– Do kindness, Lord, to the good and honest of heart. But who turns aside into their crooked ways, Lord lead them away amid evil doers. Yes, that served her humour very well for now, and she was able to go to supper with the other nuns and sit with some quiet of mind through the meal while Dame Thomasine read softly from Dame Julian of Norwich’s Showings. She was nonetheless relieved as they left the refectory to begin the hour of recreation before Compline ended the day to find one of the guesthall servants waiting in the cloister walk to tell her she was wanted in the guesthall, please it her. It pleased her very well. Asking Dame Claire to come with her – and then Sister Elianor, too, as she saw the novice’s face – she left the cloister. Crossing the yard to the guesthall, she only with effort held her walk to “hurried, not flurried.” Setting Sister Elianor a good example, she firmly told herself. In the hall the rushlights were burning on their prickets around the walls, giving a warm light to the gathering of people there. Master Naylor and Master Richard; Margery; a man who must be John Adirton; Simon Perryn and another village man whom Frevisse knew by sight though not by name, standing behind Adirton as if they were perhaps – but not quite – his guards. As Frevisse had asked her to, Dame Claire went away to see how Anneys Barnsley did, leaving Sister Elianor to stand correctly a few paces behind and aside as Frevisse acknowledged the men’s bows and Margery’s curtsy before asking, “John Adirton?”
