The Widow's Tale (Sister Frevisse Medieval Mysteries Book 14)

by Frazer, Margaret

  Her gaze fixed on Nol and her words as stiff as her body, Cristiana said, “Lying down hurts.” She slipped from the curve of Mistress Say’s arm, sat down on the settle’s edge, and asked, still looking at Nol, “This is the man?”

  “He overheard you and Gerveys talking, yes,” Mistress Say said gently. “He’s the one who told my lord of Suffolk about you.”

  “And then you killed my brother,” Cristiana said at Nol. “And Pers and the other man.”

  “No!” Nol said that quickly, not to Cristiana but at Alice and Master Say. “I swear I’d nothing to do with that!”

  “If not you,” Cristiana said, “then who? You didn’t have time to tell Suffolk himself they were going to Ware, but you could have told someone here.” Her gaze flicked toward Alice. “Or Laurence Helyngton.” She stood up and her voice rose with her. “You told him, didn’t you, and when he only killed Pers the first time, you told him Gerveys would be in the church last night so he could kill him then. Or you killed him yourself!”

  Nol was no fool. He understood the danger he was suddenly in and cried, “No!” again at Alice and Master Say. “I never did that! I swear it! I’ve never had anything to do with Master Helyngton or any of them!”

  “How very honorable of you to spy for only one person at a time,” Alice said coldly. “Supposing we believed you.”

  “It’s true, though! I’ll swear on the Bible or anything else you ask me to that I’ve had nothing to do with anybody’s murder!”

  “Who else would it have been?” Cristiana said at him. “How many treacherous curs can there be in one place?” Alice, looking at Nol with the cold regard she might have given a piece of rotten fruit, held up a hand for Cristiana to be silent and Mistress Say gently made her sit down again, while Nol said, both sullen and ill-eased, “All I did was tell my lord of Suffolk about what I heard. That’s all I did. Naught else.”

  “So you say,” Alice acknowledged mildly. “It will be interesting to hear what you say when asked about it somewhat differently.”

  She slightly moved one hand. Her two men stepped immediately forward and took hold on him, one of them twisting his arm up behind his back, not all the way to pain, Frevisse thought, but enough that Nol went rigid, knowing what could come next. Watching him, Alice asked Master Say, “Is there somewhere among your outbuildings where my men can keep him under guard tonight? Until there’s time to deal further with him?”

  “I’ll show them where,” Master Say said.

  “Master Say!” Nol pleaded at him. “Don’t let them! You—“

  Master Say coldly cut him off. “Apparently, Nol, I’m not your master, merely someone who paid you wages while you served my lord of Suffolk.”

  Before Nol could find answer to that, Master Say went past him and out of the room, and as her men began to shove Nol around to follow him, Alice said to them, “You know what’s to be done with him. See to it.”

  Both men answered, “Yes, my lady,” and the last sight Frevisse had of Nol was his frightened face turned back as if to make some final plea as they shoved him out of the room.

  Mistress Say was half-lifting Cristiana to her feet, telling her, “Now you must come and lie down in bed. You shouldn’t have come.”

  Cristiana let herself be led away. Domina Elisabeth, after quick looks at Alice still standing hard-faced in the middle of the room and at Frevisse with her gaze fixed on Alice, silently followed.

  Behind her, Frevisse rose, went and closed the door, turned to Alice and said, keeping the words flat, free of accusation, “Torture is illegal.” Allowed by law only to make an accused plead either guilty or not guilty so that his trial could go forward.

  Alice looked at her and said as flatly back, “I gave no order for torture. They’ll hurt him a little tonight, then leave him to think about it. He’ll be far more ready to talk in the morning.”

  “Alice, I gave him into your hands. The fault will lie on me, too. On my conscience, if nothing else.”

  “It will not. The fault of whatever happens to him lies on that man himself.”

  “Alice,” Frevisse said, not trying to keep grief from her voice.

  “Frevisse,” Alice said harshly back, almost mocking her. “I need to know how treacherous this man is. I need to know who else he’s sold this secret to.”

  “How would it matter who else he’s told? You were the one who opened and read the thing. No one else.”

  “I have to know who else knew about it. I need to know how far this treachery goes.”

  No, that was not what Alice needed, Frevisse realized sharply. What Alice needed was to learn whether or not her husband had ordered these three deaths.

  But while Frevisse tried to find something to say, Alice, maybe misunderstanding her silence, said, “Frevisse, this Nol is nobody. Set against two kingdoms and a war, he’s less than nobody. He’s in the way of things that need to be known. I can’t let him stay in the way.”

  Coldly, the words away before she thought to stop them, Frevisse answered, “Let us exalt the kingdoms of the earth—Mankind’s creation—over God’s creation, Mankind itself.”

  Alice started to answer that but stopped, tightly shut her mouth, turned sharply away, and left.

  Chapter 22

  Grief lay leaden in Cristiana. Grief for Edward. Grief for Gerveys. Grief for everything that had been her life and was gone past ever having back. Grief. And the certainty that now there would never be an end to sorrow, to grief, to pain. Grief. And the wish that she were dead instead of Gerveys.

  Gray and heavy as she now was with grief and constant pain, why couldn’t she be dead instead?

  Gerveys was dead and no one seemed to care except herself. Tomorrow maybe they would all care again, but today the only thing on everyone’s mind but hers was the king’s hawking along the river, the king’s feasting afterward here at Baas, and the day’s bright weather was cruel and everyone’s pleasure in it more cruel.

  And she was cruel, she knew, in refusing to let Mary and Jane go out with Nurse and the nurserymaid and little

  Betha and the baby Genofeffe and a servingman, to watch the hawking from the slope above the river meadows and the feasting from a distance with the crowd of village folk there would surely be. Cruel, yes, but not so cruel as to risk them away from her.

  Sitting on the chest at the foot of the bed with her arms wrapped around herself and holding very still against the pain, Cristiana watched them sprawled on cushions on the bedchamber’s floor sullenly playing fox-and-geese with Ivetta on a gameboard brought from the nursery. For all that they had cried for their uncle yesterday, today they were angry and hurt at being kept in here and safe. Even Mary, who should have understood better. But they wanted to see the king and queen.

  Cristiana had seen both king and queen as lately as two years ago when Edward had last taken her to London. King Henry was a tall young man with brown hair and brown eyes and the grave air of a child watching the world from a distance. Queen Margaret was a pretty-faced girl-woman in a beautiful gown. Cristiana had no care to see either of them again.

  Just now she had no care to see anyone ever again except her daughters.

  Except Laurence, if she could see him dead.

  The nun said there was no way yet to tell who had killed Gerveys, but that was foolishness. Who else had it been but Laurence?

  Laurence, who was out there in the bright day among the gentry come to wait upon their king and queen and keep company among the courtiers. Laurence with his claim to Mary and Jane still unbroken. Laurence.

  Pain throbbed in her, adding the raw goad of its fear to all her other fears. She wanted to call Mary and Jane to her, take them in her arms, hold them, feel them warm and alive and safe with her. Mary with her little-girl body and her little-girl ways but her womanhood not far away and too often now a worry in her eyes she should be too young to have.

  And Jane, sturdy and determined but still so little, still so unknowing of so very much. If Lady Alice fai
led to keep her promise, what would happen to them, given back into Laurence’s hands? They were all that was left of her life. To know that her love could not keep them safe grieved her beyond almost any other grief, hurt her beyond any other pain.

  Everything hurt. Everything in her life was come down to pain, to fear.

  To hating Laurence.

  Jane lifted her head from the gameboard as if she had heard something. Then she scrambled to her feet and ran to the window, too small to see out but trying to pull herself up to the sill. Mary, almost as quick to her feet, joined her, gave her a boost, and braced her so they could both look down into the kitchen yard from where Cristiana could now hear a bustling and excited voices.

  “They’re starting to carry out food!” Mary said. “The hawking must be done.”

  “Nearly done,” Ivetta corrected. She was climbing to her feet, too, and Cristiana saw by the wetness on her cheeks that she had been crying even while she played with the girls. With a small pang of guilt, Cristiana admitted to herself how little thought she had given to Ivetta’s grief since yesterday. But her own grief was so much the greater, so much the worse than Ivetta’s could be. Edward was gone, and now Gerveys, and she still had no surety her daughters would be safe. If anyone should cry, it should be her.

  And yet since yesterday no tears had come to her, as if they were lost under the weight of all her griefs, her fears, her pain.

  Ivetta had joined the girls at the window, was saying, “Word must have come to have everything out and ready for when the king and queen and everyone ride up from the river.” Tears or not, she was excited, too.

  That forgetfulness of grief—Ivetta’s and the girls’—hurt Cristiana. Like the fair, bright day, it was wrong. And yet . . .

  Cristiana stood carefully up. It was maybe not at them she should be disappointed but at herself. Wrapped in her griefs and fears, was she beginning to forget how to be kind?

  As she joined Mary and Jane and Ivetta, the open uncertainty with which they looked at her gave weight to her worry and made her almost glad to say, “Would it be better if we went to the garden and watched from there?”

  Mary and Jane bloomed into instant happiness and started for the stairs, Ivetta hurrying after them, trying to tidy their gowns and hair as they went. Cristiana, following more slowly down the stairs and along the screens passage, felt the house’s emptiness around her and was glad to see the outer gate to the road was shut and there was a man on guard atop the gatehouse. John was too sensible a man to leave his house open to thieves while everyone was busy and gone elsewhere, had probably even set up for a constant change of guard so that none of his men would miss out too long on the day.

  The girls and Ivetta were well ahead of her. By the time she reached the garden door, they were to the garden’s far side, crowded to the gate there. Beyond them, Cristiana could see servants passing on their way from the kitchen to the pasture—Lady Alice’s people as well as John’s and probably more from the royal household, too. She could remember when such things had greatly mattered to her, when she would have wanted to know how all was being seen to and done. Now her thought had no feeling to it. Was she going to lose all feelings except fear and grief?

  Even sight of Dame Frevisse seated on the turf-topped bench along the garden’s north side where the sun fell pleasantly barely stirred feeling in her. It seemed the nuns were among the things about which she had ceased to care, and instead of avoiding her, she went toward Dame Frevisse, who stood up at her approach and might have said something but Cristiana demanded, “Have you found out anything about my brother’s death? Did they make that man tell what he knew?”

  “I’ve not heard that he’s said more than he did yesterday,” Dame Frevisse said evenly.

  “What have they done with him?”

  “He’s still here under guard.”

  “He has to be made to tell that Laurence murdered my brother. That Laurence did it or had it done.”

  “Very possibly,” Dame Frevisse granted. “But we have to be certain.”

  “I’m certain.”

  “I know.”

  Goaded by the nun’s quietness, Cristiana challenged, “You’d rather it was Laurence than your cousin, wouldn’t you?”

  “I’d rather have the truth,” Dame Frevisse said back, ungoaded. “For Sir Gerveys’ sake as much as anyone’s.”

  And in the nun’s face Cristiana saw what she had wanted to see in someone else all day. Sorrow. Not simple, soon-eased unhappiness, but sorrow. Deep-set sorrow that would be held in heart and mind with prayers and memories, not let to slide into the back of forgetfulness as soon as might be.

  And quietly Dame Frevisse said, “I think I failed to tell you yesterday how sorry I am for your brother’s death. He has my prayers.”

  And Cristiana had her pity. Cristiana felt it enwrap her, cool against the heat of her unshed tears. Cool and . . . sustaining, like a hand held out to steady someone in danger of falling; there because it was needed.

  Why the nun’s pity mattered, Cristiana did not know. Or her sorrow. Time was that she had wanted nothing from the nuns but for them to go away. But some of the tightness around her heart unclenched a little, and with a quietness that surprised herself, she said, “Thank you.,”

  “They’re coming!” Mary called from the gate. “We can see the horses! Hurry!”

  Cristiana turned from Dame Frevisse and went to join her daughters. Ivetta crowded aside to let her come close behind the girls, and she put an arm around their waists and tried to feign enjoyment with them as they exclaimed at the several score of riders now cantering up the long slope of the shallow stream valley in a rainbow-array of gowns and surcoats, sunlight shining and glinting off their horses’ brightbrassed harnesses.

  “Oh, please,” Jane begged. “Let’s go nearer. We won’t see anything. There’ll be people in the way!”

  There were a great gathering of common folk from nearby villages and countryside strung and clustered all along the slope and closing behind the riders as they passed, following them toward the gaudy gathering of pavilions and awnings in the pasture below the house, already encircled by more people kept back by a line of guards. Jane was right: there would be little seen from here once the royal party dismounted. But among those who would be around the king was Laurence. Like John and Beth, he was there among the riders, and probably Milisent and her dull-eyed husband Colies. They were there and Edward was not . . .

  The fresh rise of her grief was forestalled by Mary asking where King Henry and Queen Margaret were among the riders. Because the riders were drawing rein beside the pavilions Cristiana could answer that easily. As the servants came forward to take the horses and the riders dismounted, there was a tall man in green around whom everyone else moved like water flowing around an island in a stream. Cristiana pointed him out and added, “The woman with him, in green, too, that’s Queen Margaret,” in a wide-coifed headdress and a gown whose sleeves trailed nearly to the ground.

  Jane, disappointed, said, “They’re not wearing their crowns.”

  “Not for hawking,” Mary said distainfully.

  Quickly, before Jane could make an insulted reply, Cristiana said at random, “There’s Master Say, I think.” Because the guards were keeping a gap in the crowd for the servants to come and go, the food-laden tables and people moving around them could be narrowly seen from the gateway, and Cristiana went on to pretend she recognized various neighbors and great lords there, diverting Mary and Jane while her mind lurched back to her heart-hurting thought of Edward.

  He should have been there and he was not. Not there or ever anywhere again. Or Gerveys. He was gone, too. They were gone and only pain was left . . .

  She realized she had slid into silence, that Mary and Jane were looking questioningly up at her, and she fumbled for something to say, pointed and said, “There’s Mistress Say. I remember the gold-tawny gown she was wearing this morning. Wave to her.”

  To encourage them, she waved,
too, never supposing anyone over there would note them, and no one did, but some of the servants returning from the field for more food did and waved. The girls waved back at them, but Cristiana let her hand fall to Mary’s shoulder and stared past them toward the pavilions. Somewhere Laurence was waiting his chance to beg the king’s favor. She knew as surely as she knew the sun was shining and hatred scalded through her. Edward was dead and Gerveys was dead and Laurence was there, talking, eating, laughing, waiting his chance . . .

  “Please, Momma,” Jane begged, tugging at her gown. “Couldn’t we go nearer? Please?

  Mary added her plea. “Please, Momma?”

  Cristiana looked down at their upturned faces, hardly able to see them through her blind fierceness of hating Laurence. But she forced her own face into a smile and kissed them on their foreheads and said, pointing away, “Oh, look what they’re doing now,” though they were doing nothing more than they had been—standing around the tables, eating, drinking. But Mary and Jane looked and Cristiana ignored Ivetta’s stare at her. Ivetta was nothing in this. No one was anything in this except Mary and Jane.

  Her thoughts cleared by the scald of her hatred, Cristiana looked at the stark, plain shape of things with a terrible clarity. Her love had not been able to keep either Edward or Gerveys safe. Neither would her love keep Mary and Jane safe. Nor would promises from Lady Alice or John. Promises were weaker things than love. If love was not enough, what good were promises? Her pain’s promise was the only sure promise, promising that she would die and Laurence would be left alive with his unslaked greed.

  He must not be.

  But with the same hate-brought clarity that she shaped that thought, Cristiana knew she must be done with hate or she’d go to Hell. To Hell and not to Heaven where Edward was. Unless she wanted to spend Eternity without Edward, she would have to want Laurence’s death only in the same way she would want the death of any evil man—not with hatred but only for justice’s sake.