“But what if we think someone did indeed pay the drovers to carry him off, to make it seem he’d run off so he’d lose his holding, again at the hands of the reeve Henry Barnsley? That Kelmstowe’s holding then went to Barnsley made it all the better, but what the man who paid the drovers was after at the first was simply to set up Kelmstowe as someone who would readily be blamed for Barnsley’s murder when it came. That’s why he needed Kelmstowe not merely gone but to come back, too, as he assuredly would because of his mother and sister. Then it was a matter of waiting and hoping things would time out rightly and, for him, they did. Kelmstowe came back, and after he did, I’ll warrant a great deal there have been constant little threads of talk about how angry he must still be at Barnsley, how if Barnsley is wise he won’t turn his back on Kelmstowe, how it’s maybe just a matter of Kelmstowe biding his time.”
The glances between the men, a nod from one and a slight lift of a shoulder by Simon Perryn answered her half-question even before they looked back to her and together nodded, saying her guess was right.
She went on, “But it wasn’t Tom Kelmstowe who was biding his time. Anneys Barnsley’s sister was with child. When the birthing came, Anneys Barnsley would be with her, Henry Barnsley on his own. That gave Adirton–” She finally named him, and no one objected. “–a certainty his chance would come. When it did, he left a pot of poisoned broth as apparent charity for the Kelmstowes, to see to it they were kept at home all the night when it was needful no one see them elsewhere. The same poison that he had used to kill his wife not long before.”
“She died!” Adirton exclaimed. “Everyone knows she just fell ill and died. My wife. It happens!”
“Happens she died of a sudden,” Frevisse said coldly, “with the same troubles that laid the Kelmstowes low last night. Only worse. I wonder – have you been sharp enough to rid yourself of whatever you used, or will a thorough search–” more thorough than Margery had been able to make in this while – “of your place find something you’d rather we didn’t?”
Adirton blanched. Good. His poison was still somewhere to be found. If there was any doubt, a small dose could be tried on him to be sure of it, Frevisse thought grimly as she went on, “With Barnsley dead and Kelmstowe easily thought guilty, he would be free to comfort and then marry the widow, getting thereby a considerable holding without the trouble of having deserved it.” She looked to Master Naylor. “He would have been thought fit to take it over along with the widow, yes?”
“Yes,” the steward said. He was more than usually grim.
“So, with no suspicion of murder falling on him because it was plain someone else had killed Barnsley, he’d be far better off than he had been and with a new wife. Of course if it turned out the new wife did not suit him–” Frevisse fixed a hard stare on Adirton. “–he had his way of remedying that, to free himself to look for another.”
Adirton’s jaw clenched as he apparently tried to hold back from saying anything, before he burst out, “That’s nothing but guesses! First and last, nothing but guesses! You’ll never find the drovers to ask, for one thing!”
“Drovers come the same way year after year,” Master Naylor said. “If we have to wait until we’ve asked every one that comes through in the coming year, then that’s what we’ll do.”
“In the meanwhile,” Frevisse said, “the others that were there when Barnsley’s body was found will be asked if you indeed handled it enough to have blood on your sleeves and the front of your tunic. I think we’ll hear that you didn’t. So where did the blood come from?”
Adirton opened his mouth, perhaps to give an excuse for it, then must have remembered he had already said it was Barnsley’s blood and closed his mouth.
“That and finding the poison wherever you’ve hidden it, added to what Anneys Barnsley has already said, will go a long way to satisfying the crowner, I think,” Frevisse said.
“That, and that I’ve heard him more than once warning folk in the alehouse that Kelmstowe was likely to break out again in some manner of hurt to someone,” Simon Perryn said. “Aye. We’ll stand behind all this when time comes to jury for the crowner.”
“That should suffice,” Frevisse said, her gaze locked with Adirton’s.
Adirton took a threatening step forward. Simon Perryn and the other man clamped hold on his arms, keeping him where he was. He wrenched once, more from anger than any thought he could escape, then spat at Frevisse’s feet, splattering the stone floor. She did not move, only kept her cold gaze on his angry-weasel face until at Master Naylor’s order the two village men wrenched him around and hauled him from the hall.
* * * * *
Frevisse had John Adirton too much in her thoughts the next few days, troubled that she could form no more than the plainest prayers for him and those only by rote.
With such thoughts for company, she was grateful when Sister Elianor broke in on her thoughts the second morning, come to say Tom Kelmstowe was here, had asked to speak with her, was waiting in the yard. Rather than have him come into the cloister, Frevisse went down to him. As she came out of the cloister door, followed by Sister Elianor, into the sunshine of the yard, Kelmstowe shoved back his hood to bare his head, went down on one knee, and held out a folded bit of white cloth, saying, “From my mother and sister, my lady. In thanks.”
At Frevisse’s gesture, he stood up, and she took the cloth from him. While she unfolded it, he went on, running the words together in his eagerness to have them said, “I’ve nothing of my own to give yet except my thanks, but you have that, right enough and in full, and my promise of faithful service to you for always after this.”
“That’s thanks enough,” Frevisse said, smiling to assure him she believed him and gladly accepted his word. She knew from Master Naylor that his lands were to be restored to him, and that in due course he would also be given such of Barnsley’s as were not bound to Anneys Barnsley as dower. Having been victim as well as tool in John Adirton’s deceptions, she would be left that much but lose the rest because of her deliberate lie against Kelmstowe. “But this is lovely,” Frevisse exclaimed, finding she held a linen nightcap, made to fit close to the head and tie under the chin, and embroidered around the outer edge with fine pattern of tendrils and leaves in thread probably pulled from the same cloth as the cap was made.
“Aye,” Tom Kelmstowe said, looking greatly pleased on his mother’s and sister’s behalf. “They wanted you to have something but know there’s not much you can have, being a nun and all. So they thought maybe this would be well enough, being so plain but prettied just that little?”
Frevisse answered his uncertainty with, “It is quite acceptable.” She would not for the world tell him it was not, despite the embroidery made it questionable. “Your mother and sister did the embroidery?”
“Aye. They’re good at it, aren’t they?” Kelmstowe said, his relief at her acceptance probably making him bold to show his pride in them.
“They are indeed.” And arthritic fingers in the older nuns and lack of skill in the younger presently meant the nunnery’s vestments and altar cloths were in need of such good hands to mend them. Even, perhaps, to make new ones. Frevisse tucked that thought away for the future as she thanked Kelmstowe again and received his repeated thanks in return, so that they afterward went their own ways, back to their widely differing lives, with good feelings on both sides.
It was the look on Sister Elianor’s face as she stood aside to let Frevisse go ahead of her along the passageway to the cloister walk that made Frevisse pause there and ask, “Is there something troubling you?”
The girl bowed her head, started to shake it, her lips forming No, before she changed her mind, looked up, and said, “It very nearly went wrong for all of them, didn’t it? For that man and his mother and sister. And the wife, too. The widow. It went altogether wrong for her, her husband being killed. But it would have come to her death, too, wouldn’t it?”
“I think so, yes.”
“I didn’t kn
ow that someone could turn to so much – because he wanted what wasn’t his to have – could turn to so much–” Sister Elianor fumbled for the word she wanted.
“Evil,” said Frevisse.
“Evil.” Sister Elianor accepted the word almost unwillingly. She hesitated, then asked very quietly, “May I go to the church and pray this while until None?”
Frevisse’s urge was to let her; it was what she wanted often enough herself; but the prioress part of her asked, “What are you supposed to be doing at this hour?”
“I’d finished helping Dame Margrett polish the altar candlesticks and was going to see if Dame Claire needed me for anything when the man knocked at the door and I came for you instead.”
“Go and pray then, since you’re not needed elsewhere.”
Sister Elianor made a grateful curtsey and turned away along the walk toward the church – going with bowed head and even pace – neither hurried nor flurried, Frevisse noted before going up the stairs to her parlor. There she laid the cap on the table and stood contemplating it for a few moments before deciding that, yes, she would wear it. Not for the sake of its prettiness, which would be wrong, but to keep her mindful of the people beyond the nunnery walls who needed her judgment and care as much – and sometimes more – than the nuns close around her.
Accounts were waiting for her on the other side of the table, but she drifted with her thoughts to the window and sat down. She was glad for Tom Kelmstowe, his mother, and sister, but it was again toward Adirton her thoughts went.
Had “evil” been too strong a word to give to Sister Elianor? She was afraid she could not find a lesser. There was too much wrong about him. What he had done, he had not done from stupidity. He had set about most cunningly to get what he wanted, never troubling to look past his own greed to any feeling for the people whose lives he was destroying. Too many men had greed for more than they needed, cared nothing for what harm they did along their way, cared nothing about who they left hurt, impoverished, and desperately without life’s needs. Nothing mattered except their own excessive greed be satisfied.
Except of course such greed could never be satisfied. Greed beyond need fed on itself, creating ever-greater hunger for more. A hunger never able to be satisfied because it devoured even as it fed. Devoured mind and soul as surely as disease devoured a body unless a balance could be found.
John Adirton had never sought that balance. He had outright murdered his wife and Henry Barnsley, and left the Kelmstowes ruined past apparent mending. All so he could have more. Never mind that the less he left to others barely let them go on living.
There was a rot in John Adirton’s soul that let him see only his own necessity and feel nothing for anyone else’s. There were so many ways to be cruel in the world. Adirton had turned aside from none.
It was just as well that he would hang.
Blessedly, at that moment the bell began to ring for None. Frevisse made to rise, found a weight on her lap, and sank back, surprised to find the cat curled there. It knew as well as she did what the bell meant but gave no sign it meant to move. If anything, it settled more heavily, as if defying her to push it off her lap. She nearly did, but paused. Just as there were cruelties great and small in the world, so there were kindnesses. Great ones might be few and far between, but small ones came daily and often. Christ had said “As long as you did such to one of my least brothers, you did so to me” without saying where “least” left off; and so, with silent laughter at herself, Frevisse gathered up the defiantly boneless beast, rose to her feet, and gently put it down where she had been sitting, leaving it to re-curl and settle itself on the warmed cushions as she left the room, called to the prayers in which she hoped to find her peace.
THE END
Margaret Frazer
Margaret Frazer is the award-winning author of more than twenty historical murder mysteries and novels. She makes her home in Minneapolis, Minnesota, surrounded by her library of books, but she lives her life in the 1400s. In writing her Edgar-nominated Sister Frevisse (The Novice's Tale) and Player Joliffe (A Play of Isaac) novels she delves far inside medieval perceptions, seeking to look at medieval England more from its point of view than ours. "Because the pleasure of going thoroughly into otherwhen as well as otherwhere is one of the great pleasures in reading."
She can be visited online at http://www.margaretfrazer.com.
Sister Frevisse Mysteries
Beginning in the year of Our Lord's grace 1431, the Sister Frevisse mysteries are an epic journey of murder and mayhem in 15th century England.
The Novice's Tale
The Servant's Tale (Edgar-Award Nominee)
The Outlaw's Tale
The Bishop's Tale (Minnesota Book Award Nominee)
The Boy's Tale
The Murderer's Tale
The Prioress' Tale (Edgar-Award Nominee)
The Maiden's Tale
The Reeve's Tale (Minnesota Book Award Nominee)
The Squire's Tale
The Clerk's Tale
The Bastard's Tale
The Hunter's Tale
The Widow's Tale
The Sempster's Tale
The Traitor's Tale
The Apostate's Tale
Player Joliffe Mysteries
In the pages of Margaret Frazer's national bestselling Dame Frevisse Mysteries the player Joliffe has assumed many roles on the stage to the delight of those he entertains. Now, in the company of a troupe of traveling performers, he finds himself double cast in the roles of sleuth and spy...
A Play of Isaac
A Play of Dux Moraud
A Play of Knaves
A Play of Lords
A Play of Treachery
A Play of Piety
Margaret Frazer Tales
Neither Pity, Love, Nor Fear (Herodotus Award Winner)
Strange Gods, Strange Men
The Simple Logic of It (A Bishop Pecock Tale)
The Witch's Tale (Sister Frevisse Mystery)
The Midwife's Tale (Sister Frevisse Mystery)
Volo te Habere...
This World's Eternity
Shakespeare's Mousetrap
The Death of Kings
The Stone-Worker's Tale (Sister Frevisse Mystery)
Winter Heart (Sister Frevisse Mystery)
Cover Art: Gustave Courbet - Poor Woman of the Village, 1866.
Cover Design: Justin Alexander
Winter Heart Page 6