The Apostate's Tale by Margaret Frazer

Author:Margaret Frazer
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2007-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Through Easter Week—the beginning of Paschaltide—the nuns’ ordinary tasks were kept as slight as might be, to give rest from the rigors of Holy Week and Easter and time for their own prayers outside the Offices, but thus far in the week Frevisse had not found much chance for either rest or her own prayers, aside from that brief while before Tierce this morning. So when a pause in her duties came early in the afternoon, she returned to the church, somewhat hurrying in hope she could reach the shelter of her stall in the choir before someone needed her for something.

She succeeded, was a little surprised but nothing more to find no one else there except Sister Helen, huddled down on her knees in front of her own seat. The first sharp stab of wariness only came as the girl looked up at her, face pale and strained, and pleaded, “Please, will you talk with me?”

Frevisse’s first urge was to tell the girl it was to Domina Elisabeth she should talk, that it was the prioress’ place to comfort and guide St. Frideswide’s nuns, but despite an inward quailing, she found herself saying evenly, “Assuredly,” and came to sit in the stall beside her while Sister Helen shifted backward from her knees onto the narrow wooden seat of her own stall.

There, she seemed to lose whatever she had wanted to say. She sat looking down at her hands twisting together in her lap, bit her lower lip for a moment, looked sideways to Frevisse, looked back to her hands, and only finally brought herself to whisper, “I’m frightened.”

That was so far from anything Frevisse had thought to hear that she said blankly, “What?”

“It’s Sister Cecely,” Sister Helen said desperately.

It would be, thought Frevisse.

“What if…” Sister Helen faltered. “She took her final vows and yet she…What if I…”

“Become as faithless as she did?” Frevisse said bluntly. “That you’ve the good sense to fear it gives good hope you won’t.”

“But what if…” Sister Helen turned her head and looked full at Frevisse, despair naked on her face, and desperately and in a rush, she said, “It’s not her. Not really. It’s that I don’t feel what I felt when I first came here. Not always. Sometimes I don’t feel it at all. Sometimes there’s no joy in anything. Sometimes I have to drag myself to Offices, they’re such a drudge. Sometimes I can hardly pray at all. I have to force myself. That can’t be right!”

“Right or not, it comes to all of us,” Frevisse said.

Sister Helen’s eyes widened. “Even to you? Even now?”

Frevisse did not understand the “even to you” and let it pass, answering instead, very firmly, “Even now. The only difference between what you’re suffering and what I sometimes suffer is that now I know that sooner or later I’ll come out the far side of it, into the joy again.”

“You do? Will I?” Sister Helen asked with mingled hope and hopelessness.

“You will if you have the

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