She awoke aware she was not ready yet to be awake. She tried lying very still to see if she might go to sleep again, but her mind had had rest enough that now it was remembering how in the night, with two men ill of quite surely the same thing, the fear of contagion had been as thick as the stench around Symond Hewet’s bed. But from there she remembered how at the night’s end, when she and Dame Claire had been aside from everyone, washing their hands in a basin and about to leave Symond to Dame Johane’s care, Dame Claire had said, too low for anyone but Frevisse to hear, “It’s not sickness. It’s poison. I’ve no doubt of it.”
Poison. Just as Dame Amicia had exclaimed yesterday and Sister Cecely insisted on.
And probably not a chance poisoning from food gone bad. Something chancing to be wrong in the guesthall’s food or drink might strike down Breredon and only Breredon. But for a full day to pass and then one—and only one—other man to fall ill the same way…
It could have been by chance. Chance was an odd thing.
Lying with her eyes still closed, Frevisse slightly smiled in mockery at herself. Chance was, by its very nature, of course odd. But that was not the point of her thought and her smile left her. She wanted it to be likely that Breredon and Symond Hewet had been felled by chance, but she had to look at the possibility they had been sickened by someone’s deliberate hand, because if they had been, whoever had done it had to be found out before more harm was done. Breredon had been ill, Symond Hewet very ill. Dame Claire had said that if he had had a weaker heart, he would be dead by now.
If someone else sickened, would it be to the death? Was that what someone was trying for?
Frevisse opened her eyes and made her unwilling body sit up. Dame Claire was gone and the light through the single, small window was the gray of an overcast day, keeping her from judging the time. As she rose stiffly to her feet, she felt the ill humour that came with too little sleep fraying at the edge of her thoughts. She tried to smooth them as she shook out her habit’s rumpled skirts, telling herself that her discomfort was the least of what was happening. Bracing her hands in the small of her back, she carefully stretched a little and tried to turn her thoughts toward what mattered more than her body’s discomfort. She would leave the question of what had been used to sicken the men to Dame Claire and Dame Johane. It was a lesser question. What mattered more, to her mind, was who had poisoned them. And why.
So far as “why” went, she could—barely—accept Rowcliffe might poison Breredon to have the bother of him out of the way, as Sister Cecely had wildly insisted. What she could not do was make it seem a likely thing for Rowcliffe to do. With him she could see a shouting match, a hard blow from the front, a rough scuffle, maybe a dagger drawn and even used. She could see all of that, but poison, like an ambush or a dagger from behind, did not suit with what she had seen of Rowcliffe.
But then again, how much had she seen of him, to know one way or another what he would do?
And even if he would poison Breredon, why would he poison his cousin?
To keep suspicion away from himself?
Or could it have been Symond himself who saw to poisoning Breredon, then poisoned himself to keep suspicion away? Except there had been no serious suspicion that Breredon was ill by anything other than mischance.
And would Symond have so badly misjudged the dose he gave himself, have made himself so much more terribly ill than Breredon had been?
Still, as Dame Claire had said, poisons worked different ways on different people, just as medicines did. What sufficed for Breredon might have been too strong for Symond without he intended it to be. He—or whoever had given it to him. Unless whoever had given it to Symond had intended him to die.
Still, poison did not seem either Rowcliffe’s or Symond’s way of doing things.
What of Breredon’s servants then? Would one of them have poisoned Symond as revenge for Breredon’s poisoning?
But no one had thought Breredon’s illness was poisoning. And even if Coll or Ida had taken hold on some thought that it was and set out on misplaced revenge, where had they got something to so nearly match Breredon’s illness?
Or could one or the other of them have poisoned Breredon for some hidden purpose of their own, then poisoned Symond to confuse matters?
But again, since no one else had been thinking of poison for Breredon’s illness, no one had needed to confuse anything.
Maybe it had gone the other way. Maybe the poison had been meant for Symond all along, and Breredon’s poisoning had been meant to mislead. Or been done by mistake.
But who had reason for poisoning Symond?
Frevisse could just see why a Rowcliffe might think poisoning Breredon would be to the good: he was an added problem to the trouble they already had with Sister Cecely. But surely he was not that great a problem—not so great a one to warrant murder—not with the Rowcliffes’ presence here having forestalled anything he and Sister Cecely might have purposed. Why make trouble that did not need making?
So back to Symond. She knew even less about him than she did about Breredon. Someone might have reason to want him dead without she had any way of even guessing what it might be. But then that someone would have to be either his uncle or his cousin, wouldn’t it?
She could not help making that a question, but who else was there? Breredon? Poisoning himself first to avert suspicion from himself? Then depending on one of his servants to see to Symond’s poisoning? Because surely Breredon had not been fit to do anything like that for himself yesterday.
Still, if this was about the Rowcliffe properties and Edward, John Rowcliffe would seem the more likely prey. Had it been Symond by mistake? He did not figure at the center of the trouble at all, so why poison him? Had he simply been simpler than Rowcliffe to poison?
All that seemed an even further stretch of likelihood than Symond being poisoned to divert suspicion from himself or from someone else when there had been no suspicion that needed diverting.
If Breredon and Symond had been on the same side in the matter of Sister Cecely, there might have been some sense to be made of it all—that someone wanted to be rid of them both. Or that one of them wanted to be rid of the other. But they weren’t on the same side. Were they? Could there maybe be something someone knew that gave reason to want them both dead?
This was useless. She could think of too many possible “whys,” too many “maybes.” They were making a maze in her mind without giving her any way to tell a true “why” from the rest. She should maybe start with “how” it had been done. “How” might tell her “who,” and “who” could then be brought to confess to “why.”
She found that at some point she had sat down on the bed again, was staring at the far white-washed wall without seeing it, and still had her hands pressed to her back because she had forgotten to move them. With a small grimace at that new stiffness, she let go of her back and stood up again. It was against the Rule to be this idle and alone during the day. Besides, she had gone as far as she could in her own mind. She needed to ask questions of someone besides herself.
She was not sure what questions—or of whom—until, going into the infirmary’s outer chamber, she found Dame Claire standing at the wooden worktable there, the infirmarian’s book laid open in front of her. It was a battered volume, its parchment pages dog-eared and stained. From her turns at helping in the infirmary, Frevisse knew there were leaves of various plants pressed among its pages, and that here and there dried plant stalks and other things marked places used by the several generations of St. Frideswide’s infirmarians for reasons long forgotten but left by their successors because, Dame Claire had once said, “They were put there for someone’s reason sometime. It makes me feel I’m keeping company with them, those other women, all of us leaving something of ourselves for the ones who come after us.”
Just now she looked up, frowning, from a page showing a thin-lined drawing of some plant with carefully written script below it and less carefully written notes in various
inks around it and said, “Poison doesn’t seem to have been of much interest to my predecessors. There’s nothing here that helps.”
“Are you certain it was poison both times? Is it possible Master Breredon was honestly ill, and someone then used something against Symond that copied his illness?”
“Anything is possible,” Dame Claire said wearily and somewhat shortly. “It’s ‘likely’ that limits matters. Even if that was the way of it, from where did this opportune poison come from, since they would hardly be likely to have it to hand?”
Almost as one, they both looked up and around at the array of dried herbs hanging from the ceiling beams and the shelves of pots and small boxes along one wall; and after a silent moment, Frevisse asked, “Can you tell if anything has been taken?”
“Probably not.” But Dame Claire was already going to a small chest sitting at a far end of the shelves. She kept her stronger medicines there, Frevisse knew, to keep anyone from laying hands on them mistakenly. The chest had no lock, though. Dame Claire simply raised the lid and looked inside, shifted the variously colored and tagged cloth bags and small, stoppered bottles around a little, held a glass vial up to what light there was through the window, shook her head, returned it to the box, closed the lid, and said, “I can’t tell. Everything is here, but I’m not certain of quantities. There’s never been need to be that precise about them.”
Frevisse nodded that she understood. Dame Claire came back to the table, stared down at the book again, then turned some pages but not as if she thought to find any needed answers in it. Frevisse asked, “But you’re certain it was poison?”
“You keep asking me that,” Dame Claire said somewhat impatiently. “I’m as certain as may be. That’s all I can tell you. Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know.”
“Have you told anyone that it’s probably not disease that struck them?”
“I haven’t even let anyone know I’m awake yet,” Dame Claire said. She closed the book. “I’d best go see how the men do before Tierce.” She paused, frowning again. “How long did we sleep? Surely it’s time for Tierce by now.”
When they went into the cloister walk, they found out that it was more than time for Tierce. Dame Margrett, presently sitting guard outside Sister Cecely’s door, said at them, “You’re awake. Best you tell Domina Elisabeth. She had us called silently to Tierce, to keep from waking you.”
“I’ll go to Domina Elisabeth,” said Frevisse, then laid a hand on Dame Claire’s arm and said, too low for Dame Margrett to hear, “I’ll tell her what we think, but that we think it best to keep it to ourselves for now.”
Dame Claire gave a small nod of agreement, and they went their separate ways, she to see how the sick men did and release Dame Johane from her duty if she were still there, Frevisse up the stairs to the prioress’ parlor where she was not much surprised to find Abbot Gilberd.
He and Domina Elisabeth were not alone, of course. Dame Thomasine was standing just inside the door, and of those who might have been there, she was best, Frevisse thought, because Dame Thomasine hardly ever spoke about anything and never beyond what she had, of necessity, to say. Her silence on whatever was said here need hardly to be asked.
As Frevisse made her low curtsy, Domina Elisabeth echoed Dame Margrett with, “You’re awake. Good. Dame Claire, too?”
“She’s gone to see how her patients do,” Frevisse said.
“Do we know yet what it is they have?” Abbot Gilberd asked. “Or ate?”
Frevisse paused, brought herself to look at him straightly, and answered, “We think they were poisoned. Purposely.”
Both Abbot Gilberd and Domina Elisabeth stared at her as if what she had said did not make sense to them. Dame Thomasine crossed herself. A moment later both the abbot and Domina Elisabeth did, too, Domina Elisabeth saying, “God forbid,” and Abbot Gilberd demanding, “By whom? With what?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“Then you will have to find out,” he ordered. “You have a marked skill at doing such. Do it.”
The sharpness of his order startled her into momentary silence. She did have a skill at finding things out, and Abbot Gilberd knew it. Besides, whether he had bade her do so or not, she would have tried, and so she lowered her head, her eyes, and her voice, and said most meekly, “Yes, my lord.” Then said, without raising her head, eyes, or voice, “I would ask, though, that nothing be said of poison, that people may go on thinking it’s disease.”
That silenced Abbot Gilberd a moment in his turn, before he asked, “Why?”
“So that I may ask questions without the poisoner knows he is suspected. Also, if we claim contagion, we can insist no one leaves, to take it with them. If poison is thought of, then there will be those who will want to go, claiming they want to escape it happening to them.”
“Or to escape detection, if they’re the guilty one.” Abbot Gilberd said. “Yes. We’ll keep silence on it. You, too, Dame—”
He broke off. Domina Elisabeth supplied, “Thomasine.”
“Dame Thomasine. You will say nothing of what you heard just now.”
Dame Thomasine bowed her head a little lower in assent.
From the cloister the bell began to call to…Sext, Frevisse reminded herself. To have slept straight through Tierce meant she was disordered in the day, but she gratefully accepted the summons and the silence it enjoined on them all, made quick curtsy to Abbot Gilberd and Domina Elisabeth, and all but fled the room for the stairs. They would have to follow in more seemly wise and Dame Thomasine come after them, but Frevisse made full use of the excuse to be away and in the sanctuary of her choir stall lost herself gratefully in the prayers and psalms of the Office. She had missed not only Tierce, but Matins and Lauds and Prime today. There was no blame to her in that, except maybe for sleeping through Tierce, but being guiltless did not lessen her relief as she joined in the opening, “Deus, in adjutorium.”—God, come to help.—And for the while of the Office she was able to keep her mind only there, in that now that was at the same time a freeing of the heart and mind to join the soul’s reaching out into the Forever beyond the world’s bounds.
It was very hard, at the Office’s end, to come back into the day and its troubles, but by the time Frevisse left the church with the others and received Domina Elisabeth’s benediction in the cloister walk, her thoughts were already slipped away from her momentary peace to questions again.
She would set aside for now the matter of what had been used against both men and from where had it come. It was sufficient that Dame Claire was certain something had been used. And since she had no way yet to know the why of the poisoning, asking how it had been done seemed presently the best way to go.
The plainest answer, of course, was by something put into the men’s food or drink, and she instantly did not like that answer. Their food and drink had come from the guesthall’s kitchen, been served by the guesthall’s servants.
But that might not be entirely true, she told herself. Both Breredon and the Rowcliffes had servants with them. She would have to find out who served them and where. If Breredon had indeed been keeping entirely to his room, that limited who could have come at his food or drink. She hoped.
She found she was standing alone in the cloister walk, looking at a soft fall of rain into the garth.
When had the day turned to rain? she wondered. She wondered, too, how long she had been standing there, finding that after all she was not so willing as she had thought she would be to do what came next—to return to the guesthall and ask questions.
Not that her willingness or unwillingness mattered. Bound as she was by her vow of obedience, her duty was to obey, willing or unwilling. So long as a duty was neither a sin nor dishonorable, once it was given it had to be done, and the guesthall and its guests were presently her duty. Even without Abbot Gilberd’s order, she must go back and, once there, would ask the questions that were gathering in her mind. Never mind that what she truly wanted to do was go to sleep again and awaken to
find everything was answered, all troubles ended.
That being impossible, she went on her way along the cloister walk, only to have Dame Margrett, sitting on guard again, say with a nod toward the open doorway beside her, “She wants to talk to you.”
Chapter 21
Cecely now mostly sat on the bench, keeping what watch she could on the cloister through the narrow doorway. Twice she had caught glimpse of Neddie passing along the far side of the walk with that woman they had keeping him, but plainly they were not going to let him near her. Nor did anyone come near her who did not have to. All she had seen of even Abbot Gilberd today was when he paused in passing the doorway and looked in. She had immediately bowed her head and gone into the necessary low curtsy, expecting him to say something at her, but by the time she had straightened and looked up, he was gone, not a word spoken.
They were trying to drive her mad. That was it and she knew it. To keep from satisfying them, she had finally been reduced to finding the breviary among the rushes, to try passing the hours with reading. If nothing else, the psalms praising God for the striking down of enemies were to the good. Her Latin had never been much, but she could read it well enough in the psalms, and curses in Latin did seem stronger, as if using Christ’s own language gave them greater weight. “Qui autem perdere quaerunt animam meam, introibunt in profunda terrae. Tradentur in manus gladii, portio vulpium erunt.”—Whoever seeks to ruin my life, they’ll go into the depths of the earth. They’ll be given to the sword, foxes will eat them!
Yes. That was how it ought to be.
Without Alson she would have known nothing that was happening. As it was, all she knew was what little Alson knew, and she only heard it when Alson had her turn at sitting guard, meaning she knew very little and not very often. Still, Alson had had one of her turns during Sext just now, and goaded by what Alson had told her, Cecely made bold to ask the nun outside her door if she might speak to Dame Frevisse—no matter that “asking” anything of these women stuck in her throat, the more especially because she had to sound “humble” while she did it.
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