The Novice's Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  “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 Montfort’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 wa
s 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…um…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.”

  “Was she still sleeping?”

  “Yes. But she awoke a short while later.”

  “How was she then?”

  “Quiet. A little confused but in her right wits and apparently recovering.”

  “But she did not recover, did she?”

  Frevisse had the double urge to smack the self-pleased condescension off his face and to verbally rip his illogic to shreds. She smothered the first desire but said astringently, not tempering her contempt, “She was better. Weak still, but coherent and recovering. I was several minutes out of the room, hearing nothing from her, before she began the screaming again with no warning at all. We found her thrashing and incoherent, in pain and struggling to breathe. It was poison, not her heart or temper that killed her and you will never bring Dame Claire or me to say otherwise.”

  Montfort’s florid face turned more red as she talked, and darker red before she had finished. The suffusing color seemed to stop his words, even when she had sharply ended. The clerk’s scratching pen trailed off to silence for lack of anything to write; then Montfort shifted his feet on the floor and said, but this time with almost no conviction, “You are not fit to judge.”

  “Perhaps not,” she replied. “But you cannot make a lie of what I know to be true.”

  Montfort glared at her but said nothing. Unable to hold a stare without words to back it, he whirled toward his clerk. “From here on, be sure to take down everything these women say. They want the truth, they’ll have it, and convict themselves with their own words.”

  He swung on Thomasine. “So what were you doing all night in your aunt’s room? Just answer what I ask you. Don’t go adding matters. What did you do?”

  Thomasine did not lift her head. Toward the floor she said, “I prayed.”

  “That’s all you did?”

  “My lady aunt was sleeping. My great-aunt. By marriage. She was sleeping and so I prayed.”

  “And when she awoke?”

  “I told her I had prayed for her.” Thomasine looked up. On this at least she was confident. “I wanted her to know my prayers were worth more to her than any worldly marriage could be.”

  “And what did she say?”

  Thomasine looked down again. Her voice was barely audible. “She insisted she would have me out of here.”

  “And you were angry with her. And afraid. Your sister said so.”

  “No. Not then. She couldn’t take me anywhere, weak as she was. I didn’t have to be afraid of her. I fed her and helped her drink her wine and hoped she would sleep again.”

  “But when Dame Frevisse left you alone with her, she worked herself into a temper nonetheless.”

  He said it with flat determination, meaning her to accept it.

  Thomasine shook her head. “No. She was in no more temper than was usual to her. Not even really angry. Only determined she was going to leave. She sent me out to fetch her women.”

  “Out? You left her?”

  “For only a moment. I looked back—”

  “It doesn’t matter for how long,” he interrupted impatiently. “What you’re saying is that when you left your aunt, she was in no fit.”

  Thomasine nodded her head wordlessly, her eyes fixed on his face.

  “You’re saying she was fine when you left the room. And that then, when you weren’t there, she began the screaming and all the rest.”

  Thomasine nodded again.

  Montfort stared at her discontentedly, then turned his attention to Frevisse. “Is that what you say, too?”

  “I heard nothing from Lady Ermentrude after I left the room until Thomasine was standing beside me. She started to say something but Lady Ermentrude began to scream and we all went in to her.”

  “Who do you mean by ‘all’? Be precise.”

  Frevisse answered levelly, “Dame Claire, Thomasine, myself. One of Lady Ermentrude’s women named Maryon. Have you spoken to her?”

  “Of course I have. Go on. Anyone else?”

  “Robert Fenner was with us. Father Henry came a few minutes later, in time to give her last rites.”

  “But Sir John and his lady were not there.”

  “I thought it better they not be, since seeing them had so angered her before.”

  “So you told them to stay out. You take a great deal on yourself, Dame.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Perhaps I do.”

  She left it there for him to make of her reply what he would. But there came a hard rap on the door, and his attention immediately shifted.

  “Come,” he barked.


  The lean man who entered was beyond doubting a Fenner, with Lady Ermentrude’s height and arrogant nose. He was wide across the shoulders and his fair hair was cropped close. He was richly dressed in a buff linen houppelande, with a jeweled belt low on his hips. The garment’s yard-wide sleeves were gathered at his wrists and slit from below the elbow nearly to the shoulder, to show the sky-bright cotehardie underneath. The cotehardie’s blue matched his hose and shoes and the long liripipe of his hat. It was an easy guess, from his looks, his manner, and Montfort’s sudden, deflated, respectful bow, that he was Sir Walter, Lady Ermentrude’s older son.

  Frevisse, sinking quickly in a deep curtsey, could not read in his face what he was actually feeling, even when she straightened to look fully at him. Not looking at them at all, he briskly acknowledged her curtsey, and Thomasine’s, as well as the clerk’s quick rising and bow at the table. His attention was all for Montfort, and he cut over the crowner’s fumbled greeting with “We must needs talk. Are you nearly finished with these?”

  “Quite finished, my lord. Done just as you were entering, Sir Walter.” Montfort flicked his hand dismissively at Frevisse and Thomasine. “You may go. You were satisfactory. You may go.”

  More than merely willing, Frevisse collected Thomasine by the arm and hasted her out of the room, leaving the door for someone else to close.

  Chapter

  9

  OUTSIDE THE DOORWAY, they nearly collided with young Robert Fenner, who fell back, his eyes going to Thomasine. “I pray you pardon me, my ladies,” he said.

  Apparently Thomasine was no longer afraid of this particular male. She murmured it was no matter and shifted a little, as if she would continue going toward the outer door. But Frevisse held her where she was and said to Robert, “Do you know if word is out about Lady Ermentrude’s death?”