The Widow's Tale (Sister Frevisse Medieval Mysteries Book 14) (19 page)

A cheery-faced young man, Nol sobered at the sight of

Master Fyncham and came more slowly to the stairfoot while Master Fyncham asked, “You served Mistress Helyngton and her brother in her chamber the day she first came here, didn’t your

Nol went from sober to wary, and well he might, Frevisse thought. To be suddenly questioned about a man who had just been murdered was very good reason to be wary. But after his pause, Nol remembered to bow to her and answered, “Aye, I did. I took them wine, I think. Like I did just now to that Ivetta. She’s in a bad way.”

“You remember that day, though?” Frevisse asked. “When Mistress Flelyngton first came here?”

“Oh, aye, I remember,” Nol said, beginning to be brightly confident again.

Frevisse wished she was. What was she supposed to ask him? Did you happen to listen outside the chamber door? Are you the duke of Suffolk’s spy ? Did you betray Sir Gerveys yesterday? She settled for, “Tell me how it was. You went up to their room …”

She left that hanging and Nol’s eagerness took over. “Aye. I went up the stairs, that Ivetta right on my heels. Thought she’d go right over the top of me, the way she hurries, you know. I nipped quick to stay ahead of her and went in.”

“You
knocked
and went in,” Master Fyncham said.

“I didn’t, I don’t think,” Nol said. “The door was standing open and …” At Master Fyncham’s look, he reconsidered and said quickly, “I must have knocked. I did, surely.”

Before that could go farther, Frevisse asked, “How did they seem to you when you went in?”

Nol paused to think about that. “Worried, I’d say. Tired, too. Her anyway. Is he dead, her brother, the way they’re saying?”

“He’s dead,” Frevisse said. “Yes.”

“Sawnder, too. That’s bad all around.” Distress took over Nol’s face. “How’d it happen? Nobody—“

“We’ll know more when Master Say returns,” Master Fyncham said. He looked at Frevisse, but she slightly shook her head; she had no more questions for Nol just then, and Master Fyncham dismissed him with, “That’s enough for now. See if there’s any help you can give in the kitchen.”

Nol screwed his face into a mock distaste at that but bowed and left, and behind him Master Fyncham said, “I fear he talks more than he listens, does young Reignold. A young man with ability enough but making no effort to put it to good use.”

“Reignold,” Frevisse said. She’d have known Nol was only a slighting of his name if she had troubled to think about it. “You said something about Reignold yesterday. In the hall.”

“Did I?” Master Fyncham sifted through his memory. “I did, yes.”

“You said he was gone, drunk, for two days.”

“In Wormley. In the alehouse there. The alewife finally sent to ask he be removed, he was in the way. He was brought back sodden. If he does as much again, I’m not sure we’ll keep him.”

“When was this?”

“When?” Master Fyncham searched his memory again. “He went missing just after Mistress Helyngton came. He had his half-day off and didn’t come back. It was two days later the alewife sent to be rid of him.”

Frevisse hoped she hid her hot glow of triumph. If this Nol’s half-day was added to his two other days, he had been gone almost three days. Time enough for what she thought he might have done. “I need,” she said to Master Fyncham, “someone to ask more closely about his days in Wormley. Someone who’ll question closely and find out certainly whether he was truly there or not. Not from the alewife but others. And if he wasn’t there, did he hire a horse somewhere?”

“You think Nol has something to do with all that’s been happening wrong here?”

“There’s chance, yes. But don’t say that to anyone. Not before we know more.”

“Assuredly. I’ll see to it. I’ll go myself. The household will hold itself together that long. If you’ll make it well with Mistress Say?”

“I’ll make it well,” Frevisse promised.

Master Fyncham gave a firm nod and left, leaving Frevisse to hesitate at what to do next. If Nol was Suffolk’s spy, that was one question answered, with maybe more answers to come from it. But this was too soon to hang all her hopes on it and she went up the stairs to Cristiana’s chamber, stopped outside the shut door and listened, able to hear Domina Elisabeth urging Ivetta to lie down, to rest. Frevisse knocked and went in.

Domina Elisabeth was standing near the window. Ivetta was pacing the room’s length, hands wrung together, tears and grief still marring her face. As she turned at the far wall and began to pace back, Frevisse asked, “Ivetta, the servant who was just in here, have you seen him before this?”

Ivetta stopped where she was, staring at Frevisse as if the question confused her.

“The man who was just in here,” Frevisse insisted. “Did you know him?”

“The man?” Ivetta groped through her grief. “He’s one of the household.”

“Have you seen him here, in this room, before today?” Ivetta looked at her blankly. Frevisse tried again.

“The day Mistress Helyngton first came here, she and Sir Gerveys talked in here together. Only the two of them. That man brought them wine. He went up the stairs just ahead of you and then left again. Do you remember?”

Ivetta finally took hold on what she was being asked. “That man. That day. No. I didn’t see him go up the stairs. I
heard
him, is what. Heavy-footed as a plough-horse he was. It was going down he passed me going up. I don’t remember he brought any wine.” She looked suddenly surprised, then her eyes narrowed and a flush of anger covered the mottling of her tears on her face. “There was the other time, too. When Pers and I . . .” Her tears rose again. “Pers and I, we saw him skulking at the foot of the stairs here two days ago. When

Mistress Helyngton and Sir Gerveys were talking in here then. Pers went after him to see what he had to say for himself, but all he said was he was wondering what
we
were doing on the stairs. Pers thought it was more than that, though. Pers thought he was hoping to spy and said he’d keep an eye on him after that. Only he . . . Pers . . .” She gulped on returning sobs and said with a burst of fierceness, “You ask that fellow some questions! You ask him
hard.”

“Pers went after him,” Frevisse said, unready to leave her to her tears just yet. “But you stayed at the door, yes?”

“What? Stayed? Yes. Right there. He never got near, he didn’t. He never . . .”

Ivetta gave up and collapsed in heaving sobs on the chest at the bedfoot. Domina Elisabeth went to pat her shoulder. Frevisse stayed where she was, considering that if Ivetta was to be believed, Nol might well have heard what passed between Cristiana and Sir Gerveys the first time they talked here together but neither he nor anyone else could have heard them here two days ago. That meant it must have been Sir Gerveys’ talk with Master Say afterward that was overheard. Or that it was Master Say who had betrayed them.

F
revisse came
down the stairs from her talk with Ivetta troubled by her thoughts. She did not want to ask the questions she needed now to ask of both Alice and Master Say, because even if she heard answers that freed them from her suspicions, she was afraid she might likewise hear the lie behind the words. Voices could treacherously give away what someone meant to keep hidden. What if she heard a lie behind either Alice’s or Master Say’s voice? What then?

But Alice had set her to this. She had to believe in Alice. And Master Say? If she were honest with herself, she had to admit she didn’t want to find him treacherous. Given a choice, she would rather lay everything on Laurence Helyngton.

But if she could find no way someone had overheard Sir Gerveys in talk with Master Say . . .

I
n the screens
passage Mistress Say was just coming from the butlery. If not happier, she at least looked less desperate than earlier as she said, “Dame Frevisse, my lady of Suffolk was just saying she would talk with you.”

“Frevisse,” Alice said from the butlery doorway. “If you please,” and drew back into the small, windowless room where the daily supply of wine and ale was kept under lock and key, and there were shelves of the household’s platters, plates, cups, and goblets of everyday use and the locked chests of greater valuables. Alice in her gown of finest linen and her cauled headress with soft trailing veil was so ill-matched to the workaday place that Frevisse paused in the doorway. Alice, able to see her face by light of the shallow oil lamp burning on the narrow desk set to one side of the room, asked impatiently, “What is it?” Then added, without waiting for answer, “Come in. Close the door. We’ll be as private here as anywhere.”

Frevisse obeyed but said as she did, “I was only wondering how long it’s been since the duchess of Suffolk was in a butlery.”

“Two weeks ago at Ewelme,” Alice said with asperity. The manor she had inherited from her father. “Discussing with Master Gallard if we had wine enough on hand to last until the autumn wine fleet comes from Gascony. Would I were there now, with naught to think about but how the harvest is going, rather than all this.” She stood up. “What have you learned? Anything of use?”

Frevisse matched her asperity. “It’s very likely your spy here is a servant named Reignold, usually called Nol. It also seems //wlikely he knew Sir Gerveys was going to Ware.” Alice waited for more. When nothing more came, she demanded, “That’s all?”

“Yes.”

“But you suspect . . .” Alice left a gap for Frevisse to fill. “Yes,” Frevisse said. “I suspect.” And did not go on. “What?” Alice demanded. “Say it.” And then, sharply, “I already know it. Ask it.”

“Did you tell anyone that Sir Gerveys would go somewhere to collect this paper? Or set someone on to watch him when he went?”

“I did not. Not either of those things.”

“Did Master Say tell you about his talk with Sir Gerveys that evening? That Sir Gerveys would be going the next day for the paper?”

“Master Say told me nothing about it. No one did. I didn’t know when Sir Gerveys would go, or where. Nor did I speak to anyone at all about what passed in the orchard with Mistress Helyngton.” Alice’s voice sharpened more. “Nor— before you ask it—did I have anything to do with the murders last night. Once I had the document, Sir Gerveys was no longer a concern of mine.”

Returning sharp for sharp, Frevisse challenged, “He was someone’s concern. Someone who maybe feared he had read the thing and had to stop him from ever telling what it said. Someone not willing even to risk the possibility he’d read it.” Eyes and voice cold, Alice said, “Yes, that has to be considered, doesn’t it? But I haven’t even read the thing myself. Look.” She slipped her right hand into the close-fitted wristband of her gown’s left sleeve and brought out the packet Sir Gerveys had given her yesterday. She held it out. “I haven’t even opened it. My lord husband
ordered
me not to open it,” she added with a bitterness perhaps more betraying than she meant it to be. “Do you truly think I’d order a man’s murder—two men’s murders—for any reason, let alone for a thing I haven’t even read?”

Frevisse went very near to her and said at nearly a whisper, urgently, “Alice, not you. But someone could have come here with you already ordered to murder if there was need.” Alice went deeply still. Except her eyes widened. Then she closed them and pressed a hand over her mouth.

“Always remembering,” Frevisse said, watching her face, “that the order may have been to kill
anyone
who might have read the thing, not simply Sir Gerveys.”

Eyes still closed, Alice said, “God forgive me.”

Cold clenched around Frevisse’s heart. There were some answers she did not want to hear, but she asked nonetheless, “What?”

Alice opened her eyes, lowered her hand, and said in a voice as cold as Frevisse felt, “God forgive me for what I thought just then. That my husband could have ordered such a thing. That he could have sent someone with me with order to make sure anyone who might have read the letter had no chance to tell what it said. For just that moment I believed it possible.” She looked down at the packet in her hands; turned it over; turned it over again; then held out a hand to Frevisse and asked, “Might I use your knife?”

Meaning the short-bladed knife carried in a small sheath in the pouch hung from Frevisse’s waist, mostly used at meals. Most people had them, but Alice was too fine a lady to be troubled with a belt pouch, and Frevisse silently handed her own to her. Equally silent, Alice slid the blade under the packet’s cord, slit it, then slid the blade under the wax seal, breaking it and letting its pieces and the cord fall to floor.

“Since I was more than halfway to believing my husband could have given such an order,” Alice said, handing back Frevisse’s knife, “I mean to see what has us all so frighted.” She began to unfold the packet.

This was Alice as Frevisse had mostly known her—a woman clear of thought and quick of decision. And finally she understood why Alice had seemed not herself here. These few days past she had been more than merely worried. She had been afraid.

For her husband? Or
of
him?

Alice let the packet’s cloth wrapping fall to the floor, too, only the small-folded paper that had been inside it in her hands now. She unfolded it to the black-inked writing on it and began to read. Unable to see the words, Frevisse watched Alice and by the oil lamp’s soft glow saw the stark deepening of every line of Alice’s face, aging her out of her carefully kept middle years into seeming of the woman she would be if she lived to grow old. Her beauty was still there, kept by her bones, but laid over it, etched into it, was . . . grief. Grief first. Then anger. Made the worse by Alice letting neither of them loose.

Instead, she seemed to draw them inward, where their burning must have been scalding her heart, if her eyes, when she looked up from the paper to Frevisse, were anything by which to judge. “He’s betrayed us,” she said. “He’s betrayed the king and us and everyone.”

“Who?”

“Suffolk. And the duke of Somerset. The two of them together.” Stiffly, carefully, Alice began to fold the paper closed again. Her voice stiff and careful, too, she said, “Shall I tell you what it says?” But the anger was beginning to burn through her control. She did not wait for Frevisse’s answer but went on, bitter and harsh. “It’s a rough writing out of an order to Somerset in France. He’s the king’s governor of Normandy. Of all our towns and castles and fortresses and troops in France. This orders him to set Sir Francois de Surienne . . With hands that trembled now, Alice unfolded the paper again and read, “ ‘set him to that Breton business we agreed to ere you went into France, that an end may be made once and for all to this.’ “

She stopped. Frevisse waited, but Alice only stood staring at the paper, until Frevisse asked, “What does he mean by ‘an end’? An end to what?”

Alice looked up from the paper. “To the French war. That attack on a border town in Brittany this last March—the attack and the sacking afterwards that broke the truce so badly there was no mending of it—it wasn’t some piece of over-bold foolishness by Surienne, the way the first reports told it. He’s has been one of our best captains of mercenaries for years. He was even made a Knight of the Order of the Garter two years ago. I never understood why. Now I do. They were readying him—my husband and Somerset. Even then they were readying him for this.”

“I don’t understand,” Frevisse said, though she was beginning to.

“That breaking of the truce,” Alice said. “It was deliberate. Surienne attacked that town by surprise, captured it, stripped it of everything worth stealing. The French demanded apology and reparation from Somerset as the English governor of Normandy. Somerset refused to do anything about it. Nor was he ordered to it, the way he should have been, by the king. Or my husband. Finally King Charles, as he was bound to do, began to attack our border fortresses in return. You have to know this much about it, surely.”

“I knew the truce had been broken and that the war had started up again.” The way the war had been starting up now and again for the past twenty years and more, so that this time had not been worth any more thought that the other times had been.

“The war started up again because we broke the truce
on purpose to start it up again.
Surienne’s attack was meant to goad the French into attacking us, and they have, and Somerset is doing
nothing
to stop them. I didn’t understand why. Nor would Suffolk talk about it.” Alice made as if to pace but there was no room for it, and she went on angrily and with growing despair, “I don’t know the tally of how many fortresses and towns we’ve lost by now. In a matter of weeks, Frevisse. Weeks! After all these years of laying claim to the French crown and fighting to get and hold Normandy, Somerset has been all but
giving
everything back to the French. He and my husband. They planned it. That’s what this paper tells me. That they planned it, all of it. Surienne’s attack and everything that’s happened since then. They’ve wanted for years to be done with the war and this is their way of doing it.”

“But why? Why break the truce? Why end the war by losing it?”

“Because losing it is the only way we can be done with it. We’re never going to win it.”

“But we had the truce. And the king’s marriage to Margaret of Anjou to make it good …” A French princess who had brought nothing to the marriage but the hope of peace and the promise of an heir to the throne. Except that there was no heir yet. And now there was no peace either. “We’ve held Normandy for decades. Why lose it?”

Alice’s voice hardened. “Holding Normandy costs money. When the war was new, when towns were being taken and sacked and lands were being seized, there was plunder in plenty. Enough to mostly pay for the war and make men rich into the bargain. But everything has been stalemated for years now. The money goes out for holding onto Normandy but no money comes in from it. The king’s honor requires we hold what’s left of his kingdom in France, but the king’s household has taken to spending more money on itself than comes into it and who’s going to tell king or queen or any of the lords around them—including my husband—that the money has to go into the French war instead?”

The words, long-dammed and now unleashed, were pouring out—far more than Frevisse wanted to know and surely far more than Alice ought to be saying but bitterly, angrily, Alice went on, “Do you know why Parliament wouldn’t give any money to the war this year? Because for years they’ve watched almost everything they give go into the royal household’s pleasures, not the war. When the duke of York was governor of France, the King and his Council rarely sent him enough of the money he was promised to pay the soldiers and for supplies and all. He paid for things as best he could, much of it out of his own lands and money. I promise you that Somerset is not about to make that sacrifice. Not him nor any other lord. Instead, he and my husband have set up to be done with Normandy as fast as may be. They mean to save themselves the trouble and expense of the war by
losing
it, and never mind the dishonor and betrayal in what they’re doing.”

Alice ran out of breath and words together. Frevisse looked down at the paper clenched in her rigid hand and said gently, as she would have handled a wound, “Alice, that’s much to take from the little that’s there. It says none of that . . .”

“Put everything I haven’t understood of what’s happened these past few months together with what it
dm
say and suddenly there’s sense where there wasn’t any,” Alice said fiercely. “I promise you, it says enough. It even says it several different ways. They must have been trying out ways to say it without putting it straight into words. Suffolk and whoever else was there. There’s more than only his hand here. That’s what this is—their trial and error at giving the order for betrayal. They didn’t dare send it through a messenger by word of mouth or put it in clear words, lest it was captured on the way. But once they’d done it, why did they have to be careless with this?” She shook the paper, hating it and angry at their foolishness. “Why did they have to leave this lying where someone could find it?”

A discarded piece of paper that should have been burned but was not and instead became the thing on which Cristiana had hung her hopes of her daughters’ safety and brought on—probably—the deaths of three men.

Weary with the weight of it all, Frevisse said, “Likely each of them thought someone else had seen to destroying it.”

Sounding weary, too, with the kind of weariness that comes with defeat, Alice said, “But no one had. And now what am I going to do?”