The Widow's Tale (Sister Frevisse Medieval Mysteries Book 14) (20 page)

F
revisse had
no useful answer to Alice’s desperate question. Even if there were enough on that paper to prove Suffolk’s treachery, anything Alice might do against him would come back on herself and their children. Let him be found guilty of treason and he would be sentenced to death and everything he owned stripped from him—nobility, properties, reputation. He would be dead and his family dishonored. His destruction would be theirs. And even if Alice risked that, even if she—or someone—denounced Suffolk, would it be of any use? He was presently all-powerful in the government. Who in England had anything like sufficient power to bring him down now that the duke of York was sent away to Ireland?

Alice’s place and power came through her husband. Frevisse had none at all. What could they do that would change anything for the better? But there were lives being destroyed in France and countless people betrayed. To say nothing, do nothing . . .

“The king,” Frevisse ventured. “If you could tell …” Alice unhesitatingly shook her head against that. “No. ITe …” She broke off, shaking her head more, rapidly refolding the paper and thrusting it back into her sleeve. “No. I have to think.”

She pushed past Frevisse, seized open the door, and left. Frevisse, slow with thought, picked up the cloth that had been around the paper, folded it and hid it up her own sleeve while pushing the cord and wax seal aside with her foot, out of sight under a chest sitting along the wall. Better no one knew the packet had been opened.

Still slowly, still thinking, she blew out the oil lamp, turned to leave, and found Mistress Say in the doorway. Uncertainly, Mistress Say asked, “Lady Alice . . .?”

“She’s just gofte . . .”

“Gone out. I know. She passed me without a word. Is there something more wrong?”

“About tomorrow? No. She’s gone to set everything in hand,” Frevisse said quickly, coming out of the butlery. And added, to take the talk away from Alice, “How is it with Cristiana and her daughters?”

“She’s told them about Sir Gerveys. They’ve cried. The girls have. Not Cristiana.” That lack of tears worried Mistress Say as much as it did Frevisse. Grief turned inward instead of let out could be a deadly thing. “She wants to go to her chamber with them. I came to be sure she’d not meet Lady Alice on the way.”

“Domina Elisabeth and Ivetta are still there, I think.” Locking the small room’s door with a key from among those hung from her belt, Mistress Say said, “It might be a comfort to her if your prioress prayed with them.”

“Has Master Say returned?”

“Not yet.” Mistress Say’s worried frown deepened between her eyes. “Nor sent any word.”

“Will he bring Sir Gerveys’ body back here, or will Cristiana go to the church, do you think?”

“Cristiana means to go nowhere. She says she’ll stay in her chamber and keep Mary and Jane with her there until this is over, until she knows they’ll be safe. By your leave, my lady.” Mistress Say left her, going back toward the parlor.

Glad to be alone and not wanting to meet Cristiana, Frevisse went along the screens passage and out the foredoor, down the steps, and along the yard to the garden. As she had hoped, no one was there and she settled herself on the turf bench along one wall, alone with her thoughts, little though she presently liked them.

There was nothing she could do about the secret now burdening Alice, and with the rest, no matter how she sorted and sifted and arranged what she knew, she saw no answers. Because nothing else seemed of any use and she had missed all the day’s Offices since Prime, she tried to pray, both for the good it might do and to free her mind from her thoughts’ useless circling. And sometimes answers came to her while she prayed.

None did this time. She was unable even to hold her mind to the prayers themselves, and she was grateful when a servant brought food and drink to her on a tray. He said that since there was no dinner in the hall today, Mistress Say had thought she might want to eat out here alone. Frevisse sent back her thanks, ate and drank without much noting what, and was something like glad, as she finished, to see Master Fyncham come through the gateway.

The midday sun was pleasantly warm along the turf bench and she beckoned him to join her there, saying as he bowed to her, “Sit, please you. You found out something?” For he looked very much like someone pleased with himself.

He sat and said, “Nol was
not
in Wormley that while. He paid the alewife to lie for him.”

“She told you that?”

“She did. It seems she told him she’d lie for him so long as there was no trouble about it, but ‘If you’re here asking about him,’ she said to me, ‘then there’s trouble and, no, he wasn’t here.’ I found out, too, whom he hired a horse from. What they told me agreed with what the alewife said—that he was gone about two and half days. He left in early afternoon of his half-day off and came back at evening two days later and spent the night drinking at the alehouse after paying the alewife to send her lying complaint about him along to here the next morning.”

Frevisse gave him well-deserved thanks and asked, “Do you know where Nol was last night?”

Master Fyncham began, “In the loft where the servants—“ then he saw what lay behind her question and trailed off uncertainly “—sleep.” He recovered. “Or he should have been. I’ll ask the other men.”

“Another thing.Has he been away from the manor any other time since Mistress Helyngton came here? On his half-day or even for only a few hours?”

“He hasn’t, no. He’s been under my displeasure and close watch since his supposed while in Wormley. He’s been nowhere except here. Unless,” Master Fyncham said grimly, “it was at night, and about that I shall ask, too.”

As he rose to his feet, Frevisse warned, “We don’t want him frighted into running.”

“I’ll take care,” Master Fyncham assured her briskly.

“I want, too, to send a message to Lady Alice. I need to write it and have a servant take it.”

“Yes, my lady.”

Frevisse thanked him again, he left, and she was left with the satisfying certainty that this Nol was Suffolk’s spy and had taken word of the paper to Suffolk. What part he had had in Pers’s and Sir Gerveys’ deaths was still to be found out. He likely had struck no blow himself, but had he passed word to someone else who had?

To someone else in Suffolk’s pay? Or to Laurence Helyngton? But then Laurence might well be in Suffolk’s pay, earning Suffolk’s regard and satisfying his own anger against Sir Gerveys at the same time.

It would tie together so many ends if that proved true.

Except that Suffolk might well protect Laurence if Laurence was his man in this. What would happen to Cristiana and her daughters then? Alice had surely promised their safety in good faith, but what good faith was in her husband?

That thought kept Frevisse uncomfortable company into the afternoon. A servant came with the pen and ink and paper she needed to write to Alice. When she had done, he took the message and sometime after that Master Say returned home. Hearing horses in the yard, she went to look, saw Master Say dismounting, and followed him into the house, needing to pause at the stairfoot to let men carrying down the tabletops, trestles, and benches from the great hall go past her, on their way to load them onto two wagons waiting to haul them to the field for tomorrow’s use. When finally she was able to go up and inside, she found Master Say in the parlor, telling his wife and Domina Elisabeth how the crowner’s arrival had kept him in Broxbourne.

Sent for because of Pers’ death, the man had found himself with two more and, “I stayed to give what help I could,” Master Say said. “Everyone who lives around the green has been questioned, but no one heard anything, let alone saw aught. The mist and darkness took care of that. We found out as best we could what travelers were at the inns in Broxbourne last night, questioned those still here, and sent men after those already gone to be sure who they are and if they know anything.” His discouragement was open. “I doubt they will.”

“One of the murderers was wounded,” Frevisse offered.

“The crowner has sent men to question herbwives, apothecaries, and doctors from here to Waltham, Ware, and Hertford in hopes someone has been treated for a dagger-wound. If it was only slight, though, we won’t find anything out that way. And priests,” Master Say added. “Priests are being asked, too, on the chance it was bad enough to kill the cur. That’s our best hope.”

“What’s been done with Sir Gerveys’ and Sawnder’s bodies?” Mistess Say asked.

“Sawnder’s cousin is seeing to his. I thought Cristiana . . .” A servant appeared in the doorway. “Lady Alice, sir,” he said and moved quickly aside, barely out of Alice’s way as she swept passed him, swept a look at them all rising to their feet, and declared, “Master Say, I’ve come to talk to one of your servants. A man named Nol. Send for him.”

Master Say, just straightening from his bow to her, bowed again. “Of course, my lady. Edmund, tell Nol he’s wanted here.”

As the servant started to leave, Alice added, “I’ve two men of my own in the hall. They’ll go with you to see that he comes.”

With the servant gone, Master Say asked tersely, “What’s amiss, my lady?”

As tersely back, Alice said, “You’ve a spy in your household, set here by my husband. Dame Frevisse found him out for me. Now I want to question him.”

Master Say started to say something but thought better of it. Alice moved to the middle of the room. The gracious friend and guest were gone from her manner. She was altogether the duchess of Suffolk, possessed of power and able to use it. She turned to face the door, waiting. In silence the rest of them waited, too, Master Say with a hand on his wife’s shoulder; Domina Elisabeth looking questioningly at everyone; Frevisse careful to meet no one’s gaze.

Wherever Nol had been, he was soon found. He came into the parlor boldly enough, despite Alice’s two men behind him. He surely had small doubt why he was there and less when the men took places on guard either side of the doorway, but he put on a brave front, trying to look as if he was clear of any thought why he was there.

“You,” Alice said, wasting no time on subtlety. “You’re a spy here for the duke of Suffolk.”

Probably ready for clever word-play while he tried to find a way out of however much trouble he was in, Nol froze at the blunt accusation, then gathered himself and said steadily, “Yes, my lady.”

“You took word to him that Mistress Helyngton and Sir Gerveys had a secret they would sell to him.”

“Yes, my lady.”

“How did you find that out?”

“I listened outside the room where they were talking. They said they had something that would ruin the duke of Suffolk.” He seemed to have decided that, once begun, he might as well hold nothing back. “I didn’t hear more than that. That woman Ivetta was coming, so I finished going up the stairs as loudly as I could and claimed I’d come for a tray.”

And that was why Ivetta had not seen him when she came along the screens passage, Frevisse thought. He had been already on the stairs, listening.

“You then went to my lord of Suffolk with word of what you’d heard,” Alice said. “Is that how you always got word to him when you had something to tell?”

“No, my lady. There’s someone comes through Wormley at set times. I meet him and tell him if there’s anything to tell.” He shifted an uneasy look at the Says and away to Alice again. “Not that there’s been anything to tell, but I’ve told him that, too. But this was something that seemed shouldn’t wait until he came. So I went myself.”

“And were well paid, I trust,” Master Say said coldly. Even wariness could not keep the gleam of coins out of Nol’s voice. “I was.” But he had the grace to add, “It wasn’t like what they said had anything to do with you, sir. It was all them and against the duke of Suffolk.”

“Who else did you tell?” Alice demanded.

Nol’s answer came as quickly as Alice’s demand. “No one. I never told anyone else at all.”

At the doorway one of Alice’s men moved suddenly, barring the way. Past him, Cristiana said, “I want to come in.”

Mistress Say looked to Alice for permission.

As Alice hesitated, Cristiana said, “Ivetta heard in the kitchen you were questioning someone.”

Alice nodded at her man and he stood aside. Cristiana came in. Her dreadful calm was still on her—dreadful because it was the calm of someone facing a thing so terrible she did not dare to feel it; so terrible that when she finally felt it, the pain might tear her into pieces. Frevisse wondered how long it would be until she could no longer hold back that pain. And what would happen when finally it broke free in her.

Mistress Say met Cristiana and led her toward the settle with an arm around her waist, saying, “You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t be up at all. At least lie down.”

Her gaze fixed on Nol and her words as stiff as her body, Cristiana said, “Lying down hurts.” She slipped from the curve of Mistress Say’s arm, sat down on the settle’s edge, and asked, still looking at Nol, “This is the man?”

“He overheard you and Gerveys talking, yes,” Mistress Say said gently. “He’s the one who told my lord of Suffolk about you.”

“And then you killed my brother,” Cristiana said at Nol. “And Pers and the other man.”

“No!” Nol said that quickly, not to Cristiana but at Alice and Master Say. “I swear I’d nothing to do with that!”

“If not you,” Cristiana said, “then who? You didn’t have time to tell Suffolk himself they were going to Ware, but you could have told someone here.” Her gaze flicked toward Alice. “Or Laurence Helyngton.” She stood up and her voice rose with her. “You told him, didn’t you, and when he only killed Pers the first time, you told him Gerveys would be in the church last night so he could kill him then. Or you killed him yourself!”

Nol was no fool. He understood the danger he was suddenly in and cried, “No!” again at Alice and Master Say. “I never did that! I swear it! I’ve never had anything to do with Master Helyngton or any of them!”

“How very honorable of you to spy for only one person at a time,” Alice said coldly. “Supposing we believed you.”

“It’s true, though! I’ll swear on the Bible or anything else you ask me to that I’ve had nothing to do with anybody’s murder!”