“I’ve hoped to speak with you, too, my lady,” Elianor said eagerly.
First, though, there was the matter of Rowcliffe’s demand about Edward, and Frevisse told it, then added her outward reason for bringing Elianor, saying at the end, “I thought, too, it would give her the needed chance to talk with you.”
“Of course,” said Domina Elisabeth steadily. “As for Master Rowcliffe’s desire to see the child, I think it should be Edward’s choice, not his mother’s. Ask Edward his desire in this and use your own judgment on it thereafter.”
“I think Edward should go no farther than the church,” Frevisse said.
Domina Elisabeth nodded agreement to that. “It might be well to have Father Henry there, too, that the Rowcliffes understand we’ll have no tolerance of trouble.”
“Yes, my lady,” Frevisse said, with the thought that Father Henry’s broad shoulders together with the authority of his priesthood would probably be sufficient to keep Rowcliffe from attempting anything foolish, should Rowcliffe have anything foolish in mind.
Domina Elisabeth gestured for Elianor to sit on the window seat near her and said, “Let us talk now, since we have this chance.”
Frevisse willingly took that for dismissal, made curtsy, and left.
To reach Mistress Petham’s chamber, she had to go down to the cloister walk again. Passing along it, she passed Sister Thomasine sitting her turn at guard outside the guest parlor where, for the sake of better light and air, the door presently stood open, and Frevisse had glimpse of Sister Cecely pacing in the small room’s shadows. Sister Cecely had been a restless, unhappy girl here. Now she was a restless, unhappy woman. Was she simply that way always, inside the nunnery and out, or only here in St. Frideswide’s, Frevisse wondered as she went up the stairs to Mistress Petham’s chamber. However it had been for Sister Cecely, much of it had come by way of her own choosing, but Edward had had no choice in anything, and Frevisse inwardly admitted she was interested in how he would take this offer of chance to see his near kin again.
In the moment before she knocked at the frame of the open door, she saw him sitting cross-legged on the end of Mistress Petham’s bed, reading aloud with somewhat labored slowness from a book laid open on his lap while Mistress Petham lay against her pillows, watching him with a kindly smile. When Frevisse knocked, he broke off, and they both looked toward her, Mistress Petham’s smile changing to welcome but Edward’s ease gone to wariness even before Frevisse said why she had come; and when she had told him, he stayed unmoving and unanswering, staring at her, much like a small animal gone frozen-still in the hope a passing hawk will fail to see it, until Mistress Petham prompted, “Edward? Do you want to see your cousin?”
Edward flinched a look toward her, then back at Frevisse, and hardly above a whisper, asked, “What does my mother say?”
“She’s not been asked,” Frevisse said, carefully quiet. “This is for you to say. No one else.”
Edward ducked his head over the book still open on his lap. “I don’t want to see him.”
Frevisse could not tell whether that was from fear of John Rowcliffe or because he knew his mother would not want it. Trying for more answer, she asked, “Is there someone you would rather see instead?”
This time Edward’s answer was a whisper that neither she nor Mistress Petham heard, and Mistress Petham leaned forward and asked, “What, Edward? Who is it you’d rather see?”
Edward did not raise his head, only his voice a little. “My father.”
That silenced both women for a long moment, until Frevisse said very gently, “You know your cousins Symond and Jack are here. Would you like to see either of them instead of Master Rowcliffe?”
They waited again, until finally Mistress Petham said, “Edward?” and he lifted his head a little to say to Frevisse, “Jack.”
She smiled at him. “Then you shall. Jack and no one else.”
Someone began to ring the cloister bell, calling to the morning’s Office of Tierce, and she went instantly silent and bowed her head in farewell to Mistress Petham. Mistress Petham bowed her head in return while holding out her hand to Edward. “Come,” she said. “Let’s follow Dame Frevisse to the church.”
Chapter 15
Sitting on the bench, her back against the wall, Cecely scuffled her bare feet in the loose rushes covering the guest parlor’s floor and stared at the room’s far wall. It wasn’t even that far a wall. A few yards away, no more, and the other walls hardly farther off on either side. It was a small room, a hateful room. A prison room. Just as it always had been. She hated it now the same way she had hated it when she was a nun here and had feared it was as near as she would ever come to the outside world again. Even then, she had only been allowed in here when she had a visitor or visitors, and because those had almost always been kin of one sort or another, Johane had almost always been with her here because they shared so many kindred that a visitor to one of them had usually been a visitor to them both.
Johane had used to laugh that they came in hope some of the nunnery’s piety would wear off on them. Now did Johane even remember how to laugh anymore? Or had that been worn out of her along with every other memory of what pleasure life could be?
In those whiles of visitors, there had been talk and something to eat and drink besides the nunnery’s usual dull fare, so that for that little while it would hardly matter that the room was small and bare and miserable. But it was small and bare and miserable, and she had been in it since yesterday with nothing to do but pace its little space or sit and stare at the bare walls, the ugly rafters, the dry rushes, or else try to sleep and mostly fail to do so. At least they had brought down the miserable mattress and pillow from her bed in the dorter, even if they’d only put them on the floor in the corner, and the door still stood open, but probably only to give her light enough to read the breviary Domina Elisabeth had given to her.
“Use it,” the prioress had said coldly yesterday. “Look into your heart and see the wrong you’ve done to God and yourself. At least begin the search to find your way back to God’s love.”
Cecely had nearly spat at her feet.
They made her want to scream, these women. They had found nothing better to do with their lives than shut themselves up in here to die before they were dead. What did they know of love or anything else? She had had love. She knew everything they did not, and one of the things she knew was how useless God’s “love” was when she was lonely or frightened or in need of a man’s warmth. God’s “love” and God’s “care” and God’s “comfort.” Where were they? What use were they? It hadn’t been God there in her bed at night when she put out a hand, needing someone. It hadn’t been God who had laughed with her and pleasured her and made life bright around her. It had been Guy.
And where had God been when Guy died? If God “loved” and “cared” and “comforted,” where had he been then?
Oh, they all had answers. The priest at home had had answers, and if she asked these women here, they’d have answers. But their answers were only words. Words weren’t Guy’s arms around her, holding her warm and safe. Words weren’t what she wanted. What she wanted was Guy holding her against the miseries of this awful place.
Except she wouldn’t be here if God hadn’t taken Guy from her. He had taken Guy, and what use was his “love” and “care” when she ached for someone to be holding her? God was no use for that. There was no one to hold her, no one to put their arms around her and make her feel safe. She was alone and no words about God’s “love” and “care” were going to change that.