The Prioress’ Tale by Tale Prioress'

women—just as she had all her years after coming to the nunnery, until she became prioress—slept in the dormitory across the cloister, each in her own cell, closed in by thin wooden walls and a curtain for a door, with a bed and not much else, but the prioress had two rooms for herself— bedroom and parlor all her own—and even a fireplace, the only one in the cloister except for those in the kitchen and the warming room. It gave her somewhere all of her own, somewhere away from all the endless demands and needs and envies turned on her for being prioress.
    Envy. That was the sin that drove Dame Claire and Dame Frevisse on and on against her. They had both wanted to be prioress, had been counting on it being one of them when Domina Edith died, and could not forgive that the election had gone against them, that God had chosen her instead.
    That was the thing she clung to at the end of days like this one. God had chosen her.
    Standing in her darkened doorway, peering into the parlor’s gloom, where there should have been at least lamplight and, better yet, a fire on the hearth and wine set out, she demanded, “Katerin!”
    A scrabbling near the fireplace showed Katerin was there. Alys took a step into the room.
    “Katerin, where’s my fire?”
    “Nearly,” Katerin piped a little desperately from the darkness. “Nearly.” The scrabbling went on, steel struck flint, and there were sparks and then small flames in dry tinder on the hearth, with Katerin’s earnest face leaning over them, red-cast in the dark as she blew gently on the flames, urging them alive, with a hand poised to the side with more tinder for when they were strong enough.
    Alys had stayed where she was but now went forward to stand beside her, near the warmth that would soon reach out as the fire grew. Katerin glanced up with a pleased smile. Alys nodded back reassuringly. Katerin’s brain had been burned out by a fever when she was a child; she had spent much of her nearly thirty years following her mother around the village like a toddling infant, until, when the woman came to die, she begged, by way of Father Henry, the nuns to take Katerin into the priory.
    “She’s cleanly kept and good at simple tasks. She’ll earn her keep,” Father Henry had said on Katerin’s behalf. “And it would be a mercy to her mother to know what’s going to become of her.”
    For no good reason that Alys remembered now, except maybe to spite the distaste some of her nuns had shown at the thought of having a half-wit among them, she had agreed. As it had turned out, although Katerin had little to work with in the way of wits, what little she had was given over entirely to trying to please. Finding that if only an order was simple enough for Katerin to grasp, she never questioned or hesitated over it, Alys had very shortly made her entirely into her own servant. The only troubles were that an order had to be very simple, and that if Katerin felt she had failed or someone was angry at her, she panicked into complete incompetence. On the whole, it was easiest not to panic her by showing any anger, so Alys said nothing about her being late with the fire, only nodded to show it was all right and waited until Katerin had nursed the fire past kindling into flames licking along logs before saying, “That’s a good fire, Katerin. Very good.”
    Katerin stood up, wiping her hands on her apron, smiling widely, and made a curtsy with much of the gladness a puppy would have shown for being patted.
    “There’s something else I want you to do for me,” Alys said. Katerin bobbed her head eagerly, to show she was ready. She rarely spoke unless she had to, but she was always ready to do whatever was asked of her, if only she could understand it.
    “I need you to go to Father Henry and Sir Reynold,” Alys said with careful slowness, giving time for the names to take hold in Katerin’s head. “You remember Sir Reynold?”
    Katerin nodded willingly. It was a chancy thing