6 The Murderer's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  When the while of explanations was over and there had been supper and the manor was settling into evening ways, habits taking hold even in the tide of tonight’s talk, Frevisse slipped away from company and questions to the dark garden. The nearer paths were a paleness in what faint light came from over the parlor shutters. Further from the hall there was only starlight under the clear night sky, but that was enough to care for her feet across the greensward among the birch trees to the arbor where she found her way through its deeper darkness to the rose garden and starlight again.

  The evening damp was rising, and it was foolish to be out, she knew, but she needed solitude awhile, time for her thoughts to settle and new equilibrium to come. Eased by the silence, she looked up at the sky. So many stars there. Windows into a heaven unimaginably far. So long a way for a soul to go.

  She said a prayer for Martyn’s soul, wherever on its journey it now was, and brought herself to make another prayer for Giles, whose soul was still in his body but probably not beyond tonight; he was expected to die before dawn. Sire Benedict had already given him Last Rites, so Master Holt had told her. He had tried to talk with him when what could be done for his wound had been done.

  “And even now he’s raging that everyone’s stupidity interfered with what he meant to do. At you in particular for spoiling how cleverly he had managed Martyn’s death, and at you and Edeyn and Lionel altogether for crossing him at the end,” Master Holt had said coldly, in anger and disgust. “He’s better off dead, for everyone’s sake.”

  For everyone’s sake but Giles‘. The devils that must have haunted him all his life were surely closing in now for the moment when his body could no longer hold his soul; having fallen back into rage, he had forfeited the safety the Last Rites had given him. Lionel’s demon had been the more obvious all these years, but Giles’ demons were the more deadly when all was said and done, destroying a soul instead of only flesh.

  So there would be an end of Giles, and for Lionel and Edeyn a change in everything their lives had been. Edeyn still carried Giles’ heir but when Giles was dead, she would be that most independent of women, a widow, more in control of her own life than had ever been allowed her before. There was no chance of marriage between her and Lionel, not only because he had sworn never to marry but because she had been married to his cousin; man’s law and God’s barred any closer link between them. But the child to come was equally Lionel’s heir; there was a bond they could keep. Whatever they made of that and of whatever else there was between them would come in time’s fullness, Frevisse reflected, and all she could give them were her prayers, but those she would give gladly.

  And for herself? More prayers because the angry questions there had been between her and Dame Claire were still there to be answered, and the answers had to do with more than only what she had done today. If she had succeeded in meeting Dame Claire’s challenge to hold her judgment in check, if she had drawn back instead of going on, it would have cost Lionel his life. If she had stood aside from what she was sure of, Giles would have been able to kill again.

  So she could say she had been right. But so had Dame Claire. She had been driven as much by her dislike of Giles as anything else, and the good that had come of it could almost be called happenstance.

  Judgment, justice, and fairness all existed. They were supposed to be one and the same, but they were not, not as often as they should be.

  And there was what was commonly called common sense that was supposed to be the root of wisdom; but Frevisse had found too often before this that what was common was not necessarily sensible, nor what was sensible necessarily common. Common sense had seemed to make it clear to everyone how Martyn had been killed and common sense had been wrong. Had it been wisdom then that had taken her beyond that into her doubts? Or, as Dame Claire said, only her ill judgment based on no more than dislike?

  She had no answers yet as to what she would do when she was once again in St. Frideswide’s, confronted with Domina Alys. She had hoped, had prayed she would be able to change, to become more accepting, but she doubted that she had. Not yet. Maybe she would simply have to live it through, finding her way day by day, no overwhelming answer given. Maybe it had to be enough that for here and now something had been made right, that two people had been saved from so much wrong.

  The light wind whispering among the rose leaves said there would be rain before morning; the long run of fair days was ended. But in a pause before supper she and Dame Claire had talked and were already agreed there was no reason why they should not go on their way tomorrow, come what may, whatever weather. Assuredly, she was ready.