Sins of the Blood

by Margaret Frazer

  Thomasine’s hazel-green eyes, still swimming in tears, searched Frevisse’s face as if for signs of trickery. Finding none, she whispered, “All right. I’ll tell her.”

  “Good then. And now there’s another matter to hand, the one that brought me for you. Master Montfort has come.”

  Thomasine looked at her questioningly.

  “The crowner,” Dame Frevisse said.

  Thomasine remembered then. He had come to St. Frideswide’s not long after she first entered, when a stockman had been found in a barn, dead, with a broken skull, and no one to swear how he had come by it. Master Morys Montfort had come then, it being his duty as crowner for northern Oxfordshire to view and report on any sudden deaths. So he had come and viewed and decided what everyone else was already certain of: that the stockman had last been seen somewhat drunk, was known to be more than a little careless at the best of times, and had gotten himself kicked in the head and half across the stable by a cow well known to be a kicker. Death by misadventure had been Master Montfort’s decision, and the man had been buried, the cow as the instrument of his death duly slaughtered and its meat distributed to the poor. Since then there had been no need for Master Montfort at St. Frideswide’s. Until now.

  “He was sent for after Martha Hayward’s death.” For once Dame Frevisse’s voice was bare of anything but the flat statement of facts. “Now he’s come and must needs see to Lady Ermentrude’s dying, too, and wants to talk to everyone who had attendance on her, you among them. He’s in the guest hall.”

  They had begun walking as Dame Frevisse talked, Thomasine hurrying a little to match her long stride. Now she stopped short under the last arch of the cloister walk and asked quickly, “Do I have to see him? I can only tell him what everyone else will say about them both.”

  “You were the first to see your aunt when she returned here yesterday. And you were there at both their dyings, besides being with Lady Ermentrude all the night before her death. He wants to question you.”

  “Everyone knows what happened. Everyone saw the drink take her mind and then her body. There’s nothing else to tell. And Martha’s heart failed. Dame Claire will tell him that.”

  “Dame Claire says otherwise now.”

  “She does?”

  “Yes.”

  Dame Frevisse’s voice had a hard edge to it that said more than the word, but what the more might be Thomasine had no time to guess. Dame Frevisse went on, and she had to follow, thrusting her hands up either sleeve and tucking her head down, resolutely low, not seeing anything except her feet as they left the cloister and crossed the courtyard to the guest house.

  Its outer hall was crowded with people, mostly in Lady Ermentrude’s livery. Their clacking chatter died away as Dame Frevisse entered. Thomasine’s quick glancing to either side showed they were looking at her and Dame Frevisse, but Dame Frevisse passed among them with apparently complete disinterest.

  At the threshold to the room that had been Lady Ermentrude’s, Thomasine consciously braced herself for whatever might be there, but after all it was only a room, with the window shutters standing open to the warm day’s sunlight, the bed freshly, neatly made – no sign at all that here had been two deaths so near together under God’s heavy hand, and the bodies still lying within the nunnery walls, wherever their souls might be by now.

  Thomasine’s nervous glance around the room, from under the shelter of her lowered lids, showed her that Master Montfort wished to talk to what seemed a great many people besides herself. Dame Claire was there, and Father Henry, and Aunt Ermentrude’s lady-in-waiting Maryon, who was studying Dame Claire like Dame Alys studied a butchered lamb before dividing it. Only the monkey was missing. Beyond them, seated on the bench under the window, with the sunlight aureoling his brown hair to auburn, was the youth called Robert Fenner. Thomasine had the impression that he was looking at her almost like Maryon was looking at Dame Claire, so she moved backward, putting Dame Frevisse between her and his gaze.

  But there were not enough places to sit in the room, except for the bed, where no one seemed to want to sit, certainly not Thomasine. Father Henry was already standing. It was Robert Fenner who stood up quickly and said, “Here. Pray you, sit here, my lady.”

  He might have meant Dame Frevisse, but Dame Frevisse, intent on going to Dame Claire across the room, said, “Yes, Thomasine, do you sit. We may be waiting for a while.” She added to Dame Claire, “He’s not finished yet with Sir John and Lady Isobel?”

  “Not yet. The lady is still so shaken, he’s talking with them in their room. But he can hardly be much longer.” Dame Claire’s tone, like her face, was rigid, withdrawn as if her thoughts were inwardly turning around something else.

  Neither she nor Dame Frevisse were heeding Thomasine at all. With no choice, Thomasine went, eyes down, to take the place Robert Fenner had offered her.

  Instead of moving away as she sat, he slid down on his heels beside her, his back against the wall. From there he could look up into her face whether she wanted him to or not. He smiled. Thomasine deliberately shut her eyes, refusing to acknowledge that he was there, and began the Paternoster, the first prayer that came into her mind. Her lips moved on the “amen” though she did not mean them to, and he must have seen them because, before she could begin again, he said softly, “Dame Frevisse speaks to me.”

  Thomasine threw him an inadvertent glance, then shut her lips tightly over any words that might try to escape her.

  “You heard her. She’s fully a nun but she talks to me,” Robert persisted.

  “But I don’t,” Thomasine whispered back, refusing to look at him again. “Not to any man.” The warmth left around her heart by Dame Frevisse’s assurance that she was safe from being put out of St. Frideswide’s made her less taut with nerves than she might have been, so she was able at least to tell him she did not want his attentions.

  “My lady?” The quiet voice on her other side made Thomasine look up. The woman Maryon made a small courtesy with her head. “I hope you’re well enough after all that’s happened and last night?”

  “Y-yes,” Thomasine murmured. “Thank you. And you?”

  “Well enough, I thank you.” Maryon drew a deep sigh and smiled a little sadly at Robert, who had risen to his feet. “We are rather at loose ends for the time, my lord. What will you do now your lady is gone?”

  Robert made a vague gesture. “There’s no place for me at home. Mayhap Sir Walter will take me again into his household. I don’t know.”

  “Nor I.” She was a pretty woman, all softness and smooth skin, with dark hair and manners meant to please. She made Thomasine uncomfortable. “I left the Queen’s service in hope of seeing something more than Hertford Castle, where she mostly wants to be, and now that hope has come to an end with Lady Ermentrude’s dying. Though she wasn’t an easy mistress, mind.”

  “No. She wasn’t that,” Robert agreed.

  “I’ve wondered if it wasn’t her wanting to leave the Queen, so much as the Queen asking her to go because of her tongue. Did you ever hear aught about that?”‘ There was a curious cadence to her speech that made Thomasine wonder where she had been born.

  “Never anything but what Lady Ermentrude said. That she was tired and wished to leave and Queen Katherine granted it.”

  “You never heard her speak ill of the Queen?”

  “Never.”

  The conversation did not interest Robert. Maryon turned her attention back to Thomasine. “Or you either? Never any reason why she left the Queen except she was tired?”

  Gossip of royalty was not common in St. Frideswide’s. Thomasine remembered very well what Lady Ermentrude had said the afternoon she first arrived. “She said there was going to be scandal and she wanted to be away before it started.”

  Maryon’s eyes, so gentle-humored and soft under their full lids until then, sharpened. “Did she say what sort?”

  A little disconcerted, Thomasine said, “Oh, no. She might have been going to but Master Chaucer sai
d he’d heard nothing of any such thing and...” Thomasine sought for exactly his reply, “...and that he was sure Lady Ermentrude knew better than to say anything about any such matter, to him or anyone.”

  Robert uttered a short sound of amusement. “How did she take that subtle hint?”

  Thomasine looked at him, a little surprised. “How should she take it except agree?” She frowned, trying to remember. “Only I’m not sure she actually did. Domina Edith changed the subject right then, I think.” She paused, thoughtful – and remembered herself. With a blush and a sudden awareness of Robert’s eyes on her, she ducked her head down again.

  Maryon, not noticing and clearly in a humour for gossiping, said, “Well, it will probably be a relief for her sons, her being dead, after the shock is over.”

  That brought Thomasine’s head up again. “What a dreadful thing to say!”

  “Not really,” Robert said lightly. “I was first in the household of Sir Walter, and many a time I heard Sir Walter complain that she was spending the family into poverty. ‘Always the best,’ he would shout, ‘and never mind if she has to send to London, Bristol, or Calais for it.’”

  Maryon’s dimple appeared. “And I heard her complain that if her son had his way, they would live year round on bread and cheese.”

  “Her, perhaps,” amended Robert. “Sir Walter believes a noble man’s living should match his high place.”

  “Maybe he thinks those nearing life’s end should begin casting off what they cannot take with them.” Maryon’s ironic tone scandalized Thomasine, who believed people shouldn’t immerse themselves too deeply in life’s pleasures to begin with, in fear of the deadly sin of gluttony.

  Robert, seeing Thomasine’s expression, dropped out of the wicked game at once. “Even the greatest families have their troubles these days,” he said.

  “Indeed,” agreed Maryon, unaware. “Sir Walter has been sitting with such concern at Lord Fenner’s bedside these two months past.” She explained to Thomasine, “They’re cousins by Sir Walter’s father – or did you know that? Lady Ermentrude being you aunt, you probably did.”

  “No,” said Robert. “Sister Thomasine takes very little notice of the matters of the world.”

  “Of course, poor thing. Well, Lord Fenner has no sons and the title goes by the male line so Sir Walter will be Lord Fenner when the old man dies, which looks like it could happen any time. Property come with the title, but Lord Fenner has other wealth, and Sir Walter wants to be sure it doesn’t all get given away elsewhere. Interesting how he’s been so concerned about that, and now that his mother is dead, he comes by a fortune equally large. It appears Sir Walter will be doing very well for himself indeed.”

  Maryon seemed to have acquired a wide knowledge of Fenner matters in the little while she had been in Lady Ermentrude’s service. Thomasine felt some reproving remark was required, but before she could form one, Master Montfort appeared in the doorway.

  He was a round, well-bellied man with small black eyes and fox-red hair unevenly thinning across the top. The long, pointed slope of his nose gave his face a sly, smiling shrewdness that Thomasine supposed was surely useful in ferreting out the facts around unfortunate deaths.

  Behind him a little dark shadow of a clerk, carrying pen and ink and parchment scraps, peered nearsightedly around the room for a place to put them. Master Montfort nodded him to the table by the bed and settled himself in the doorway, legs straddled as if to make sure they would all stay where he wanted them until he had finished his business.

  In a full, self-assured voice, Master Montfort demanded, “Which of you is the novice Thomasine?”

  Thomasine was too surprised and unsettled to move or answer until Dame Frevisse said, “Thomasine,” in a tone that brought her to her feet. Past hope of going unnoticed, she moved a little forward, made an uncertain bob of a curtsey, and whispered, “Sir.”

  “Look at me, child.”

  It was a straight demand, barely courteous. Drawing a deep breath, Thomasine looked at him.

  “So,” he said, as if that settled something. “You met Lady Ermentrude when she first arrived here yesterday. How did she seem to you? I want what you thought about it then, not what you think about it now. Well?”

  Despite the clipped command in his voice, Thomasine waited, swallowing, making sure before she tried them that the words would come. “Excited,” she managed at last. “Angry.” And then because strict truthfulness was needed, she added, “I could smell wine on her breath. I think she was drunk.” She glanced at the little clerk, who was busily writing her words on one of his scraps of parchment.

  “She frightened you.” Montfort reclaimed her attention.

  Thomasine turned her surprise to him. How had he known that?

  “I’ve already heard that from your sister.” Master Montfort gave the information as if grudging it. “She says Lady Ermentrude appeared drunk. That she was dragging you by the arm. That you were frightened.”

  Reassured he was not reading her thoughts, Thomasine answered readily, “Yes, I was afraid. She said she was going to take me out of St. Frideswide’s. She was holding onto me so tightly I couldn’t break free. And she was talking so wildly. I think it was the drink in her making her talk so.”

  “Did you think so then?”

  The question rapped at her as if she had said too much. Thomasine hesitated, her eyes darting from place to place around the floor as if the answer would be somewhere there. “I was too afraid to think,” she whispered at last. “I was too afraid.”

  “But you did not try to get away from her.”

  “She was hurting me...”

  Beside her Robert said, “I told her not to struggle.”

  Thomasine stared at him. She had not known he was standing so near to her, or that he would dare speak so strongly to Master Montfort.

  “Who are you?” Master Montfort demanded.

  “My name is Robert Fenner. I am in – was in – Lady Ermentrude’s household.”

  “Fenner? Then you are related to her, as well.”

  “I am a great-nephew.”

  “You were in her service long?”

  “Almost three years. I began in Sir Walter’s household at age nine, but latterly his household became too large, and I was sent to Lady Ermentrude.”

  “There was no quarrel?”

  “No.”

  “You got along well with Lady Ermentrude?”

  “As well as any.”

  “You went with her when she rode to Sir John’s manor?”

  “No.”

  “But you were in the yard when she returned?”

  “I heard Lady Ermentrude ride in. I was in the guest house and came out in time to see her send the priest away and take hold of Lady Thomasine.”

  His bright gaze moved to Thomasine, who instantly dropped her own. But there was no way to shut out his warm, steady voice.

  “And how did she seem to you then?” Montfort demanded.

  “Frightened. Very frightened. But she listened to me and helped me bring Lady Ermentrude into the hall.”

  “I meant, how was Lady Ermentrude?” Master Montfort said, his tone attempting to quell.

  Not very quelled, Robert said, “Drunk, I think. Smelling of wine, unsteady on her feet. Confused in her talking. But–”

  “So she was drunk and feeling the effects of her hard riding that day and the day before,” Master Montfort interrupted.

  “She’d ridden that much and more on other occasions and not felt it. I don’t know why she did that day.”

  “But she did feel it, didn’t she?”

  “I don’t think it was the riding.”

  “The drinking then. She was not a young woman.” He looked around the room and dared someone to gainsay him. No one did, and having asserted his authority, Master Montfort said, “So it would seem safe to say it was her drinking and exhaustion that killed her, coming as they did after her raging of the day before. She was too old to indulge in all that tem
per and drinking. They made an end of her.”

  Quite clearly he had the answer he was seeking. Now he would let them go, Thomasine thought, and gathered herself for the relief of dismissal.

  “No,” Dame Claire said in precise, deep tones, “it was something else.”

  Everyone’s eyes went to her, but her own gaze was on the crowner, her face as set and certain as his own.

  After a moment Montfort asked insolently, “Something else, madam?”

  Dame Claire said stiffly, “She may have been drunk when she arrived here, but all her dying signs show something else. Her convulsions as she was dying. The manner of the pain and the way it took her. That was not her heart failing. I have had time since she died to look into my books. I’ve read–” She drew a deep breath and forced herself to go on against Master Montfort’s lowering look of displeasure. “Lady Ermentrude was poisoned. That’s why she died.”

  Thomasine, caught in her own stillness, had not known how still everyone else had been through all of Dame Claire’s speaking. Not until now, when sharply there was movement and indrawn breaths, her own among them. Master Montfort’s lower lip jigged up and down as if fighting with his mouth over whether he would speak or not. Finally he said tersely, “You think so?”

  “I know so.”

  “And what makes you sure?”

  “I would maybe not be sure–”

  “Ah.”

  “But Martha Hayward’s death was the same.”

  Before, there had been surprise in the movements around the room; that sharpened now into open consternation. Except from Dame Frevisse. Thomasine, despite her own alarm, was aware of the nun’s stillness. Had Dame Frevisse known Dame Claire was going to say that?

  Master Montfort had recovered himself. “I’ve not turned to Martha Hayward’s death,” he said sternly. “So, you say it was suspicious, too?”

  “Father Henry was there when she died,” Dame Claire said. “And Thomasine. They can tell you the manner of her dying.”

  Master Montfort glared at the priest. “Well?”‘

  Father Henry was clearly unhappy at being called on to confirm a dreadful truth. “We were watching by Lady Ermentrude. She was sleeping and Martha was talking. Martha’s tongue went ever on wheels but this time she was gabbling, louder and louder, until I had to tell her to remember the sleeping woman. But she became excited, very lively. She would not sit still, walked around and around, still babbling, until the words began to catch in her throat and change to queer sounds. She grew flushed and she looked strange and then clawed at herself.” Father Henry made vague gestures at his chest or throat. “She fell down kicking on the floor. Thrashing and choking until suddenly she wasn’t... anymore. There was time for me to pray over her but only barely, and she died before help came.”