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be off to wherever they wanted and welcome riddance to them, but she’d have the work done first, by blessed St. Frideswide she would! And if he did not think so, let him remember she had her cousin and his men to change his mind for him.
    He had backed off right enough then, and well for him that he had, but she doubted he would stay backed off, and most certainly he would not if she lost Reynold.
    For that reason and several more she could not afford to lose Reynold, but he was making it difficult, with his half-kept promises and now this girl. What she truly needed was more money. With money enough, every problem would give way, from Master Porter right down to her silly women. The trouble was that there was not more money.
    And even if there had been, she had no true wish to be rid of Reynold.
    Grimly she chewed her way through the rest of the meal. While St. Katherine went to her joyful martyrdom, a bowl of apples, still crisp from the harvest, was passed down the table; and while a soldier was severing her holy neck, Alys watched Sister Cecely take open pleasure in peeling her apple in one long strip. Since waste was unallowed, she always ate the peel afterward, so why did she bother? But at least she ate it, unlike Sister Thomasine, who, when she bothered to come to meals at all, left half of whatever she was given to be handed off as alms to whoever showed up at the priory gate for it. That was piety but one that Alys understood no better than she did Sister Cecely’s apple peeling. Food was for eating, and how did it help if two went hungry when one of them had no need to? But that was how it was with saints. Pious but impractical, every one of them, and where were they then?
    “ ‘And so the blessed maiden Katherine went crowned to Christ,”“ Dame Perpetua read reverently, ” ’in the month of November, on the twenty-fifth day, a Friday, near the hour our Lord gave up his life on the cross for her and for us all. Amen.“”
    That was the familiar end. Dame Perpetua fell silent, then sighed, closed the book, and rose from her place with it clasped to her breast, to curtsy to Alys and then go away to the kitchen for her own meal. Alys, having contained impatience that long, rose to her own feet, the rest of the nuns with her. She ran them through grace, then stood eyeing them unfavorably, knowing what they wanted.
    There was an hour’s recreation now, between supper and the day’s last prayers at Compline, and they were all eager to be off to make the most of it, to crowd around the fire in the warming room and let their tongues run away from their wits over everything they thought they knew about this afternoon, with Dame Frevisse to lead them on.
    Briefly, bitterly, Alys considered ordering them to silence for the evening—or forbidding them their fire. That would curb their ways a little, give them something else to think on.
    But suddenly they were not worth the bother. What she really wanted, besides to be rid of her throbbing head, was to not be looking at their foolish faces anymore and that was easily managed.
    “Tell Dame Perpetua she’s to lead you in prayers at Compline,” she said curtly, and ignoring everything but the need to hide how much her head was hurting, left them with stiff dignity.
    Outside, in the almost dark of the cloister walk, she let her shoulders slump and increased her stride so that she was well away toward her rooms before they came out of the refectory behind her, heading the other way for the warming room, already in low-voiced, eager talk.
    Alys paused at the foot of her stairs, listening but not able to make out the words across the darkening cloister. She supposed she did not need to. They would be on about her and none of it to the good, likely.
    Discouraged by the thought, she climbed the stairs to her rooms with heavy-legged weariness and the relief of escape.
    She had not known when she became prioress how greatly she would come to depend on her rooms. The other