The Widow's Tale (Sister Frevisse Medieval Mysteries Book 14) (7 page)

And as much as anything Cristiana’s claim that the duke of Suffolk had helped her husband’s cousin in wronging her unsettled Frevisse and gave weight to her protest of innocence. All too well Frevisse knew that William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk was not overly given to honesty or justice if they were in his way to something he wanted. She could believe far too easily that, given reason or money enough, he might well have helped this Laurence as Cristiana claimed.

But none of that solved or settled anything, only raised new questions, and almost Frevisse could have wished she had not started it.

A
ugust was come
, the days heavy with heat, the nights thick with warmth, the square , garth at the cloister’s heart close-grown with flowers and herbs in their full summer flourish. Passing around the cloister walk to the church after her afternoon lesson with Dame Perpetua, Cristiana paused beside the low wall between the walk and the garth to take pleasure in the flaunt of colors in a way she had never done in her garden at home. At home there had been so much else as well to please the eye and pleasure the mind and heart. Here in St. Frideswide’s there was so little of anything, the nunnery was so small and unwealthy, with no
luxuria
anywhere. In the church the altar cloth and the priest’s Mass garments were beautifully embroidered and the silver-plated altar goods were kept faultlessly polished, but the altar goods were old—Cristiana had seen where some of the plating was worn almost through—and the altar steps were bare, with no carpet or decorated tiles, only the same plain stone as the floor she lay on, the stones cool under her even now, so far into summer. When winter came, the cold of those stones would cut through the linen of her chemise and gown into her flesh, into her bones.

Sometimes, in an unguarded moment, she wondered if she would be given a warmer gown come wintertime; then the thought that she would still be here when winter came frightened her as much as thought of the cold. But at least she was no longer left completely alone. Whether by Dame Frevisse’s doing or Father Henry’s or simply because she had been no trouble thus far, some of the rigor against her had lately eased. She still had three days a week of bread and water, no word having come yet from this Abbot Gilberd, but on the other days her portion of food was greater than it had been. No one had said why; it simply was. And although the silence against her was still kept, she sometimes had lessons with Dame Perpetua on understanding the Offices. Dame Perpetua enjoyed teaching and was good at it; sometimes Cristiana now understood some of the things said above her during the prayers. More than that, though, she was relieved to be given something other to think about than her fear and anger, and there was comfort in having someone talk to her.

But if the nuns had begun to have better hope that time would come when she would become a nun, hope was all they would ever have of it, she thought bitterly. Standing there beside the garth’s low wall, she looked up from the gaudy yellow of the St. John’s Wort to the shiningly blue sky above the cloister’s roof-ridges that was all she ever saw of the world outside the nunnery. Sky and nunnery walls had become her world and, oh, by St. Anne, her own hope was sometimes hard to hold to. Those walls could so easily outlast her and she was so weary with waiting.

Head bowed with that thought and her hands folded together over her hurting heart, she went onward to the church the way she was supposed to do in any idle time she had and knelt before the altar and prayed with the desperation that came over her whenever her fear of never escaping from here was more than usual. How many weeks had it been now?

She was still rapidly murmuring for release when she heard a nun’s soft step behind her but went on praying until a hand touched her shoulder. Just loud enough for the nun to hear, she said, “Amen,” and looked up to find Sister Amicia there.

Stiffly, being one of the nuns who ever made a point of staying well away from her, Sister Amicia said, “There’s a man to see you.”

Cristiana’s heart lurched. Gerveys.

“Domina Elisabeth says you can see him in the guest parlor. He’s Master Helyngton, she says.”

Christiana’s heart lurched again, downward this time. Making no move to rise, she only stared at Sister Amicia until the nun said impatiently, “Now,” and walked away.

Stumblingly, Cristiana stood up. Not Gerveys. Laurence.

Her mind went empty, unable to handle the sudden shift to hope and out of it again into new fear. Through a fog of unthinking she followed Sister Amicia from the church. Two nuns were working at the desks along the church wall, their pen scratching loud in the cloister’s quiet. The guest parlor was beyond them and around a corner of the walk, beside the passage from the cloister’s outer door, but Sister Amicia was going the other way, and Cristiana stopped, taking time to gather her wits. Was she supposed to see Laurence alone?

Not Gerveys. Laurence.

The understanding that Laurence was here and she was to see him finally took hold on her. She lifted her head. Very well then. Laurence. She was here on his terms. Whyever he was here now, it was on his terms, too. If nothing else—and he had left her nothing else—she would meet him on
her
terms. Even if that meant no more than not going to him immediately. And rather than toward the guest parlor, she went the other way around the cloister walk, to the refectory where the nuns ate. Just inside the door a basin and a water-filled pitcher sat on a bench and a clean linen towel hung on the wall above them, waiting for hands to be washed before and after meals. Steadily, making no haste about it, Cristiana poured some of the marjorem-scented water into the basin, washed her hands, used a dampened corner of the towel to wipe her face, dried her hands and face, and hung the towel carefully straight on its rod. By feel, she made certain her headkerchief was straight, covering as much of her hair as possible. There was nothing to be done about her gown. Besides the gray gown she had worn at first, she had been given this equally gray, more coarsely woven one to wear turn and turnabout when one and then the other was being laundered. All that could be done for it was to shake out the skirts before she folded her hands over each other at her waist and went out and on around the cloister walk to the guest parlor, trying to believe she was ready to face Laurence.

The guest parlor was a small, bare room where nuns were allowed to meet with relatives or others who might come to see them. The white plastered walls were plain, there were a bench, a few joint stools, a small table for use if food and drink were given, nothing else. Stopping in the doorway, Cristiana saw, first, Laurence standing beside the table, his fingers unevenly tapping at it with impatience, and then—to her relief—Dame Frevisse standing against the wall beside the door. She would be why Cristiana had heard no knocking at the outer door; she must have been at the guesthall when Laurence arrived and had seen him into the nunnery herself.

Her presence made Cristiana more bold and she said at Laurence before he could say anything, “You asked to see me?” ungraciously enough to leave him with no doubt she was not yet broken.

He returned her ungraciousness with his own, a slight lift to his lip as he eyed her before saying, “You’re doing well, I see.”

“Well enough. What do you want?”

“Your help.”

Because neither screaming at him nor damning him to hell would be any use, Cristiana went on staring at him, saying nothing.

“With Mary,” he said.

Knowing he counted on that rousing her, Cristiana kept her face blank. That she could do it so well frightened her. For weeks-lost-count-of she had been praying for her daughters, and here was Laurence offering her word of Mary and she was able to stand there staring at him, showing nothing, saying nothing.

Sharply, not liking her silence, Laurence said, “We’re trying to marry her to Clement as we planned.”

“As
you
planned,” Cristiana said sharply back at him. “Not Edward or I.”

“Edward and you are beside the point now. The point is she won’t do it. She won’t even accept betrothal to him. When we try, she screams at us, says she won’t say the words and never will. She bit the priest when he took her hand to give it to Clement, and she hit Clement in the face with her fist when he tried to kiss her.”

Warmth spread around Cristiana’s heart. Mary was well, then, and being brave. “And Jane?” she asked, keeping her voice level. “Is she well, too?”

“She’s well, too,” Laurence snapped. “Better than Mary will be, the way Mary is going, and no, that’s not a threat against your miserable daughter. She’s doing it to herself. Making herself sick with her glooming and crying and not eating. Milisent says she’ll be ill and no use if she goes on this way.”

Hearing that, Cristiana kept her face blank only with difficulty but said with cold satisfaction, “Nor can you marry Jane to him instead because she’s too young. Besides, you’d have to wait that much longer for her to bear your Clement a child, to make the inheritance secure.”

“Yes,” Lawrence agreed tightly. “That’s why Eve come for you. To take you back so you can persuade Mary to this marriage.”

Cristiana stared at him, not quite grasping what he was offering her.

Probably impatient at her silence, Laurence snapped, “Do you understand what I’m telling you? If you’ll swear that you’ll quiet Mary down, that you’ll persuade her to this marriage and see her through the wedding, I’ll take you back with me. You’ll be out of here today.” His voice dropped into a darker tone. “Otherwise, we’ll have to find a way to
force
her to it. It can’t be that difficult a choice, woman. Make it.”

He was right: it was not a difficult choice. Cristiana’s heart leaped with her answer; but the cold back part of her mind held her silent a moment longer. She was finding there was something in her that was like the hard cinder left when all lesser matter had been burned away. Her weeks of fear and grief here had done that to her—or
for
her. Had burned away the parts of her that had been simply loving, had simply wanted to care and be cared for; had burned away her simpleness and left her with the unyielding wall of determination to have back what Laurence had taken from her. To have her home and her daughters and her life—and to destroy Laurence, and Milisent, too, if it were at all possible. And here he was, offering her at least hope of that chance somehow to strike against him. Against them.

So, no, her choice was not difficult at all, and letting her shoulders drop and her gaze fall as if she were defeated by his strength, she said in a small voice, “I’ll make all well about the marriage. I swear it.”

“Good woman,” Laurence said, satisfied and triumphant, not even thinking twice whether she meant “all well about the marriage” the same way he did. She doubted Milisent would have so easily trusted her submission, but Laurence heard only what he expected to hear, accepted her defeat, and made to lay a hand on her shoulder. Cristiana shrank back from him, refusing his touch, trying to make her disgust look like fear. At the same moment Dame Frevisse made a small movement forward and Laurence took back his hand and told her curtly, “I’ll see your prioress now.”

To Cristiana, Dame Frevisse said, “Go back to what you were doing,” and Cristiana, glad for the chance to be away from Laurence, bowed her head lower in answer and started to leave.

Behind her Laurence said, still triumphing, “Don’t hope your brother is going to help you once you’re out of here, either. He sailed with the duke of York for Ireland a month ago.”

Cristiana let her shoulders slump more and went out. His words hurt but did not cripple her. Let him think what he would, she did not mean to wait for someone else’s help anymore. Let her be free of here and with her daughters and she would do herself whatever needed to be done for them and her, against Laurence and anyone else.

T
he long-slanted
light of a rose-and-yellow sunset fell through the wide, westward-facing window of the prioress’ parlor, keeping at bay the cool evening shadows gathering elsewhere in the cloister. Overly warm and worried over why she was here, Frevisse sat sipping wine slowly from her goblet while watching Domina Elisabeth seated in the room’s other chair turning her own goblet around and around in her hands, looking down into it instead of at Frevisse. Wine was a rare indulgence in St. Frideswide’s. Almost equally rare was Domina Elisabeth hesitating over what she had to say. Those things, joined with having been summoned here when the other nuns were gone out to the garden for their hour’s recreation after supper, made Frevisse warily silent, doubting it was for the pleasure of her company that Domina Elisabeth had summoned her.

“About Cristiana leaving us,” Domina Elisabeth finally said, still looking into her goblet. “What do you think about it?”

Respectful and cautious, Frevisse ventured, “It didn’t seem my place to think about it.”

Domina Elisabeth looked at her. “My lady, pardon my saying so, but you think about everything. What do you think of this Master Laurence Helyngton?”

“I didn’t like him.”

Domina Elisabeth slightly smiled. “Nor did I. What do you think Cristiana thought of him?”

“She didn’t like him either. She fears him, I think.”

“But she was willing to go with him?”

Frevisse hesitated, then said, “She wants to be out of here. If it means going with him, she’ll go.”

“Lie’s also the reason why she’s here at all. I gather the warrant for her to be put away was given at his petition. That same warrant allows him to determine when she may be taken out, too.”

“If he has the authority for that, then we’ve no concern left in the matter,” Frevisse said, knowing full well it must not be that simple or they’d not be having this talk.

Still twisting the goblet around and around between her hands without ever drinking from it, Domina Elisabeth said, “The trouble is that I’ve had no release from Abbot Gilberd.” She rarely referred to her brother by other than his title and name, and yet somehow no one ever forgot it was by his doing she had been made prioress of St. Frideswide’s almost ten years ago. “In his letter about this woman he strictly charged me with her care, that she must not be let go or allowed to escape, that I must answer for her in all things. Now this man has come to take her out of our care, but I’ve had no release from Abbot Gilberd.”

“Isn’t the warrant enough to forego any need of release from Abbot Gilberd?”

“It’s enough that I’ve agreed she can go tomorrow.”

“But?”

“But I still feel bound by Abbot Gilberd’s bidding that she is mine to answer for. That’s why I didn’t release her to him today, the way he demanded. That she must go is plain— her daughter’s health being endangered, I understand—but I told him she could not go before tomorrow, that I needed to provide for her release.”

“He accepted that quietly?”

“I’d not say quietly, no. Nor happily. Nor was he happy that I won’t allow her to go with him unaccompanied. He didn’t see fit to bring any woman or women with him, and considering Abbot Gilberd’s charge, I’ve told him—and he has agreed—that when she goes with him tomorrow, I go with her.”

Frevisse had a terrible certainty of what would come next, and inevitable as the coming sunset Domina Elisabeth went on, “I’ve chosen you to accompany me.”

Because no nun was supposed to go out of the nunnery unaccompanied, someone had to go with Domina Elisabeth. That was beyond argument. Frevisse simply did not want to be that someone.

“It’s ill enough that I be gone,” Domina Elisabeth said. “To take anyone who’s holding one of the great offices at present”—the cellarer, sacrist, and others who saw to the detailed running of necessary parts of St. Frideswide’s life— “would make for greater upset. Nor would taking one of the younger nuns be so satisfactory as taking someone on whom I can better depend for help in forestalling or dealing with any trouble Cristiana may make.”

“Do you think she’s likely to? She’s made none here.”

“She’s been obedient here in all outward ways, but do you truly think she’s changed inwardly, become truly penitent? Despite that Father Henry has softened toward her, I’ve seen obedience but nothing else. I have to worry what she may do once she’s freed from here. Until Abbot Gilberd releases me, I want all the help I can have in keeping watch on her and, if necessary, curbing her.”

Still looking for reason not to go, Frevisse tried, “I’m presently hosteler.”

But hosteler was least among the nunnery’s officers; she had small hope it would protect her. Nor did it. Her answer ready, Domina Elisabeth said easily, “Sister Amicia will take your place. Tomorrow in chapter meeting I’ll give all the needed orders and give charge of everything to Dame Claire for the while. We’ll leave immediately afterward.” Obedience had been for Frevisse the most difficult of her vows as a nun. She was far better at it than in her younger days but only with difficulty she said, “Yes, my lady,” and nothing else.

T
he three-days
’ journey went unpleasantly. The weather was the best of it, with enough rain at nights to settle the dust of the road without making mud and the sky clearing before they were much on their way each day so that they rode under bright skies through countryside golden with ripened grain and harvested fields. Not the travel but the company was the trouble for Frevisse.

Faurence Helyngton made plain how much he resented the slow pace that was all Domina Elisabeth would allow for Cristiana, weak from fasting. In return, Domina Elisabeth let him know her displeasure at having to come on the journey at all. In answer to that, Master Helyngton was as near to outright discourteous as made no difference and the four men he had brought for escort followed his lead. On her part, Cristiana was tautly silent or—when she spoke at all—snappish. She kept as far away from Master Helyngton as she could and wanted no more to do with Domina Elisabeth or Frevisse than could be helped. Domina Elisabeth thought her ill-natured and ungrateful for Master Helyngton’s mercy in bringing her to her daughter at so much trouble and expense for himself, but Frevisse suspected she was hiding anger and fear behind her silence and that both the anger and the fear were possibly very warranted. She had yet to decide whether or not she believed what Cristiana had told her in the church, but even if it had been all lies and Cristiana was what she was accused of being, that only justified Laurence Helyngton’s contempt of her, not the cruelty that lay behind it, flicking out from hiding now and again.

Sometime during the first day of riding Frevisse decided that whatever was the truth about Cristiana, she disliked Laurence Helyngton on his own account.

They spent the last night on their way at St. Albans where it would have been good to visit the saint’s shrine in the abbey church, but Helyngton curtly refused Domina Elisabeth’s request. With that, and after another night shared in an inn’s bed with Domina Elisabeth and Cristiana and faced with yet another day in constant company with them and Helyngton, Frevisse found herself waking to the next morning in a dark humour and disinclined to hide it. So it was odd that when Cristiana, trying to pin her veil into place and failing, let her hands fall into her lap, defeated, it was Frevisse rather than Domina Elisabeth who went to her and said, “Here. Let me.”

When Cristiana held up the pins to her, her hands were trembling. Frevisse saw them but said nothing. To ask if Cristiana was all right was pointless: she plainly was not. To ask if’ there was anything Frevisse could do to help was equally pointless: there was nothing to be done except the small kindness of pinning her veil and seeming not to see the tears brimming in her eyes, ready to fall if she so much as blinked. But Cristiana did not blink. She sat with her back board-stiff and her hands white-gripped together in her lap, and by the time Frevisse had finished with her veil, the tears had sunk from sight and her voice was level when she thanked Frevisse.

Frevisse silently granted that, whatever else Cristiana was, she was brave.

She was noting other things about her, too. Cristiana had been given back her own clothing—laundered and smoothed—before they left St. Frideswide’s. She was again gowned as a respectable widow, but Frevisse was considering what she had considered before—that it was clothing meant for home, not travel. That gave weight to Cristiana’s claim she had been suddenly seized and carried off. Nor had she lied when she said she had a brother who might help her; Helyngton had granted as much by taking the trouble to quell any hope of him.

Following Domina Elisabeth and Cristiana from the bedchamber to their breakfast in the inn’s common room, Frevisse had to remind herself that it was not her place to take any side in this. She was here to companion Domina Elisabeth and keep watch on Cristiana. Moreover, she should take heed against favoring Cristiana simply because she so much disliked Laurence Helyngton. That he was dislikeable did not mean Cristiana should be thought innocent. His wrong did not make Cristiana’s right. In fact, Frevisse told herself, for all she knew there might be no one in the right in this matter at all—dead husband, vanished brother, in-laws she’d never heard of—they might all be in the wrong, she thought fiercely and shoved out of her mind consideration of anything but the inn’s breakfast of thick bread spread with honey and bowls of last night’s leftover lamb stew.

The morning went as the ones before it had gone. Miles were ridden with no one having aught to say to anyone else and the countryside changed, with more forest than there had been but still fields rich with harvest and busy with workers. Not far beyond St. Albans they left the main way for lesser roads winding between high-hedged fields, and in a while Frevisse realized Cristiana, riding between her and Domina Elisabeth, had straightened in the saddle and was looking around her with almost gladness.

Quietly, not to be overheard by Helyngton riding well ahead of them or the guards around them, Frevisse asked, “You know where we are?”

“Yes,” Cristiana breathed. “Finally, yes.”

The road ran level here, with woodland to the left and on the right a low-cut hedge along a slightly downward slope of field with harvesters scything rye. Ahead, the low houses of a village, white and brown among the surrounding fields, lined the road, with five riders just riding out of it toward them. Not the first travelers they had met today. This was a populous part of England and even harvest-time was not enough to keep everyone at home, and probably only because they were nearing Cristiana’s own part of the country did Helyngton turn suddenly wary, making a low, backward gesture that told his men to close in around the women while drawing rein himself until he was riding close ahead of them.

From the way Cristiana was staring at the oncoming riders, Frevisse guessed she still held hope of her brother’s rescue; and by the way she slackened again almost immediately, Frevisse knew he was not there. Helyngton, to the contrary, lost his sudden wariness as the other riders neared, went easy in his saddle, and raised a hand in greeting at almost the same instant the other lead rider did. They came abreast, and as both drew rein to a stop, Helyngton said with open courtesy, “Master Say. Well met.”

Despite he was younger than Helyngton by some years Master Say returned the greeting with confident ease, taking off his simple-brimmed hat of a deep red that matched his short riding doublet worn over dark hosen and calf-high leather boots, and bowed from the saddle, answering, “Well met with you, too, sir.”

“What brings you this way?” Helyngton asked, making easy talk.

Hat on again, resting his hands on his saddle’s pommel, Master Say said as easily back, “To meet you, as it happens.” Openly surprised, Helyngton said, “To meet me?” Master Say nodded past him to Cristiana. “More particularly, her, in truth.”

There was nothing of threat in the way he said it nor any threat about the four men a little behind him, two to either side, but Helyngton stiffened. Even from behind him Frevisse could see he was readying some protest. But Master Say, without looking away from him, held out a hand out to the man nearest on his left, who had ready a folded paper he immediately gave him, Master Say immediately held it out to Helyngton, saying, “A grant to me from his grace the duke of Suffolk to take Cristiana Helyngton, widow of Edward Helyngton of Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, into my care and keeping.”

The surge of blood up the back of Helyngton’s neck almost matched the red of Master Say’s doublet as he made a strangled sound, not taking the paper but finally choking out, “Into your keeping? Yours? But he . . . he . .

“Gave you the wardships and marriage rights of Mary and Jane and keeping of their lands. He did, indeed,” Master Say said, still easily.

“And the keeping of her! He gave her into my keeping, too!” Helyngton clutched at the pouch hanging from his belt. “I have it here.”

Making a light, dismissing movement with the paper he still held out, Master Say said with calm cheerfulness, “But this cancels it and gives her into my care.”

“What are you playing at, Say?” Helyngton demanded. “It’s maybe better you ask what his grace of Suffolk is”— Master Say gave the paper a small twitch that suggested

Helyngton might do well to take it” ‘playing at’.”

Helyngton snatched the paper from him with an oath, flipped it open, and began to read. While he did, Domina Elisabeth urged her horse forward a few steps and raised her voice to say firmly, “Wherever Mistress Helyngton goes, we go with her. She was put into our priory’s keeping on our abbot’s order and unless you have countermand to that …” Master Say bowed from his saddle to her, more deeply than he had done to Helyngton. “If that be the way of it, my lady, then most certainly you must continue in her company and be welcomed. By your leave, I’m John Say of the manor of Baas, Broxbourne.”

Mollified by his courtesy and perhaps not hearing the subtle change of authority from her to himself in his answer, Domina Elisabeth said with matching courtesy who she and Frevisse were and from where, adding, “Our abbot is Gilberd of St. Bartholomew’s near Northampton.”