The Novice’s Tale (29 page)

Frevisse bit the inside of her lip. Chaucer’s light response made anger and confusion mix across Sir Walter’s face. Chaucer held out his hand to Frevisse and said, “But I’ve come a weary way this morning, and missed my dinner in the bargain, and would pay my respects to your lady prioress, my dear. Is there possibly more of that wine I had last time I was here? It was particularly good, I thought.”

It was a prompt Frevisse was ready enough to follow. As smoothly as he, she said, “Of course, Uncle,” and took the one step that put her beside him.

“You’ll pardon us, my lords?” Chaucer asked.

Whatever they were thinking—and judging by Sir Walter’s face it was nothing pleasant—there was no reasonable way of stopping him. They made small bows, their men did likewise, and then Chaucer had her to the doorway and through it.

With a gasping laugh, Frevisse shot home the bolt, locking the door with herself and Chaucer safe inside.

“I suppose this can all be explained?” Chaucer asked as she turned back to him. “Wrestling in the yard with young men, quarreling with nobility, sheltering murderers. This is the way you spend your holy days, Frevisse?”

“When needs be,” Frevisse said. “But I’m hoping to change my ways. Weren’t you a little obvious in ‘my dealing’ me just now?”

“I was afraid anything more subtle would be lost in the thickets of Sir Walter’s brain. I notice you ‘uncled’ me readily enough. What’s all this about?”

Frevisse said, “Come with me to Domina Edith. I have to tell her what I’ve learned today. So doing, we’ll both tell you what’s been happening.”

The parlor was drowsing in its comfortable sameness as they entered, except that Domina Edith, leaning heavily on the arm of young Sister Lucy, was turning from the window.

“I saw only the last of it,” she said. “You were well come, Master Chaucer, and have mightily displeased them. You see something of the trouble we’re in of a sudden.”

“The sight of Dame Frevisse beset with a Fenner and Master Montfort tells me enough to make me want to hear the rest, I promise you.”

With Frevisse’s and Sister Lucy’s help, Domina Edith sank carefully into her chair. When she was settled, she bid Sister Lucy go, saying Dame Frevisse would see to her until Sext. When she was safely home, Domina Edith fixed Chaucer with a firm look.

“There have been two murders done here, Master Chaucer.” She then explained, concluding, “Sir Walter has decided our novice Thomasine is the guilty one and is determined to see she suffers for it.”

“And you’re sure she is not?”

Domina Edith cocked her head toward Frevisse. “You and Dame Claire know that part best. Tell him.”

It was a relief to lay everything out in simple steps to someone not entangled in the mess. Frevisse said readily, “From all the symptoms on Lady Ermentrude when she rode in here that second day, she was poisoned before she ever reached St. Frideswide’s. Dame Claire swears it is true, and believes the poison was henbane. It was when that failed that the killer went to nightshade, and killed first Martha Hayward and then Lady Ermentrude. So certainly Lady Ermentrude died of poison given her here in St. Frideswide’s, but assuredly she arrived already poisoned. I’d been trying to learn who could have poisoned her wine the night before she died since only a few people were near her. When we learned of the henbane, I had to learn who was with her both at her niece’s and here.”

“And you’ve done so?”

“As nearly as possible, I think.”

The cloister bell began to chime for Sext. Domina Edith sighed. “I confess myself strongly tempted to miss my prayers this time to hear more of this. But Heaven takes precedence, and I’ve learned too many times that prayers both aid and comfort me in worldly matters. Do you stay and talk, Dame Frevisse, about this with Master Chaucer. His greater knowledge of the world may be the boon we’ve needed. I give you leave to stay here with Master Chaucer and miss Sext because matters are becoming worse and the sooner there is answer to this matter, the better. Only call for Sister Lucy to come for me, if it please you.”

Chaucer withdrew to the window to wait while Domina Edith was helped from her chair and out of the room. Her shuffle of footsteps faded down the stairs, and Frevisse found she was thinking the brief verse that belonged to Sext’s prayers day in and out: “Incline to my aid, O God: O Lord, make haste to help me.” With an inward, unhappy smile at how apt that was, she turned to Chaucer.

“It’s all in bits and pieces, Uncle, with none of it giving an answer I can hold to. Some several people could have killed her but what I need to know now is the reason for her dying. It must have been a sudden one, something beyond the ordinary, because Lady Ermentrude had been like this for years.”

“You mean dead?”

Despite herself, humor twitched at Frevisse’s mouth. “Be respectful. I meant offensive.”

“That’s much more respectful, yes.”

A moment of laughter warmed between them, then faded. Quietly Frevisse said, “The question I can’t let go of is, what changed? Why suddenly now did someone decide Lady Ermentrude was no longer bearable? Why suddenly now did she need to be dead? We have to find it out, and who did it, before it tears any further at St. Frideswide’s peace.”

“Perhaps it wasn’t Lady Ermentrude they were after. Perhaps Martha was the intended victim. Tell me about her. Was she anyone in particular, this Martha Hayward? Anyone Lady Ermentrude knew?”

“Before she came here, she was in Lady Ermentrude’s kitchen, a position of no great importance, but she would talk of her mistress as if she were her chambermaid. Lady Ermentrude found her a place here when she was reducing her servants after her husband’s death.”

“Has she been much in contact with Lady Ermentrude of late?”

“Not at all, that I know of. It seems only chance brought her instead of someone else to watch at Lady Ermentrude’s bedside then.”

“How did she die? Where?”

“There in the room. Of poison. She had a tendency to greed and it seems she drank some of the drugged wine and gobbled the milksop meant for Lady Ermentrude. The poison was in one or the other.”

“Hmmm,” said Chaucer. “So Lady Ermentrude was given the rest of the goblet’s contents later?”

“No, a fresh mixture was prepared for her, and after she drank it, she died. And so, it seems, did her monkey.”

“Ah. Then it was indeed Lady Ermentrude they were after. Tell me what you’ve learned, and what you suspect.” He sat down, to show he was willing both to wait and listen. “Lady Ermentrude left almost as soon as I did?”

“I saw you out the gate and as I turned away, Lady Ermentrude was coming, intent on leaving.”

“You don’t know why?”

“She never said, simply rode off with a few men-at-arms and two of her ladies because she was in haste, she said.”

“And she went direct to—”

“To .Thomasine’s sister and her husband. Sir John Wykeham and Lady Isobel. I believe you know them?”-

“He was in my ward. I helped to arrange their marriage.”

“Lady Isobel says that Lady Ermentrude arrived all in a taking and told them their marriage had to be undone. When she and Sir John tried to reason with her, Lady Ermentrude flew into a mindless rage and fought with them far into the night, then in the morning stormed away, intent on returning here. She was still in such a temper she refused to eat, only drank some wine brought from Sir John’s stores. Sir John and his lady followed after her, in fear she would do damage to herself or make herself ill, she was so angry.”

“Does Sir John tell the same story?”

“Sir John is telling nothing at all. His tooth is paining him and his jaw is swollen, but he heard what his wife said to me and made no denying gesture to anything.”

“What do you think of them?”

Frevisse said cautiously, “He seems an easy man, and kind. He and his lady are most fond of one another, but… Lady Isobel seems utterly willing to accept that her sister killed Lady Ermentrude, though it pains her to think it.”

“Have you pointed out that Thomasine couldn’t have done it?”

“No one knows about the henbane except Dame Claire, Domina Edith, me, and now you.”

“A quarrel lasting well into the night and yet so little to be said of its details seems unlikely,” mused Chaucer. “Have you asked anyone else what they might have heard?”

“I’ve questioned two servants who were there, but the door to the solar where they argued is regrettably thick and the window protected by a walled garden. All that was heard besides Sir John trying to quiet them was something about a marriage and France and the need to undo it.” Chaucer’s expression changed. “What are you thinking?”

He did not reply directly, but asked, “Lady Ermentrude said nothing about marriage when she returned here? Nothing at all?”

“No, what she wanted was to take Thomasine away. That’s all she said before she went into a sort of screaming, gibbering fit, and then collapsed into exhausted sleep or unconsciousness.”‘

“But you’re sure Lady Ermentrude was already poisoned before then.”

“Very sure. What we thought was drunkenness when she arrived was the effect of henbane.” Something shifted and slipped into place in Frevisse’s mind. “Henbane,” she said.

But Chaucer was not listening; he rose to his feet and went to the window to stare out at the sky. “I thought there would be more rain but it’s looking to break to sunshine soon. That will be good for the harvest, I’m thinking.”

“You’re thinking something else as well,” Frevisse said.

Chaucer turned back to her, his face grim, untouched by any of his wonted humor. “What I’m to tell you goes no farther than yourself.” She nodded and he continued, “When I went from here the other day, it was to Hertford and the Queen I went, not my own business. And I went because of what Lady Ermentrude was stupidly hinting at that afternoon. About secrets and trouble in the Queen’s household.”

Frevisse cast back to what they had talked of that afternoon when Lady Ermentrude had come. There had been no seeming importance to any of it at the time, and she had not thought on it since, but, “Yes, I remember. You knew what she meant?”

“I didn’t know then. I know now. Her Grace the Dowager Queen, daughter of King Charles VI of France, widow of King Henry V of famous memory and mother of our present King Henry VI of England, has been married this half year past to a Welsh esquire of no family worth mentioning, an officer in her household. Before spring comes, she’ll bear his child.”

Frevisse felt her mouth open, then drew it sharply closed on every question or comment that came into her mind. A queen’s marriage—a widowed queen’s as well as any other’s—was a matter of state, to be talked over in councils, debated and decided on by the lords of the government for the best ends of the realm. It was not a thing done in secrecy, as this one must have been, and never with a nobody of both foreign and ordinary birth. And if there was going to be a child, it was a secret that had to come out, and when it did there would be a scandal that would taint anyone connected to it.

“So it’s no wonder Lady Ermentrude was leaving her service,” Frevisse said. “To escape what will come when the marriage is disclosed.”

“Exactly. Loyal to her own well-being to the end. Though she wasn’t the first or last to find an excuse to leave.”

“But how did you find it all out?”

Humor glinted again in Chaucer’s eyes. “I went and asked Queen Catherine, of course.”

“Just… walked in and asked her?”

“It seemed the straightest way,” Chaucer said. “I told her of meeting Lady Ermentrude and that if there was indeed something afoot, she might be well advised to let me know of it because I don’t want more upsets in the government than are already there, and if this were a secret I could help her keep, I would, if I knew it.”