The Novice’s Tale (9 page)

Martha, her head around the opened corner of the door, spoke up. “I was with her for seven years, and I can say she could drink several bottles at a sitting, but it was usually of an evening, at her own fireside. And she might grow boisterous at it, but I never saw her taken like this. When I heard that shrilling start and my heart went up into my mouth, I knew my lady was taken in pain like she’s never been before.” But she was staring at Lady Ermentrude with ghoulish satisfaction.

Frevisse caught her eye and frowned a hush at her. Martha frowned back, but retreated, pulling the door shut.

Dame Claire looked at Lady Isobel and Sir John. “She was with you last night? Was she drinking then? What did she eat? Was she drinking before she left you this morning?”

“She drank a cup of wine at supper, and she ate very little of what we all had,” Sir John answered. “She was in a rage, too busy ranting at us to eat or drink much. She left without breaking her fast this morning, only took some wine and rode off.”

“We were afraid for her,” Lady Isobel said. She spoke rapidly, eyes shining with unshed tears. “She kept talking at us, not listening to our replies. She said wild, impossible things. Ugly things.” Her head sank, and Sir John held her more closely, looking at the listeners as if his lady wife’s trouble was their fault. Taking courage from his embrace, she lifted her chin and continued, “We tried to quiet her—the servants, you know; they will gossip, repeating all they overhear. But it was no use. She went at us until late in the night and again this morning. I doubt she slept much if at all, because she was in the same fury this morning. We tried to have her stay but she rode off still furious at us. We were afraid for her, John and I, riding off like that. Afraid she might be taken ill on the road…” Isobel gestured vaguely. “Her heart. Or a fall. She can be cruel to a horse when she’s in a temper. She’s not young, and not always careful of herself.. We followed after her as soon as might be. And now Thomasine says she came here swearing she’d have her out of the nunnery. I saw a madman once. It was awful. It was like—” She looked toward Lady Ermentrude and fell eloquently silent.

“Whatever this is, she’s very ill with it,” Dame Claire said with flat calm. “And not in her mind only.” She had gone on examining Lady Ermentrude as far as she properly could with men in the room. Now she gently urged her to straighten and lie flat, to be covered. “It’s not her heart or she’d not be so violent. Or apoplexy because that leaves its victims helpless, and that she obviously is not. It may be a fever. But it’s a strange fever that leaves the hands and feet cold.” Dame Claire was clearly thinking aloud.

“Perhaps she is only drunk then,” Sir John suggested hopefully.

“Drink can take people in different ways.” Dame Claire nodded. “ ”This could well be one of them. But whatever it is, she’s quiet now and needs to be kept that way lest she make worse whatever is already wrong. Thomasine.“ She looked to where Thomasine still stood at the bed’s foot.

Slowly Thomasine drew her eyes away from her great-aunt, to look at the infirmarian. “Thomasine,” Dame Claire repeated, “I want the box from the far shelf in the infirmary. The gray one with the borage flowers painted on its lid. You helped me make the compound, remember? Valerian for nerves and borage for melancholy. Bring it. And it needs to be given with wine. There’s none left in the infirmary so you’ll need all three keys to the wine chest. You’ll have to ask Domina Edith for hers, and then Dame Alys, and Dame Perpetua.”

Lady Isobel stirred in her husband’s arms. “We have some malmsey with us. We brought it on the chance we could make peace with her. It’s one of her favorites. I’ll go for it.”

But Sir John said with a gesture, “Wait. Malmsey may not be right for this.”

“It should be fine, and save us time,” Dame Claire said. “My thanks. Only the box then, Thomasine. What’s that you’re holding?”

“A milksop, my lady.”

“Good. Leave it; we may want it. Now go. Be quick.”

Frevisse reached out to take the bowl from Thomasine’s stiff hands. Thomasine made the correct curtsey to Dame Claire, then backed away from the bed as if afraid to turn her back to Lady Ermentrude. Not until she bumped into the door frame did she turn to fumble the door open and leave so quickly she seemed as much in flight as in obedience.

Frevisse set the bowl carefully on the table along the wall. Father Henry, who had been standing to one side of everyone this while, praying under his breath, now lifted his head and asked, “Will she live?”

“I don’t know. She’s very ill,” Dame Claire answered. “But blood and heart and breathing are all strong. And she’s quiet now. That’s to the good, if her mind stays unconfused.”

Lady Ermentrude made a small moan and turned her head toward the sound of Father Henry’s voice, keeping her eyes closed. “Az devil ‘rhongst us,” she croaked.

“Then you want our priest’s prayers,” said Frevisse sensibly.

Father Henry came to stand by the bed, fumbling his way into anxious Latin as he gestured a cross over it. “
In nomini Patris, et Filios, et Spiritu Sanctos, amen,”‘
he intoned.

Frevisse flinched at his inaccurate Latin, but Lady Ermentrude, with a deep, spasmed effort, broke one hand’s grip from the crucifix and reached out to him, groping until she found his arm and dug her fingers into his sleeve. Her mouth worked, the cords of her neck stretching with tension, but all she managed was a gargling croak. Her eyes bulged with her effort and panic. The gargling changed to a hiss. Dame Claire moved as if to quiet her, but something in the sound made sense to Father Henry. Leaning toward Lady, Ermentrude, he said, “Sin. It’s sin that frightens you?”

Lady Ermentrude’s head twitched in agreement. Her throat worked, straining.

“We all live in fear of that, my lady,” Father Henry said. He patted her hand where it clung to him. “But I’m praying for you. Do you wish to make confession?”

“Sssinsss,” Lady Ermentrude hissed. “Wwwwurrsss sssinns…” Anger darkened her face, and her gaze crawled around the the room. Her hand twitched away from Father Henry to claw at her throat. “… thannn müine,” she whined, high off the back of her mouth. “‘Wwwurrss thannn müine.”

There was fear mixed with the anger. It glistened in her eyes as she brought them back to the priest. She let him take her hand into his own as he said soothingly, “All sins come to God in time, and there are none that can’t be forgiven, if we but ask. It’s your own we need to care for now. Would you have me give you absolution?”

Unsteadily, Lady Ermentrude jerked a nod. Father Henry opened his wooden box and took out two small beeswax candles already in silver holders. He put them on the table, flanking the bowl of milksops, and Frevisse brought a scrap of kindling from the fireplace to light them while he took a small glass bottle of chrism, another of blessed water, and a fist-sized wad of fresh bread, his practiced movements somehow reassuring. In the few years Father Henry had been at St. Frideswide’s, Frevisse had found that neither his mind nor faith went very far, but were strong so far as they went; and it was strength Lady Ermentrude needed just now.

Quietly Frevisse gestured to Lady Ermentrude’s women, and Lady Isobel and Sir John, that they should go now. None of them seemed willing, until Dame Claire took Lady Isobel gently by the elbow and urged her toward the door. Sir John, his arm still tenderly around his wife, went with them, the maid close at their heels. Only the dark-haired lady-in-waiting continued to hesitate, until Frevisse made a sharper, demanding gesture at her. With a sidelong look at her mistress, she went. Frevisse followed to make sure no one lingered within eavesdropping distance.

The cluttering knot of servants outside the door drew back reluctantly, leaving them a little space. Dame Claire said to the lady-in-waiting and the maid, “She will not need you for a while. Go reassure the others that she’s alive and quiet now, that she was in a nightmare, nothing else. We don’t need foolish rumors running through all the priory.”

The maid curtsied, but the lady-in-waiting said firmly, “I’m the lady of her chamber today. I’d best stay and go in again when we’re able. You do as the lady bids,” she added to the maid.

Clearly glad to obey, the maid walked away, immediately surrounded by the other servants. A little wave of low-voiced questioning followed after her, and Frevisse knew that despite Dame Claire’s words, by dark word would have run all the way to the village that Lady Ermentrude had been surrounded by dancing demons and the flames of Hell and that Father Henry had driven them away with prayers and holy water.

Dames Claire and Frevisse started away from the door. Sir John stopped, putting his hand to his jaw and wincing. He asked, “She’ll live?” in a voice stiff with pain.

Dame Claire thought before answering slowly, “There seems no reason why she shouldn’t. Her heart and pulse are strong. It’s her mind that seems gone most awry, and that will mend of itself if it’s only drunkenness.”

“Then she’ll be all right?” Lady Isobel insisted.

“I think there’s a goodly chance, though we may not know until morning Or later. Thomasine, bless you for your speed.” She held out her hand for the box Thomasine handed her, a little breathless with her haste. “There is this at least to bring on sleep, and that can be a better cure than most.”

“The wine, I nearly forgot.” Lady Isobel drew away from her husband. “I’ll bring it.”

“No, I will,” he offered quickly, but winced again, and she placed a hand on his arm and smiled up at him.

“You don’t want the outside air on that tooth. Besides, I know where in the saddlebags it is. You wait here, love.”

Beyond the cloister walls the bell began to ring for late afternoon’s Vespers. Dame Claire said, “You go, Dame Frevisse. Let Thomasine stay to help me. When Father Henry is through I want to give her the medicine and see if she will eat some of the milksop. We’ll come when we can.”

“I’ll stay, too, by your leave,” Martha Hayward put in, thrusting her way into the knot around Dame Claire. “I know her ways as well as any and can fetch things for her from the cloister better than her present people. That’ll save Thomasine’s feet a bit.”

“And when I’ve brought the wine, I’ll bide with her, too,” Lady Isobel said. “Or we can be with her in turns. Whatever is the matter, she’s my aunt and we owe her that much. If you think it all right?”

“Assuredly,” Dame Claire said. “And good.”

Frevisse, with the thought that they seemed to have the matter well in hand without her, nodded her own agreement and left for the church.

Vespers was one of each day’s longer Hours, with four psalms to be sung among its prayers. In her first months in the nunnery, as a novice with ideals but little knowledge, Frevisse had resented its intrusion into the routine of every afternoon. All the other offices had made sense and been a gladness to her, even Matins and Lauds, the twin service that dragged her from bed at midnight. Prayer then in the dark watches of the night, the church seeming full of otherworldly shadows, lurking around small hollows of gold candlelight beside the altar, and her mind withdrawn by sleep from everything but the need to chant the office and prayers, was a wondrous time, with God present all around them.

But Vespers came in busy late afternoon, with the nuns hurrying in to it from all parts of the priory and Frevisse almost always having to leave some task half-done behind her, and needing to go back to it, distracted, later. She had done silent penance for her resentment, but when that did not cure it, she had been finally forced to admit her feeling to Dame Perpetua, newly come then to being mistress of novices.

“It intrudes,” she had complained. “It’s in the way of whatever I’m about.”

“But isn’t prayer what we’re supposed to be about?” Dame Perpetua had asked. She had an instinctive talent for knowing the best way to teach, based on a novice’s needs and strengths. Some needed leading, others prodding. A very few could be challenged. “You have some business for being here other than serving God perhaps?”

Frevisse, goaded into looking at her mind and its habits, had come—less than graciously at first—to admit there were reasons for Vespers at the busy end of afternoons: a need to remember there were matters more important to the undying soul than the passing needs of everyday.

“A solis ortu usque ad occasum, laudabile noman domini.”‘
From the dawn of the day until sunset, praised be the Name of the Lord.