1 The Novice's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  “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 forced 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 Hay ward’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 Hay ward 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 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, s
o 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?”‘