The Murderer's Tale (11 page)

Annoyed and amused together that she had been so obvious, Frevisse said, “Better. Thank you.”

“Luce should thank me, too.” There was a small smile in Dame Claire’s voice. “You looked as if you were about to do violence to that hapless smock.”

Frevisse laughed softly, already eased by being out. The paths were dried now from last night’s rain, and all the garden’s shades of green and brightness shone in the morning’s light, seeming new-made to the day. The gateway into the churchyard was roofed by a little thatched pentice and the gate was unlocked. Beyond it, the path ran on to the church porch through the peace of the churchyard. By the time they reached the door set deep in its porch, Frevisse was wholly quieted, her mind turned toward prayer.

Every church was different, according to the desires of those who built it, but every one was the same, a place where the distance to God seemed less, the soul’s hope more reachable. Inside, this one of Minster Lovell was bright with light from the clerestory windows, and like the manor house, it smelled of newness, of stone not long from the quarry and fresh plastering and paint. Frevisse glimpsed its painted walls, dramatic with tall saints and a Judgment Day with demons, all done in bold colors to catch the eyes of worshipers and remind them of the need for prayer, but she and Dame Claire were drawn along the nave toward the altar and St. Kenelm’s shrine beyond it. Set high to be seen the length of the nave, elaborately carved from stone and painted in blues, reds, and greens touched here and there with gold, in the sunlight from the clerestory above and the east window beyond, it seemingly glowed with its holiness. Lord Lovell did well by his saint, Frevisse thought.

Her eyes on the shrine, she was halfway along the nave before she realized she and Dame Claire were not alone there. Lionel’s back was to them where he knelt on the altar steps, but she recognized the dark blue houpelande he had been wearing in the garden earlier, and for even better confirmation the white dog Fidelitas lifted her head from where she lay on his spread skirts to look at them. Frevisse glanced around with unformed expectation of Martyn or Edeyn being somewhere near, but there was no one else. Beside her Dame Claire put out a hand to her arm, stopping her, and nodded toward Lionel. They exchanged a look but did not speak, understanding each other well enough. Lionel was in such a need of prayer that it would be shame to disturb him. Crossing themselves, they knelt where they were to make their own prayers, sharing the prayer book Dame Claire carried at her belt.

Each of a day’s nine offices was different from the others, and each changed from day to day according to the season and where they were in a week, but they were also all the same year in, year out, and linked by the desire for God and the soul’s salvation. Sext, coming in late morning, was a brief office but Frevisse had long since learned its value, its reminder in the midst of every day’s bothers of eternity. Today, aware even in her prayers of Lionel kneeling nearby and the curse he carried with him, she prayed with more compassion than usual its daily reiteration,
“Confer salutem corporum, Veramque pacem cordium.”
Give health to the body, And true peace to the heart.

Or to the soul.
Cordium
could mean heart or soul. Or both at once, she supposed, and that would be very right for Lionel. Peace to his heart and soul, because there seemed small hope of it for his tormented body.

He was still in prayer when they finished, but as they rose to their feet in a soft sound of skirts, Frevisse saw his head lift, his hand move as he crossed himself, meaning he was done, too. Already on their feet, they left him but in unspoken agreement waited in the porch for him. It might have been natural to go on, but their going on might look too much like avoiding him and so they stayed. Frevisse wondered how often that was the way of it for him: people either avoiding him in fear and disgust or else deliberately seeking his company, to prove they did not fear or despise him. And which of the two did Lionel resent the least?

There was no way to know, but she caught his hesitation as he saw them, and the swift glance he swept across their faces that told her he was trying to tell if they knew about him now and what they thought of him if they did. It must always be like that for him, she realized—assessing people in the moment that he met them, judging what they knew and how they were going to be toward him if they knew too much.

She did not think that she reacted at all, except to curtsy with Dame Claire who said for both of them, “Master Knyvet.”

“My ladies,” he answered, bowing.

It was Fidelitas who made it easier, trotting forward to sniff first at Dame Claire’s skirts, then at Frevisse’s, waving her plumed curve of tail in approval. Lionel smiled with actual amusement. “She has opinions,” he said.

“She’s assuredly taken to you. What’s going to happen when you leave here?” Dame Claire asked.

Fidelitas returned to him and he bent to rub her behind the ears. “I may have to buy her from Lady Lovell by the look of it.” He did not seem to mind the thought or worry that Lady Lovell might demur; he was probably as sure of her kindness as Frevisse was coming to be.

The path was wide enough they could walk together, Fidelitas ahead of them, back toward the churchyard gate. In the sunlight, Frevisse could see Lionel’s face was shadowed with tiredness, dark under his eyes, and there was a bruise on his forehead that had not been there yesterday.

Dame Claire commented on the weather. Lionel agreed it was very fair. He moved a little ahead to open the gate and stand aside for them to go through before him. On the path that skirted the greensward, not far beyond the gateway, Edeyn and Martyn Gravesend were coming toward them in close talk, and something Martyn said made Edeyn laugh in the moment before they realized that Frevisse, Dame Claire, and Lionel were there. Edeyn’s already happy face brightened with wider smile, her hand going up in greeting as she moved more quickly toward them, calling in her bright voice, “Lionel! My ladies. Well met! We were coming to warn you it’s nigh dinnertime, Lionel.”

They met and all turned toward the house, Frevisse falling back, to let Edeyn walk on Lionel’s other side from Dame Claire. Martyn, as was proper, stood aside to let them all pass, his low bow sufficient greeting. His face, even more than Lionel’s, betrayed he had spent a night that had been worse than merely unrestful, shadowed around his eyes and hollowed below the cheekbones as if part of him had been drained away with effort.

Instead of leaving him to walk a few paces behind her, Frevisse said, “Walk with me, please you.”

Martyn slightly bowed again and did, but left it to her to make conversation if she chose so that for a little way they went in silence, the light flow of Edeyn’s talk about the men’s successful hunt and Lady Lovell’s return passing back to them.

But their pace was slightly slower than the others so that gradually they were a little farther behind and then a little farther. That was Martyn’s doing and Frevisse let him until they were enough behind that what they said would not be easily overheard. Then she looked at him and he returned her look and said, “You know about Lionel.” Statement, not question.

“Yes,” she agreed. And after a moment’s pause she added, “Everyone knows.”

“By way of Master Giles.” Again not question but fact, bitterly said.

For perfect accuracy, she answered, “I heard it from Master Geffers first.”

“Who doubtless had it from Master Giles.”

Frevisse slightly inclined her head in acknowledgment.

Martyn smiled wryly. “Master Giles has a way of making certain no one is long ignorant of it, wherever we are.”

And not out of kindness either, Frevisse wanted to add, but Martyn already knew that, probably more surely than she did. Instead she said carefully, wanting to see his reaction, “He says that for their safety people should know, on the chance they’re there when Lionel is attacked.”

“The only person in danger when Lionel is attacked is Lionel himself. He’s the only one that’s ever been harmed in them.”

“Giles said you had.”

“Giles would.” For the first time Martyn’s tone betrayed that Giles’ dislike of him was fully returned. “In the worst of the fits Lionel flails. He doesn’t know it. He doesn’t know anything when one is on him. He loses all control of his body and his mind isn’t there. I used to be hit sometimes, until I learned better, but that wasn’t deliberate by Lionel, only because I was near, and I’ve learned how to duck since then. Nobody is in any danger from Lionel, not even by chance, because no one but me is willing to be near him when an attack comes. Lionel has always been the only one who’s badly hurt in them.”

“The scar down his face?”

“That’s one. Once he broke his arm when it caught under the edge of a bed and he wrenched before I could free him.”

Ahead of them Edeyn turned her face smiling up to Lionel, and his laughter and hers and Dame Claire’s mingled clear in the morning air. Momentarily Frevisse wondered if that was another cause for Giles’ dislike of his cousin. “How did you know I knew about Lionel?”

“You’d been in Master Giles’ company last night. I didn’t suppose he had changed his ways.”

“And that’s something Lionel knows, too, I suppose.”

“He knows.”

Frevisse had noticed before how much meaning Martyn was able to put into few words. What was it like to be Lionel, caught not only by his demon but between Martyn and Giles? For he was caught, on every side. By the reality that Giles was his heir and therefore could not be ignored. By the necessities forced on him by his attacks. By his need of Martyn because there was no one else willing to take on the danger of caring for him when an attack came.

“And when people know about him, what then?” she asked.

“What do they do? It varies. Some shun him completely. Those are the simplest to deal with. Others keep company with him, but you can see them hoping, behind their manners, to see an attack come on him. Others try to treat him as if there were nothing untoward about him at all, as if he were like anyone else.”

“And mostly he is,” Frevisse said. “It’s not as if he were constantly possessed.” Not like his cousin Giles whose demon was merely of more subtle sort and therefore worse, in her opinion, because less readily seen and dealt with.

“No,” Martyn agreed. “He’s not constantly possessed.”

There was a weariness in his voice that matched the strained tiredness of his face, and, completing what he had left unsaid, Frevisse murmured, “Except by the fear of what could come on him at any time.”

Martyn’s look at her was sharp with appreciation and a hint of smile eased his mouth. “Except for that. But at least he usually has warning. Sometimes as much as half an hour, usually less but almost always enough for him to go where he won’t be seen.”

Like a sick, hurt animal, Frevisse thought.

Ahead of them the others had reached the door and Lionel had stepped aside to bow the women through, smiling at them both as he did. Tall and angular as he was, he was not graceful, and his scarred and long-jawed face missed handsome by several degrees, but there was a warmth to him that like his cleverness and ready laughter made it easy to like him. Frevisse abruptly ached with unexpected pain for a life lived the way Lionel had to live his, shunned by other people, always waiting for the evil to come on him despite everything he had done to be free of it, despite all his prayers. Even given the friendship he had from Martyn and Edeyn, he was very much alone.

Chapter 8

Dinner was a loud and pleasant meal in the great hall, a jumble of talk among the morning’s hunters who apparently had had a good run and taken sufficient deer for a few days’ needs, and everyone else with their own matters to complain of, discuss, or laugh over.

Used to the quiet of St. Frideswide’s refectory where the only voice at mealtimes was the reader’s quietly giving the daily reading, Frevisse listened more than she talked to the knights on either side of her about the hunt until they became absorbed in talking past her to each other and then she gladly stopped talking or listening to them at all.

Dame Claire farther along the table was in steady conversation with the gentlemen on her left side but too far away for Frevisse to hear any of it. She did not much care; it was enough that Dame Claire seemed more herself than she had been for a long while past, and probably from more than last night’s good rest and the morning’s ease, Frevisse thought. The days away from Domina Alys were the larger part of it, and she deliberately put away from her the worry of what would come when they returned to the priory at the end of their pilgrimage. Let today’s goodness suffice and the morrow’s evils be dealt with when they had to be.

Instead she occupied herself with ignoring the men beside her and watching everything else around the hall, most particularly noticing at the rightward table just below the dais a young boy and girl she did not remember from last night’s meal, both of them well dressed and so assured in their manners and each with a woman in attendance on them that almost surely they were Lady Lovell’s own children. Frevisse vaguely recalled that there were four Lovell sons and, she thought, two daughters. She was not sure of their ages, but some at least were old enough by now to be already sent to other households to be raised, and likely these two here were the youngest, the boy near eight by the look of him and soon to be sent away, too.

He looked something like his mother, with her coloring and strong oval face. Possibly the girl, brown-haired, her eyes heavy-lidded, was more like her father, but Frevisse had never had occasion to see Lord Lovell and could only guess. At least they were giving their nurses no trouble. Like all else she had seen at Minster Lovell, they were well kept and well mannered.

Farther down the hall at the lower tables, John Naylor was still in company with Master Holt the steward. Martyn had joined them, and the talk among them looked good-humored, judging by their smiles. Father Henry, seated just below the high table but at the far end from herself, was deep in talk with Sire Benedict, both of them intent but seeming to be enjoying themselves. To her regret the Knyvets, though at the high table with her, were at its far end so she could not see them at all. Knowing more about them, it would have been interesting to watch what went on among them and it would have helped to pass the time.