The Clerk’s Tale (22 page)

‘You’re hot,“ Domina Elisabeth said. ”Sister Joane showed me where the borage mixture is kept. I’ll ready some for you.“

When she was gone out, Frevisse asked, to* give Sister Ysobel something to think about besides her dying body, “What have you thought of?”

Unsteady with her ragged breathing, Sister Ysobel whispered, “The other thing… I didn’t tell the… young crowner. That when Master Montfort came into the garden… he said something angrily. A word. No more. Then went to the waiting man. There were only his footsteps, going from the gate. The other man, wherever he was, didn’t move. Then they talked.”

‘But you heard nothing they said,“ Frevisse said.

‘There was hardly… anything to hear.“ Sister Ysobel closed her eyes, waited until her breath caught up to her words, and went on, ”They hardly… spoke at all.“

Domina Elisabeth returned with a small basin of water, saying as she set it on the table, “The borage is brewing. A few more minutes,” before she went out again, leaving Frevisse to take and wring out a cloth from the cool water and wipe Sister Ysobel’s hot face.

Sister Ysobel, used to having that done, kept on from where she had been. “One of them said something. The other one asked what sounded like a question. An angry question. That was the longest thing either of them said. The other man answered him back, angrily, too, and only a few words, and that was all.”

‘That was all? They didn’t quarrel? A greeting, a question, an answer, and nothing else?“

‘Nothing else.“

Frevisse considered that before finally saying, slowly, “The other man was there to kill Montfort. From what you say, there was no quarrel. One of them asked a question, the other answered and then, whoever the other man was, he simply stabbed Montfort. We don’t know why Montfort was there, but the other man came for no other reason than to kill him.”

Sister Ysobel made a small, agreeing movement of her head. “Yes,” she breathed. “Yes.”

‘But I doubt it would have helped the crowner any, even had you been able to say it to him.“

Worry clearing from her brow, Sister Ysobel said on a sigh, “No. I don’t suppose it would.”

It did not even make clear that Montfort had come to the garden to meet someone he knew, although he’d be unlikely to agree to a secret meeting with a stranger.

Unless the stranger was a messenger from someone he did know, someone whose asking or order for such a secret meeting he would accept.

Who had asked the question Sister Ysobel thought she had heard? Had Montfort asked something and the murderer answered him, then stabbed him? Or had the murderer asked and killed Montfort when his answer had been Wrong? Her guess would be the murderer had asked it and, when Montfort’s answer had not been what he wanted, had killed him. But either way was possible. And did it matter?

Trying to find something to ask that might lead somewhere useful, she asked, “Did you hear the murderer leave?”

‘I heard footfalls on the gravel again. Briefly.“ She paused to work at breathing before going on, ”Then there was only silence until the gate creaked again. I thought they had moved further away… and were speaking too low for me to hear anything.“

‘But you didn’t go on with the Office?“

Sister Ysobel’s smile was small and bitter and tired all at once. “I’d lost my place and couldn’t… bring my mind back to it. It’s hard to think sometimes. I took up the rosary instead.”

Domina Elisabeth returned with the borage mixture in a shallow cup. Sister Ysobel tried to sit up and Frevisse helped her with an arm behind her back and a careful pushing of the pillows, then moved aside for Domina Elisabeth to hold the cup to Sister Ysobel’s lips, patient while she drank in small sips between long pauses, until the cup was empty. Worn out with the effort, eyes closed, Sister Ysobel whispered her thanks to Domina Elisabeth, who asked as she set the cup down, “Would you like us to leave you to sleep now?”

Sister Ysobel moved her head slightly side to side on the pillow. “Stay,” she whispered. “Talk and let me listen.”

Domina Elisabeth and Frevisse traded looks, and as they sat down side by side on the next bed, where they had sat before, Domina Elisabeth said, “You’ve heard me more than enough these past few days. Dame Frevisse, do you talk for a while.”

That was fair and Frevisse cast quickly through her mind for something to say. There had been enough said about the murder for now and other people surely brought talk about nunnery matters. Better to find something far different, and on that thought’s heels Frevisse asked, “Have you ever been to Spain? On the pilgrimage to St. James at Compestela?”

Sister Ysobel’s lips made the word “No,” and Frevisse let the story take itself, building partly from her own very small-child memories of riding in a woven pannier on the side of a quiet ass led by her father along pale, dusty Spanish roads, the smell of orange blossoms in the air, but mixing it with other people’s haps and hazards heard over the years—including the pack-laden mule who fell while crossing a flooded stream and, even though it was rescued from drowning, refused ever to cross running water again and had to be sold to the nearest farmer who would take it.

Sister Ysobel’s laughter over that brought on a brief heave of coughing that jerked her forward, drove her back into the pillow, and left her struggling with quickened, shallow breathing and blood flecked at one corner of her mouth. Wordless, Domina Elisabeth squeezed out the cloth in the basin and wiped away the blood, and Sister Ysobel after faintly smiling thanks whispered, “Go on, please.”

Frevisse did, more carefully this time, telling how in Compestela’s streets and market a pilgrim could buy St. James’s badge of a scallop shell made of everything from gold to pewter to poorly glazed plaster. “The only kind of scallop shell you can’t buy there is a real one, I think,” she said, though she did not remember for herself, had only heard her father laughing about it sometimes over the years afterwards.

Lying white and still against the pillow but smiling, Sister Ysobel whispered, “Isn’t that always the way?” And then, “I think I’ll sleep awhile now.”

‘Of course, my dear.“ Domina Elisabeth rose and leaned over to kiss her forehead and Frevisse could see the family resemblence there must once have been—a shape of nose and cheek—before disease had brought Sister Ysobel down to dying flesh sunk slack over bones.

‘I just wish“—Sister Ysobel whispered—”that I could stand one more time… on a high hill… in sunlight and the wind.“

For a moment Frevisse thought what a strange longing that was for someone who had chosen to live out her years cloistered inside nunnery walls. And then thought that after all it was not so strange. Life’s end was the time when longings were most likely to rise up for things left behind or undone. Even if they had been left behind in favor of a greater longing, left undone because of a greater need, now was when they came, the ghosts of a life unlived. But useful ghosts, because how was anyone to know the true value of a thing except by knowing what it had cost them? How could anyone make final peace with all they were leaving unless they looked at it, judged it, valued it?

For herself, Frevisse could only hope that when her dying time came, her own last longing and regret would be as simple as a wish to stand one last time on a high hill in sunlight and the wind.

Quietly, careful of their footfalls and the door, they left Sister Ysobel to her sleep.

Chapter 14

By midday the world was soaking, with mud underfoot and every eave steadily dripping when Frevisse and Domina Elisabeth picked their way across the street to Lady Agnes’s to find four more guests had come, three men and a woman, friends of Lady Agnes ridden in for the funeral, though Frevisse gathered from their cheerful talk as they stood together in the hall waiting for the tables to be laid for dinner that they were here more for curiosity’s sake than out of mourning for Mont-fort. When all was ready and they moved to be seated at the high table, Lady Agnes bade the men—Frevisse had not tried to keep their names in mind—to sit all together °n her right because, she said, they would talk of things the women would not want to and therefore she would have the women on her left, the better to talk without the men.

For herself, Frevisse was pleased to be put to the table’s far end with Domina Elisabeth between her and the other woman and Lady Agnes. From there she would hardly be part of any talk and able to listen or not, as she chose. Mostly she chose not. The nearest talk, between Lady Agnes and the woman and sometimes Domina Elisabeth, was as easy to foretell as Lady Agnes had said the men’s would be—of the weather and neighbors and children. Frevisse, sitting with eyes lowered and all her heed seemingly on the well-spiced, roasted meatballs and creamed parsnip soup, found herself listening past Domina Elisabeth’s agreement that indeed the snow was melting fast today, who would have thought it after yesterday’s cold, to the men’s talk at the table’s other end. If the meal had been a full feast, the hall full of people, there would have been no hearing them, but there were only household folk at the lower table today, speaking quietly in the presence of their betters, while the men were trading comments on Montfort, boisterous with each other’s company and most of what they said coming clearly over the women’s talk. The surprise for Frevisse lay in how little ill of Montfort they had to say. The times she had encountered him, his stupidity had seemed exceeded only by his rudeness, but among the three men here there was a kind of grudging respect for the way he had been rising in the world.

‘He was sharp enough,“ the farthest man granted to something one of the others had said. ”Look where he started from and where he ended.“

‘He ended dead,“ the man beside him said.

They all laughed but the first man went on, insisting, “So will we all, but in the meanwhile Montfort did well enough. Look at him buying that manor two years back.”

‘And this year he bought his way into the escheatorship,“ the third man said. ”Word is that he was looking to be sheriff one of these years soon.“

God forbid, Frevisse thought, while the second man said, “He’d been making warm with Suffolk, the word is.”

‘Oh, aye. Suffolk.“ The first man’s tone carried a burden of unsaid things and a moment’s silence among the men agreed with him before the third one said, ”Have you heard he’s been given keeping of the Norwich bishopric until a new bishop is made?“

‘He’ll make a pretty penny off of it, that’s sure.“

‘He does off of everything else.“

Frevisse was grateful that if Domina Elisabeth or Lady Agnes heard any of that, neither of them saw fit to offer comment on her own tenuous link to Suffolk. For her own part, she would as soon forget it but it was unsurprised that Montfort had been trying to attach there.

Just as James Champyon was.

His purpose and Montfort’s had been running the same way, it seemed. Had they run together? Because if they did, then neither Master nor Mistress Champyon had had anything to fear from Montfort, no reason to want him dead. Never a man to be put off from his own ends unless forced to it, Montfort would have found in their favor over the contested manner, whatever the truth might be.

But what if Master Champyon had been Montfort’s rival for Suffolk’s interest? Or Montfort been playing to some other end than the plain one and somehow against Master Champyon’s interests? Then Master Champyon or even his stepson Rowland might have had reason to want him dead rather than treacherously alive.

But to what other end than Suffolk’s favor could Montfort have been playing?

And how would Master Champyon or anyone else have known of it, been certain enough of it to go to the length and danger of murdering Montfort?

She knew too little and had to depend too much on things overheard or happened on by chance, as with these men now—and following her own thoughts, she had lost what they were saying—or with Sister Ysobel this morning.

Losing hold a little on her patience, she scooped her spoon forcefully into a browned-almond-topped white rice pudding, tired of time spent eating and thankful that since there would be food after the funeral and therefore no point to feeding full now, the meal was shorter than it might have been. Once done and making ready to go out, Lady Agnes and her woman guest held brief debate on whether they should wear the thick wooden patterns that would put them dry-footed above the snowmelt and mud, but mindful of the clatter they would make on the church’s stone floor or the bother of dealing with them if taken off and carried, they decided against, despite Let-ice’s frown at Lady Agnes. Instead, with Frevisse slightly trailing behind everyone else and their busy talk, they all made their way into the street and along ft with much swerving from puddles, the women with lifted skirts.

There was drier going across the priory’s cobbled yard and into the churchyard with its wide, graveled path between the graves, leading from its penticed gateway to the wide gathering place outside the church’s north door. With the door still closed, no one was going in yet, the perhaps two score other folk standing around in clusters, most of them knowing each other, to judge by the steady on-go of subdued talk among them and how widely welcomed Lady Agnes and the men and woman with her were welcomed. But Domina Elisabeth had fallen back from among them to Frevisse’s side when they came into the churchyard and now she drew Frevisse aside with her, saying low-voiced, “I think it best that we’re seen to be here on our own, rather than with Lady Agnes. Because of this inheritance matter. It wouldn’t be seemly to give appearance of being somehow entangled with it.”