“I could be tempted to think they were more worried that she might say something about the quarrel,” Frevisse said grimly. “We don’t know why she was so angry. All they have said is that she wanted their marriage ended. I wonder why.”
“They brought servants with them, and there were others with Lady Ermentrude. We’ll ask them what they know and heard. But there were others in reach of the wine after it was set out.”
Frevisse closed her eyes, trying to remember who had been in Lady Ermentrude’s chamber anytime she knew of. “You and I were there. And Thomasine. And Father Henry.”
“Now there’s nonsense,” Dame Claire protested. “He has no reason at all to want to kill anyone.”
“We don’t know why Lady Ermentrude was killed. Not knowing, we can’t be sure he doesn’t have a reason from before he came here.” She smiled. “But it would be a passing strange reason, I should think. Now, Lady Isobel sat with her in the night. And the servants Maryon and Maudelyn. Sir John came at least once, I think. They all say no one else was there, but Lady Isobel and the two servants slept, and though Thomasine insists she was awake and praying the whole time, she might have dozed unknowingly.”
“Or been so far into her prayers she was unaware of anything else.”
Frevisse nodded agreement. “So there might have been others in and out and no way for us to learn of them except to go on asking. Will you come with me? Something that’s said may mean more to you than it does to me, or more to both of us if we’re both there to hear it.”
“Assuredly. Where first?”
Frevisse smiled wryly. “To Dame Alys, since we’re so near the kitchen.”
The kitchen still seethed with purposeful movement. The ox was browning on its spit, and the baked cakes were cooling on a side table; the smell of baking bread was rich in the air. Dame Alys was in heavy talk with one of Lady Ermentrude’s servants near the door. Frevisse, pausing to draw her attention, was aware that the low-voiced running talk all through the kitchen had stopped on their entry, and that faces turning toward them were bright with nervous excitement. Somehow word must have come to them that Dame Frevisse and Dame Claire were looking into this matter on orders from the prioress. Frevisse said nothing, but simply gestured a summons at Dame Alys, who for a change came without complaint or her spoon.
They returned to the slipe, and before Frevisse could say anything, Dame Alys burst out, “So is it true? Someone finally did what the old…,” she reconsidered her word and said, “…lady has been begging to have done these fifty years or more?”
With a quelling lack of excitement, Frevisse said, “She was assuredly poisoned. Someone has killed her and Domina Edith has set Dame Claire and me to asking questions.”
“And there were truly demons come to grab her Hell-bound soul? You saw them?”
“No one saw them,” Dame Claire said wearily. “Lady Ermentrude was jibbering in some sort of brain fever and Thomasine said she must be seeing demons. That was all it was, just her brain fever and too much wine. It was before she was poisoned anyway.”
“Oh. Thomasine.” Dame Alys dismissed the matter with regret but firmly. “As holy a child as I ever hope to meet, but she’s not got the sense God gives a Michaelmas goose. So what about Martha then? She was poisoned, too, they’re saying.”
Frevisse said, “It appears she took what was meant for Lady Ermentrude.”
Dame Alys crossed herself, shaking her head. “Greed and temper were always her failings. God’s will be done,” she added piously.
“But,” Frevisse asked, “who made the first milksop for Lady Ermentrude?”
“First one? She had more? The greedy—” Dame Alys stopped herself and said, “I did. Bad enough I had to take the time, and for such as she, but Thomasine is a perfect simpleton at any task not based on prayer.”
“What bread did you use?”
“None of my fine new loaves, I assure you! No, since it was to be soaked in milk anyway, I gave her an old loaf I’d meant to use as crumbs for thickening.”
“And what milk and honey?”
Dame Alys’s thin eyebrows climbed up her broad forehead. “Whatever was sitting on the hob and in the cupboard. It’s good enough for us, it’s good enough for the likes of Lady Ermentrude.”
“And did Thomasine go straight back to the guest house?”
“Now, did I go along and show her the way? I’ve better things…” Dame Alys’s expression changed. “Ah, no, that’s when the shrieking started and Martha took off to see how close she could get to it, and I sent Thomasine packing after her.”
And Thomasine had arrived at Lady Ermentrude’s room in Martha’s wake; she had not had time to go anywhere else. Unless she had gone to the infirmary on her way to the kitchen. But Frevisse thought she had not had much time for that, not if the milksop was all made in the little while before Lady Ermentrude began to scream.
Dame Alys, unhobbled by doubts, thrust onward. “That old harridan, thinking Thomasine belonged anywhere but in St. Frideswide’s! It’s God’s blessing I don’t have to cook another meal for her, but how long is it until that son of hers takes himself off?”
“Tomorrow or the next day, we hope,” Frevisse said. “But meanwhile he’s set men to mend the chimney and, once they do, you won’t be bothered anymore.”
“It can’t happen soon enough. There, I’ve told you all I know. Can I go back to making sure those numb-wits don’t decide to use the rice for flour or some other foolishness?”
Frevisse excused her and drew a deep, steadying breath when she was gone. Dame Claire, with her blessed ability to keep silent, waited while she thought, until finally Frevisse said, “What I’m beginning to want more than anything else is the reason why someone wanted Lady Ermentrude dead right at this moment. Sir Walter is right, this was an awkward time and place to do a murder, and on holy ground beside.”
“Is there anything we can do besides asking questions?” Dame Claire asked.
“Not that I know of. And I can’t even be sure they’re the right ones.”
“You can only ask the questions you have. After all, they may lead on to others.”
Frevisse half-smiled. “True enough. Let’s see what more we can be learning.”
Not very much, it transpired.
“I haven’t noticed anyone much moved to grief for the lady,” Frevisse said, an hour later. “Not even her own son. He seems much hotter for revenge than burdened with grief.”
They had managed not to meet Sir Walter face-to-face, but Frevisse noticed, as they crossed the hall again in search of the servant Maudelyn, that more than a few people pointedly shifted out of their way and no one seemed inclined to meet their eyes.
“I think,” she said quietly, “that Sir Walter has made his displeasure with us known.”
“How long before he demands again we give him Thomasine?”
“He’ll want Master Montfort to back his demand this time, so it depends on how long it takes for him to terrify our crowner into it. Not very long, I’m afraid.”
Maudelyn proved almost as difficult to run to ground as Maryon, but once cornered, she seemed prepared to talk with them. She was a homely woman, the sort who would be normally cheerful and glad of a gossip, even with her betters. But now her hands twisted in her skirt and she kept her eyes averted. “Yes, I remember what happened as clearly as can be. It was just as I’ve already told you, and Sir Walter. There’s nothing more to be said, I promise you.”
“Is there anyone you can think of who would be wanting your mistress dead?”
Maudelyn shrugged. “None.”
“She was a kind mistress?”
Maudelyn hesitated, then shrugged again. “She could be right cruel, to me and to everyone around her, when she chose. And she mostly did. It’s no wonder—” She stopped short.
“What? That someone murdered her?” asked Dame Claire.
A hand over her mouth, Maudelyn nodded.
“Come now,” said Frevisse in her strictest voice, �
�tell us the truth. It may be that we already know what it is you’re trying to hide.”
Maudelyn’s eyes widened. Her hand slowly came down. “It doesn’t matter, I guess,” she muttered. “With my lady dead, I’ve lost my place anyhow.” She took a breath and straightened her back. “‘Twas me that drank the wine.”
“What wine?”
“In the bottle. I saw it and nobody was paying much attention, so I took it and hid it under my skirt and said I needed to visit the garderobe, and I drank it there and dropped the bottle down the hole. There! I’ve told you!” She broke into tears.
Frevisse absently patted Maudelyn’s plump shoulder and looked at Dame Claire, who was looking back, both of them dismayed at this destruction of the most solid part of their theory.
“Have you been ill since you drank the wine?” Dame Claire asked.
“N-no,” Maudelyn blubbered. Her tears stopped as if her eyes had been plugged with a cork. “Is it true, then? That it was poison killed her? And it was in the wine? By Our Lady’s veil, I drank from the very bottle!”
They assured her that could not be the case, as she was herself still alive, and left her still amazed. When they were out of earshot, Dame Claire asked, “Now what?”
“I don’t know. It seemed so clear the poison must be in the bottle. I should have guessed otherwise when Lady Isobel told me she opened the twin of it for Sir John. Because unless she marked it somehow, how could she tell which was the deadly bottle after they rubbed around one another on that hard ride? It should have been plain to me then that the poison could not have been in the wine.”
The cloister bell began to chime, startling them both.
“Vespers,” Dame Claire said, relieved. “We can’t do anything more today.”
“Except ask Thomasine if she’s remembered seeing anything more,” Frevisse said as they left the guest house and descended the stairs to the yard, hurrying a little through the soft fall of rain. “But she won’t. She’ll repeat she prayed all night and saw or heard no one and there’s the end of it. Why does the child bother me so much?”
“Because she’s the child you very nearly might have been, if you’d had her childhood leisure to indulge in piety,” Dame Claire said.
Frevisse looked sideways at her, and found her own first amusement at such an idea sliding into dismay with the discomforting thought that it might be true. Except for Domina Edith, Dame Claire knew more about Frevisse’s deep piety than anyone else at St. Frideswide’s; and knew better than anyone that it was only her early childhood that nourished a need to be as pragmatic as devout. It was a welcome diversion from such thoughts to see Robert Fenner coming purposefully toward them, reaching them as they reached the cloister gate.
As they crowded under the eaves, out of the rain, Frevisse saw again the large bruise that was discoloring Robert’s left cheek and jaw. As Dame Claire reached to touch it, he flinched back from her.
Frevisse asked quickly, “Was it Sir Walter gave you the bruise? How did you anger him that badly?”
Robert jerked his hand in quick dismissal. “I was too slow picking up a boot he’d dropped, that’s all. His mother was quick with her hands, too, but not as strong.”
“So he’s taken you back into his household.”
“Yes. I’m a Fenner after all, and we take care of our own. If roughly, sometimes.”
“Then perhaps you can be of service to us—and Thomasine, if you will.”
His grin was as charming as an angel’s. And his mind as quick to understand. “You want me to listen to anything I can, and see you hear of it afterwards.”
“Yes.”
“Gladly. Anything to serve the Lady Thomasine. You’re worried for her, aren’t you?”
“And so are you, I think.”
“I think her very fair and very sweet.” A faint blush over his cheeks made him suddenly look even younger than he was. “But I’m also without inheritance and have few hopes and know that even if she willed it, she could not be for me. So all I can be is worried for her. So far it’s all Sir Walter’s idea to have her out of here, but with a little more pushing, Master Montfort of the little wits and great ambition is going to agree with him. The easiest choice will be the best choice for him, he thinks.”
“And that’s where Thomasine’s peril lies,” Frevisse said bluntly. “So if you hear anything you think I ought to know, any of the priory’s lay servants will know how to take word to me about it. Will you be able to do that?”
“Yours at your need, my lady,” Robert said as if she were a queen. “Will you take Lady Thomasine a letter from me?”
“Never,” she said promptly.
He grinned around the worry in his eyes, and said, “Well, there’s something else, too.” He bowed. “You’ve been asking questions about who was in Lady Ermentrude’s chamber last night. You’d best ask me, too.”
Frevisse and Dame Claire exchanged looks. The bell was still calling to Vespers, but there was this task to be done as well. Best talk to him now while he came willing to speak; Domina Edith would almost surely pardon their being late.
“You were in Lady Ermentrude’s chamber that night?” Frevisse asked.
“Once. I awoke sometime and went to see if anything was needed. Lady Ermentrude and the woman Maryon were both sleeping. Lady Isobel was not there, or the maidservant, Maudelyn. The lady Thomasine was praying. I don’t think she knew I’d come.”
“You did not speak to her?”
“No.” But his color deepened, and it was obvious he had stood there awhile, looking. If his look was anything like the way he said her name, it had been a very warm and lingering stare, Frevisse thought, and Thomasine deep indeed in prayers not to have felt it. She asked, “Except for then, and later when Lady Ermentrude died, were you ever in her chamber that day or before?”
A shrewdness in his face told Frevisse he was following very well what her questions meant, but he answered simply enough, “I helped bring her into the hall when she first came. That was all.”
“So you saw her very well then,” Dame Claire said. “I only came to her after she had begun to quiet. Was she very drunk?”
“Like I’d never seen her,” Robert said. “It seemed more than drunkenness, like she was gone mad.”
“Brain-fevered maybe,” Frevisse suggested. “From the day’s heat and her drinking and her anger.”
Robert frowned, not anxious to disagree. “She was giddy on her feet and saying her eyes hurt. The sun wasn’t particularly bright that I noticed but she said it was hurting her and covered them. Her eyes were all black and swollen, I know that. The blue of them was a thin rim about the black. And she kept hold on one thought all the while as if she were afraid of losing it: she would have Thomasine away from here at once. But she seemed so wild I doubt she really knew what she was saying, just kept saying it, with her eyes all staring, so she looked mad even if she wasn’t.” His look sharpened on Dame Claire. “I’ve said something.”
Frevisse looked at the infirmarian beside her. Dame Claire’s expression was somewhere between excitement and distress, and her voice uneven as she said, “Yes, you’ve said something.” She pulled at Frevisse’s arm. “We have to go or we’ll be too late even for Domina Edith. Thank you for telling us.”
The bell for Vespers had stopped. Frevisse and Dame Claire hurried along the cloister walk. So urgent was her need for information that Frevisse ignored the rule of silence to ask, “What did he say that mattered so much to you?”
Dame Claire pressed her fingers into Frevisse’s flesh through the heavy cloth of her habit. “I never heard her symptoms before. I never asked how she was when she first came back here from the Wykehams. Everyone kept saying she was drunk and I never asked.”
“It didn’t seem to matter. Drunkenness or brain fever. Does it make a difference?”
“I don’t think that it was either one. What that boy said about Lady Ermentrude’s giddiness, her wildness almost without sense and her bulging eyes all
black and hurting her in the sun; Frevisse, if we join that with her screaming afterwards and her seeming to see awful things, then she was already poisoned when she arrived back at St. Frideswide’s. I’d swear to it.”
Chapter
11
THEY WERE AT the door to the church, already remiss in talking in the cloister and unwilling to be any later for Vespers. They slipped into the church, made apologizing curtseys to Domina Edith, and took their places in the choir.
But once in her place, chanting the verses so familiar they did not need her thoughts, Frevisse felt the creeping impact of Dame Claire’s assertion. If she were right, someone had tried to kill Lady Ermentrude not two times but three. And it had to have been someone not of the priory, for none of the priory people went with her to the Wykehams or met her on the way back. So who, then? Someone who went to Sir John’s and Lady Isobel’s with her—or met her there or on the road on the way back to St. Frideswide’s. Whoever it was, came with her into the priory and stayed, to try again—and again.
So some of the questions Frevisse had been asking were no longer ones that needed answering. But at the very least Thomasine could no longer be considered guilty. If Dame Claire were right, even Sir Walter and Master Montfort would have to accept that.
Except this was somewhat subtle reasoning, at least by Master Montfort’s standards. He would not take Dame Claire’s word for it. He would say she was lying to protect the nunnery and refuse to hear her. Or, being male, he would say a mere woman should not dare to offer some female notion as fact. Montfort, the fool, and Sir Walter, the arrogant fool, would never waste their valuable masculine time seeking the truth when they thought they already had it.
Suddenly Frevisse found the curses in today’s chanting of Psalm 109 very applicable. “Let his days be few; and let another take his office…. Let his children be vagabonds…. Let the extortioner consume all that he has; and let the stranger spoil his labor.” And she did not care if that curse fell on Master Montfort or on Sir Walter or on both of them, so well they both deserved it.
But even as she knew the translation of this verse, she knew the later verse, and her perverse mind recited it to her before she could stop it: “His delight was in cursing, and it shall happen to him; he loved not blessing, therefore it shall be far from him.” With an inward bow, she begged pardon for her soul’s sake, and turned her mind back to Vespers’ true purpose, to bring the day toward its close in peace and harmony.
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