The Reeve's Tale (23 page)

Was it greed that made a person so stupid? Or was it that stupidity led to greed?

Frevisse turned toward St. Chad’s, tired with this gathering of pieces. And now, whether she wanted to or not, she would be sifting and shifting them around, trying to make sense from them without knowing if she even had the pieces needed to make sense.

And meanwhile there were her slacked duties waiting to be answered for. For that, she would not only to ask Sister Thomasine’s pardon but offer to take both their duties through the night in reparation. Unhappily, no matter how little she minded asking pardon, the rest of her resolve brought her to falter in the nave doorway. These past days’ duties had not grown easier with doing. If anything, they had grown harder for her. But that gave her no right to scant them, especially when she knew Mistress Margery purposed to spend tonight at her own cottage, tending a needed herbal brew through its simmering and sieving and more simmering, and with firm hold against what she would have preferred to do, she went on in.

The little family clusters of straw-stuffed mattresses laid on the floor down both sides of the nave were as they had been, the low, shielded lamplight showing here and there the restless shifting of a child, pale faces and glint of eyes as women looked up to see who had come and then, Frevisse being of no great interest to them, turned back to what they had been doing, which looked for a merciful number of them to be settling to sleep beside their sleeping children. Only Anne Perryn stood up and moved away from her children, bedded near the rood screen, to meet Frevisse and ask, low-voiced, “Have you seen Simon? Do you know how is it with him? Is he going to be arrested?”

‘He’s at home and well. As things are now, he’s not to be arrested, no.“

‘As things…“ Anne began worriedly but behind her Lucy whimpered, ”Mama,“ and Anne turned back to her, whispering, ”I’m here, lamb. Don’t wake your brothers, there’s a good girl.“

This afternoon Lucy had been sitting up on her bed, blinking owlishly into the church’s twilight and declaring she wanted to go home. Tonight she was more querelous, whimpering for a drink, but beside her Colyn lay curled into a quiet, sleeping bundle. It was Adam’s restlessness on the mattress beside theirs that was troubling. Even in the low light Frevisse could see his fever-flush and that he was awake but not much conscious, she feared, and silently praying for God’s mercy on him, she passed through the rood screen into the chancel, where Sister Thomasine was kneeling with bowed head in front of the altar.

With a spasm of distress, Frevisse realized she had let the hour for Vespers pass and Compline come without a thought. Contrite and dismayed, she went to kneel beside Sister Thomasine, able to catch enough of her low murmur to join in, head bowed low over her clasped hands, “…
peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo et opere: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
”… I have sinned greatly in thought, in word, in deed: by my fault, by my fault, by my most great fault. And on through Compline’s heart-comforting web of prayers and psalms to the familiar end.
“Divinum auxilium maneat semper nobiscum. Amen.”
May divine aid remain always with us. Amen.

In the right way of things, after Compline there should have been only a silent going to bed and sleep, and at St. Frideswide’s the nuns were probably doing exactly that, but here as she sat back on her heels, waiting penitently, patiently, while Sister Thomasine prayed alone a little longer, Frevisse worked to hold to Compline’s peace while she could, knowing that the night was only beginning and sleep would be brief if at all.

Sister Thomasine finished, made the sign of the cross over her breast, and they rose together, bowed to the altar and moved aside to the sacristy doorway, where Frevisse said, her voice kept low, “My apology for being gone so long. By your leave, I’ll take the whole night watch in recompense.”

Sister Thomasine looked at her, seeming still half-lost in her prayers, but after a moment said softly, “You were about God’s work as surely as I was. There’s no need of recompense.”

One of the graces—and, occasionally, annoyances—of Sister Thomasine was that she never feigned what she did not mean, but Frevisse searched her face anyway. Bodily there was little of her to begin with, and Dame Claire forever worried that, left to herself, she paid insufficient need to whether she was well or ill, other things mattering to her more. Tonight she looked well enough, but Frevisse asked, “You’re not over-tired? You’re not going to bring yourself to sickness with this?”

Sister Thomasine’s eyes widened with surprise. “Tired? Not beyond anyone else, surely. I’m…” She seemed to look inward a moment before saying, simply, “I’m happy.”

‘Happy?“ Frevisse echoed and was discomfited by her voice betraying her own unhappiness.

Seeming not to hear it, Sister Thomasine answered, “How could I not be? All these days and nights I’ve been living inside of prayer instead of only praying, been nowhere but here, in prayer and at God’s work with never need to do anything else.”

To live inside of prayer instead of merely praying. It was something Frevisse was sometimes able to do but not often, only sometimes and never for very long but enough that she understood what it meant to Sister Thomasine who had never wanted anything, since she was a half-grown girl except to live in prayer, as near to God as she could come; and she said, admitting her own weariness, “Then thank you, yes. I’d like to take my turn at bed now.”

‘Your supper is here. Father Henry brought it.“

‘Gilbey Dunn’s wife fed me well enough. You’re welcome to my share if you wish it.“

Sister Thomasine regarded her gravely. “May I?”

Frevisse covered her surprise. In the priory Sister Thomasine rarely ate even all of her own portion, let be want more, though now Frevisse thought on it, she had been eating well enough here, and quickly she said, “Yes, please, if you like.”

‘I think I’d better,“ Sister Thomasine said as it was something she had considered seriously. ”With all that needs doing for the children, I seem to need more food than otherwise.“

‘Then, please, eat it all. I’ve no need of it tonight.“

And would find some way to see Sister Thomasine had more after this.

Sister Thomasine bowed her head in thanks, and Frevisse bowed hers in return, with the doubt that Sister Thomasine would ever cease, in one way or another, to surprise her.

Chapter 16

She awoke in thick darkness, for a moment con-fused, the room around her wrong for her cell in the nunnery’s dorter, until the narrow, door-shaped outline of lamp-yellow light told her she was in St. Chad’s sacristy, not in bed but on a mattress on the floor; and if she was awake, then the hour was probably near to midnight and time for Matins and to take Sister Thomasine’s place. Used to her cell’s darkness, she rose and with little trouble found by feel her wimple and veil where she had laid them carefully aside, with unthinking familiarity put them on, pinned the veil in place, stood, and shook out her skirts. With nothing else needed to be ready, she paused to gather herself with a murmured
Deo gratias
and slipped from the sacristy to find the nave reassuringly sunk in silence and shadows.

After so many other nights of children whimpering or crying, miserable and in pain, with women moving back and forth in the low-kept lamplight, the stillness was like balm. Even Anne Perryn was sleeping, stretched out narrowly between Colyn and Lucy, though it was likely unbearable weariness had taken her down, rather than desire, because on the mattress next to them Adam lay awake— or something like awake—his eyes closed but his head turning restlessly from side to side. Sister Thomasine was with him, one hand laid lightly on his chest’s uneven breathing while with the other she soaked a cloth in a basin of water.

As Frevisse came toward them, she glanced upward but said nothing, and Frevisse waited while she wrung out the cloth and was reaching to lay it over Adam’s forehead again when suddenly his eyes were open, staring at her, startling both her and Frevisse to stillness, before his head began to turn again, his fever-bright eyes roaming as if he searched for something to fix them on, then suddenly did, staring upward past Frevisse with such fear that she turned and found herself looking up at the tall figure of St. Chad painted on the narrow wall flanking the rood screen between chancel and nave. Unnaturally lean, it rose through shadows toward the rafters, but the face was caught by some trick of lamplight that gave life to the large eyes staring away into the dark.

Adam whimpered and Sister Thomasine leaned over him, asking, “Adam, what is it?”

Eyes still on the painted saint, Adam tried to speak, choked dryly, managed to whisper, “That man. He never smiles. He just stands there.” The boy gave a dry sob. “He just stands there staring and waiting for me to be dead!”

‘Adam.“ Sister Thomasine touched his cheek, bringing him to look at her, and gently but certain, said, ”He never smiles because what he’s seeing is too beautiful for smiling at.“

Adam lay still. “Too beautiful for smiling?” he whispered, his voice a bare thread of sound.

Sister Thomasine nodded, as unsmiling as the saint as she asked, “Haven’t you seen a summer sunrise, just when the light strikes out of the darkness and across the fields and every drop of dew turns to diamonds and the sky to a blue you never see another time and any clouds there are to gold and everything is changed and strange and more beautiful than you knew anything could be?”

Slowly Adam nodded.

Sister Thomasine nodded with him, saying gently, “Heaven is even more beautiful than that and the saint is looking into heaven. That’s why he doesn’t smile. Because what he’s seeing is too beautiful for smiling.”

His gaze still clinging to her face but unfeared now, Adam took a deep, slow breath. “That’s why you don’t smile, either, isn’t it?” he whispered.

Sister Thomasine touched his cheek and laid the wet cloth over his forehead and eyes, and in a little while, when he was surely asleep, she rose to her feet, stood for another moment over him, hands folded, head bowed to prayer, then turned to Frevisse and said softly, “He’ll do well now.”

He looked no better to Frevisse, the fever-flush still on him, his breathing still ragged, but she nodded agreement. Together, they made sure all was well throughout the nave before going to say Matins and Lauds together in the chancel until part way through Laud’s third psalm, a child roused, whimpering, and when there was no sound of anyone moving to quiet it, Frevisse broke off with a hasty crossing of herself and went, finding it was a little girl who had bettered yesterday and so her mother was gone to see to things at home for tonight. When Frevisse had given her a drink and settled her to sleep again, Sister Thomasine had finished Lauds and was gone to bed, and Frevisse stood in the aisle between the clusters of mattresses and dark, low humps of sleeping bodies, listening to soft snufflings and snores without finding anything that needed her and, for lack of something else to do, returned to Adam.

Since yesterday’s morning Frevisse had been afraid of exactly this watch, midnight through to dawn, when, even at the best, life ebbed low and death so often subtly came. She did not want to watch a child die. Nor see his parents’ grief. Nor have to try to give comfort where there was none to be had. With those uncompaniable thoughts, she sat down on the joint stool between the mattresses, feeling that the only present mercy was that Anne Perryn looked likely, at last, to sleep a night through. If Adam died…

Frevisse put the thought from her, took the fever-dried cloth from his forehead, soaked it again, wiped his face and throat and arms, and relaid it on his forehead. He never stirred the while except to go on breathing in that light, labored, frightening way, and when she had finished, Frevisse lay her hands in her lap and began to pray, for him, for all the children, for help in the matter of Tom Hulcote’s murder…

How long and how deep she went into the praying she could not have said, but when the bright caroling of bird-songs outside in the last darkness before dawn brought her back and she tried to straighten, she found herself stiffened with long sitting and, hand pressed to her spine, eyes still shut, had to draw herself upright bone by bone, feeling every one of them. Then froze to stillness as she heard something besides the birdsong. Heard Adam’s breathing. Changing.

Quieting.

With a heart-thud of fear, she leaned over him, starkly far from her prayers’ peace of a moment before, until she saw as she stripped the cloth from his forehead and laid her hand there that his face was sheened with sweat. With blessed sweat.

He was drenched with it, all over. The fever was broken.

Quickly she shook Anne by the arm, telling her even while waking her, forestalling her fear, and watched while she felt of her son’s face, kissed his damp forehead, laid her hand over his even, easy breathing, and began to cry.

Frevisse had expected prayers and thanks to God but watching Anne’s huge, silent tears swell and slip down her face, she knew they served as well for thanks as any prayer ever could.

Behind her, come so quietly Frevisse had not heard her, Mistress Margery said, “He’s strong. He’ll do well now.” She was carrying a cloth-covered pottery jug and to Frevisse’s glance at it, she answered, “It brewed well.” But she was looking at Frevisse in return and asked, “How do you, my lady?”

‘Tired is all,“ Frevisse said though her head felt as stale as the nave’s air.