The Widow's Tale (Sister Frevisse Medieval Mysteries Book 14) (18 page)

At least two men against him, then, and more probably three at the least. Two to hold him, another to stab.

Sir Gerveys had come out of the church and been seized, or maybe they had gone in after him and dragged him out. Either way, he had fought them at the church door, been dragged, and somehow fought them again, hopeless though it must have been, already hurt as he was and in the dark and outnumbered. The thought of how it must have been made Frevisse both sick and angry. Sick with thought of Sir Gerveys’ fear and fury and despair. Angry at whoever had done it to him.

Why hadn’t he cried out, either in anger as men did in a fight, or for help? Even in the mist, a shout would have been heard and people would have come, maybe not in time to save him but the bodies would have been found, an alarm raised. Why had there been no outcry?

Intent in her thoughts, she had not noted Father Richard rise to his feet and startled a little when he touched her arm. “Please, my lady,” he said gently. “No one expects you to bear this. Withdraw, if you will.”

Her refusal of his kindness was tempered by his horror-blanched face. With feigned womanly uncertainty she said, “No. Thank you. I’m well enough. But should we . . . could we . . . turn Sir Gerveys onto his back? To leave him lying facedown . . . seems . . . wrong.”

What she wanted was to see if there were other wounds in him, but her excuse served well enough; despite no constable or bailiff had come, Father Richard called one of the men from the crowd and between them they gently turned over Sir Gerveys’ body. There were other wounds. Two in his chest. One in his stomach. A fourth that looked to be where the sword or long dagger through his back had come out. Someone had been very thorough in making him dead. She also saw why he had made no outcry.

A narrow, black bruise circled the front and sides of his neck where something had dug deeply into the flesh. A rope, Frevisse guessed. Guessed now, too, that Sir Gerveys’ murderers had taken him from behind and in the church while he prayed beside Pers’ body, after Sawnder was dead. If he had heard any footfall behind him, he would have thought it only Sawnder, until the rope went around his neck and strangled off any cry.

Shedding blood in a churchyard was bad enough, but a killing inside a church was a dire thing, a crime worse than plain murder that even the kind of men there had been here seemed to have shied from it. Instead, they had throttled Sir Gerveys to silence and dragged him from the church to kill him.

The business had not gone all one way, though, Sir Gerveys’ dagger, hidden under him until he was rolled over, was still clenched in his right hand and there was blood on the blade. Not his blood either. Hand and dagger had been under his right shoulder, clear of the pooled blood from his wounds and with no blood on his hand at all. The blood on the dagger had to be someone else’s, and Frevisse found herself grimly glad that someone among his murderers had not gone unscathed.

A man, his clothing rumpled with hurried dressing but with all the bearing of authority about him, came through the crowd. The village’s bailiff or constable, Frevisse supposed, and she faded back, leaving to Father Richard whatever business came now, slipping away not to rejoin Domina Elisabeth but into the church. All was still in shadows there, save for the lamp-glow above the altar at the church’s far end and a soft light among the rafters from the rising sun, enough for her to see the bier in front of the rood screen with Pers’s shroud-wrapped body on it and the candles guttered out in their tall stands at its four corners. Going closer she saw Sir Gerveys’ sword, too, lying on the floor, beside and evenly aligned with the bier. He would have put it in front of him as he knelt in prayer, facing the altar with his back to the door. Come at from behind, half-trottled and dragged backward in the first moment of attack, Sir Gerveys had not even been able to lay hand on his sword.

Frevisse tried and failed to keep from imagining the sudden rope around his neck, his throttled struggle for air and to break free as he was dragged from the church. Only outside, when nearly it was too late, had he been able to grab out his dagger and strike at least one of his murderers, fighting for his life even as he was dying, stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed again, from behind as well as front, maybe more than one man killing him while others held him. Then they had left him there, lying in his blood; and she wanted them found out and made dead in their turn, never able to kill anyone again. And might God forgive her for wanting that so much.

T
he rumpled man
and Father Richard came into the church, the priest looking around worriedly for sign of the bloodshed.

“All the killing was done outside,” Frevisse said. “There’s no blood here.”

“You’ve looked?” the rumpled man asked tersely.

“I can see,” she said. Guessing how little the help of an unknown nun would be welcomed, she was already leaving. Only because she did not know if the man would think of it for himself, she turned back at the door and said, “Whoever smashed Sawnder’s head was maybe badly spattered with his blood. It might be worth giving out word you’re interested in anyone seen with blood on them.”

“My good lady!” Father Richard exclaimed, distressed. But the other man’s eyes narrowed in assessment of her as he said, “That’s something Fd thought of, but my thanks.”

“And whatever was used to hit him,” Frevisse persisted, “if it was a club and wooden, blood doesn’t clean easily off wood.”

“If it was wood,” the man said back, “it’s likely ashes in someone’s fire by now.”

“Unless they’re stupid. They might be.”

The man acknowledged that with a grim twist of his mouth.

“Sir Gerveys wounded someone, too,” Frevisse added.

“It looks he did, aye,” the man said.

“A wound in a man will be harder to hide than a club.”

“It will. I thought that, too,” the man said. “You were more than praying out there, weren’t you?”

Frevisse bowed her head for answer to that and left. Outside, the bodies had been covered and were being guarded by two men. The crowd had begun to drift apart and away to their day’s work, but Domina Elisabeth still waited and asked when Frevisse joined her, “How could you to look so closely at those men? They were so horribly dead.”

Slowly considering her answer, Frevisse said, “Sometimes, by God’s grace, I see more in such things than most people do. Sometimes, by looking, I find out the murderer.”

“Yes, I know. You’ve done it other times. But here . . . the blood …” Domina Elisabeth broke off. Then, after a moment, she said quietly, “God’s gifts aren’t always easy to bear. Come. We’ll maybe be needed at Baas.”

They were beyond the green and village, were started up the hill, when Master Say and two of his men came at a fast canter toward them. They drew to the roadside but the men drew rein and Master Say demanded at Domina Elisabeth, “Is it true? Sir Gerveys and Sawnder, they’re both dead?”

“God have mercy on their souls,” Domina Elisabeth answered.

Master Say swore and made to ride on, but Frevisse put out a hand, stopping him long enough for her to ask, “Please.

.

One question. Did you tell anyone at all that Sir Gerveys and Pers were going to Ware yesterday?”

“No one,” Master Say snapped and heeled his horse forward into a canter again.

It was pity, Frevisse thought heavily, that their being there sooner rather than later would make no difference to Sir Gerveys or Sawnder. She and Domina Elisabeth walked on, the golden morning’s warm beauty all around them. The last of the mist was gone from the valley and there was birdsong in the hedgerows and Sir Gerveys was dead and would never see it or any other morning.

Sir Gerveys. Pers. The man Sawnder. All dead because of a secret Cristiana’s husband should never have had.

At least Frevisse supposed that was the reason behind their deaths. But Alice now had the thing, whatever it was. Even if the ambush yesterday had been because of it, there had to be some other purpose to Sir Gerveys’ death.

Unless . . .

She tried to stop her thoughts from going that way but they were already gone.

Unless someone had wanted to be certain that whatever was in the paper went unknown, Sir Gerveys had handed it to Alice still sealed, but there were ways to open and reseal something without destroying the seal if one had the skill and time enough. Who was to say Sir Gerveys hadn’t that skill? And he had had the time yesterday while the thing was in his hands. It maybe didn’t even matter whether he had read it or not. That he had had the chance could have been reason enough for someone to decide he should be dead. Had that been the purpose of the attack on him yesterday? To seize the document and kill both him and Pers against the risk they’d read the thing?

Did she believe Alice was that treacherous?

No. She did not. But she could believe someone
with
Alice might be under orders about which Alice knew nothing.

Had Alice told any of her people about her dealings with

Sir Gerveys and Cristiana? If she had not, there was still the chance that whoever had overheard them in talk—if someone had overheard them—had passed word to one of Alice’s people, under orders from Suffolk.

Or maybe the paper had nothing to do with yesterday’s ambush and these murders. There was still the quarrel between Cristiana and her husband’s cousins. More than once, Laurence Helyngton had looked as if he wished Sir Gerveys dead. Had he gone past wishing?

If only she knew either the who or the why of yesterday’s attack, surely other answers would come. As it was, uncertain whether last night’s murders had had anything to do with yesterday’s ambush, she did not know which way next to go with her suspicions and questions. What if the ambush and the murders were done for separate reasons by altogether different people? What if Laurence Helyngton was behind one and someone working for Suffolk behind the other? Or could Laurence be working for Suffolk in both matters? Or what if Laurence Helyngton had had naught to do with either one of them? What then?

Again she came back to reminding herself that, little though she liked the thought, Master Say might be less than the friend he seemed to be. If Cristiana’s lands and her daughters’ marriages were so valuable to Laurence Helyngton, they would be equally valuable to Master Say, a man very capably making his way in the treacherous world of ambitions around the king—a world where the more you had, the better placed you were to lay hands on yet more.

She and Domina Elisabeth were met in the manor’s great hall by servants wanting better word than had so far come. Domina Elisabeth could only assure them that, yes, Sir Gerveys and Sawnder were dead. One of the women began to cry, but Domina Elisabeth asked for Mistress Say and Mistress Helyngton and she and Frevisse went on to the parlor, where Mistress Say, pale and tight-lipped, was in low-voiced talk with Master Fyncham. She broke off when she saw them, read their faces without needing to ask more, and said one brief thing more to Master Fyncham, who bowed in answer, bowed to the nuns, and left.

When he was gone, Mistress Say asked, “There’s no doubt?”

“None,” Domina Elisabeth said. “I’m sorry.”

On the settle where Sir Gerveys had lain yesterday, Ivetta was sitting crumpled and crying in a worn out way, but at Domina Elisabeth’s words she gave a louder, more convulsed cry, and began to rock, her arms wrapped around herself. Cristiana, seated alone on the bench below the window, her back to the world outside it, was doing nothing, her hands lying together and unmoving in her lap, a dryeyed stillness to her face that was worse than any tears. She had raised her head when the nuns came in but now went back to staring at the floor in front of her and said, empty-voiced, out of whatever distant place she was in “I want Mary and Jane here with me. I want to be the one who tells them.”

“I’ll bring them,” Mistress Say said immediately.

Cristiana’s eyes stayed down, her voice empty. “Only them. I want no one but them. Ivetta, go away with the nuns, please.”

That startled Ivetta into pausing her tears to stare at Cristiana. Using that pause, Domina Elisabeth went to her, raised her to her feet by a hold on her elbow, and started her out of the room. Ivetta did not protest, but Frevisse said, “I’ll stay with Cristiana until her daughters come.” Because she was not sure Cristiana should be left alone.

Mistress Say, following Domina Elisabeth and Ivetta out, agreed with a nod of her head.

Frevisse’s hope then was that Cristiana would stay silent, but at the small sound of the door’s latch falling Cristiana said without lifting her eyes from the floor, “How was he killed?”

Because there was small use in trying to keep it from her Frevisse answered steadily, “He was taken by surprise and outnumbered. He fought back. There are signs of that. He wounded at least one of them before he was cut down.

Stabbed from behind and in front. It must have all gone very quickly.”

That last was something of a lie, but there were longer deaths than his had been and Cristiana needed what little comfort could be given.

Cristiana said nothing.

Frevisse waited but the silence drew out, until Mistress Say returned with Mary and Jane. They came in, their eyes large with knowing something was wrong. Cristiana stood up and held out her arms to them and they both ran to her and Frevisse slipped past Mistress Say and out of the room. Shutting the parlor door again, Mistress Say followed her, saying as Frevisse stepped down from the dais, “Dame Frevisse, wait, if you please.” Frevisse turned and Mistress Say joined her, going on, “Domina Elisabeth has taken Ivetta to Cristiana’s chamber and I’ve ordered wine taken to them. I’ll take some to Cristiana in a while. Then . . .” Her gaze went past Frevisse and with the weight of more worry she said, “Oh, no.”

Frevisse turned to look, too. Nothing more threatening than a maidservant approaching, wiping floury hands on apron, was there, but sight of her reminded Frevisse of what she had utterly forgotten—tomorrow the royal hunting party would be here. By rights, that should have been all that Mistress Say thought about and did today. Instead she had murders and griefs and distracted servants on her as well.

Given all that, she sorted out with admirable calm the woman’s question about the meat pies that were supposed to be baked this morning, moving down the hall while they talked. Frevisse drifted behind them, wanting to know what Mistress Say had wanted with her, but as Mistress Say finished about the pies, Alice swept into the hall past a manservant trying to announce her. Briskly waving aside everyone’s curtsies and bows, she said, “Beth, I’ve heard what’s happened.” She turned her briskness briefly on Frevisse. “You’ve been there, I hear. You’ll tell me more later. But for now, Beth, we’ve tomorrow to deal with. With all the present upset, you have hardly hope of seeing to all that needs doing.

I’m taking it on myself to send people of my own to Ware and Hertford for everything we’ll want tomorrow in the way of food.”

“But . . Mistress Say began.

“There’s ale in plenty to be had in Broxbourne and Hoddesdon, I understand. The barrel of wine I promised you will be here today and with that the matter of drink is taken care of. For the rest, the cookshops and bakeries in Ware and Hertford should suffice. After all, this is no fine dinner we’re giving, only something between these people’s hawking and their riding on their way. Meat pies and sweet pastries in quantity and much to drink. That will be enough. And not only do I mean to send for it. I’ll pay for it, too. No.” She cut off the beginning of a protest from Mistress Say. “Having brought this on you at a bad time, I will pay for it. Your share will be to see to everything when it all arrives and that it’s served forth in suitable manner tomorrow. All I presently need from you is agreement over what to order. Where can we talk?”

She made to go toward the parlor, but Mistress Say, overwhelmed until then, said, “Cristiana and her daughters are in there.”

For a bare moment, at mention of Cristiana, Alice faltered, briefly betraying the control with which she was holding her brisk certainty in place, but the next moment her smooth mask was in place again and she turned away from the parlor, saying, “The butlery, then. That’s out of everyone’s way.”

She was going as she said it, taking Mistress Say with her. Over her shoulder, Mistress Say said back at Frevisse, “Master Fyncham wants to talk to you, my lady.”

Without looking back, Alice added, “Best tell him the change of plans, so he can make the cook happy.”

Left standing alone, Frevisse supposed that if she waited there in the hall Master Fyncham would find her or someone who could tell her where he was, but she was in no humour to wait for anything and followed Alice and Mistress Say from the hall. In the screens passage Alice and Mistress Say were already gone into the butlery. Frevisse went past it and out the rear door to the wooden stairs down to the small cobbled yard between the hall and kitchen where sight of Master Fyncham coming up saved her going down.

He had the harassed look of a man who had been dealing with a cook unhappy over too much to do in too little time, but he was not immediately pleased with Frevisse’s word of the changed plans either, saying at her disbelievingly, “It’s to stop? Everything Cook has in hand is to stop? None of it’s going to be needed?”

Frevisse saw the double danger of telling a cook that not only was everything thus far planned now changed, but that everything thus far done was no longer wanted, and she said hastily, “Just say that nothing else should be started. Finish what’s in hand and then wait to hear what Lady Alice and Mistress Say decide.”

Master Fyncham looked hardly happier with that, but since it let him shift trouble away until later—and maybe altogether to Mistress Say—he said willingly enough, “Wait here, pray you,” and returned down the stairs and across the yard to the kitchen. Soon thereafter Frevisse heard what sounded like a heavy pot-lid crashing down on a heavy pot, and immediately after that Master Fyncham came from the kitchen in haste, across the yard and up the stairs and past her without pause. She followed him into the screens passage where he shut the door between them and the kitchen yard, drew and released a long breath, and said, “Done.” He settled his ruffled dignity, gathered his thoughts, and asked, “Do you mean to go on with your questions from yesterday despite today’s grievous trouble?”

Hiding her surprise at his thought she might stop, Frevisse said only, “Yes.”

“Then …” Master Fyncham began, but they were at the foot of the stairs to Cristiana’s bedchamber and as he spoke her door opened and a servant with an empty tray came out and started light-footed down the stairs. “Nol,” Master Fyncham said, “I was just about to speak of you.”