The Apostate's Tale

Chapter 25

Shaken, Frevisse stared down at the huddle of Sister Cecely. The grief and anger that had torn her voice, the outright terror on her face before she collapsed, had been of a woman in vast, staggering pain.

And yet Frevisse found herself turning away from her with no word said.

Found herself leaving the room.

Found Abbot Gilberd standing in the cloister walk just outside the door.

Dame Perpetua, surely having risen to her feet when the abbot approached, was standing, too, her head deeply bowed as she probably did her best to be invisible. She would have heard everything, but how much Abbot Gilberd had heard, Frevisse had no way of knowing. She started a deep curtsy that he stopped with a flick of his hand, then made a sharp gesture for her to follow him. With folded hands and her head as bowed as Dame Perpetua’s, Frevisse did, hearing behind her the whisper of Dame Perpetua’s skirts as she sank rapidly down onto the stool, probably in relief that it was not to her the abbot wished to speak.

On her own part and judging by her startled glimpse of his stern stare at her before she had started to curtsy, Frevisse very much doubted she was going to like the next few minutes and tried to brace herself as he led her along and around the cloister walk to the corner near the foot of the dorter stairs. There, most away from where they might be overheard by anyone while still in sight of anyone who cared to look, Abbot Gilberd turned to her and said, “You gave that woman no comfort.”

Even without Abbot Gilberd’s stern saying of it, Frevisse was unsteadied by that failure, now it was done past undoing. Whatever else Sister Cecely was, she was a woman in breaking-hearted torment and yet Frevisse had walked away from her with no offer of comfort at all. From where had that cruelty come? Frevisse did not know until slowly, staring at the paving stones between the hems of her black gown and Abbot Gilberd’s black robe, she found her way to an answer and, still slowly, feeling her way through the words, finally said, “Sister Cecely has lived comfortably in her lies for years. She’s lived in them happily and never cared what was the truth. Now all her lies are breaking down and taking her comfort with them. But to have the lies broken and all her comfort gone may be the only way she’ll ever be able to grow into facing the truth.”

And Frevisse prayed silently that it had been an innate knowing of that-even if not understood until now-that had kept her from giving any kindness to Sister Cecely just now. An innate knowing, not a cold heart.

Whichever way it had been, Abbot Gilberd said nothing for an uncomfortably long moment. Then he sketched a cross in the air above her, said, “Benedicite, dame,” and walked away along the cloister walk.

Keeping her head bowed, Frevisse said, “Thank you, my lord,” at his departing heels and stayed where she was. Only when he was well away, probably going to see Domina Elisabeth again, or perhaps Sister Cecely, did she move, going swiftly along the walk behind him as far as the door into the church. There she lifted the heavy latch and went in, closed the door with care for silence, and went-nearly fleeing in her need-to her place in the choir, sank to her knees in her stall, clasped her hands on the reading ledge, pressed her forehead to her hands, tightly closed her eyes, and began to whisper, “Omnipotens deus, misereatur mei et dimissis peccatis meis. Omnipotens deus, misereatur nostri et dimissis peccatis nostris.” Almighty god, have pity on me and dismiss my sins. Almighty god, have pity on us and dismiss our sins.

Repeating and repeating it until the upheaval of her feelings steadied and her mind cleared a little.

Then, falling silent, she lifted her head and eased carefully backward onto the seat behind her.

One thought at last came cold and calm to her.

There were still lies in this matter.

Cecely said Symond Hewet had asked for Edward’s wardship. She said that she had forestalled him with threat of telling Jack Rowcliffe’s father about the bill of obligation, that then she had become frightened and decided to flee.

On the other side, Symond Hewet claimed that she had tried to extort money from him with the bill, that he had warned her off with promise of trouble for her if she made trouble for him.

The stories were close enough to one another. Cecely had notably left out mention of stealing the deeds. Symond had said nothing about asking for Edward’s wardship. Both agreed that Cecely had tried to use Jack’s bill, whatever the reason. So, if nothing else, that was likely true, however little way it went to answering anything.

Maybe it was not necessary to know precisely what had passed between them. It was maybe enough to know that-whatever the truth behind her choice-Cecely had fled from the Rowcliffes, taking her son and the stolen deeds, not knowing that Symond knew her deepest secret and that, knowing it, he would have somewhere to look for her.

Even Cecely was not such a fool as to come here if she had known-even suspected-anyone knew her past.

Of course returning here at all had been a fool thing to do, whatever her reason, but Cecely had never been as well-witted as she plainly thought she was-well-witted while everyone else were fools; that was how she seemed to see the world.

Frevisse thought wryly that an almost greater question than who had poisoned Breredon and Symond was why no one had yet tried to do away with Cecely. Cecely was the root cause of everyone’s troubles, and yet it was at Breredon someone had struck first.

Another thought eased into Frevisse’s mind, drawn by that one. When Breredon had fallen ill, Cecely had immediately said the Rowcliffes had done it and should be sent away. She had said it again just now in bitter insistence.

Frevisse could see why Cecely wanted the Rowcliffes gone. If Cecely were fool enough to think she still had chance of escaping here, her hope of it had to hang on Breredon, and so long as the Rowcliffes were here, the thing would be impossible, even to Cecely’s poor thinking. Hence her insistence that they were guilty of Breredon’s sickness.

But she had been insisting on their guilt from the first, before anyone else had thought of poison at all. Because of her open anger at the Rowcliffes no heed had been given to her, but what if…

Frevisse felt her way carefully into her next thought.

What if Breredon had been poisoned not to kill him or even to make him very ill but only ill enough that the Rowcliffes might be accused of poisoning him? Doses were hard to judge. He may have fallen more ill than was intended by…whoever had done it.

But then had come Symond Hewet’s sickness. He had been far nearer to death than Breredon had been. Had that been meant? Or had both men been meant to die, and Breredon’s sickness been less and Symond’s greater only by chance? By ill chance for Symond.

But the first question was still-Why had they been poisoned at all?

Frevisse gave way and finally looked straight at the thought she had been circling-that somehow Cecely had seen to Breredon being ill so that the Rowcliffes would be accused and sent away.

So far as she had been able to learn, no one had reason to go to the trouble of having Breredon dead, not even the Rowcliffes now he was forestalled of getting Edward. But his sickness could have served Cecely if she could have made anyone believe her accusations against the Rowcliffes.

How she might have seen to Breredon being ill was something Frevisse would consider in a while. A question that came first was why, if Cecely had wanted Breredon ill as a way to having the Rowcliffes sent away, it would have made sense for her to then have Symond sicken, too. If what she wanted was for the Rowcliffes to go away, Symond’s illness only served to keep them here.

Unless…

Cecely made no secret of her angry bitterness against him, both for knowing her secret and for “betraying” it to the Rowcliffes, and just now she had been openly, resentfully disappointed he was not dead.

What if whatever had been given to Breredon had been meant to sicken him, but what had been given to Symond been meant to kill?

Certainly Cecely’s angry bitterness against him seemed almost sufficient to that.

Or fully sufficient?

Murder was a sadly short-witted answer to anger, Frevisse thought. Or to anything, come to that.

That being given, who was the most short-witted person in this business?

Cecely.

And given the anger she had just shown at her paramour’s betrayal of their secret to Symond and at Symond for leading the hunt to her here, with the added edge that Symond was in reach while her paramour was not-yes, Frevisse was afraid she could see all too readily how Cecely, short-witted, might give way to wanting Symond dead.

Might want it enough to try somehow to kill him.

It was the “somehow” on which it all fell down.

Cecely had had no chance to do anything to anyone in the guesthall, and between the guesthall and the cloister the only link was Frevisse herself, if Dame Claire and Dame Johane were discounted, and Frevisse thought with a grim humour that they could be.

Oh, other folk went back and forth between the cloister and guesthall. Not nuns, of course, except by the prioress’ leave, and none of them would have helped Cecely at anything like this anyway. But servants did, when there was need to take or fetch something from one place to another, as was happened lately with the guesthall’s needs drawing heavily on the cloister’s stores of food. But how would a servant, briefly in the guesthall kitchen, have had chance at only Breredon’s or Symond Hewet’s food or drink? To have poisoned either one, let alone both, someone from the cloister would have had to be in the guesthall kitchen at just the right time, knowing just which food or drink was meant for either man, with just the right chance to poison either the food or drink.

Unless these attacks were not, after all, aimed at anyone in particular.

Frevisse stopped short on that thought and looked at it again.

What if the poisonings were without particular purpose, just happening to happen to Breredon and Symond?

That, in its way, was worse than imagining Cecely was behind them, because if the poisonings were, one way or another, Cecely’s doing, then there should be some way to find the trail between her and them. But if the poisonings were by someone run mad and taken to happenstance killing…

No. Better to hold to the thought that these were, somehow, Cecely’s doing, Frevisse thought. If, after following that trail as far as it went, she found that it went nowhere, then she would look at that other possibility.

She stood up. There might be time left before Sext to ask Dame Claire or Dame Johane about the medicines. If they could give a firm answer about them, she would be that little further ahead.

It was only while she was passing along the cloister walk toward the infirmary, past Dame Perpetua still sitting guard on Sister Cecely, that she suddenly wondered why Abbot Gilbert had not asked why she had taken it on herself to give up the missing deeds and bill. He had surely heard at least that much of what had passed between her and Sister Cecely. He might very reasonably have demanded an explanation of her. Instead, he had said nothing about it at all. Why not?

A twinge that was not quite worry, but might be if she had time to dwell on it, passed through her thoughts that were otherwise mostly on poison. She let it go, pleased, as she came to the infirmary, to find both Dame Claire and Dame Johane there, heads bent together over the infirmary’s book laid open on the worktable. They both looked up, their foreheads tightened with almost identical small frowns, and Dame Claire said, “If you’ve come for an answer about the herbs and all, the best we can tell you is that we don’t know.”

“Don’t know if you’re missing any, or don’t know what was used?” Frevisse returned.

“Either,” Dame Claire said.

“I think there may be some missing from several things,” Dame Johane said. “As if someone took a little from each instead of much from one.”

“What would they do, mixed together?” Frevisse asked.

“We don’t know,” Dame Claire said. “What may-and only may-be missing are herbs and drugs we’ve never mixed together. There was no purpose to doing so.”

“Unless to make someone very ill,” Frevisse said. “Or kill them.”

Dame Claire’s face settled into hard lines. “Or kill them,” she agreed. “Yes.”

“But you can’t be certain anything was taken at all,” Frevisse said.

“We can’t,” Dame Claire said. “Oh, I’m certain enough none of the truly potent things were taken. The dwale. The monkshood. Those are untouched. But among the herbs that could do what was done-” She shook her head. “We can’t tell for a certainty.”

“But I think there’s less than there should be,” Dame Johane put in earnestly.

Dame Johane, who was Cecely’s cousin and might have more loyalty to her than she had outwardly shown.

Frevisse shook off that thought. Surely, if Dame Johane had had her own guilt to cover, she would have been more firm that nothing was missing.

The bell rang to Sext, blessedly ending talk, but as she left the infirmary with Dame Claire and Dame Johane, Frevisse saw clearly how that brief squirm of suspicion was fresh warning of how deeply Cecely’s return was corrupting the nunnery’s peace.

Frevisse had learned early that a nunnery was not a peaceful place by either nature or chance. However much-or little-a nun might desire to give herself to God, she remained herself, and selves tended all too easily to grate, one against another, the more especially when cloistered, with no choice about being together. It was the cloister’s peace that gave best chance for deepest prayer and the growing away from the world and self that were the reasons for coming into a nunnery, but there was constant need for great, kind, firm care by a prioress ever-watchful against the very many things that could undermine and overset her nunnery’s peace. As Cecely was oversetting St. Frideswide’s peace, both by her grating self and by the outward-spreading circles of trouble around her.

And just when a prioress’ firm hand was most needed, Domina Elisabeth was all but vanished from among them.

Still, she came to the Office this time, belatedly again as she had to Tierce, but that was better than not at all, like yesterday. Judging by the flatness of her voice as she started the Office, her mind was not much there, but Frevisse had to admit that neither was her own when she found herself saying, “Quam dilecta habitation tua, Domine exercituum! Desiderat, languens concupiscit anima mea atria Domini…”-How delightful is your dwelling, Lord of the host! Fainting, my soul desires and longs for the halls of the Lord…-while thinking, What if Cecely had simply brought poison with her?

Why she might have done so could be set aside for now. Just let the question be, What if she had?

But everything had been taken away from her after she came here.

But not from Edward.

And there had been her demands to see him. Could she have given him the poison to keep, the way she had given him the deeds?

Possibly. Possibly.

There were too many possibles about all of this. Frevisse felt an impatient need to move past possibles to something certain. She looked for and found Mistress Petham and Edward in the nave, and after the Office she overtook them in the cloister walk and in as plain a voice as she could, free of undertones or over-meanings, she asked Edward whether his mother had given him anything else to keep secret.

Edward looked worriedly from her to Mistress Petham, then at his toes, then finally said, “Yes.”

“Do you still have it?” Frevisse asked gently. “Where is it?”

For answer, Edward freed his hand from Mistress Petham’s, unclasped the small leather pouch hanging from his belt, took from it a little leather bag closed by a drawstring, and said, “It’s in here.”

Frevisse held out her hand. Slowly he set the bag into it. By the feel of it, it held the little glazed clay boules with which he and Mistress Petham had been playing the other day. She loosened the drawstring and felt inside but found only boules.

Watching her, Edward said softly, “It’s in the bottom.”

She had been looking for a vial or box or something else that could hold poison. Instead what she felt, now she was feeling for it, was a folded paper, or maybe it was parchment. She tried to draw it out but it seemed stuck.

“It’s stitched,” Edward said. “So it won’t come out.”

He answered her questioning look by pointing at the bag’s bottom. Frevisse lifted the bag high enough for her to see the bottom, and indeed in the middle of the bag’s bottom curve was a single stitch, where no one was likely to note it or think about it if they did, enough to hold in place something folded and put inside the bag. Frevisse lowered the bag and looked at Edward. “What is it?” Because whatever it was, it was not a packet of poison, attached so firmly it could not be taken out of hiding.

“My manor,” Edward said, still softly.

“The deed to your manor?” she asked, carefully gentle. “The one your father left you?”

Edward nodded.

“Your mother took out your boules, turned the bag inside out, folded the deed very small, stitched it in place, turned the bag right side out, and put your boules back in. Was that the way of it?”

Edward nodded.

And who would trouble a small boy about his bag of boules?

Still, without much trying, Frevisse could think of several ways things could go wrong with that as a hiding place; but by now she knew all too well that Cecely was not long on either thought or imagination. Cecely saw what she wanted to see, and when the world failed her vision of what it should be, she was angry and resentful of everyone and everything except herself.

Mistress Petham stroked the back of Edward’s head, telling him, “You are a very brave boy. You didn’t give the secret away, you know. Dame Frevisse found it out.”

He nodded without seeming much comforted. Whether it was his fault or not, he had lost yet another secret he had been supposed to keep.

Frevisse could only hope that when he was older, he would accept that there were secrets with which he should never have been burdened, that the guilt of them was not his.

That he had carried the weight of worry and might carry the guilt for who knew how long was yet another thing to be set in the scale against Sister Cecely.

But the deed was not what Frevisse had been seeking or had even thought about-making her wonder what else had she failed to think about in all of this-and she asked, very gently, as she gave him back his bag, “Edward, did your mother give you anything else to keep?”

Softly, cradling the bag, his eyes downcast, he said, “No.”

Frevisse did not insult him by asking if he was sure. From wherever it had come-not from his parents, surely-there was a strong strain of truth in the child, and she quietly thanked him for his help. Eyes downcast, he nodded silently. Then he looked up with silent pleading at Mistress Petham. She gave him a small nod, seeming to know his question, and asked Frevisse, “Is all well with what Edward gave you yesterday?”

Frevisse looked down at Edward and answered, “They’re back with the men to whom they belong. Your cousins are all very grateful. All’s well about it.”

Edward bit his lip, looked at his feet, looked up at her, and whispered, “Does my mother know?”

Frevisse answered his worry quietly. “She does. It’s made her unhappy, but she’s unhappy about a great many things just now. What she meant to do was wrong, and what you did was right. Your father would be glad of it and proud of you.” Or if not, he should have been, she added silently and somewhat savagely.

Edward nodded and let Mistress Petham take his hand again and lead him away. He was not fully reassured, Frevisse feared, watching them go, and she had to wonder whether his mother would turn against him now his truth had lost her everything she had meant to use in her stolen life. Very possibly Edward wondered the same. How much did he understand about what his mother had been doing? Children might be innocent and they might be ignorant; neither was the same as being stupid. Edward maybe understood full well his mother had meant to sell him to Breredon as his last piece of usefulness to her, and that understanding might ease his guilt at what his truthfulness had cost. He might even understand that, even if he had lost his mother by his truthfulness, she had been intent on losing him for her own selfish ends.

Frevisse could only hope that in time to come he would take what comfort he could in knowing that by doing right he had kept greater wrongs from being done.

But that was much to ask presently of a small boy.

Frevisse went back along the walk to her desk in its stall and sat down. Beyond the thin boards between her desk and the next, the sound of a pen scratching said Dame Johane was as honestly at work as Frevisse should have been, but she left pen and ink and paper where they were and simply sat, brooding on poison, the poisoned, and the poisoner.

If nothing had been taken from the infirmary and if Cecely herself had brought nothing, then…

What if Breredon poisoned himself with something he had brought with him, as cover for then poisoning Symond? Or maybe John Rowcliffe himself had been meant, and Symond been struck by accident.

But that would mean Breredon had known he would encounter the Rowcliffes here and had had reason to plan to kill one of them.

Or maybe it was not a Rowcliffe he had had in mind to kill when he brought the poison with him. Maybe it had been meant for Cecely, for some reason other than anything of which Frevisse yet knew or had even clue.

Or then again, perhaps one of the Rowcliffes was the poisoner.

Or then again…

No.

Frevisse firmly stopped that wide ranging of her thoughts. If she disproved the most straightforward likelihood-that Cecely was guilty-then she could go roaming to other possibilities.

But was she looking at Cecely as guilty for any better reason than how much she disliked her? Did she have more reason than that to suspect her before anyone else?

Frevisse rested her elbows on the desk, clasped her hands together, and bowed her head onto them, closing her eyes not in prayer but in thought, trying to look at it all from the beginning.

Cecely had come here in flight from the Rowcliffes, needing a “safe” place to wait for Breredon, to deal with him behind the Rowcliffes’ backs. She…

Frevisse stood up, eyes wide.

Among all her twisting around of possibilities, all her trying to suppose everything that might have happened or could have happened or maybe had happened, there was one thing she had failed to wonder.