Death and the Lady Read Online Free PDF Page A

“that this were best discussed in walls. And not,” she added
as hope leaped in milord’s face, “Sency’s. St. Agnes’ priory can house a noble
guest. Let you go there, and we will follow.”
    He bowed and obeyed. We went down from the gate. But Mère
Adele did not go at once to St. Agnes’.
    People had come to see what we were about. She sent them off
on errands that she had given them long since: shoring up the walls, bringing
in such of the animals as were still without, shutting Sency against, if need
be, a siege.
    “Not that I expect a fight,” she said, “but with these
gentry you never know.” She turned to me. “You come.”
    She did not need to turn to Lys. The lady would go whether
she was bidden or no: it was written in every line of her.
    It was also written in Francha, who was never far from her
side. But she took the child’s face in her long white hands, and said, “Go and
wait for me. I’ll come back.”
    One would hardly expect Francha to trust her, and yet the
child did. She nodded gravely, not a flicker of resistance. Only acceptance,
and adoration.
    Not so Celine. In the end I bribed her with Pierre, and him
with the promise of a raisin tart if he took her home and kept her there.
    oOo
    Mère Adele set a brisk pace to the priory, one that gave me
no time to think about my frayed kerchief and my skirt with the stains around
the hem and my bare feet. Of course milord would come when I had been setting
out to clean the pigsty.
    Lys stopped us at the priory’s gate, came round to face us.
The men had gone inside; we could hear them, horses clattering and snorting,
deep voices muted in the cloister court. Lys spoke above it, softly, but with
the edge which she had shown Messire Giscard. “Why?”
    Mère Adele raised her brows.
    Lys looked ready to shake her. “Why do you do so much for
me?”
    “You’re our guest,” said Mère Adele.
    Lys threw back her head. I thought that she would laugh, or
cry out.
    She did neither. She said, “This goes beyond plain
hospitality. To chance a war for me.”
    “There will be no war,” said Mère Adele, “unless you’re fool
enough to start one.” She set her hand on the lady’s arm and set her tidily
aside, and nodded to Sister Portress, who looked near to bursting with the
excitement of it all, and went inside.
    oOo
    Messire Giscard had time for all the proper things, food
and rest and washing if he wanted it. He took all three, while we waited, and I
wished more than ever that I had stopped to change my dress. I brushed at the
one I had, and one of the sisters lent me a clean kerchief. When they brought
him in at last, I was as presentable as I could be.
    Mère Adele’s receiving room was an imposing place, long and
wide with a vaulted ceiling, carved and painted and gilded, and a great stone
hearth at the end of it. It was not her favored place to work in; that was the
closet by her cell, bare and plain and as foreign to pretension as the prioress
herself. This was for overaweing strangers; and friends, too, for the matter of
that. I hardly knew what to do with the chair she set me in, so big as it was,
and carved everywhere, and with a cushion that must have been real silk—it was
impossibly soft, like a kitten’s ear.
    It let me tuck up my feet at least, though I was sorry for
that when the servant let milord in, and I had to untangle myself and stand and
try to bow and not fall over. Lys and Mère Adele sat as soon as milord did,
which meant that I could sit, too: stiffly upright this time.
    He was at his ease, of course. He knew about chairs, and
gilded ceilings. He smiled at me—there was no mistaking it: I was somewhat to
the side, so that he had to turn a little. I felt my cheeks grow hot.
    “This lady I know,” he said, turning his eyes away from me
and fixing them on Lys. “And you, reverend prioress? And this charming demoiselle?”
    Well, I thought. That cured my blush. Charming I was not,
whatever else I was.
    “I am Mère