The Apostate's Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  “Humble” seemed to work, though. Far sooner than she had hoped, the long-nosed, stiff-spined woman was standing in the doorway, looking as if Cecely was a bad smell; and Cecely, forgetting to be either humble or courteous, demanded, “Is it true Symond Hewet is dying?”

  “No,” Dame Frevisse snapped back. “How did you hear he was?”

  Not about to betray Alson, Cecely said, “Women talk. In the walk. I can hear them. The abbot is here. When is he going to see me again?” Not that she wanted to see him again, but this waiting, with nothing going one way or other, was wearing at her.

  “I suppose he and Domina Elisabeth have other matters to talk of beyond you.”

  What matters? Cecely wanted to demand. Because they kept busy with something besides her for long enough, her chance might come after all…

  Doubting Dame Frevisse would tell her anything even if she knew it, she asked instead, “How ill is Master Breredon?”

  “He’s mending.”

  “It was John Rowcliffe did it, you know.”

  “Did what?”

  “Poisoned him,” Cecely snapped, impatient at having to say it again. How often would she have to say it before someone got it into their head? “He’s dangerous! They all are, the Rowcliffes. I told you that. They want me dead. They want Neddie dead. Your abbot should make them go away!”

  With no sign of being moved in the slightest, Dame Frevisse asked, “What of Symond Hewet?”

  Cecely felt herself blink with surprise and wariness. “Symond?”

  “Why was he poisoned?”

  “Why was he poisoned?” Cecely echoed.

  “Supposing John Rowcliffe poisoned Master Breredon, why would he then poison his cousin?”

  “To throw suspicion away from himself. Or—” Cecely leaped to a better reason. “Or because Symond was going to finally tell the truth. Or threatened to tell the truth. Then Neddie would get the manors he’s supposed to have and John would lose them, and so he wanted to stop Symond saying anything and he poisoned him!”

  Her triumph at that cooled under Dame Frevisse’s level stare in the long moment before Dame Frevisse asked, “What has Symond Hewet been lying about? How would John Rowcliffe lose these manors if Symond Hewet told the truth?”

  Glad of the chance to tell someone, Cecely said eagerly, “He’s the last living of three brothers. He…”

  “John Rowcliffe?”

  “Yes!” Cecely said impatiently. How slow-witted was the woman? “There were the three brothers. And a sister. She was oldest. She was Symond’s mother. Then there was the oldest brother. He died a long time ago. George was his son. It was George that drowned with Guy. Then there was John, and then Neddie’s grandfather, Guy’s father. The father of all of them had been a merchant in Norwich. After he was rich, he bought manors and moved away from Norwich. You see? His lands weren’t entailed. He could will them any way he wanted to. They didn’t have to go to only the eldest son. They were supposed to be divided between his sons, but John took them all!”

  “How?” Dame Frevisse’s voice matched her stare—level and bare of any feeling.

  “How?” Cecely echoed.

  “How did John Rowcliffe take the manors without his brothers made protest against him?”

  “They were dead!” How could this woman be so slow? “They were dead and Guy and George were too young. Neddie’s age, maybe. John had their wardships. There wasn’t anything they could do, and when they were old enough to do something, John had brought them to think there was nothing wrong.”

  “How did you find all this out?”

  “I asked questions. He’d raised them to have no questions. They just believed him. But I found out the truth. Now they’re both dead, and he wants to do the same thing to Neddie! To steal his manor like he stole the others! But Symond must have decided enough was enough, and he was going to tell the truth, and so John poisoned him!”

  “You’re growing too loud,” Dame Frevisse said. “Lower your voice. Why would Symond have kept quiet all these years about the wrongs done his nephews?”

  “Cousins,” Cecely snapped but with her voice down. She had not meant to share this with the whole nunnery. It was just that the injustice of it and that no one cared made her so angry! “None of it was skin off his nose, was it? He had what he had from his mother, so he wasn’t out anything. John probably bribed him some way, too. I don’t know! But since he’s the only one who can give John the lie, that’s why John wants to be rid of him!”

  “Except you have the deeds to the manors you claim aren’t his. Won’t those deeds give John Rowcliffe the lie as well as anything Symond Hewet might say?”

  “What? Yes! That’s why he wants them so badly! That’s what I tried to tell Abbot Gilberd. That if Neddie becomes a monk, the manors will go his abbey!”

  Dame Frevisse went on staring at her. Cecely barely kept from stamping her foot with impatience. The woman was so slow! But at last, Dame Frevisse nodded, said, “Yes. That interests him against the Rowcliffes, surely,” turned, and left the room.

  Cecely took two angry steps after her, wanting more from her than that. Then common sense caught up to her and she sank down wearily on the bench again. Demanding anything from a woman like Dame Frevisse—a woman who had never been a woman—was useless. She was as narrow as the cloister she lived in.

  Still, something of what Cecely had said seemed to have struck through to her. If nothing else, it might get the Rowcliffes sent away, or maybe John arrested. That would make everything easier. Something had to turn her way soon.

  Frevisse made effort, while crossing the yard to the guesthall, to subdue her angry impatience at Sister Cecely and somewhat succeeded. If not rid of it by the time she entered the hall, she at least had it controlled as she went to talk to Ela where she sat on a low stool in her usual morning place at the head of the stairs to the guesthall’s kitchen, watching what went on.

  With her head crooked sideways to look up past her shoulders’ increasingly rounded stoop, Ela said, “Good morning, lady,” and made a slight attempt to rise, knowing Frevisse would gesture for her to stay seated.

  Frevisse did, brought another stool, and sat down close to Ela, to say quietly, just between the two of them, “I have questions for you.”

  The hall servants had finished with their morning cleaning of the hall. The Rowcliffes were at their now-usual place in a far corner, a few men who must be of the abbot’s entourage with them. Frevisse and Ela had their end of the hall to themselves, and Ela said, “Ask. I daresay I can make a good guess at answers.”

  “The evening Master Breredon fell ill, he was served in his chamber on a tray his servant took to him, yes?”

  “That’s so, as best as I recall. Nobody wanted him and the Rowcliffes meeting up if we could help it. Him no more than the rest of us.”

  “Did he fear them, do you think?”

  “My thought was just he’s a man who’ll step aside from trouble if he can, rather than run at it head on.”

  “Who set the tray? In the kitchen, who put the food and drink on it?”

  Ela held silent a moment, shrewdly eyeing Frevisse while thinking, before answering with a question of her own, “You’re thinking, aren’t you—you and Dame Claire—that it was poison that took both Master Breredon and Master Hewet?”

  There being no point in denial, Frevisse answered, “We are, yes, and I want to know how it came to them.”

  Ela made the small bobbing of her head that had to pass for a nod on her age-stiffened neck, then considered a while before saying, “Well, I’m feared I can’t say for certain about Master Breredon’s tray. Likely it was Luce set the tray, but it might have been Tom. I know it wasn’t me. Nor I don’t remember as it was carried up to him directly, or if his man came down for it. It would be Tom or Luce or his man you’d have to ask. As for Master Hewet, he’s been served at table with the others, his kinfolk, every time. That would have been Tom. When it’s this many menfolk all together, I keep Luce t
o the kitchen when I can. Not that they’ve been anything but well-mannered, except toward Master Breredon. But less tempted, less trouble, as they say.”

  “What about Mistress Lawsell and her daughter?”

  Ela softly chuckled. “There’s a problem. Mistress Lawsell doesn’t know whether to keep her and her girl to their chamber, so they won’t take ill—” Ela broke off to ask, “You want everyone to go on thinking it’s maybe a contagion, do you?”

  “Dame Claire and I think that would be best.”

  “Good, then. Less trouble than if they think there’s someone poisoning them,” Ela agreed and returned to answering Frevisse’s last question. “But since the young Rowcliffe started taking heed of her girl, Mistress Lawsell is torn between keeping her closed up and loosing her to him.”

  “What does Elianor do?”

  “Comes out. Stays in. Whatever her mother says. Butter-not-melt-in-her-mouth-obedient to her mother, she is, but she doesn’t encourage him that I can see.”

  Frevisse wondered if Elianor’s mother was deceived into thinking she was winning against Elianor’s desire for nunhood. Or was Elianor slipping away from it herself, despite all she had said and maybe not even knowing that she was? Without talking with Elianor, there was no way to know, and there was no time now to wonder much about it. Frevisse thanked Ela and crossed the hall to Rowcliffe and the abbot’s men. They all stood up to bow to her. Young Jack had briefly disappeared into their chamber but was just coming out. He joined their bows and she bent her head to them all in return, then asked Jack, “How does he?” supposing he had been to see his cousin.

  “Asleep,” Jack said. “But it’s a quiet sleep. He’s likely past the worst.”

  “How do you feel?”

  Jack traded startled looks with his father, before saying, “Well, thank you,” and his father echoed him.

  “That’s good to hear.” Then to Rowcliffe, “If I might speak with you aside, please.”

  He rose and left the table, going with her to the end of the hall where he said, before she said anything, “We’re not leaving while he’s so ill. Whatever it is, we’ll see it out here, him and—God forbid—whoever else comes down with whatever it is.”

  “We do pray God forbids more of whatever it is, and I promise you there’s no thought of asking you to leave. What I hope instead is that you’ll tell me what the line of inheritance is in your family.”

  Rowcliffe looked somewhat a-back at that. “For what?” he demanded.

  “It’s about the manors Sister Cecely claims are Edward’s.”

  “The lecherous-tailed, thieving bitch. They’re no more his than the moon is. I’m going nowhere until I have my deeds back.”

  “What I wonder,” Frevisse said coolly, “is why she thinks Edward has claim to these manors.”

  “Because she’s a fool!”

  Frevisse raised her eyebrows at him. She watched while he throttled his anger into his control until finally he was able to say civilly enough, “It goes this way, no matter what she says. My father, God keep his soul, married twice. By his first wife he had my sister, my brother Robert, and me. Then my mother died, and a while after that he married again, God knows why, and had another son. When my father died, he left her—his second wife—with her dower lands to live on and her son Edward with moiety in a manor and an apprenticeship with a Norwich merchant.”

  “That Edward being your half brother and our little Edward’s grandfather.”

  “Aye, little Edward’s grandfather and my half brother. He was a good man.” Rowcliffe shuffled his feet as if suddenly uneasy about something and said, almost apologizing, “Heed. What I just said about my stepmother—that God knows why my father married her—that’s my anger talking. She was a good woman, a good wife, and the only harsh words she ever gave us were ones we’d earned.” Something very like a boy’s mischief warmed half a smile of remembrance from him. “Edward was a good brother, too. We’re a family that likes each other.” The remembered mischief faded, replaced by the weight of the present, and he said heavily, “It’s hard to have both my brothers gone. Robert and Edward both. And now there’s Guy and George gone, too, sudden and together, and while we’re still in the midst of grieving, this fool of a woman brings all this other trouble on us, where there didn’t need to be trouble at all.” He glanced toward the chamber where Symond Hewet lay. “Now there’s this,” he said and crossed himself. “God keep us all.”

  Frevisse copied the cross before saying, “So Guy had only claim to a portion of a manor, not a whole one, as Sister Cecely says. And Edward has nothing, not being legitimately his son.”

  “No, there’s a whole manor that’s young Edward’s, just as the—” He stopped, started again. “Just as his mother says. Guy bought a manor and willed it to Edward. Come to Edward that way, there’s no question it’s his and no quarrel about it.” This time his glance was an angry one at Breredon’s chamber. “Except over what she means to do with it. No, the trouble is she’s got it into her addled head that Guy’s father should have had an equal share with my brother Robert and me in all my father’s manors, and that share should have come to Guy and then to young Edward, and that he’s been cheated out of it.”

  “But your father hadn’t divided them that way?” Frevisse asked.

  “He couldn’t. He was a merchant rich enough he married into the gentry, but the three manors were my mother’s, her inheritance from her father. They were to go to her sons after she and our father were dead, and that’s what happened. Robert got two. I got one. Our half brother Edward had a moiety—a life-share—in one of Robert’s, and besides that, our father had bought him into a good apprenticeship with a mercer in Norwich. The moiety went back to Robert when Edward died, but Edward had done well enough that he left Guy as well off as the rest of us, just not in lands.”

  “Because the lands were all from your father’s first wife and couldn’t go to his second wife’s son,” Frevisse said, to be sure she had followed all of this.

  “You have it. Sometime or other your Sister Cecely took hold on it otherwise. She made the last three years or so a hell for Guy, nagging him to do something about ‘the wrong’ done him and his father. It was to shut her up he bought a manor and willed it to Edward. Didn’t shut her up, though, and once he was dead, she pulled this trick on us, despite she knows—she has to know—that Edward, being a bastard, has no rights to inherit anything not straightly willed to him. Not that we were supposed to know there was no marriage,” Rowcliffe added bitterly.

  “Nor would you have known it if Symond had not told you.”

  “If Guy hadn’t told him and he hadn’t told us, no, we’d not have known. Even then, Symond might not have told us, except she ran and took Edward and the deeds with her.”

  That raised a few questions about Symond, but more immediate was Frevisse’s wondering why Guy had told him at all. Was there more to it than what Symond had already told her? She was looking forward to when he would be well enough for her questions, but that would not be now, and she asked, “Yesterday at meals who served your food? A guesthall servant or one of your own?”

  Rowcliffe had been braced for more questions about inheritance, it seemed, or else he had to think about it to remember. Either way, he took a moment before answering, “One of yours. I wouldn’t have one of my hamfists do it for fear of more on me than anywhere else.”

  “Would Symond have had to drink and eat whatever the rest of you did?”

  “Of course.”

  “All the same,” she persisted. “Nothing different.”

  “Nothing different,” Rowcliffe said.

  “From the same pitcher, from the same platter,” Frevisse said, thinking aloud.

  But not the same bowl or cup, said the back of her mind.

  Rowcliffe had sharpened to her questions now and demanded, “Why? Are you thinking poison instead of disease? You’re thinking he was poisoned?”

  “I think that sometimes food spoils without any
one knows it in time,” Frevisse said. “If it’s that rather than disease, I have to find it out.”

  That was not a denial of poison, but Rowcliffe took it that way, as she had meant him to. “Better if it’s that,” he agreed. “Couldn’t be poison, anyway. How would she get it here?” His voice hardened. “She’s locked up, isn’t she? You’ve said she is.”

  “She’s confined in a room, with guard kept at the door at all times. She goes nowhere, even to the church.”

  Rowcliffe gave a curt nod, satisfied by that. His next likely question would be about Abbot Gilberd and his dealing with Sister Cecely. Frevisse avoided it by thanking him for his answers and walking away. Unfortunately she took with her the one question to which she had not even a glimmer of answer yet: who had poisoned Breredon and Symond. She expected that how would answer the who, but in truth she was a little afraid of what that answer might be, because it was more and more shaping toward being not one of the outcomers but someone of the nunnery, and why someone of the nunnery should want to do this much harm—and even murder—was something she did not understand at all, and not understanding it made her afraid that what she might find out would be not only altogether apart from but even darker than the matter of Sister Cecely.

  Chapter 22

  Whatever Frevisse’s fears, they did not release her from her duty, and she went next to Breredon’s chamber, to be met at the doorway by his man Coll, who bowed and said before she asked, “He’s fit to talk, if that’s what you want.”

  It was, but more than that, Frevisse was pleased to find Breredon somewhat sitting up, leaned back on a pillow against the head of the bed. Color and strength were still gone from his face, but there was more life in his eyes than there had been yesterday, and before she could speak, he said, “They tell me Symond Hewet has sickened, too. Has anyone else?”