The Widow's Tale (Sister Frevisse Medieval Mysteries Book 14)

by Frazer, Margaret

  “But Cook is rarely anywhere but in his kitchen,” Master Fyncham said.

  Frevisse agreed they could discount the cook.

  They all, including the cook, had come with Mistress Say from her first marriage’s household, Master Fyncham said.

  Frevisse asked, “Even Master Say’s own man?” Who attended on Master Say personally and particularly, just as one of the maids was especially Mistress Say’s.

  “No,” Master Fyncham granted. “I misspoke there. His former man, Symond, died about a year ago. A fever, I fear. Edmund came to Master Say but lately, on recommendation from Master Say’s brother.”

  “Master Say’s brother?”

  “Master William Say. Dean of the Chapel Royal.”

  Master Fyncham was pleased with that. Frevisse was not. Did William Say of the king’s chapel have ambitions that might be served by setting a spy into his brother’s household? Not necessarily to spy for himself but for someone higher whom he wished to please? Someone able to help him to higher place than Dean of the Chapel Royal?

  “And the children’s nurse?” Frevisse asked. “She of course came from Mistress Say’s first marriage?”

  “She did.”

  The coolness of Master Fyncham’s reply led Frevisse to ask more and she soon gathered that Nurse was somewhat his rival and neither she nor the nursery maidservant was included in his count of household folk because she ran the nursery as almost a separate domain from his.

  “Did she and the nursery maid both come with Mistress Say?” Frevisse asked. “With her daughter from her first marriage?”

  “Nurse did. The girl was hired here.”

  And so knew people hereabout, had ties here that others in the household lacked and had been only the thin wall away from where Cristiana and Sir Gerveys had talked together. How she would have had chance to listen with children and Nurse all around was another question, but at least it was another question.

  “And you, Master Fyncham,” Frevisse asked, “when did you join the household?”

  As if taken by surprise at a question directly about himself, the steward’s face went almost blank. Then he broke into a smile and answered, “I was tutor to both Master Say and his brother in their boyhood. When they passed the age for needing a tutor, I became Master Say’s clerk and on to being his steward now that he has household of his own.”

  Frevisse set aside as unlikely the thought that Master Fyncham was the one betraying his master’s trust but, “What of Mistress Say’s steward? What became of him if everyone else came to her new household and you took his place?”

  “Master Heton,” Master Fyncham said with affectionate warmth. “He stayed on to show me how matters were done and which servants were good for what and their weaknesses and all. Then he retired to his daughter’s house with a goodly annuity from Mistress Say. We write occasionally. I tell him how things go on here and he tells me how much he enjoys doing very little.”

  No angered and dismissed former servant there, then. Not that Frevisse could see how, from outside the household, the man could be making the present kind of trouble. Suborning a servant to do it for him perhaps? Having been suborned himself by . . . whoever was behind all this?

  That was stretching possibilities past probableness’ bounds and Frevisse let it go and asked, “Do you know who waited on Mistress Helyngton in her chamber the first day she was here? Who went to her chamber for any reason? Besides her own woman, I mean.”

  For the first time Master Fyncham was perplexed. “That was . . .” he paused to count, . . four days ago. I’ll have to ask. Someone will possibly remember.”

  “Yesterday, just ere supper, Sir Gerveys talked with Master Say in the parlor. I know Mistress Say joined them there.” And Frevisse dearly wished there was a discreet way to ask if Mistress Say had paused to listen outside the closed door. “Did anyone else go to—or near—the parlor while they were there?”

  Master Fyncham considered that before saying, “I think not. The high table was being laid then, if I remember rightly, and I was overseeing it. So, no, no one would have had chance to listen at the door. If that’s what you mean?” he added.

  “That is very much what I mean.”

  Did it help he was clever enough to understand her questions’ purposes? Or would his understanding let him slant his answers away from the strict truth as he knew it, either thinking to please her or else to hide something? She could not know, could only go on, though she was fairly well run out of things to ask, left with only, “Has anyone done anything out of their usual way these past few days?”

  Master Fyncham frowned slightly. “Out of their usual way?”

  “Been where they shouldn’t be. Done something they usually would not. Or been gone when they were expected to be here. Anything out of the ordinary way by anyone.”

  “Young Reignold was gone two days without leave,” Master Fyncham said, “but he was drunk at the alehouse in Wormley the while and that is not unusual.” The steward looked across the hall to where a youth was setting out along the table the thick-sliced rounds of hard bread that would serve instead of plates for lesser members of the household.

  “Reignold?” Frevisse asked, somewhat diverted by so grand a name for a servant.

  “I understand his mother had ambitions for him,” Master Fyncham said. “More than he has for himself, I fear.”

  If asked, Master Fyncham could probably tell her something likewise particular about every servant under him and anything about the household’s running that she might ask—from how much firewood was used in a day to how many sacks of flour were needed for bread-making in a week to the cost of cinnamon at last autumn’s buying of winter supplies. She only wished that he had told her something that helped her toward knowing who in the Says’ household was a traitor.

  Chapter 18

  Frevisse waited until after supper to go on with her questioning. By then everyone in the household knew what she was doing and that Master Say had ordered their cooperation. Some gave it simply enough, answering whatever she asked and making an end of it. Others wanted to tell her anything and everything, and worst of those was the nursery maid, Ellena. Leaving Nurse to settle the children to bed, she was only too glad to stand on the stairs below the nursery telling all about her hope of seeing the world now she was with the Says, “who’ll go to their other manors and even to London sometimes, surely, so finally I’ll see more than only Broxbourne, you don’t know what it’s like to stay in one place and never go anywhere. Oh, but you’re a nun, so maybe you do know.”

  Only with effort was Frevisse finally able to determine out of all her talk that at the times it mattered she had been in the nursery and nowhere else and had heard nothing from the other room, so she said.

  After that, Frevisse spoke with Nurse, blessedly more briefly but to the same end—she had never heard aught through the wall and added she was sorry the children’s noise must go the other way readily enough, try though she did to keep them quiet.

  Quiet was what Frevisse wanted, but when she had thanked the woman and gone down the nursery stairs, she encountered Cristiana and Mistress Say in the screens passage, going together toward the outer door. They neither of them heeded Frevisse. Mistress Say was intent on pale-faced, distressed Cristiana, and Cristiana intent, Frevisse saw, on following her brother supported between Master Say and Master Fyncham, going out the door above the yard.

  Frevisse followed them without considering whether it was her business or not.

  Outside, the foreyard was gathered full of blue evening shadows under a yellow sky, the sun only lately sunk from sight beyond a westward stretch of woods. Mistress Say held Cristiana at the top of the stairs with an arm around her waist while the men made their slow way down to where two saddled horses and a groom were waiting. Frevisse moved to Mistress Say’s other side and asked quietly, “Where are they going?”

  Not distraught but no happier about it than Cristiana, Mistress Say answered, “To the church, Si
r Gerveys means to keep vigil by Pers’ body tonight.”

  His squire would have done as much for him if things were otherwise, but given Sir Gerveys’ hurt, it was unreasonable. All the protests against it had probably been made already, though, and so Frevisse kept silent, watching the men help Sir Gerveys onto his horse. At his grimace of pain as he settled into the saddle, Cristiana gave a short, sobbing gasp, but he took up his reins, shaking his head to something Master Say said at him.

  “John wanted to go with him,” Mistress Say said as the groom swung onto the other horse. “Gerveys wants him here instead, so Sawnder is going. He’ll keep watch on Gerveys and fetch help if need be. Cristiana, all will be right when it’s done.”

  Despite what it was going to cost Sir Gerveys’ in his body, he would feel the better in his mind for keeping vigil over his dead squire, Frevisse supposed. It was on Cristiana the vigil would be hardest, Sir Gerveys raised a hand to her in farewell and she waved back, but when he had turned his horse toward the gate, she pressed her clenched hands together to the base of her throat and struggled against sobs as she watched him and the groom ride out of the yard.

  Sir Gerveys might have done better to have spared her this, Frevisse thought. Cristiana was not weak. She’d not have held this well together against everything if she were weak, but she needed respite, needed chance to regain her balance and her strength. Frevisse drew Mistress Say a few paces aside and asked softly in her ear, “Can you give her something to make her sleep tonight?”

  “I’ve already given word for it,” Mistress Say said softly back. “For her and Ivetta, too. Better for them both if they sleep soundly tonight.”

  Better for everyone and a mercy for Cristiana and Ivetta, Frevisse thought, and left them as Master Say and the steward returned up the stairs. Domina Elisabeth had long since gone to their chamber above the parlor. Ready both to be done with questions for tonight and to go to bed, Frevisse went that way, too, hoping Domina Elisabeth would have no questions of her own or want to talk about the day’s happenings.

  If Domina Elisabeth did, one assessing look at Frevisse changed her mind and she merely said, “We’ve badly scanted the Offices today. Would you rather do Vespers and Compline, or only Compline and go straight to bed?”

  It was usually Domina Elisabeth rather than Frevisse who scanted the Offices when life became over-full, but this time Frevisse almost answered she’d rather do neither. What she wanted was to be done with thinking for today, to be asleep as soon as might be; but habit was too strong in her and she said, “Both, if you please.”

  That was the better choice. The day’s-end comfort of Vespers’ and Compline’s prayers quieted her with their reminder of all there was beyond the passing troubles of everyday. By the time they came to Compline’s soft, sighing end, twilight was drawn well on toward dark and they readied for bed in silence before Frevisse went to slide the shutters across the windows. At the eastward one, she paused to look out at the yellow flecks of torchlight around Alice’s pavilion in the field and said a silent prayer for her cousin’s good sleep, then another prayer for Cristiana and Ivetta’s rest and yet another for Sir Gerveys at his grieving vigil.

  Quieted with prayers, she slept well, but all the questions and worries were waiting for her in the morning. As she and Domina Elisabeth walked down the hill to early Mass through a thin mist burning off in a haze of gray and gold, she wished she could simply, for the while, accept the day in its early and uncomplicated peace until after Mass. But she was already turning over in her mind what she had learned yesterday and still finding there seemed nothing there that answered the questions that mattered.

  If she could find out Suffolk’s spy in the household, she would be better along, she supposed. Especially if he confessed not only sending word to Suffolk but to betraying Sir Gerveys into yesterday’s ambush and who had set it. That would answer everything. Unfortunately, she did not see she was anywhere near to learning Suffolk’s spy. She’d not even found out how Sir Gerveys and Cristiana had been overheard on that first day although they must have been. Or else one of them was betraying the other and Frevisse could not believe that. Or Master Say had told Suffolk himself. She must not let go of that possibility, not when she as yet had no sure thought on how yesterday’s betrayal had happened either. Since Pers had been keeping guard on the stairs outside the bedchamber, Sir Gerveys must have been heard talking with Master Say. By whom? Mistress Say? Or Master Fyncham? He said himself he was busy in the hall then. Or, again, had Master Say betrayed them? Did his ambition run so high that he’d do a thing so base? But why? She couldn’t see what he would gain by it. Or Mistress Say either, working by herself without his knowledge.

  Were the two treacheries one person’s doing, or were they done separately, by different people?

  She needed to find out Suffolk’s spy.

  If Master Fyncham could tell her who had waited on Cristiana that first day, she would have someone then who might have overheard Sir Gerveys and her, rather than the no one she presently had.

  As for who had betrayed Sir Gerveys’ going to Ware, there was a possibility that would not disappear, no matter how she avoided it: Alice had known Sir Gerveys would go somewhere to fetch the paper. Did she set some of her men to watch for him, follow him, steal it if the chance came?

  Frevisse told herself that Alice had no reason to take that trouble or risk.

  But she might have. She might have some reason of which Frevisse had no thought at all.

  But then why ask Frevisse to find out who was the traitor?

  Because she knew Frevisse would try, whether told to or not, and this way she protected herself from suspicion?

  No. Frevisse refused to believe Alice was that base.

  Except the thought was there, and she knew it would not leave her until she had found out who was the traitor. Until then, she would not be free of a doubt she did not want to have.

  The twisting of her burdensome thoughts kept her company into Broxbourne. The mist was still thick there in the valley, not yet given way to the just-rising sun. Only the bellpentice on the church’s west gable end showed above the grayness as she and Domina Elisabeth crossed the wide, long village green, and only gradually did they see the gathering people outside the church—far too many for Mass on an ordinary weekday. More folks were hurrying through the mist from the houses around the green, and Domina Elisabeth said, in the same moment that Frevisse thought it, “There’s something wrong.”

  They quickened their walk but when they reached the crowd’s edge could not see among them and Domina Elisabeth demanded of a man craning his neck to look past the people in front of him, “What’s happened?”

  “That knight,” he said, still craning. “They’re saying he’s dead. Him and Master Say’s man that was with him. Both dead, they’re saying.”

  Domina Elisabeth and Frevisse crossed themselves. Domina Elisabeth began to draw back, ready to leave, but even while crossing herself, Frevisse went forward. The man, finally looking at her, said eagerly, “I’ll see you through, my ladies,” and began to nudge and shove a way among the other lookers-on with, “Let the ladies through. Move yourself, Jamy. It’s nuns.”

  Domina Elisabeth stayed where she was, and when Frevisse came to the crowd’s fore-edge, she nearly wished she had stayed with her, rather than see Sir Gerveys sprawled out facedown on the broad, small-graveled space between the crowd and the church door, a single, wide stab wound in his back, with—beyond him, crumpled down close to the church wall, almost against a buttress thrust out from the wall there—the man Sawnder who had ridden from the manor with him yesterday.

  Father Richard knelt praying between them. It was probably at his order the crowd was keeping back, but among the excited talk around and behind her, Frevisse heard a woman say, “It was Father Richard found them. When he was coming to the church.”

  “The mist and all,” someone else said. “That’s why nobody saw ‘em sooner.”

  “That’
s the fellow that was hurt yesterday,” another woman put in.

  And from a man, “They did for him all the way this time, that’s sure.”

  Forcing aside the jumble of talk and her own sickened horror, Frevisse forced herself to look straightly at Sir Gerveys. The wound in his back was enough to have killed him, and if it went all the way through him, then most of the blood there had been was soaked down through the gravel, because there was none around him. But why he had been out here? His vigil would have been kept in the church beside Pers’ body. Flow had he come to be outside, in the open, ten feet and more from the church? Sawnder’s body was aside from the door, crumpled down as he must have fallen and still in the thick early shadows cast by the just-rising sun. When possible, bodies were left as they were found until seen by bailiff, constable, or crowner. Whoever had the duty here in Broxbourne was surely sent for, would be here soon, but Frevisse,meaning to claim Lady Alice’s authority if need be, went toward Sawnder’s body.

  Father Richard looked briefly up but bowed his head again without speaking, probably supposing she was come to pray with him. She was praying, for both Sir Gerveys and Sawnder, because souls so suddenly, brutally sundered from the flesh were in special need of the prayers they had not been able to make for themselves at their death. But prayers did not keep her from seeing, now she stood over him, how the back of Sawnder’s skull was crushed inward, a ruin of brain and bone and black-dried blood hidden until then by the shadows.

  From a distance the shadows had hidden, too, the blood spattered across the wall above him, telling he had been killed here, struck a rising blow from behind while facing the wall, Frevisse judged. Someone had come at him silentfooted in the dark, or more probably at a run, to be across the gravel before Sawnder, hearing them, would have had time to turn before they struck him. With a club it must have been, to smash his skull that thoroughly. He had probably been dead before he knew he was dying.