The Prioress' Tale

Chapter 23

He stood at the corner of the altar steps behind Sister Thomasine, looking at all of them with a puzzlement that said he had not been listening out of sight. “Edmund?” he repeated. “Who’s Edmund?”

Joice moved toward him, saying warmly as if glad he was there, “Benet, were you looking for me?”

Become a little wary, his gaze going from her to Joliffe to Edmund, slumped in on himself again, to Frevisse, to Sister Thomasine, and back to Joliffe and Edmund, he said, “I needed to see you. Lady Eleanor said you’d come here to pray?”

He made that too much a question and Frevisse tried desperately to find something to say to divert him from whatever he was starting to wonder, but it was Joliffe who said in apparent delight, moving between him and Edmund, “My lord! We’re trying to work out who could have killed Sir Reynold and who could not.”

“What? Here?” Benet asked, all the unacceptability of that answer plain in his voice.

“Where better? It’s out of the way and quiet. And your sword is exactly what we need. Thank you.”

He reached for the sword hung at Benet’s side-Sir Hugh must have given order for the men to go armed now, Frevisse thought-and Benet immediately stepped back from him, clapping a hand to the pommel, asking, “Why do you think you need a sword?”

“It had to be someone fairly tall who killed Sir Reynold,” Joliffe began, his hand still out for the sword.

“How do you know that?” Benet asked, making no move to give it.

“Because of how the blow went in.”

Benet’s other hand came around to grip the hilt, white-knuckled and ready to draw. “How do you know how the blow went in?”

Joliffe seemed not to notice, going on easily, “Dame Frevisse told me. She saw it.”

“Yes,” Benet agreed, glancing at her, his suspicion not allayed but spreading to include her. “She did.”

“To put a blow straight through a man that way,” Joliffe said, moving toward Benet as if still expecting him to hand over his sword, “it had to have been done by someone near Sir Reynold’s height. If we have a sword and someone’s back, we can maybe judge how tall the murderer was and that would limit who to be suspicious of.”

Benet fell back another step, giving himself enough to draw his sword, and countered, “Who’s Edmund?”

So much for diverting him.

“He’s no one,” Joice said.

Looking at all their faces guardedly, Benet held out his free hand to her. “Come away from here.”

“No! Not with you,” Joice said, beginning to draw back from him, and Benet moved suddenly forward, pushing Joliffe aside, reaching for her. Hampered by her cloak and skirts, Joice tried to avoid him but stumbled, and he caught her by the arm, saying, “There’s something wrong here. Come away.” She jerked to be free of him, and Edmund sprang up, ordering, “Leave her alone,” as he started for Benet, who swung Joice behind him in the same movement of drawing his sword, to bring it point up to Edmund’s throat, stopping him in mid-stride.

Unarmed, clad in only a rough tunic and hosen, Edmund froze where he was. They all froze, because the smallest movement of Benet’s sword could be Edmund’s death, until Sister Thomasine said quietly, “There’s no need.” Benet’s gage flickered her way; she came nearer to him, to lay her hand on his wrist above where he held the sword and say, “Truly. There’s no need. And this no place to shed anyone’s blood.”

Trying to sound as calm as Sister Thomasine, Frevisse said, “You’re in a church, Benet. And the man isn’t even armed.”

Benet jerked his head at Joliffe. “He is.” Joliffe promptly held his hands well out from himself, away from the dagger hung from his belt. Benet glanced at him but kept the sword at Edmund’s throat. “And this man’s been all a lie from the start. He’s not witless. He was never witless, was he? Were you?” he added at Edmund in direct accusation.

Before Edmund could answer, Frevisse said, “No. You’re right. He was never mad. He pretended to be so he could reach Joice, help her if she needed it. He’s here for Joice’s sake, the same as you are. He’s a clerk to her uncle, that’s all.”

Gently, her hand still lightly on his wrist, Sister Thomasine said, “You’re in a church.”

Benet hesitated, then lowered his sword from Edmund’s throat, turned the blade aside, but kept his gaze on him. “He could still be the one who killed Sir Reynold.”

“Yes,” Frevisse agreed. “But so could others. That’s what we’re trying to learn.”

“I still say him for choice. Or you,” Benet added at Joliffe.

“Indeed? Me?” Joliffe said, as if the thought took him completely by surprise.

“Or you, Benet,” Joice said fiercely. She pulled free from his slacked hold impatiently and moved to stand well aside from both him and Edmund. “Why not you instead of them?”

“Because I had no reason to!” Benet protested.

“How do we know that?” Frevisse countered. “How do we know that for certain about any of us or anyone else?”

Benet was momentarily without answer to that, but Sister Thomasine said quietly, “He’s not tall enough.” All of them, including Benet, looked at her questioningly, and she nodded toward him. “See? He’s not tall enough,” she repeated.

“She means you’re shorter than Sir Reynold by almost a head,” Frevisse said, catching up to her thought.

“Here,” Joliffe said, turning his back on him. “I’m near Sir Reynold’s height. Take your sword and see if you could give me the kind of blow that killed him. Straight through below the left shoulder blade.”

Benet hesitated, looked around at all of them watching him, and raised his sword; then raised it higher, to bring its blade parallel to the floor, its point level with Joliffe’s back below the left shoulder blade. In that position the hilt was nearly level with his chin and his elbows were thrust awkwardly out to the sides. “This won’t work,” he said.

Joliffe craned his head around to see. “You couldn’t put much force into a blow from there,” he agreed.

Benet dropped his elbows, cramping them together below the blade. “Nor if I held it this way either.” He changed his grip to one hand above the hilt, one below. “Or this way either. My shoulders are too cramped.” He shifted his hold and dropped the hilt below his waist, the blade angled up at Joliffe’s back. “If I were striking a man from behind, it would be this way.”

“Try it one-handed, as if it were a lighter, shorter sword,” Frevisse suggested.

Benet shifted his body to an angle with Joliffe’s back and raised the blade again and thrust. Although he pulled the stroke up short, it was clear there could have been enough to drive it in if he had chosen to, and lowering his arm and blade, he said, “I could probably thrust from there strongly enough.” But he was frowning, dissatisfied over the thought. “The difficulty would be in thrusting true, to strike cleanly enough for a quick kill, there in the dark and with Sir Reynold moving.”

“There’s something else,” Frevisse said slowly. “Even if you had the skill or luck to put the blow just that way, why didn’t Sir Reynold cry out? He would have, wouldn’t he, even dying, from a blow like that?”

“He would have,” Joliffe said grimly. “Very likely. Likely enough I wouldn’t have cared to risk giving him the chance, risk someone hearing him if I was trying to do a murder.”

Tentatively Joice said, “He might have been knocked over the head first, knocked down, unconscious.”

“And if he were lying flat on the floor, driving a sword down into him would have been no problem,” Edmund said, then added more hesitantly as he realized the complication that caused, “For almost anyone.”

“I handled his head when we were readying him,” Benet said. “There were no signs of any blow. Not to his head or anywhere else on him.”

That could be checked with Lewis, Frevisse thought, or on the body itself, if she had the chance, but she did not think it mattered because: “Judging by the wound, the blade went fully through him,” she said. “The gash in his chest wasn’t a slight rip made by a sword’s point. It was as wide as the one in his back. It looks as if the blade was thrust all the way through him, then wrenched sideways with enough strength to partly cut into his spine. The tip of a sword blade grounded on the floor wouldn’t have done the kind of damage there is.” She held out her hand to Joliffe. “Give me your dagger and turn around.”

With a wry look but not questioning what she meant to do, Joliffe gave her the dagger and turned his back on her. Shaking back the loose sleeve of her outer gown to clear her arm, she moved up close behind him. “If it were done to Sir Reynold this way, it was done swiftly but I’ll do it slowly, so please just stand still.”

Joliffe nodded, and rising a little on her toes to compensate for his greater height, Frevisse reached around to clamp her left hand under his jaw, forcing his mouth closed and his head back as she drove the dagger toward just below his left shoulder blade, turning her hand aside so it was her knuckles instead of the point that she shoved against him. If she had not, the dagger would have gone straight into him, between the ribs, through the muscle and lung and heart. And moving slowly but with strength, she followed through on the blow, shoving her fisted hand against him, so that his body bowed out away from her and he would have staggered forward except she kept her grip on his chin, dragging his head back beside her own, holding his mouth shut against any sound beyond a strangled grunt.

Neither of them were using full strength. She could not have held him if he had tried to pull away from her; but it would have been difficult between two well-matched men, one of them with his death wound in him. Joliffe, playing Sir Reynold’s part, sagged back against her, as a dying man would have, and they held where they were for a moment, making sure of what she had done, before she let him go and stepped back, flipping the dagger around to hand it to him hilt-first, wanting the thing out of her hand as soon as might be, as he turned to face her.

Joliffe took it, his face grim as she felt hers was, and said as he slipped it into the sheath on his hip, “That looks to have been the way of it. A sure blow and a simple one, with hardly a chance of any outcry.”

Benet, looking sickened, said, “A coward’s blow. Sir Reynold hadn’t even the smallest chance of defending against it.”

“A practical blow,” Joliffe said. “Quick, certain, no chance of outcry and small likelihood of being caught of it.”

More steadily than she felt, Frevisse said, “That means we can guess it was done with a dagger, not a sword, by someone Sir Reynold’s height or very close to it. Someone strong enough to have held him like that long enough for him to die.”

“Then flung him down and left him,” Benet said bitterly.

“Which brings us back to Edmund and me,” Joliffe said. “And Sir Hugh, Domina Alys, and the three or four among Sir Reynold’s men who matched him in height.”

“Or one of the masons,” Benet said. “Master Porter first.”

“Master Porter was never gone from the lodge last night between supper and dawn,” Joliffe said. “Nor any of the others long enough to have come into the cloister, lain in wait on the possibility they’d have a chance to kill Sir Reynold, and come back.”

“Before anything else,” Frevisse said, “there’s the matter of the blood. There had to have been blood on whoever did it.”

“Yes!” Joice saw the point immediately. “Whoever did it, they’d have to change their clothing and wash off the blood. Without being seen.”

“And neither would be easy to do,” Frevisse said. Not in the cloister or the guest halls. For one thing, water would not be readily come by. Servants slept in the cloister and guest-hall kitchens, so there would be no having any water from there without being noticed. The wells were in the open in the kitchen yard and courtyard. The risk of being seen using either one was high. A desperate man might take the risk, but even then, even if he managed to wash clean his hands and body, what about his bloodied clothing? Wash it perfectly clean in the dark and have it dry by morning so no one would notice? Even being rid of it where it would not be found would be difficult to manage in the confines of the cloister and guest halls. Aside from that, someone wearing different clothing from what he had worn the day before would be remarked on after Sir Reynold was found, when anything noticed out of the expected would draw suspicion.

She had started on that line of thinking earlier but not followed it far enough. For whoever had done it, killing Sir Reynold had not been the end of it; and she said slowly, “Domina Alys.”

“Yes,” Joliffe agreed. “She was with him, already in the cloister, no problem there and no problem at being at his back if she was seeing him to the door and out. Afterward she would have had her own rooms to wash in, change her clothing, and who’s to know a nun is wearing something different than the day-before?”

The stairs to her rooms were beside the passage where Sir Reynold had been killed. She could have come down with him, killed him, gone back up with little chance of being seen. And she would have had Katerin to help her wash the blood off both her and her clothing, with her fire to dry her dress at afterward so that she might even be wearing it today, come to that.

And Katerin would likely have forgotten all about it by now, or shortly would. Only things that happened over and over again seemed to stay any length of time with her. Passing happenings drifted out of her mind within hours: by now she had likely forgotten there had been any anger between Domina Alys, Sir Reynold, and Sir Hugh last night.

“But it could as well have been him,” Benet said suddenly, looking at Edmund with dislike. “He was alone in the church all night and wouldn’t have to worry about changing clothing if he stripped off and went about it naked. If he was seen before he killed Sir Reynold, it wouldn’t matter. We all thought he was mad. If he wasn’t seen and he made the kill, he only had to wash the blood off to be in the clear, and he had water.” He pointed to the jug and basin left for Edmund’s necessities along the wail beyond the pallet and his blankets. “Any water he bloodied, he could dump out in the cloister garth and no one the wiser.”

Before Edmund could answer, Joice exclaimed, outraged, “He never would!”

“I might,” Edmund said more reasonably, “but where did I lay hands on a dagger? Everything I had was taken away to be burned when Domina Alys had me washed. I had no weapon of any kind.”

Benet glared at him, visibly casting through his mind for an answer, before saying, “You might have had one when you first came to the priory, hid it somewhere, and went out after it last night.”

“Before or after he stripped naked?” Joice asked scornfully.

Still reasonably, Edmund asked, “Where would I have hidden a dagger among those rags I was wearing when I came?”

“A small one, strapped to your side or thigh.”

“It wasn’t a small dagger killed Sir Reynold,” Frevisse said. “It had to be one of the larger kinds to do the damage it did.”

“A basilard for a guess,” Joliffe said. “It would have to be, to go completely through a man and be strong enough to cut sideways into his spine afterward.”

“How would Domina Alys come by one of those?” Frevisse asked sharply. “Or Master Harman hide one in his rags?”

“A shorter way to go,” said Edmund, “might be to ask if there’s anyone we already know who has one.”

Both Joliffe and Benet were suddenly, completely motionless, until Joliffe slowly turned his head and looked at Benet, who still did not move but stayed staring off into the air in front of him as if he were seeing something he very much did not want to see.

“Benet,” Joliffe said gently.

“Sir Hugh,” Benet said, hardly above a whisper. “Sir Hugh has one.”