That was among Lent’s purposes-to bring the mind to pause from its usual forward course into remembrance, and by way of deprivation make awareness of what blessings there were in life and thereby grow the gratitude for them that was too often otherwise lost under life’s daily busyness. Then at the weary end of Lent came Holy Week and finally Easter with its bounty of hope, with souls meant to be as refreshed by their Lenten journey as bodies were refreshed by the end of Lent’s fasting, and the fields and pastures with spring’s new life.
Meanwhile, mercifully, Sundays in Lent were not fast days, but while through the rest of a week each midday’s dinner might be sufficient to quiet stomachs for a while, suppers were never enough, and when time came in the darkest hour of the night to leave bed and go to the church for Matins, Frevisse too often found her hunger threatening to come between her and her prayers. She mostly tried to offer up her hunger as her sacrifice in humble return for Christ’s sacrifice of himself and sometimes she succeeded, but all too often it was a close-run thing and sometimes she failed completely, her body’s need too much for any intent she tried to have. They were all suffering that way, she knew, and Domina Elisabeth, mindful that they were going to cold beds, often allowed a final warm drink before Compline, the day’s last Office. Tonight especially the warm, spiced cider was a needed mercy because at Matins, Tenebrae began, the shadowed last days of Holy Week, when the dark passions of sacrifice and death were sorrowed through all over again before the joys of Easter morning. Through these coming three days the Offices were longer, their prayers and psalms more densely woven, asking much of fast-wearied bodies and minds. Mindful that the hours given to sleep before Matins were always too few, the nuns did not linger over their cider, partly because it would go cold if they did, partly to be done with it before time for Compline, when everything but prayers had to cease for the day.
Yet Tenebrae was one of her favorite times of the year, Frevisse thought a few hours later in the church, as she shifted from her knees to slide backward into her choir seat and resisted the urge to hold her cold-stiffened fingers out to the warmth of the candle burning in its holder between her place and Dame Amicia’s. She tried thinking downward at her stomach, hoping to soothe it to quiet while she joined her voice to the others in, “Nam zelus domus tuae comedit me, et opprobria exprobrantium tibi ceciderunt super me.”-For zeal for your house consumes me, and the taunts of reproach at you fall on me.
It was a bracing beginning and much needed this middle of the night. Matins could sometimes be the hardest Office, even at the best of times, with the nuns dragged from sleep and their beds for it, but it had an especial beauty with its weave of words and candlelight in a world otherwise silent and in darkness. Beyond their island of light and prayers there were only the night and its silences. No other duties hovered interrupted and waiting beyond the choirstalls. At this hour there was only prayer.
And a sneeze from Dame Perpetua at the end of the antiphon.
And a long, straining yawn from Dame Amicia.
And Dame Margrett jerking her head up from a deep nod toward sleep at the beginning of the first psalm.
And a shuffle of her own feet as Frevisse found she was thinking more of her cold toes than anything she should have been and brought herself sharply back to, “Laudabo nomen Dei cum cantico”-I will praise the name of God with song.
Perfection, alas, was never of this world.
But the first psalm ended and the wonder began.
Because this was Tenebrae, the days of Shadow and Darkness, a tall triangular stand with fifteen burning candles stood in front of the black-covered altar, between it and the nuns, throwing out a halo of warm light across the altar and the choir stalls. Now, at the first psalm’s end, Father Henry, who had been kneeling on the altar steps since before the nuns came into the church, rose to his feet. He had been so deeply still that Frevisse had ceased to heed his unusual presence at the Office, until now, surely stiff with his long stillness, he turned to the fifteen Tenebrae candles and with great care put one of them out.
The darkness beyond the altar, under the roof, behind the choir stalls crept a little closer, and the shiver down Frevisse’s spine was not from cold this time.
Father Henry returned to his knees, facing the altar again, and the Office went on, until at the end of the next psalm, he rose and put out another candle and the darkness crept nearer.
And on it went through Matins and into Lauds. One by one the candles went out and the darkness closed around the altar and the nuns in their stalls; and Frevisse, whether she would or not, was aware on one side of her mind of Sister Cecely kneeling, rising, sitting along with them all but silent, forbidden by the Rule, in her disgrace, to say any Office with them until she was purged and cleansed of her fault and sins. Yesterday Sister Cecely’s presence had irritated and irked, and surely it would again, but in this while, just now, Frevisse felt only pity for her, cut off as she was from sharing aloud in the wonder.
Now only one of the Tenebrae candles and the candles on the altar were still a-light. And in the Benedictus, his voice now joining them, Father Henry with great care put out the candles on the altar one by one until as the nuns chanted softly, “…ut illuminer eos, qui in tenebris et in umbra mortis sedent, ut dirigat pedes nostros in viam pacis.”-…to light those, who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet in the way of peace-he put out the last altar candle. Only the one Tenebrae candle on its stand and the ones lighting the nuns’ prayerbooks still burned and the darkness seemed very near.
But not as near as it would be.
Having said the antiphon that closed the Benedictus, the nuns almost as one leaned to blow out their own candles and slipped forward onto their knees, finishing Lauds while Father Henry took the last Tenebrae candle and set it with great care on the altar, to show that one Light still burned in all the Darkness. Then, while the nuns said the last prayer of Lauds in silence, each to herself, he took that last candle and hid it, still a-light, behind the altar.
Only a faint glow in the darkness showed it still burned for a hope and promise that light would come again beyond the darkness of Christ’s dying. All else was lost in shadow.
Returning to the front of the altar again, Father Henry made the sign of blessing over them, and still in silence and with bowed heads they rose to their feet and made their way from their stalls and the choir, out of the church into the cloister walk and night.
In the normal way of things, they would have returned to their beds now, but after the long effort of Matins and Lauds, there was hardly time enough before Prime to make that worth their while, and instead of toward the dorter, they hurried in a whispering of skirts and soft-shoed feet around the cold cloister walk to the kitchen where two sleepy servants had the fire built up on the cooking hearth and cups set out on the broad, scrubbed worktable. Allowed no talk among themselves, the nuns crowded around the table, each taking a cup and holding it out for one of the women to fill with warm cider, then taking it to the hearth, crowding in haste to the warmth there.
Sister Cecely was still with them. Humbly coming last from the table, she made to stand beside Dame Johane at one end of the hearth. Dame Johane drew aside more than was needed to make place for her, as if Sister Cecely were someone too unclean to be too near, unpurged of her sin as she yet was. Frevisse averted her eyes, knowing she would not want to be looked at if she were in like case. Besides, she would rather give all her heed to the pleasure of warmth and drink while she had them, knowing the respite would be brief.