Better, then, not to go on doing it. Better that Domina Elisabeth be told now and be done with it, Frevisse thought, and she quietly left the choir, trying to disturb Sister Helen as little as might be.
She carried her decision as far as the foot of the stairs to Domina Elisabeth’s rooms and would have carried it up the stairs except Luce from the guesthall came hurrying down them. Suddenly confronted with each other, they both came to sudden stops, Luce saying, “Oh!” then bursting out, “I was just sent to find you! My lady wants you! Peter is come back from Abbot Gilberd. He’ll be here tomorrow. The abbot. The abbot himself! Domina Elisabeth wants to see you!”
With hidden dismay and sinking heart, Frevisse thanked her and went on up the stairs. Domina Elisabeth met her in the doorway at their head, fretted and unsettled, exclaiming, “Come in! Luce told you. I heard her. What are we going to do? How can we be ready?”
Frevisse could have matched her for unsettled. To have one of Abbot Gilberd’s officers here would have been one thing. As the abbot’s man, he would have needed to be shown something of the courtesy due his master and St. Frideswide’s could have done that well enough. To have Abbot Gilberd himself here was a far more difficult thing, and if giving way to alarm as open as Domina Elisabeth’s would have done any good, Frevisse would have joined her in it. Since it would not, she said with an outward assurance that she inwardly lacked, “Very little needs to be done to be ready, my lady. Master Breredon will have to move into one of the lesser chambers. He can be shifted as soon as I say.” And that would serve him rightly, she thought. She would likewise put fresh wariness of Abbot Gilberd into both him and the Rowcliffes, and that would be to the good, too. “There’ll be time enough this afternoon to have the room cleaned and readied for my lord abbot.”
Her steadiness had somewhat steadied Domina Elisabeth but, “What of food? What are we going to feed him?”
Frevisse refrained from saying, Let him eat what we eat, why should he eat better? Neither Domina Elisabeth nor Abbot Gilberd would see it that way, so more usefully, she offered, “Someone in the village should still have at least one ham they’ll be willing to sell.” She knew for a certainty that there were villagers who lived better than the nuns did. “Master Naylor can be sent to buy what he may. There’ll have to be a lamb from the flock, no matter what. We still have honey and sufficient dried fruits, I think. Dame Perpetua will be best able to tell you what’s to hand and what can be done with it. I think we’ve still a little white flour left.” Domina Elisabeth seemed about to protest something-probably that none of that sounded enough-but Frevisse added very firmly, “Beyond that, why should my lord abbot think we live more richly than we do?”
That stopped whatever Domina Elisabeth had been about to say. She did not look so much reassured as too distracted to carry it further and said rather desperately, “Yes. We can only do what we can do. I’ll leave the guesthall to you. Have Dame Perpetua come to me, please. Dame Juliana, too. The church will have to be readied.”
“My lady,” Frevisse said, made a curtsy, and left.
At least, with Easter just past, little would need doing in the church, but she suspected that Domina Elisabeth would nonetheless have them all scurrying from task to task from now until Abbot Gilberd arrived. Yet more trouble to be laid to Sister Cecely’s account.
In the cloister walk again, she found that Luce’s news had already spread; she was hardly away from the stairfoot when Dame Juliana and Dame Amicia passed her on their way to Domina Elisabeth without need for summons, and in the cloister’s kitchen she found Dame Perpetua in the midst of laying a firm hand upon the flutter the news had caused there. Frevisse shared her thoughts on what was to be done about feeding the abbot, and Dame Perpetua agreed with her but said, “He’d better bring his own wine with him, though. Do we know how many men he’s bringing with him?”
“It seems not. I would guess at least ten.”
“Blessed Saint Frideswide. He’d better bring some food with him, too, then. Will you talk with Master Naylor or should I?”
“I will,” said Frevisse. “This is going to fall mostly on the guesthall, after all.”
“But feeding the abbot is going to fall mostly on me,” Dame Perpetua said grimly. “He’ll be dining with Domina Elisabeth in her chamber probably. I’d better see to our napery, too, I suppose.”
Leaving Dame Perpetua to her share of the trouble, Frevisse went to the guesthall. Here old Ela was waiting for her just inside the door but blessedly not in any kind of fret or flutter, saying without the bother of any greeting, “I’ve already warned Master Breredon you’ll be asking him to shift. You’d best send someone to the village to see what food is to be had there, and I’m going to need more help here, what with the abbot’s men added to the lot we already have.”
“Master Naylor will see to what can be had from the village. Hire who you need for help. Thank you for warning Master Breredon,” Frevisse said but with a smile that old Ela matched. They understood each other. Between them, they would make all go well here-or someone else had better have good reason why it did not.
Master Breredon made no trouble over having to shift into one of the smaller chambers, cramped though he would be there with his two servants. At Frevisse’s direct demand at him and then at the Rowcliffes, they all swore they would keep their quarrel quiet, abiding the abbot’s arrival. Mistress Lawsell in her own chamber said she was content for herself and her daughter, unworried at it all. For Elianor, standing behind her mother, Frevisse said, “There is always the church. You can spend time there if the hall here becomes too busy for you. That might be best for Elianor, given your hope she becomes a nun.”
“Yes. Of course,” Mistress Lawsell said without convincing force, while Frevisse pretended not to see Elianor’s smile.
Admitting to herself her cowardly desire to avoid whatever upheaval was going on in the cloister, Frevisse stayed busy at the guesthall as long as she could, only leaving when the bell summoned her to Vespers. After that the needs of supper, recreation’s hour, and Compline filled the time until welcome bed. It was only in the morning after Prime and breakfast, as the nuns were on their way back to the church for Mass, that Luce came at them in the cloister walk, pale with sleeplessness and fear, exclaiming at Dame Claire, “It’s Master Breredon! He’s been sick all the last half of the night! Heaving and purging! Ela says you have to come. Come quick!”
Chapter 18
He looks like to die,” Luce cried. “I swear he does! He won’t stop heaving up, but there’s nothing left in him to heave. Or go the other way either. He’s been doing it for hours. It’s terrible!”
Breaking away toward the infirmary, Dame Claire demanded, “Why didn’t you come for me before this?” Adding, “Sister Johane, come with me.”
“Ela didn’t think it would last so long. He’d be sick and then he’d be done. That’s what she thought. But he isn’t.” Luce scuttled a few steps after Dame Claire, then back to Frevisse, wringing her hands. “Ela says you have to come!”
“Of course,” Frevisse said with far more outward calm than she felt inwardly. If this was some contagion broken out in the guesthall…
She looked to Domina Elisabeth for permission to forego Mass and, “Yes,” Domina Elisabeth said. “Go. Go, of course.” She pressed both her hands distractedly to her forehead below the edge of her wimple. “Why now? Why must this happen now?”
Having no answer to that and supposing none was expected, Frevisse made barely a curtsy and went around the cloister walk the other way from Dame Claire’s, toward the outer door, Luce following her.