Kindle - Winter Heart (7 page)

“Aye.  That.”  The woman’s blurred thoughts caught up to what she was being asked.  She let her hand fall to the bed while she peered up at Frevisse.  Fumbling, pulling the words almost singly from her befuddled mind, she said, “Say Tom tried to have me.  So he’d run off then.  Not be here to hurt my Henry.  He’d be gone, see.  It frighted me how he was so angry at Henry.  John said I should do it.  To make him go away.”

Behind Frevisse, Adirton said in an awed voice, “Her wits are altogether gone.  Seeing her man dead has turned them all the way over.”

Not seeming to have heard him at all, Anneys Barnsley whimpered, “But he came back,” and dropped to the pillow again.  Beginning to weep softly, she said at the ceiling beams, “John said he wouldn’t come back.  But he did.  Now he’s killed my Henry.  Killed him dead.”

As her weeping turned to a low wail on those last words, Adirton turned to Master Naylor and the other men and demanded, “You hear her, right enough?  She knows it was Tom Kelmstowe did it.  Who else but him?”

“Who else but Kelmstowe is just the question we’ve been asking half the day,” said Frevisse said, moving aside as she spoke, out from between Anneys Barnsley and Adirton. 

The woman, her heed drawn by the movement, returned her tear-blurred gaze to Adirton.  “You said,” she pleaded.  “You said if I lied it would keep him safe.  That you’d keep him safe.  Why didn’t you?”

“For the same reason he killed his wife,” Frevisse said. 

All the men except Master Naylor startled at that.  Adirton was apparently too taken aback for protest or denial, but she had said it less in hope of anything from him – or even from Anneys Barnsley, probably still too drug-addled to understand – as for the listening men who would be the witnesses at Adirton’s trial, and seemingly still to only Anneys Barnsley, she said strongly, “He did it so he could marry you and have all – both his holding and yours.”

“And Kelmstowe’s,” Master Naylor said.

“And Kelmstowe’s,” Frevisse agreed. 

Adirton had recovered enough to exclaim, “This is fool’s talk!  You’re making something out of a mad woman’s maunderings.”  He gave a jerk of his head at Anneys Barnsley, quietly continuing her weeping with a hand now over her eyes, her mind drifted away from them again, all Frevisse’s words lost to her.  Adirton made to leave.  Frevisse held up a hand to tell the men to let him go, but when he was from the room, sent them after him with another gesture.  She followed, passing wide-eyed Sister Elianor, who had been hovering as close to outside the door as she could be, able to see and hear though there had been no room for her in the small chamber. 

Adirton, walking quickly, was headed for the outer door.  “No,” Frevisse said after him.  “We are not done with you here.”

Adirton spun around, threat in the tension of his body.  He was instantly flanked by Simon Perryn and the other man, with Master Naylor and his son ready behind them.  Adirton assessed his chances and stood still, his glare fierce on Frevisse.  It seemed he was no fool – that he already understood who was his worst foe here.  Coming near, to confront him to his face, she said, “We have from Anneys Barnsley that you worked on her fear that Tom Kelmstowe might harm her husband.  That you persuaded her to accuse him of trying to rape her.  That you led her to think he would run away and her husband would be safe.”

“She’s addled with whatever you’ve given to shut her up.  There’s no one going to believe what she said in there.”  Looking back and forth between the men flanking him, he demanded of them, “You could see she’s not in her right wits.  You’re not set to believe any of that, are you, eh?”

“Oh, aye,” Simon Perryn said quietly.  “I think we are.  And whatever else Domina Frevisse will say, too.” 

The other man nodded agreement.  Adirton curled his lip with disgust at both of them.  Frevisse went on, “That Kelmstowe went missing made it easy to believe you were right about him.  Except he tells an altogether different story of why he disappeared.  You’ve heard it?” she asked the two village men.  They nodded that they had.  She went on, “It’s an odd story, because how likely was it for someone to pay drovers to carry him off for a jest?  But neither did it make sense that he’d take all that trouble to run away to London – and it does seem he was truly there – only to turn around and come back again.  No more sense than it made to anybody that he would attack Anneys Barnsley and
desert his mother and sister.  So everything about his story made no sense.

“But what if we think someone did indeed pay the drovers to carry him off, to make it
seem
he’d run off so he’d lose his holding, again at the hands of the reeve Henry Barnsley?  That Kelmstowe’s holding then went to Barnsley made it all the better, but what the man who paid the drovers was after at the first was simply to set up Kelmstowe as someone who would readily be blamed for Barnsley’s murder when it came.  That’s why he needed Kelmstowe not merely gone but to come back, too, as he assuredly would because of his mother and sister.  Then it was a matter of waiting and hoping things would time out rightly and, for him, they did.  Kelmstowe came back, and after he did, I’ll warrant a great deal there have been constant little threads of talk about how angry he must still be at Barnsley, how if Barnsley is wise he won’t turn his back on Kelmstowe, how it’s maybe just a matter of Kelmstowe biding his time.”

The glances between the men, a nod from one and a slight lift of a shoulder by Simon Perryn answered her half-question even before they looked back to her and together nodded, saying her guess was right. 

She went on, “But it wasn’t Tom Kelmstowe who was biding his time.  Anneys Barnsley’s sister was with child.  When the birthing came, Anneys Barnsley would be with her, Henry Barnsley on his own.  That gave Adirton–”  She finally named him, and no one objected.  “–a certainty his chance would come.  When it did, he left a pot of poisoned broth as apparent charity for the Kelmstowes, to see to it they were kept at home all the night when it was needful no one see them elsewhere.  The same poison that he had used to kill his wife not long before.”

“She died!” Adirton exclaimed.  “Everyone knows she just fell ill and died.  My wife.  It happens!”

“Happens she died of a sudden,” Frevisse said coldly, “with the same troubles that laid the Kelmstowes low last night.  Only worse.  I wonder – have you been sharp enough to rid yourself of whatever you used, or will a thorough search–” more thorough than Margery had been able to make in this while “–of your place find something you’d rather we didn’t?”

Adirton blanched.  Good.  His poison was still somewhere to be found.  If there was any doubt, a small dose could be tried on him to be sure of it, Frevisse thought grimly as she went on, “With Barnsley dead and Kelmstowe easily thought guilty, he would be free to comfort and then marry the widow, getting thereby a considerable holding without the trouble of having deserved it.”  She looked to Master Naylor.  “He would have been thought fit to take it over along with the widow, yes?”

“Yes,” the steward said.  He was more than usually grim.

“So, with no suspicion of murder falling on him because it was plain someone else had killed Barnsley, he’d be far better off than he had been and with a new wife.  Of course if it turned out the new wife did not suit him–”  Frevisse fixed a hard stare on Adirton.  “–he had his way of remedying that, to free himself to look for another.”         

Adirton’s jaw clenched as he apparently tried to hold back from saying anything, before he burst out, “That’s nothing but guesses!  First and last, nothing but guesses!  You’ll never find the drovers to ask, for one thing!”

“Drovers come the same way year after year,” Master Naylor said.  “If we have to wait until we’ve asked every one that comes through in the coming year, then that’s what we’ll do.”

“In the meanwhile,” Frevisse said, “the others that were there when Barnsley’s body was found will be asked if you indeed handled it enough to have blood on your sleeves and the front of your tunic.  I think we’ll hear that you didn’t.  So where did the blood come from?”

Adirton opened his mouth, perhaps to give an excuse for it, then must have remembered he had already said it was Barnsley’s blood and closed his mouth.

“That and finding the poison wherever you’ve hidden it, added to what Anneys Barnsley has already said, will go a long way to satisfying the crowner, I think,” Frevisse said. 

“That, and that I’ve heard him more than once warning folk in the alehouse that Kelmstowe was likely to break out again in some manner of hurt to someone,” Simon Perryn said.  “Aye.  We’ll stand behind all this when time comes to jury for the crowner.”

“That should suffice,” Frevisse said, her gaze locked with Adirton’s.

Adirton took a threatening step forward.  Simon Perryn and the other man clamped hold on his arms, keeping him where he was.  He wrenched once, more from anger than any thought he could escape, then spat at Frevisse’s feet, splattering the stone floor.  She did not move, only kept her cold gaze on his angry-weasel face until at Master Naylor’s order the two village men wrenched him around and hauled him from the hall.

Frevisse had John Adirton too much in her thoughts the next few days, troubled that she could form no more than the plainest prayers for him and those only by rote.

With such thoughts for company, she was grateful when Sister Elianor broke in on her thoughts the second morning, come to say Tom Kelmstowe was here, had asked to speak with her, was waiting in the yard.  Rather than have him come into the cloister, Frevisse went down to him.  As she came out of the cloister door, followed by Sister Elianor, into the sunshine of the yard, Kelmstowe shoved back his hood to bare his head, went down on one knee, and held out a folded bit of white cloth, saying, “From my mother and sister, my lady.  In thanks.”

At Frevisse’s gesture, he stood up, and she took the cloth from him.  While she unfolded it, he went on, running the words together in his eagerness to have them said, “I’ve nothing of my own to give yet except my thanks, but you have that, right enough and in full,
and
my promise of faithful service to you for always after this.”

“That’s thanks enough,” Frevisse said, smiling to assure him she believed him and gladly accepted his word.  She knew from Master Naylor that his lands were to be restored to him, and that in due course he would also be given such of Barnsley’s as were not bound to Anneys Barnsley as dower.  Having been victim as well as tool in John Adirton’s deceptions, she would be left that much but lose the rest because of her deliberate lie against Kelmstowe.  “But this is lovely,” Frevisse exclaimed, finding she held a linen nightcap, made to fit close to the head and tie under the chin, and embroidered around the outer edge with fine pattern of tendrils and leaves in thread probably pulled from the same cloth as the cap was made.

“Aye,” Tom Kelmstowe said, looking greatly pleased on his mother’s and sister’s behalf.  “They wanted you to have something but know there’s not much you can have, being a nun and all.  So they thought maybe this would be well enough, being so plain but prettied just that little?”

Frevisse answered his uncertainty with, “It is quite acceptable.”  She would not for the world tell him it was not, despite the embroidery made it questionable.  “Your mother and sister did the embroidery?”

“Aye.  They’re good at it, aren’t they?” Kelmstowe said, his relief at her acceptance probably making him bold to show his pride in them.

“They are indeed.”  And arthritic fingers in the older nuns and lack of skill in the younger presently meant the nunnery’s vestments and altar cloths were in need of such good hands to mend them.  Even, perhaps, to make new ones.  Frevisse tucked that thought away for the future as she thanked Kelmstowe again and received his repeated thanks in return, so that they afterward went their own ways, back to their widely differing lives, with good feelings on both sides.

It was the look on Sister Elianor’s face as she stood aside to let Frevisse go ahead of her along the passageway to the cloister walk that made Frevisse pause there and ask, “Is there something troubling you?”

The girl bowed her head, started to shake it, her lips forming No, before she changed her mind, looked up, and said, “It very nearly went wrong for all of them, didn’t it?  For that man and his mother and sister.  And the wife, too.  The widow.  It went altogether wrong for her, her husband being killed.  But it would have come to her death, too, wouldn’t it?”

“I think so, yes.”

“I didn’t know that someone could turn to so much – because he wanted what wasn’t his to have – could turn to so much–”  Sister Elianor fumbled for the word she wanted.

“Evil,” said Frevisse.

“Evil.”  Sister Elianor accepted the word almost unwillingly.  She hesitated, then asked very quietly, “May I go to the church and pray this while until None?”

Frevisse’s urge was to let her; it was what she wanted often enough herself; but the prioress part of her asked, “What are you supposed to be doing at this hour?”

“I’d finished helping Dame Margrett polish the altar candlesticks and was going to see if Dame Claire needed me for anything when the man knocked at the door and I came for you instead.”

“Go and pray then, since you’re not needed elsewhere.”

Sister Elianor made a grateful curtsey and turned away along the walk toward the church – going with bowed head and even pace – neither hurried nor flurried, Frevisse noted before going up the stairs to her parlor.  There she laid the cap on the table and stood contemplating it for a few moments before deciding that, yes, she would wear it.  Not for the sake of its prettiness, which would be wrong, but to keep her mindful of the people beyond the nunnery walls who needed her judgment and care as much – and sometimes more – than the nuns close around her.

Accounts were waiting for her on the other side of the table, but she drifted with her thoughts to the window and sat down.  She was glad for Tom Kelmstowe, his mother, and sister, but it was again toward Adirton her thoughts went.