The cloister bell began to chime, startling them both.
“Vespers,” Dame Claire said, relieved. “We can’t do anything more today.”
“Except ask Thomasine if she’s remembered seeing anything more,” Frevisse said as they left the guest house and descended the stairs to the yard, hurrying a little through the soft fall of rain. “But she won’t. She’ll repeat she prayed all night and saw or heard no one and there’s the end of it. Why does the child bother me so much?”
“Because she’s the child you very nearly might have been, if you’d had her childhood leisure to indulge in piety,” Dame Claire said.
Frevisse looked sideways at her, and found her own first amusement at such an idea sliding into dismay with the discomforting thought that it might be true. Except for Domina Edith, Dame Claire knew more about Frevisse’s deep piety than anyone else at St. Frideswide’s, and knew better than anyone that it was her early childhood that nourished a need to be as pragmatic as devout. It was a welcome diversion from such thoughts to see Robert Fenner coming purposefully toward them, reaching them as they reached the cloister door.
As they crowded under the eaves, out of the rain, Frevisse saw again the large bruise discoloring his left cheek and jaw. As Dame Claire reached to touch it, he flinched back from her.
Frevisse asked quickly, “Was it Sir Walter gave you the bruise? How did you anger him that badly?”
Robert jerked his hand in quick dismissal. “I was too slow picking up a boot he’d dropped, that’s all. His mother was quick with her hands, too, but not as strong.”
“So he’s taken you back into his household.”
“Yes. I’m a Fenner after all, and we take care of our own. If roughly, sometimes.”‘
“Then perhaps you can be of service to us – and Sister Thomasine, if you will.”
His grin was as charming as an angel’s and his mind as quick to understand. “You want me to listen to anything I can, and see you hear of it afterwards.”
“Yes.”
“Gladly. Anything to serve Sister Thomasine. You’re worried for her, aren’t you?”
“And so are you, I think.”
“I think her very fair and very sweet.” A faint blush over his cheeks made him suddenly look even younger than he was. “But I’m also without inheritance and have few hopes and know that even if she willed it, she could not be for me. So all I can be is worried for her. So far it’s all Sir Walter’s idea to have her out of here, but with a little more pushing, Master Montfort of the little wits and great ambition is going to agree with him. The easiest choice will be the best choice for him, he thinks.”
“And that’s where Thomasine’s peril lies,” Frevisse said bluntly. “So if you hear anything you think I ought to know, any of the priory’s lay servants will know how to take word to me about it. Will you be able to do that?”
“Yours at your need, my lady,” Robert said as if she were a queen. “Will you take Sister Thomasine a letter from me?”
“Never,” she said promptly.
He grinned around the worry in his eyes, and said, “Well, there’s something else, too.” He bowed. “You’ve been asking questions about who was in Lady Ermentrude’s chamber last night. You’d best ask me, too.”
Frevisse and Dame Claire exchanged looks. The bell was still calling to Vespers, but there was this task to be done as well. Best talk to him now while he came willing to speak; Domina Edith would almost surely pardon their being late.
“You were in Lady Ermentrude’s chamber that night?” Frevisse asked.
“Once. I awoke sometime and went to see if anything was needed. Lady Ermentrude and the woman Maryon were both sleeping. Lady Isobel was not there, or the maidservant, Maudelyn. Thomasine was praying. I don’t think she knew I’d come.”
“You did not speak to her?”
“No.” But his color deepened and it was obvious he had stood there awhile, looking. If his look was anything like the way he said her name, it had been a very warm and lingering stare, Frevisse thought, and Thomasine deep indeed in prayers not to have felt it. She asked, “Except for then, and later when Lady Ermentrude died, were you ever in her chamber that day or before?”
A shrewdness in his face told Frevisse he was following very well what her questions meant, but he answered simply enough, “I helped bring her into the hall when she first came. That was all.”
“So you saw her very well then,” Dame Claire said. “I only came to her after she had begun to quiet. Was she very drunk?”
“Like I’d never seen her,” Robert said. “It seemed more than drunkenness, like she was gone mad.”
“Brain-fevered maybe,” Frevisse suggested. “From the day’s heat and her drinking and her anger.”
Robert frowned, not anxious to disagree. “She was giddy on her feet and saying her eyes hurt. The sun wasn’t particularly bright that I noticed, but she said it was hurting her and covered them. Her eyes were all black and swollen, I know that. The blue of them was a thin rim about the black. And she kept hold on one thought all the while as if she were afraid of losing it: She would have Thomasine away from here at once. But she seemed so wild I doubt she really knew what she was saying, just kept saying it, with her eyes all staring, so she looked mad even if she wasn’t.” His look sharpened on Dame Claire. “I’ve said something.”
Frevisse looked at the infirmarian beside her. Dame Claire’s expression was somewhere between excitement and distress, and her voice uneven as she said, “Yes, you’ve said something.” She pulled at Frevisse’s arm. “We have to go or we’ll be too late even for Domina Edith. Thank you for telling us.”
The bell for Vespers had stopped. Frevisse and Dame Claire hurried along the cloister walk. So urgent was her need for information that Frevisse ignored the rule of silence to ask, “What did he say that mattered so much to you?”
Dame Claire pressed her fingers into Frevisse’s flesh through the heavy cloth of her habit. “I never heard her symptoms before. I never asked how she was when she first came back here from the Wykehams. Everyone kept saying she was drunk and I never asked.”
“It didn’t seem to matter. Drunkenness or brain fever. Does it make a difference?”
“I don’t think that it was either one. What that boy said about Lady Ermentrude’s giddiness, her wildness almost without sense, and her bulging eyes all black and hurting her in the sun; Frevisse, if we join that with her screaming afterwards and her seeming to see awful things, then she was already poisoned when she arrived back at St. Frideswide’s. I’d swear to it.”
* * * * *
The adventure continues in Margaret Frazer's The Novice's Tale!
And be sure to check out these other great Dame Frevisse murder mysteries:
The Servant's Tale
The Outlaw's Tale
The Bishop's Tale
The Boy's Tale
The Murderer's Tale
The Prioress' Tale
The Maiden's Tale
The Reeve's Tale
The Squire's Tale
The Clerk's Tale
The Bastard's Tale
The Hunter's Tale
The Widow's Tale
The Sempster's Tale
The Traitor's Tale
The Apostate's Tale
Margaret Frazer
Margaret Frazer is the award-winning author of more than twenty historical murder mysteries and novels. She makes her home in Minneapolis, Minnesota, surrounded by her books, but she lives her life in the 1400s. In writing her Edgar-nominated Sister Frevisse (The Novice's Tale) and Player Joliffe (A Play of Isaac) novels she delves far inside medieval perceptions, seeking to look at medieval England more from its point of view than ours. "Because the pleasure of going thoroughly into otherwhen as well as otherwhere is one of the great pleasures in reading."
She can be visited online at http://www.margaretfrazer.com.
* * * * *
Sister Frevisse Mysteries
Beg
inning in the year of Our Lord's grace 1431, the Sister Frevisse mysteries are an epic journey of murder and mayhem in 15th century England.
The Novice's Tale
The Servant's Tale (Edgar-Award Nominee)
The Outlaw's Tale
The Bishop's Tale (Minnesota Book Award Nominee)
The Boy's Tale
The Murderer's Tale
The Prioress' Tale (Edgar-Award Nominee)
The Maiden's Tale
The Reeve's Tale (Minnesota Book Award Nominee)
The Squire's Tale
The Clerk's Tale
The Bastard's Tale
The Hunter's Tale
The Widow's Tale
The Sempster's Tale
The Traitor's Tale
The Apostate's Tale
* * * * *
Player Joliffe Mysteries
In the pages of Margaret Frazer's national bestselling Dame Frevisse Mysteries the player Joliffe has assumed many roles on the stage to the delight of those he entertains. Now, in the company of a troupe of traveling performers, he finds himself double cast in the roles of sleuth and spy...
A Play of Isaac
A Play of Dux Moraud
A Play of Knaves
A Play of Lords
A Play of Treachery
A Play of Piety
A Play of Heresy
* * * * *
Margaret Frazer Tales
Available Now as Kindle E-Books
Neither Pity, Love, Nor Fear (Herodotus Award Winner)
Strange Gods, Strange Men
The Simple Logic of It (A Bishop Pecock Tale)
The Witch's Tale (Sister Frevisse Mystery)
The Midwife's Tale (Sister Frevisse Mystery)
Volo te Habere...
This World's Eternity
Shakespeare's Mousetrap
The Death of Kings
The Stone-Worker's Tale (Sister Frevisse Mystery)
Winter Heart (Sister Frevisse Mystery)
Heretical Murder (A Bishop Pecock Tale)
Lowly Death (A Bishop Pecock Tale)
* * * * *
Cover Art: Prayer With Rosary - Photoganda, Inc.
Cover Design: Justin Alexander
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