‘As things…“ Anne began worriedly but behind her Lucy whimpered, ”Mama,“ and Anne turned back to her, whispering, ”I’m here, lamb. Don’t wake your brothers, there’s a good girl.“
This afternoon Lucy had been sitting up on her bed, blinking owlishly into the church’s twilight and declaring she wanted to go home. Tonight she was more querelous, whimpering for a drink, but beside her Colyn lay curled into a quiet, sleeping bundle. It was Adam’s restlessness on the mattress beside theirs that was troubling. Even in the low light Frevisse could see his fever-flush and that he was awake but not much conscious, she feared, and silently praying for God’s mercy on him, she passed through the rood screen into the chancel, where Sister Thomasine was kneeling with bowed head in front of the altar.
With a spasm of distress, Frevisse realized she had let the hour for Vespers pass and Compline come without a thought. Contrite and dismayed, she went to kneel beside Sister Thomasine, able to catch enough of her low murmur to join in, head bowed low over her clasped hands, “… peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo et opere: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.”… I have sinned greatly in thought, in word, in deed: by my fault, by my fault, by my most great fault. And on through Compline’s heart-comforting web of prayers and psalms to the familiar end. “Divinum auxilium maneat semper nobiscum. Amen.” May divine aid remain always with us. Amen.
In the right way of things, after Compline there should have been only a silent going to bed and sleep, and at St. Frideswide’s the nuns were probably doing exactly that, but here as she sat back on her heels, waiting penitently, patiently, while Sister Thomasine prayed alone a little longer, Frevisse worked to hold to Compline’s peace while she could, knowing that the night was only beginning and sleep would be brief if at all.
Sister Thomasine finished, made the sign of the cross over her breast, and they rose together, bowed to the altar and moved aside to the sacristy doorway, where Frevisse said, her voice kept low, “My apology for being gone so long. By your leave, I’ll take the whole night watch in recompense.”
Sister Thomasine looked at her, seeming still half-lost in her prayers, but after a moment said softly, “You were about God’s work as surely as I was. There’s no need of recompense.”
One of the graces-and, occasionally, annoyances-of Sister Thomasine was that she never feigned what she did not mean, but Frevisse searched her face anyway. Bodily there was little of her to begin with, and Dame Claire forever worried that, left to herself, she paid insufficient need to whether she was well or ill, other things mattering to her more. Tonight she looked well enough, but Frevisse asked, “You’re not over-tired? You’re not going to bring yourself to sickness with this?”
Sister Thomasine’s eyes widened with surprise. “Tired? Not beyond anyone else, surely. I’m…” She seemed to look inward a moment before saying, simply, “I’m happy.”
‘Happy?“ Frevisse echoed and was discomfited by her voice betraying her own unhappiness.
Seeming not to hear it, Sister Thomasine answered, “How could I not be? All these days and nights I’ve been living inside of prayer instead of only praying, been nowhere but here, in prayer and at God’s work with never need to do anything else.”
To live inside of prayer instead of merely praying. It was something Frevisse was sometimes able to do but not often, only sometimes and never for very long but enough that she understood what it meant to Sister Thomasine who had never wanted anything, since she was a half-grown girl except to live in prayer, as near to God as she could come; and she said, admitting her own weariness, “Then thank you, yes. I’d like to take my turn at bed now.”
‘Your supper is here. Father Henry brought it.“
‘Gilbey Dunn’s wife fed me well enough. You’re welcome to my share if you wish it.“
Sister Thomasine regarded her gravely. “May I?”
Frevisse covered her surprise. In the priory Sister Thomasine rarely ate even all of her own portion, let be want more, though now Frevisse thought on it, she had been eating well enough here, and quickly she said, “Yes, please, if you like.”
‘I think I’d better,“ Sister Thomasine said as it was something she had considered seriously. ”With all that needs doing for the children, I seem to need more food than otherwise.“
‘Then, please, eat it all. I’ve no need of it tonight.“
And would find some way to see Sister Thomasine had more after this.
Sister Thomasine bowed her head in thanks, and Frevisse bowed hers in return, with the doubt that Sister Thomasine would ever cease, in one way or another, to surprise her.
Chapter 16
She awoke in thick darkness, for a moment con-fused, the room around her wrong for her cell in the nunnery’s dorter, until the narrow, door-shaped outline of lamp-yellow light told her she was in St. Chad’s sacristy, not in bed but on a mattress on the floor; and if she was awake, then the hour was probably near to midnight and time for Matins and to take Sister Thomasine’s place. Used to her cell’s darkness, she rose and with little trouble found by feel her wimple and veil where she had laid them carefully aside, with unthinking familiarity put them on, pinned the veil in place, stood, and shook out her skirts. With nothing else needed to be ready, she paused to gather herself with a murmured Deo gratias and slipped from the sacristy to find the nave reassuringly sunk in silence and shadows.
After so many other nights of children whimpering or crying, miserable and in pain, with women moving back and forth in the low-kept lamplight, the stillness was like balm. Even Anne Perryn was sleeping, stretched out narrowly between Colyn and Lucy, though it was likely unbearable weariness had taken her down, rather than desire, because on the mattress next to them Adam lay awake- or something like awake-his eyes closed but his head turning restlessly from side to side. Sister Thomasine was with him, one hand laid lightly on his chest’s uneven breathing while with the other she soaked a cloth in a basin of water.
As Frevisse came toward them, she glanced upward but said nothing, and Frevisse waited while she wrung out the cloth and was reaching to lay it over Adam’s forehead again when suddenly his eyes were open, staring at her, startling both her and Frevisse to stillness, before his head began to turn again, his fever-bright eyes roaming as if he searched for something to fix them on, then suddenly did, staring upward past Frevisse with such fear that she turned and found herself looking up at the tall figure of St. Chad painted on the narrow wall flanking the rood screen between chancel and nave. Unnaturally lean, it rose through shadows toward the rafters, but the face was caught by some trick of lamplight that gave life to the large eyes staring away into the dark.
Adam whimpered and Sister Thomasine leaned over him, asking, “Adam, what is it?”
Eyes still on the painted saint, Adam tried to speak, choked dryly, managed to whisper, “That man. He never smiles. He just stands there.” The boy gave a dry sob. “He just stands there staring and waiting for me to be dead!”
‘Adam.“ Sister Thomasine touched his cheek, bringing him to look at her, and gently but certain, said, ”He never smiles because what he’s seeing is too beautiful for smiling at.“
Adam lay still. “Too beautiful for smiling?” he whispered, his voice a bare thread of sound.
Sister Thomasine nodded, as unsmiling as the saint as she asked, “Haven’t you seen a summer sunrise, just when the light strikes out of the darkness and across the fields and every drop of dew turns to diamonds and the sky to a blue you never see another time and any clouds there are to gold and everything is changed and strange and more beautiful than you knew anything could be?”