The Novice’s Tale (28 page)

“So she accepted a gift of wine from them? Or had she brought it with her?”

The woman shrugged. “Not her! No, she sent for wine, she knew they kept malmsey particular for her. Sent that mincing dark-haired cat to fetch it. But that was Lady Ermentrude for you. Bring the house down with her temper and then demand the best it has to give. I don’t hesitate to say it, though she’s dead and coffined.”

“It sounds as if it was a huge quarrel, and no forgiveness anywhere,” Frevisse said.

“No, not like that at all. A huge quarrel, right enough, but it was Lady Ermentrude would have none of making peace. And they came riding after her, didn’t they, with more of her favorite wine for a gift. And Lady Isobel sitting up with her that last night. No, it wasn’t my lord and lady who didn’t want peace.”

“But what was it all for? No one has ever said.”

Disappointment shaded the woman’s face. “Now there’s the pity. All that shouting and none of us could make out the sense of it. The solar door’s that thick, it muffled all but the noise.”

“And no one happened to walk outside the window?” Frevisse smiled to make a conspiratorial joke of it, as if it were the thing she would have thought to do.

The woman smothered appreciative laughter, but her eyes gleamed, showing she was glad to find a nun so ready to forget her dignity and have a friendly gossip. “Well, I won’t say it might not have crossed someone’s mind mayhap, but outside the solar is Lady Isobel’s own private walled garden, and no one quite dared to be going in there like that, over the wall. It would be worth your life to cross her like that. She’s a fine lady but she can be sharp when she’s been crossed, you know.”

Frevisse said with real regret, “And so all that disturbance keeping everyone awake, and no idea at all what they were on about?”

The woman shrugged. “Something about a marriage. That word was said loud enough a few times. And something about it being none of Lady Ermentrude’s business. But nothing else clear enough to make any sense. It made all of us in the household nervous, I promise you.”

And moreover what a waste, her expression said: a splendid subject for gossip spoiled by an honest carpenter’s thick doors.

Frevisse shared her disappointment, for other reasons, and went to knock on Sir John and Lady Isobel’s door.

Lady Isobel’s voice bade her enter. Except for the very best one, which Sir Walter had now, the guest-hall bedchambers were small and sparely furnished, but Lady Isobel had made this one into her own. A dress lay in careful folds over a stool; a small prayer book was open on the plain table; Sir John’s cloak hung evenly from a wall hook, its folds arranged by a loving female hand. Even the air was faintly scented with her perfume.

Sir John lay dozing on the bed, propped up on pillows, one hand still cupped to his swollen jaw, his face pale with pain. Lady Isobel rose with a quick and graceful movement to come between him and Frevisse, saying in her light voice, “Forgive me. I thought you were the girl come back with the medicine I’ve begged of your infirmarian.”

Frevisse, remaining by the door, said, “I won’t stay long. I have only a question or two I need to ask.”

“Questions?” Lady Isobel’s slight frown hardly marred her smooth loveliness. Frevisse had the sudden—and ungracious—thought that Lady Isobel probably went to a great deal of trouble to keep from marring her loveliness.

“About the quarrel Lady Ermentrude had with you before she returned here.”

Sir John stirred and groaned. Lady Isobel looked around at him with concern and a quieting lift of her hand. “It’s not the servant with the medicine yet, my heart. It’s Dame Frevisse. Just a little longer.” Then to Frevisse, with a tiny show of exasperation, “We’ve told you of that already. We’ve told everyone. She came on us unwarned and ranting. Her wits were unhinged, by drink or a brain fever maybe, I don’t know.”

“But what was she ranting about?”

Lady Isobel drew a deep sigh. “She was demanding that our marriage be ended. She kept demanding it over and over and never listened to anything we tried to say. She frightened me and made no sense at all.”

“What was her thought behind the demand? Did she ever say?”

Lady Isobel firmly shook her head. “No more than her mad thought that Thomasine was brought here by coercion. If there was more to it, she was so incoherent I never discerned it.”

“You know that Master Montfort wants to arrest Thomasine for Lady Ermentrude’s death?”

Lady Isobel put her fingers to her lips. Her face was grieved. “I can’t believe she would do something like that. How could she have been so desperate? She’s meant to enter St. Frideswide’s since she was old enough to say so. I suppose Montfort thinks it was our lady aunt insisting she should not that frightened her more than she could bear. But how someone set on being a holy nun could bring herself to do it—it passes thought.”

“You think she might have done it?”

Lady Isobel looked at her with wide and bewildered eyes. “You think perhaps she didn’t? Sir Walter and Master Montfort seem so sure. And Master Montfort is a very knowing man in matters such as this.”

Frevisse managed to keep her voice untouched by her incredulity. “Master Montfort—”

Sir John moved on the bed, making a small, painful sound, then mumbling, “Who…”

Lady Isobel went to him quickly. “Hush now, my dear, hush. I know it hurts but more medicine will be here soon. Dame Claire promised. Then you’ll have ease and can truly sleep. I know you need your silence. The lady is going now.”

That was more than a mere hint, but Frevisse asked, “Have you ever been to France, you or your husband?”

Lady Isobel, still bent over Sir John, her hand on his forehead, did not even look around. “France?” she said distractedly. “No. Why should we ever want to go to France? Lie easy, my love. She’s going now so you can rest.”

Frevisse went with outward grace, a brief farewell, and the unsettling realization that Lady Isobel was willing to believe that Thomasine had killed their aunt.

She was at the guest hall’s outer door, at the head of the steps to the yard and intent on taking what she had so far learned to Domina Edith, when Master Montfort said officiously from behind her, “Dame, we wish to speak to you.”

She stopped and turned. Her single long look at his nervous, determined face and Sir Walter’s angry one behind him told her enough, but very politely, controlling her own voice and face, she said, “Yes, my lord?”

“We must needs talk with you, Dame,” Master Montfort said.

“At your service, my lord.” Deliberately, calmly, she met his eyes, looked past him to Sir Walter and added, “But in God’s first. It is coming on the hour of Sext and I must go to the church.”

Sir Walter’s lips clamped angrily tight. “To give comfort to your little sanctuary nun? I’ve posted my guards. There’ll be no stealing her away from the nunnery without I know about it. And word has gone to the sheriff, so when her sanctuary time is up, he’ll have the girl anyway. Why draw this out for everyone? It’s your doing that put her there—”

Lifting her voice to be heard across the yard and into the hall, Frevisse said, “And let you be grateful for it since it kept you from breaking both England’s law and the law of God’s Holy Church.”

Sir Walter began to color again. Frevisse reflected that a man so easily angered to red would never make old age. She knew that nothing would satisfy him except having his own way, so that she might as well not even waste more time quarreling with him. Making sure her voice still carried to everyone, she said, “I have duties now. I pray you excuse me to them.”

She made to turn away from both of them. “God’s teeth!” Sir Walter swore. “Take her, Montfort, you fool!”

Frevisse grabbed up her skirts and bolted down the stairs toward the cloister door.

Behind her Sir Walter bellowed, “Hold her! One of you down there! Stop her!”

There were men scattered across the yard. A few began to move, but uncertainly, not clear on whether he meant her, and how they were supposed to lay hands on a nun. Only two were quick enough to intercept her. One was a large man who only needed to move a few yards sideways to block the cloister door. As he moved to do so, Robert came suddenly at her from the side. He grabbed her by the upper arms and said fiercely under his breath, “Fight me,” as he swung her around and staggered toward the cloister door as if carried by the force of her running.

Frevisse jerked an arm free and clouted him over his ear. He staggered and ducked, and they lurched forward, almost into the large man in their way. He shifted sideways, circling to try and catch hold of her, too. Robert yelled, pushed her away, and grabbed for his ankle as if he had been kicked. Hopping and yelping, he managed to lurch into the other man, staggering him off balance and bringing him down in a heap with Robert on top.

Frevisse flung herself at the door, but even as the latch gave under her hand, hands grabbed at her from behind, dragging her back and spinning her around. The other man and Robert still lay on the cobbles. It was Sir Walter, quicker than all the others. He hauled her away from the door, out into the center of the yard.

“Boldly done, Dame. But I have you now and here you’ll stay. If we can’t have the novice, then the nunnery can’t have you, unless your prioress thinks again and offers a fair exchange.”

“A fool’s exchange,” Frevisse retorted breathlessly. “And you little know our prioress if you think she’ll make it. Nor the bishop either. You’ll find yourselves excommunicate if you go on this way.”

“Damn the bishop, and that silly old woman your prioress! My mother’s murderer does not go free!”

“I beg your pardon for intruding,” a familiar voice said quietly at Sir Walter’s back. “I don’t think you heard me come.”

Sir Walter spun around. Thomas Chaucer was standing dismounted beside his horse under the gateway from the outer yard, his mounted men behind him: He was regarding Sir Walter coolly, not seeming to see Frevisse at all. His gaze traveled around the yard and up to Montfort, still gaping at the head of the steps. Chaucer nodded to him in polite greeting and then strolled forward to Sir Walter. At his moving, Montfort hasted down the steps, reaching Sir Walter just as Chaucer was saying, with mild interest, “Is there some sort of trouble here, my dear?”

Frevisse, in her great relief, had to hold an urge to laugh at Sir Walter’s face as, confronted with so important a man as Chaucer, he struggled to curb his anger. Very evenly she said, “A little trouble, Uncle, but it’s being sorted out, I think.”

Sir Walter jerked away from Montfort’s, plucking at his sleeve and demanded, “What are you doing here, Chaucer?”

The question was more peremptory than polite. Montfort made a choking noise of protest. Sir Walter far outranked Chaucer in title and birth, but Chaucer’s power and connections went far beyond any Sir Walter could claim. The part of Sir Walter’s mind not taken up with his anger knew it, but for just now he plainly did not care. “What brings you here?” he repeated.

“Your mother’s’ death, surely,” Chaucer said, unof-fended. He looked casually around the yard again. “I heard she’d suddenly died and I came this way in hopes of offering condolences to you before you took her body home to burial. Is there a problem?”

“There’s murder. My mother was murdered and this woman is keeping the murderer from us.”

Chaucer looked at Frevisse in surprise. “Are you, my dear? I raised a niece in my own house who would behave like that?” Without waiting for her answer, he turned to Sir Walter. “Your mother was murdered?”‘

Sir Walter’s face was shifting expressions rapidly. But he answered belligerently enough,“Poisoned. By their novice. And now she’s taken sanctuary to keep from justice.”

“Poisoned,” Frevisse agreed quickly, “but not by Thomasine.”

“Then who else?” Sir Walter snarled. “Who else had chance and reason both for doing it?”

“That little mouse of a child I saw last time I was here?” Chaucer’s tone was still mild, as if no one’s voice had been raised. He glanced at Montfort, who nodded to show he agreed with Sir Walter then bowed to Chaucer. “Really, my dear Frevisse, if she’s taken to poisoning, I wouldn’t think you’d want her anywhere about.”