Free The apostate's tale by Margaret Frazer Page B

and said, “I know. We’ve all heard. Poor lady, to have lost him. He was such a goodly man to look on.”
    Cecely nodded, momentarily wordless with her grief.
    Alson looked up the stairs again. “We can’t be caught talking. But maybe later?”
    “Today,” Cecely said, not about to waste this chance she had hoped for since she first saw Alson was still here. “At recreation time. In the necessarium.” There was somewhere the nuns let her go alone.
    Alson’s eyes and mouth went “Oh,” with surprise, but she gave a ready little nod, and they went their separate ways.
    Only at the foot of the stairs did Cecely pause to lean close over Neddie and say in his ear, “ Never tell anyone that Alson and I spoke together,” giving a jerk on his hand to be sure he understood.

Chapter 8
     
    W hile the Offices of these holy days were longer, daylight was not. The dark rigors of Good Friday were nearly done, but only because their supper had been so slight did the nuns have time at all for what should have been their hour of recreation before Compline and bed. Still, Frevisse welcomed even that little while and was come out with those nuns who were free to it into the fading twilight to walk the graveled paths of the cloister’s high-walled garden.
    It was a needed respite for those who had it. Ahead were tonight’s prayers, then the long mourning of Holy Saturday, and finally the night of vigil and prayers that would bring them at last to Easter. This pause in the effort of Holy Week’s prayers, this time of simply walking in the garden, gave minds and bodies chance to rest and ready themselves for the more that was to come. But Domina Elisabeth and Dame Claire were not there. From now until Easter two nuns would be constantly at vigil in the church, turn and turn about. This was their time.
    Dame Margrett was absent, too, allowed to spend this time with her mother, but Dame Thomasine was there, standing alone beside the pear tree, her face lifted to the pale sunset sky as if she were watching the last soft yellow drain away, so thin in her black nun’s gown and so still that she might have been another tree rooted there beside the path. Dame Juliana was, as usual, bent over the very young plants in one of the beds she so lovingly tended, while Dame Amicia and Dame Johane were walking together, their talk keeping pace with their brisk steps although their voices were too low for words to carry. Sister Helen usually walked with them when she did not walk with Dame Margrett, but this evening she was walking alone, her hands tucked into the opposite sleeves of her novice’s gown, her head bowed in thought or prayer.
    For her part, Frevisse was standing just outside the gate, not free to go into the garden yet. Her turn at watching Sister Cecely had begun, and as the nuns had come along the slype—the narrow passageway from the cloister walk to the garden—Sister Cecely had said suddenly and somewhat desperately, “I must go,” and turned aside to the stairs up to the necessarium. Frevisse had let her go. The only two ways to the necessarium were this one and a door to the nuns’ dorter. Not believing Sister Cecely was going to flee from the necessarium to the dorter and from the dorter down its stairs to the cloister walk and away, Frevisse had felt no need to follow her, was simply lingering in sight of the door, waiting for her and watching the others.
    Or, now, was watching Sister Helen in particular, who was come to a stop not far from Dame Thomasine and was standing watching her watch the sky. This was Sister Helen’s first Eastertide in the nunnery, and Frevisse suspected that, as was usual with novices, she was seeking to match the high holiness of the days by working over-hard at her prayers and penances. Only experience and maybe the careful guidance of others would teach her that zeal was best balanced by consideration of the body’s need for reasonable rest from the rigors of prayer, lest both prayer and