The Boy's Tale (9 page)

"From the other end there are stairs down into the kitchen and others up into the dormitory," she said impatiently.

That would be why they had not been shown the necessarium; it went too many places they weren't supposed to go—including out. Adela led them leftward, away from the necessarium, toward a gate in the wall that blocked their view of what lay beyond. It was a wicker gate, chin-high on Jasper if he went on tiptoe to see over it, and as Lady Adela had promised, there was a garden beyond it. He could see at a glance there was no one there and that it was only an ordinary garden, with neat little paths and proper little flower beds, an arched green arbor along one side, and turf benches built against the tall stone wall that closed off all view of the world beyond. It was far smaller and plainer than any of his mother's gardens, without even a fountain.

Impatiently, Edmund reached for the gate's latch. Lady Adela said, "Oh, let's not go here. They'll find us too soon. I know something better."

Without waiting for their agreement or argument, she flitted away along the garden wall, quick on her feet despite her limp, to another gateway closed by a solid wooden door that gave no hint of what might be beyond. Beside it, Lady Adela squatted down on her heels to scrabble at a large stone beside the path. It was heavy, and Jasper crouched beside her to help. Over them Edmund reached to try the gate's handle.

"It's locked," he said indignantly.

"Of course it's locked," Lady Adela answered. To their pulling, the rock rolled up on one side and, quick with triumph, she snatched out a big, rusty key from underneath it. "This is a back gate to the cloister. People aren't supposed to just go in and out of a back gate. They have to use the ordinary gate."

"Then what are we doing?" Edmund demanded.

"Going out."

Edmund and Jasper looked at one another. They both knew the answer they had to make to that. But matters of conscience tended to weigh more heavily with Jasper than Edmund, and he said for both of them, "We aren't supposed to go out of the cloister. Mistress Maryon said so."

"Nuns aren't supposed to go out. Nuns aren't supposed to do
anything.
But we're not nuns."

Edmund and Jasper looked at each other again, unable to argue that.

Lady Adela elbowed Edmund aside to come at the lock. The key was very large; she needed both hands to manage it into the keyhole.

"We shouldn't," Jasper said doubtfully.

"No," Lady Adela agreed cheerfully, wrestling with the key to turn it. It yielded with a mild screech. "We shouldn't. But I'm going to anyway."

Chapter 7

It would soon be time for the small service of None. Set between midday's Sext and late afternoon's Vespers, None's interruption of whatever work she had in hand had annoyed Frevisse in her early days at St. Frideswide's, but she had long since come to value it for its reminder that the heart of her life was here and not in whatever worldly duties each day required. Since she was presently sacrist, with her duties mostly confined to the care of the church and its furnishings, it was of late easier to hold to that knowledge.

Today, having already done what was needed to ready the church, she had come to sit in her choir stall for a quiet time of thought before the bell rang. This near midsummer the sun rode so high it only shone directly into the church at earliest morning and latest evening. In the early afternoon now, the church was gray with soft shadows and coolness, a world apart from the warm, busy day outside. A goodly place for thought as well as prayer, Frevisse felt, and she was in need of both.

What she truly wanted to do was go to Domina Edith and talk through again the problem of the boys. Not that there was anything new to say; she only wanted it for her own comfort, and that was hardly fair to Domina Edith, so deep in her own necessity now.

She had written the letter to Alice as Domina Edith had told her to, and given it over to Master Naylor the same day. It was gone by messenger to find Alice wherever she might be; and of course Frevisse could now, when there was no help for it, think of better, more subtle, more politic ways she should have asked about matters that ought to be none of her concern.

She tried to keep it from her mind. A more reasonable worry—and still nothing to talk to Domina Edith about—was that the sheriff and Master Montfort, the crowner, would be here sometime this afternoon, according to their forerider who had come this morning. It all went well, they would make their inquiries and simply go away, perhaps as soon as tomorrow. If things went ill—if servants were questioned too closely and mentioned the boys and if some word had reached the sheriff about certain boys being missing and sought . . . But there was no reason the sheriff or crowner should talk to any of the servants. They would speak to witnesses of the attack. That meant to Sir Gawyn, Mistress Maryon, the two men, and possibly Jenet. Frevisse hoped they would all tell the same story and, as planned, leave the children out of it. If they did not, there could well be trouble, but Frevisse could think of nothing more to protect against it than what had already been done.

At least the children had been no great bother so far. Or at least not so great a bother as they might have been. Even if they did not stay completely out of the way, their manners were charming, they were quiet, and among the nuns at recreation it was generally agreed they were very sweet, handsome little boys. Only Dame Alys professed to find their presence intolerable, but Dame Alys would have found the presence of the archangel Gabriel intolerable if it suited her.

Frevisse had noted that the boys found ways to avoid Dame Alys when they could, which showed they had intelligence as well as charm, and if she had had to choose, she preferred intelligence to both charm and handsomeness because more could be done with it in the long run.

None of that solved the problem of them, however. It was a problem that could not be solved, only gladly parted with when Sir Gawyn was well enough to ride on with them.

With her forehead laid on her clasped hands, Frevisse prayed for his continued swift healing.

And for Domina Edith's.

No, that was not fair. Domina Edith was turned willingly toward her end, and any prayer for her should be that she come to it gently, not that she be kept longer from where she was so ready to go.

That, Frevisse had found, was very hard. But if she cared as much for Domina Edith as she claimed, then her prayers had to be for Domina Edith, not for herself. The words from the hymn that was part of None came to her.

Largire lumen vespere. Quo vita nusquam decidat, Sed praemium mortis sacrae Perennis instet gloria.
Give light at evening, So that life nowhere fails But goes to the reward of holy death With glory perpetual.

She tried to draw the words deep into herself, to give herself up to them, but when she had finished, she leaned her head more heavily on her hands, mentally sighing. It was no longer so consistently difficult for her to know what was the right thing to do—not as it had been in her younger days when so many decisions had been struggles not only between conscience and desire but, more basically, to grasp what the core of the struggle actually was. She was better now at perceiving right desire against wrong desire, but the effort to do what was right rather than what was easier and more comfortable was still not always the simple matter she wished it could be.

A hand hesitantly touched her shoulder. Startled, Frevisse jerked upright. Sister Thomasine stood in front of her, hands clasped to her breast, a worried expression on her usually serene face. She beckoned Frevisse to come with an urgency so unusual in her that Frevisse immediately stood up to follow her from the church, along the cloister walk and into the slype. Frevisse could not remember a single occasion since Sister Thomasine had entered St. Frideswide's when she had made use of the slype's privilege to impart urgent information and, thoroughly alarmed now, she said as soon as they were in it, "What is it? What's the matter?"

In a low-voiced rush, Sister Thomasine said, "I can't find the children. They're nowhere in the cloister."

"Nowhere? Are you sure?"

"The boys—I "thought to give them some horehound drops for a treat. I thought it would make them feel better." Sister Thomasine twisted her hands together unhappily and added hurriedly, "They are last year's horehound drops. We didn't use them up through the winter. We have a plenty of them and I'll be making more—"

"I'm sure it's all right," Frevisse interrupted. "A very kind thought. But you can't find Edmund and Jasper?"

"Or Lady Adela."

"And Jenet doesn't know where they are?"

"I don't know where Jenet is." Sister Thomasine had stopped wringing her hands and was now crushing them against her breast again. "I mean, I think I know, but I doubt the little boys are with her, and she wouldn't take Lady Adela. I think she went to pray over the dead men again. She told me—I didn't speak to her, I never have, but I happened on her once, coming back into the cloister crying and she told me then—that she loved a man and he was dead. She said there's no one else to pray over him and I think she goes to do it sometimes."

"She isn't supposed to leave the children for more than a minute!" Frevisse said angrily. "Assuredly not long enough to go all the way to the village!" The seven dead men had been put in the village church to await the crowner's and sheriff's coming. In the warm weather, with no certainty how long it would take for the crown's officers to come, that had seemed better than having them in the priory's church. But the village was a quarter mile away. By the field path it took only a short while to go and come back, if one's business there was brief, not much longer if one took the road. "How long has she been gone?"

"I don't know. I've been in the infirmary since dinner."

"What of the children? When were they last seen?"

"I don't know. I haven't asked anyone. When I couldn't find them, I came to you."

"Jenet wouldn't have taken them with her. She knows they have to stay inside the cloister." Frevisse was thinking aloud, and asked the next thought that came to her. "Why did you come to me before anyone else?"

Sister Thomasine bit her lip, dropped her eyes, and said at the floor, "I've seen how you watch them, and how worried you've looked ever since they came. More worried than anyone else. More worried than seemed needed." She huddled her shoulders up a little, in echo of a gesture she had almost lost since taking her vows. "So ... I thought that maybe you knew more than the others about something wrong in their coming and when I couldn't find them . . ."

Her words trailed off nervously. She looked worriedly up at Frevisse, who stared back at her with an unsettled mingling of surprise and dismay. She had been wrong to think that Sister Thomasine did not notice much of anything beyond her prayers and duties. To find that she noticed Frevisse specifically enough to know she was worried over the boys when no one else was, was disconcerting in the extreme.

But that was not to the point just now. "Lady Adela is gone, too, you said?"

Sister Thomasine looked even more wretched. "Yes. I couldn't find her either. And . . . and the gate to the orchard is unlocked."

Frevisse found she was staring at the younger nun. "What brought you to try it and find out?"

"When I couldn't find any of them anywhere inside the cloister, I went to see if they were in the garden. Lady Adela has been there with us at recreation. I thought she might have taken the boys. The orchard gate is just beyond and so I tried it, just because that's what a child would do, you know, and it was unlocked. It isn't supposed to be unlocked!"

"No, it isn't. Come with me." Without knowing she had made up her mind, she hurried out of the slype and toward the orchard gate.

Sister Thomasine followed her but asked, "Shouldn't we tell someone if we're going out?"

Strictly, she was right. Someone should be told and permission granted before any nun left the cloister except on such business as the hosteler had and then only within set limits. But seeking permission would take time and Frevisse was afraid there was no time to spare. "The fewer people outside the nunnery who know the boys are here, the better. If we can find them before someone else does, that will be best."