The Apostate's Tale

As the nuns of St. Frideswide's priory prepare for the welcome end of Lent, their peaceful expectations are overset by the sudden return of long-vanished Sister Cecely. Nine years ago she fled from the nunnery with a man. Now her lover is dead and she has come back, bringing her illegitimate son with her.

She claims she is penitent, that she wants only to redeem her sin and find a safe haven for her child. By the law of the Church, neither she nor the child can be turned away, but their presence begins to stir doubts and questions in the hearts of some of the nuns about their own faithfulness to the enclosed life they live. However, these doubts become the lease of the problems Dame Frevisse must confront when her worldly troubles follow Sister Cecely and her son into the nunnery, pursuing her out of the life she claims to have left behind.

Contrite Sister Cecely may be -- however much Frevisse may doubt it -- but truthful she is not, and as the apostate nun's lies begin to overtake her, dangers of more than one kind become an unwanted part of life in the priory.