean to make of this seeming miracle laid into her hands? Because make something of it she surely meant to do. If nothing else, she was foreseeing pilgrims with money and gifts that would pay for that miserable tower of hers…
Frevisse forced her mind away from that. Whoever ascended to the mountain of the Lord, it was not likely to be someone who interspersed her prayers with bitter thoughts against her prioress. Domini est terra et quae replent earn, orbis terrarum et qui habitant in eo. Of the Lord is the earth and that which fills it, the circle of the earth and those who live on it.
Better to give herself over to prayer and God’s praise, as Sister Thomasine did, than sink into bitterness over things beyond her power to mend. Leave to God how the world would go.
Unless, her mind suggested, the Lord meant for his faithful to see to his world the way worldly lords expected their men to see to their lands, with the lord holding sovereignty but his men responsible and answerable for how well or ill things went in their keeping.