The Maiden’s Tale by Margaret Frazer Read Free Book Online Page B

to Dame Elisabeth with, “We’d very much like to be shown around, if it please you.”
    As Dame Elisabeth led them through rooms, around the cloister walk and to other rooms, talking quietly while she did, Frevisse for the first time wondered less how it was going to be at St. Frideswide’s with a new prioress than how it would be for the new prioress, leaving the place that had been her home since girlhood. Set where it was, the priory drew prosperous London merchants’ daughters and the daughters of lesser nobility whose dowries plainly kept St. Helen’s very comfortably provided. Did Dame Elisabeth realize what she was giving up in coming to St. Frideswide’s? And what would happen if she did not find her rise to higher office worth the cost?
    But even while she showed them through the rooms, briefly introducing them to nuns they happened to meet, Dame Elisabeth was asking occasional questions that they were answering more fulsomely than they might have done a litany of direct ones, questions that if she kept on this way, would leave her knowing a great deal about St. Frideswide’s before she ever reached there.
    Up a stairs, she stood aside from a door for them to go in ahead of her, saying, “This is our library,” and Dame Perpetua, ahead of Frevisse, simply stopped in the doorway. Over her shoulder Frevisse could see why. At St. Frideswide’s, what books they had were kept in two chests stored among other things in the small room above the sacristy. Here was a whole room given over only to books. Along one wall were closed shelves with one of the doors standing open to piled books inside; down the room’s center a table, other books lying out on it; desks for writing; a glassed window giving light to everything.
    Dame Perpetua, as if dazed, drifted in. Frevisse would have followed but Sister Clemens was coming up the stairs, calling, “Dame Elisabeth,” followed by a woman in a rose-yellow cloak and many-veiled headdress. “From the countess of Suffolk,” Sister Clemens panted as she reached them. “For Dame Frevisse.”
    Frevisse stepped forward and the woman made curtsy to her, saying, “My lady has your message and asks if you would favor her by coming to supper tonight.”
    “You mean now?” Frevisse asked, taken somewhat aback.
    “If it please you. Her ladyship has sent escort of half a dozen men for you. And whoever has companioned you, of course.”
    There was hardly a way to turn down an invitation so thoroughly offered, nor did Frevisse doubt Abbot Gilberd would approve her going. It was likely what he had hoped for. But more than that, she was pleased to know Alice so wanted to see her and said, “We’ll come with pleasure and thanks, my lady.” Then she saw Dame Perpetua casting a desperately unhappy look at the library and added, for kindness’ sake, “Unless you’d rather stay here, Dame? I doubt Abbot Gilberd would object to…”
    She looked at the lady-in-waiting for her name.
    “Lady Sibill, by your leave, my lady.”
    “… would object to Lady Sibill being my surety in your stead.” Because it would be unacceptable for her to go out of the nunnery and through London unaccompanied by some woman.
    “Yes! Please!” Dame Perpetua said, all gladness on the instant, and men because that eagerness might seem impolite, said, “It would hardly do for both of us to leave Dame Elisabeth when we’ve only just come.”
    Dame Elisabeth agreed readily to all of that, and leaving her and Dame Perpetua to the library, Frevisse went with Sister Clemens and Lady Sibill away to the outer door, with a pause in the corridor there for Sister Clemens to hurry away and find wherever Frevisse’s cloak had been taken and bringit back to her. The half dozen men Lady Sibill had spoken of, squires in the dark blue Suffolk livery with the Suffolk badge of a silver ape-clog on their shoulders, were waiting, still mounted, in the cobbled yard, and when Frevisse followed Lady Sibill out, one of them