Jerking her sleeve free from Ela’s fingers, Frevisse followed him, overtaking him at the foot of the stairs as he hesitated, unsure of the way.
“Here!” Frevisse said sharply, shoving open the door into the open cloister walk. No men were supposed to come so far into the nunnery, but it was the shortest way to the church from here. “Your men?” she asked. “Can they be of use?”
Chaucer shook his head. “There’d only be blood shed to no purpose. I’ll have to stop him with words or nothing.”
Breathless with fear as much as haste, Frevisse nodded, gathered up her skirts and ran. Chaucer followed her.
The cloister door to the church had been left wide in Ela’s haste. Only the sudden shadows of the church after the gray daylight of the cloister slowed them as they entered. And then, together, they completely stopped, held by the same shock that already held Sir Walter and his men in crowded disarray in the church’s short nave.
It was easy to forget among the quiet patterns of St. Frideswide’s that its nuns were the daughters, granddaughters, sisters of men who held their inheritance by right of arms and battle skills. As nuns and women their daily life held little need for their inheritance of courage, but their blood remembered. With no weapons but their own anger and courage, they were standing in a closed rank of black and veiled white across the center of the choir, between Sir Walter’s men and Thomasine. She stood alone at the top of the altar steps, beside St. Frideswide’s altar, her right hand stretched out to touch it. Head raised, she was staring out at the men come to take her, and there was no show of fear in her at all.
In front of them all stood Domina Edith. She should have seemed small there, between Sir Walter’s men and her grouped nuns. But her age was like a mantle of authority, and she was not frail but fierce, her hand raised defiantly against the men, forbidding any of them to come so much as one step closer.
And behind her the nuns chanted in powerful unity the Dies Irae, the promise of God’s wrath, judgment, and doom on all men who crossed His will. Their voices rose together, flinging the words at Sir Walter and his men, making God’s wrath their own terrible weapon. “Dies irae, dies ilia. Solvet saeculm in favilla. Quantus tremor est tuturus, Quando judex es venturus. Cuncta stride discussurus!”‘ A day of wrath that day will be, the world dissolved in glowing ashes. Trembling before the Judge’s throne, no sin going undiscovered, all sinners brought to their deserved fate.
As they chanted their defiance and a warning of God’s wrath, somewhere outside the day’s clouds shifted, letting a long and single golden shaft of brightness sweep the length of the church’s darkness, from the western window to Thomasine, where she stood above them all. She shone in its sudden brightness and, as if to answer it, raised her face, shining, into it. With pure and simple loveliness, as if she were seeing something more wondrous than any fearful thing before her, she smiled, and reached out into the light and emptiness in front of her, toward something there that no one else could see.
Beside her, Frevisse heard Chaucer draw in his breath through shut teeth. She could not have taken her own eyes from Thomasine to save herself.
But his startlement and her wonder were nothing to the effect on Sir Walter’s men. They had been ready for scurrying, frightened women and the huddling, unnerved novice some of them had glimpsed in the courtyard. Not for this. The rearmost of them began a furtive slipping backward out of the great door behind them. Others started to draw back after them, their fear of staying there stronger than their obedience to Sir Walter.
He was still at their head, already stirring out of his own frozen pause. He had his anger to protect him a little, but he must have felt their going and swung around on them. “This way, you fools!” he ordered and started for the altar again. Only the men nearest to him followed, and among them only Robert Fenner kept close at his back. The others let distance spread between them and Sir Walter and somehow after a few steps were not following him at all but staying where they were, uneasy on their feet, the farthest ones joining the drift toward the door.
Sir Walter was almost to the choir before he realized how alone he was. With an oath he swung around. “Buzzard-hearts! You’re going to let a pack of howling women stop you?”
Domina Edith moved her hand. The singing fell away to silence behind her, letting Sir Walter’s voice grate into the charged stillness.
“Come back, you bench-bred bastards! You’re supposed to be men!”
“And we want to stay that way,” an anonymous voice said out of the clot of men around the doorway.
“Step out and say that to my face!” Sir Walter roared, but there was only an uneasy shifting of the men nearest him and no obeying. “ ”The boy here is the only man among you and I’ll remember it!“
He clapped Robert on the shoulder and swung around to face the nuns and Thomasine again. But Chaucer moved forward now, not directly into his way but near, saying quietly, “My lord, think well what you are doing.”
Sir Walter snarled, “My mother’s murderer stands up there and I’ll have her to justice!”
But he did not move forward, and Chaucer said, “You blur the wrong done to your mother by making another injustice.”
“I’ll risk that to gain her murderer there!” Sir Walter pointed violently at Thomasine. The sunlight had diffused by now into simple afternoon light, but she still stood motionless beside the altar, enraptured and unaware of him. Sir Walter’s gesture lacked some of his former force, Frevisse thought. The crest of his anger was breaking on the nuns’ defiance, his men’s unwillingness, the sight of Thomasine, and the risk of the Church’s anger. It was one thing to override Montfort, another to cross wills with Chaucer, who had the weight of law at his back, the royal council’s good will, and nothing to lose by defying him.
He hesitated, looking from Chaucer to the nuns and back again, as if unsure where the greater threat now lay. Behind him more of his men disappeared through the doorway, leaving only Robert and three others. Frevisse for the first time looked fully at Robert.
He must have come intending to protect Thomasine if he could. Now he stood, unmoving, lost to all the sound and movement around him, looking at her. But while Thomasine was beholding something only she could see, Robert was looking at her with all his heart, knowing that he had lost her. All hope of having her died in his eyes as Frevisse watched, and he was no more ready than the rest of them when Sir Walter suddenly, savagely, slapped him on the shoulder and said, “So keep her for now! But don’t think you’ll be having her out of here and clear away. My men are still here. I’ll close this place so tight no one can go without my knowledge until I have the bishop’s writ for her!”
Stiff with rage and defeat, he spun away. Numbly Robert followed him, not looking back.
Outside the door, Sir Walter’s voice rose, roaring at his men, but this faded and was soon too remote to matter. In the stillness the nuns began to feel their victory, and a little spate of excited talking started. Domina Edith silenced it with a sharp gesture. “Not yet,” she said. “Thomasine…”
She turned as she spoke, and the others with her. Thomasine, come back to herself from wherever she had been, was shivering. Her eyes had lost their focus, and she stared blindly back at the nuns as if unable to see them, then abruptly sat down on the top step.
The women began to surge toward her, but Domina Edith said, “Let her be. Dame Claire only is to touch her. The rest of you go to the common room. We’re not done yet with Sir Walter and praying will do Thomasine more good than your smothering her. Go and pray.”
They went reluctantly, forming their familiar double procession line to leave the church.
Dame Claire knelt beside Thomasine, patting the girl’s cheek and speaking softly to her. Thomasine, dazed, did not resist or particularly respond.
Frevisse, with a glance at Chaucer, went over to Domina Edith. Chaucer followed. Domina Edith looked around and said with her familiar mildness, “My thanks, Master Chaucer, for your timely hel
p.”
“It was more your doing than mine, Domina. And the child’s.” He nodded toward Thomasine. “She spoke bravely for herself without saying a word.”
Domina Edith nodded. She had seen Thomasine when she turned to signal her nuns to silence. She sighed. “Yes. And every one of those men saw it. Now she, and we, must needs live with it. As well as with Sir Walter.”
“Sir Walter at least is a matter I can help,” Chaucer said. “We talked, Dame Frevisse and I, and have the answer that will rid you of him. We know the murderer.”
Domina Edith and Dame Claire lifted eager faces to him. Only Frevisse, kneeling now on Thomasine’s other side and holding her hand, continued to watch the girl’s face. Her eyes were still closed, but she was more conscious than she was showing; her fingers had tightened around Frevisse’s when Domina Edith spoke of her.
“You know?” Dame Claire exclaimed. “Then why didn’t you say so to Sir Walter?”
“Because more than only Lady Ermentrude’s death is involved. I must needs have the murderer out of his reach before he knows the truth. He can’t be talking to her.”
“Her?” Domina Edith and Dame Claire both echoed. Their gazes swung disbelievingly to Thomasine.
“Assuredly not. Someone not part of St. Frideswide’s at all. All I need to do is to talk to Sir John and ask his help. With it, I’ll have the woman out of here by tomorrow’s dawn or a little later. And soon after that, you’ll be free of Sir Walter.”
Domina Edith considered his words before nodding. “I entrusted the matter to Dame Frevisse and to you. Let my trust see it through to the end.”
“Then by your leave,” Chaucer said. He turned to Frevisse. “You’ll come?”
“I’ll stay here a time. No need for both of us to disturb Sir Walter’s peace.”
“Such as it is,” Chaucer said dryly and bowed his leave to Domina Edith. “I’ll talk to Sir John and Lady Isobel in their room and, if they agree, see them on their way, then come back and tell you how it goes.”
“But not why,” Domina Edith said.
Chaucer’s grin was appreciative at her sharpness. “But not why,” he agreed.
When he was gone, Domina Edith sighed again. The strength of the moment was going out of her and she looked as if she wished for Sister Lucy to lean upon. But she turned her attention to Thomasine and asked, “Is she better?”
Dame Claire nodded, but it was Frevisse who, slipping an arm behind Thomasine’s shoulders, sat her firmly upright and said, “We need to talk. Heed me, Thomasine.”
Thomasine obeyed. Her gaze was still cloudy with shock and strain but sensible enough as she looked at Frevisse. “I saw… something,” she whispered. “In the light. I knew I was safe. I wasn’t afraid at all.”
“I know you weren’t,” Frevisse said.
“Is she well enough to talk?” Domina Edith asked.
Thomasine turned her pale face toward her reassuringly. “I’m quite all right,” she murmured.
“Right enough,” Frevisse agreed. “We need to talk, you and Domina Edith and I.”
Dame Claire rose and went down the steps. She took Domina Edith by the arm. “You should sit,” she said and guided her across the choir to her stall.
Domina Edith sank down gratefully onto its seat, but her attention was on Frevisse now. “You’re troubled by something,” she said.
“There are still things I don’t understand about the murders,” Frevisse said. “Among them, why did Lady Ermentrude decide so abruptly to leave St. Frideswide’s? Do you remember what we talked of that day Lady Ermentrude came, in the parlor with Master-Chaucer?”‘
Domina Edith pursed her lips and clearly cast back in her mind before she nodded. “I think so. Much of it.”
“Then I want to talk it again, with Thomasine to listen and hear if anything sounds wrong, or means something more to her than it does to us. Do you understand me, Thomasine? Can you do that?”
Thomasine’s face cleared of all its vagueness. She was fully back to them, and some of Frevisse’s urgency was reaching her. “Yes,” she said. “I’ll try.”
“Then what did we talk of?” Frevisse asked Domina Edith. “Thomasine, I think, after she had left. Briefly. And my being new as hosteler. None of that can signify. It has to have been something outside of St. Frideswide’s.”
Domina Edith thought. “France?” she said at last. “Master Chaucer was telling us he was bound for France shortly. We gossiped of that. And of the King. And that Lady Ermentrude was angered at being ill-received at Fen Harcourt. I remember that.”
“Moleyns,” said Frevisse with sudden memory. “Chaucer is going to collect Lord Moleyns’s heiress. We talked about her. And someone else.” It was names she wanted. Or events. Something to stir Thomasine’s memory, unless she was imagining there was anything to be stirred. She had only the henbane to lead her on and maybe it was a false clue.
“William Vaughan,” Domina Edith said firmly. “A young man named William Vaughan who made a French marriage and left a child that Lady Moleyns has had the raising of.”
Frevisse was aware of Thomasine suddenly tense in the circle of her arms. “That means something to you, Thomasine?”
Thomasine frowned, then shook her head. “It can’t have been the William Vaughan I knew. Knew of,” she amended. “He died.”
“So did this one. At Orleans siege, trying to save Lord Moleyns.”
“Then it’s someone else. The William Vaughan whom Isobel knew died of sickness two years or more before then.”
“Your sister knew him? Not you?”
Willing to be helpful but clearly not understanding what difference it made, Thomasine said, “He was an esquire in Lady Ermentrude’s household when Isobel was there.”
Frevisse said, “Then he would be the same. Master Chaucer was asking if he had relations yet living and if Lady Ermentrude knew them since he had been in her household.”
“Oh, no.” Thomasine sounded very certain. “Because he couldn’t have married in France, because…”
She stopped; against Frevisse’s encircling arm she was now utterly rigid When she said nothing else, Frevisse asked carefully, “He couldn’t have married because of what?”
Slowly, drawn by Frevisse’s will more than her own, Thomasine’s head turned until she was staring wide-eyed directly at her.
“Say it,”‘ Frevisse said softly, not daring to startle her but needing to hear it.
Thomasine failed to respond. She was not, Frevisse realized as she watched a motionless struggle take place behind the girl’s eyes, a fool; it was simply that all her thinking had always been turned toward the Church and her nunhood. Now her mind was turned toward something else with the same intensity and depth, and what she was thinking was beginning to frighten her.
Frevisse asked again, “Why couldn’t William Vaughan have married in France?”
“Because…” Thomasine held back, then dropped her gaze away to the tiled floor and said, “… because he was betrothed to Isobel before he went. They did it secretly. He was to make his fortune and come back to her. He couldn’t have married anyone else. They were betrothed.”
And a betrothal was as binding as the vow of marriage. Once made, however lightly, only death or an act by the Church could free the couple from one another. If Lady Isobel had been betrothed to William Vaughan, and he was still alive when she married Sir John, then her marriage was no marriage and her children were bastards.
Which could be reason enough to kill.
“It was a secret betrothal? No one knew of it except themselves? And you? How did you know of it if you didn’t know him?”
“The one time I visited her at Lady Ermentrude’s, he had just gone to France. Isobel was all full of thoughts of him and talked to me because there was no one else. So I knew about him and that they were betrothed. But later she heard that he was dead.”
Thomasine straightened up earnestly, free of Frevisse’s arm. “So it’s all right, it must be! Befor
e she married Sir John, she’d heard from William Vaughan that he was ill and dying. That’s how she knew she was free to marry Sir John. Lady Ermentrude had arranged for their marrying and Isobel was finding reasons not to, until she heard William Vaughan was dying and then it was all right. I remember how glad she was, because she’d fallen in love with Sir John by then and been so afraid she would lose him. She told me so.”
“But no one else knew of the betrothal? Not Lady Ermentrude?”
Thomasine hesitated before saying uncertainly, “I think she might have. Isobel might have had to tell her, because she was running out of reasons for not marrying Sir John. There was a while they fought about it, and,” with some wonder that she had never thought about it before, “then she agreed she didn’t have to. And then, as if the saying no had never happened, they were married all of a sudden.”
Thomasine looked at Frevisse, her eyes sad. “But Isobel never heard that he was dead. All she ever heard was that he was dying. He wrote to her, saying he was. She showed me his letter, and was sad about it for a day, and then her marriage to Sir John went forward. She never truly heard that William Vaughan was dead.”
Isobel had simply hoped it were true, Frevisse thought, as usually it was when someone was pronounced dying. Very possibly Lady Ermentrude, not taking her resistance lightly, had pressured her into telling why she was avoiding marriage with Sir John. Which would explain why Lady Ermentrude had been so suddenly set on going to her that afternoon after they had talked of William Vaughan. The marriage she had been raging about to Sir John and Lady Isobel had indeed been theirs, not the Queen’s.
Was it in that raging that Sir John learned their marriage was no marriage? Or had he known earlier? Whichever, he wanted it kept a secret as much as Lady Isobel.
And that explained why Lady Isobel was willing to accept Thomasine as the murderer, because Thomasine’s death would break the last link between herself and William Vaughan now that Lady Ermentrude was dead.
And Chaucer—the one person who could keep Sir Walter from executing Thomasine—was gone to ask their help in saving her.
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