The Prioress’ Tale (18 page)

Aunt Eleanor nodded, understanding that at least, but then said slowly, “In the great pilgrimage churches, yes, it’s done.”

“And it can be done here!” Alys cried, forgetting to hold her voice down. That was exactly the point. Was she the only one who could see it? “This madman is the beginning for St. Frideswide’s and he’ll stay here at the altar for as long as it takes Sister Thomasine to pray him back to his full wits!”

Softly, without raising her head, Sister Thomasine murmured, “I won’t.”

Alys turned to stare at her, blank-minded with surprise, then jerked her wits back together. Aware that everyone else except the madman was staring, too, she demanded, “What do you mean, you won’t? You won’t what?”

“I won’t pray for him to be healed,” Sister Thomasine said as quietly, still without raising her head.

Anger began to overtake Alys’ disbelief. Her voice rising, she demanded, “You’re telling me you won’t pray for him?”

She had thought after the lesson she had given on Dame Frevisse this morning no one would dare to cross her for a long, long while to come. For it to be Sister Thomasine—
Sister Thomasine…

“Alys,” Aunt Eleanor said, “she’s saying she won’t pray simply for him to be healed. She
will
pray for him. You will pray, won’t you, Sister Thomasine?”

Sister Thomasine raised her head and looked with clear, untroubled eyes, first at Aunt Eleanor and then at Alys. “Yes. Of course I’ll pray for him,” she said simply.

Relieved, shaken, fighting the trembling that was always the aftermath of her rages, Alys accepted that with relief. But why did people have to drive her into these angers to begin with?

From the altar, Dame Claire said, “I’ve cleaned enough of the blood and dirt away to see the wound isn’t much.”

Willing to be distracted, Alys turned away from Sister Thomasine to ask, “He’ll be all right?” Reynold’s men had better pray he was.

“I’ve an ointment for it, and if the wound is kept clean, he should do well enough.”

“We’ll keep it clean enough,” Alys promised grimly. “Is he hurt aught else?”

“He doesn’t seem to be.” Dame Claire set her hand under the man’s chin and tried to raise his head. He resisted but she forced him with, “Let me see you.” There had been only scrubbing enough yet to have the wound clean, but she had shoved his matted hair back while she did it, so that for the first time his face showed, and she made him look at her while she asked as impatiently as if he were just any patient resisting her help, “Do you hurt anywhere besides your head?”

“No,” he said hoarsely, pulled free, and tucked his head low again.

Dame Claire forced the cloth she had been using on him into his hand. “Wash your face then while I find the ointment.”

He tried to resist that, too, but she warned sternly, “There won’t be prayers for someone as ungodly filthy as you are. Wash.” Not straightening up, the man fumbled with the cloth and began to rub at his face, somewhat unpurposefully.

The girl Joice shifted away from Dame Claire to hold the basin where he could use it more readily. No, Alys saw she was doing more than simply that—she was kneeling so low she could look up into his face. And Alys felt the spur of another hope. The girl had proved to be nothing but stubborn since she had come, had shown small sign that Alys could see of warming to Benet at all. Now here she was, after hardly looking at Benet, all but worshiping this dirty lump of a man. What if it turned out it had not been Reynold’s doing at all that brought her here, but God’s? What if she was meant to be here for this miracle, to be changed by it, to choose not Benet but nunhood in St. Frideswide’s? If she had the dowry Reynold said she did and she chose to become a nun…

“Alys,” Aunt Eleanor said.

Alys turned to find one of the kitchen women standing a respectful distance off, wanting to be noticed.

“Yes?” Alys said impatiently.

“The bath is ready,” the woman said, making a quick curtsy with the words. “Dame Perpetua said to tell you.”

“Good. Stay. You can help see him there. Dame Claire?”

“Done for now,” Dame Claire said, just smearing ointment on the cut. “I’ll put more on when he’s been bathed, but this will serve until then.”

She stoppered the jar and put it back in her box of medicines while Alys advanced to the foot of the altar steps and ordered, “Fellow, look at me.”

He did, for what it might be worth. He was still vile to the eye and nose and had mostly only smeared the dirt with the little washing he had done, but at least he had responded to her, and with the loud encouragement she would have used on a dog she meant to grasp at least something of her meaning, she said at him, “You understand what you have to do now? You’re going to have a bath. You’re going to be cleaned so you can stay here in the church. They’re going to take you away for your bath and then bring you back and you’ll be fed and seen to and Sister Thomasine will pray for you. You understand that?”

She was nodding at him while she said it and he was nodding back, nod for nod, so there was hope he understood, and she gestured the kitchen woman forward, ordering, “Help him up. See him out. Go with him, Dame Claire. And send someone to see what’s keeping Father Henry.”

She drew back and left them to it. The kitchen woman came readily, probably curious enough by now from what she must have heard from Sister Amicia and Dame Perpetua not to mind the smell. Between them, she and Dame Claire helped the man to stand and brought him down the altar steps. As they passed her, Alys, drawing back, saw he was shivering and ordered, “See to it he’s better clothed before you bring him back here. A cloak or something.”

“Yes, my lady,” the kitchen woman answered, but Joice quickly set aside the basin and rose, sweeping off her yards-of-green wool cloak—Reynold had to have the right of it; her people must be wealthy—as she followed them down the steps. “Mistress Southgate,” Aunt Eleanor said, in a tone meant to warn her off, but Joice swung the cloak around the madman’s shoulders, filthy though they were, enveloping him. Frightened or wary, likely, he jerked as if to twist free of it, but Joice laid a hand on his back in reassurance and even dared to meet his startled eyes in a long look before she drew aside, leaving him to go on with Dame Claire and the other woman.

“Joice,” Aunt Eleanor said, calling the girl to her as Lady Adela went to take Joice’s hand, asking, “Couldn’t we go with him, too?”

“No,” Aunt Eleanor and Alys said together. What Joice would have said was cut off by the cloister bell beginning to ring to Vespers. Sister Thomasine immediately turned away toward her choir stall; and Aunt Eleanor, taking the bell for cue, came to take Lady Adela’s other hand, saying firmly, “What we’ll do is pray for him. That will do him the most good. Come along.”

Lady Adela’s lower lip went out in sign of coming stubbornness, but Joice said, “That would be good,” and held between them, Lady Adela submitted, going away down the nave with her and Aunt Eleanor, Margrete following, so that Alys was free to swing her attention toward the cloister door where the incoming nuns were making a confusion, more interested in having a look at the madman that clearing the way for him. Alys advanced on them, ready to give them both sides of her tongue and enough of her mind that after this they would think twice before having anything but prayers in their heads once the bell rang for an office. St. Frideswide’s had finally been blessed like it deserved, and by blessed St. Frideswide, they were going to start being worthy of it, like it or not.

Chapter 16

As Frevisse led Joliffe out of the church, willingly leaving Domina Alys to make whatever she would of the madman, Sister Amicia was already fending off Sister Emma and Sister Cecely’s attempt to go in with, “You can’t. I told you. She said no one. She’d be angry.”

Probably reminded by sight of Frevisse what Domina Alys’ anger could lead to, they passed quick looks among them and fell to an embarrassed silence that Frevisse gave no sign of noticing; nor sign that she saw their looks change again as Joliffe came out behind her, merely bent her head to them slightly as she passed. But behind her Joliffe said in a deliberately deepened, mellowed voice, “Good day to you, my ladies,” bowing low without losing stride as he passed.

Knowing too clearly what effect that would have, Frevisse walked faster, leaving Sister Cecely’s beginning giggles behind, saying at Joliffe without turning her head, “You’re not helping things here.”

“Of course I am. Now they’ll have something new to talk on.”

“They
have
something new to talk on. We have a madman in the church.”

“A cured madman,” Joliffe pointed out.

Frevisse was not ready to think about that yet. The complications that would come if it were true were too many. “I thought you were going to see him out of here and away yesterday.”

“I did. I thought I had. He must have come back on his own.” The protest was real, but then Joliffe shifted his voice to profound piety and added, “It has to be God’s will he’s here.”

Goaded, Frevisse swung around to tell him what she thought of people who invoked “God’s will” whenever they did not want the responsibility of dealing with things gone ill, but the sharp movement startled pain across her back and she went very still, waiting for it to subside.

Joliffe froze with her then said quickly, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”

She managed something toward a smile. “It was my own doing.”

“Then is it safe to mention that I think I’d rather not go out this way?” He nodded ahead of him toward the door into the guest-hall yard. “There are likely to be men out there who aren’t too happy with me at present.”

Chagrined she had not thought of that, Frevisse said, “The kitchen yard instead,” and started to go on around the cloister walk, meaning to let him out through the kitchen passage, but stopped short again—more carefully—to ask, “Your lute. Your other things. Are they somewhere the men could come at them?”

“There’s nothing of mine they can come at,” Joliffe said cheerfully. “Master Porter asked me last night if I would prefer his masons’ company to Sir Reynold’s, and the choice wasn’t hard. My lute and all are in the masons’ lodge and very safe.”

“Then you’d do better to go out through the orchard rather than the kitchen yard,” Frevisse said, thinking aloud.

“A quiet walk in an autumn orchard with a lovely lady,” Joliffe said. “Yes, that will do well.”

“I’ll go so far as to take you to the gate and see you out,” Frevisse said dryly, not to be drawn again. “You’ll have to do your walking on your own.”

They had come almost around the cloister to the slype, the narrow passage out to the walled path that ran along the gardens to the orchard gate. The other nuns’ voices were rising shrill, with Sister Johane come from somewhere to join the excited talk outside the church door, and Frevisse turned down the passage with relief. Joliffe followed her without comment or question, still a few proper paces behind her, through the slype and along the path to the gate, where she turned to face him again, saying, “The gate is locked and Domina Alys has the key, but I don’t suppose it will bother you to climb the wall.”

“Not in the slightest,” he assured her, his face alight with silent laughter. “Only tell me before I go, are those the women you’re penned in with all the time? Is it always like this?”

“It can’t be always like this,” Frevisse pointed out. “We’ve not had a madman in the church before and it seems to me that that was your doing.”

“But your prioress isn’t. God’s mercy, how did you come to vote her into office?”

“I didn’t,” Frevisse answered curtly.

Suddenly unlaughing, Joliffe agreed, “No. I don’t suppose you did.”

They regarded each other silently for a moment, before Frevisse said, “You’ll take word to Mistress Southgate’s people and our abbot when you leave here?”

“Assuredly.”

“I’ve no way to pay you for it,” she began.

Joliffe dismissed that with a hand over his heart and a deep bow. “I’ll do it for nothing else than the pleasure of thwarting your prioress. And Sir Reynold, too, come to that.” He eyed the wall, gauging its height. “This wall must be meant only for keeping nuns in, because there’s hardly enough of it to keep anyone out.” He stretched up a hand, easily reaching its top, then turned to her again. “If you need to see me before I’ve gone…”

“There won’t be any way for me to talk with you after this. Sister Amicia has to be with me whenever I leave the cloister, and after tomorrow I won’t be allowed out of it at all, and from now on, for a time at least, Domina Alys will surely keep the church door to the yard barred to protect her madman. You won’t be able to come in.”

Joliffe dismissed all that with a gesture. “There’s always the tower.”

“Yes,” Frevisse agreed. “There’s the tower. I can go to its top and call across the rooftops for you. Except there’s no way in for me.”

For a grown man, Joliffe’s smile could take on all of a small boy’s mischief. “Secrets, my lady. There are always secrets. You know those boards covering the doorway into the choir? If you take good hold of them on one side, lift a little, and pull, they swing open just wide enough for someone not too broad to go through into the tower. Then all you need do is go up the stairs inside and down the scaffolding outside and there I am.”

“Oh, yes,” Frevisse said, covering her alarm and sudden speculations—who else knew that, had used it, for what, and how had Joliffe come to know of it?—with mockery. “I’m likely to do that. Why isn’t there a secret door directly through the tower’s outer wall, too, and save the trouble of stairs and scaffolding?”

“Secret doors through stone are so difficult to manage,” Joliffe said, matching her mockery. “I gather the masons aren’t being paid enough to take the trouble of making one.”

“They weren’t paid to take the trouble of making this one!”

“From what Master Porter says,” Joliffe returned, turning away to gauge how much a scramble he needed to reach the top of the wall, “they’re not being paid at all for anything.”

“What?” Frevisse asked sharply.

Surprised by her surprise, Joliffe turned back to her. “You didn’t know?”