Chapter 9
Frevisse returned to the priory in company with Ienet Comber bringing curded cheese to the nunnery kitchen. They parted in the kitchen yard with Ienet’s promise that when her business with the curded cheese was done, she would wait there to keep Frevisse company back to the village, and Frevisse cut through the priory’s side yard, meeting only servants, to a small gate into the inner yard, the shortest way to Master Naylor’s house. She had intended no pause along the way but as she latched the small gate closed behind her the bell beyond the cloister walls began to ring to Sext and she stopped, her hand on the latch, her throat tightening with longing for the nunnery church’s deep, familiar quiet, her own place in the choir stalls, the weaving of nun’s voices through the Offices’ prayers and psalms…
But that was all forbidden to her for this while. She could not even enter the cloister, and she bowed her head, whispering some of the words from today’s Sext… Deus, Qui temperas rerum vices… Confer salutem corporum, Veramque pacem cordium… God, Who governs time and fortune… Give health to the body, And true peace to the soul. Turning it from a prayer for herself into a prayer for others far more desperately in need than she was, she drew a deep, steadying breath and turned toward the gateway to the outer yard.
But to have been brought to this because of Sister Thomasine…
That day in the village churchyard, while Mistress Margery and Father Edmund and Father Henry were talking the women around to keeping the ill children together in the church, she and Sister Thomasine had been left in the lee of things, aside and quiet, on the verge of going home, Frevisse had thought until Sister Thomasine had said, “We’ll have to send word to Domina Elisabeth we’re staying.”
Frevisse’s immediate response was that no, they weren’t, but years of nunhood had given her some governance over her tongue, making her hesitate, when this time she should not have, before saying carefully, “We’ll have to ask her permission.”
‘Father Henry can ask for it when he goes back for Dame Claire,“ Sister Thomasine had said.
More to Frevisse’s mind had been withdrawal to the nunnery themselves and a brief explanation to Domina Elisabeth followed by her refusal, but it hardly mattered and she had let it happen Sister Thomasine’s way because Domina Elisabeth would never give permission for them to stay, however she was asked.
But from what Father Henry said when he returned, it seemed that their prioress had never had the mesels, nor had Dame Juliana or Sister Cecely, and so she had forbidden them to return for this while, in fear they would bring the infection with them. Moreover, she had refused Dame Claire to come, only given her leave to send all the advice and herbs she would.
‘But you,“ Frevisse had protested to Father Henry. ”You’re not forbidden.“
Father Henry had looked sheepish, as if something were his fault. “I have to say the Mass.” And therefore the priory could not do without him, even at the danger.
But it meant Sister Johane was left with the duties of cellarer for who knew how long. And with Sister Emma as kitchener…
Her meals and Sister Thomasine’s meals were brought thrice daily from the nunnery kitchen, that their keep not fall on the village, and Dame Claire sent medicines by way of Father Henry, and Domina Elisabeth had sent word that prayers were being said for the sick, and all that was very well, Frevisse thought, walking through the brief shade of the inner yard’s gateway into the hot sunlight of the priory’s outer yard, but brought no end to the hours of ill children and frightened parents and lack of prayers there had been these four past days and were still to come. Even with keeping the Offices as best they could in the shortened form allowed when out of the nunnery, none of them-not even Matins and Lauds at midnight-ever went uninterrupted by a child or several waking restless with fever and discomforts; and most of their mothers had no servants at home and needed to go back and forth from church to house and were tiring, needing Frevisse and Sister Thomasine more and more through the days as well as the nights. Some of the men tried to be of help with at least their own child or children but most of them hadn’t the way of it. Why a man who mucked out byres every day of his life should be put off by a small child’s dirtied napkin or anyone’s vomit was more than Frevisse understood. But she thought that, for many of them, the trouble was they could not help letting their fears come too much between them and what needed to be done; most of the women let nothing-fear least of all-come between them and their children’s needs. In truth, for most of them the greater their fear, the fiercer they were in doing what needed to be done to keep their children alive, no matter the dirt or ugliness of it.
Interestingly, Father Henry in his own way was as fierce, though it had taken Frevisse a while to see it. Between his duties at the nunnery-and sometimes instead of his duties, she suspected-he was always with the children, two beds at a time if need be, holding hot, restless hands, telling stories and more stories, all kinds of stories, quieting children who needed something besides their own and others’ misery to listen to, diverting mothers who needed the same. It was a pity that Father Edmund, as he admitted and anyone could easily see, was small use with children and less use the more ill they were, but he made up for it by being constantly out and about through the village, comforting people in their homes, lending a hand here and there as need was, or else praying at his own house since his church was no good to him at present, he smilingly said.
Unfortunately the case was much the same with Frevisse. She had never had nor ever wanted a way with children. But then neither had Sister Thomasine ever desired motherhood, devoted from girlhood to the cloister and prayers, but she had given herself over to the children’s care far more wholeheartedly than Frevisse had, to Frevisse’s shame. But then Sister Thomasine was also pleased beyond measure to be, all day and all night, in a church, uninterruptedly in sight of the altar except when she and Frevisse withdrew into the sacristy where mattresses had been brought for them to sleep in a little privacy. Though Sister Thomasine never stayed there long but after only brief sleep would rouse and slip back into the chancel to kneel and pray before the altar until she was needed again.
Frevisse suspected that, ill children or no, Sister Thomasine had rarely been more happy.
Unhappily, that did nearly nothing to improve Frevisse’s struggle with her own ill humor, one admittedly greatly compounded of fear, because it frightened her to see how quickly a child could fall ill, frightened her more to see how quickly it could worsen, frightened her most of all to know how easily any one of them could die.
Behind her the cloister bell ceased ringing, telling her the other nuns were in church now, in their places in the choir beginning Sext, and she slipped one of the Office’s antiphons over her uncalm thoughts. Suscepisti me, Domine: et confirmasti me in conspectu tuo. You have received me, Lord: and you have strengthened me in your sight. It loosened some of the knots in her with the comfort that, whatever happened, there was always the shelter of prayers and the certainty of Something Else beyond the burdens of everyday and the briefness of mortality.
But consideration of mortality brought her back to why she was come to see Master Naylor.
Beside the steward’s door the two guards stood up, slow in the heat. For a moment Master Spencer’s man looked as if he was about to challenge her but decided it was not worth the bother, while the priory guard, the same who had been here last time she came, knocked at the open door and asked, “Is it true what’s said about Tom Hulcote? He’s been found dead?”