The Prioress’ Tale (30 page)

Alys tried to say the madman was not Reynold’s murderer because with Reynold dead, the madman was all she had left for hope; but they had reached the foot of the stairs, were just into the cloister walk, Hugh still holding her by the arm, still drawing her along with him, still talking as he turned toward the outer door and came, suddenly silent, to a stop, staring at—of all unlikely things—her madman standing on the low garth wall not far away along the walk. And beyond him, at the next pillar holding up the walk’s roof, the minstrel. Both of them stretched as far up as they could reach and groping in the narrow wedge of space where roof beam and roof slanted together.

The beams of the cloister walk’s roof were the only place that had come quickly to Frevisse’s mind where something could be readily hidden in the cloister. Impelled by sounds of men and horses outside in the yard as she came out of the church, she had said urgently to Joliffe, Benet, and Edmund, “Hurry! They’re leaving!”

Benet protested, “They can’t be. I’m not with them,” and started past her toward the outer door; but Joliffe went past her and leaped onto the low wall to start searching where she had told them to, at the pillar and roof beam nearest the stairs to Domina Alys’ rooms, while Edmund took the next one. As Benet hesitated, half-turning back to them, Joliffe finished with the first, dropped down and circled past Edmund to leap up onto the wall again. AS Sir Hugh and Domina Alys came from the stairs.

Frevisse froze and so did they, staring, before Sir Hugh started forward, drawing his sword as he came, ordering, “Down! The both of you. Down!”

Joice said urgently, “Edmund!” and moved toward him as if that would be some defense, while Frevisse without thinking stepped in front of Sister Thomasine. Benet, more practical than either of them, drew as Sir Hugh did, his sword out and in Sir Hugh’s way.

“Benet…” Sir Hugh began.

In a voice hollowed with anger and grief, Benet answered, “No. It’s done.”

And behind Frevisse, Joliffe said, “It’s here.”

Sir Hugh made a spasmed move to go forward. Benet jerked his sword to hold him where he was, while Joliffe tugged and the thing came loose, a dark bundle, tightly rolled, that had been wedged into the angle of the roof and roof beam. He held it out toward Sir Hugh. “Yours?”

“No.” Hugh bit the word short.

“No,” Frevisse agreed. “Not yours. Godard’s. You merely made use of it.”

“When you killed Sir Reynold,” Benet said with bitter certainty.

“What are you talking about?” Domina Alys asked, strangely unforcefully. “What do you mean, killed Reynold? What is it?”

“Godard’s leather doublet,” Frevisse said. Joliffe shook it out. The leather, stiffened with dried blood, only partly gave up its folds but there was no doubting what it was. “Godard was wearing it when he was hurt. They took it off him in the hall after they brought him back here. Remember? By then the wound had been covered and the blood on the doublet was dried. It was thrown aside. No one bothered with it. Everyone forgot about it. Except Sir Hugh. Benet remembers he took it to his own room after Godard died, saying he would see that Godard’s things were given to his family when there was time.”

Domina Alys shook her head, holding now to Katerin’s arm as if she could not otherwise stand up, looking at Sir Hugh with a bewildered emptiness as she asked, “What’s she saying, Hugh?”

Sir Hugh did not answer. It was Benet who said, raw with angry pain, “She’s saying Sir Hugh took Godard’s doublet and wore it under his own doublet last night when he and Sir Reynold came to see you. She’s saying that after he left you, he put it on over his own doublet and waited here in the cloister walk, in the dark, for Sir Reynold to come down and then killed him.” Benet’s voice broke, leaving him wordless somewhere between grief and rage.

“It’s leather,” Frevisse said. “He needed to kill Sir Reynold close, to keep him from crying out, and the leather kept his own clothing from being bloodied. No one was going to miss a dead man’s doublet. All he had to do with it afterward was hide it here and go out clean in his own clothing.”

“Hugh?” Domina Alys asked. Tight-lipped with held-in rage, he threw her a harsh look and said nothing.

Joliffe picked up a dark blood-stiffened cloth that had fallen to the pavement from the unfolded doublet. “He’d even thought to bring a rag to clean his dagger with and left it here, too. The weather is too cold for flies to come to the blood and nothing else would give away its hiding place.”

“Hugh?” Domina Alys asked again, wanting him to say something, not that.

Sir Hugh lowered his sword away from Benet’s with a deep, impatient breath and said at her, “Don’t be a greater fool than Reynold thought you were. That’s exactly how it was.”

Domina Alys tried to answer. Her mouth moved, but nothing came, as if there were nothing left in her to make words out of; as if anger and hope and everything else words came from no longer existed in her; until finally, faint in the cold morning air, she whispered, “Why?”

Hugh looked at her disgustedly. “Because I had no more use for him. That’s why.”

Chapter 25

In the warm midst of the afternoon the cloister lay quiet again, as if there had never been other than sunlight and peace inside its walls. Standing beside the church door, gazing at the frost-killed garth and trying to empty her mind of anything but stillness and prayer, Frevisse whispered,
“Exaudi, Domine, preces servi tui.”
Hear, Lord, the prayers of your servant. Prayers for peace, however momentary; for sanctuary, however brief; for mercy, however undeserved.

Behind her the door opened and closed so gently there was hardly sound from it, and Sister Thomasine came with barely a hush of skirts to stand beside her.

“Is she still there, the same?” Frevisse asked.

Sister Thomasine made a small nod.

“And Katerin?” Frevisse asked.

Again the small nod.

To Sir Hugh’s answer, made as carelessly as if he were unguilty, Domina Alys had stood staring, only staring, not at anything, even him, only at nothing, at a terrible nothing bare of anything that should have been there—rage or grief or disbelief—and then had said to no one, out of that nothingness, empty of any feeling, “I have to go pray,” and gone past them all as if no one was there, along the cloister walk and into the church.

Katerin had followed after her and there they still were, Domina Alys stretched out face down on the floor in front of the altar, silent, motionless, her arms spread out straight from her sides, with the small movement of her breathing the only sign she was alive, while Katerin crouched nearby, drawn up into as small a ball as she could manage, arms wrapped around her updrawn knees, as silent as her lady and rocking slightly, very slightly, back and forth.

No one had chosen to disturb them, not even Abbot Gilberd. He had come into the cloister as Sir Hugh was giving his sword over to Benet, and to Frevisse’s relief Roger Naylor had been with him. That had meant there was less need of explanations than there might have been, though explanations enough were needed. Less welcome was the sight of Sir Walter Fenner crowded among the men behind him, ready to make a fight of something if he could. But Abbot Gilberd had proved to have a quick way with facts. He had sorted through what he needed to know just then and sent Sir Hugh away under guard of some of his men and Benet, refusing Sir Walter’s offer, to take him in charge and to the sheriff with, “No, Sir Walter. My thanks, but it will be best, I think, if I see to my men taking Sir Hugh to the sheriff. For now all the present wrongs in the matter have been done to the Fenners. I’d like to keep it that way.”

That had been blunt enough that Sir Walter had had no quick reply, and Abbot Gilberd had given him no time to think of one but went on briskly with, “This is all secondary to what’s brought me here. I’ll see to it being given over to civil law as soon as may be. Sir Hugh can be conveyed directly to the sheriff by my men for a beginning, as soon as they can be horsed and gone. The rest of the Godfreys I’ll bind over to keep the peace until the justices can deal with them, and then they can take themselves home. Today for preference. Sir Walter, you and your men shall be my guests here tonight and leave tomorrow.” When the Godfreys would be well gone, he did not add but did say, on the chance Sir Walter missed the point, “I trust I will not have to bind you over, too, to keep the peace? You understand the matter is now for the law to see to?”

It required little acquaintance to know Sir Walter’s character; it required a great deal of confidence to handle him with the assurance that Abbot Gilberd did. Sir Walter had darkened an unbecoming shade of red but said, grudgingly, that he understood.

“And so you don’t mind swearing to it, do you?” Abbot Gilberd had said, and Sir Walter had sworn and been dismissed to see his men kept his oath along with him.

Abbot Gilberd’s questions after that to those of them still there in the cloister walk had been short and few and left him in full enough understanding of how things were to say, “Tell—it’s Dame Juliana who’s presently cellarer?—tell her the nunnery is in her charge until I’ve finished with the Godfreys and made sure of the Fenners giving no trouble. I’ll speak to you all after Vespers, before Compline. Matters outside should be well enough in hand by then to leave me free for it. But first your prioress.”

Sister Thomasine, her head bowed, had said gently, “She’s praying.”

“Well, she should be,” Abbot Gilberd had said in a tone meant to curb tongues that had no business wagging.

Sister Thomasine had lifted her head to look at him and said softly, “It might be best, my lord, to leave her there for now.”

And Abbot Gilberd had paused, looking back at her, then said, “It might be, yes. Let her stay then until I’m ready for her.”

He had left then, taking Master Naylor, Joliffe, Edmund, and his men with him. Joice had gone to Lady Eleanor who must know something from watching from her chamber window and now would have to know the rest. Frevisse and Sister Thomasine had gone to the gardens where Dame Juliana had had the nuns at work clearing the last of the beds for winter, having given up all hope of bringing the day back into line; and explanations had gone on until dinner. Even then, before they could eat, Frevisse had had to tell it all again, to everyone—nuns and cloister servants gathered together in the refectory—along with Abbot Gilberd’s warning he would talk to them later. That had given rise to talk that had seen them through the meal and would see them through the afternoon, so that when they had finished eating, Dame Juliana—wide-eyed with the strain of responsibility now officially given—had set the servants to scrubbing the kitchen and taken the nuns into the gardens to walk and talk themselves into exhaustion.

Exhaustion was something of which Frevisse already had enough, and when she had seen Sister Thomasine slip away from the others, toward the church, she had quietly followed, not to the church but simply into the cloister walk to be alone awhile.

Now she had been alone that while and was glad of Sister Thomasine’s coming, of something more than silence and her own thoughts, even though now she had asked her useless questions about Domina Alys there seemed nothing more to say.

It was Sister Thomasine who offered quietly, “The minstrel wants to see you.”

For a moment, bound up in other thoughts, Frevissse did not follow where she had gone, then said, “Joliffe? Where? In the church?”

Sister Thomasine nodded.

“He spoke to you?”

“He asked if he could see you.”

“Come with me,” Frevisse said and turned to go inside.

Domina Alys still lay before the altar and Katerin was still near her, unchanged, unmoved, from the two hours and more ago that Frevisse had last seen them. When she had crossed herself to the altar, she paused, looking at them, and then said low-voiced to Sister Thomasine beside her, “Is there anything to be done for her, any help we can give?”

“Our prayers,” Sister Thomasine said simply, sounding surprised she had needed to ask.

But, yes, she had needed to ask, Frevisse realized to her shame, because prayers and Domina Alys did not go together in her mind, except to pray for patience to endure her, and that was not going to be enough now. Prayers for Domina Alys—possibly the hardest thing she could be asked to give and therefore the most necessary—for her own sake as well Domina Alys‘.

Bowing her head, she made the first of what would have to be a great many, for both of them.

Joliffe was where she thought he would be, behind the choir stalls, sitting on the wall bench near the door into the tower. He rose to his feet as she and Sister Thomasine approached, bowed to them, then smiled at Sister Thomasine and asked her, “Here for propriety’s sake?”

To Frevisse’s surprise, Sister Thomasine smiled back at him, a small smile but warm, agreeing with him.

“On the chance that if Abbot Gilberd hears she’s been talking with a man,” Joliffe went on, “she can say she wasn’t alone with me.”

Sister Thomasine made a small nod. That was exactly why Frevisse had asked her to come but she did not much care to be discussed as if she was not there and said, “Your Sir Walter was here before his time.”

“A matter I mean to mention to him when I collect my pay,” Joliffe answered. “The word I sent him and Sir Reynold’s yesterday raid together moved him faster than planned. It was only good luck your abbot was on the move, too, thanks to Master Naylor, and crossed his path in Banbury.”

“God’s will,” Sister Thomasine murmured. When Joliffe and Frevisse looked at her questioningly she said, “God’s will our abbot was there. Not luck.”

“God’s will,” Joliffe amended. “Your pardon, my lady.”

“My prayers,” she said and smiled at him again, her small, shy, rarely seen smile now given to him twice.

He smiled, too, but then another look came into his eyes and he shifted from merely looking at her to something more intent and said, “You’re fasting too much.”

“Oh, no!” Sister Thomasine seemed shocked at the thought. “It’s only been for penance, for…”

She hesitated, seeming not to know how to say it.