“And beyond that,” Frevisse said, unable to restrain herself, “you do wrong to suspect folk who’ve done a service to a hurt man and no harm that we know of.”
“They’re lordless men,” Naylor replied. “Answerable to no one and belonging nowhere. Their sort are never to be trusted.”
“Some players have a patron who answers for them,” Domina Edith said with a questioning look at Frevisse.
Frevisse shook her head. “They’ve mentioned no one to me.”
“And surely they would have if they belonged to someone,” Dame Alys put in.
Sister Fiacre rose to her feet with unusual fierceness. “And even that’s no surety. My lord father was patron to some, but when my brother inherited the lordship he turned them off because he found they were misusing our name to base ends. All such are of a kind and none of them honest!”
So long a speech left her breathless. As much in need as in embarrassment, she pressed her sleeve over her mouth and, coughing, sat down.
“That’s no more fair a thing to say than that all stewards are thieves because some are,” Frevisse retorted, meaning it a jibe as much at Naylor as she did at Sister Fiacre. “All we know of these folk is that they did an honest service to a hurt man and have asked for the shelter the Rule binds us to give them and are kept here by a sick child. It’s unjust to assume they are other than they’ve shown themselves to be.”
“By the time they show what they are, it will be too late,” Naylor responded. “Give them a medicine for the child and maybe an extra blanket and send them on their way.”
They had both forgotten Domina Edith and were speaking directly at each other. Frevisse said, more sharply than she intended, “Better we be wronged by them than that we wrong them without cause.”
“They’re gadelings.”
“Lordless, yes, but not without a living. They were employed at Fen Harcourt over Christmas, and have work in Oxford when they reach there.”
Domina Edith raised her hand. “Enough.”
Naylor closed his mouth over what he was about to say. Frevisse, startled to realize how heated she had become, bowed her head, tucked her hands into her sleeves and subsided. Dame Alys trumpeted into her handkerchief, letting her red-faced glare take the place of words, while Sister Fiacre wrung her hands silently.
“It is not our place to judge these people,” Domina Edith said. “There is no harm in keeping some small watch on them, which you may set if you so wish, Master Naylor, so long as it is done without offense to them. But we have offered them shelter and are bound by the Rule to give it so long as it is fit and they do us no wrong. Indeed, they may do us a good. This is a season when the Holy Church bids us make merry. Do you think it possible, Dame Frevisse, that they would perform for us? A play suitable to the place and season tomorrow or the next day maybe, if they stay so long?”
“Oh, yes, please!” Sister Amicia exclaimed with a glad clap of her hands. Then she covered her mouth in shock at her breach of manners.
“Three paternosters on your knees before the altar, Sister Amicia, before this evening’s Compline,” Domina Edith said without even looking at her. Sister Amicia’s flares of frivolous enthusiasm were familiar to all of them. “Dame Frevisse?”
“Yes,” Frevisse said. “I think they would willingly do that. I’ll ask them and then tell you what they say.”
“Do so. And that, I think, ends this morning’s business.” Domina Edith raised an unsteady hand in a gesture that included all of them. “Go with God’s blessing on you and your duties through the day.”
6
IN THE CLOISTER walk, Frevisse was overtaken by Naylor. He was not a tall man, hardly her own height, but he carried himself to the fullness of it, meeting her eyes as she turned in surprise to look at him. “Dame, you were eloquent on behalf of these players. Why are you so willing that they stay?”
Frevisse arched her eyebrows in deliberate surprise. He knew as well as she did that the Rule forbade casual talk in the cloister. But as he had never been a casual man, if he was wanting to talk to her, he had a purpose, and she twitched her head toward the cloister door into the courtyard to show that she would speak with him outside. As they walked on, he persisted. “Men who roam the roads lordless and landless-players, beggars, jongleurs, any of that sort-are knaves at best, and more likely plain rogues. Why be so willing to risk this lot here for longer than it takes to turn them out of doors, Dame?”
Frevisse walked faster, reaching her hand for the cloister door, but Naylor moved more quickly and was ahead of her in time to open it. Frevisse bowed her head partly in thanks, but more to hide her face from him for the moment it took to go past him. She had been half-ready for his question or something like it, but not for the surge of remembrance that came with it.
But by the time he had shut the door and turned to her, she had both her expression and answer ready. “I wasn’t bred to the nunnery, Master Naylor. My parents were of the world. And very worldly. I’ve learned better than to believe something simply because it’s said. Nor am I so ignorant that I think a man can be condemned out of hand for being one thing instead of another. Not even for being lordless and landless. If I condemn a man because he’s a player, knowing no more of him than the tales told of players, then judging by the tales I’ve heard of stewards, I can as readily condemn a man for being one of those.”
Roger Naylor’s eyes narrowed. Stewards were stock figures of corruption and mercilessness in too many stories for him to miss her point. He looked as if he would say something, but stopped himself and instead turned on his heel and strode silently away. Frevisse looked after his eloquently rigid back, her satisfaction at routing him stronger than any regret she should have had for her forward speaking. And she felt warmer than she had for hours.
“That was a shrewd hit for so gentle a nun,” someone said mockingly.
Startled, Frevisse turned to see Joliffe sitting on the step at the foot of the well on the courtyard’s near side. Wrapped in a cloak gray as the shadows, his hair pale as the well’s stone wall, he was easily unseen so long as he did not move or speak.
“And that’s an odd place for someone to be resting,” Frevisse responded. At this hour of a winter’s morning, the well was still in shadow under its hawthorn tree; the rime of frost around its rim and step betrayed how cold a place it was to sit.
Joliffe rose to his feet and came toward her. “Or it’s not. Depending on one thing and another. Did I hear the word ‘player’ in your talk? I take it your steward has been complaining of our existence.”
“Of your existence here, assuredly. He’d probably not mind in the least if you existed somewhere else.”
“So we’re to go?” He asked it lightly enough, as if it did not matter to him if they had to pack and leave within the hour. But Frevisse had long since learned the use of reading a person’s stance and face as much as their voice. And she saw that though Joliffe had learned to live with being forever sent on his way, he had not learned to like it. “No. You’re to stay as long as need be for Piers’s sake, and be welcome.”
The almost imperceptible stiffness went out of him, and he asked, disconcertingly, “And I may take it that you championed us? That you persuaded your prioress to this over Master Naylor’s protests and were eloquent on our behalf?”
With what she meant to be asperity, Frevisse said, “Eloquent enough, it seems.”
Joliffe’s smile etched laughter lines into his face with all the roguery that Naylor suspected his kind of having. “Then St. Genesius’s blessing on you, lady, for your kindness and your golden tongue.”
Despite herself, Frevisse warmed to his amusement. Matching his tone, she said, “I suspect St. Genesius has quite enough to do in tending to you without considering me. I’ll be satisfied with St. Frideswide’s blessings, thank you. But it will be Dame Claire you’ll be needing if you go on sitting out in the cold this way. Haven’t you better sense than that?”