Help us, Seinte Frideswyde!
A man woot litel what him shal bityde.
The Miller’s Tale – Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer
Mid-September in the year of Our Lord’s grace 1431 had perfect weather, warm and dry. There was a drowse of autumn to the air, and in the fields beyond St. Frideswide’s priory walls the harvest went its steady pace under the clear sky. There had been rain enough and sun enough since mid-July to bring the grain to full ripeness. Now most of it lay in golden swaths behind the reapers or was already gathered into shocks to dry.
All month long the days had become familiar with the calling of the men and women back and forth at their work, the cries of children scouting birds away, and the creak of carts along the tracks to bring the harvest home.
Inside St. Frideswide’s walls there was awareness of the harvest but none of its haste or noise; only, as nearly always, a settled quiet. A sway of skirts along stone floors, the muted scuff of soft leather soles on the stair; rarely a voice, and then only briefly and in whispers since the rule of silence held here except for the hour of recreation and the proper, bell-regulated hours of prayer sung and chanted in the church.
A Benedictine peace ruled there, Thomasine thought as she paused to gaze out the narrow window on the stairs to the prioress’s parlor, a plate of honey cakes in her hands, still warm from the oven. She had been told to hurry with the cakes, that they were meant for an important guest, but she could not bear to pass this view over the nunnery’s cream-pale stone walls. Framed in the narrow window was a scene of stubbled fields scattered with shocks of grain and small-with-distance figures bent to their work. Beyond them was the green edge of the forest and, over all, the Virgin-blue of sky, all of it as finely detailed and remote as a miniature painted for a lady’s prayer book, precise and wonderful to look at.
And soon to be far beyond her reach.
Slender with youth and the haste of growing up, narrow-boned from many childhood illnesses, and desperately pious, Thomasine meant to be a nun before autumn was done. In two weeks and a little more, on St. Michael’s day, she would finally kneel before the altar to take her final vows. She was seventeen and had been waiting almost nine years to be granted the precious black veil and to be safe behind priory walls for all her earthly days to come.
Through each day between herself and safety, Thomasine had been hugging that certainty ever closer to herself, and now with a deep breath of contentment, she leaned forward to look down at the little nunnery orchard just outside the cloister wall. Apple and cherry trees, unburdened of their fruit but dusty and weary with bearing, waited for autumn to further rob them of their leaves. Oh, bittersweet life, to be an apple tree! thought Thomasine. She could not have said for a thousand marks how an apple tree’s life could be bittersweet, but it seemed a fine, even spiritual, notion. Soon she, like the apple tree, would be rooted in St. Frideswide’s forever.
While the cakes cooled on their plate between her hands, remarked the more practical part of her mind.
A familiar pang of guilt shot through her; while she stood there gaping, she was failing the most basic of all the vows: Obedience. With a penitent frown, she hurried up the last steps to Domina Edith’s door.
There, not meaning to, she paused again. Her hand was raised to knock, but the sound of voices in the room beyond held her. Dame Frevisse’s she knew – strong and very distinct from Domina Edith’s age-dimmed, murmuring tones, which faintly followed it. Both of their voices were familiar, as everything in St. Frideswide’s was blessedly familiar. It was the man’s voice answering theirs, deep and amused, that froze her hand. In her year and barely more at St. Frideswide’s, she had grown unused to men’s voices; they had no place in a nunnery, where even the voices of women were supposed to sound only rarely, according to the Rule. She had been warned about their guest, but that had not been enough to ready her.
Her raised hand drew back from the door, going instead to make sure her hair was all pushed safely out of sight under her dingy white veil. Then she tugged at her faded gown, to be sure it hung loose enough around her and gave no hint of her shape under its shabbiness. Although she had come to St. Frideswide’s well provisioned by her sister and brother-in-law, she had chosen to trade her goodly clothes for the most worn garments in the nunnery’s chests. Intent on proving how worthy she was, and despite her sister’s disappointment and a suspicion that the prioress did not completely approve, she had clung to the habit of poverty. Now she was truly uncomfortable wearing anything remotely fine.
Sure that nothing was amiss with her appearance, that she was sufficiently uncomely, she tapped with mouse quiet at the door.
Too quietly. Dame Frevisse continued speaking, her words unclear but her voice strong and certain, doing nothing to ease Thomasine’s reluctance. Before she had come to St. Frideswide’s, she had expected there would be no differences among the nuns, that vows and a life lived together would make them somehow all alike, and she had been unsettled to discover, despite being blended all together in a sea of black gowns and veils, their faces framed in white wimples, that they were still individual. Especially Dame Frevisse.
From the very first she had caused Thomasine unease. The plainness of her habit made her age uncertain, but her face was too strongly shaped for mildness, her eyes too clever under their dark brows, seeing much and remarking on everything with subtle mockery. The only nun whose scrutiny Thomasine felt more sharply was the prioress herself, who, despite all her years and age-weakness, seemed to see more of Thomasine than Thomasine presently wanted seen.
The man’s voice came again, answering Dame Frevisse’s. Thomasine’s hand trembled. But obedience was still pressing at her back and the plate of cakes still cooling in her hands. She tapped again, more definitely than before.
Domina Edith’s faint blessing answered her. “Benedicte.”
Holding the plate in front of her as shield, Thomasine opened the door and entered.
St. Frideswide’s was not poor, but neither was it rich. The prioress’s parlor was only by contrast not so stark a room as the rest of the nunnery. Among her duties were the receiving of important visitors and the conducting of such nunnery business as needed more privity than the general gathering at daily chapter or required the regrettable presence of men within the cloister. For the dignity of St. Frideswide’s, the parlor had the luxury of a fireplace, and actual glass in the three tall, narrow windows overlooking the inner yard. Bright embroidered cushions lay scattered along the bench below them, and a fringed carpet woven in a Spanish pattern covered a table set with a silver ewer and bowl. Because Domina Edith had been prioress for thirty-two years – coming to the office the same year that the Duke of Lancaster had seized the throne from Richard II and made himself King Henry IV – other matters more privately hers had crept in, too, including her own embroidery frame and the tiny, elegant, elderly greyhound curled in its basket by the hearth.
As the priory’s only novice, Thomasine was often sent to fetch or carry this or that between places in the cloister; the prioress’s parlor was too familiar to her to need her attention, and she paused correctly just inside the door, head bowed, waiting to be acknowledged. Yet she could not resist, now that she was there, the urge to peep sideways around the swung-forward edge of her veil, at the man seated not five paces from her on the window bench.
In men as men of course she took no interest; no heed at all if possible. But today an important man was visiting. Word had run along with the order for the honey cakes that it was Thomas Chaucer who was come to Frideswide’s today, and even Thomasine in her determined unworldliness knew of Thomas Chaucer. Like the weather, he was a common topic of conversation in Oxfordshire, both because of who he was and how he had come to it. His father had been a poet and a customs officer, his mother the daughter of a very minor knight, but Thomas Chaucer, so the rumors insisted, was one of the richest and most powerful commoners in England. So powerful he could resign of his own will from the King’s Council though he had been asked to stay; rich enough, it was said, that his purse-proud, wool-merchanting cousin, the Cardinal Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, was pleased to ask his advice.
So it was vaguely unsettling to see him sitting at ease in Domina Edith’s familiar parlor, looking hardly different from the way Thomasine remembered her father: A middle-aged gentleman with well-grayed hair and pleasant face, tanned with sun, moderately lined around the eyes and across the forehead; dressed in a green wool houpelande to his knees, split front and back for ease of riding, with lamb’s wool budge at its cuffs and collar, his hood with its trailing liripipe laid to one side out of respect for Domina Edith and the warmth of the day. He wore a large ring on either hand but no gold chains or other jewels, and his high riding boots were only boots so far as Thomasine could tell, knowing nothing of cordovan leather or how much effort it might have taken to fit them so skillfully to the curve of his leg.
She looked and was, without admitting it to herself, disappointed, while he did not look at her at all but went on listening with concentrated politeness to Domina Edith insisting in her old and worried voice, “I’ve always been afraid they would want silk for him when he’s still too young. Young bodies, even royal ones, need to be kept warm, you know. You’re certain that he has good woolen undershirts?”
“I’ve seen the royal inventory and joined in the discussion of His Grace’s clothing in Council myself,” Chaucer said, reassuringly and with good humor. “He has goodly store of woolen shirts and wears them. And he’s a strong young lad. At nine years old he can be taken for twelve easily. Nor has he ever sickened a single day I know of since he was a baby with colic.”
Domina Edith nodded. “Just so he doesn’t outgrow his strength, God save His Grace. That’s always a peril in the young, outgrowing their strength.”
She went on nodding as if agreeing with herself, but the focus of her eyes had begun to fade.
Thomasine with a flare of embarrassment realized that her prioress, here and now, in front of Master Thomas Chaucer, was falling asleep. Everyone in St. Frideswide’s knew that in her seventy-ninth year, a fabulous age, Domina Edith came to sleep easily at almost any time.
“Always a peril,” she murmured. “I remember my brother as a boy…”
But age was stronger than memory. Her eyelids fluttered briefly and then drifted down with her voice. Her slow nodding subsided; her chin sank into the folds of the wimple below her throat, and silence filled the room, until after a few moments she drew a deep breath, far back in her throat and very nearly a snore.
Thomasine dared not move. She could only stand, embarrassed, her anguished gaze fixed on her prioress, until Master Chaucer leaned back, stretched his legs out comfortably, and said, his voice warm with amusement, “It’s God’s blessing to come to sleep so easily.”
“She deserves God’s blessing. She’s a good, kind woman.” Standing behind Domina Edith’s chair, Dame Frevisse smiled at him, a smile so casual and familiar that Thomasine, shocked by it, let her dismay show on her face. Dame Frevisse, glancing her way, caught the look and said with a touch of asperity, “You may put the cakes on the table, Thomasine. And then surely you must stay, to keep matters proper between Master Chaucer and myself.”
Thomasine, dropping her gaze back to the floor, obeyed, setting the plate on the Spanish cloth and stepping back with her eyes still down, to fold her hands out of sight, into her sleeves in front of her, mortified to hear Dame Frevisse explaining to Master Chaucer, “Thomasine is a trifle scrupulous, as befits a novice. She is nearly ready to take her final vows.”
To Thomasine’s dismay Master Chaucer’s attention turned to her. In his steady, mild voice he asked, “Are you liking the life well, child?”
Thomasine was appalled to find her head lifting and her eyes coming around to meet his, drawn by his voice. Catching herself, she hastily returned her gaze to her toes and said, “Very well, if it please you, Master Chaucer.”
“And when do you take your vows?”
“At Michaelmas, if it please you.”
“If it pleases God,”‘ Chaucer corrected mildly.
Thomasine felt scarlet warmth flow over her cheeks and drew her head down, turtling back into her dress, not knowing how, or whether, to reply. He had to know that unnecessary conversation was forbidden to her. Or was it necessary now, to show him she knew perfectly well that everything was according to the will of God, that she had only been being polite? Or would that be a prideful display of knowledge? Tears of helpless confusion welled into her eyes, worsened by the fear he would speak to her again.
Casually rescuing her, Dame Frevisse said, “It should please God very well to take a bride like Thomasine. She’s shown a true vocation for our life. Only she finds it somewhat difficult to talk to men. Which is as it should be.”
Her tears stifled by surprise and gratitude, Thomasine looked up again, ready to face whatever came next. But their attention was gone away from her as simply as it had come, leaving her only an onlooker again.
“And you, Frevisse,” Master Chaucer asked. “How goes it with you? You weren’t hosteler when last I was here.”
Thomasine wondered at the familiarity of his tone, but Dame Frevisse answered back as casually, “I came to it last quarter-day when we changed offices all around. It means less time in cloister, more time busy with outside matters, but I like it well enough for the while. Otherwise everything is as always, including the fact that I’m very glad to see you again. Are you missing yet your place on the King’s Council?”
“Except that Matilda reminds me daily how much the decision lowers me in important men’s esteem, I don’t seem to find myself grieving for it.”
“Poor Matilda.”
Thomasine had been scandalized at the obvious ease between them, and her spine stiffened further at the note of laughter in Dame Frevisse’s voice. Her eyes were still resolutely down and she did not think she had moved, but Dame Frevisse, with her discomfiting skill at knowing what someone else was thinking, said, still amused, “It’s all right, Thomasine. Master Chaucer’s lady wife is my aunt and I spent eight years of my growing up in her household. We’re kin and have known each other for as long as you’ve been alive. Our laughter is simply because we both of us know that ‘the esteem of noble men’ ranks almost as high with poor Aunt Matilda as her hope of salvation.”
“Poor Master Chaucer, rather,” Master Chaucer said dryly. “Your Aunt Matilda has a way of making an unhappy household when she’s unhappy.”
“But with Alice married now to Suffolk, she’s surely a little more content?”
“With an earl for a son-in-law and the hope of lordlings for grandchildren, she’s almost forgiven me my latest disappointing of her.”
“You’ve not bought your way out of knighthood again?”
Chaucer gave a mock-sly wink. “Maybe out of something even higher.”
Dame Frevisse shook her head. “Then even I must despair of you.”
But she failed to sound despairing, and Chaucer chuckled.
“My place in the world would hardly change by my gaining a title. I’d simply add more duties to my life and my taxes would go up and that’s an idiot’s price to pay for fancying my name. Besides, it might mean my having to go back to watching Winchester and Gloucester make fools of themselves on the Council. I’ve had my share of that, thank you. And at any rod, with Winchester set in Normandy for this while, Gloucester has settled down to governing with some degree of sense.”
“But not much?”
“He can’t use what he does not have and ‘sense’ is high on his list of inadequacies.”
Dame Frevisse stopped the soft beginning of a laugh with her hand and glanced toward the sleeping prioress before saying quietly, “It’s good to talk with you again, even for this little while. Thank you for stopping.”
“My pleasure more than my duty.” Master Chaucer made a courtly inclination of his head, then twitched it sideways toward Thomasine, adding, “I hope we’ve not offended someone again.”
Thomasine, drawn by their casual talk, found she had been listening avidly. Now, wincing at her conscience’s sharp rebuke as much as at Chaucer’s amusement, she jerked her gaze back down as Dame Frevisse said with some asperity, “I have Domina Edith’s permission to talk with Master Chaucer. She knows how it is between us and finds no harm. Don’t take it all so much to heart.”
Thomasine swallowed hard past the tightness in her throat and whispered, “Yes, Dame.”
With light amusement in his voice, Master Chaucer remarked, “Both heaven and earth rejoice when a saint escapes the earthly body: Heaven because a soul has triumphed over the devil. And earth because a saint is a prickly person to live with.”
Dame Frevisse looked over at Thomasine; her face echoed her voice’s concern as she said nearly gently, “Sit, Thomasine.”
Thomasine, who tired easily, sat gratefully on a stool beside the table, but her resentment lingered.
Dame Frevisse turned back to Master Chaucer. “We’re all going to be very grateful for your gift. Blue silk was exactly our need for Father Henry’s new chasuble.”
“I’m told there’ll be white of the same weight in a few months if you’d have a need for it.”
“Far be it from me to say we’ve never a need for white silk!” Dame Frevisse said. “Dame Perpetua has a new pattern of grape vines that we could embroider…” She paused, lifting her head to a bother of noise beginning to grow in the walled courtyard below the window. “Now what is that?”
The noise sharpened into a clatter of many hoofs on cobbles and rising voices. Thomasine jerked upright. One voice carried above the others and she was afraid she recognized it. Chaucer turned where he sat to look out, and Dame Frevisse crossed the room to join him. But Thomasine, sure now she knew who it was, huddled down onto her stool, as if hoping by some miracle a bush would grow out of the floor and hide her.
Dame Frevisse, peering out, said with a feeling plainly far from devout, “God have mercy on us.”
Continue with Chapter 2 tomorrow!
