Sister Ysobel reached toward the table where a rosary of both dark and silver beads lay waiting. Domina Elisabeth hastily handed it to her and Sister Ysobel smiled her thanks, took it, closed her eyes, and began, “Ave Maria, gratia plena …” Hail Mary, full of grace… deliberate over the words as if each one were precious.
After four Aves, one to a bead, Frevisse stopped her. “That’s the way you always say it?”
Sister Ysobel opened her eyes. “Always.” She handed the rosary back to Domina Elisabeth but kept her gaze steady on Frevisse. “Always,” she repeated.
Then there would have been more than time enough for the murderer to be well away before Master Gruesby raised an outcry.
For that matter, there would have been time and enough for Master Gruesby to have killed Montfort, left through the fence, and come around and through the stableyard to “find” the body.
Frevisse found she was not uncomfortably with that possibility, able to believe easily enough that Master Gruesby, after his years in Montfort’s service, might have reached the point of hating him enough to kill him. He could have lied to Montfort to arrange the secret meeting, giving him the chance both to kill and to keep suspicion from himself. Where was he supposed to have been when Montfort was killed? Did Christopher know whether he had actually been where he said he was? Had Christopher even considered he might be lying?
Putting that thought aside for later, Frevisse said, “You told the crowner that no one entered the garden through the infirmary door. That you heard voices of, you thought, two men about the time Master Montfort was murdered. That you know how long it was until the outcry was raised because you were saying the rosary in that while. What else should I ask you about? Unless you’ve remembered something more.”
‘It’s not that I’ve remembered more. It’s that I never finished what I had to tell that young man.“
‘Didn’t finish? Why?“
‘Because I began to cough, and before I’d done, he thanked me and left.“ Sister Ysobel could put little force into the words but she bit them short with displeasure. Then she unwillingly smiled. ”Sister Joane was glowering at him from the doorway. She frightened him off, I think. And I made no matter of it afterwards because what little else I had to say wasn’t enough to change anything, I doubt.“
But she wanted the chance to say it anyway and Frevisse obliged by asking, “What else was there?”
‘The door from the passage into the garden. It creaks a little, hardly to be noticed unless one has nothing else to do but lie here and listen to whatever there is to hear. Before I heard the men talking together, it opened and shut only once. Nor was it open long. Only long enough for one person to pass through.“
‘A creak as it opened, a short pause, another creak as it closed,“ Frevisse said. ”Like that? Not long enough for two people to have come through it?“
Sister Ysobel made a small, agreeing nod. “The next time I heard it was just before the dead man’s clerk made his outcry.”
There was nothing helpful in that. It was already certain, from the witnesses in the stableyard, that only Mont-fort and Master Gruesby had come that way, but before Frevisse had to say that to her, Sister Ysobel went on, “I suppose the murderer must have come through the fence. That’s an easy guess, though no one’s said so. It was the other thing I wanted to tell that young crowner. About hearing the murderer.”
Frevisse’s heed sharpened. “You heard him?”
‘I heard him walking. Well, heard someone walking and afterwards knew it must have been him.“
‘You’re certain it was a man?“
‘The walk was too heavy and long-strided for it to have been a woman. Skirts, you know.“
‘You didn’t wonder why there was a man in the garden?“
‘I wondered but supposed we had a new gardener and no one had told me. There was no one else he was likely to be.“
‘But you’re certain you didn’t hear him come in?“
‘I slightly thought he must have come in by the gate and that I somehow hadn’t heard him. You know how one does, wanting an answer and taking one that’s simple rather than right.“
Frevisse knew. It was a common, sometimes perilous trick everyone sometimes played on themselves, herself included. “And you’re sure he hadn’t come through the infirmary?”
‘I wasn’t fevered or drowsing that afternoon. When I’m not…“ She paused, maybe to catch her breath*—her dying lungs made even so little as she was asking of them difficult—but also she sounded a little ashamed as she continued, ”When I’m awake and unfevered, I’m always listening. In hopes someone is coming to see me.“
Domina Elisabeth leaned forward to take her hand. Sister Ysobel returned her hold with a slight squeeze and went on, “I’m certain no one came that way. When the gate creaked with Montfort coming in, I thought it was the other man going out and wondered how I had missed hearing him when he came in.”
‘I’ll speak to Sister Joane about having the gate hinges greased,“ Domina Elisabeth said.
‘Oh. No, don’t,“ Sister Ysobel protested. ”It gives me something to hear. Until spring comes…“ Her pause then, as if something in her had suddenly hurt, betrayed how surely she knew there was likely to be no spring for her this year or any other, before she went on, ”… there’ll be something more to hear in the garden than sparrows quarreling sometimes. But until then, with so little to hear, I’d rather the gate went on creaking.“
‘Of course,“ Domina Elisabeth murmured, meaning to be soothing, Frevisse supposed.
But she also supposed Sister Ysobel would prefer to be distracted rather than soothed and said, “So you heard the man who must have been the murderer walking. For how long, do you think, before Master Montfort came in?”
‘I heard him walking not long after Nones started. I started the Office when the bell stopped. When everyone would have started it in the church. I’d reached Olim locutus es in visione by the time I heard Master Montfort come in.“
About a quarter of an hour, Frevisse could guess. Unless Sister Ysobel had been praying at a running pace and it was doubtful that she had.
‘I was maybe slower than usual,“ Sister Ysobel said, as if picking up her thought. ”Prayers pass the time and I never make haste over them anymore.“
Frevisse could not see yet that knowing how long the murderer had been there made any difference. But it might count for something later. There was the chance with every small piece that it might count later…
Sister Ysobel made a soft sound that was probably as near to laughter as she dared to come and, when Frevisse looked at her questioningly, said, “The way you were staring away to somewhere else, your mind gone far off and everything here forgotten. Did what I said help you any?”
‘It might,“ Frevisse said, the only truthful answer she had, and was saved from saying more by a nun coming into the room, breviary in hand, and the bell to Tierce beginning to ring. Forestalled from speaking by the Rule that enjoined silence when the call to an Office came but understanding readily enough the other nun was come to say Tierce with her cousin, Domina Elisabeth gave Sister Ysobel the breviary from the table beside the bed and, with Frevisse, silently rose and left, to go to the church for their own prayers.
Frevisse found small satisfaction in the Office, try though she did to put Sister Ysobel and what she had said from her mind for the while, and at the Office’s end she returned to the infirmary willingly enough with Domina Elisabeth, to find the other nun already gone, the breviary laid aside, and Sister Ysobel lying narrow under the blankets with flushed cheeks, her eyes fever-brightened, and her breathing more labored than it had been. But she said as soon as she saw them, “I’ve been thinking about what I heard,” then had to pause, fighting to find enough breath to go on, restlessly turning her head away from the hand Domina Elisabeth laid on her forehead.
‘You’re hot,“ Domina Elisabeth said. ”Sister Joane showed me where the borage mixture is kept. I’ll re
ady some for you.“
When she was gone out, Frevisse asked, to* give Sister Ysobel something to think about besides her dying body, “What have you thought of?”
Unsteady with her ragged breathing, Sister Ysobel whispered, “The other thing… I didn’t tell the… young crowner. That when Master Montfort came into the garden… he said something angrily. A word. No more. Then went to the waiting man. There were only his footsteps, going from the gate. The other man, wherever he was, didn’t move. Then they talked.”
‘But you heard nothing they said,“ Frevisse said.
‘There was hardly… anything to hear.“ Sister Ysobel closed her eyes, waited until her breath caught up to her words, and went on, ”They hardly… spoke at all.“
Domina Elisabeth returned with a small basin of water, saying as she set it on the table, “The borage is brewing. A few more minutes,” before she went out again, leaving Frevisse to take and wring out a cloth from the cool water and wipe Sister Ysobel’s hot face.
Sister Ysobel, used to having that done, kept on from where she had been. “One of them said something. The other one asked what sounded like a question. An angry question. That was the longest thing either of them said. The other man answered him back, angrily, too, and only a few words, and that was all.”
‘That was all? They didn’t quarrel? A greeting, a question, an answer, and nothing else?“
‘Nothing else.“
Frevisse considered that before finally saying, slowly, “The other man was there to kill Montfort. From what you say, there was no quarrel. One of them asked a question, the other answered and then, whoever the other man was, he simply stabbed Montfort. We don’t know why Montfort was there, but the other man came for no other reason than to kill him.”
Sister Ysobel made a small, agreeing movement of her head. “Yes,” she breathed. “Yes.”
‘But I doubt it would have helped the crowner any, even had you been able to say it to him.“
Worry clearing from her brow, Sister Ysobel said on a sigh, “No. I don’t suppose it would.”
It did not even make clear that Montfort had come to the garden to meet someone he knew, although he’d be unlikely to agree to a secret meeting with a stranger.
Unless the stranger was a messenger from someone he did know, someone whose asking or order for such a secret meeting he would accept.
Who had asked the question Sister Ysobel thought she had heard? Had Montfort asked something and the murderer answered him, then stabbed him? Or had the murderer asked and killed Montfort when his answer had been Wrong? Her guess would be the murderer had asked it and, when Montfort’s answer had not been what he wanted, had killed him. But either way was possible. And did it matter?
Trying to find something to ask that might lead somewhere useful, she asked, “Did you hear the murderer leave?”
‘I heard footfalls on the gravel again. Briefly.“ She paused to work at breathing before going on, ”Then there was only silence until the gate creaked again. I thought they had moved further away… and were speaking too low for me to hear anything.“
‘But you didn’t go on with the Office?“
Sister Ysobel’s smile was small and bitter and tired all at once. “I’d lost my place and couldn’t… bring my mind back to it. It’s hard to think sometimes. I took up the rosary instead.”
Domina Elisabeth returned with the borage mixture in a shallow cup. Sister Ysobel tried to sit up and Frevisse helped her with an arm behind her back and a careful pushing of the pillows, then moved aside for Domina Elisabeth to hold the cup to Sister Ysobel’s lips, patient while she drank in small sips between long pauses, until the cup was empty. Worn out with the effort, eyes closed, Sister Ysobel whispered her thanks to Domina Elisabeth, who asked as she set the cup down, “Would you like us to leave you to sleep now?”
Sister Ysobel moved her head slightly side to side on the pillow. “Stay,” she whispered. “Talk and let me listen.”
Domina Elisabeth and Frevisse traded looks, and as they sat down side by side on the next bed, where they had sat before, Domina Elisabeth said, “You’ve heard me more than enough these past few days. Dame Frevisse, do you talk for a while.”
That was fair and Frevisse cast quickly through her mind for something to say. There had been enough said about the murder for now and other people surely brought talk about nunnery matters. Better to find something far different, and on that thought’s heels Frevisse asked, “Have you ever been to Spain? On the pilgrimage to St. James at Compestela?”
Sister Ysobel’s lips made the word “No,” and Frevisse let the story take itself, building partly from her own very small-child memories of riding in a woven pannier on the side of a quiet ass led by her father along pale, dusty Spanish roads, the smell of orange blossoms in the air, but mixing it with other people’s haps and hazards heard over the years—including the pack-laden mule who fell while crossing a flooded stream and, even though it was rescued from drowning, refused ever to cross running water again and had to be sold to the nearest farmer who would take it.
Sister Ysobel’s laughter over that brought on a brief heave of coughing that jerked her forward, drove her back into the pillow, and left her struggling with quickened, shallow breathing and blood flecked at one corner of her mouth. Wordless, Domina Elisabeth squeezed out the cloth in the basin and wiped away the blood, and Sister Ysobel after faintly smiling thanks whispered, “Go on, please.”
Frevisse did, more carefully this time, telling how in Compestela’s streets and market a pilgrim could buy St. James’s badge of a scallop shell made of everything from gold to pewter to poorly glazed plaster. “The only kind of scallop shell you can’t buy there is a real one, I think,” she said, though she did not remember for herself, had only heard her father laughing about it sometimes over the years afterwards.
Lying white and still against the pillow but smiling, Sister Ysobel whispered, “Isn’t that always the way?” And then, “I think I’ll sleep awhile now.”
‘Of course, my dear.“ Domina Elisabeth rose and leaned over to kiss her forehead and Frevisse could see the family resemblence there must once have been—a shape of nose and cheek—before disease had brought Sister Ysobel down to dying flesh sunk slack over bones.
‘I just wish“—Sister Ysobel whispered—”that I could stand one more time… on a high hill… in sunlight and the wind.“
For a moment Frevisse thought what a strange longing that was for someone who had chosen to live out her years cloistered inside nunnery walls. And then thought that after all it was not so strange. Life’s end was the time when longings were most likely to rise up for things left behind or undone. Even if they had been left behind in favor of a greater longing, left undone because of a greater need, now was when they came, the ghosts of a life unlived. But useful ghosts, because how was anyone to know the true value of a thing except by knowing what it had cost them? How could anyone make final peace with all they were leaving unless they looked at it, judged it, valued it?
For herself, Frevisse could only hope that when her dying time came, her own last longing and regret would be as simple as a wish to stand one last time on a high hill in sunlight and the wind.
Quietly, careful of their footfalls and the door, they left Sister Ysobel to her sleep.
Chapter 14
By midday the world was soaking, with mud underfoot and every eave steadily dripping when Frevisse and Domina Elisabeth picked their way across the street to Lady Agnes’s to find four more guests had come, three men and a woman, friends of Lady Agnes ridden in for the funeral, though Frevisse gathered from their cheerful talk as they stood together in the hall waiting for the tables to be laid for dinner that they were here more for curiosity’s sake than out of mourning for Mont-fort. When all was ready and they moved to be seated at the high table, Lady Agnes bade the men—Frevisse had not tried to keep their names in mind—to sit all together °n her right because, she said, they would talk of things the
women would not want to and therefore she would have the women on her left, the better to talk without the men.
For herself, Frevisse was pleased to be put to the table’s far end with Domina Elisabeth between her and the other woman and Lady Agnes. From there she would hardly be part of any talk and able to listen or not, as she chose. Mostly she chose not. The nearest talk, between Lady Agnes and the woman and sometimes Domina Elisabeth, was as easy to foretell as Lady Agnes had said the men’s would be—of the weather and neighbors and children. Frevisse, sitting with eyes lowered and all her heed seemingly on the well-spiced, roasted meatballs and creamed parsnip soup, found herself listening past Domina Elisabeth’s agreement that indeed the snow was melting fast today, who would have thought it after yesterday’s cold, to the men’s talk at the table’s other end. If the meal had been a full feast, the hall full of people, there would have been no hearing them, but there were only household folk at the lower table today, speaking quietly in the presence of their betters, while the men were trading comments on Montfort, boisterous with each other’s company and most of what they said coming clearly over the women’s talk. The surprise for Frevisse lay in how little ill of Montfort they had to say. The times she had encountered him, his stupidity had seemed exceeded only by his rudeness, but among the three men here there was a kind of grudging respect for the way he had been rising in the world.
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