The Prioress' Tale

Chapter 20

It took surprisingly little time to sort matters into order. When Frevisse came back from the infirmary with sheets, Benet was standing outside the parlor door, waiting to take them from her, but though she gave them to him, she followed him in anyway, to find the scant furnishings of a bench, small table, a few stools, a chair had all been moved back to the walls now and Sir Reynold’s body laid out in the middle of the floor with Lewis waiting beside it, stiff-faced and pale.

Lady Eleanor was sitting, composed but equally pallid, on the bench, hands folded in her lap, her eyes closed as if she prayed. Dame Claire stood near her and answered Frevisse’s questioning look with a shake of her head that said Lady Eleanor was as well as might be and there was nothing more to do for her just now.

“Father Henry?” Frevisse asked.

“Someone had to see how it was with Domina Alys,” Dame Claire said; and neither she nor Frevisse would have been welcome, nor Lady Eleanor fit to do it just now.

“Sir Hugh?” Frevisse asked.

“Gone to be sure the men are making no trouble,” Benet answered. He had spread the sheet out on the floor and he and Lewis were readying to move Sir Reynold’s body onto it.

Not needed there, Frevisse willingly left. The first numbness was wearing off; her mind was beginning to move more clearly and she did not like where her thoughts were going. Nor was she pleased to find Prime had ended and Sister Cecely and Sister Emma approaching her in a rush of black gowns and veils along the walk, with Sister Johane more slowly in their wake. She moved to intercept them, saying, to forestall their flurry of questions, “Go on to breakfast with the rest,” so firmly that they stopped, momentarily silenced, until Sister Cecely burst out, “He’s our cousin! It’s our right! Where’s he been taken? What’s happening?”

Dame Juliana was leading the rest of the nuns, except for Sister Thomasine, of whom there was no sign, along the far side of the cloister walk toward the refectory, and Frevisse guessed these three were to be left to her, and with the barest of sympathy, since there was more avid curiosity than grief in their eager faces, she said, “He’s been moved into the parlor and is being seen to by Lady Eleanor, Dame Claire, and some of his men. There’s no need of you here.” And added, “Nor is Sister Emma his cousin.”

“That’s no matter,” Sister Cecely said. “She’s with us. We should go to him.”

“No, you shouldn’t,” Frevisse said, deciding patience was no use. “You’re not needed there. If you truly want to be of use to him, go back to the choir and pray for his soul.”

“Yes, but-” Sister Johane began.

“Or if you’re that eager to see his blood,” Frevisse interrupted, pointing into the passageway where it was spread and darkened on the floor where Sir Reynold had lain, “there’s a great deal of it. Maybe you’d like the task of scrubbing it away.”

“Oh no!” Sister Johane shrank back, not looking. Sister Cecely and Sister Emma had less sense, looked where Frevisse pointed at the spread and mess of Sir Reynold’s blood, gasped, grabbed each other for support, and went on staring. Frevisse, out of patience, took them each by an arm, pulled them apart, and pushed them along the walk, shoving them on their way when they were past the parlor door.

“Go to breakfast,” she ordered disgustedly. “You’re not wanted here.”

Compelled, they went, and belatedly it occurred to Frevisse that she could go to breakfast, too, that maybe she ought to rejoin the others in making what they could of the day, since she was no more needed here than Sister Cecely was.

Instead, she turned the other way, toward the church, wondering about Sister Thomasine and whether she should be there alone with the madman, despite she had an endangered soul to pray for and no matter how harmless he had seemed until now.

Walking quickly, her own head bowed, she was nearly to the church door before she realized Joliffe was there, outside the door, in the cloister walk, where he had no business being, standing at ease and as if he had been waiting for her. Startled, annoyed that he must have used the door out of the tower and come through the church, she asked him without other greeting, “You know?”

“You think I’d come in here otherwise?”

She gestured past him toward the church. “Is it well in there with Sister Thomasine?”

“She’s praying at the altar,” he said, and then answered what she had not asked. “And your madman is tucked into his blankets and not looking likely to stir out of them for any reason.”

“He’s not my madman. Listen, there was talk among Sir Reynold’s men against Master Porter that you’d better warn him of.”

“He’s heard. Word of it came right along with the word Sir Reynold was dead. It took the edge off our mourning for him, you can guess.”

Frevisse ignored that. “Sir Hugh warned them off, but he’s not Sir Reynold and they may decide not to heed him.”

“Master Porter already has Sir Reynold’s man off the tower, and on the chance the masons have to retreat into it, they’re readying the scaffolding to go over at a push if need be. Preferably with a few of Sir Reynold’s men on it, come to that.”

“Wait,” Frevisse said. “Sir Reynold had a man on the tower? Why? Since when?”

“Since yesterday, after they came back from the raid. A watch to warn if anyone was coming. Or trying to leave,” Joliffe said, grimly enough to show he saw the implications as clearly as she did. Sir Reynold had been afraid trouble was so close behind him, or at least that it was closing on him fast, that he had set watch against it. Had Domina Alys known that or was this something else he had kept from her?

Just now what Domina Alys had known or not known did not matter. A trouble closer than any he had thought of had overtaken Sir Reynold, and Frevisse asked, not even trying to make it casual, “Where did you spend last night?”

Joliffe understood exactly what she was asking and answered readily, “With the masons. From when I left you, on through supper and all night. But,” he added thoughtfully, “I slept near the door. I might have gone out after they were all asleep without anyone’s knowing.”

“Did you?”

“Go out? I’m not likely to say I did, am I?”

“Not if you have any wit at all. Did anyone else?”

“The nights are long and many bladders small. Some went out, as usual, but no one in particular or for overly long. Not Master Porter with a particularly heavy hammer-”

“Sir Reynold was stabbed,” Frevisse said.

“Not Master Porter carrying his dagger in his hand and snarling about vengeance. Of course I seem to recall that I slept a great deal of the time, it being night and all, so I probably missed some comings and goings, but no, I didn’t notice anything in particular.”

“And might not tell me if you had?” Frevisse suggested.

Joliffe tended to be unpredictable in what he took seriously and what he did not. He grinned at her question. “You’re not a very trusting woman, are you?”

“No. I’m not. You wouldn’t tell me, would you?”

“Probably not,” he said lightly. Then the lightness dropped away and he said, altogether serious, “There’s something I will tell you. Sir Reynold was being an obvious idiot for a long while before yesterday. You know about the Fenners and the Godfreys’ quarrel?”

“The Fenners,” Frevisse said with new alarm. “What about the Fenners?”

“There’s been word out for half a year and more that Sir Reynold meant to reopen the quarrel, so when things began to happen to various Fenner properties and Fenner followers these past few months-small things, nothing like yesterday’s raid but enough-there were suspicions, and when Sir Walter Fenner heard Sir Reynold was moved in here, he thought it was time to find out more of what Sir Reynold might have in hand. Do you know anything about Sir Walter?”

“A little.” Enough that she did not want to know more or have him in St. Frideswide’s again. The last time he had been there he had been trying to find his mother’s murderer among the nuns and not been greatly concerned with legalities while doing it.

“He’s somewhat more subtle in his ways than Sir Reynold was,” Joliffe said. “Before stirring trouble up, he decided to send someone to find out for certain, secretly, what Sir Reynold was about.”

“You,” Frevisse said.

“Me,” Joliffe agreed. He made her a graceful, mocking bow. “A simple minstrel, seemingly wandered into your fair priory by chance and therefore suspected of nothing.”

“Why you?”

“I was to hand when Sir Walter needed someone and he offered enough money it was worth my while to do it.”

“But you haven’t sent him word yet. There hasn’t been time,” Frevisse said.

“I sent it yesterday morning.”

Yes, he would have known enough by then to tell Sir Walter his suspicions were justified, even without the raid and killing afterward, but: “How?”

She did not expect him to tell her, but he did. “A peddler came into your village the same day I came here. He wasn’t a friendly sort and settled for bedding down alone in someone’s byre instead of someplace better, with no one to notice if he slipped out and spent a while near onto moonrise in the deep shadows of the church’s doorway, doing nothing. No more than anyone noticed me go out over your orchard wall-no great trick, let me tell you-and meet him there, tell him what I knew, and come back the same way. He was away yesterday morning to pass word to someone in Banbury, who’s sent it on fast to Sir Walter by now.”

“And when Sir Walter hears it, he’ll come in force against Sir Reynold here.”

“Yes,” Joliffe agreed.

“How soon?” Frevisse demanded. “If you went now and told him things had changed, that Sir Reynold is dead…”

“Sir Reynold’s men aren’t. Nor Sir Hugh. After yesterday’s work, Sir Walter won’t be satisfied with anything short of being sure no Godfrey can strike at him again.”

With St. Frideswide’s caught in the middle.

Not trying to hide her anger, only the fear that was goading it on, Frevisse asked, “How soon is he likely to be here?”

“Tomorrow, I would guess.”

“When you meant to be gone, well out of it before he ever came but here long enough you wouldn’t be suspected of being the one who told him, even if anyone bothered to think of you at all.”

“That was what I had in mind, yes.”

“Leaving us to face it all unwarned!”

“No!” Joliffe denied that forcefully. “Before I left, I would have told you and trusted you not to betray me.”

She would not have, he was right about that, but: “What good would that have done?”

He shrugged, confident. “There are only three doors into the cloister. You would have found way to have them barred when Sir Walter and his men came. With Sir Reynold and his men shut out and the nuns shut in, you’d all have been safe enough.”

“But our priory folk wouldn’t be, or our villagers!”

“I suspect I would have passed a word of something like warning along to your villagers as I went through, and they’d see your priory folk heard in time, and I doubt they would be passing it along to Sir Reynold’s folk.”

“Wouldn’t that risk you being found out if anyone asked questions afterward? Exactly what you’ve tried to avoid?” she said caustically, too angry to believe him willingly.

He answered caustically back, “I doubt Sir Reynold and his ilk-your prioress among them-would bother with questioning their peasants afterward. Aside from despising them too much to think it worth their while, they’d likely be too busy answering questions themselves by then from sheriff and crowner and abbot and all to care what any villagers might have to say.”

Beyond the fact that he was probably right, Frevisse was annoyed to find she believed he would have done exactly as he said.

Improbably, as if there had been no taint of anger between them, he grinned at her. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like I’ll be going anywhere for a time, as things are now.”

“It would be a great pity if you wandered off at this point,” Frevisse agreed. “Because if you did, suspicion of Sir Reynold’s murder would very likely turn on you.”

“But now that you know Sir Walter is coming…?”

Joliffe left the question unfinished but she knew what it was. What was she going to do with what she knew?

“Nothing, yet,” she said. Joliffe would be in danger as soon as she warned anyone because they would want to know how she knew. But neither could she keep it secret for long, for everyone else’s sake.

She sat down on the garth wall with a suddenness that acknowledged how tired she was, in mind and body both. Joliffe joined her, leaning back against a pillar the way her back would not presently let her, with one leg crooked under him, at ease. The morning was still cold, but the sun had cleared the roof of the east range, spilling thick gold light into the cloister; Joliffe held out his hand into the brightness, cupped as if the light were something he could hold.

“The simplest way to handle it,” he said, “is of course to find out who Sir Reynold’s murderer is. Then I can go, warnings can be given, all is well.”

“Well is not the word I would have chosen,” Frevisse said. “Nor simplest.”

“Ah, words,” Joliffe said airily. “Such feckless things.”

“But supposing you aren’t the one who killed him…?”

Joliffe bowed his head to her without looking away from his hand. “Thank you for being willing to suppose that.”

“You’re welcome. So supposing it wasn’t you, who else could it have been?”

“For choice, your Domina Alys.”

“For choice, your Master Porter,” she answered back.

Joliffe regretfully agreed. “Sir Reynold had both of them furious with him before yesterday was over.”

“But he was Domina Alys’ kinsman. She’d be less likely than Master Porter to turn to killing him.”

“I’ve always found myself more inclined to loathe those I know best, rather than strangers,” Joliffe observed.

Ignoring that, Frevisse said, “And she’s likely to lose whatever she hoped to gain by him being here, now he’s dead, besides that she knows better than most, being nun and prioress, how she’s damned her soul if she’s killed him, while for Master Porter killing him might seem no more than a straightforward way to be rid of the threat Sir Reynold was to him.”

“Except now Sir Reynold’s men are a danger to him. He would have likely foreseen that.”

“He’s maybe counting on the clear fact that Sir Hugh is not so short-headed as Sir Reynold, mat he’ll see better than to turn them loose on anyone.”

“Of course there could be reasons Sir Hugh would want Sir Reynold dead,” Joliffe said. “One at least. He’ll likely take over the men for his own and have the profit of what Sir Reynold started, now Sir Reynold is dead.”

“There’s that,” Frevisse granted. “He’s hardly to know how ungood a thing that is at this point. Though, again, this is hardly the time to unbalance things, even not knowing that. Wouldn’t it serve him better to wait until Sir Reynold had fully succeeded?”

“Who knows?” Joliffe said. “What we have is somewhere to start, three possibilities to find out about.” He stood up. “I’ll go learn what I can about Master Porter and anyone else among the masons last night. You’ll do the same for your prioress and Sir Hugh and anyone else inside the cloister who may look likely once you’ve started?”

Frevisse nodded and stood up. She did not see how she would be able to do much, but it was better than waiting for what might happen, with a murderer somewhere among them. Oddly, that had been a thought she had been keeping clear of, concentrating on Sir Reynold being dead. But Sir Reynold was dead because someone had killed him, and she had to gather her thoughts to face that. “Meet me in the church after Tierce,” she said. It was not much time, but they did not have much time, nor maybe many chances either, to exchange what they might learn.

“One thing,” Joliffe said. “About how Sir Reynold was killed. You said he was stabbed. Where?”

“In the passage from the cloister out to the yard.”

“I meant where, on him, was he stabbed. How was it done? With what?”

“In the back with a sword.”

“Not a dagger?”

“It was a wide wound. I’d think it would have taken a sword to make it.”

“Where?” Joliffe turned his back toward her. “Show me.”

Frevisse drew her finger in a line below his left shoulder blade, from midway across that side of his back toward his spine. Joliffe’s shoulders twitched and a shiver ran up him. “There.”

Joliffe turned around. “Did it go all the way through him?”

Frevisse remembered the blood had spread from under the body and answered, “Yes. Why are you asking all this?”

“I don’t know. It’s just I’ve always found it better to know too much than too little. Haven’t you? Ask questions while you can, for what you might need to know later.”

She had found that true, too, though probably on different sorts of occasions than he had. They regarded each other in considering silence a moment before Joliffe said, “I’ll see you after Tierce,” and turned back toward the church.