The Widow's Tale (Sister Frevisse Medieval Mysteries Book 14)
Page 15
There was deep comfort in that blending of the eternal and the now; and when the time came, she was able to give herself to the Mass with its far-reaching into otherness, its going into the mystery of Beyond that was greater than the passing passions of the world. And after it that release and pleasure stayed with her while she and Domina Elisabeth exchanged a few mild comments on the weather with Father Richard, a small, balding, quiet-mannered man who had never yet asked intrusive questions about why they were there and asked none now about Lady Alice though word of her coming was surely all through the neighborhood by now.
Frevisse could not decide whether he was so content with his small corner of the world that he had no curiosity, or if he simply had a servant who informed him of everything, leaving him no need of questions.
The church lay at the east end of Broxbourne’s wide green, well away from the broad highway beyond the houses at its far end. It was a road that never lacked for travelers: southward it led to London, hardly a day’s ride away; northward it went by way of Ware and a number of other towns to, eventually, the great shrine at Walsingham. Already this morning it was well-flowing with people on foot and horseback when Frevisse and Domina Elizabeth rode onto it and saw Master Say and two servants coming toward them at a jogging trot.
For a moment Frevisse thought that he was come to meet them for some reason, but he only made a small bow of his head as he rode past, and Domina Elisabeth turned in her saddle to watch them away, murmuring, “How odd.”
They rode on, shortly leaving the highway for the deserted, steeper road to the manor. The morning was still cool but the early clouds and rain were gone, promising a fair and shining late summer day. Frevisse let herself hope that it might be an even fairer day—that today Abbot Gilberd’s release would come and she and Domina Elisabeth could leave.
Was it cowardice to want to be away from Alice and her trouble?
She decided it probably was, but she saw no way she was any use here to anyone, and so—cowardice aside—wouldn’t it be better to be gone and out of everyone’s way?
At the manor, she and Domina Elisabeth gave their horses to a stableman in the yard and went up the stairs and inside, were still in the screens passage when they heard Alice in the great hall demanding with raised voice, “. . . gone where? How long until he’s back?”
Frevisse followed Domina Elisabeth into the hall, to find Alice, Mistress Say, and Cristiana were standing in the middle of it, with a scatter of servants frozen and staring at them and Mistress Say taking Cristiana by the arm and beginning to draw her away, saying to Alice, “My lady, wouldn’t this better be done in the parlor?”
“It would be, yes,” Alice snapped and went past them both, leading the way.
From maybe no more than plain curiosity Domina Elisabeth followed them, and Frevisse went with her, less from curiosity than with thought of somehow curbing Alice’s too-open anger. At what?
She did not see that Cristiana was as angry until they were into the parlor when, with the door shut against the servants’ watching, she pulled free of Mistress Say, spun on Alice, and said in plain rage, “He had to go to Ware. He’ll be back when he gets back.”
“To Ware?” Alice said as sharply. “No farther? Only to Ware? That’s, what, five miles?”
“Six from here,” said Mistress Say.
“Twelve miles to go and come,” Alice said. “When did he go?”
“At first light, I’m told,” Mistress Say said in a calming voice. “Even if Sir Gerveys’ business takes a while in Ware—“
“It shouldn’t,” Cristiana snapped, still glaring at Alice.
“—he could well be back by dinnertime,” Mistress Say ended soothingly.
Unsoothed, Alice said, “If he’d hurried, he could be back now. If he’s decided to take it for himself…”
Furious and contemptuous together, Cristiana cried, “My brother’s not treacherous.”
Before Alice could worsen things by answering that, Frevisse broke in, deliberately bland-voiced, “Has Sir Gerveys gone somewhere?”
“To Ware, it seems,” Alicg-snapped. “He and his squire. Early this morning without telling anyone but the man who helped to saddle their horses.”
“And you’re helping them return here sooner by raging about it?” Frevisse asked evenly.
Alice turned on her, an angry answer ready, but maybe read in Frevisse’s look that she had gone far enough—or too far—because instead of saying more, she made a sharp casting-away gesture with one hand and went away to the window. From there, her back to the room, she said stiffvoiced, “If you’d be so good as to join me, Dame Frevisse.” The others all shared quick looks before Frevisse went to Alice’s side, where Alice neither looked nor spoke to her but went on staring out the window. Behind them, Domina Elisabeth moved to the settle and began murmured talk about Broxbourne’s church being very old. Mistress Say drew Cristiana to sit, too, commenting that the roof was poorly, and under their voices, for only Frevisse to hear but still steadfastly looking out the window rather than at her, Alice said, “Tell me I’ve done well to trust these people, Sir Gerveys and his sister.”
Before Frevisse could answer, the door was flung open to the headlong entry of Cristiana’s Jane, with somewhere behind her Ivetta calling, “No! You knock first!” But Jane was already in the room, running to her mother’s out-held arms as Ivetta, with a firm hold on Mary with one hand and Mistress Say’s daughter with the other, reached the doorway. “If you want me to take them away …” Ivetta said breathlessly.
“Of course not,” Mistress Say said before Cristiana could answer. “Betha, Mary, come here, my dears. Give courtesy to my lady duchess.”
She was making deliberate use of the children for distraction, Frevisse thought. Alice had to turn around and smile and bend her head to their curtsys that were only a little spoiled by small Betha needing Ivetta’s hand to steady her. Courtesy satisfied on both sides, Alice returned to looking out the window, and under Betha loudly explaining to her mother that she was sharing her dolls with Jane, asked again, “Have I done well to trust them?”
Frevisse took time to consider her answer, then said carefully, “Cristiana wants her daughters safe. I doubt anything in the world matters to her as much as that. Nor do I think her brother will betray her. I’ve seen nothing but love and loyalty between them.”
Alice jerked one hand in sharp dismissal of that.
“Alice,” Frevisse said with forced gentleness, “there are people to whom love matters more than worldly power.” Her cousin’s stillness then was, in its way, worse than any answer, because Frevisse could not tell what she was thinking behind it, until very quietly Alice said, “I know that.”
“But do you believe it?” Frevisse asked quietly back.
And this time the answer was worse than the silence: barely above a whisper, Alice said, “I used to.”
Frevisse had no answer to that, and the silence drew out between them until Alice said, “I know I’ve helped nothing by making show of my thoughts, my fears, just now. Believe me, I’d hide them if I could. Talk to me about something else, please. Just keep me company and take my mind away from this waiting. Because if Sir Gerveys has gone to York with this thing …”
Frevisse started in on the first thing that came into her mind, which—strangely—was Domina Elisabeth’s cat and its constant interest in the birds Dame Perpetua fed with bread crumbs in the cloister’s garden. Dame Perpetua resented the cat’s threat to the birds, the cat resented her interference with its business, and more than once protest had been made in Chapter meetings about Dame Perpetua’s sudden outcries of “Shoo! Shoo!” making unseemly disturbance of the cloister’s quiet. Frevisse did not greatly care one way or the other about cat, birds, or Dame Perpetua’s outcries, and assuredly Alice did not, but it was something to say, something to draw Alice’s mind a little aside from other thoughts, and from there Frevisse moved on to the coming marriage between the priory steward’s older daughter and t
he village reeve’s younger son, making more a story of it than there truly was until interrupted by a suddeness of raised voices and running footsteps in the great hall.
She and Alice and everyone else looked that way just as someone knocked hard at the parlor door. Starting to rise, Mistress Say called, “Come in,” even as a maidservant flung open the door and cried, “The master is back. And Sir Gerveys. There’s been a fight! He’s hurt!”
Cristiana pushed her daughters away from her and sprang to her feet, only barely behind Mistress Say out of the parlor, with Ivetta on her heels and Alice close behind them. Startled into fright, Jane and little Betha began to cry but Mary would have gone after her mother except Domina Elisabeth caught her by the skirt and pulled her back onto the settle, at the same time putting out an arm to draw Jane and little Betha to her. With no thought of helping Domina Elisabeth, Frevisse went after Alice.
At the hall’s far end a fuss of servants were crowding, shifting, falling back, making way for Master Say and one of his men carrying Sir Gerveys between them on their linked arms, his own arms around their necks, his right leg bound around above the knee by a thick, bloodied cloth, his eyes shut, and his teeth set against pain.
To everyone Master Say was declaring loudly, “A cut with a sword, yes. Get out of the way. Beth!”
Less desperate now that she saw her husband unhurt, Mistress Say caught Cristiana’s arm, holding her aside and beginning to give orders, sorting her servants to usefulness with, “Master Fyncham, my medicines. Kate, fresh yarrow from the garden. You know it. Nol, two basins and a pitcher of hot water, with more hot water after that until I say I need no more. Alice, clean cloths. And wine. The rest of you . . .”
“Pers!” Ivetta shrieked, craning her neck, looking among the crowding servants. “Where’s Pers?”
Nearly to the parlor with Sir Gerveys, Master Say said over his shoulder at her, “Pers took a blow to the side. He’s at the inn in Broxbourne. They’re seeing to him there.” With a. wordless cry, Ivetta started toward the outer door. Behind her, Mistress Say ordered, “Edmund, go with her. Get her a horse and ride with her.”
One of the servants bowed and ran after Ivetta. The others were scattering to their tasks, Master Say and his man had slowed, going carefully through the parlor doorway, watchful of Sir Gerveys’ leg, while Cristiana, free of Mistress Say, kept close behind them, silently desperate. In the parlor Domina Elisabeth was guiding the staring girls to the room’s other side, away from the settle. Mistress Say circled the men and Cristiana to reach the settle ahead of them, quickly piled up cushions at one end, and stepped aside for the men to set Sir Gerveys carefully down. Not carefully enough. As Frevisse followed Alice back into the parlor, he sank against the cushions with a groan he could not help, and Mary gave a frightened sob.
“Take the children out,” Mistress Say said at Domina Elisabeth. “Please.”
Domina Elisabeth did, carrying Betha and herding Mary and Jane ahead of her. Cristiana, behind the settle now, as near to Sir Gerveys as she could be without being in the way, was still silent, neither crying nor crying out but wringing her hands, her eyes fixed on his face, Master Say began to ease Sir Gerveys’ riding boots off as gently as might be and Mistress Say to unwrap the bloodstained cloth from his thigh, Sir Gerveys opened his eyes, met Cristiana’s desperate gaze, and said, short-breathed with pain, “It’s not so bad as it might be. Not deep.”
She made a stiff little nod, willing to believe that, but asked, “Pers?”
Sir Gerveys shut his eyes again.
Cristiana whispered, “If he were alive, you wouldn’t have left him.”
With pain beyond his body’s, Sir Gerveys said, “He took a sword thrust meant for me.”
“Ivetta,” Cristiana said.
Tersely Master Say said, “We thought it better she find it out there than here. She would have gone to him either way.” She would have, and there Vas enough to do here without adding Ivetta’s first storm of grief to it. To send her unknowing to Pers had been ^ cold decision but a good one, Frevisse thought, keeping with Alice well aside and out of the way. Mistress Say was ripping Sir Gerveys’ hose away to lay bare his thigh and the wound. It was shallow, yes, but also a full six inches long and still somewhat bleeding.
Servants began to come then with all Mistress Say had ordered. When they had been sent out again, she began to see to the wound with the skill every lady of a manor was expected to have; and while Sir Gerveys lay pressed back against the cushions, mouth set and breathing hard against the pain, Master Say told what he knew of what had happened.
“They were just past Hoddesdon, not much beyond Cock Lane, coming back from Ware. I’d just seen them, was raising my hand to wave, when half a dozen riders came at them out of the woods there.”
“They were waiting for us,” Sir Gerveys said. His eyes were tightly closed “It was us they wanted. It wasn’t chance.”
“I spurred forward with Sawnder and Rafe,” Master Say went on. “We evened the odds too much for the curs. They broke away, back into the woods, and we couldn’t follow them. Not with Gerveys and Pers both hurt.”
Quietly across the room Alice asked, “Did you know them?”
“They were hooded. I didn’t recognize their horses either. Gerveys?”
“No,” Sir Gerveys managed out and nothing more, drawing a quick breath of pain as Mistress Say poured wine into the cleaned wound.
“It was Laurence,” Cristiana burst out bitterly. “He somehow found out. Someone told him.”
Her look at Alice told who she thought had done that. Alice answered coldly, “Why would I?”
“To have this thing you want so much without giving up anything in return. To keep Laurence’s favor because he’s of more use to you than I’ll ever be. And to be rid of my brother because he’s the duke of York’s man.”
“First,” Alice said, her face and voice hard, “I gave you my word in this matter. Second, I can have Laurence Helyngton’s service for the asking, without I play you false. Third, may I be damned if ever I’m party to any man’s murder, no matter who he serves. Fourth, if I played you such a trick, I’d likely lose Master Say’s loyalty and he’s worth far more than Laurence Helyngton.”
“John is hardly likely to give up Suffolk’s favor, no matter what,” Cristiana said bitter. “It’s worth far too much to—“ Sir Gerveys jerked up from the pillows, ordering, “Cristiana! Stop it!”
Cristiana broke off, staring at him, then seemed to hear what she had been saying and cried out in raw distress to Master Say, “John, I’m sorry! I know better than that. I know …”
Master Say went around the settle and laid firm hands on her shoulders. “It’s no matter. That was your fear talking, not you. You’ve had enough and more to fear with what’s happened to you. There’s no offense taken.”
“Beth …” Cristiana said toward her.
“Not by me and not by Beth,” Master Say assured her. “Assuredly not,” Mistress Say said without looking from the clean, folded cloth she was pressing over the wound. “I’ve said worse things to him myself in anger and with less reason and he’s not turned me out yet.” She lifted the cloth. “Look, Cristiana. It’s only a shallow slash. When it’s healed, he won’t even have a limp to make the ladies pity him.”
As Cristiana bent to look, Alice took hold on Frevisse’s elbow and pushed her toward the door to the hall. Frevisse let herself be guided out of the room and—both of them ignoring the servants backing quickly away from too near the door—along the dais to its far end. There, still keeping hold on her, Alice faced her and ordered, “I want you to find out who betrayed my dealings with these people.”
Keeping a strangle hold on her anger, wanting to hear Alice’s answer, Frevisse said, “The attack might have been merely attempted robbery and no more than ill-fortune that it happened to Sir Gerveys.”
“Don’t play simple with me,” Alice snapped. “Someone here betrayed them to somebody. I want to know who.”
“Probably. But how did he know Sir Gerveys was gone anywhere? More importantly, did he know what Sir Gerveys had gone for? I have to know who here betrayed Sir Gerveys and, in effect, me. I want you to find them out.”
“Maybe your own spy is playing several ways at once.”
“If he is, he’ll be very sorry when we find him out.”
At least that reassured Frevisse that Alice had told her the truth about not knowing who the spy was. “Will my lord of Suffolk tell you who it is, now that this has happened?”
“He’ll have to, but it may not be our spy. It could well be someone else. I want you to do what you’ve done before. Listen. Ask questions. Watch people. You’re good at all of that. Find out who betrayed us. I don’t like treachery or being accused of it.” She looked past Frevisse and raised her voice. “John.”