Knowing that, Frevisse could only wonder how had it been for Simon Perryn and the others these past three years of ill weather. To watch their hoped-for harvests rot in the fields and then live with the hunger that came afterwards, and everything to do again-the ploughing, harrowing, seeding-days into weeks into months of work with no surety that the next year would be any better.
The field of grain beyond the churchyard wall, only weeks away from ripeness, gave evidence of their courage and hope that they would win their gamble this year at least.
Domina Elisabeth had had the right of it, Frevisse thought-and not about Sister Thomasine alone. Her own prayers would hereafter have a different weight to them, now that the village folk had names and faces for her.
She looked for Sister Thomasine and found her drawn aside into the lee of the church porch, alone again and in no seeming distress. When Frevisse approached her, she looked up calmly enough, and asked, “Is it settled?”
‘The reeve and jurors have decided to keep the holding in Lord Lovell’‘s hands for the time being, rather than give it to either man,“ Frevisse answered; and then did not resist asking, ”What do you think of it all?“
‘Of it all?“ Sister Thomasine asked, puzzled.
Frevisse made a small gesture to the gathered clumps of people scattered around the churchyard. “Of all this. Of everyone.”
With the slightest of thoughtful frowns, Sister Thomasine looked around at the clusters of men and women, all of them busy in talk, and the children everywhere, most of the older ones playing at some kind of walking-tag among their elders, just short of running so no one could say at them, “Don’t run,” but managing to annoy their elders with it anyway while the younger ones were mostly, oddly enough, keeping with their mothers, sitting on the grass beside them or leaning against them, their mothers’ hands absently resting on heads or shoulders or patting at fretful ones wanting to be heeded or go home. Frevisse only wished someone would take Mary Woderove home. She was near the wall beside the gateway pentice, being talked to by Anne, Perryn’s wife, and three other women, and though she seemed quieted out of her anger, she was standing with her head down, refusing to look at them. Anne’s younger boy was there, too, pushing restlessly against his mother, scratching behind one ear at some idle itch, although his brother and Dickon had found a perch further along the wall with some other boys who were listening wide-eared to Father Edmund and Father Henry talking again with Tom Hulcote and some other men. Faced with both priests, they were all subdued enough, though Tom kept shaking his head again and again against whatever was being said at him.
Sister Thomasine sighed and turned her mild gaze back to Frevisse, the slight frown softened to puzzlement as she said gently, “I don’t see why so many choose to make such trouble for themselves, to care so much for worldly things that at the end all come to nothing. Why care so much for things that always end, when there’s God instead?”
It was what a nun, a bride of Christ, should say, but Frevisse knew Sister Thomasine well enough to know that the should and ought that guarded and guided most people’s tongues had nothing to do with her answer. She truly did not see what there was in the World that could possibly be preferred to God.
Frevisse had made the same choice, had given her life over to God and prayer, but knew she had carried with her into her nun’s life an understanding of the other choices and why people made them. She was unsure- and unsettled by her unsurety-whether Sister Thomasine’s lack of that understanding was a weakness or a strength.
The clot of men around Tom Hulcote was breaking up, dispersing at the priests’ urging, Frevisse guessed, with Father Edmund keeping a hand on Tom’s shoulder and going with him toward Mary, still among the women, while Father Henry came toward Frevisse and Sister Thomasine with half his heed still on Tom’s friends, watching to be sure they wandered off rather than clustered into talk again. As he joined them, Frevisse asked, “Did you talk him out of his anger?”
‘I don’t know. Our best hope is that the worst of it is past. But Tom is as much hurt as angered over it, and the sore of the hurt will keep rubbing the anger awake, I’m afraid. He wants very much to have Mary Woderove to wife.“
‘They could marry, even without the holding,“ Frevisse said.
‘They neither of them want to live that poorly, I fear,“ Father Henry said gravely.
Frevisse was saved from struggling to hold back from her answer to that by a shout, “Hai! Look!” from one of the boys atop the wall that turned heads first toward him and then where he was pointing, away toward a rider leading a packhorse just coming into view from the Banbury road beyond the priest’s house.
There was no mistaking Otes, the Banbury carrier. Frevisse had had dealings with him when she was hosteler and again lately as the priory’s cellarer, because he came this way every few weeks on his rounds, carrying letters sometimes, and bringing things ordered by those lacking time or else the wish to go all the way to Banbury market for something not to be had otherwise-needles, say, or spices-and taking orders for things to be brought next time he came. Old Bet, the dun mare he rode, and Splotch, his strong-backed, brown-and-white spotted packhorse, were as well known as he was, and children were tearing off handfuls of the rich churchyard grass before running to meet him. His usual place was likely the village alehouse or else the oak tree on the green, but since most of the village looked to be gathered here, he turned churchward, to draw rein at the gateway, returning greetings but not so cheerfully as Frevisse was used to seeing him, his eyes running among the folk gathering to him until he found out Mary Woderove and said to her over the heads between them, with a twitch of his head toward his pack-horse, burdened with the usual packs and hampers on either side but between them this time a wooden box maybe two feet long, barely a foot wide or deep, “It’s your husband, Mary. I’ve brought him home.”
Frevisse understood immediately and started a prayer. It was a moment longer before Mary, understanding at last, cried out shrilly and flung her hands over her face as Anne and the other women closed on her and Tom Hulcote drew hurriedly back with the look on his face of most men confronted by a crying woman and almost everyone else looked merely uncertain what to do, except the horses, who were reaching soft-lipped for the children’s offerings of fresh grasses, mouthing them carefully out of one small hand after another while the children stared at their parents and everyone else behaving suddenly so strangely. Father Edmund made the sign of the cross in the air toward what was earthly left of Matthew Woderove as he and Father Henry both began to pray aloud for the man’s soul. Sister Thomasine bent her head, joining Frevisse in the Office of the Dead: Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine. Et lux perpetua luceat eis. Give eternal rest to them, Lord. And perpetual light shine on them… A porte inferi Erue, Domine, animas eorum. From the gate of hell Rescue, Lord, their souls. But Frevisse was also watching Mary sobbing in Anne’s arms, and Tom Hulcote caught awkwardly apart, alone, looking uneasily from Mary to the wooden box with her husband’s bones to Mary again; and at Gilbey and Elena Dunn even more apart from everyone than Tom Hulcote but close to each other.