Free The Boy's Tale by Margaret Frazer Page B

Gawyn, Mistress Maryon, the two men, and possibly Jenet. Frevisse hoped they would all tell the same story and, as planned, leave the children out of it. If they did not, there could well be trouble, but Frevisse could think of nothing more to protect against it than what had already been done.
     
    At least the children had been no great bother so far. Or at least not so great a bother as they might have been. Even if they did not stay completely out of the way, their manners were charming, they were quiet, and among the nuns at recreation it was generally agreed they were very sweet, handsome little boys. Only Dame Alys professed to find their presence intolerable, but Dame Alys would have found the presence of the archangel Gabriel intolerable if it suited her.
     
    Frevisse had noted that the boys found ways to avoid Dame Alys when they could, which showed they had intelligence as well as charm, and if she had had to choose, she preferred intelligence to both charm and handsomeness because more could be done with it in the long run.
     
    None of that solved the problem of them, however. It was a problem that could not be solved, only gladly parted with when Sir Gawyn was well enough to ride on with them.
     
    With her forehead laid on her clasped hands, Frevisse prayed for his continued swift healing.
     
    And for Domina Edith's.
     
    No, that was not fair. Domina Edith was turned willingly toward her end, and any prayer for her should be that she come to it gently, not that she be kept longer from where she was so ready to go.
     
    That, Frevisse had found, was very hard. But if she cared as much for Domina Edith as she claimed, then her prayers had to be for Domina Edith, not for herself. The words from the hymn that was part of None came to her.
     
    Largire lumen vespere. Quo vita nusquam decidat, Sed praemium mortis sacrae Perennis instet gloria. Give light at evening, So that life nowhere fails But goes to the reward of holy death With glory perpetual.
     
    She tried to draw the words deep into herself, to give herself up to them, but when she had finished, she leaned her head more heavily on her hands, mentally sighing. It was no longer so consistently difficult for her to know what was the right thing to do—not as it had been in her younger days when so many decisions had been struggles not only between conscience and desire but, more basically, to grasp what the core of the struggle actually was. She was better now at perceiving right desire against wrong desire, but the effort to do what was right rather than what was easier and more comfortable was still not always the simple matter she wished it could be.
     
    A hand hesitantly touched her shoulder. Startled, Frevisse jerked upright. Sister Thomasine stood in front of her, hands clasped to her breast, a worried expression on her usually serene face. She beckoned Frevisse to come with an urgency so unusual in her that Frevisse immediately stood up to follow her from the church, along the cloister walk and into the slype. Frevisse could not remember a single occasion since Sister Thomasine had entered St. Frideswide's when she had made use of the slype's privilege to impart urgent information and, thoroughly alarmed now, she said as soon as they were in it, "What is it? What's the matter?"
     
    In a low-voiced rush, Sister Thomasine said, "I can't find the children. They're nowhere in the cloister."
     
    "Nowhere? Are you sure?"
     
    "The boys—I "thought to give them some horehound drops for a treat. I thought it would make them feel better." Sister Thomasine twisted her hands together unhappily and added hurriedly, "They are last year's horehound drops. We didn't use them up through the winter. We have a plenty of them and I'll be making more—"
     
    "I'm sure it's all right," Frevisse interrupted. "A very kind thought. But you can't find Edmund and Jasper?"
     
    "Or Lady Adela."
     
    "And Jenet doesn't know where they are?"
     
    "I don't know where Jenet