The Boy's Tale (10 page)

But to her surprise, Sister Thomasine lifted her head and said, "You have authority over me as sacrist of St. Frideswide's. Say I must come with you and I shall."

It was as neat a shifting of responsibility as Frevisse had ever encountered, though it was undoubtedly done in total innocence.

"Come then," Frevisse said, and Sister Thomasine came without hesitation. Stifling an irk she knew she should not feel, Frevisse shut the gate and directed briskly, "You take this half of the orchard and I'll take that. Call to them and look for them and we'll meet on the far side if we don't find them."

It was a fair-sized orchard, meant to meet the nunnery's needs. Planted when the nunnery was new, the trees were gnarled with age, their lower branches near the ground, spread wide and temptingly easy for a child to climb, with good hiding in the summer's thickness of leaves.

The long grass whispered at Frevisse's hem and gave softly under her foot, silencing her steps. She called, "Come out now!" and summoned the children by name, and listened for an answer, but there was not even a rustle in the leaves to betray where someone might be hiding. Out of sight among the trees, Sister Thomasine was cajoling the children to show themselves with no better luck. As she neared the orchard's far side, Frevisse said grimly to herself, "They'd best not be playing hide-and-seek with us."

She and Sister Thomasine met along the earthen bank that curved around the orchard's outer edge, drawn together by their own voices.

"Perhaps they never came this way," Sister Thomasine suggested.

"Someone unlocked the gate from the inside," Frevisse answered. She was eyeing the earthen bank. It was perhaps six feet high, grown over with long grass and steep enough that anyone would have to scramble to go up it. But the climb was far from impossible; the bank was meant more to set the orchard apart than serve as an impassable barrier. "They surely came this way, and can't have gone far. We might see them from up there." Frevisse gathered up her skirts in one hand, preparing to climb.

"Up there?" Sister Thomasine regarded the height doubtfully. "The bell for None will go at any moment."

But Frevisse could not stop the search now, having broken the rules to begin it. Going back would only give the children time to wander farther. "I'll take responsibility if we're late," she said and bent forward to climb the steep slope. After more hesitation, Sister Thomasine followed her.

At the top Frevisse sat down with a grateful exhale to catch her breath and look at what lay beyond. Perhaps fifty yards away a wide stream curved between the nunnery and the open fields of the village. It was heavily bordered with trees that were mostly willows and alders to hold the banks together and provide withies for making baskets and hurdles and even walls of houses, but with larger trees among them whose deadfalls could be gleaned for firewood in season. The earthen bank was too low to give a view beyond the trees, and between the bank and stream was only a narrow field, this year in pasture with a few milch cows grazing at their leisure. Angling across it was the broad ditch dug to divert water from the stream to the nunnery, first under the kitchen and then the necessarium before curving back to rejoin the stream below the pasture. Made when the priory was new, it was nearly hidden behind its own screen of brush and younger trees.

Sister Thomasine struggled up beside her, less out of breath but far more shaken, if her white face and wide eyes were anything to judge by. Since she had come to St. Frideswide's as a novice seven years ago, she had been no farther out of the cloister than the inner yard and the orchard, and those only rarely. Now, plumping down beside Frevisse, she straightened her wimple and veil and smoothed the front of her dress with habitual preciseness. Then she stared out at the wide world beyond the bank with gentle wonder, squinting against the sunlight glancing into her eyes.

"Oh how lovely," she breathed, and Frevisse felt a pang of mingled satisfaction and alarm. It was good to see Sister Thomasine startled out of her still-faced holiness; it was also disquieting. There was nothing unusual to see from here, certainly nothing that would imperil anyone's soul to gaze on it, but it had been in girlhood that Sister Thomasine had blithely given up the world. What effect would this glimpse of unrealized beauty have on her now?

Very little, it appeared, for after a moment Sister Thomasine dropped her hands into her lap and, smiling, said contentedly, "It's good to see, once in a while, how beautiful it is, so I can understand the ones who choose to stay in it and pray the better for them. I don't see the children."

There was indeed no one in sight but the milch cows, but Frevisse said, "Listen."

From somewhere among the trees along the ditch children's bright voices laughed and called. Sister Thomasine crossed herself with a great sigh of relief. Frevisse gathered herself to her feet. "I'll go for them. You stay here, and if you hear the bell, go back without us. I'll be as quick behind you as we can." There was no point in both of them being in more trouble than was necessary. Sister Thomasine nodded gratefully, and Frevisse set herself to slide down the outer side of the bank.

They had meant to go no farther than the orchard, but when trees had been climbed and tag had been played and Lady Adela refused to be tied to a tree to be a maiden in need of rescuing—with Jasper chosen to be the dragon so Edmund could slay him—there was nothing left to do except climb the sunlit slope of the earthen bank. Once they had done that and seen a whole new world to explore, going down the bank's far side was inevitable.

Jasper had momentarily hung back. "We shouldn't," he said. But Edmund was already going, arms spread out for balance while his feet ran away with him; and when Lady Adela lay down athwart the hill and rolled, laughing, her hair tangling around her head, it was too much to resist. Jasper flung himself down and rolled after her, finding too late there was no way to control how fast he went so that he bowled to the bottom to land sprawled and laughing almost on top of her, any idea that they shouldn't go at all quite gone.

Edmund, indignant at having missed that sport, was ready to climb up and take his turn at it, but Lady Adela was already clambering out of the dry ditch at the bottom to set off across the pasture. Giddy and not sure if he could walk straight, Jasper followed her. Edmund trotted after them with the idea it would be fun to chase the cows, but Lady Adela said, "No," with so firm an assurance that he dropped the idea without argument. She was limping a little more than before, Jasper noticed, as if maybe her leg were tired or hurting, but she didn't say so, just led them to the grave-bottomed stream flowing among the withies through the pasture.

There wasn't any need to talk about it. They all sat down, stripped off their shoes and hosen, and waded in, up to their knees in its cool joy.

Jasper wasn't sure exactly how it was decided it would be his shirt they used, but before long his doublet was on the bank and his shirt had been turned into a net to catch the minnows that darted among the green streamers of water plants wavering gently in the current. Lady Adela tried at first to keep her skirts out of the water, but being careful interfered with their sport and she gave it up in favor of swishing her hem through the water to herd the minnows toward Edmund and Jasper. It didn't matter that they were having no success at all; and they were all so thoroughly wet that by the time Jasper stumbled over something and sat down up to his chin in the stream all he could do was laugh.

He had never in all his life been so without people expecting him and his brother to behave with dignity and good manners—and seeing to it that they did. Here there were just themselves and Lady Adela and nobody telling them what to do and that they shouldn't do something they wanted badly to do. There was water and sunlight and splashing and minnows and laughter as loud as they wanted it to be.

Until Lady Adela's giggle broke off with a gulp, and Jasper and Edmund followed her frightened gaze upward to Dame Frevisse standing on the bank above them.

Chapter 8

The bell rang for None as Frevisse and Sister Thomasine herded the wet, subdued children back through the orchard gate. "Go on. You go to None, I'll see to the children," Frevisse told Sister Thomasine, who nodded gratefully and hastened away; but by the time she had disposed of the children, Frevisse was late, as she had known she would be, and had to slip into her choir stall among disapproving glances. Tomorrow in chapter meeting she would have to confess to leaving the cloister and taking Sister Thomasine with her and then do whatever penance was given. For now, she joined in the office's second psalm even before she had found it in her prayer book, her head bent diligently to prayer. But only for a few lines. Then her mind slid away. The children were safely back in their rooms, with one of the priory servants to see Lady Adela into dry clothing and Jenet tearfully setting Edmund and Jasper to rights. No harm had come of their disobedience, but she doubted this was the end of it. She had been above them on the bank for a time, watching their laughter and play, and it was plain that she—that everyone—had seriously misjudged Lady Adela. Assuredly she was a quiet, polite, attentive child, but that was not all she was. And Edmund and Jasper were clearly not so biddable as they had seemed either.

Nor, Frevisse guessed, would the three of them go back to being as quiet as they had been, now that they had discovered the delight of each other's company. There was going to be need to supervise them more carefully, which was not going to be easy without it becoming obvious to the other nuns whose curiosity she did not want aroused.

At None's end, as the nuns left the church, Dame Claire waited beside the door with a gesture to Frevisse to stay with her. Head bowed, Frevisse stood beside her until everyone else was gone, then followed her around the cloister walk to the slype where Dame Claire said, "I suppose you had good reason to be late to the office?"

Dame Claire was as near to a friend as Frevisse had in the priory. They were alike in their reasons for choosing to become nuns, and had long since learned to respect and depend on each other's intelligence. But Dame Claire presently held the prioress's authority and to that authority instead of to her friend Frevisse respectfully said, "Yes, Dame."

"And you will explain yourself in chapter tomorrow?"

"Yes, Dame."

Dame Claire took a deep breath. "Good. I can tell Dame Alys so when she comes complaining to me about it at recreation."

Frevisse gave a small, tight smile. "As if no one had noticed I was late except her."

"And that there were grass stains on your gown and a smell of river mud on your shoes," Dame Claire said. "Why were you outside and what kept you late?"

"The children left the cloister and I had to go in search of them. They were playing in the stream at catching minnows. It was all three of them," she added.

"Lady Adela followed the boys? Why, to keep them from harm?"

"I rather gathered that she led them."

"Our Lady Adela?"

"Indeed. It seems to have been lack of opportunity rather than inclination that's kept her so quiet these months past."

"Oh dear."

"It was she who knew where the key to the orchard was hidden. That was the way they went out."

"How did she know about the key?"

"She wouldn't tell me. She was willing to admit how they went out but not how she knew where the key was. She'd only say she 'turned the rock over and there it was.' And maybe that's how it happened. They might have been playing and she found it by chance."

"Then likely she would have said so," Dame Claire said.