The Novice's Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  Thomasine did. She pressed her hands over her face and wept until the tears seeped between her fingers.

  Frevisse waited patiently, until the sobs subsided to a few ragged hiccups and then silence. Thomasine’s hands fell limply into her lap.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  Frevisse waited, having no particular answer to that

  Thomasine hiccuped again on caught tears. Drawing a handkerchief from her sleeve, she wiped her face. “It was what Sister Amicia said,” she whispered. “She was hoping their bodies would be taken away soon, so the harvest home feasting won’t be spoiled by their being here. Lady Ermentrude’s and Martha’s.” She nodded painfully toward the coffins, lidded now and nailed shut, then looked at Frevisse with huge, tear-swimming eyes. “Sister Amicia is wanting harvest home to be as ever it is, not thinking of them at all and that they’re dead and won’t see harvest anymore. It hurt so much so suddenly, thinking they’d never sit down with their friends anymore, I started to cry. They’re dead and I’m crying when I should be praying.”

  Frevisse said, “No, you cried for good reason. Now you’ve finished and we’ve things to see to. Come wash your face so we can be on with them.”

  Thomasine raised her head. Her pale, thin face was mottled with the red of her crying, her eyes pained. “But I’m not supposed to feel these kinds of things! I’m not supposed to care about things like the body dying, or anything of world at all. I don’t want to. I want to be away from it, not hurting for it. They’ve gone to God. I’m only supposed to pray for them, not cry.”

  Frevisse might have had compassion for the child if she had been asking for guidance, but her usual impatience at Thomasine’s useless simplicity, and the pressure of too many things still needing to be done, made her ask sharply, “And what good do you think your prayers are going to be if you don’t care about what you’re praying for? We work and pray for more than just ourselves and well you’d know it if you’d paid any heed to anything at all besides yourself since you came here. What good do you think your prayers are going to be, if the only thing you care about is your own self? You cried because you were hurting for other people’s hurt, and that’s probably worth more than a hundred careful prayers with no feeling at all behind them. Now come. We’ve things to do.”

  Thomasine stayed where she was, staring with mouth slightly open, looking stupid. Or stunned. Then her mouth closed, and a slow flush of color crept up her face, covering the mottling of her crying. Her eyes lost the blur of tears and her mouth’s soft line tightened, making her look more her age, a woman instead of a frail and cosseted little girl.

  Frevisse half-expected some kind of answer from her, but after that first moment, Thomasine’s gaze dropped and she rose to her feet, showing that she was ready to come, all outward meekness again. Only the stiffness of her shoulders and her rigid neck, the cringe gone out of it, showed that what Frevisse had said had struck deep enough to leave a mark. And something of the courage she had shown to the crowner had come back, too, because before Frevisse could turn away, she lifted her head and said quietly, “Master Montfort wants it to be me who killed them, doesn’t he?”

  There were ways around answering that directly, but meeting her gaze, Frevisse said levelly, “Yes. You’re the simplest choice, and with Sir Walter snapping at him, Montfort is going to want the simplest choice.”

  Thomasine searched Frevisse’s face, looking for hope. Frevisse did not give it. So far she had no idea who had given the poison, or why. Until she did, Thomasine was indeed the first, best choice. “Come now,” she said. “All that may be done is being done. We must go tell Domina Edith how matters stand. She’ll want to know.”

  The door to the prioress’s parlor stood open, and from it Sir Walter’s voice rumbled, raw with temper and bare of courtesy. “Hear me out! My mother is dead. By poison, Montfort says. Murdered. And from what I’ve heard, it was some one of you did it.”

  Frevisse flickered one hand in the sign for church, meaning Thomasine should go there and stay. Thomasine nodded and left without hesitation. When she was safely gone, Frevisse rapped at the door clearly enough to be heard over Sir Walter’s continuing voice.

  “Benedicite,” Domina Edith said. Her quiet voice carried with apparent ease over Sir Walter’s, and Frevisse entered, head properly bowed but not so low she could not see all of the room from under her eyelids. Domina Edith was in her chair, drawn straightly up but facing Sir Walter with an expression that said he was far from overwhelming her with his noble temper. To her right stood Dame Claire, rigid with self-control; to her left was Father Henry, very pink with indignation, glaring at Sir Walter.

  Beyond Sir Walter was Robert Fenner, standing statue-still, his face guarded. A freshly formed bruise showed dark along the side of his face. He glanced past Frevisse, looking for someone, and when he saw she was not there, set his eyes back to carefully not looking at anyone.

  Sir Walter, with his mother’s way of dominating a room, stood in the parlor’s center, head up, hands on hips. He paid no heed to Frevisse but went on at Domina Edith, “My mother was never so drunk in her life she didn’t know what she was doing, and there was naught wrong with her heart. It was poison, and someone here gave it, and the only one with reason enough to do it, Montfort says, is your novice Thomasine D’Evers. I want her to come away with me, now. Montfort says he’s not done with his questions, but he’s a fool and I am not. Are you going to give her over at my asking or do you want to make a quarrel of it?”

  So it had gone that far already. Frevisse could not help making a tiny sound of disgust, and Sir Walter swung around to point at her fiercely, aware of her after all. “You! You’re hosteler, right? My mother was in your keeping when someone killed her so you must share responsibility with that puling girl. I think you know more than you’ve told.” He swung back to Domina Edith. “She’s not a nun. You’ve no right to keep her. You can’t protect her. I’ll have her out of here if I have to take the place apart stone by stone!” His face was red, his light, protuberant eyes very like his mother’s. “And if the King’s man won’t do justice, I’ll have you all for sheltering her!”

  Domina Edith raised her eyebrows very slightly. Father Henry, hands clenched into fists, stirred forward, but the prioress lifted a finger from the arm of her chair, stopping him. Very calmly she said to Sir Walter, “lama professed nun, belonging to God. Not you nor Master Montfort nor the King himself, God keep him, can touch me. Or any of those in my charge.”

  Sir Walter’s jaw worked, cutting off words not fit to say before he finally swung back at Frevisse and said sharply, “Produce the girl. For the sake of your soul and your prioress’s peace. You know where she is. She’s in your care—just as my mother was!”

  “Your mother was also in mine,” Dame Claire said firmly. He glared at her, but she went on, “We don’t know who gave the poison to your lady mother. Or to Martha Hayward. We don’t even know where the poison came from.”

  “You have poisons on your shelf, all ‘pothecaries do. I dare you to deny it!”

  “The poison that killed them was nightshade, and, yes, I have it with my medicines, for poultices and suchlike. But it also grows in any wood, for anyone to take if they trouble to look for it.”

  “And there’s the matter of who could have given it, no matter where it came from.” Domina Edith spoke in a cold, clipped, patience-coming-to-an-end tone. “I myself would think three times over before agreeing with Master Montfort on any conclusion, especially one so grave as this.”

  Sir Walter asked with his belligerence a little less certain, “You have some better ideas on the matter?”

  “Dame Claire very sensibly points out that others besides Thomasine could have had nightshade. It might be someone among Lady Ermentrude’s own people.”

  “So that’s how you would have it!” Sir Walter sneered his scorn. “Blame it on a servant and not one of your own! Pah, a servant could have done it anywhere and more conveniently elsewhe
re than this. It wasn’t one of her own people. It was someone here. Mayhap even one of you right in this room!”

  He was stirring himself to fury again. Frevisse felt her own temper rising in answer to it, and saw that Father Henry was reddening, tensing to say something or, worse, do something. Quickly she said, “Then you’ll have to tell us why one of us would do it, Sir Walter. Why would we want Lady Ermentrude dead when she’s given so much to St. Frideswide’s?”

  Triumphantly Sir Walter sprang at the point “Because she was meaning to take your novice out of here! She was going to take the girl away—and with her would go her dowry. Surely something you’re not wanting to lose. A poor little place like this is always wanting money. You couldn’t afford to lose the only dowry likely to come your way for a while, so my mother had to die. But you’re going to lose more than the dowry now. There’s not a Fenner will give a penny to this place when the truth’s found out!”

  Domina Edith flung up one hand to silence Dame Claire and Frevisse together. “Stay!” she snapped at Father Henry, already moving toward Sir Walter, his hands flexing at his sides. The priest stopped, but Frevisse heard his teeth grinding together. Domina Edith, her eyes fixed on Sir Walter with a chill and withering look, pressed her hands down on the arms of her chair and raised herself slowly, remorselessly, to her feet. She was not tall, but her force of will reached out and held them all until she had drawn herself up straight. In a tone to match her look, but not raising her voice, she said, “If it were any business of yours to discover, you’d find St. Frideswide’s has no need to go begging to anyone, or be bankrupt by a lost dowry. Our house may be small but we are not poor nor beholden to anyone, and you may take your Fenner pennies and your temper with them, for you’ll not insult me and mine in my own nunnery. You are in sorrow and, by the Holy Rule, our guest for this time being, and will be treated so, no matter how we feel about it. But mind your tongue. Not even your mother in all her tempers ever presumed to speak to us as you have done. You have what answers we can give you here. Go back to the guest hall and leave us before even guest right and a knowledge of your grief aren’t enough to make me stomach you. And don’t come in my presence again unless you are on bended knee in sign of a contrite heart, asking my forgiveness. Go.”

  Sir Walter drew himself up, breathing heavily through his nose, his mouth working around things he wanted to say while his mind visibly canceled them short of words. At the last it was probably the fact he had had to face his mother all his life that kept him silent against Domina Edith, and furious but unable to do else, he jerked his shoulders in a travesty of a bow and flung himself out of the door. Less headlong, Robert followed him, with a roll of his eyes and a raising of his eyebrows at Frevisse as he passed her. Frevisse looked at his bruised cheek and twitched her head at Sir Walter’s back. Robert nodded, and was gone. She pushed the door shut after him and moved quickly to help Dame Claire ease Domina Edith back into her chair.

  The prioress seemed none the worse for her effort, only a little breathless, and still annoyed. “Worse manners than any Fenner, ever. And less sense. Half a mind would at least make up for lacking manners. A little.” Her hand closed on Frevisse’s wrist. “There’s going to be more trouble coming. We didn’t satisfy him and he won’t be stopped by what we’ve said. You’re hosteler and must go out of the cloister yet again. Can you face him?”

  “Yes, of course.” She had spent all her childhood managing other people being difficult; she had small qualms about facing either Sir Walter or Master Montfort.

  “That’s good. That’s very good. You can go then where you need to go, and ask what needs to be asked. Master Montfort will never find out everything, not now that Sir Walter has an answer that satisfies him. We can’t depend on either of them for the answers.”

  “Yes, Domina.”

  “And Dame Claire,” Domina Edith said.

  “Whatever you need, Domina.”

  “Think harder on the poison and who could have given it. Was there a particular reason for it to be nightshade? Who, having chosen it, would have it to hand? Did they choose it suddenly because it was there? Or did they plan aforetimes to have it? Think of all of it, both of you. Father Henry.”

  The priest came eagerly to stand in front of her.

  “Your prayers,” she said. His face showed his disappointment at so inactive a task, but Domina Edith said firmly, “Your prayers. As many of them as you can manage, that we be allowed to find out whatever truth there is in this. Because,” she added with a waspishness that must have been strong in her in her youth, however mellowed it had grown with age, “truth would have to stand up and bite Master Montfort before he’d recognize it. Go on now, all of you. I have a shameful need to sleep.” Her attention sharpened again. “Where’s Thomasine?”

  “I sent her to the church when I realized Sir Walter was with you,” Frevisse said.

  Domina Edith nodded, satisfied. “Let her stay there. She’ll do well not to be with you when you cross paths with Montfort or Sir Walter. Go on now.”

  They left her. At the foot of the stairs Father Henry went away toward the church, Dame Claire and Frevisse, of one accord, to the narrow slipe, where they could talk. But once there, they seemed out of things to say, and Frevisse wondered if the strain of the past two days showed as clearly on her as it did in the gray shadowing around Dame Claire’s eyes.

  Finally Dame Claire asked, “So what are we to do?”

  At least to that Frevisse had an answer. “We do again what we’ve been doing, asking again where everyone was and what everyone did. And we seek to speak to those we’ve missed, to learn what they remember about everything that’s happened. Someone had an urgent reason to have Lady Ermentrude dead, or they’d not have been so headlong about it, not after Martha’s death. It would be among those who wanted her dead to begin with.” Frevisse began to count off on her fingers. “Her son, Sir Walter, to inherit the money he feared she would spend before he got hold of it. Sir John and Isobel, with whom she rode off to quarrel and who came riding so fast after her when she left them. There’s the servants she keeps close about her, Maudelyn and Maryon.”

  “Why them?” interrupted Dame Claire.

  “I don’t know. But every time something happens Maryon is there, peering and questioning. Except when I want to talk to her. Then she is not to be found.” She switched hands to tap her other thumb. “Robert Fenner.”

  “That nice young man?”

  “That nice young man began in Sir Walter’s household, moved suddenly to Lady Ermentrude’s, and now will go back. And it was after Sir Walter talked to him that Sir Walter began to suspect Thomasine.”

  “What about Thomasine?” Dame Claire’s tone was reluctant, sober. “We even have to consider it might have been her, if only to prove it was not.”

  Frevisse nodded, but said, “She might kill in fear, or panic, and surely she felt both when Lady Ermentrude seemed grimly determined to take her away, but her conscience would drive her into agonies afterwards. She’s the sort who does penance for spilling a bowl of soup.”

  Dame Claire smiled despite herself at the thought of Thomasine’s excesses. Then she sobered. “There’s Martha Hayward’s death to be remembered, too.”

  Frevisse shook her head. “It was most likely not meant at all. If by some terrible mistake Thomasine killed Martha, then that death would have shocked her back to her senses. She’d never have tried again.” She frowned. “Where did the poison come from? Is there any missing from your stock?”

  “No. That is, I don’t think so. I haven’t used any nightshade in some while, so I am not sure whether my supply of it is a little diminished or not. The jar does not appear disturbed.”

  “Which it probably would if Thomasine, who would have been in a great hurry, rushed in to steal some of it. What about some other poison? Was there anything in the stomach-ache potion for the monkey that could have killed a person?”

  “Nothing sufficient even to kill the monkey, let
be a person. And nothing to bring on those agonies.”

  “So Lady Ermentrude came here drunk and we fed her milksops that Thomasine fetched from the kitchen.” She tapped her right forefinger.

  “Yes,” nodded Dame Claire. “The feud between Dame Alys’s family and the Fenners. She has often said she’d like to take a hand in that quarrel.”

  “But we’re fairly certain it was the wine that had the poison, since the monkey is dead of it.”

  “Fairly certain, but not perfectly. Is it possible that the creature stopped to dip into the bowl of sops before rushing off with the bottle?”

  “I suppose. We had best learn who could have handled the food at any time, as well as the wine. How long does nightshade take to kill?”

  “Different times with different people and depending on how much and how fast they have it. Martha would have gulped most of the first goblet down at once, before Father Henry warned her it was medicine.”

  “And Lady Ermentrude only sipped at the other one again and again the morning that she died,” said Frevisse, remembering. Her face stiffened with another thought. “The first one—the one that Martha drank from—Thomasine dropped it. Lady Isobel tried to give it to her but she dropped it. She is not usually so clumsy.”

  The two women regarded each other soberly.

  “Presuming Lady Isobel would not deliberately try to poison her own sister…,” Frevisse said after a moment.

  “Frevisse!” Dame Claire exclaimed. “That’s not even to be thought on!”

  “Everything has to be thought on. So let’s suppose Lady Isobel did mean to poison Thomasine.”

  “That would mean she poisoned Lady Ermentrude too. And for what reason? Why would she want them both dead?”

  “The wine was brought by her and her husband. And Lady Ermentrude was in a tearing rage at them, so bad they followed her here to try to settle it.”

  “They were worried she would come to harm on the road.”