Tedious brief tales of Granta and Gramarye

by Arthur Gray

“It is all forgotten now, for the pestilence wiped out the memory of those days. Scarcely twelve months had gone since she took the veil when Margery Cailly disappeared from the Priory. You may think what babble of tongues there was in our parlour—how they who were wisest had always known how it would be, and the rest rebuked them for not telling them beforehand. And so for another twelvemonth she was lost to us, and some sisters, who were kind, hoped that she would come back, and some who were kinder, hoped she would not.

“Then, one day in the year before the pestilence, comes an apparitor with our lost Margery, and a letter to the Prioress from the Lord Bishop of Ely. The letter is to say that the Archbishop of Canterbury, in his visitation of Lincoln diocese, has found Margery there, living a secular life; and because secular life is sin to those who have entered the religious order, he commits her to his brother of Ely, in order that the lost sheep may be restored to the fold where she was professed. And his Lordship of Ely—Heaven help him for a blundering bachelor!—directs that she shall be committed to the convent prison-house until she repents of her wickedness, and when she is loosed from it, shall make public confession in Chapter, and implore the pardon of the sisters for her enormities.

“Our Prioress was kinder to Margery than the Bishop meant—who could not be kind to her? Her prison life was no longer than would satisfy the Bishop’s enquiries, and as for the confession in the Chapter-house—it never happened. There were some, though they liked not confession for themselves, who thought an opportunity was missed, and blamed the Prioress; for cloister talk is dull if we know not one another’s failings. Still, the sisters were kind to Margery, and very kind when they wanted to get the secret from her. But she said never a word about it, unless it were to the Prioress. Beautiful she was as ever, but grief and humiliation were on her, heavy as death, and because she confided in none, she lost the friendship of the sisters. To me, who was but a child, she would talk, but scarcely to another, and her talk with me was never about herself.

“One other there was with whom sometimes she had speech, and that was old Thomas Key, maltster and trusty servant in general matters of the Priory. Him she had known in happier days when he was a tenant of the Caillys at Trumpington. Her family was too proud and too pious to remember the disgraced nun, and they never visited her; but from Thomas she learnt something of home and the outside world.

“Then came the dreadful year when the pestilence raged in Cambridge town. The nuns had been used to get leave from the Prioress to go out into the town, but there was no gadding now. The gate was closely barred, and none were admitted from outside except Thomas Key. We carried the Host in procession about the Nuns’ Croft and—laud be to the saints!—it protected our precincts from the contagion. And while the sinful world without died like the beasts that perish, we sat secure, but frightened, in our cloister, and blessed our glorious saint for extending the protection of her prayers over the pious few who did her service in St Radegund’s.

“You have heard how the parish clergy died that year. One, two, sometimes three died in one parish, and the Bishop found it hard to provide successors. Boys that had barely taken the tonsure a week before were sent in haste to anoint the sick and bury the dead in places where the plague had left an unshepherded flock. Sir John Dekyn, priest of St Peter’s church on the hill, was one that died, and his successor did not live a fortnight after him. Then we heard from Thomas Key that a mere youth had taken the place, one Sir Nicholas of the Shelford De Frevile family, who had but lately been ordered priest at Ely. And we were told that he worked with a feverous zeal among the poor, the sick, and the dying of his parish.

The Chancel Squint.

“Now when this news was brought to sister Margery by Thomas Key, it was to her as a summons from death to life. Her eye brightened and her cheek glowed when she heard of the heroic goodness of this young priest. While the sisters shuddered and shrank at each morning’s fatal news, she was consumed with a passionate desire to know what was passing in the plague-stricken town, and she plied my mother and Thomas Key with incessant questionings. ‘Who was sick of the townsfolk? Were any of the clergy visited? How went it with the poor in St Peter’s, where the pestilence was hottest?’ For some weeks she heard that the light burned still at night in St Peter’s parsonage, and that the priest was unscathed, incessant in his ministrations and blessed by his parishioners. And it seemed as though the sickness was abating.

“Then, late one afternoon in early August, there came a call for Margery. Thomas Key brought it, and whether it was his own tidings, or a message from some other, I cannot say; Margery never told me. But this I know, that she took me apart in the cloister and spoke to me, and she was terribly moved and her voice was choked. ‘Little Alice,’ she said, ‘as you love me, get me the gate-key after Lauds to-night. It is life or death to me to go out into the town. Only do it, and say nothing—no, not to your mother.’ Young as I was, I knew how the nuns were used to humour my mother into letting them pass the gate; but that was in day-time. At night, in our besieged state, with the death-bells tolling all around, it seemed a terrible thing to venture. But I asked no questions. Say it was the recklessness of a girl—say it was the love that I bore to Margery. I stole the key and gave it to her after sundown.