The Widow's Tale (Sister Frevisse Medieval Mysteries Book 14) (6 page)

D
uring a chill
and rainy recreation hour a few days later, she and Dame Claire were walking at a measured pace around and around the roofed, square cloister walk. Because everyone else had chosen to stay in the warming room, save Sister Thomasine, gone, as was her way, to the church to pray, they were alone; and because silence was easy between them, they were silent, until Dame Claire said, “I’m worried about our widow.”

Frevisse, who had been thinking about her copying work and how many days it might be before she finished with the present book, took a moment to shift her thoughts, then said, “Worried? Why? Do you think she’s ill?”

“When I’ve asked her,” which would count as necessary talk from Dame Claire as infirmarian, “she says she isn’t.”

“She’d surely tell you if she was, if only to win some ease in her life.”

“Yes,” Dame Claire agreed but sounded no happier. “Or if she were the monster of sinfulness we’ve been told she is, she would lie that she was ill, so as to have that ease.”

“If
she were the monster of sinfulness?”

Dame Claire gestured impatiently. “If I knew nothing about her, if I only saw her, watched her as we’ve all been watching her these days, it’s grief I would think of. Not that she was depraved but that she was in deep grief.”

“She might well be in grief. For her sins, if nothing else. Or for having been taken away from her sins unwillingly.”

“Or for both and other things we’ve no thought of, which aren’t my duty to consider but Father Henry’s.” The priory’s priest. “It’s her health I’m worried for. She’s too pale and growing thin.”

“Thin will happen when every other day you have only bread and water,” Frevisse said. “Can you advise Domina Elisabeth to ease that part of her penance?”

“I’ve presumed it’s by Abbot Gilberd’s order.” And therefore not readily ignored.

They walked on in silence, turned the corner near the refectory, and began around the walk again before Frevisse said toward the paving stones, “Have you noted that Sister Thomasine doesn’t avoid her?”

“Yes.”

Dame Claire sounded no more comfortable with that than Frevisse was. Sister Thomasine in her early years in St. Frideswide’s had been almost cripplingly pious, but over the years her piety had deepened, steadied, was no longer something she forcefully asserted but simply lived in. It made her—for Frevisse at least—far easier to live with. It was only to be expected she would pray for their sinful widow’s soul; it was equally expected she would otherwise shun her. Perhaps not so openly as some of the nuns did, gathering their skirts away if Cristiana happened near them, as if her sins were a sickness that might be caught, but surely keeping her distance. Instead, she made no point of it at all and in the church knelt beside her at the altar as easily as if she were another nun.

Frevisse had been disquieted by that, was pleased Dame Claire was, too, and said on a sudden thought, “What if she made confession to Father Henry? If she did and showed any degree of contrition for her sins, he would be able to ask Domina Elisabeth to allow her more food at least.”

“That might help, yes.” Dame Claire’s voice rose with relief. “He’d do that. Especially if I prompt him that way first. Yes. That might very well help.”

And if it did not, at least they had tried.

I
n honor
of St. Lawrence’s day, supper had finished with the rare pleasure of crisply fried wafers dipped in sugar, so that afterward Cristiana on her knees in the church during the nuns’ daily hour of recreation gave deep thanks that today had not been one of her bread-and-water days and that for this little while she was not hungry. At most meals the nuns ate far less than she was used to having. She told herself she might have grown used to that, but her bread-and-water days left her so light-headed she was sometimes unsteady on her feet and at night her stomach gnawing at itself kept her awake when she might have slept, now that she no longer cried so much.

In truth, she rarely cried at all anymore. She felt as if her grief had eaten its way into her so deeply it was maybe beyond her tears’ reach. Or maybe she was just too tired for crying.

Having given her small prayer of thanks and her other, constant prayers for Mary and Jane and that Gerveys might find her soon, she sat back on her heels, her chin resting on her clasped hands pressed against the base of her throat in at least semblence of prayer. Around her, the church was abloom with golden, fading, evening light. She could remember when she would have felt that beauty was like God’s embrace made visible. Now all it meant was that she had endured through another day with no sign of any better hope for tomorrow.

If only she wasn’t always so hungry she would be able to think more clearly and maybe find some way of escape from this place. She was sorry, too, in a distant way that she had upset the priest when he took her confession today. He seemed, all in all, a kindly enough man, with a burly, uncomplicated certainty to him that in another time and place she would have found comforting. He had even been kind enough to tell her his name. Father Henry. But despite that he had asked if she wanted to make confession, he had seemed almost afraid to hear it. Afraid of what depths of sin she would reveal? Afraid he would see hell’s mouth gaping behind her and his own soul polluted by her mere words? Even suspecting that was his thought had not curbed Cristiana’s gladness at a chance to talk to someone.

She had promptly unsettled the poor man, though, when he began by asking when she had last made confession. “In Holy Week,” she had answered.

Startled, he had fumbled, “Not since then? When they . . . after you . . . Surely before they brought you here . . . you didn’t make another one?”

“I was seized without warning.” She had let all her bitterness show. “I was bound and gagged and brought here with no chance for anything.”

Uneasily he had asked what penance she had been given at Easter. She had listed the Aves and Paternosters given her by Father Richard for her numerous small sins and the beeswax candle she had given the church in recompense for her anger at Edward when he bought the chestnut gelding last autumn when they had not needed another horse.

When she stopped, Father Henry had sat silently waiting, then asked, “Nothing more?”

“There was nothing more.”

Again he had been silent, then bade her go on with what she wished to confess now. With bitter satisfaction, she had confessed to her wrath and her hatred and to her despair, then had waited through another silence from Father Henry before he asked cautiously, “Is that all?”

“And envy,” she said, belatedly thinking of it. “Envy of the nuns at their meals on the days when I have only bread and water.”

“And?”

“There’s nothing more, Father.”

“No . . . sins of the flesh?”

“On my soul’s hope of salvation,” she had said more sharply than she had ever spoken to any priest, “those are all my sins.”

Father Henry’s unhappy silence had drawn out somewhat long before finally he asked, “Do you repent of these sins?”

She had meant to be humble, because those
were
sins, however justified, but found herself saying harshly, “No.” With no urge to take back the word once it was said.

“I can give you neither penance nor God’s forgiveness if you’re not repentant,” Father Henry had warned. He had sounded as if it hurt him to say it.

Caring nothing for his hurt, Cristiana had said, “Then don’t,” stood up, and walked away.

Afterward she was sorry it had come to that. She knew full well the comfort there was in giving up her sins to a priest and the relief that came with forgiveness and penance. But what use would pretended repentance be? The hunger pains in her stomach would reawaken her envy. Her despair would not give way so long as she was trapped here. And as for her wrath and hatred at Faurence, Milisent, and everyone who had helped them put her here, what use would penance be when her fury at them still seared with actual, burning pain behind her breastbone? It wasn’t penance she wanted. What she wanted was out of here and her daughters with her and the chance to pay Laurence and Milisent back for everything.

A flare of her hatred-pain took her with no warning, curled her forward on herself, and then, its warning given, faded. She straightened slowly, wary of waking it again, and was surprised to find tears on her cheeks and—when she opened her eyes—Sister Thomasine kneeling beside her in prayer toward the altar.

Sister Thomasine prayed more intently than anyone Cristiana had ever known. No matter what the hour or how long she knelt, her body was straightly upright from her knees, her hands steepled together palm to palm at her breast, her head deeply bowed, her face shielded from view by the soft fall of her veil to either side of it. Save for when she gave Cristiana the pad for under her knees, she had never spoken to her nor given any sign that Cristiana was there while she was praying. That made it the more startling when now, as Cristiana drew a cautious breath, wary of wakening the pain again, and settled back onto her heels, Sister Thomasine lifted her head and turned to look at her, the first time Cristiana had fully seen her face.

Whatever Sister Thomasine had been when young— pretty or plain or even ugly—was gone. Her face was refined down to fine bones and pallor almost as white as the wimple tightly around it, as if both food and sunlight were things in which she rarely indulged. And yet in her eyes were more of depth and distances than Cristiana had ever seen in anyone’s. Cristiana stared into them as Sister Thomasine put out a narrow, white hand and laid it gently on her shoulder with all the tenderness a mother might have given a child.

It was only for a moment. Then Sister Thomasine took back her gaze and her hand and faced the altar again, head bowed to her prayers. Yet for that moment of her touch and look, Cristiana’s hatred, angers, and pain had all seemed little things.

A
few days
after that the church was again softly golden with westering sunlight and Cristiana was again alone in front of the altar in the hour before Compline. As she had come toward the church after supper, she had seen Sister Thomasine among the nuns going through the narrow slype toward the tall-walled garden beyond the cloister to spend their hour’s recreation, but now when she heard a slight, soft footfall behind her, she supposed she was come after all, until the nun who stopped beside her did not kneel, instead said, “Cristiana,” and when Cristiana jerked up her head to look at her, added, “I want to speak with you.”

Wary both of the nun and her own stiff knees, Cristiana stood up unsteadily.

The nun, her hands tucked into her opposite sleeves, made no move to help her, simply waited until she was standing, then said, “I’m Dame Frevisse.”

Cristiana had learned a few of the nuns’ names by chance, but mostly she knew them as “the older nun who talked too much,”

“the young nun who stared,”

“the nun with her nose in the air.” This one was “the tall nun who had been at the guesthall.” Not knowing what lies Milisent had said to her then, Cristiana set her lips tightly together, determined not to be lured into speaking. The nun made a slight nod, accepting her silence, but said, “Since you confessed to Father Henry, he’s been openly unhappy. It seems to be a troubled unhappy rather than weighed-with-sin unhappy. Do you see the difference? Do you understand?”

Cristiana gave a curt nod that she did. Was she supposed to be stupid as well as sinful?

“He of course can say nothing about your confession, but he’s asked that your penance of bread and water be eased.” Cristiana felt hope quicken. If only she weren’t so hungry all the time, if only she could think more clearly . . .

“Domina Elisabeth has agreed to write to Abbot Gilberd about it,” the nun continued.

Cristiana’s hope dwindled. Letters took time and permission might well not come, not if this Abbot Gilberd believed all that Laurence must have told him.

“In the meanwhile, since we are allowed to speak to you on necessary and immediate matters, and because as hosteler I have to consider the well-being of our priory’s guests—which in some sense you are—I have determined that knowing how you are in both your body and mind is a necessary and immediate matter. Because you are charged not to speak except in answer to questions, I’m asking you if there anything I can do to help you?”

Cristiana gulped for air along with hope, half a score of things racing through her mind before she grabbed at one that had been heavy on her all these days. “Please,” she said and heard her desperation raw in her voice. “Where am I?” Dame Frevisse’s eyes narrowed. “You were never told where they were taking you?”

“No one told me anything. I was taken suddenly and by force in my own house. I was blindfolded and gagged and kept tied in a curtained litter until we were nearly here.” The nightmare of it rose again in a black wave. Her voice shook. “Three days. And at night I was tied to a bed in a locked inn room. I was never told where I was, where I was going.” Quickly, almost as if she understood the pain of that, Dame Frevisse said, “You’re in St. Frideswide’s priory in northern Oxfordshire. You’re near to Banbury.”

Oxfordshire, Cristiana thought, dismayed. Three far days’ journey west from home.

“Where do you come from?” the nun asked. “Hertfordshire,” Cristiana said faintly. “Near a place called Broxbourne.”

“On the main way from London to Walsingham, yes,” Dame Frevisse said. “I’ve passed through it, going to Walsingham. A long time ago.”

Tears welled hot in Cristiana’s eyes. In this wasteland of hopelessness and strangers, even to know someone knew from where she came was a relief. The tears flowed over and she wiped them from her cheeks almost angrily. She had hoped she was done with crying. What use was she going to be to even herself if such small mercy as this undid her?

Ignoring her tears, Dame Frevisse said, “You say you were seized without warning …”

“And falsely!” Cristiana said, not heeding that was not yet a question. “I told the priest and I’ll swear on anything you ask that I’ve done none of the things I’m accused of! My husband died and they took my daughters. They—“

Dame Frevisse stopped her with a quickly lifted hand. “Abbot Gilberd in his letter—“

“I don’t even know this Abbot Gilberd! He can only know what Laurence—he’s my husband’s cousin, he’s the one who’s done this—he can only know what Laurence told him. Laurence wants all the Helyngton lands for himself. He’s persuaded the duke of Suffolk to give him my daughters and our lands by lying about me, but it’s all false! I swear …” Something in Dame Frevisse’s face stopped her; hope drained out of her to discouragement again and bitterly she said, “You don’t believe any of this, do you?”

Her face shadowed by a frown, Dame Frevisse said, “I think I rather more believe you than not. But I don’t see yet what I can do to help you.”

Cristiana could have wept again, this time with her discouragement.

But Dame Frevisse went on, “More food and less penance, to begin with. I’ll do what I can for that. Try not to despair too deeply.”

Dame Frevisse started to turn away, but Cristiana said urgently, “Please!”

The nun turned back to her and Cristiana tumbled out, “If a man named Sir Gerveys should come here—Sir Gerveys Drury—please, for God’s mercy, tell him I’m here.” Doubt rose in the nun’s face at this sudden mention of a man. More desperately Cristiana said, “He’s my brother. He’ll be trying to find me.” She had to believe that or utterly despair. “If he comes, please, tell him I’m here.”

Considering, Dame Frevisse said slowly, “No one has forbidden us to say you’re here. If anyone comes asking for you, they’ll be told.”

“Thank you,” Cristiana whispered.

Dame Frevisse gave a short nod and left her. Cristiana watched her black-gowned back until she was gone, remembering when she had been as certain in herself and place as the nun was. When there had been Edward and Mary and Jane and home and her whole world sure around her.

With her tears burned dry again, she turned back to the altar and knelt to pray for Laurence’s death and for Gerveys to come for her. Soon.

Soon.

F
revisse paced alone
along the cloister walk, head bowed, watching the paving stones pass beneath her skirts. Should she confess, either to Domina Elisabeth or else to Father Henry, that she had talked with Cristiana? Her justification for it was, at best, of doubtful worth. Still, it had served, however little. She knew more than she had known. But how much of it did she believe? That the woman was from Broxbourne in Hertfordshire was probably true; and that she desperately hoped a man named Gerveys would find her. He might even be her brother. For the rest of it, she had indeed been bound and gagged while being brought here, and while that could have been to keep her under necessary control because she was not fully sane, she had given no sign of either madness or violence while she was here. Although if she were as corrupt as she was accused of being, she
was
mad, even if not violent. Thus far, though, she had been obedient enough, with no sign of anything but grief about her.

And anger, Frevisse amended. Most of what she had said just now had assuredly been bitter and desperate with anger, with no sign at all of penitence. Anger, grief, bitterness, desperation. But no penitence. And yet Father Henry, deeply troubled about something, was apparently not troubled about that.