The Clerk's Tale

Chapter 12

The bed had been made since Frevisse and Domina Elisabeth had left it that morning but nothing had been done to warm the chamber. Frevisse eyed the open window, its shutter lowered to let in fresh air, but decided against bothering to shut it. Simply closing it would do nothing toward warming the room, nor was she minded to call for a warming pan or anything else that would, even briefly, bring her company.

Instead, she wrapped herself in her cloak, sat on the bed with her feet tucked up under her safe from the floor’s draughts, and turned to thinking while she had the chance, beginning with what Christopher had told her of Montfort’s death and then about what she had learned on her own. Set out and looked at, there was not much. Of what she had learned, most was on the Lengley side, with very little about the Champyons, and none of it bearing plainly on Montfort’s murder.

But Montfort was dead. He had either angered someone sufficiently or been threat enough to someone that this person had killed him, and that anger or threat most probably had to do with this manor of Reckling.

It might not, of course. There was always the possibility he had been killed because of something else. But if he had been, the likelihood of discovering the murderer was even less than it already seemed to be. So, like Christopher, she would work at the problem from the only sure way they had, and that brought her to the question, What was the threat that had been worth Montfort’s death? If it came from something he had found out, then likely the threat still existed, a danger to whoever else might find it out.

Unless it was some sort of written proof and Montfort had had it with him when he was killed and now his murderer had it. Or more likely, had by now destroyed it. In which case threat and proof and hope of learning anything about them were all gone together.

But proof of what? The most damning, to one side or the other, would be something that showed Stephen was-or else was not-Sir Henry’s legitimate son.

So… who was most concerned with that?

Stephen, of course. To have the manor of Reckling, the Champyons had to prove he was illegitimate, and if that was proved against him, then he lost all claim to any inheritance at all from his father. All the Lengley lands would cease to be his.

That made it Lady Agnes’s problem, too. Frevisse suspected she had the fierceness to want a man dead and she was openly bound, both by oath and love, to the claim that Stephen was the son of her son Sir Henry and his wife. That she had a key to the garden’s gate was no use, because no one but Montfort and then Master Gruesby had been seen or heard to go in that way, and besides that, she was hardly strong enough to have driven a dagger through Montfort, let alone have managed to come into the garden by way of the fence.

Stephen could have done both those things, and Lady Agnes and her household were the only ones to say he had been with her that afternoon. But neither was there anyone who had yet said they had seen him elsewhere, and there was a large part of the problem, no matter whom she considered-no one had seen anyone along that side of the priory at the necessary time that day.

Where had Master Philip Haselden been then, she wondered. To him it mattered that Stephen be kept legitimate both for his daughter’s sake and because of his service to Lord Lovell. If Stephen was proved illegitimate, Nichola’s marriage to him would turn from being a profit to an utter loss, and if Lord Lovell were displeased enough over the loss of the manor, it might cost Master Haselden his favor with him, a favor that Frevisse gathered had been very profitable to him over the years.

And then there was Master Champyon’s ambition. He was said to want the manor as a way into favor with Suffolk. How great was that ambition? Great enough for him to go to the trouble and expense of taking the matter to law, at least. Did he have any other way to come to Suffolk’s notice or was the manor his only one and therefore his interest the more desperate? But then how did he come to have sufficient knowledge of Goring to know about the infirmary garden and where it was in the nunnery and how to reach it unseen? Did his wife know? And if she did, then how? She wasn’t from here, it seemed. But Frevisse knew so little about her or her dead sister and had only other people’s word that her ambition to power matched her husband’s. Not that it needed to. Simple greed to have the manor could be as powerful a force as greed for influence with powerful men.

Come to that, why not suppose she could have gone to meet Montfort herself? Nothing had yet been said about where she was when he was killed. For all Frevisse knew, Mistress Champyon might well have the strength to kill a man and so might Juliana, come to that. But where would either of them have come by a ballock dagger? It could be carried concealed under a cloak, that was no problem, but it was hardly a woman’s weapon, hardly something either of them would happen to have with them. So it would have to be someone else’s-husband, son, brother, even a servant-who either did not know it had been borrowed or else knew it had but did not realize that it mattered… or else did realize and was keeping silent anyway.

Christopher must ask more openly about that dagger. It might be in the Thames by now but it might not. It depended on whether the murderer thought he was better rid of it and maybe have someone wonder where it had gone than to keep it and deny having aught to do with Montfort’s death if he were asked.

The cold had begun to slip through Frevisse’s cloak and habit and undergown. She was not chilled yet but soon would be and rather than wait for it she uncurled her legs, slipped stiffly off the bed, and began to pace the chamber without letting loose of her thoughts. There was still Rowland Englefield to consider. He wasn’t well accounted for the afternoon of Montfort’s murder. Despite not questioning him at the inquest, Christopher had surely checked the brothel or wherever Rowland claimed to have been, to learn what was said there. That was something she would ask Master Gruesby when next she had chance. Or Christopher himself, though she doubted chance for that would come until after his father’s funeral. In the meanwhile, how could she go about making acquaintance with both the Champyons and Rowland? More acquaintance with Juliana she did not want or even need because, despite she might have been able to kill Montfort, there was no open reason why Juliana would have bothered herself with having Montfort dead. She had pointed out herself that she did not stand to gain anything by her mother having the manor, and Juliana had not seemed to Frevisse someone who would trouble herself on anyone’s behalf but her own.

Unless, of course, having disposed of Montfort, she planned next to dispose of her brother and thereby clear her own way to inheriting the manor and possibly other things, depending on how the Englefield lands from their late father were entailed.

Maybe she should consider Juliana a little further. The question of the dagger was the same for her as for her mother, and she knew Goring well enough to come and go the back way to Lady Agnes’s garden. But Stephen had very likely told her that, and even supposing she somehow knew how to reach the infirmary garden, it was hardly likely she-or her mother, come to that-could have gone there and come back without being noticed and remembered by someone and more probably several someones. It was possible, Frevisse was willing to grant, but hardly a chance a murderer would care to depend on, surely?

The only thing made simpler by considering Juliana as the murderer was that she would have had no trouble coming near enough to Montfort to use the dagger if she had chosen to let him think she was attracted to him…

Frevisse pulled back from the pointless unkindness of that thought. Juliana was already too unkind to herself to need more unkindness from anyone else.

But had Christopher even asked about where she was that afternoon?

That was something else she would have to ask him or Master Gruesby when the chance came. She equally wanted to see the letter that had come to Montfort from Lord Lovell, though how a letter he had not yet read could have brought on his death she did not try to guess. And another thing she should have asked about before now was how Montfort had been lured to the garden at all. There had to have been a message. Why had nothing been said about it or about who had brought it?

Frevisse rubbed at her face with both hands, her mind beginning to congeal with too many questions still to be asked. She was warm again, though, and curled back onto the bed. To fill some of the time until she could ask the questions, she should spend at least a while in prayer for Montfort’s soul after letting the uneven and disjointed past few days serve as excuse not to, needful though she knew it was. Given Montfort’s greed and uncare for anyone but himself in life and the suddenness of his death, his soul was likely lost beyond hope in Hell, but there was always the chance there had been some small piece of virtue in Montfort, enough to have rescued him into Purgatory where at least there was hope of winning through the torments there to Heaven. And if there was the smallest chance of saving a man’s soul, even Montfort’s…

With more grimness than grace, Frevisse brought herself to, “A porta inferi, Domine, erue animam eius. Domine, exaudi orationem meam. A porta inferi, Domine, erue animam eius…” From the gate of Hell, Lord, rescue his soul. Lord, hear my prayer. From the gate of Hell, Lord, rescue his soul…

She had always believed that a prayer with her heart and mind behind it was worth more than one of merely words but though she tried now for better than only the sound of her own voice, she did not feel she had much succeeded by the time the nunnery bell freed her to go to Vespers.