The Apostate's Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  A twinge that was not quite worry, but might be if she had time to dwell on it, passed through her thoughts that were otherwise mostly on poison. She let it go, pleased, as she came to the infirmary, to find both Dame Claire and Dame Johane there, heads bent together over the infirmary’s book laid open on the worktable. They both looked up, their foreheads tightened with almost identical small frowns, and Dame Claire said, “If you’ve come for an answer about the herbs and all, the best we can tell you is that we don’t know.”

  “Don’t know if you’re missing any, or don’t know what was used?” Frevisse returned.

  “Either,” Dame Claire said.

  “I think there may be some missing from several things,” Dame Johane said. “As if someone took a little from each instead of much from one.”

  “What would they do, mixed together?” Frevisse asked.

  “We don’t know,” Dame Claire said. “What may—and only may—be missing are herbs and drugs we’ve never mixed together. There was no purpose to doing so.”

  “Unless to make someone very ill,” Frevisse said. “Or kill them.”

  Dame Claire’s face settled into hard lines. “Or kill them,” she agreed. “Yes.”

  “But you can’t be certain anything was taken at all,” Frevisse said.

  “We can’t,” Dame Claire said. “Oh, I’m certain enough none of the truly potent things were taken. The dwale. The monkshood. Those are untouched. But among the herbs that could do what was done—” She shook her head. “We can’t tell for a certainty.”

  “But I think there’s less than there should be,” Dame Johane put in earnestly.

  Dame Johane, who was Cecely’s cousin and might have more loyalty to her than she had outwardly shown.

  Frevisse shook off that thought. Surely, if Dame Johane had had her own guilt to cover, she would have been more firm that nothing was missing.

  The bell rang to Sext, blessedly ending talk, but as she left the infirmary with Dame Claire and Dame Johane, Frevisse saw clearly how that brief squirm of suspicion was fresh warning of how deeply Cecely’s return was corrupting the nunnery’s peace.

  Frevisse had learned early that a nunnery was not a peaceful place by either nature or chance. However much—or little—a nun might desire to give herself to God, she remained herself, and selves tended all too easily to grate, one against another, the more especially when cloistered, with no choice about being together. It was the cloister’s peace that gave best chance for deepest prayer and the growing away from the world and self that were the reasons for coming into a nunnery, but there was constant need for great, kind, firm care by a prioress ever-watchful against the very many things that could undermine and overset her nunnery’s peace. As Cecely was oversetting St. Frideswide’s peace, both by her grating self and by the outward-spreading circles of trouble around her.

  And just when a prioress’ firm hand was most needed, Domina Elisabeth was all but vanished from among them.

  Still, she came to the Office this time, belatedly again as she had to Tierce, but that was better than not at all, like yesterday. Judging by the flatness of her voice as she started the Office, her mind was not much there, but Frevisse had to admit that neither was her own when she found herself saying, “Quam dilecta habitation tua, Domine exercituum! Desiderat, languens concupiscit anima mea atria Domini…”—How delightful is your dwelling, Lord of the host! Fainting, my soul desires and longs for the halls of the Lord…—while thinking, What if Cecely had simply brought poison with her?

  Why she might have done so could be set aside for now. Just let the question be, What if she had?

  But everything had been taken away from her after she came here.

  But not from Edward.

  And there had been her demands to see him. Could she have given him the poison to keep, the way she had given him the deeds?

  Possibly. Possibly.

  There were too many possibles about all of this. Frevisse felt an impatient need to move past possibles to something certain. She looked for and found Mistress Petham and Edward in the nave, and after the Office she overtook them in the cloister walk and in as plain a voice as she could, free of undertones or over-meanings, she asked Edward whether his mother had given him anything else to keep secret.

  Edward looked worriedly from her to Mistress Petham, then at his toes, then finally said, “Yes.”

  “Do you still have it?” Frevisse asked gently. “Where is it?”

  For answer, Edward freed his hand from Mistress Petham’s, unclasped the small leather pouch hanging from his belt, took from it a little leather bag closed by a drawstring, and said, “It’s in here.”

  Frevisse held out her hand. Slowly he set the bag into it. By the feel of it, it held the little glazed clay boules with which he and Mistress Petham had been playing the other day. She loosened the drawstring and felt inside but found only boules.

  Watching her, Edward said softly, “It’s in the bottom.”

  She had been looking for a vial or box or something else that could hold poison. Instead what she felt, now she was feeling for it, was a folded paper, or maybe it was parchment. She tried to draw it out but it seemed stuck.

  “It’s stitched,” Edward said. “So it won’t come out.”

  He answered her questioning look by pointing at the bag’s bottom. Frevisse lifted the bag high enough for her to see the bottom, and indeed in the middle of the bag’s bottom curve was a single stitch, where no one was likely to note it or think about it if they did, enough to hold in place something folded and put inside the bag. Frevisse lowered the bag and looked at Edward. “What is it?” Because whatever it was, it was not a packet of poison, attached so firmly it could not be taken out of hiding.

  “My manor,” Edward said, still softly.

  “The deed to your manor?” she asked, carefully gentle. “The one your father left you?”

  Edward nodded.

  “Your mother took out your boules, turned the bag inside out, folded the deed very small, stitched it in place, turned the bag right side out, and put your boules back in. Was that the way of it?”

  Edward nodded.

  And who would trouble a small boy about his bag of boules?

  Still, without much trying, Frevisse could think of several ways things could go wrong with that as a hiding place; but by now she knew all too well that Cecely was not long on either thought or imagination. Cecely saw what she wanted to see, and when the world failed her vision of what it should be, she was angry and resentful of everyone and everything except herself.

  Mistress Petham stroked the back of Edward’s head, telling him, “You are a very brave boy. You didn’t give the secret away, you know. Dame Frevisse found it out.”

  He nodded without seeming much comforted. Whether it was his fault or not, he had lost yet another secret he had been supposed to keep.

  Frevisse could only hope that when he was older, he would accept that there were secrets with which he should never have been burdened, that the guilt of them was not his.

  That he had carried the weight of worry and might carry the guilt for who knew how long was yet another thing to be set in the scale against Sister Cecely.

  But the deed was not what Frevisse had been seeking or had even thought about—making her wonder what else had she failed to think about in all of this—and she asked, very gently, as she gave him back his bag, “Edward, did your mother give you anything else to keep?”

  Softly, cradling the bag, his eyes downcast, he said, “No.”

  Frevisse did not insult him by asking if he was sure. From wherever it had come—not from his parents, surely—there was a strong strain of truth in the child, and she quietly thanked him for his help. Eyes downcast, he nodded silently. Then he looked up with silent pleading at Mistress Petham. She gave him a small nod, seeming to know his question, and asked Frevisse, “Is all well with what Edward gave you yesterday?”

  Frevisse looked down at Edward and answered, �
�They’re back with the men to whom they belong. Your cousins are all very grateful. All’s well about it.”

  Edward bit his lip, looked at his feet, looked up at her, and whispered, “Does my mother know?”

  Frevisse answered his worry quietly. “She does. It’s made her unhappy, but she’s unhappy about a great many things just now. What she meant to do was wrong, and what you did was right. Your father would be glad of it and proud of you.” Or if not, he should have been, she added silently and somewhat savagely.

  Edward nodded and let Mistress Petham take his hand again and lead him away. He was not fully reassured, Frevisse feared, watching them go, and she had to wonder whether his mother would turn against him now his truth had lost her everything she had meant to use in her stolen life. Very possibly Edward wondered the same. How much did he understand about what his mother had been doing? Children might be innocent and they might be ignorant; neither was the same as being stupid. Edward maybe understood full well his mother had meant to sell him to Breredon as his last piece of usefulness to her, and that understanding might ease his guilt at what his truthfulness had cost. He might even understand that, even if he had lost his mother by his truthfulness, she had been intent on losing him for her own selfish ends.

  Frevisse could only hope that in time to come he would take what comfort he could in knowing that by doing right he had kept greater wrongs from being done.

  But that was much to ask presently of a small boy.

  Frevisse went back along the walk to her desk in its stall and sat down. Beyond the thin boards between her desk and the next, the sound of a pen scratching said Dame Johane was as honestly at work as Frevisse should have been, but she left pen and ink and paper where they were and simply sat, brooding on poison, the poisoned, and the poisoner.

  If nothing had been taken from the infirmary and if Cecely herself had brought nothing, then…

  What if Breredon poisoned himself with something he had brought with him, as cover for then poisoning Symond? Or maybe John Rowcliffe himself had been meant, and Symond been struck by accident.

  But that would mean Breredon had known he would encounter the Rowcliffes here and had had reason to plan to kill one of them.

  Or maybe it was not a Rowcliffe he had had in mind to kill when he brought the poison with him. Maybe it had been meant for Cecely, for some reason other than anything of which Frevisse yet knew or had even clue.

  Or then again, perhaps one of the Rowcliffes was the poisoner.

  Or then again…

  No.

  Frevisse firmly stopped that wide ranging of her thoughts. If she disproved the most straightforward likelihood—that Cecely was guilty—then she could go roaming to other possibilities.

  But was she looking at Cecely as guilty for any better reason than how much she disliked her? Did she have more reason than that to suspect her before anyone else?

  Frevisse rested her elbows on the desk, clasped her hands together, and bowed her head onto them, closing her eyes not in prayer but in thought, trying to look at it all from the beginning.

  Cecely had come here in flight from the Rowcliffes, needing a “safe” place to wait for Breredon, to deal with him behind the Rowcliffes’ backs. She…

  Frevisse stood up, eyes wide.

  Among all her twisting around of possibilities, all her trying to suppose everything that might have happened or could have happened or maybe had happened, there was one thing she had failed to wonder.

  Chapter 26

  Symond Hewet was sleeping when Frevisse came to his chamber. His cousin Jack was sitting on a stool beside the bed and stood up at sight of her, bowed his head courteously, and whispered in answer to her inquiring look, “He’s been sleeping more easily. I think he’s better.”

  Symond’s breathing did seem more even and there was perhaps somewhat more color in his face. It was surely a pity to wake him, and Frevisse hesitated; but she needed two answers, one of them as soon as might be, and she reached down and touched his shoulder. Jack made a small sound but no other protest and she ignored him. Symond awoke slowly. Still too weak to be surprised, he peered up at her and asked vaguely, “What?”

  Frevisse stooped to put herself closer to him, so he need make less effort in answering her, and said, “Sister Cecely claims that you meant to have Edward’s wardship. That you threatened to take Edward from her. Did you?”

  “Threatened?” Symond sounded puzzled. “His wardship, yes. Not threatened. No…I told her we’d agreed on it. That we meant…all of us…not to leave him…to her.”

  He made a small lift of one hand’s fingers toward Jack as if bidding him to take over, and Jack said, “After Guy died, when we all talked together—my father and mother, Symond and his wife, and me—we all found that, one time and another we had all had Guy say to us he didn’t think Cecely should have the raising of Edward if anything happened to him. He hadn’t done anything about it before he died. There was a lot he didn’t do before he died. But none of us thinks she’s fit to raise a cat, let alone Edward, and we think Guy had come to know it, too.”

  “Didn’t…” Symond started, paused to take several shallow breaths, then finished, “…I tell you that?”

  “You didn’t,” Frevisse said. “You simply said she threatened to tell about Jack’s bill of obligation.”

  Symond made an effort toward a smile. “Thank you for that, by the way. And for the deeds.”

  “I told him,” said Jack.

  “It means though…Cecely will hate you…as much as she hates us.”

  That brought a sudden, startling new thought to Frevisse. She set it aside for later and said to Symond, holding steadily to the present point, “So it was decided among Guy’s kin that you were to have Edward.”

  Symond made a small grunting sound of agreement, and Jack said, “Yes.”

  “What happened was that you told Cecely you wanted Edward’s wardship, and she then countered with the threat of Jack’s debt.”

  Symond made the barest nod, agreeing to that.

  “One question more,” Frevisse said. “Then I’ll leave you to sleep again. Did you say anything to Cecely about knowing she was a nun? Or anything by which she might have guessed you knew it?”

  “Nothing. To her or anyone,” Symond whispered. “Not until she had gone. Guy had me swear…it was only if there was…trouble. Otherwise…secret always. I swore…that to him.”

  Frevisse straightened. “Thank you. I’ll leave you to your rest now.”

  Only when she was out of the room did she find how greatly angry she was all over again. At this time yesterday Symond Hewet had been a hale man, fine in both wits and body. Today he was so ill and damaged that dying could come to him almost more easily than living, and if she was right about why this had been done to him, she was going to be even angrier than she already was.

  There was momentary relief in seeing neither John Rowcliffe nor Mistress Lawsell as she passed through the hall. Just as when she had been going to Symond, only a few of the abbot’s men were sitting about, taking no interest in her. Meeting Rowcliffe would probably have been no great matter, but she was certain that encountering Mistress Lawsell would be anything but pleasant. At any other time, the trouble between the mother and daughter would have been the center of everyone’s heed. Now it was an aggravating distraction that Frevisse wished Abbot Gilberd would see to, rather than spending his time in long talks with his sister and far too little time, so far as Frevisse could tell, on the problem of Cecely. Unless—again that terrible thought—they were talking over at such length what was to be done with Cecely because Abbot Gilberd wanted to leave her here and Domina Elisabeth was resisting it.

  If that was it, Frevisse prayed Domina Elisabeth held her ground at whatever cost.

  That being a worry about which she could do nothing, Frevisse pushed it away from her. There were an irksome number of things in the world about which she could do nothing. Let her keep her heed on those that she maybe could. E
ven though that meant she had to talk to Cecely again and never mind that was least among things she wanted to do. With the question that had taken her to Symond Hewet still stark before her, she went grimly to do it.

  Dame Perpetua looked up from the book she was reading to say as Frevisse neared her, “Whatever you did to her last time, don’t do it again, if you please. She has been pacing and angry ever since. If she kicks that stool across the floor one more time, I may hit her with it.”

  “Has she said anything?”

  “Said anything? Other than damning all of us and everyone else she can name to Hell? Only that man’s name—her paramour’s—over and over, angrily some of the time, crying the rest of it.” Dame Perpetua did not seem moved to pity by that.

  From the shadows beyond the doorway, Cecely said bitterly, “I can hear you talking of me!”

  “Then know I’ve been hearing you, too,” Dame Perpetua snapped back at her, “and not liking you any the better for it!”

  Frevisse went in. Standing against the far wall, Cecely said, “Go away. I don’t have to talk to you. I don’t want to talk to you.”

  As bluntly back, Frevisse asked, “How did you know it was Symond who told the rest of the Rowcliffes you were a nun and might be here?”

  “What? Because…because he’s the one Guy told.”

  “How did you know that? That Guy had told him?”

  With the anger that seemed so often to serve her in place of thought, Cecely flung back, “Because Guy told me! How else would I know?”

  Frevisse stared at her a long moment, then swung around and left her.

  Dame Perpetua asked, “What was that between you?” but Frevisse only shook her head against answering and went away along the walk. She paused at the foot of the stairs to the prioress’ rooms but could not find it in herself to turn to Domina Elisabeth or Abbot Gilberd for help in this just yet, and she went on, out of the cloister and back to the guesthall, to the kitchen this time.

  With a great many people to be fed at midday, Luce and Tom were bustling while Ela sat hunched on her stool well out of the way, ready to give orders if need be. There was pause when Frevisse came in, with Luce bobbing a quick curtsy from where she was slicing some pale vegetable at the worktable, and Tom giving a kind of bow without stopping stirring a large pot of something on the fire. Ela did not try to rise with her stiff knees but gave a respectful nod of her head while Frevisse came fully to a stop, taking a deep breath of the good smell with surprised pleasure before crossing to kneel down beside Ela and say, “Whatever is cooking, its smell is a delight.”