The Novice's Tale (Sister Frevisse Medieval Mysteries) [Paperback]

Margaret Frazer (Author)

Book Description

Series: A Dame Frevisse Mystery | Publication Date: November 1, 1993

The arrival of lusty, blaspheming dowager Lady Ermentrude at St. Frideswide convent in 1431 causes quite a stir, but before the obnoxious woman can get what she came for--her niece, the novice Thomasine--she is murdered.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Berkley; Reissue edition (November 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 042514321X
• ISBN-13: 978-0425143216
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #33,891 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Margaret Frazer is a full-time writer. She has twice been a finalist for the Edgar(r) in the paperback original category. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A novel that depicts medieval nuns as people!, September 6, 2005

By 

Nina M. Osier (Randolph, ME USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Novice's Tale (Sister Frevisse Medieval Mysteries) (Paperback)

In 1431, the convent of St. Frideswide's peaceful English September is disrupted by the arrival of a familiar but less-than-welcome guest. Lady Ermentrude, great aunt to the saintly novice Thomasine, always enjoys tormenting the timid girl by threatening to find her a husband before Thomasine can take her final vows. This time she's just two weeks away from that great moment. So when Ermentraude dies of poisoning in St. Fridewide's guest hall, after a hard and hasty ride on some mysterious family business, Thomasine - unlikely murderess though she might make - is nevertheless everyone's prime suspect.

Everyone's, that is, except Sister Frevisse. Although she has to admit that Thomasine does look guilty, the convent's hosteler looks elsewhere instead of accepting the too-easy answer (in contrast to the "crowner" who investigates on the King's behalf, and the rest of Lady Ermentrude's family).

I seldom read mysteries. I picked this one up because of its setting in time and place, hoping for a few hours of amusement; and author Frazer delivered that in spades. Sister Frevisse, a mixture of involuntarily learned worldliness and devotion to the godly, contemplative life that's her choice, is a thoroughly original character. So, in their different ways, are the tale's other major players. What pleased me most, though, was the simple joy of reading a novel that depicts medieval nuns as people. That by itself would have been more than worth the read.

It was easy to forget among the quiet patterns of St. Frideswide's that its nuns were the daughters, granddaughters, sisters of men who held their inheritance by right of arms and battle skills. As nuns and women their daily life held little need for their inheritance of courage, but their blood remembered.

Yes! Exactly!

20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Introducing Dame Frevisse, Benedictine nun, December 8, 2002

By 

Michele L. Worley (Kingdom of the Mouse, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Novice's Tale (Sister Frevisse Medieval Mysteries) (Paperback)

Thomasine D'Evers, a frail 17-year-old, has wanted only the cloister since she was eight years old, driven mostly by intense piety - but partly from fear of the childbirth that killed her mother, and shyness intensified by the isolation of many childhood illnesses. This September of 1431, when Thomasine's final vows will be pronounced at Michaelmas (September 29th), her great-aunt, Lady Ermentrude Fenner, has arrived to pay an unannounced visit.

Lady Ermentrude likes to drop in on the priory's guesthall without warning and *with* a large following of servants, men-at-arms, and obnoxious pets. ("'A monkey,' Domina Edith repeated, sounding as if she had been given a second hundred years in Purgatory.") Since one of Ermentrude's favourite pasttimes is arranging family marriages for fun and profit, every visit is accompanied by rude, half-teasing offers to take Thomasine away and arrange a marriage for her with a vigorous young husband (or an older rich one, whichever strikes her fancy). (Robert Fenner, the one young man who seems to admire Thomasine for herself, has sense enough to hold his tongue rather than let the pushy old lady make things worse - for one thing, he knows he's not a good enough match.)

On this visit, Ermentrude arrived when Thomas Chaucer was visiting his niece, Dame Frevisse. The current events discussion of the war in France - the Hundred Years' War - is interesting; Henry VI is still a little boy. After meeting with the prioress, Dame Frevisse (who's in charge of the guesthall), and Master Chaucer, Ermentrude leaves the bulk of her retinue to settle in while she dashes off for a quick visit to Thomasine's married sister Isobel. But Ermentrude returns the next day in a frenzy, swearing that Thomasine shan't be forced to take vows, and that she 'has a good husband coming to her after this' - and that she's taking her away from this horrible place at once. She's been nearly raving all day, as Isobel and Sir John, arriving hard on her heels, can attest.

Within a few hours, Lady Ermentrude is dead of poison, together with a kitchen servant who sampled one dish too many.

Far too many people had opportunity, and with Lady Ermentrude, there's not far to look for motive. Lady Ermentrude had recently left Queen Katherine's service, dropping broad hints of impending scandal - did someone take steps to shut her mouth? Dame Alys, cellarer and chief cook, comes of a family embroiled in a feud with the Fenners, and could be counted on *not* to use new bread for the lady's milksop, but that which could have been tampered with. The lady's servants led a hard life - did something become too much for one of them? Worst of all, of course, Thomasine brought the milksop meant to soothe Lady Ermentrude's throat.

Master Montfort, the local 'crowner' (coroner) of northern Oxfordshire at this point in the series, is intensely irritating; he'll bend over backward for an easy explanation. ('Easy' in this case is the quickest resolution that'll let Lady Ermentrude's son Walter return to his rich uncle's deathbed.) Montfort's also a pig; he badmouths any information from any of the sisters, especially Frevisse, who he thinks gets above herself. It galls him that the sisters are under Church jurisdiction rather than his own.

Frevisse, with her cleverness and the worldly experience of much travel on pilgrimage in her youth, is left to save Thomasine by figuring out what happened. (However, the expertise and intelligence is distributed among the sisters - for instance, Domina Edith, the prioress, is the first to realize what they'll have to cope with, and Dame Claire the infirmarian is the medical expert.) After her parents died, Frevisse was raised in her aunt's household, but was far closer to her uncle, Thomas Chaucer - Geoffrey Chaucer's son. Chauncer is an anomaly, a powerful, wealthy commoner who refuses all titles, with a lot of noble and even half-royal relations; through him, Frevisse is well connected.

All the Dame Frevisse stories have titles after the fashion of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. However, rather than being narrated by the title character as in Chaucer's tales, they're told in limited 3rd person, alternating between the title character and Frevisse. The title character is always a major supporting player in the story, but not necessarily a suspect. The means employed by each murderer vary from story to story, and unlike, say, Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael mysteries, years go by between events at St. Frideswide's. Set 24 years before the Wars of the Roses began, signs of the approaching turmoil, like tremors before an earthquake, can be seen.

This Benedictine priory differs from Brother Cadfael's abbey, for more reasons than the three centuries separating them. St. Frideswide's holds fewer than a dozen sisters, who are cloistered and who observe the rule of silence. While provided for, the priory isn't particularly wealthy, and since it's only a priory, it must answer to the abbot of another house. Apart from that of the prioress, elderly Domina Edith, the offices are swapped around each quarter, so a sister won't necessarily stay with one job all her life.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good plot twists, July 8, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Novice's Tale (Sister Frevisse Medieval Mysteries) (Paperback)

This was the first Sister Frevisse book I've read, and I can't wait to read more. The characters are vivid, our sleuth multi-dimensional, and the historical details seem well researched (although I'm no medievalist). This book has a great little twist at the end, and will keep you guessing!