That brought Thomasine’s head up again. “What a dreadful thing to say!”
“Not really,” Robert said lightly. “I was first in the household of Sir Walter, and many a time I heard Sir Walter complain that she was spending the family into poverty. ‘Always the best,’ he would shout, ‘and never mind if she had to send to London, Bristol, or Calais for it.’”
Maryon’s dimple appeared. “And I heard her complain that if her son had his way, they would live year round on bread and cheese.”
“Her, perhaps,” amended Robert. “Sir Walter believes a noble man’s living should reflect his high station.”
“Maybe he thinks those nearing life’s end should begin casting off what they cannot take with them.” Maryon’s ironic tone scandalized Thomasine, who believed people shouldn’t immerse themselves too deeply in life’s pleasures to begin with, in fear of the deadly sin of sloth.
Robert, seeing Thomasine’s expression, dropped out of the wicked game at once. “Even the greatest families have their troubles these days,” he said.
“Indeed,” said Maryon, unaware. “Sir Walter has been sitting with such concern at Lord Fenner’s bedside these two months past.” She explained to Thomasine, “They’re cousins by Sir Walter’s father—or, did you know that? Lady Ermentrude being your aunt, you probably did.”
“No,” said Robert. “Lady Thomasine takes very little notice of the matters of this world.”
“Of course, poor thing. Well, Lord Fenner has no sons and the title goes by the male line so Sir Walter will be Lord Fenner when the old man dies, which looks like it could happen any time. Property comes with the title, but Lord Fenner has other wealth, and Sir Walter wants to be sure it doesn’t all get given away elsewhere. Interesting how he’s been so concerned about that, and, now that his mother is dead, he comes by a fortune equally large. It appears Sir Walter will be doing very well for himself indeed.”
Maryon seemed to have acquired a wide knowledge of Fenner matters in the little while she had been in Lady Ermentrude’s service. Thomasine felt some reproving remark was required, but before she could form one, Master Montfort appeared in the doorway.
He was a round, well-bellied man with small black eyes and fox-red hair unevenly thinning across the top. The long, pointed slope of his nose gave his face a sly, smiling shrewdness that Thomasine supposed was surely useful in ferreting out the facts behind unfortunate deaths.
Behind him a little dark shadow of a clerk, carrying pen and ink and parchment scraps, peered nearsightedly around the room for a place to put them. Master Montfort nodded him to the table by the bed and settled himself in the doorway, legs straddled as if to make sure they would all stay where he wanted them until he had finished his business.
In a full, self-assured voice, Master Montfort demanded, “Which of you is the novice Thomasine?”
Thomasine was too surprised and nervous to move or answer, until Dame Frevisse said, “Thomasine,” in a tone that brought her to her feet. Past hope of going unnoticed, she moved a little forward, made an uncertain bob of a curtsey, and whispered, “Sir.”
“Look at me, child.”
It was a straight demand, barely courteous. Drawing a deep breath, Thomasine looked at him.
“So,” he said, as if that settled something. “You met Lady Ermentrude when she first arrived here yesterday. How did she seem to you? I want what you thought about it then, not what you think about it now. Well?”
Despite the clipped command in his voice, Thomasine waited, swallowing, making sure before she tried them that the words would come. “Excited,” she managed at last. “Angry.” And then because strict truthfulness was needed, she added, “I could smell wine on her breath. I think she was drunk.” She glanced at the little clerk, who was busily writing her words on one of his scraps of parchment.
“She frightened you.” Montfort reclaimed her attention.
Thomasine turned her surprise to him. How had he known that?
“I’ve already heard that from your sister.” Master Montfort gave the information as if grudging it. “She says Lady Ermentrude appeared drunk. That she was dragging you by the arm. That you were frightened.”
Reassured he was not reading her thoughts, Thomasine answered readily, “Yes, I was afraid. She said she was going to take me out of St. Frideswide’s. She was holding onto me so tightly I couldn’t break free. And she was talking so wildly. I think it was the drink in her making her talk so.”
“Did you think so then?”
The question rapped at her as if she had said too much. Thomasine hesitated, her eyes darting from place to place around the floor as if the answer would be somewhere there. “I was too afraid to think,” she whispered at last. “I was too afraid.”
“But you did not try to get away from her.”
“She was hurting me….”
Beside her Robert said, “I told her not to struggle.”
Thomasine stared at him. She had not known he was standing so near to her, or that he would dare speak so strongly to Master Montfort.
“Who are you?” Master Montfort demanded.
“My name is Robert Fenner. I am in—was in—Lady Ermentrude’s household.”
“Fenner? Then you are related to her, as well.”
“I am a great-nephew.”
“You were in her service long?”
“Almost three years. I began in Sir Walter’s household at age nine, but latterly his household became too large, and I was sent to Lady Ermentrude.”
“There was no quarrel?”
“No.”
“You got along well with Lady Ermentrude?”
“As well as any.”
“You went with her when she rode to Sir John’s manor?”
“No.”
“But you were in the yard when she returned?”
“I heard Lady Ermentrude ride in. I was in the guest house and came out in time to see her send the priest away and take hold of Lady Thomasine.”
His bright gaze moved to Thomasine, who instantly dropped her own. But there was no way to shut out his warm, steady voice.
“And how did she seem to you then?” Montfort demanded.
“Frightened. Very frightened. But she listened to me and helped me bring Lady Ermentrude into the hall.”
“I meant, how was Lady Ermentrude?” Master Montfort said, his tone attempting to quell.
Not very quelled, Robert said, “Drunk, I think. Smelling of wine, unsteady on her feet. Confused in her talking. But—”
“So she was drunk and feeling the effects of her hard riding that day and the day before,” Master Montfort interrupted.
“She’d ridden that much and more on other occasions and not felt it. I don’t know why she did that day.”
“But she did feel it, didn’t she?”
“I don’t think it was the riding.”
“The drinking then. She was not a young woman.” He looked around the room and dared someone to gainsay him. No one did, and having asserted his authority, Master Montfort said, “So it would seem safe to say it was her drinking and exhaustion that killed her, coming as they did after her raging of the day before. She was too old to indulge in all that temper and drinking. They made an end of her.”
Quite clearly he had the answer he was seeking. Now he would let them go, Thomasine thought, and gathered herself for the relief of dismissal.
“No,” Dame Claire said in precise, deep tones, “it was something else.”
Everyone’s eyes went to her, but her own gaze was on the crowner, her face as set and certain as his own.
After a moment Montfort asked insolently, “Something else, madam?”
Dame Claire said stiffly, “She may have been drunk when she arrived here, but all her dying signs show something else. Her convulsions as she was dying. The manner of the pain and the way it took her. That was not her heart failing. I have had time since she died to look into my books. I’ve read—” She drew a deep breath and force
d herself to go on against Master Montfort’s lowering look of displeasure. “Lady Ermentrude was poisoned. That’s why she died.”
Thomasine, caught in her own stillness, had not known how still everyone else had been through all of Dame Claire’s speaking. Not until now, when sharply there was movement and indrawn breaths, her own among them. Master Montfort’s lower lip jigged up and down as if fighting with his mouth over whether he would speak or not. Finally he said tersely, “You think so?”
“I know so.”
“And what makes you sure?”
“I would maybe not be sure—”
“Ah.”
“But Martha Hayward’s death was the same.”
Before, there had been surprise in the movements around the room; that sharpened now into open consternation. Except from Dame Frevisse. Thomasine, despite her own alarm, was aware of the nun’s stillness. Had Dame Frevisse known Dame Claire was going to say that?
Master Montfort had recovered himself.
“I’ve not turned to Martha Hayward’s death,” he said sternly. “So, you say it was suspicious, too?”
“Father Henry was there when she died,” Dame Claire said. “And Thomasine. They can tell you the manner of her dying.”
Master Montfort glared at the priest. “Well?”
Father Henry was clearly unhappy at being called on to confirm a dreadful truth. “We were watching by Lady Ermentrude. She was sleeping and Martha was talking. Martha’s tongue went ever on wheels but this time she was gabbling, louder and louder, until I had to tell her to remember the sleeping woman. But she became excited, very lively. She would not sit still, walked around and around, still babbling, until the words began to catch in her throat and change to queer sounds. She grew flushed and she looked strange and then clawed at herself.” Father Henry made vague gestures at his chest or throat. “She fell down kicking on the floor. Thrashing and choking until suddenly she wasn’t…anymore. There was time for me to pray over her but only barely, and she died before help came.”
There was perspiration on his forehead as he finished, his open face revealing his discomfort.
Thomasine was already braced as Master Montfort’s displeased eye turned to her. “Well?” he demanded. “Was that the way of it?”
Feebly, biting her lip, she nodded. He glared at Dame Claire. “I was told it was heart failure. Can’t that have been heart failure? The clutching at her chest?”
Before Dame Claire could speak, Dame Frevisse said in her light, clear, unemotional voice, “Father Henry, pardon me, but how exactly did Martha catch at herself? Can you show us exactly?”
The priest looked bewildered but complied, his big hands after a moment’s hesitation going not to his chest but to his throat, and not clawing but grabbing and pulling as if trying to loosen something that could not be reached.
“Like that?” Dame Frevisse asked.
“Like that,” Father Henry confirmed.
Thomasine nodded.
Dame Frevisse turned to Master Montfort. “So it was not her chest she grabbed for but her throat.”
“And that proves?” he said shortly.
“The heart in final pain does not make someone catch at her throat,” Dame Claire said.
“But this Martha woman died in minutes, by his account, and Lady Ermentrude was all night about it.”
“Individuals have individual responses to poisons; what will kill one instantly may, in fact, only give another an hour’s indigestion.”
“Perhaps Martha Hayward took more of the poison more quickly than Lady Ermentrude did,” Dame Frevisse put in.
“How’s that?” Master Montfort snapped the words, upset that these women were defying him, and clearly more dissatisfied with them with every word they said.
Dame Frevisse seemed not to notice. “There was wine beside Lady Ermentrude’s bed, with medicine to make her sleep, but she collapsed before having any of it.” She looked at Father Henry again. “You said Martha helped herself to Lady Ermentrude’s wine. She must have drank most of it. I remember there was very little left when it spilled.”
Father Henry moved his feet nervously. “She ate the milksop and then drank deeply of the wine. I told her it had medicine in it and she stopped. I should have stopped her, but—”
But Martha Hayward had never been a woman easily stopped in her pleasures, said the look on everyone’s face.
“She was always tasting or sipping at whatever came to hand,” Thomasine offered softly.
Master Montfort’s look suggested he did not want to hear about it. “So did anyone else drink any of this wine?” People began shaking their heads, but before anyone could answer, he rapped out, “You said it was spilled?” and looked at Dame Frevisse.
“In the trouble after Martha’s dying it was spilled. So far as I know, no one else drank of it.”
Master Montfort looked at everyone but received only shrugs or shaking of heads.
“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 apo
plexy. 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.
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