Startled by the change of direction, Lady Adela answered, "An oath given under duress isn't binding. You made us promise not to go out so it didn't count."
"An oath isn't . . . Who told you that?"
"Isn't it true? We thought it was true or we wouldn't have gone." Lady Adela seemed distressed at the idea her argument might have been wrong.
Frevisse gathered her wits and replied as clearly as she could. "If you're forced to swear an oath because someone is threatening your life, if you're in danger and have to make a promise to save yourself, that's an oath made under duress and you are not bound by it. But it wasn't that way when I asked you to promise, was it?"
"No-o-o," Lady Adela admitted. "I suppose not."
"So who told you about duress?"
"I promised I wouldn't tell."
"Was it someone here?"
"Y-e-s."
"Lately?"
"Y-e-s." Lady Adela had become quite interested in her toe tracing the line of the stone paving in front of her.
"Lady Adela, I think you had best tell me. You love Jasper. He and Edmund are in danger, and I need to know everything I can if they're to be kept safe." With difficulty, Frevisse made her tone mild.
Reluctantly, Lady Adela said, "Now he's dead, he won't mind or be in trouble for it. There's that."
"There's that," Frevisse agreed, holding tightly to her patience. "So please tell me."
"It was one of the men who belong to Edmund and Jasper."
"Will? Sir Gawyn's squire?"
"No. The other one. The one we met at the stables that day. The bigger one. The one who drowned."
Colwin. "Yes," Frevisse said. "I know who you mean." But" not what it meant. It was simply another shape among the pieces she was gathering but none of them fit together yet with any sense. "When did you have chance to talk to him about oaths?"
"That day at the sty, before Jasper and Edmund fell in. He was asking what we did all day, shut up in the nunnery, and didn't we ever want to be out. So I told him about how we had been out and how you'd made us promise not to do it anymore, and then he told me about oaths made under duress. Only he was lying?"
"He was lying," Frevisse said firmly. "What were Edmund and Jasper doing while you talked with Colwin? Did they talk to him, too?"
"Not then. They mostly talked with Master Naylor." "Who else was there before the boys fell in?" "Father Henry and Will and the pig man and some other men from the stables, I don't know their names."
"So there were you and Edmund and Jasper, Father Henry, Master Naylor, Will and Colwin, and the pig man and some men from the stables." She went through the names slowly, ticking them off on her fingers. Lady Adela's head bobbed to each one. "Anyone else?"
Lady Adela's head changed from bobbing to shaking. "No one else."
"And you were talking to Colwin when the boys fell in." "No, I'd stopped that. I was just standing on the bottom rail of the fence—Master Naylor said I couldn't go up higher because I'm a girl." It was plain she scorned that reasoning. "I was leaning over to watch the piglets. I wasn't talking to anyone."
"Who was standing near the boys when they fell?" Lady Adela frowned with concentration, then shook her head again. "I don't know. I was looking at the piglets."
Frevisse withheld a sigh. It would be very helpful if someone knew where people were at that moment. She was sure now that it had been the first attempt to kill the boys. The murderer had been there and no one had noticed anything.
Chapter 20
At the end of Sext, when they had left the church and were gathered in the cloister walk before scattering to their different work, Dame Claire informed the nuns of Will's murder, and told them in the mildest way that while they had been in service Sir Gawyn had been moved into the cloister's infirmary and guards set at all the doors into the cloister, for his safety.
Some word of Will's murder had already begun to spread by way of the servants before then. Frevisse had felt the unease of it among the nuns when they gathered for the office with much looking at one another and small, urgent hand signals. They stirred now as Dame Claire told them, but when she went on to explain about Sir Gawyn they were startled into staring silence at the idea of a man brought deliberately into their midst.
It was Dame Alys who reacted first, pushing red-faced to their fore, looming over Dame Claire and raging, "Without asking? You let a man be brought in here without consulting us? What are we supposed to make of that? It's against the Rule, both doing it and not consulting us. What are we to make of it? A man in cloister!"
Seeming even smaller than she was in front of Dame Alys's bulk but as strong-willed in her quieter way, Dame Claire declared coldly back, "This is not the time to discuss it. You will wait until chapter tomorrow. Besides, there have been men in our cloister before."
"On business. Or as guest of Domina Edith's parlor and always one of us there to keep it proper. Not put to bed in the infirmary! The Rule, Dame! You forget the Rule!"
"And you forget charity! And the Rule that comes before even St. Benedict's! Do to others as you would have them do to you!"
"He's a man!"
"He's hurt and he's in danger!" She cut Dame Alys off with the sign for silence.
Caught with her mouth open, Dame Alys huffed and purpled, enlarging with frustration and outrage to what seemed the point of bursting, then spun away, shoved through the other nuns, and stormed out of the cloister, presumably to wreak havoc in the guesthall, where no one could gesture her to silence.
Dame Claire waited for the slam of the door into the yard, then motioned for the others to go about their business. Hushed, they obeyed, some more sullenly than others, only Frevisse staying and so only Frevisse seeing when Dame Claire let go her show of command and drained suddenly to weariness. But when Frevisse moved toward her, holding out a questioning hand to help, Dame Claire drew herself straight again, made a gesture of refusal that was close to anger, and went back into the church.
Rebuffed and hurt by it even while understanding that Dame Claire resented the position she had put her in, Frevisse sighed and went to see how Sir Gawyn and Maryon did.
As she passed the door to the boys' room, Edmund leaned out and caught at her skirt.
"Please, Dame, may we go see Sir Gawyn, now that he's here? We'll only go there and come right back. We promise. Jenet will be with us."
Jasper stood behind him, nodding earnest agreement. A luster had come back to him with this chance to see Sir Gawyn again and a hopefulness that Frevisse could not deny.
"Let me see how he does first. He may be too tired just now, after coming from the guesthall. But surely soon Jenet may take you to see him."
Jasper drew a deep, delighted breath. He and his brother were so alike to look at, with their dark red hair and gray eyes and sturdy, graceful build, and so alike in what they did together; but Frevisse had noticed before now that Jasper did not talk or demand as much as Edmund did, perhaps because he had Edmund there to do it for him. But she thought he saw more of what was around him and felt what he saw more deeply than his brother did. Edmund would probably come to charm birds off the trees, as the saying went, and woo his way to anything, but she suspected it would be Jasper who would make true friends and hold them against whatever happened in his life; and he would hurt more over whatever happened to him than his brother did.
Because there was nothing she could do to help that or keep him from any of the pain that would inevitably come to him, any more than she had been able to keep him from the hurts already happening, she smiled past Edmund at him with particular kindness before going on to the infirmary.
Beyond the room where the medicines were made and kept was the longer room with its six beds where, God forbid, ill nuns could come for special rest and care. Living removed from any town and most people, under the stringent balance of the Rule, there were few illnesses in the priory beyond winter rheums, so the room was mostly unused, but it was kept in readiness, and there had been no trouble mak
ing up a bed by the door with fresh sheets and blankets for Sir Gawyn.
But he was not lying in it when Frevisse entered. He was at the far end of the room, walking carefully from handhold on the bedpost at the end of one bed to the bedpost of the next, with Maryon hovering, as ever, near at hand. His face was set with concentration, his hair dark with perspiration at the temples. He looked up from his feet when he realized someone was there and, reading her expression rightly, said, "If I do naught but lie in bed, I'll only grow feeble."
"And this way you may exhaust yourself beyond recovery, pushing yourself too hard too soon," Frevisse returned.
"He walked here on his own," Maryon put in.
"Slowly," Sir Gawyn said wryly. "And I think I'm ready to lie down again now."
Maryon took hold of his unhurt arm and helped him back to his bed. The strain of the past days and today showed in her tense movement; her usual grace seemed as exhausted as Sir Gawyn's strength.
When he was lying down again—and admittedly his color was better than it had been; he might be right about the walking, despite what doctors insisted in such matters— Frevisse said, "You understand you're to stay strictly in here?"
"We heard," Sir Gawyn said.
"That was Dame Alys ranting?" Maryon asked.
"Indeed," Frevisse agreed. 'The boys are confined to their room, too, but if you like, I'll give permission for Jenet to bring them to see you."
Maryon smiled. "They were at their door as we came along. Yes, it would be good to have them come."
"No," Sir Gawyn said. His eyes were closed. "Not now. Later."
With a worried look at him, Maryon reversed herself and agreed, "Not now. You're tired. Later."
"But you could go see them," Frevisse suggested to her. "I think they'd be glad of that."
"They would, wouldn't they?" Maryon agreed, but not eagerly. How deep was the bond between her and Sir Gawyn, that she was willing to neglect the boys for him? "I'll go now, while you rest, Gawyn."
Not opening his eyes, he nodded.
Frevisse stepped back to let her go first, but as Maryon did, Sir Gawyn said, "Dame Frevisse, would you stay a little?"
Maryon glanced back with a slight frown but went on. Frevisse returned to his bedside. With an effort, Sir Gawyn drew himself up a little on the pillows so he was not lying so helplessly flat and shifted himself, favoring his shoulder, into a better position.
"How badly does it hurt?" she asked.
"Surprisingly little, unless I move it too much." But it was not his shoulder he was concerned with just now. "Has anything more been learned about Will's death? And Col-win's?"
"Master Naylor is asking more questions, to learn where they were yesterday, and when, and if anyone unknown has been seen around here, but I've heard nothing from him so suppose he hasn't found anything new."
"So no one has any idea about their deaths?"
"I have ideas."
Sir Gawyn waited, and when she went no farther, said, "But you're not going to tell me."
"They're too unformed as yet. We're guessing they were killed because they stood between someone and the boys.
And we know someone wants the boys dead because someone has tried twice to kill them."
"Twice?" Sir Gawyn's voice darkened. "What do you mean, twice?"
"Two days ago they fell into a pigsty where there's a fierce sow with piglets. It was thought an accident, that they'd lost their balance. The boys insisted they didn't, and now I agree. I think someone deliberately moved the rail they were sitting on and made them fall."
"And you know who was at the sty when it happened?"
"Colwin and Will and some of our priory folk. No one else."
"So it's someone within the nunnery, not from outside."
"And therefore someone able to enter and leave the guesthall in the night familiarly enough not to disturb anyone or, if he did, not be particularly noticed," Frevisse agreed. "And Will lied about what he did yesterday, but I don't know why yet."
"Lied? About what?"
"About where he was when Colwin was killed. He wasn't with the horses. That isn't how his shirt was torn."
"You're thinking he killed Colwin?"
"He might have." She hated to say it, but the possibility was there.
"He wouldn't have." Sir Gawyn refused the idea flatly. "And if he did, then who killed him?"
"I don't know. The pieces don't make sense yet. But they will. Before I let them go, they will. It's the only way to be sure the boys will be safe. And you and Maryon."
Sir Gawyn did not answer that. His gaze, like his voice, was dark with anger and frustration. And maybe fear, Frevisse thought, because he, like Edmund and Jasper, was helpless, dependent on what others did or did not do.
Frevisse left him, returned to the church for some of her duties as sacrist, and waited for word from Master Naylor. It came just before None, brought by Ela from the guesthouse—and was no use. With the painstaking carefulness of having learned Master Naylor's words by heart, Ela reported, "He's asked everything you wanted asked of everyone who could be asked and no one says more than you already know."
"There've been no strangers seen and unaccounted for? No idea of what Colwin and Will had words over? No one knows where Will was yesterday afternoon?"
"I can only say what Master Naylor said and that's all he said," Ela replied patiently. "There wasn't any more. You want me to tell him something from you back?"
"No. I've nothing to say back. Thank you."
Nothing to say back and nothing new to work with.
At the end of None, with its prayers offered for Domina Edith, she knew she should not put off going to Domina Edith any longer.
The day had grown quite warm, excellent for the haying but uncomfortable for one in long-sleeved gown, wimple and veil. The air on the stairs up to the prioress's chamber was still and hot, but there was no one there except herself and, without meaning to, Frevisse found she had paused in that momentary privacy to gaze out the narrow window there. From here there was a distant view over the nunnery's wall to green grain fields beyond and the forest beyond them, but her mind was nowhere near to what she was seeing.
Someone in St. Frideswide's was a murderer.
The first, unsuccessful attempts to kill had been directed at Edmund and Jasper, but though it had been Colwin and Will who actually died, she still thought the boys were the intended victims. Colwin's and Will's deaths had been happenstance.
At least Colwin's almost assuredly had. But someone had deliberately set out to kill Will. Because he was in the way of the boys' deaths? Because once Colwin was dead, Will needed to be, too? Why? Where had he been yesterday when he was not exercising the horses?
Colwin had used Lady Adela and the oath to lure the boys from the cloister. Had he merely been making mischief to amuse himself, or had there been purpose to it? But if he had made the attempt against the boys there at the pigsty when an unexpected chance offered itself and then again more deliberately at the pool, who had killed him? Or had it been Will who tried both times to kill the boys, and when Colwin had interfered with him, or came on him by accident, killed him for it? But how did that lead to Will's death?
Every possibility ended in the uncertainties of questions she could not answer yet. There were too many pieces missing. Or she was not seeing the pieces she had in their right order. There were answers somewhere, and some way to find them—but they had to be found quickly, before there was more murder.
But first she had to go to Domina Edith, to face a farewell she did not want to make.
Wiping at her damp forehead and the frown drawn tiredly between her eyes, with a wish that she had had more sleep last night, she continued up the stairs.
The parlor was still, empty in the afternoon sunlight beginning to slant through the wide window overlooking the courtyard. In the bedroom beyond it the stillness was almost as deep. Sister Thomasine knelt at the prie-dieu in silent prayer. Sister Lucy sat beside the bed, fanning
Domina Edith's face with a sheet of parchment taken from some book. The gentle sway of her hand, the small noise of the parchment moving in the air, were the only sound and movement in the room, and for a dreaded moment Frevisse was unsure that Domina Edith still lived.
But faintly, faintly the sheet over her stirred and her face was not yet graying with death.
Frevisse had meant only to stand in the doorway, make her silent farewell and a prayer and go softly away. She had thought that was all she could bear. But Sister Lucy's face was as wan as Domina Edith's, and Frevisse went forward, silently held out her hand for the parchment.
The elderly nun hesitated. Frevisse made a gesture as if washing her face and stretched her back. Sister Lucy blinked with weary acknowledgment of her need, gave over the parchment, and rose from the stool, hand pressed to the small of her back. She moved aside and Frevisse took her place, beginning to fan Domina Edith's face as Sister Lucy left the room.
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