Free The Hunter’s Tale by Margaret Frazer Page B

trouble. Is that so?”
     
    Everyone looked at everyone else and there was a general shaking of heads that, no, neither Ursula nor her mother had been any trouble. “In truth,” Dame Perpetua said, “Lady Anneys has eased my work. She gives Ursula some of her lessons and has helped with the mending.” She frowned a little. “Although Ursula’s sewing has not improved.”
     
    ‘She keeps to herself,“ Dame Emma said. ”Lady Anneys, I mean. She comes to the Offices, of course—all but Matins and Lauds and Compline, of course, and that’s understandable—and she brings Ursula with her, which is good, it spares one of the servants the task. But she doesn’t talk. I’ve tried with her more than once but she ’saves her breath to cool her fingers,‘ as the saying goes. I don’t think I’ve had more than ten words with her at a time…“
     
    And if anyone could get away from Dame Emma with less than ten words, they had accomplished something indeed, Frevisse thought.
     
    Domina Elisabeth raised a hand, stopping Dame Emma’s present outpouring, and smiled on them all. “I shall take it, then, that all is well there. There’s nothing else? Then it’s time to tell you that because today is St. Swithin’s holy day and because we well deserve it, too, we will have holiday this afternoon. Not merely holiday from duties either. I’ve provided for something altogether different for us.”
     
    Sister Margrett forgot herself so far as to clap her hands and exclaim, “Oh! What, my lady?” with such delight that rather than rebuke her excess, Domina Elisabeth smiled and said, “You’ll see when the time comes,” but that was all she would say.
     
    Morning tasks were not so well attended to as they might have been and at each Office of prayer—Tierce, Sext, Nones—only Domina Elisabeth’s sternest looks stopped the whispers running among Dame Emma, Sister Amicia, and Sister Margrett before the Office could begin, and when finally at their midday dinner’s end Domina Elisabeth bade them gather in the cloister walk, there was an unseemly hurry of scraping benches and fluster of skirts. Dame Emma’s stiffening joints kept her behind the younger nuns’ rush out the refectory door, but even among the older nuns who chose to put on a front of more dignity, no one lingered. Most days in the nunnery were much like other days. The most constant change was in the Offices themselves as their prayers circled through the seasons of the Church—Whitsuntide just past, then the summer and autumn holy days, on to Advent and Christmastide, Lent and Lady Day and Easter, and around to Whitsun again. The promise of something other than the ordinary was welcomed by nearly everyone, save maybe Sister Thomasine, who had to be almost shooed ahead by Sister Johane to have her out the door quickly enough.
     
    They found Lady Anneys and Ursula waiting in the cloister walk, Ursula bouncing a little on her toes with impatient delight. Frevisse had expected a solemn little girl to return from her father’s funeral but she had not; nor had Lady Anneys shown any signs of deep grief, only a grave willingness to keep to her own and Ursula’s company. Today, though, they plainly both knew something of what Domina Elisabeth purposed because they were dressed for some kind of work, their gowns plain, Lady Anneys with simply a veil pinned over her hair, and Ursula’s long hair fastened up around her head instead of hanging down her back. But whatever Domina Elisabeth had in mind for them she did not
yet say,
merely nodded to Lady Anneys to walk beside her and, taking Ursula’s hand, led the rest of them along the cloister walk and through the slype, the narrow passage leading out of the cloister toward the nuns’ high-walled garden. Coming out at its far end, she turned not toward the garden’s gate but leftward along the garden wall to the usually locked back-gate into the orchard. Enclosed by a steep earthen bank, the orchard was