The Prioress’ Tale (26 page)

He said it miserably, as if there were some sort of guilt in it, but he wanted no comforting from her, and Frevisse turned her questioning to Benet. “Sir Reynold and Sir Hugh came here together from the guest hall and then Sir Hugh went back to the guest hall by himself. Do you know if anyone saw him come back?”

“Everyone, I suppose,” Benet said. “We were all still up.”

“Did Sir Hugh come back soon or long after he and Sir Reynold had gone?”

“I hadn’t been sitting there long,” Benet said, “but I don’t know how long they’d been gone before I came outside. Everything was confused in the hall after Godard died.”

“Where were you sitting?” Frevisse asked.

“On the guest-hall steps.” More in answer to Lewis’ look of surprise than to Frevisse, Benet said a little defiantly, “After Godard died, I wanted to be away from them awhile, out of the hall. Away from how it was in there. No one needed me. I came out and sat there in the dark until I could face going in again.”

“You saw Sir Hugh come back from the cloister while you were there,” Frevisse said.

“Yes.”

“Did he go to the well in the yard?”

“To the well? To wash off the blood, you mean? Because you think he killed Sir Reynold? No! He didn’t go to the well. There wasn’t any blood on him.”

“It’s dark in the yard by that hour. How could you tell there was no blood?”

“Why do you think he killed Sir Reynold?” Benet threw back at her.

“I don’t think he killed Sir Reynold,” Frevisse answered as curtly. “I don’t think anything, except that I have to learn all there is to learn about how and where everyone was last night or Sir Reynold’s murderer may go uncaught.”

Where Benet might have gone with that was cut short as the door from the yard opened. They waited, instinctively silent, for whomever was coming, until Sir Hugh came out of the passageway. He looked at them incuriously and said to Frevisse as she made a small curtsy and Benet and Lewis small bows to him, “My lady mother?”

“Gone to her chamber,” Frevisse answered.

He nodded thanks, said to Benet and Lewis both, with a nod back toward the passage, “Have someone come clean the blood up. The nuns shouldn’t have to do that,” and went on.

Benet and Lewis immediately started for the outer door, skirting the blood dried on the stones. Frevisse followed them, doing the same and saying low-voiced at their backs, “Sir Hugh isn’t wearing what he wore yesterday.” That had been a brown doublet with close-fitted sleeves. Today he had on one of dark blue, the sleeves cut more fully. “He’s changed his clothing since yesterday.”

Benet and Lewis both stopped and faced her. “He had Godard’s blood all over him yesterday, remember?” Benet said sharply. “He changed after Godard died, before he and Sir Reynold went to see your prioress.”

“What he’s wearing now is the clothing he changed into then?” Frevisse persisted.

“Yes!” Benet said, and Lewis nodded in agreement.

“You’re sure of it?”

“He has the brown doublet. He has the blue. That’s all he has.” Benet was very sure of it.

“And he wore the blue one to see Domina Alys last night.”

“I saw him when he was going out with Sir Reynold,” Lewis said. “That’s what he was wearing.”

“How long did you stay out after Sir Hugh went in?” she asked Benet.

“I don’t know.” He was impatient now. “The moon wasn’t up and I wasn’t heeding the stars. Awhile.”

“Did you see anyone else while you were out there?”

“No. No one. Whoever did it must have gone in through some back way. Or come later.”

“And you didn’t hear anything? No outcry? Nothing?”

“No. We have to go.”

She wanted to ask him if anyone had likely noticed when he returned to the hall but there seemed small point to it. Even if they had, they would likely have no more certainty about when it was than he had about when Sir Reynold and Sir Hugh had gone or Sir Hugh had come back. No one would have been turning an hourglass on it.

She nodded that she was done and they went, leaving her standing there looking at the door that had not been barred last night, thinking on what she had learned so far and wishing she could see she was near to an answer. But she was not, and she should go, while there was chance to question Sir Hugh.

Chapter 22

Uneasy with dislike of everything that she was doing, Frevisse went up the stairs to Lady Eleanor’s room. Its door was shut, but the heavy wood was not enough to keep in Lady Eleanor’s angry voice and Frevisse paused with her hand raised to knock. She had never heard Lady Eleanor close to anger before, over anything, but in what sounded like a cold fury she was demanding, “And you’ll just go, like that, with everything undone? Is that all this has come to?”

Sir Hugh’s answer was less clear, his voice low, hurried, but without obvious anger “… later… see that…”

Frevisse knocked at the door. There was instantly silence but hardly a pause before Margrete opened it. Lady Eleanor and Sir Hugh stood facing each other near the foot of the bed. Across the room Joice and Lady Adela were seated at the window, each holding a dog and both looking toward the door with open relief. If they were there, then whatever Lady Eleanor and her son had been arguing over, it had not been murder, Frevisse thought. And was disconcerted at how easily the thought came.

“Dame Frevisse,” Lady Eleanor said crisply. Her face, so pale when Frevisse last saw her, now had the bright flush of anger. “It’s good you’ve come. He means to take the men and go, now, today.”

“He can’t go! None of them can!” The protest burst out before Frevisse could stop it.

Less patiently than he had spoken to his mother, Sir Hugh said back, “I can. I’d better, unless you want more bloodshed here than there’s been already.”

“Surely you can hold your men back from doing anything against the masons,” Frevisse said.

“Hah!” Lady Eleanor exclaimed. “It’s not the masons I’d fear for if this lot of sword draggers went against them.”

“Mother,” Sir Hugh said, tight-lipped with control. “If we’re here when this abbot comes—and my guess is that someone has talked too much and he’s coming in force, by what it says here—” He jerked up his hand with a paper that looked to have been a sealed letter but was open and unfolded now. “He’ll see too much, and if he does, he’ll likely try to keep us from leaving at all. I can’t afford to have him seeing things or keeping us here!”

“Abbot?” Frevisse said, going toward them. “Which abbot? Lady Eleanor, does he mean our Abbot Gilberd?”

“Yes,” Lady Eleanor answered. “Someone has stirred him up, it seems. The letter says he means to be here this afternoon at latest, and that letter is a nice balancing between giving word he’s coming and not leaving time for much to be done about it!”

Frevisse turned on Sir Hugh. “How did you come by the letter? It surely wasn’t to you. When did it come?”

“It came this morning. No, it’s for Alys. I took it from the messenger,” Sir Hugh said impatiently.

“It wasn’t yours to take!”

“She’ll have it in good time.”

“She should have had it from the messenger’s hand! Unopened!”

“She’ll have to settle at having it from mine,” he said coolly, and turned his attention deliberately away from her. “Mother, I haven’t time for this. I’ll let you know where we settle. It won’t be so good as here, but we’ll make do. This isn’t finished.”

“Then you’re not calling off the Fenner matter. You’re only out of here for safety’s sake?” Lady Eleanor said.

“Yes!”
Sir Hugh’s patience was suddenly thin. “You don’t think there can be any calling off of it now, do you? After what Reynold’s done? Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t.”

“But you don’t want to,” Lady Eleanor insisted.

Unexpectedly Sir Hugh half laughed and leaned down to kiss Lady Eleanor on the forehead. “No,” he said, quietly certain. “I don’t want to. Not any more than you do. Set your mind to ease on that.”

Lady Eleanor reached up and laid her hand along his cheek, smiling, saying fondly, “That’s my good son.” She patted him lightly, briskly, affectionately. “Then you’d best be off. If it were me, I’d choose a place and time to meet and send the men off by different ways. Don’t bother with taking more than you can carry yourselves. Carts are only a bother. The priory can use whatever you leave.”

“Already considered and decided. Only I won’t tell you where we’ll be because then you can swear you don’t know.” He stepped back, took one of her hands, and kissed it. “You’ll hear from me.”

He gave a brief bow of his head toward Lady Adela and Joice, another to Frevisse, and would have gone with no more than that, but Frevisse said, disbelieving she had understood, “You mean you’re taking your men and going? Now? Before anything has been settled over Sir Reynold’s murder?”

Sir Hugh gave her a cold look. “You have it, my lady.”

“But Sir Reynold’s murder…”

“We’ll maybe find out who did it and we’ll maybe not. Right now it’s more important to have us away from here before your abbot comes.”

“If you leave, it will be said you did it.”

“If I stay, it may very well not matter whether I did it or not. If we’re kept here long enough for the Fenners to find us out, I’ll likely be dead anyway.”

He was moving for the door as he spoke. Quickly Frevisse asked as he went past her, “When you left Domina Alys and Sir Reynold last night, did you go directly back to the guest hall?”

“Where else would I go? Yes, I went directly back to the guest hall.”

He was to the door now, ready to forget her if she would let him, but Frevisse demanded at his back, “Did you see anyone else out then?”

He turned, letting her see she annoyed him but answering, “I saw Benet on the guest-hall steps. And, no, I didn’t see anyone else. And, no, I didn’t kill Reynold. Mother, take care, stay well.” He clipped a bow of his head toward Lady Eleanor and was gone.

Margrete shut the door behind him but was looking at Frevisse while she did. They were all looking at her, Frevisse realized. Joice, for whom it was essentially finished, the threat of Sir Reynold gone and Benet unlikely now to push any claim on her, so that all she need do from here on was wait. Lady Adela, never any part of it except in curiosity. And Lady Eleanor, whose part in the Godfreys being here seemed to have been far more than Frevisse had ever had reason to guess.

Silently she and Frevisse regarded one another across the room, Frevisse with no words for what was in her mind, until finally Lady Eleanor said mildly, not offended, only curious, “What are you doing? Suspecting Hugh of killing Reynold?”

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Frevisse said. And then because that was a lie, said, “Yes, I’m suspecting Sir Hugh of killing Sir Reynold. I’m suspecting everyone and asking questions I’d rather not be asking, because someone has to and no one else is.”

“And now you’ve found out something you’d rather not have known. About me,” Lady Eleanor said calmly.

“Yes.”
Frevisse threw all her anger into that, glad to have it said. “You knew Sir Reynold was attacking the Fenners, didn’t you? Not just the other day but for months now. You’ve known about it and you want Sir Hugh to keep on with it.”

Lady Eleanor bent her head in quiet acknowledgment. “Yes. Exactly so.”

“Yes to all of it?” Frevisse asked a little desperately, wanting her denial.

“To all of it,” Lady Eleanor said.

“It was because of you Sir Reynold came here, wasn’t it? All the years Domina Alys has been here, he never came until now. It was you who thought how he could use St. Frideswide’s and told him.”

“I wrote to Hugh about it,” Lady Eleanor answered, undisturbed by the anger behind Frevisse’s accusation. “My husband, his father, paid most of the costs of the court matters that came to nothing against the Fenners. Hugh and I had talked of having our own back from the Fenners somehow, and this seemed a good chance to do it. He brought Reynold in on it.”

“Is this why you come to St. Frideswide’s? To use it against the Fenners?”

“Oh, no!” That, at least, roused Lady Eleanor to strong denial. “I came for exactly the reasons I gave. It was only after I was here that I began to see the possibilities.” She smiled, wanting Frevisse to understand. “We needed somewhere not readily thought of when raids started against the Fenners, but somewhere defensible if we were found out too soon.”

“But why?” Frevisse asked. “Why any of it at all? The Godfreys and Fenners have let whatever it was between them go by for years. Why start it up again? It was over.”

“It was never over,” Lady Eleanor said in gentle explanation, expecting her to understand. “They still have what’s ours. We fought it through the courts, hired lawyers, clerks, met the cost of paying judges off to hear the matter fairly when the Fenners were paying them to hear it otherwise. Years of that, all cost and no return, until we couldn’t afford to go on with it, particularly after my husband died, and had to let it lie, but, no, it wasn’t over, only at a standstill for a time.”

“But this raiding of them,” Frevisse said. “Why?”

“Partly as a way to have back a little of what they owe us.

They’ve gone unhurt too long. But more than that, now that we’ve shown how vulnerable they are, men enough will join us so we can go against them openly. Men enough we can take back our properties the same way the Fenners have held them. By force.“

Frevisse stood still, bringing herself to accept that all of this thus far—the thieving, at least two deaths, and possibly Sir Reynold’s—was, at the most, because of Lady Eleanor. Carefully keeping her feelings from her voice, she asked, “Did Domina Alys know any of this?”

“None of it,” Lady Eleanor said unhesitantly. “She would never accept her priory being used this way. You know that.”

Frevisse had thought she knew it; but she had thought she knew other things—thought she had known Lady Eleanor—and was finding she had been very wrong. “Why not have Sir Hugh do it alone, instead of giving it over to Sir Reynold?”

“Partly because Reynold could always bring men to follow him more easily than anyone I’ve ever known, no matter what he asked of them, and partly because Alys would believe whatever Reynold told her, never look past it, nor tire of him being here as soon as she would have tired of Hugh.” Despite she had been speaking calmly, reasonably, tears shone in Lady Eleanor’s eyes and she broke off, pressing a hand to her lips to stop their trembling before going on a little brokenly, “You see, when Reynold set his mind to it, he could charm a bird out of a tree, a badger out of its holt, a man or woman into doing anything he asked of them, and Alys more quickly than most.”