The Boy's Tale (23 page)

The bell for Compline roused her. A little dazed with the intensity of where she had been, she gathered herself and rose stiffly to her feet. Her knees hurt but they eased as she left the church to join the others going to the chapter house for Compline, the day's quiet ending.

Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine, secundum verbum tuum in pace . . .
Now you dismiss your servant, Lord, according to your word in peace . . .

The words wove their rich, familiar way through the warm evening air that smelled of drying hay and sunshine and the mingled scents of flowers in the cloister garth. A late-wandering fly buzzed in through the chapter house door and out again. Like troubles, it came and went, Frevisse thought, and the flow of prayers went on as ever, a comfort and a surety beyond the griefs and alterings of every day.

Divinum auxilium maneat semper nobiscum.
Divine help stay always with us.

Amen, amen, and amen again, Frevisse thought.

But tonight, instead of a moment of silence before Dame Claire dismissed them to their beds, she said, "We should pray especially now for Domina Edith. And anyone who chooses to spend the night or part of it in prayer for her in the church is free to do so."

A startled sob escaped Sister Amicia. Dame Perpetua, with tears in her own voice though she was not yet giving way to them, asked, "Could we pray beside her instead?"

"She's asked that we not. That only Sister Lucy and Sister Thomasine attend on her."

Drawn from her own concerns, Frevisse noticed for the first time that Sister Thomasine was not there, though Sister Lucy was, pallid and drawn, the only color in her face the bright pink of weeping around her eyes.

"Why only them?" Dame Alys demanded.

"Because Sister Lucy has known her longest and Sister Thomasine is infirmarian."

"What if we want to be there?" Dame Alys insisted.

"What we want isn't what matters here. For now, for this while still, Domina Edith's word is what holds highest sway."

"But what if she says who is to succeed—"

Dame Claire cut her off sharply. "If she says anything we need to hear, Sister Lucy and Sister Thomasine will tell us."

Dame Alys gave Sister Lucy a grim glance and closed her mouth tightly over whatever else she wanted to say.

In the miserable silence Sister Emma gulped, sniffed, and asked tremulously, "It won't be long—?" She could not say the words.

"Perhaps by morning," Dame Claire said. "Perhaps another day. Hardly more." She concluded gently, firmly, "God's blessing on us all now and forever. Go in peace," dismissing them to bed or the church or—for Sister Lucy—Domina Edith's chamber. But with a small lifting of her hand, she bade Frevisse linger behind the rest, and when they were alone in the room said, "I directed some bread be left for you in the refectory. And you had best go to bed afterwards."

"I'd thought to go back to the church."

"I know, but your day hasn't been easy. You're tired and it shows. Eat and go to bed until Matins. There'll be prayings in plenty now but the flesh's willingness to bear more will wane with the hours. You'll be most in need between Matins and dawn. Go on and eat and take your turn then."

Frevisse curtsied her obedience and did not ask what Dame Claire intended to do through the night. Dame Claire's willingness to pray would not wane with the hours. But she could not help asking, "Has Domina Edith ... Is she still conscious?"

Dame Claire shook her head. "Just before Compline she drifted into a sleep I don't think she'll awaken from."

In the refectory Frevisse found the bread, with a piece of cheese and a mug of water beside it at the end of one of the long tables. It was strange to sit alone in the bare-raftered room and eat in solitude. She gave thanks and ate because she had been told to, but her hunger was gone. No matter what had happened in her time in St. Frideswide's, there had always been the certainty of Domina Edith. Now that certainty was ending. Even with Dame Claire as prioress— for surely the election would follow Domina Edith's clear wish—things would be different, and there had been comfort in the sameness all these years.

Grief for the loss of someone most dear and unease at the unknown that must come kept her thoughts from other things until she had taken off her outer gown and veil and wimple, washed her face and hands, and lain down in bed in her cell in the dormitory with a sigh of gratefulness for the ease she had not known her body so much wanted.

The late light still lingered beyond the unshuttered windows, and a distant cheerfulness of voices told her the hayers were only now coming home from the fields. Make hay while the sun shines, as Sister Emma was far too wont to say. But the dormitory was darkening in soft blue shadows, and as nearly as Frevisse could tell, she was alone here, as she had been in the refectory. The others were in the church, praying for Domina Edith, with herself left out of everyone else's pattern yet again. And pattern was so much a part of the nunnery's life. A sameness from day to day that freed the mind to concentrate on prayer.

Not that prayer was the center of some lives, nuns though they were. Frevisse suspected prayer beyond the appointed hours received short shrift from Dame Alys, for instance. Or Sister Amicia, poor thing, who had only the barest idea of what even the offices were for and would have been happier as a gossiping housewife in some market town than as a cloister nun. And Sister Emma—

Frevisse cut off the thought. It was not her place to judge her fellow nuns, and to do it so uncharitably made it the worse. And she was falling asleep. Aware of her mind drifting wide and gently away, she let it go, and only at the very last thought, who was at the pigsty when the boys fell in?

Chapter 18

Dawn came with slow golden glory through the church's east window, the roof beams gilding first, then the church filling with light; and Frevisse in her choir stall, weary and rich with prayer from all the hours spent there since Matins, thought that now would be the moment for Domina Edith's soul to leave them, to rise toward heaven through the golden light in company with the glad, day-greeting prayers of Prime.

But when the nuns came out of the church, it was Ela from the guesthouse hovering in the cloister walk, uneasy on her feet and worried over something other than Domina Edith. Dame Claire looked at her questioningly and she pointed at Frevisse. "Master Naylor wants her to come soon as may be. Now, if she can," Ela said.

Dame Claire turned her look to Frevisse, gestured to ask if she wanted to eat first. Her own alarm rising with Ela's agitation, Frevisse shook her head, and Dame Claire gestured permission for her to go.

Not waiting, Ela hobbled away at her best pace, to be outside where she could more freely talk. The courtyard was still cool in shadows, even the doves not come yet; but there was a hurrying of folk who had no need to be there through the gateway from the outer yard, and as Frevisse closed the cloister door behind her, Ela burst out, "It's that Will, my lady. Sir Gawyn's squire. He's been stabbed dead, they say."

Nothing seemed to move in Frevisse's mind. She could only see Will as he had been yesterday on the guesthall steps, mourning for Colwin's death. He could as well have been mourning for his own.

"Dead?" she heard herself stupidly say. "Murdered?"

"And Master Naylor wants you as soon as may be. Now, please you!"

Frevisse grabbed at what would have to pass for her wits and walked away so rapidly that Ela was left behind. "Move!" she snapped at the men blocking the guesthall steps in front of her.

They pushed one another aside and called warning to the others ahead of them so that she had clear passage into the hall. A servant woman stood in its middle, wringing her hands in her apron and answering the questions being pressed at her with, "I don't know. They just say he's dead. He's been stabbed. I don't know by who."

She interrupted herself long enough to curtsy to Frevisse who demanded, "Where is he?"

The woman untangled her hands from her apron and pointed. "The back passage, just where it turns to the necessarium."

Frevisse left her to dither and the crowd to its useless curiosity. The back passage led to the necessarium beyond the smaller guest rooms, including those given to Sir Gawyn and Mistress Maryon. One of Master Naylor's more burly men from the stables was keeping anyone from entering, but stood aside readily and with a bow to let her pass.

Beyond him, after perhaps twelve feet, the passage doglegged to the right. As she went toward the turn Frevisse could just see Master Naylor standing beyond it, arms folded, his gaze on something on the floor farther along. He heard her coming and moved aside without speaking, to let her see, too.

The passage went a few yards more to the necessarium's door. In the narrow way, bent as if he had slumped down the wall to the floor, Will lay in the pointless ease of death. Propped against the wall, his bright head was resting loosely toward one shoulder; one arm lying across his lap, the other fallen limp to his side. Frevisse could not see his face and she was glad. But there was no way to not see the dagger hilt between his ribs.

"Oh, God in heaven." She crossed herself. "God have mercy on his soul. And I'd thought he might be our murderer."

"What?" Master Naylor jerked his attention away from Will's body to her face. "You thought that?"

"I thought it was a possibility. There were questions I wanted to ask him today."

They regarded the body silently awhile. Then Frevisse said, "Who found him? When?"

"One of the hall servants, just before dawn, when everyone was starting to stir. The first one going to nature's call."

"And no one came in the night?"

"Not that they've said, and someone would have by now if they had."

"So he could have been here all night," Frevisse said. "He doesn't look to have been to bed, though he was maybe readying to go." He was fully dressed except for his boots; only his hosen covered his feet. She edged forward near enough to touch his hand and lift it a little. "He's been dead long enough to be quite cold, and he's stiffening."

She knelt and made herself look into Will's face. It was nothing; empty of expression; Will was completely gone from it. She shifted her attention to the dagger. "It's thrust in full to the hilt," she said.

"See here." Master Naylor pointed to the wall above the body where a long scar in the plaster ran from the height of a man's chest in a long curve to disappear behind Will's back. "It went full through him and out the back. That's from the point."

"And it was his own dagger, I'd guess." She indicated the empty sheath at his side.

"So it was someone he knew."

"And trusted enough they were able to take his dagger and stab him through before he could cry out or fight back," she agreed. "Any struggle or noise would have roused someone in the hall." The guesthall servants mostly slept on pallets around the great hall at night.

"Or it was someone he didn't so much trust as had no suspicion of," Master Naylor suggested.

"There's that, too," Frevisse agreed. She stood up. "Have Sir Gawyn and Mistress Maryon been told?"

"Mistress Maryon knows. She went in to Sir Gawyn."

"Did she see the body?"

"She didn't want to."

"But I do," Sir Gawyn said behind them from the guarded end of the passage. He had dragged a doublet on roughly over his shirt and hosen. Strained and grim, he leaned on Maryon who was as pale as he was and had her face averted.

Master Naylor said, "Let them by."

Maryon stayed where she was. Sir Gawyn came forward alone with one hand to the wall for balance, and Master Naylor moved aside to let him come to Will's body. Frevisse in the narrow space settled for stepping back instead of trying to pass them both and so could see Sir Gawyn's expression as he looked down at his squire. Of the possible emotions he might have had, he showed none. His eyes were dark and still in a face rigid as stone. He looked at Will for as long as a slow heart might beat twenty, then backed away, still looking, leaning on the wall for support until he turned, reached out for Maryon, and let her help him away along the passage.