Novice’s Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  “So where did Lady Ermentrude have poison from, if poison it was?” he demanded.

  Dame Claire answered that. “When she awakened in the night, not long before she died, she ate a little…”

  “Of what?”

  “Another milksop,” Dame Frevisse said. “And drank a medicined wine Dame Claire had readied for her.”

  “What was in it?” Montfort glared at Dame Claire.

  “Valerian, white clover, the usual herbs that give a soothing rest. Nothing that would do harm.”

  “And where’s the goblet from that time? Did she drink it all?”

  Dame Claire looked around as if thinking to see it somewhere in the room. “I didn’t see it, after.”

  Dame Frevisse said, “Robert, who had the tidying here after Lady Ermentrude was carried out?”

  “I did. I oversaw some of her women doing it. I don’t remember the goblet. You helped in here, Maryon. Do you remember?”

  Maryon raised her eyes from staring at the floor. “No. I don’t. I emptied the bowl of sops down the garderobe.”

  “Where did the wine come from? Your stores?”

  “It was a bottle of malmsey, supplied by Sir John and Lady Isobel.” Dame Claire frowned. “I don’t know where it went, either.”

  “But the goblet,” Dame Frevisse insisted. “It was the goblet she drank from. Robert, Maryon, did either of you take it away?”

  They both shook their heads. Dame Frevisse turned to Master Montfort. “Then we should look for it. And the bottle.”

  “Oh, by all means. We don’t want to have theft on our hands, too, do we?” he said ironically.

  But Robert was already moving to look behind a chair set crosswise to a corner, and Maryon behind a chest set against the wall. Master Montfort’s face took on a dusky red hue, and Thomasine guessed that only his dignity kept him from tapping his foot with impatience while he looked for the right thing to say to stop what he saw as nonsense.

  Before he found whatever words he wanted, Robert on his knees, groping under the edge of the bed, drew back his hand with a satisfied exclamation and held up the goblet.

  Master Montfort was unimpressed. “So we don’t have to take on theft, too. Simply carelessness.” He nodded dismissively at Maryon. “See to having it cleaned and put safely away with her other goods, woman.”

  But Dame Frevisse intercepted Robert and took the goblet. She looked into it and turned it so Dame Claire could see to its bottom. The infirmarian shook her head. “There’s nothing left to judge anything by,” she said regretfully. “But it would be if we could find the bottle.”

  “Come now, woman.” Master Montfort allowed his impatience to show around the edges of his vast dignity.

  “We must stop talking nonsense before it makes unneeded trouble. The throes of apoplexy can look much like poison, and we have grounds for suspecting it was apoplexy and none at all for thinking it was poison.”

  Dame Claire drew herself up to the top of her diminutive height. “We have very excellent grounds for knowing it was poison. And assuredly it was never apoplexy. You’d have to find a quack doctor and pay him to say so if that’s the testimony you want. Every symptom named for both the women cries poison, not heart failure.”

  Master Montfort glowered at her. “Poison is a cheap word. Can you be telling me what ‘poison’ it might have been?”

  “Nightshade. I can show you the book and read you the words. They name the symptoms and they are very like what we saw.”

  “Very like—! You draw bold conclusions for a person of your sex and learning.” He turned from her to address himself broadly to Father Henry, Robert, and his clerk. “It’s a common problem with women kept with too little to do and too little to think about. They find excitement where they may.”

  Father Henry and Robert were too wary to make any answer to that. The clerk, whose pen had been scritching at parchment fragments all the while, did not write it down.

  Master Montfort, noting he was being edited, strode across the room, snatched the parchment from the clerk’s ink-stained fingers, glanced down at what he had last written, made a disgusted noise, and crumpled it. “No need to put her words down. Nightshade and nonsense. That’s the kind of idle talk that blurs the straight facts of a case.”

  Dame Frevisse said quietly, “Neither her talk nor her facts are idle, and it would be ill-advised to ignore them.” There was no hint of defiance or temper in her voice, but it held a confidence that with or without him, the inquiry would go on.

  Master Montfort, puffed and red again, glared at her.

  Dame Frevisse, unyielding, let him.

  The unpleasant quiet held, the clerk’s pen poised above another scrap, waiting for words. Then Master Montfort looked away, as if to check what his clerk was going to write, and said ungraciously, “I see I must prove you wrong. Very well, we’ll have to begin my questioning again, it.seems. Who was with her in the night. Who gave her food. Or could reach her goblet. And Sir Walter is coming,” he added gloomily. “He’s not going to like this. Not like it at all.”

  Chapter 8

  When Master Montfort was through with them, there was need to tell Domina Edith what was happening, and what was likely to come of it. At Dame Claire’s asking, Frevisse went with her, and afterward they stood together in the stillness of the parlor, waiting for Domina Edith to look up from her lap. The dog twitched in its sleep, a fly butted at a windowpane, and after a time Domina Edith raised her head.

  “You have no doubt it was murder indeed?” Frevisse inclined her head even more quickly than Dame Claire had. “Murder meant and planned and attempted twice, failing the first time, succeeding the second.” “So you think Martha’s death was unintended?” “I can see no reason for it being wanted.” “But you see a reason for Lady Ermentrude’s?” “Being Lady Ermentrude, there were probably any number of reasons and people wanting her death.”

  Two days ago Frevisse would have said it wryly, but there was no humor in it now. Someone had truly wanted Lady Ermentrude dead, wanted it badly enough that Martha’s accidental dying had not stopped them, wanted it desperately enough they had tried again with barely a pause. “What reason does Master Montfort see?”

  “I think,” Frevisse said carefully, “that he is still wishing Dame Claire had kept her knowledge to herself.”

  Domina Edith nodded gently. “I knew his father as crowner before him. He was another who always wanted his problems kept as simple as might be. And would not hesitate to make them that way if he could.” She shook her head slowly. “People are often said to grow foolish with age, but it seems to me that many of us bring our foolishness with us out of our youth.” She raised her gaze and there was nothing foolish in her own eyes. Her voice changed, becoming direct and firm. “So since he cannot unsay Dame Claire’s words, what is Morys Montfort to do?”

  “He says he will set in again to prove us wrong. I am sure he wants to make an end to it, one way or another, before Sir Walter Fenner arrives.”

  “Is it possible Sir Walter might hear the death of his mother was murder before he comes within our gates? How widely is it known already?”

  Frevisse hesitated and glanced at Dame Claire, who answered, “Once I was sure of it, I told Dame Frevisse. Until Master Montfort’s inquest, only the two of us—and the poisoner”—Dame Claire was always precise—“knew of it.”

  “Now everyone who was in the room knows,” Frevisse said. “Father Henry. Thomasine. Two of Lady Ermentrude’s people. None of them are given to talk, I think.”

  “But if Master Montfort has gone back to questioning people, as he said he would…” Dame Claire said.

  “Then it will shortly be known throughout the priory there was something wrong with the deaths.” Domina Edith said it softly. “And given the ways of servants and the nunnery, it will surely be but little time before word spreads to the village, and beyond. And as it spreads, the tale will grow.”

  “I think Master Montfort means to keep it to
himself until he has learned more,” Dame Claire said. “But with one thing and another—”

  “And people’s tongues,” Domina Edith finished for her, “there is very little time before we and Master Montfort will be dealing with too much talk. And angry Fenners, for who knows which wild tongue will be the first to tell the tale to him?”

  Frevisse opened her mouth, then shut it again.

  “Say it, Dame Frevisse.” Domina Edith’s shrewd eyes were on her.

  “Master Montfort—” She stopped again, uncertain whether or not to say it diplomatically.

  Without emphasis or flinching, Domina Edith said, “—is a political creature who will discover that the sun rises in the north if he thinks it would please Sir Walter. You have already said he will look for the quickest answer. What will that be?”

  Frevisse hesitated.

  “Dame Frevisse,” Domina Edith said, “you are an exemplary nun, but have come to it by the effort of your mind, not the simplicity of your spirit. And that may be just now for the best, since surely simplicity is not our need in this matter. What are you thinking?”

  “That if I were Montfort, I would look first and hardest at Thomasine.”

  Dame Claire made a small, protesting exclamation.

  But Domina Edith simply went on looking at Frevisse. Taking her silence for acceptance, Frevisse presumed to add, “So with your leave, I’ll keep Thomasine with me as much as might be for these next few days.”

  “Oh surely there’s no need,” Dame Claire protested, understanding what she meant as readily as Domina Edith did. Then, less certainly, seeing their faces, she said, “Or if you think there is, then let her stay with me, out of sight in the infirmary. Or here with Domina Edith.”

  “That would but add to any suspicions Master Montfort may already have,” Domina Edith said, before Frevisse could. “It will be better if she’s ready to hand for any questions he may be wanting to ask, so long as you are with her to steady her in her answers, and meanwhile keep her safely from chance.” She sat in silent thought a moment, then said, “I think that with so many guests here and coming, Dame Frevisse, you are in need of help for these few days. Let it be Thomasine who goes about with you.”

  She moved her hand in dismissal. They curtseyed, but Frevisse turned from following Dame Claire to ask, low-voiced, “By your leave, Domina, may I ask questions as I go about my work? Rather than leave them all to Master Montfort?”

  Domina Edith eyed her with quiet assessment, then inclined her head, giving permission without comment.

  Frevisse found Thomasine halfheartedly at her lessons with Dame Perpetua.

  “‘No, no, child, pere is father, not the fruit,”’ sighed Dame Perpetua.

  She was safe enough there for the while, decided Frevisse. She contented herself with beckoning Dame Perpetua out of the room and asking that she send Thomasine to her when the lesson was done. “And if she is sent for to talk with Master Montfort, or anyone outside the cloister, have her come to me first so I may go with her.”

  Dame Perpetua rarely looked beyond her books and prayers and pet sparrow, but her cleverness went deep, and she answered, as if understanding more than Frevisse had said, “The child will go nowhere unless I’m with her, or I’ve brought her to you. Will that do well?”

  “Very well. My thanks.”

  Dame Perpetua nodded and went back to the thankless work of teaching French declensions, leaving Frevisse to face the guest halls and her duties.

  In the while before Vespers, in between settling such matters as whose duty it was to see that the dogs were exercised outside the priory yard and where Master Mont-fort’s men were to sleep, she began to gather the pieces.

  Father Henry, when she happened to encounter him, was the easiest. He was willing to talk about whatever she asked and apparently never wondered why she was asking.

  “No, only Thomasine and Martha and I were in the room the while, after Dame Claire left to go to Vespers. Except the woman named Maryon. She was there at first, all about the room making sure everything would be well when her lady awoke. Then she went to supper. And Sir John and Lady Isobel, too. There seemed no need of them there while Lady Ermentrude was so deep asleep, you know.” He seemed apologetic, as if perhaps he should have kept them there. Frevisse assured him it made sense for them to go. “And Lady Ermentrude never roused at all? Never drank or ate anything that was ready for her?”‘

  “Never at all. She was as out of the world’s troubles as if she were in her grave.”

  He heard what he was saying after it was out of his mouth and grew flustered, but Frevisse didn’t have the time to listen to his apologies. She said briskly, “Neither you nor Thomasine had any of the sops or wine, only Martha?”‘

  “Only Martha,” he said, and went on to repeat what he had said before—that she had gobbled all the sops and drank he knew not how much of the wine, then grown loud and erratic and caught at herself and died. “Just as I told Master Montfort,” he assured her.

  “And as you must go on telling him that whenever he asks you,” Frevisse said firmly. It would hardly do for Father Henry to begin trying to make something out of nothing.

  Among Lady Ermentrude’s and Master Montfort’s and Sir John’s people crowding the guest halls, she was unable to find Maryon. “Here just a minute or so ago,” she was told so often that she began to think the woman was avoiding her. Time for finding her ran out when the bell rang for Vespers. On the way, she met Dame Claire by chance and asked if any of the herbs she had used in either of the sleeping potions could have caused death.

  “Not even if you took them by the handful and ate them down all at once. Except the poppy. Enough of that will cause a person to fall into a deep sleep, past all waking until the drug has run its course. And it is possible to take so much that sometimes the sleeper will die without waking. But Lady Ermentrude did not sleep her way to death.”

  After Vespers was supper, eaten in silence except for a nun reading the day’s lesson aloud. The meal was finished, and they had cleared their places and were turning toward the garden for an hour’s recreation, when a servant slipped quietly up to Domina Edith and whispered something to her. Everyone paused. The prioress nodded to whatever was being said, then pointed at Thomasine and at Frevisse, crooked her finger to tell them to come, and nodded for the rest to leave.

  When they had come to her, she said, “Master Montfort has asked to see you, Thomasine.” Thomasine dropped her eyes and made her turtling gesture. Without seeming to notice, Domina Edith went on, “Dame Frevisse and my blessing will go with you.”

  Thomasine’s eyes reappeared to glance slantwise at Frevisse, then at Domina Edith. She appeared on the verge of pleading something, then thought better of it and only nodded. Frevisse controlled a surge of exasperation at so much shrinking humility, swallowed it, curtseyed to Domina Edith, and left, sensing Thomasine behind her like a lonesome shadow.

  Montfort had taken Lady Ermentrude’s former room for his own now. The table had been pulled out from the wall to be more convenient to the clerk, who was crouched there over his parchment when they entered. Poised, pen in hand and ink beside him, he did not bother with looking up when they entered, just went on waiting for whatever was going to be said.

  Montfort, on the other hand, was looking for them, rolling forward and back on the balls of his feet, rubbing one hand around the other in anticipation. Frevisse’s dislike of him had begun the first time she had ever met him and had not lessened with their distant acquaintance over the years. Now he looked at her with less than pleasure.

  “I asked for the novice Thomasine. Is she coming?”

  “She’s here,” Frevisse answered as shortly and stepped aside, revealing Thomasine.

  “That’s good then. There are things to be asked. And from you, too. Or perhaps you first. You were with Lady Ermentrude less and so there’s less you know. You helped bring her to bed when she arrived… urn… ill?”

  “I met her in the hall.
She was disoriented and in pain. Two of her women and I brought her in here, to be put to bed. We began to undress her, to make her more comfortable. She was calm at first, then became agitated, and at last flew into screaming and hysteria. Her words left her, and there was only noise—”

  “Yes, yes. I don’t need to hear every step of it. Keep it brief.”

  “Very well. She collapsed and I left Father Henry to take her confession and did not see her again until perhaps an hour later, when word was brought that someone was dying. We thought it was Lady Ermentrude, but it was Martha.”

  “And how was she then? Lady Ermentrude, I mean.”

  “Sleeping so deeply that Martha’s dying had not roused her.”

  “When did you see her again?”

  “Sometime before dawn. I awoke and came to see how she did.”