The day continued disjointed from there. No reason for Domina Elisabeth’s absence came down from the parlor. Nor did Abbot Gilberd or Father Henry or Dame Margrett, and neither did any of them come to Nones either. Afterward, dinner’s food and drink went up, but Malde and Alson coming down could only say, “They’re sitting there. Been talking, I’d guess,” which was no more than anyone could have guessed on their own and therefore no help to curiosity at all.
It was early in the afternoon that Dame Margrett came briefly down, to tell Dame Johane to take Sister Cecely up. Somehow every other nun was in the cloister walk just then and watched the three women go from the parlor and up the stairs, Sister Cecely quietly between the other two with no sign of her earlier protests. Frevisse, at her desk in one of the several stalls along the walk beside the church where the nuns worked who copied the books that made some of the priory’s income, had been trying to pretend to herself that she was working, but when they had gone, she admitted her pretence and did nothing more than sharpen several quills and count how many pages of the Festial she had left to copy, aware while she wasted that time of the other nuns likewise finding reasons to linger here and there in the walk, or if they went away, soon coming back, so that all of them-and several servants for good measure-were there when Dame Margrett brought Sister Cecely down from the prioress’ parlor
Whatever they were hoping for, Sister Cecely’s head was bowed too low and she retreated too quickly deep into the shadows of what was become her cell for anyone to see if she had been crying as Dame Margrett said to them all, “I’m to take Edward to them now,” and to Dame Perpetua who was nearest, “Will you-” She beckoned with her head toward the parlor.
For answer, Dame Perpetua came forward, pulled the parlor door shut, and put herself in front of it, making it plain that Sister Cecely was going to have no chance at her son. Dame Margrett gave a tight-lipped, agreeing nod and went to fetch the boy.
Mistress Petham had surely foreseen he would be wanted. Dame Margrett came promptly back with him, Edward holding tightly to her hand. He was scrubbed and combed and tidy, but as they went past her, coming the direct way along the cloister, not the long one, Frevisse saw him roll his eyes toward the door shut between him and his mother, much like a frightened horse wary of a possible trap. Poor child, she thought.
He was rather a longer while with Abbot Gilberd than Frevisse would have thought necessary. Once Sister Cecely rapped on the inside of the door and demanded loudly if she couldn’t have the door open again and at least glimpse her little boy. When Dame Perpetua did not answer, Sister Cecely hit the door hard with a fist and afterward was silent again.
Edward did finally come down, tear-stained and in Father Henry’s care this time. The priest swept him along the cloister walk with what looked to Frevisse like anger-and not at Edward, Frevisse thought.
Dame Margrett was close behind them, and where the nuns had stood back from Father Henry’s way, they flurried to her, wanting to know what had been happening, but she shook her head at them, saying, “We’ve been strictly enjoined to silence about it. I can’t tell you.” She added to Frevisse, still at her desk, “You’re to go up. Domina Elisabeth wants you to see Abbot Gilberd to the guesthall now.”
Frevisse willingly took her own curiosity up the stairs to Domina Elisabeth’s parlor, to be met by a heavy quiet that answered none of her silent questions, only told her things were not well. Dame Johane stood beside the door with head down and hands folded into her opposite sleeves, still as a statue. Domina Elisabeth and her brother stood at the window in a matching stillness until at Frevisse’s scratch at the doorframe they both turned. With her own eyes now properly downcast, Frevisse could not read their faces, but Domina Elisabeth sounded both weary and taut as she ordered, “Please see my lord abbot to his chamber, dame.”
“Yes, my lady,” Frevisse said, making a curtsy of obedient willingness to both her and Abbot Gilberd. “My lord.”
Holding out his hand to Domina Elisabeth, he said, “I will see you tomorrow, when I’ve had chance to talk with these Rowcliffes.”
Domina Elisabeth took his hand, went down in a low curtsy, kissed one of the large-gemmed rings he wore, and rose. She let go his hand, but he took hers back in both of his, patted it comfortingly, and said firmly, “We’ll talk more. Don’t worry on it,” then swept away from her toward Frevisse, who quickly turned and led the way down the stairs, out of the cloister, and away to the guesthall, hurried along by him following close on her heels.
He said nothing the whole way and therefore neither could she. Nor did he trouble, as Frevisse curtsied to him outside the door to his chamber, to offer his ring to her to kiss, merely went past her and in without a word, and she was suddenly fiercely glad he had provided food and drink for himself. He clearly had the wealth for it, and St. Frideswide’s very much did not, and just at that moment she did not feel charitable toward him.
Also, as she returned toward the cloister, she found that she was angry-not at his wealth or even his neglect of courtesy to her but at whatever he had done to reduce everyone who had come near him in Domina Elizabeth’s parlor to one degree or another of rigid quiet or strangled anger.
Domina Elisabeth did come down to Vespers and sat at supper in the refectory with her nuns, but she barely raised her eyes from her breviary during the Office or from the table during supper, and afterward she disappeared to her rooms again. As thwartingly, during recreation’s hour Dame Margrett and Dame Johane held to their own silence, neither of them looking happy but both of them refusing to say anything of what had happened in the prioress’ parlor today, meaning that everyone, including Frevisse, went to bed that night dissatisfied.
She found herself still dissatisfied when she came awake for Matins, groped her feet into her shoes in the darkness, slipped on her over-gown against the middle-night chill, and went from her cell and down the dorter stairs by the light of the single small lamp beside them to the dark cloister walk and the church. Besides the light ever-burning above the altar, another lamp waited there for them to light their candles along the stalls, but before even one was lighted they were all startled by running footsteps up the nave and Luce was suddenly there out of the darkness, her day’s gown loose about her and only a cap tied over her disheveled hair as she grabbed the edge of the rood screen’s opening to stop her headlong coming and cried out, “Dame Claire! You have to come! He’s sick as anything! The Rowcliffe man this time!”
Chapter 20
The “Rowcliffe man” was Symond Hewet, and he was ill in much the way Breredon had been but far worse, vomiting blood before it was done. The fight to save him went on past dawn, so that when Dame Claire and Frevisse came finally out of the guesthall, it was into the clear daylight of another cool and cloudless morning. They stopped together at the top of the steps to take deep, grateful breaths, clearing the sick-room stench from their lungs, Frevisse breathing the air and feeling the sunlight as only someone could who had been dealing with death through the darkest hours of a night. It was a lovely morning, and Frevisse knew that when she stopped being so tired she could hardly think, she would be very glad there was a man alive who had been very close to dying, but just now all she felt was need to lie down and sleep for a goodly long while.
Beside her, echoing her feeling, Dame Claire said, “I am growing too old for that manner of night.”