The Widow's Tale (Sister Frevisse Medieval Mysteries Book 14) (15 page)

There had been little talk at the high table and little was said now, except as they rose from their places Alice told Master Say, “The wagons bringing more pavilions and all should be here this afternoon.”

“If you need aught …” Master Say made graceful gesture to show that all he had was hers.

“I know I have but to ask,” Alice answered as gracefully. The royal visit might have been the only matters in their minds. She looked to Domina Elisabeth asked, “Would you accompany me this afternoon?”

Domina Elisabeth was more than pleased to do so, and Frevisse was more than pleased to have both her and Alice g
o
—two less people with whom to reckon in an afternoon that was not going to be simple.

Then why was she so ready to begin it?

Why hadn’t she balked at Alice’s order for even a moment?

Because Alice was right. She did have skill at finding things out.

It was not a skill she always used readily, but whoever had betrayed Cristiana and her brother had likewise brought on a man’s death, even if they struck no blow themselves, and for both that death and that betrayal they very much deserved to be found out.

Cristiana, leaving Mistress Say in talk with a servant, was started toward the parlor door, but Frevisse said after her, “Mistress Helyngton, I’d speak with you, please.”

Not stopping, Cristiana said, “I’ll see my brother first.”

Mistress Say turned from the servant. “Cristiana, Ivetta is come back. She’s gone to your chamber.”

Cristiana gave a soft cry of pity. “Ivetta. Yes. John, would you—“

“I’ll make sure all’s well with Gerveys,” Master Say said. “Go on.”

Cristiana and Mistress Say left and Frevisse followed Master Say into the parlor. A nun was not supposed to be alone with a man but it was a rule she had foregone before now when there was need, Sir Gerveys still slept and did not stir when Master Say laid a hand on his forehead. Lowvoiced, Master Say said, “He’s not fevered,” and went toward the window, clearly expecting Frevisse to join him.

She did. She regretted she had come somewhat to like Master Say. He was a well-minded, well-spoken man. The affection between him and his wife was open, his kindness to Cristiana apparently unfeigned. But he had not gained all that he had here and his high place in the royal household without ambition. Even granting that the duke of Suffolk had a spy here in the Say household, there was the possibility that Master Say himself might have had betrayed Sir Gerveys and Cristiana for the sake of that ambition, to further his place in Suffolk’s favor. He could even have set the attack on Sir Gerveys today. That was an ugly thought and she could see no reason why he should, but there might be more layers of ambition and betrayal here than she yet guessed at.

“You have more questions for me?” he asked.

Watching his face as well as her words, she said, “Sir Gerveys took counsel with you yesterday about whether Lady Alice could be trusted to deal fairly with them.”

“Yes.”

“He’d spoken to you about the paper once before that, though.”

“He’d spoken about having something with which he could deal with my lord of Suffolk, yes. He asked for my help. I said I’d give it.”

“Where did the two of you talk?”

“In the garden the first time. In here yesterday.”

“Did Sir Gerveys tell you he meant to fetch this thing today? That he was going to Ware this morning?”

“He said he would get whatever it was this morning. He didn’t say where he would go.”

“Was there any chance you were overheard? Either time?”

“Not in the garden, and in here we kept away from the door and our voices down. I doubt we could have been heard.”

“Where were you standing?”

“Here. At the window.”

“Was it open?” A panel at each end was hinged to swing out and in these days of warm weather they mostly stood open, were open now. “Could someone outside have heard what you said?”

“No one was likely in the garden then, and even if they were, the window is well above the ground.”

The window was, but that did not mean someone had not been in the garden. As if in answer to Frevisse’s unsaid thought, Master Say added, “It was coming to suppertime when we talked. Every servant should have been busy and accounted for, not free to be wandering in my wife’s garden in hope of overhearing something.”

The house servants, yes, but, “One of the yard servants?”

“Anyone so far from the byre and stableyards would likely have been noted. Besides, why would he have been? No one knew we were going to talk.”

“There were only you and Sir Gerveys here? Not Mistress Say, too?”

“My wife was with the children in the nursery. She came in as we finished.” Easily matching Frevisse’s direction of thought, he added, “Even if anyone had been listening at the door, she would have seen them as she came up the hall.” She might equally as well have listened outside the door herself. But there was no point in pointing that out, supposing he did not think of it for himself, and Frevisse asked, “You never said anything to your wife about this matter? Before or yesterday?”

“Given how secret the business was, I didn’t see she should be burdened with it without there was need. I told her nothing either time.”

But if she
had
overheard them yesterday, what could she have done with the little they seemed to have said? Sent word to someone that Sir Gerveys was going somewhere this morning to get something? Who would she have told? And why? Master Say could only gain by serving Suffolk in this. Why betray him as well as their friends?

Frevisse stood silent a little while, looking away from Master Say and out the window, able to see from here the pasture and the busyness of men around two just-come wagons near Alice’s pavilion there. By the time the king came there after his hawking, in less than two days now, there would be pavilions and food-piled tables, canopies probably, and cushions and very likely some of the Says’ chairs. Some several score of people would eat and talk and laugh for an hour or so and then be gone, and within hours after that, a day at most, there would be only pasture there again, with no more than memory to tell anything had happened there at all. Suffolk would have his paper. Cristiana’s daughters would be into Master Say’s protection, Sir Gerveys would be free to join his lord in Ireland.

And the squire Pers would still be dead.

Whether or not she found out who was behind his death, that would not change.

She gathered up her thoughts and said to Master Say, “I want to talk to Cristiana now.”

C
ristiana found
Ivetta sitting on the chest at the bedfoot, huddled over and holding herself, crying so hard she gave no heed when Cristiana sat down beside her, embraced her, took off her disheveled headkerchief and coif and stroked her hair. Beth brought her something to drink and that finally quieted her wild sobbing, but when she was done with the drink she bent over on her pain again, rocking gently and sometimes moaning, and to all their urging to lie down or speak only shook her head from side to side, refusing.

Leaving her to it but keeping watch, Cristiana and Beth went aside to the window to talk with their heads near together. “I’d rather keep the stronger syrup for Gerveys’ pain, but she can’t go on long like this” Beth said. “If she doesn’t calm soon, I may have to give her more than valerian.”

“Her grief won’t be the less when she awakens. It’s maybe better to let her live through it to its other side.” If there was an other side to grief. Cristiana had yet to find an other side to her own yet, different though hers had to be from Ivetta’s. She and Edward had been deep-rooted together. They had shared years and children and her grief was for loss of all she had had with him. Ivetta and Pers had shared far less, but that must be a whole source of grief in itself. Ivetta was grieving as much for what she and Pers would never have as for what little there had been.

“She’s quieter than she was, anyway,” Beth said. “The man who went with her told me that when she understood Pers was dead, she flung herself to the floor and started to scream and went on screaming until Father Richard dragged her to her knees and told her that Pers needed her prayers, not her screaming. She went to wild sobbing then. Our man got her away only because Father Richard told her nothing could be done with Pers’ body until the crowner saw it and ordered her to go.”

They looked at Ivetta still slightly moaning and rocking to and fro. At barely a whisper, Cristiana said, “I’m so frightened, Beth.” Of so many things now.

Beth laid a hand on her arm, offering a wordless understanding that was more comforting than any useless promise that everything would be well.

Someone scratched at the closed door. Ivetta’s head jerked up and Cristiana stiffened, both of them too ready for more trouble. Beth simply went to open the door.

Dame Frevisse was there, alone and with no look of bringing more bad word. Beth stood aside for her to come in and as she did she said in small, pointless courtesy, “Your stairs here don’t creak, Mistress Say.”

“They’re too new,” Beth said back with the same courtesy. “The wood hasn’t had to time to begin its shift and settle yet.”

Dame Frevisse looked briefly toward Ivetta, who had dropped her gaze again and huddled down more but not begun to rock again. Quietly Beth said, “I’ll see if she’ll lie down now,” and went to her. Dame Frevisse joined Cristiana at the window.

Two women in black gowns, Cristiana thought. Two clots of darkness in a bright room. Two shadow-women, one lost in the shadows of widowhood, the other in the shadows of a holy life. If nuns were holy. Cristiana had had no convent training when she was small, had been taught at home by her mother and the parish’s priest and had little to set to any nun’s good beside all the fear and anger and humiliation she had had in St. Frideswide’s. Even knowing her bitterness was unreasonable, she did not care. Her life had so little reason left in it that she was past caring about reason and said uncourteously, “You want to ask me your questions now.”

“By your leave.”

“By Lady Alice’s leave,” Cristiana snapped.

“By that, too,” Dame Frevisse granted. She looked around the chamber. “This is where you talked with Sir Gerveys both times about this thing?”

“Here. Yes.”

“Where?”

“Here,” Cristiana repeated impatiently.

“I mean where in the room?” Dame Frevisse said patiently back at her.

Cristiana took inward hold on herself. Impatience would not rid her of the woman. Better to help her, for all the good it would do. Then she’d go away. For the sake of that, Cristiana shut her eyes, trying to remember, and said, “The first time we talked Gerveys was sitting on the chest where Ivetta is.” Except that Beth was gentling Ivetta to her feet now. “I was in the chair. But it was close to the chest then.”

“How close?”

“Within reach of it.”

“So you didn’t need to raise your voices while you talked?”

“We kept them low. Or . . .” Cristiana tried to remember how it had been. “I don’t know that we raised or lowered our voices. We just talked.”

“Was the door open?”

Cristiana thought but had to say, “I don’t remember. It would be shut, I should think.”

“And the next time you talked?”

“I was lying on the bed and Gerveys sat next to me.”

“Which side of the bed?”

“The near side.”

“Was the door open?”

Cristiana tried her memory again and this time was able to say, “Ivetta closed it as she went out.” She nodded her head with the sudden satisfaction of being certain. “Pers was there. I heard them speak to each other. So assuredly nobody overheard us that time. Gerveys had Pers on guard there and probably Ivetta stayed with him.”

Dame Frevisse went closer to the window and leaned a little out, then turned and looked to the chamber’s other end, past where Beth was persuading Ivetta to lie down on the mattress pulled from under the bed’s far side. “It’s the nursery beyond that wall?” Dame Frevisse asked, as if the occasional rise of children’s voices did not make that plain.

“Yes,” Cristiana said.

“Were the children there both times you and Sir Gerveys talked?”

“I suppose so. Yes. I remember hearing them.” Cristiana let scorn into her voice. “You think their nurse or the nursery maid overheard us?”

Frevisse returned dryly, “Over the children? Or without the children noting one of them was listening at the wall? No.”

Leaving Ivetta lying quietly, Beth came to join them at the window. Cristiana held out a hand to her. Of late she had found herself needing to hold to people more than she ever had. The certainty of someone else’s hand helped keep her fears a little at bay. Beth, bless her, took her hand but said, “Today’s too warm for your hand to be this cold, Cristiana. Should you lie down a time?”

She wanted to go back to Gerveys but only said, “When Dame Frevisse is finished.”

“I think my last questions are for Mistress Say, by her leave.”

“Ask what you will,” Beth said in quiet acceptance.

“What’s below us here?”

“The butlery.” Where wine and the better serving dishes and tablewares were kept.

“It’s kept locked of course, except at mealtimes?”

“It is.”

“Who has the keys to it?”

“Myself and Master Fyncham, our household’s steward.”

“You’ve no butler?”

“We’ve only lately become so large a household that we need one. Until now Master Fyncham had been able to see to it all. We mean to find someone shortly.”

Dame Frevisse fell silent, looking down in thought. Cristiana and Beth waited. When she looked up, it was to Beth again. “Will you give order for your servants to answer whatever I ask them?”

“Of course.”

“I’d talk first to Master Fyncham. Now, if I may.”

“Of course.”

Cristiana wanted to scream at their careful courtesy to each other. What use was their courtesy against death? Edward was dead, and now Pers, and Gerveys could have been, and she had no hope anymore that she’d ever be rid of her pain. Never, never, never rid of her pain and her fear and she was going to die and . . .

She took her hand back from Beth and wrapped her arms around herself, holding herself as bodily together as she was trying to hold her mind, fighting against falling into shattered, sobbing pieces like Ivetta.

A manservant’s head and then the rest of him bobbed into view up the stairs.

“Yes, Nol?” Beth asked.

The man bowed while saying, “That Master Helyngton and his sisters and all are come visiting, Master Say said to tell you.”

Beth dismissed him with, “Thank you,” laid a hand on Cristiana’s arm, and said when Nol was disappeared down the stairs, “Cristiana, you don’t have to see them. You can stay here, if you want.”

“Yes,” Cristiana said. If she never saw Laurence, Milisent, or Ankaret ever again, it would be too soon. But even as she thought that, a second thought came to her and she started for the stairs, saying, “They’ve come to take Mary and Jane away again!”

Beth caught her by one arm. “They wouldn’t. Not with Lady Alice here, surely.”

“It’s more likely,” Dame Frevisse said quietly, “that they’ve heard about the attack on Sir Gerveys and come to learn for certain how badly he’s hurt.”

“Whyever they’ve come,” Beth said, “you’d best to go calmly if you go at all.”

With effort, Cristiana gathered her scatter of fears into semblance of calmness, said even-voiced, “Of course,” gently freed herself from Beth, and went.

F
revisse thought
Cristiana’s rigid back as she left the bedchamber belied her suddenly quiet voice. Mistress Say went with her, but Frevisse paused to look to where Ivetta lay, an arm across her eyes, not stirring. She must be mercifully asleep at last, then. If so, it was one of the day’s few mercies, Frevisse thought as she followed after Cristiana and Mistress Say, making no haste to overtake them, so that by the time she was in the screens passage at the stairfoot, they were gone into the hall where—judging by the rise of voices—the Helyngtons already were.

Three Say servants, lingering in the passage to overhear what they could, went kitchenward at sight of Frevisse. She lingered in their place, hearing through the wooden wall Cristiana declare, “This is no matter of yours. Go away, all of you.”

Both a man and woman started to answer that and Master

Say to say something, but Cristiana went on angrily, “And you, Master Colies. You don’t have even their poor excuse for being here. Take your wife and get out of here. No, Milisent, don’t tell me what I should do or not do. You and Laurence and your miserable husband have done what you shouldn’t and I’ll fight you all to have it undone!”

Master Say began, “Cristiana, have done . . .” as Frevisse went into the hall. Laurence Helyngton, his two sisters, Master Colles, Master and Mistress Say, and Cristiana were clotted together angrily not much beyond the wide doorway, with Laurence Helyngton in the full flow of his anger cutting across Master Say’s words with, “There
will
be fight needed. I’m not giving up my rights in this.”

“Your thefts, you mean!” Cristiana mocked.

“My rights!” Laurence snarled back.

Sir Gerveys appeared in the parlor doorway. What it had cost him to hobble there was not a good thought, and as he leaned heavily against the door to rest, Alice swept past him into the hall. Immediately, Master Say, Laurence, and Master Colles bowed to her and the women made curtsy, a pause before angers would probably flare again, except a small flurry of yellow-gowned child burst past Frevisse and flung herself at the younger of the Helyngton sisters with a glad exclaim of, “Aunt Ankaret!”

Ankaret went to her knees to meet Jane’s embrace with her own, exclaiming with matching pleasure, “Birdling!” Cristiana started forward with a hand out to snatch her daughter away, but Mistress Say held out an arm, stopping her at the same moment young Mary came past Frevisse, saying in distress as she went to her mother, “I tried to stop her. I couldn’t. I’m sorry.”

Behind her, Mistress Say’s little daughter by her first husband hovered in the doorway uncertainly. Cristiana drew Mary close to her, soothing, “It’s no matter. She just wanted to see Ankaret.” But there was no soothing in the hating look she threw at the other woman.

“They haven’t come to take us away, have they?” Mary asked her mother with open fear, holding tightly to her. “You promised they couldn’t anymore.”

“They’ve come to ask after your uncle is all,” Master Say answered with reassuring ease before anyone else could.

“And to see how you and Jane do, too,” Milisent put in. “You’re both still Master Helyngton’s wards. He still has say over where you are and all, remember.” The words were to Mary, but Millicent’s gloating was at Cristiana as she went on, “If it seems you’re unsafe here, why, of course we’ll have to take you away …”

“They’re not unsafe!” Cristiana cried. She held out a hand toward Jane, still in the circle of Ankaret’s arms. “Come here, Jane.”

Master Say did not wait for Jane to obey or Ankaret to tighten her hold, simply stepped forward and lifted Jane into his own arms with a smile at her that made Jane smile back while he said, “Of course they’re safe here. It’s Hoddesdon where the trouble was and none of us are going to Hoddesdon, are we?” He rubbed noses with Jane who giggled. He set her down with a gentle push toward Cristiana and a look at Laurence. “Nor are we making trouble here. Are we?”

Alice answered, rather than Laurence, saying in a sweet lady-voice, “Of course no one’s making trouble. Save me of course, bringing the king’s visit on you, Master Helyngton, isn’t it? And Master Colles. Come, you can see for yourselves how well Sir Gerveys does. Mistress Colles?” she added to Milisent. “Will you come? And I fear I’ve forgotten your name,” she said to Ankaret.

She drew them all away with her to Gerveys still watching from the parlor doorway. Cristiana stayed where she was, her daughters clutched to her. Frevisse saw small nods of agreement pass between Master Say and his wife, and then he followed Alice and the others away and Mistress Say went to Cristiana, put an arm around her shoulders, and guided her and her daughters out of the hall with soft words and soothing voice, gathering up her own daughter as they went.

Frevisse stood aside, out of their way, then drifted toward the others outside the parlor but already too late. Whatever had passed among them had had been bitter as well as brief, to judge by Laurence’s face as he spun away from Sir Gerveys and started back down the hall, as oblivious of Frevisse as he passed her as black thunderclouds would have been. Lady Alice, Master Say, Milisent, and Milisent’s husband came away, too, less openly furious, but Ankaret stayed, and Frevisse was just near enough to hear her plead, soft-voiced, “Gerveys, you know I won’t let any ill come to Jane. I love Jane.”