Dew In April by John Clayton

'Romance of the Middle Ages, laid in the Convent of St. Lazarus of the Butterflies. Dolores, a homeless vagabond, is given shelter by Mother Leonor, a mystic, repressed, white-hot and deeply tender woman whose passionate emotional attachments to her young novices are never explicit but pervade the entire book. Much of the story is concerned with a subtle, sweet and innocently sensual blossoming of adolescent emotions into homo-erotic form under the pressures of convent life; the interplay of delicate love relationships between Dolores, Mother Leonor, and the young novices Dezirada and Clarisse, and their fluctuation between despair, self-sacrifice and compassionate love when Dolores finds a knightly lover, Pedro, is probably unmatched in studies of feminine variance.' ~ Checklist, Marion Zimmer Bradley