The Novice’s Tale (24 page)

“Or been so far into her prayers she was unaware of anything else.”

Frevisse nodded agreement. “So there might have been others in and out and no way for us to learn of them except to go on asking. Will you come with me? Something that’s said may mean more to you than it does to me, or more to both of us if we’re both there to hear it.”

“Assuredly. Where first?”

Frevisse smiled wryly. “To Dame Alys, since we’re so near the kitchen.”

The kitchen still seethed with purposeful movement. The ox was browning on its spit, and the baked cakes were cooling on a side table; the smell of baking bread was rich in the air. Dame Alys was in heavy talk with one of Lady Ermentrude’s servants near the door. F
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> pausing to draw her attention, was aware that the low-voiced running talk all through the kitchen had stopped on their entry, and that faces turning toward them were bright with nervous excitement. Somehow word must have come to them that Dame Frevisse and Dame Claire were looking into this matter on orders, from the prioress. Frevisse said nothing, but simply gestured a summons at Dame Alys, who for a change came without complaint or her spoon.

They returned to the slipe, and before Frevisse could say anything, Dame Alys burst out, “So is it true? Someone finally did what the old…” she reconsidered her word and said, “… lady has been begging to have done these fifty years or more?”

With a quelling lack of excitement, Frevisse said, “She was assuredly poisoned. Someone has killed her and Dom-ina Edith has set Dame Claire and me to asking questions.”

“And there were truly demons come to grab her Hell-bound soul? You saw them?”

“No one saw them,” Dame Claire said wearily. “Lady Ermentrude was jibbering in some sort of brain fever and Thomasine said she must be seeing demons. That was all it was, just her brain fever and too much wine. It was before she was poisoned anyway.”

“Oh. Thomasine.” Dame Alys dismissed the matter with regret but firmly. “As holy a child as I ever hope to meet, but she’s not got the sense God gives a Michaelmas goose. So what about Martha then? She was poisoned, too, they’re saying.”

Frevisse said, “It appears she took what was meant for Lady Ermentrude.”

Dame Alys crossed herself, shaking her head. “Greed and temper were always her failings. God’s will be done,” she added piously.

“But,” Frevisse asked, “who made the first milksop for Lady Ermentrude?”

“First one? She had more? The greedy—” Dame Alys stopped herself and said, “I did. Bad enough I had to take the time, and for such as she, but Thomasine is a perfect simpleton at any task not based on prayer.”

“What bread did you use?”

“None of my fine new loaves, I assure you! No, since it was to be soaked in milk anyway, I gave her an old loaf I’d meant to use as crumbs for thickening.”

“And what milk and honey?”

Dame Alys’s thin eyebrows climbed up her broad forehead. “Whatever was sitting on the hob and in the cupboard. It’s good enough for us, it’s good enough for the likes of Lady Errnentrude.”

“And did Thomasine go straight back to the guest house?”

“Now, did I go along and show her the way? I’ve better things…” Dame Alys’s expression changed. “Ah, no, that’s when the shrieking started and Martha took off to see how close she could get to it, and I sent Thomasine packing after her.”

And Thomasine had arrived at Lady Errnentrude’s room in Martha’s wake; she had not had time to go anywhere else. Unless she had gone to the infirmary on her way to the kitchen. But Frevisse thought she had not had much time for that, not if the milksop was all made in the little while before Lady Errnentrude began to scream.

Dame Alys, unhobbled by doubts, thrust onward. “That old harridan, thinking Thomasine belonged anywhere but in St. Frideswide’s! It’s God’s blessing I don’t have to cook another meal for her, but how long is it until that son of hers takes himself off?”

“Tomorrow or the next day, we hope,” Frevisse said. “But meanwhile he’s set men to mend the chimney and once they do, you won’t be bothered anymore.”

“It can’t happen soon enough. There, I’ve told you all I know. Can I go back to making sure those numb-wits don’t decide to use the rice for flour or some other foolishness?”

Frevisse excused her and drew a deep, steadying breath when she was gone. Dame Claire, with her blessed ability to keep silent, waited while she thought, until finally Frevisse said, “What I’m beginning to want more than anything else is the reason why someone wanted Lady Errnentrude dead right at this moment. Sir Walter is right, this was an awkward time and place to do a murder, and on holy ground beside.”

“Is there anything we can do besides asking questions?” Dame Claire asked.

“Not that I know of. And I can’t even be sure they’re the right ones.”

“You can only ask the questions you have. After all, they may lead on to others.”

Frevisse half-smiled. “True enough. Let’s see what more we can be learning.”

Not very much, it transpired.

“I haven’t noticed anyone much moved to grief for the lady,” Frevisse said, an hour later. “Not even her own son. He seems much hotter for revenge than burdened with grief.”

They had managed not to meet Sir Walter face-to-face, but Frevisse noticed, as they crossed the hall again in search of the servant Maudelyn, that more than a few people pointedly shifted out of their way and no one seemed inclined to meet their eyes.

“I think,” she said quietly, “that Sir Walter has made his displeasure with us known.”

“How long before he demands again we give him Thomasine?”‘

“He’ll want Master Montfort to back his demand this time, so it depends on how long it takes for him to terrify our crowner into it. Not very long, I’m afraid.”

Maudelyn proved almost as difficult to run to ground as Maryon, but once cornered, she seemed prepared to talk with them. She was a homely woman, the sort who would be normally cheerful and glad of a gossip, even with her betters. But now her hands twisted in her skirt and she kept her eyes averted. “Yes, I remember what happened as clearly as can be. It was just as I’ve already told you, and Sir Walter. There’s nothing more to be said, I promise you.”

“Is there anyone you can think of who would be wanting your mistress dead?”

Maudelyn shrugged. “None.”

“She was a kind mistress?”

Maudelyn hesitated, then shrugged again. “She could be right cruel, to me and to everyone around her, when she chose. And she mostly did. It’s no wonder—” She stopped short.

“What? That someone murdered her?” asked Dame Claire.

A hand over her mouth, Maudelyn nodded.

“Come now,” said Frevisse in her strictest voice, “tell us the truth. It may be that we already know what it is you’re trying to hide.”

Maudelyn’s eyes widened. Her hand slowly came down. “It doesn’t matter, I guess,” she muttered. “With my lady dead, I’ve lost my place anyhow.” She took a breath and straightened her back. “”Twas me that drank the wine.“

“What wine?”

“In the bottle. I saw it and nobody was paying much attention, so I took it and hid it under my skirt and said I needed to visit the garderobe, and I drank it there and dropped the bottle down the hole. There! I’ve told you!” She broke into tears.

Frevisse absently patted Maudelyn’s plump shoulder and looked at Dame Claire, who was looking back, both of them dismayed at this destruction of the most solid part of their theory.

“Have you been ill since you drank the wine?” Dame Claire asked.

“N-no,” Maudelyn blubbered. Her tears stopped as if her eyes had been plugged with a cork. “Is it true, then? That it was poison killed her? And it was in the wine? By Our Lady’s veil, I drank from the very bottle!”

They assured her that could not be the case, as she was herself still alive, and left her still amazed. When they were out of earshot, Dame Claire asked, “Now what?”

“I don’t know. It seemed so clear the poison must be in the bottle. I should have guessed otherwise when Lady Isobel told me she opened the twin of it for Sir John. Because unless she marked it somehow, how could she tell which was the deadly bottle after they rubbed around one another on that hard ride? It should have been plain to me then that the poison could not have been in the wine.”

The cloister bell began to chime, startling them both.

“Vespers,” Dame Claire said, relieved. “We can’t do anything more today.”

“Except ask Thomasine if she’s remembered seeing anything more,” Frevisse said as they left the guest house and descended the stairs to the yard, hurrying a little through the soft fall of rain. “But she won’t. She’ll repeat she prayed all night and saw or heard no one and there’s the end of it. Why does the child bother me so much?”

“Because she’s the child you very nearly might have been, if you’d had her childhood leisure to indulge in piety,” Dame Claire said.

Frevisse looked sideways at her, and found her own first amusement at such an idea sliding into dismay with the discomforting thought that it might be true. Except for Domina Edith, Dame Claire knew more about Frevisse’s deep piety than anyone else at St. Frideswide’s; and knew better than anyone that it was only her early childhood that nourished a need to be as pragmatic as devout. It was a welcome diversion from such thoughts to see Robert Fenner coming purposefully toward them, reaching them as they reached the cloister gate.

As they crowded under the eaves, out of the rain, Frevisse saw again the large bruise that was discoloring Robert’s left cheek and jaw. As Dame Claire reached to touch it, he flinched back from her.

Frevisse asked quickly, “Was it Sir Walter gave you the bruise? How did you anger him that badly?”

Robert jerked his hand in quick dismissal. “I was too slow picking up a boot he’d dropped, that’s all. His mother was quick with her hands, too, but not as strong.”

“So he’s taken you back into his household.”

“Yes. I’m a Fenner after all, and we take care of our own. If roughly, sometimes.”‘

“Then perhaps you can be of service to us—and Thomasine, if you will.”

His grin was as charming as an angel’s. And his mind as quick to understand. “You want me to listen to anything I can, and see you hear of it afterwards.”

“Yes.”

“Gladly. Anything to serve the Lady Thomasine. You’re worried for her, aren’t you?”

“And so are you, I think.”

“I think her very fair and very sweet.” A faint blush over his cheeks made him suddenly look even younger than he was. “But I’m also without inheritance and have few hopes and know that even if she willed it, she could not be for me. So all I can be is worried for her. So far it’s all Sir Walter’s idea to have her out of here, but with a little more pushing, Master Montfort of the little wits and great ambition is going to agree with him. The easiest choice will be the best choice for him, he thinks.”

“And that’s where Thomasine’s peril lies,” Frevisse said bluntly. “So if you hear anything you think I ought to know, any of the priory’s lay servants will know how to take word to me about it. Will you be able to do that?”

“Yours at your need, my lady,” Robert said as if she were a queen. “Will you take Lady Thomasine a letter from me?”

“Never,” she said promptly.

He grinned around the worry in his eyes, and said, “Well, there’s something else, too.” He bowed. “You’ve been asking questions about who was in Lady Ermentrude’s chamber last night. You’d best ask me, too.”

Frevisse and Dame Claire exchanged looks. The bell was still calling to Vespers, but there was this task to be done as well. Best talk to him now while he came willing to speak; Domina Edith would almost surely pardon their being late.