It was, and she found it hard, when Domina Elisabeth made sign they were done here, to move away from the hearth’s warmth. Nor was she the last to give up and leave the kitchen for the cloister walk’s chill dark. Shivering as she went, she thought wryly of how strongly the body fought to prevail over the mind’s soul-longing. Whatever her mind’s intent, her body did not want the cold church and more prayer; it wanted the warm kitchen and more sleep, wanted them very badly, and there was no comfort in knowing it must be the same for everyone. Only for a saint, she supposed, would the desire for God be so great they could not only forgo but even forget the body’s desires.
She also thought, equally wryly, that if that were the way of it, she was assuredly very far from sainthood.
The day went its particular way. With the Offices lasting longer, there was less time for the nuns’ other duties, which were therefore done with haste and sometimes, by such of the nuns as did poorly on too-little sleep, with ill grace. Frevisse was able, through practiced effort, to avoid at least the ill grace. Her downfall came during the morning time given over, during Lent, to reading. At Lent’s beginning, each nun was given one of the nunnery’s books that she was to read at that set time each day. This year Frevisse’s turn had come around again to Dame Julian of Norwich’s Showings, and that had pleased her. She had brought the book to St. Frideswide’s herself, given to her by her uncle to be part of her dowry. She had read it some several times over the years since taking her vows, and so knew the work and valued it, but maybe knew it too well because this morning she found herself nodding over it, more asleep than awake and not helped by the fact that not only had the rain stopped but the sun was come out. Thinly, yes, and somewhat watery, but sun nonetheless and just warm enough to lull her toward sleep where she sat on the low wall between the cloister walk and the square garth where spring showed in the young green of herbs and someday-flowers. More than once her head falling forward into sleep jerked her awake, nor was hers the only head nodding over books elsewhere around the wall and she doubted she was the only one relieved when the cloister’s quiet was broken by Domina Elisabeth at the foot of the stairs to her rooms slapping the wooden halves of the clapper together, the sharp clack-clack-clack-clack-clack making more than one of the almost-dozing nuns jump.
Frevisse, who had seen her in time not to be taken by surprise, cast a longing look at the bell under its pentice in the middle of the garth. Through these days of Tenebrae it would not be rung to call them to the Offices. Until Easter, it was joined in the mourning. Only with the Resurrection would it ring out clear and sweet again and be all the more welcome for the while they had gone without it.
For longer than anyone remembered, St. Frideswide’s had made do with an ill-made, dull-throated bell, one that clanged rather than rang. Then, something like a year and a half ago, Frevisse had given help to her cousin in a dark time and afterward parted from her in anger. No word had passed between them since, but last summer this bell had come as her cousin’s gift to the priory.
That had been well-witted on her cousin’s part, knowing as she must have that Frevisse would have refused any gift to herself. This way, Frevisse’s thanks had been included perforce in the general thanks the nunnery had sent, but she had somewhat sharply refused Domina Elisabeth’s offered permission to write to her cousin with message of her own. The sharpness of her refusal had warned her that her anger was gone too deep, that she needed to do more than simply wait for it to fade, and through this past autumn and winter she had fought to quell and cure it, had failed, and at Shrovetide had finally confessed both her anger and her failure to Father Henry, the nunnery’s priest.
Whether it was that Father Henry had grown in the years he had been in St. Frideswide’s or that she had become better able to see his virtues, the time was long past when she thought him too slight a man in spiritual matters to be of much use. He had heard her out with kindness, had not been able to give her absolution for a sin she was still in but had set her prayers meant to help her grow free of it. She had labored at those prayers all through Lent, and labor was precisely what it had been until, just a week ago, she had found with surprise that she was come out on the far side of her anger-that it was worn away and left behind her and she was able to look back at it as one looked back on an illness, feeling-as one did after illness-the lighter for being done with it. Lighter, and whole again, and glad to be cleansed of the ugly burden that her anger-like an illness-had been.
Father Henry had warned her, though, when first setting her the task, that her penance, when she was done, would be to ask Domina Elisabeth for permission to write to her cousin and then to write not only with thanks for the bell but to ask her cousin’s forgiveness.
“You might as well have any anger at that out of the way along with the rest and be done with it,” he had said. “Then you won’t have to do penance for that in its turn.”
That had been well-forethought on his part, because it was going to be hard to ask Alice’s forgiveness. Not as hard as if she had tried to do it while still lost in her anger, but hard enough.
That was what made it penance.
Closing Showings and rising to her feet, Frevisse smiled to herself. What made the penance of true value was accepting it with a glad heart. Able to do that now, she found that the freedom it gave her was worth every hour of the struggle it had been.
The struggle to get through the rest of the day was another matter, but she made it and at her end-of-day visit to the guesthall learned from Ela that three more guests had come-one Master Breredon and his two servants.
“He means to stay through Easter,” Ela told her, sounding happier about it than Frevisse would have expected. “His servants, they’re a married couple. Seems the wife is poorly, and so this Master Breredon has brought her for her to pray for healing and so on. Her husband’s already had word with Father Henry. I thought you could say something to Dame Claire.”
“Or Dame Johane,” Frevisse said. “Yes. Not tonight but tomorrow surely.”
She briefly wondered why Master Breredon had chosen here instead of a shrine known for its healing. Surely his circumstances were better than little Powlyn’s parents if he had two servants.
Ela went on, “He’s given dried fruit, some flour, and a large ham for guest-gift.” Which explained why she was not unhappy at him being here. “I hope you’ll leave it all to us and not need it in the cloister,” she added pointedly.
Frevisse assured her that the guesthall could keep it all, relieved but keeping to herself the unworthy fear she had had that the nuns might have to give up some of their Easter feast to their guests. If it had come to that, she and the others would have given thanks that they had something to give, but being thankful to have enough to give and being glad at having to give it were not necessarily the same, and shameful though it was to admit it, Frevisse would not care to say how little glad she would have been. Lent had gone on a very long time.
She was privately laughing at herself for her weakness until Ela asked, her words more polite than the scorn in her voice, “How’s that run-back Sister Cecely doing, if there’s no trouble in my asking?”
“She’s doing well enough,” Frevisse said quellingly. Even if there was no way to stop talk of Sister Cecely, neither was there need to encourage it by saying much.
“Early days yet,” Ela said. “Even when she was here before, pretending to be a nun, she was never anything but trouble. That her own boy she brought with her?”