The apostate's tale Read Online Free PDF

news of an apostate nun’s return might not spread beyond the cloister walls, she would have lost that thought when she went to the guesthall in the afternoon. Every Benedictine house was required by the Rule to receive and care for anyone who asked for shelter. Since Frevisse was presently hosteler, the guesthall was her duty, taking her in mornings and late afternoons out of the cloister and across the courtyard, this afternoon to make sure all was well for such guests as were already there and whatever travelers might still come before the day’s early, rainy dark set in.
    Because the office of hosteler went turnabout among the nuns, in many ways it was old Ela, a guesthall servant longer than Frevisse had been in St. Frideswide’s, who knew best how things were there. Over the years she had risen to be head of the guesthall servants until, in her increasing age, she had been allowed to let go her duties and settle into ease, expected by everyone to live out her days in the nunnery’s care there in the guesthall. For now, though, the guesthall was hers again while the woman who had taken her place was healing at a daughter’s house in the village from a broken leg got in a fall on an icy step in mid-Lent, and because it was not old Ela’s wits but her body—bent-backed and shuffling—that was worn out, Frevisse was ready for Ela’s sharp question at her, “It’s true then, is it? Sister Cecely’s come back after all this while and brought a child with her?”
    “It’s true,” Frevisse granted. “How far has the talk gone, do you know?”
    “If it’s not gone to the village already, it’ll be there with such as go home to supper.” The village of Prior Byfield being only a quarter mile away, there were nunnery servants who went daily back and forth rather than nighting at the nunnery. They also went visiting relatives in neighboring villages and some went to the weekly market in Banbury. Scandal being scandal no matter how old it was, Frevisse supposed word of Sister Cecely’s return would spread until it thinned away among folk who knew neither St. Frideswide’s nor anyone here. Or until a better scandal overtook it.
    Her back so bent, she had to cock her head sideways to look up at Frevisse, Ela said, “Master Naylor,” the nunnery’s steward, “has told Peter to ready himself to ride to Abbot Gilberd with whatever message Domina Elisabeth sends. Not today surely? There’s no point in risking him and a horse this late in a bad day, I’d say.”
    “I doubt she’ll send before morning,” Frevisse said. “Weather and roads are all so bad, it will likely be a three-day ride to Northampton no matter when he leaves.”
    “He’ll be glad to hear it’s not today, anyway.”
    “I’m not saying that’s how it will be,” Frevisse said quickly. “I’m only guessing.”
    “You’re good at guessing,” Ela said. “She’s not gone all fretful and foolish at this then? Domina Elisabeth?”
    “Of course she hasn’t,” Frevisse said. Domina Elisabeth was—had always been—a steady woman. Why would Ela think she would not be now?
    But Ela nodded as if pleased over something that had been worrying her and said, “That’s to the good. Best there be a few calm heads when the henhouse goes into a flutter.”
    Quellingly, Frevisse said, “Ela.”
    “I’m only saying.” She slipped back to business. “Mistress Turnbull and Mistress Wise came in an hour ago.”
    They were two widows from near Oxford, who had taken to coming twice a year to St. Frideswide’s—at Eastertide in the spring and at All Hallows in the autumn—to make their devotions, with dispensation to make their Lent’s-end confessions to Father Henry, the priory’s priest and Mistress Wise’s nephew. They were kindly ladies who never made trouble for either the nuns or guesthall servants and always brought a ham in the spring and two fat Michaelmas geese in the autumn as guest-gifts to the nunnery, and Frevisse was pleased