The Bishop’s Tale (18 page)

She waited but Sir Philip did not answer. The fire made small sounds in the stillness, and she did not look at him because she knew he was looking at her and she did not want to see his expression.

It was a relief when Dame Perpetua appeared from the shadows of the doorway and said eagerly, breaking the silence between them, “There you are, Dame Frevisse! I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

“And I came here looking for you,” Frevisse returned. She and Sir Philip were both drawn to their feet by Dame Perpetua’s obvious excitement. “You found it?”

Smiling with triumph, Dame Perpetua held out a slender volume. “Here, in here, there’s exactly what you wanted.”

Frevisse took the book from her excitedly. “Why, it’s Galen.” The master of all doctors, the Roman authority second only to Aesculapius himself.

“Here.” Dame Perpetua took the book back and opened it to a place marked by a broken end of quill. “On the right side.”

She pointed and Frevisse read. Sir Philip came around to read over her shoulder. When they had finished, he stepped back and they all three looked at one another for a silent moment, until Dame Perpetua said, “It was Master Lionel who found it actually. Found the Galen and said he remembered something was in there about rashes and all.”

“I’ve never heard of such a thing as this,” Sir Philip said, indicating the book.

“Nor I, but there it is. Some of what I needed,” Frevisse said.

Dame Perpetua’s face fell. “Not everything?”

“It tells me in a general way what killed him, but not precisely. Nor who gave it to him. Or how. Though I’m beginning to guess,” she added.

Sir Philip looked at her sharply. “You have an idea of the murderer?”

“Oh, dear. I hoped I’d done so well,” Dame Perpetua sighed.

Frevisse patted her arm. “You’ve done wonderfully.” She raised her voice. “And so have you, Master Lionel. Thank you.”

Dame Perpetua said, “Oh, I forgot to tell you. Word has come that the crowner will be here certainly by late tomorrow morning.”

“Then the matter is out of your hands,” Sir Philip said to Frevisse.

He was right. The crowner would take what she had learned so far and thank her and dismiss her because there was no place for her, a nun and a woman, in his investigation. Bishop Beaufort would be satisfied. She could return to her grief and to tending her aunt, and be done with Sir Clement’s death. But last spring she had used her cleverness to shield the guilty from the law. She would probably never know whether she had been right to do so, or sinfully in error. But here, now, she had chance to make reparation for that by finding out another murderer, more deeply guilty than the one she had protected.

“No,” she said in answer to Sir Philip. “I’m not done with this matter yet.”

Chapter
15

Beaufort waited at the window, watching the bleak day. Below him the lead-dull waters of the moat roughened under the wind; beyond the moat, the black, weaving limbs of the elms troubled against the sky. He shivered slightly— the weather was turning more bitter by the hour—and turned back toward the room as one of his clerks ushered in Master Broun, Dame Frevisse, and her companion nun.

Beaufort frowned and sat down in his curved-arm chair without offering his ring to them or the suggestion that they be seated, too. He had expected Dame Frevisse, with inevitably the other nun, but not Master Broun, and did not care for the presumption. Guessing it was hers rather than his, he asked curtly, “You have reason for bringing Master Broun, Dame Frevisse?”

Master Broun showed his surprise. “My lord, I thought you wanted me, that perhaps you felt unwell. The stresses of these past days—”

“I am, thank God, in health.” Beaufort made a point of avoiding the attentions of physicians so far as he might. Given a chance, they found things wrong that they claimed needed to be treated in expensive ways that were usually uncomfortable and, in Beaufort’s opinion, mostly inefficacious. He understood too well in himself the lure of trying things because one had the power to do so not to recognize the trait in others. “Your being here is Dame Frevisse’s doing. She asked to see me.”

He fixed her with a look that held contained warning that his time was not to be abused. She bowed her head to him and with admirable brevity said not to him but to Master Broun, “I needed your very expert opinion on a medical matter and thought you would more readily and attentively give it if you understood his grace the cardinal was also interested.”

Master Broun again switched his gaze from her to Beaufort. “My lord, I don’t understand.”

“Nor do I,” the cardinal answered, “but I daresay Dame Frevisse is about to enlighten us.”

With her head bent a little, her hands neatly folded up her sleeves in front of her, she was an image of respect as she said to Master Broun, “You attended Sir Clement at his death. We spoke of it afterwards, you may remember.” Master Broun inclined his head in dignified acknowledgment and stayed silent. She continued, “By things that have been learned since then, it seems that he was poisoned.”

Startled, Master Broun hurriedly crossed himself twice while protesting to Beaufort, “Surely, my lord, the hand of God was rarely so clearly seen.” He turned to Dame Frevisse. “You saw the red mark of a hand on his face—”

“I didn’t,” she answered. “I saw only the welts and no pattern at all. Nor did anyone I asked about it. If it was there, only you saw it.”

She was plainly as set in her opinion as the physician was in his, and to forestall Master Broun’s protest and what might turn to acrimonious debate, Beaufort said, “Is this matter of the hand to the point, Dame?”

“No, my lord.”

“Then pass it by.” He made that a warning to her and added so Master Broun would equally understand, “I asked Dame Frevisse to look more nearly into the matter of Sir Clement’s death and give me her opinion on it. I pray you, heed her and answer what she asks you in your best wise.”

His face registering his protest, Master Broun looked sideways at Dame Frevisse and waited.

Her own expression bland and again respectful, she began, “Poison would be the most likely explanation—”

“I assure your grace, there is no such poison,” Master Broun interjected. “I am no expert on poisons, I assure you—” His tone indicated that no doctor worth his learning would be expert in such things. “But I am thoroughly familiar with the pharmacopoeia, and there is no drug, no plant, no combination thereof that will cause such symptoms as Sir Clement had.” He switched his officiousness to Dame Frevisse. “And I did most clearly see the mark of a hand, as if God smote him on the face.” He turned back to Beaufort and assured him, “A most holy and edifying sight before it faded after his death.”

“God moves in mysterious ways,” Beaufort murmured; and privately added that so did the minds of men. “Dame Frevisse?”

Very mildly—but Beaufort found he was becoming wary of her mildness—Dame Frevisse said, “The
Materia Medica
in Master Chaucer’s library agrees completely with what Master Broun has said. I could find no poison that works as this one did.”

Master Broun nodded, satisfied.

“But there is this.” She withdrew her hands from her opposite sleeves where she had modestly kept them this while, with a book in one of them. She held it out to Master Broun and said very humbly, “I’m not sure—my Latin is so poor—but there seems something here. Would you look at it?”

Master Broun looked at Beaufort instead, in clear hope of being relieved of so much nonsense. Beaufort nodded toward the book, and, reluctantly, Master Broun took it. There was a marker. He opened to it, and Dame Frevisse reached out to point to a particular place, saying, “It’s there. Can you tell us what it says?”

Master Broun instead turned back to the front of the book to find its title. “A work by Galen,” he observed.

“Then an authority not to be trifled with,” Beaufort said, allowing a trace of his impatience to show. He did not care to be involved in other people’s games.

Master Broun set himself promptly to the passage Dame Frevisse had indicated. Beaufort and she waited in silence while he read it through, and then reread it before finally looking up to say in a solemn voice meant to evidence his deep thought and judgment on the matter, “I remember me this passage now from my days at Oxford, but never in all my years at practice have I encountered the matter, to bring it to my mind again until this moment.”

“Meaning?” Beaufort asked. He edged the word with sufficient impatience to goad Master Broun to the point.

But Master Broun was bolstered by his expertise now and answered with deliberate consideration, “Meaning that those symptoms evidenced by Sir Clement previous to his death—the stifled breathing, the welts over his face and neck and arms, the great itching—do indeed occur, under certain circumstances from the poison inherent in certain foods.”

Impatiently, and more so because Dame Frevisse already knew the answer and was forcing both him and Master Broun through these steps, Beaufort said, “But everything Sir Clement ate and drank at the feast, he shared with others. Didn’t he?” he demanded of Dame Frevisse. “Or have you learned otherwise?”

“Everything he ate or drank, others did, too,” she agreed.

Master Broun raised an authoritative hand to forestall any other comments. “There are foods, you see—this is very rare, but I remember a fellow student during my time at Oxford would never eat cheese; he said it made him ill and indeed cited Galen on it. I do remember now”—he tapped the book he still held—“that there are foods that in themselves are wholesome in all respects except that in certain people they cause distress precisely such as Sir Clement suffered.” He was warming to the subject and went on with enthusiasm. “Even if only touched, they can cause itching and extreme discomfort. And though initial ingestion of whatever particular food afflicts a person may cause only a mild reaction, the effect can be cumulative so that experiencing the food one time too many will bring on symptoms so severe that death will result, though earlier attacks were not fatal.”

“And that was why Sir Clement was not terrified when I saw him partly recovered in Sir Philip’s room,” Frevisse put in. “He had experienced this before and thought he knew what to expect.”

“So, in brief,” Beaufort said, “there was something at the feast poisonous to Sir Clement but to no one else. He ate of it unknowingly and died.”

“I believe that would cover all the facts, yes,” Master Broun agreed.

Dame Frevisse said tartly, “So you no longer think it was God who struck him down?”

Master Broun flushed and drew himself up to glare at her as he snapped, “That no longer seems the obvious answer, no.”

“Thank you both,” Beaufort said crisply, cutting off whatever response Dame Frevisse was opening her mouth to make. “You have been most helpful, Master Broun. Invaluable. You’ll receive witness of our pleasure. But pray you both, hold silent on this matter for this while at least.”

He made it a request, knowing it would be taken as a command. Master Broun, mollified by the praise and promise of reward, bowed his acceptance. “As your worship wishes.”

“Then you have our leave to go. Dame Frevisse, we would have you stay,” he added more sternly.

Master Broun cast her a sideways look, satisfied she was in trouble of some sort, and bowed himself from the room. When the door had shut behind the doctor, Beaufort gestured her to sit opposite him, and resting his elbows on the arms of his chair, his hands clasped judiciously in front of him, he regarded her for a while in silence. She sat unruffled under his gaze, more self-contained than some great lords of the realm on whom he had used the same look. He said, “That was well done.”

In acknowledgment of his praise, she bent her head and responded, “I doubt he would have been so cooperative except that you were here.”

“Which is why you requested my presence. My congratulations. You seem to have mastered many of the frailties of your sex, overcoming even the pride that might have refused to make use of my authority over him. You’ve dealt with the matter both logically and with some degree of boldness.”

He was interested in seeing her reaction, but for a prolonged moment she held silent, and he found that, like Thomas, her expression was not always easy to read. Then she said evenly, “I’ve never noticed that pride is particular to either sex, and, by your worship’s leave, I’ve known as many illogical men as I have women, if not more. Nor have I ever thought—despite what the stories say and men seem to admire—that boldness was a virtue if not wisely used.”

She said it so politely, with no change of expression or tone, that it was a moment before Beaufort realized she had completely refused his compliment to her on the terms he had given it. Drily, he asked, “You don’t care for Aquinas’s opinion on the essential frailty of woman’s nature?”

“The blessed St. Thomas Aquinas refers to the frailty of her soul’s vigor and body’s strength, which do not match man’s. But we were referring to my mind, and of that St. Thomas says, if I remember correctly, ”The image of God in its principal manifestation—namely, the intellect—is found both in man and woman.“”

“And you see yourself man’s equal therefore.”

“In worth before the eyes of God, yes. And in our abilities to serve Him, without doubt. But we were made, at the time of creation itself, to be man’s handmaid. That at least I will agree to.” Unexpectedly she smiled, looking much younger, though her age was impossible to guess in the anonymity of her black habit, close-fitting wimple, and heavy drape of veil. “But in return I think you might be willing to grant the old adage that woman was the last thing God made, and therefore the best.”