6 The Murderer's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  Lionel and Edeyn laughed in ready understanding of what she meant. The Romance of the Rose, that very long and popular poem, could be taken two widely different ways, with the Lover’s quest for the Rose seen either as his pursuit of Christ’s love or else as his lust for a lady’s body. It all depended on which way one chose to read the poem.

  They had been walking along the graveled path that bordered the greensward, with Fidelitas leaping up on the turf bench to run at Lionel’s elbow height and down again, still trying to paw at him for more attention. Now Lionel gathered the dog into his arms, a full load but manageable. “You’re a trifler,” he said. Fidelitas licked up at his face. “No, I’ve washed it lately. I don’t need more.”

  He had picked up the ball as they came toward the arbor. Now he tossed it ahead of them and let Fidelitas squirm out of his arms to go after it. They had been walking as they talked, Frevisse and Edeyn on either side of Lionel, who now took up the Rose theme again with a nod at the rose bushes growing all along the trellised wall. “So despite what holy thoughts we may have here ourselves,” he said, with an acknowledging gesture to include the three of them together, “concerning roses and Roses, worldly loves and heaven’s joys, do you suppose we should warn Lady Lovell that others may be tempted here to more worldly thoughts than we—and she, of course—in our piety are?”

  “Or should we simply accept that we can’t answer for other people’s thoughts?” asked Edeyn, with warm laughter. “And keep our own as pious as best we can?”

  Frevisse lightly matched her with a mock sigh. “Alas, that might be best. One can so rarely answer for other people in these matters.”

  Lionel, the lightness suddenly gone from him, said, “But we have to answer for what we do to them. And maybe answer on our souls for what we make them do.”

  He was looking toward the farther arbor archway, and Frevisse, following his gaze, saw Giles standing there as if he had been watching them for a while and a while, listening, knowing he was unnoticed. Looking quickly back and forth between the men as they looked at one another, Frevisse saw understanding and an acknowledgment in them both of something at which she could not guess.

  Edeyn, too concentrated on Lionel, saw only his sudden change from happiness and laid a hand on his arm.

  “Edeyn,” Giles said with an amusement as difficult to read as the look that had held between him and Lionel.

  Edeyn smiled in greeting, her hand dropping naturally away from Lionel’s arm as she asked, “You’ve come to call us in to supper?”

  “At long last, yes,” Giles answered. “And we’re to sit at high table with my lady. You nuns, too,” he added.

  Frevisse started, “Then I’d best go see how Dame Claire does, if she—” but beside her Lionel came to an abrupt stop, staring at his left hand, holding it out in front of him as if it were suddenly not part of him. Fidelitas, the ball dropped and forgotten, whined up at him. Edeyn, on his other side, staring first at his face and then at his hand, began, “Oh, Lionel—”

  He stopped her with a curt shake of his head, his attention still on his hand as he ordered, “You go on. There’s time yet. I’ll go to our room. There’s nothing else can be done. Go on.”

  “I’ll send Martyn to you.”

  “If he isn’t there, yes.” He was curt, not looking at her or anyone, only at his hand as if he hated it. Or feared it.

  Giles came to take Edeyn’s arm. “He’s told you what he wants. Come on then.” Whatever Giles felt, it was not pain or anything like sympathy. “My lady,” he added to Frevisse, “if you would?” Indicating she should come with them.

  Frevisse hesitated, but Lionel wanted to be left and she went, wondering what was toward, wondering why Edeyn, like Lionel, had gone pale and now was silent, her husband’s hand still around her arm as if to be sure she went with him as they crossed the gardens back toward the manor house, Lionel left behind to come alone.

  Chapter 5

  Giles stood with his back pressed against their room’s door, as far from the thing on the floor as he could be and still be in the room at all. Good old Lionel had made it to their room before the attack came on him. How pleasant for him, and for everyone else who was therefore spared the sight of it. Giles had managed for almost three years now to avoid seeing Lionel in one of his fits and he would have gladly made it longer, but this one might give him the chance he wanted. Somewhere other than Minster Lovell might have been better, but if the chance was going to be now, he would take it; he was tired of waiting. But to know if this was the one he could use, he had to be here and see it.

  He had waited until he was sure Lionel would be down and unknowing before he came, and then said he was there because Edeyn had been worried. Martyn could not order him away and he had stayed, just as he meant to. The room was a goodly one, agreeable, and, Giles had noticed at the very first, well apart from most of the household, near only Lady Lovell’s parlor and the chapel. Chosen, he suspected, so that as few folk as necessary would know if one of Lionel’s fits came on him. Its only lack was bar or lock for the door to keep someone coming in unwanted, and here was Lionel in full grunt and thrash on the floor, with Martyn trying to keep him from hitting himself against the bed foot or too hard on the floor, unable to watch the door, too, so that it was not unreasonable for Giles to have stayed once he was in, to guard the door as a “kindness” to his cousin, he would have explained if he had been asked, but Martyn had not bothered, the arrogant bastard.

  Holding down his gorge, Giles glanced at Lionel and away again. There was nothing human left there on the floor, just a writhing, twisting, grunting hulk, all drool and twitching. If ever Lionel had clear knowledge of what he was when a fit came on him, he would have shut himself up to die and been done with it. But he did not know and he never would if Martyn had his way. Dog-vomit Martyn would keep him ignorant of it to doomsday and protect him as much as might be in the bargain because Martyn would be out his profitable place if anything permanent happened to Lionel, damn them both.

  Between them, Martyn and Edeyn were forever protecting Lionel from seeing what he was—a long-jawed, scar-faced, shambling farce of a man living out a sham of a life to everyone’s inconvenience. Why Martyn did it was plain enough. Lionel was profit to him and a sure place in life. It was Edeyn who was hard to understand. To Edeyn Lionel was… what? Giles had never quite been certain, but it was sure she had never seen him in writhe and spasm on a floor, never seen him as he fully was. She only knew he was “afflicted,” and so in need of her woman-hearted sympathy. But then, she was so soft she had even spent hours nursing her sick greyhound bitch last winter when any fool could tell it was going to die. When he had had enough, he had put the bitch out of its misery and everybody’s way with a heavy pillow. It had been a mercy all around, for everyone, but Edeyn had taken it like a woman, badly and with tears, and then, like a woman, in a few days forgotten all about it. She had even forgotten to ask him for the dog he had promised her in the bitch’s place.

  It would go the same with her over Lionel. Grief and misery for a while and then she would forget. The baby would be a distraction, too. She’d not be thinking of much else in a while. That was one of the useful things about women: give them sport in bed and set them breeding and they were satisfied until it was time to do it to them again.

  He chanced another glance at Lionel. The fit was nearly done. The thrash and writhe were fallen away to only twitching. Soon he would lie quiet and then rouse, a little more witless than usual and exhausted for a while but no great harm done. By the time the rest of them came in at evening’s end, Martyn would have seen him clean and into bed to sleep it off. But there would be tomorrow. Tomorrow night probably, if the pattern held. The fit had been a brief one and that meant that almost assuredly tomorrow night— pray God not sooner—Lionel would have one of the great ones, the wildly violent ones that left him nigh to mindless with exhaustion for hours afterward.

  Exactly as Giles needed him to be.

&nb
sp; Chapter 6

  When supper was finished in the great hall, household and guests rose from the benches and moved aside for the hall servants first to clear away the food and dishes and tablecloths, then the tables themselves, opening the hall for whatever the household chose to do with the evening—talk or singing or dancing.

  Left to her own choice, Frevisse would have been satisfied to seek out the manor chapel, say Compline with Dame Claire, and be gladly done with the day. But it was not her choice. Lady Lovell had been gracious enough to do her and Dame Claire the honor of having them sit at the high table. They must be gracious in return, which meant joining in at least the evening’s conversation. Not the singing nor the dancing assuredly, but at least the talk.

  In the general shift of folk while the servants cleared the hall of all but the chairs and benches left for comfort, she drifted apart from Dame Claire who had fallen into talk over supper with one of Lady Lovell’s older ladies about the particular benefits of certain herbs. There presently seemed to be a cheerful disagreement over whether camomile or dandelion was the better at cleansing the body of certain phlegms, and because she had no idea on the matter either way, Frevisse did not care to join in. Dame Claire was better for her sleep, her color good again and the stiffness that had had her limping when she first arose gone by the time they had come down to the hall. It had occurred to Frevisse, finding she could not remember when last Dame Claire had been out of St. Frideswide’s farther than Prior Byfield, to be worried for her, surrounded in the hall by far more people and overt cheerfulness than she was used to. There had been people, strangers, through these few days of travel but only a few at any time, not a great clutter and noise of them like here, eager for the evening’s pleasures at an hour when in St. Frideswide’s the nuns were turning toward the quietness of Compline’s prayers and bed.

  But Dame Claire seemed to be enjoying herself and so did the lady with her, so Frevisse left them to it and looked down the hall in search of John Naylor. He had been seated at a lower table in company and deep conversation with an older man whom Frevisse guessed by his quiet manner of authority and his being set with John to be Lord Lovell’s high steward. It had crossed her mind to hope that young John was aware that what he might say could affect their later dealings on the nunnery’s matter, but while she watched he had seemed to be listening far more than he was talking and she had been reassured. He was more likely to make a good impression that way than another.

  But she still wanted to learn what had been said and was making her way among the people toward where she had last seen him when Master Geffers, the franklin, intercepted her. Without his unfortunate hat his presence was diminished and his years more obvious, but his inclination to talk was the same as he slid from between two men into Frevisse’s way with, “Dame Frevisse, we meet again.”

  Frevisse acknowledged that truth with a brief inclination of her head and attempted to go on past him, but he was too much in the way and already chatting with great enthusiasm about how splendid Minster Lovell was and, “I understand you and Dame Claire are staying with Lady Lovell’s damsels. How very good of Lady Lovell, very good.”

  From wariness of anything that might prolong the conversation, Frevisse did not ask where he had been given quarters, but that did not stop him from telling her he was above and beyond the kitchens. “And very pleasant it is. Though not so good as what there will be when the west range is finished. There’ll be a great many pleasant rooms there, I understand.”

  Frevisse thought that Master Geffers probably understood very little. He was just skilled at collecting oddments of information and pasting them together into what passed for conversation. She knew his sort and how little chance she had of escaping him without some sort of talk, so she asked, “And the Stenbys? Where are they?” She had not thought of them between when they had parted company on the road and now, but they served to divert Master Geffers.

  “Ah, the Stenbys. There’s a pair I’d not mind on my properties. Solid yeomen. No nonsense and good workers, if I’m any judge. They’re not here. They found a place to stay in the village. Some goodwife glad of an extra halfpenny for putting them up and feeding them. They’ll make their devotion at the shrine in the morning and start home afterward.” Master Geffers leaned closer to Frevisse’s ear as if someone in the shift of folk around them might be interested in the great secret he was about to impart. “A wise choice for them. They’d not have fitted in here. Best among their own kind.”

  Frevisse made—murmured was too kind a word; muttered was closer to the truth—some sort of agreement at him and moved on among the people talking and waiting around them for the last of the trestles to be carried out. She was no longer particularly set on finding John so much as on escaping Master Geffers; but Master Geffers, probably out of long experience of people trying to escape him, kept with her, saying as they went, “And you’ll have noticed that Master Knyvet isn’t here, either.”

  The eagerness behind his words warned Frevisse there was a particularly choice piece of talk to come, and she cast quickly through her mind for a way to avoid it. She liked what little she had seen of Lionel Knyvet. She did not want to hear about him by way of Master Geffers’ tattling, but Master Geffers’ tongue was too quick for her. He shook his head and said with a regret that Frevisse doubted went further than the turned-down corners of his mouth, “There’s a sad case. Poor man. We were warned but one always hopes, but I fear the worst, not seeing him here for supper.”

  Before she could help herself, Frevisse asked, “Warned?”

  “About his affliction.” Master Geffers dropped his voice unnecessarily low, as if everyone around them was waiting eagerly to hear what he said. “He’s possessed, you know. Horribly. Since childhood.”

  Frevisse crossed herself even as she protested, “Possessed? How?”

  “By a demon.”

  Of course by a demon, Frevisse wanted to snap at him. What else would he be possessed by? But Master Geffers was going on, gathering speed now that he had her attention. “It’s why he’s making this pilgrimage around to St. Kenelm’s shrines. Over the past years he’s gone everywhere, prayed everywhere, made gifts to saints from one end of England to the other, but no one and nothing has been able to free him.” Master Geffers nodded, solemn-faced with the weight of it, but it was avid delight that gleamed in his eyes. “Fits. He has fits. The falling sickness, you know. The demon seizes him and he loses all control. He flails, thrashes, spits, blasphemes God’s name and everything holy. He—”

  “You’ve seen this?”

  Master Geffers hastily crossed himself. “God forbid, no. But I was told by someone who’s seen it a hundred times and done what he could to help.”

  “Who?” Frevisse snapped, angry on Lionel Knyvet’s behalf that whatever happened to him was reduced to greedy talk in Master Geffers’ busy mouth by someone who should have known better.

  Her tone was lost on Master Geffers. Urged on by her interest, he said, “His own cousin. Master Giles. Who would know better? He’s seen the demon take him with his own eyes.”

  “And he told you about it? Does Master Knyvet want this thing known all over? Surely he doesn’t.”

  Master Geffers agreed to that readily. “Oh, of course he doesn’t. He keeps it secret as best he may. But we were traveling together, you see. What if an attack came and we had no warning? Master Giles wanted us prepared. For our own safety. The attacks are so violent and come so suddenly. Though mind you”—he leaned toward her, drawn by his avidity to tell— “he does have warning, Master Giles says. The demon taunts him, to add to the torment. It tickles in his left hand before it attacks. So if ever you see Master Knyvet look at his left hand oddly, leave him as quickly as you may.”

  Frevisse remembered Lionel’s face in the garden as he had held out his hand to look at it as if it were no longer part of him. He must have been feeling the demon then. Carefully she asked, “Where is he now?”

  “That’s the question, isn�
��t it? He takes the warning and finds some place alone before the fit comes on him, with only his man Martyn Gravesend to see him through it. A pushing fellow, that Martyn, taking every advantage of his master’s curse to put himself forward. And as damned as the demon itself or he’d never dare to face the fits out the way he does. That’s what Master Giles says.”

  Master Giles would say that, Frevisse thought. He had been quick enough to make his escape, she realized, to leave his cousin alone when he knew what was coming on him.

  But Lionel had wanted them to go. He had wanted to be left, to not be seen. The warning in his hand gave him time for that and in that much it was a blessing.

  But that was not the way Giles had made it seem when he had seen fit to tell Master Geffers and apparently the Stenbys. Or else that was not the way Master Geffers had heard it.

  Revolted both by the idea of Lionel seized in a demon-fit and by Master Geffers’ eager talk of it, Frevisse asked, “Giles told all of you that were traveling together? The Stenbys, too?”

  “All of us, to be sure. And said I should warn my servant, too, just in case.”

  A servant who probably talked as readily as Master Geffers did, so that in a day or so there would be no one here who would not be watching for Lionel to look at his left hand oddly, with the worst of them hoping he would. And although Master Geffers would go on his way tomorrow morning, he would surely go on talking about Lionel along his way. Having traveled with someone possessed by a demon was too prime a tale to go untold. Frevisse wondered if Giles fully knew how much a cruelty he had done Lionel with his “warning.”

  Remembering even what little she had so far seen of Giles, she rather thought he did.

  A servant in the Lovell livery bowed in front of her and said, “My lady asks if you’d join her for the evening, my lady.”

  Frevisse was glad to accept, both because it offered Lady Lovell’s pleasant company and an escape from Master Geffers. With a murmured farewell to the franklin, she followed the servant away among the cheerful crowding of household folk, asking as they went, “Were you to find my companion. Dame Claire, too?”