THE TRAITOR'S TALE

Chapter Two

The church was plain and not over-large, its windows small and set high to give no outward view to the world, only let the blessing of sunlight into the unpillared nave and the nuns' choir where the two double lines of tall-backed seats faced each other, ready beside the altar for those six or seven times a day St. Frideswide's nuns gathered there to their Offices of prayer.

Just now, though, with the dawn Office of Prime and morning Mass past and time for Terce not yet come, the church was empty save for a single nun kneeling in her choir stall, head bowed forward on her hands clasped on the slanted board meant to hold a prayer book through the saying of the Offices. Veiled and gowned in Benedictine black, her bowed head hiding the white wimple that encircled her face and hid her throat, she would have been a shadow among shadows save the morning sunlight through the church's east window had banished shadows to the rafters and corners for the while. Only the shadows in her mind held her, and against those the church's deep quiet at this hour was a balm laid over the raw, hurt edges of her thoughts.

To her very heart, Dame Frevisse knew here was where she belonged, here inside these cloister walls, in this nunnery, in this church in this far corner of Oxfordshire. In all the world, this was her place, and most especially here in this choir stall that had been her own -- as much as anything in the world was a nun's own -- since the day she had taken her vows. Day after day, through all the years into years she had been in St. Frideswide's, she came here to pray and chant the daily Offices with St. Frideswide's other nuns. There were only ten of them now, because St. Frideswide's had never grown as its founder had hoped, but it survived and here were Frevisse's comfort and certainty, here was where she wanted to live, reaching toward God.

That reaching was the struggle and the joy to which she given her life, and although sometimes, for other people's needs, she was drawn out into the world, whether she would or no, here was where she wanted to be, with no wish at all, for any reason whatsoever, to leave her place and peace here.

But she was going to.

Her knees were complaining at her about too-long kneeling, and for pity of them and because their ache was growing into pain, she eased up and back onto the seat behind her, hands now clasped her lap but her head still bowed, her eyes still closed.

By constant edicts of the Church, nuns were supposed to be cloistered -- enclosed inside their nunnery's walls from when they took their vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience until their death. About that, bishops were very firm, but in practice the enclosure was not so narrow and there was sometimes unseemly laughter in the nuns' daily Chapter meetings when a new reminder from their bishop was read aloud, listing all the reasons for which a nun should not leave her cloister. There were always reasons for a nun to go out into the world -- to visit relations in their need, or to go on pilgrimage, or to tend to nunnery business best done by no one else, or simply to enjoy some nearby pastime like fishing or watching the harvest in nearby fields. As Dame Amicia once said, the bishop's list seemed to be longer each time it came; and although St. Frideswide's prioress, Domina Elisabeth, kept her priory more strictly than some were kept, there were nonetheless times . . .

Frevisse bowed her head lower and lifted her hands from her lap to press them, still clasped, to her forehead. Try though she would, the one prayer that kept coming to her was, "Lord, give me strength," which was a sort answer to her need but not enough of one. For her cousin Alice of Suffolk's sake she had been out of St. Frideswide's all too lately, and almost everything -- admittedly through no fault of Alice's -- had gone so far to the bad that at the end there had seemed to good to any of it, only varied layers of wrong. And now her cousin needed her again and Frevisse had been given leave to go to her.

Or not so much been given leave as been ordered to it. Alice had written, as was proper, to Domina Elisabeth, asking that Frevisse be sent to her in her need; and less for Alice's need than because Alice was duchess of Suffolk and wealthy and not without power despite lately widowed by her husband's murder, Domina Elisabeth had told Frevisse she had leave to go. Leave that Frevisse did not want.

But because obedience was one of a nun's vows, Frevisse was here, trying to pray not only for strength to do what she did not wish to, but that she be not angry at Alice for demanding her help and even angrier at Domina Elisabeth for sending her away so readily.

Or at least not so angry.

Alice had chosen a life in the world. She had married and been widowed from her first husband very young, then had married the earl of Salisbury, and when he was killed in the French war, had married William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk. Through the years after that, Suffolk had risen to a dukedom and become the most powerful of the lords around the king, and Alice had risen with him. But he had used his power badly, had finally raised such a storm of hatred and protest around himself that King Henry had, early this year, exiled him to save his life.

Instead, sailing to that exile, Suffolk had been seized at sea by unnamed English enemies -- pirates, it was said -- been crudely beheaded, his body thrown onto the beach at Dover and his head set on a stake beside it.

The pity was that his death had done nothing to right the wrongs he had helped to make in England. From spring until now at almost harvest time, rebellions had been breaking out all over England. Jack Cade's had been the worst. It was broken now, but there were steady reports of lesser ones still happening, with men's angers still fierce not only at dead Suffolk but at the men who had misgoverned with him and were still close around the king. Among loud demands for justice and good government, hatred of Suffolk seemed hardly dimmed. And now Alice, his widow, wanted Frevisse's companionship and comfort.

Fiercely and not quite as the words were in the psalm, Frevisse sharply whispered, "Eripe me, Domine, ab homine malo, a viro violento custodi me." Rescue me, Lord, from the evil man, from the violent man defend me. "Salve me, Domine, e manibus iniqui, superbi qui cogitant evertere gressus meos, qui abscondunt laqueum mihi." Save me, Lord, from the hands of the wicked, the arrogant who plan to overthrow my course, who conceal a trap for me.

She dropped her hands into her lap and opened her eyes. That was not the prayer she should be making. Or at the least not be praying it with anger. She did not believe Alice was evil or setting a trap for her, and if she could not pray better than that, she were best not to pray at all.

But she needed prayer, and if not with words, then otherwise; and she closed her eyes again and with the deliberant skill she had learned through her nunnery years, steadied her breathing, slowed it, deepened it, let her mind rest on her breathing, rest in her breathing, let her breathing ease her out of her taut anger into quietness, breathing slowly, deeply, finding quiet in herself, drawing quiet into her . . . 

"Dame Frevisse?" someone whispered to her.

Frevisse opened her eyes and looked at Sister Margrett hovering in front of the choir stalls. No nun should go out of the cloister unaccompanied by another nun. Sister Margrett, the youngest of St. Frideswide's few nuns, was Domina Elisabeth's choice to accompany Frevisse, and although Sister Margrett's Benedictine clothing concealed, as it should, all of her except her face and hands, nothing could hide her glowing eagerness to be out and away as she said, "They're ready." The half dozen men and two women whom Alice had sent with her message, so certain she'd been that Frevisse would be sent to her and their company be needed. She had slipped into the church while they were readying to ride this morning but they must be waiting now on their horses in the courtyard outside the cloister door, with nothing needed save Frevisse and Sister Margett themselves, and "Domina Elisabeth says you should come," Sister Margrett urged, and with a nod that was already weary of the journey she had yet to make, Frevisse obediently rose to her feet.