The Murderer's Tale (12 page)

This being the day’s main meal, there were more courses than last night, and though dishes were served and withdrawn with swift competence, it all went on far longer than Frevisse’s hunger or interest in eating. When it ended at last she rose and withdrew from the table in a haste that was only barely within the bounds of good manners. Dame Claire might be the better for being away from St. Frideswide’s, but Frevisse was forced to admit that her own problem of an inclination toward impatient ill temper was not particularly abated.

Unfortunately the realization made her impatient.

Inwardly smiling at her own ridiculousness, she eased toward Dame Claire and they stood aside, with neither duty nor place to go to and both of them a little uncomfortable with it. Her going marked by quick curtsies and bows from those she passed, Lady Lovell left the dais through the door to the small room from where the stairs led up to the solar and the bedchambers beyond. A few other people went that way, including the boy whom Frevisse had noticed earlier, accompanied by a squire instead of his nurse now. She did not see the girl and had lost sight of John Naylor and Father Henry in the general shift of people. Everyone seemed to be scattering to their afternoon duties, and she found it was aggravating to be caught in a routine familiar to everyone else but unfamiliar and useless to her, used as she was in St. Frideswide’s of being certain where she should be and what she should be doing through her days.

“She said we’d talk with her this afternoon,” Dame Claire said, perhaps out of the same unease, reminding them both there was a reason for their being here. Her hand went to her belt pouch where she carried the papers concerning the priory’s case.

“Luce will come for us. Or someone,” Frevisse agreed. And soon, I hope, she added, even if only to herself.

It was not Luce who came but the squire she had seen with the boy. He came back through the door and directly to her and Dame Claire, now alone on the dais except for the servants clearing the tables away. He bowed and said, “My lady asks you to come to her now, if you will.”

Frevisse had supposed they would go to the garden or parlor until she had seen which way Lady Lovell went. Now she expected they would go up to the solar, but the man led them through the small chamber not to the stairs but to another door standing open on its far side. He went through, bowed deeply, and turned to step out of their way, gesturing for them to enter.

There was no doubting that the room they came into was where the manor’s business was done. Or, more likely, the business of all the Lovell lordship. A wide table dominated the room’s center, with record rolls laid out on it, some held open with small lead bars, others labeled and waiting to hand. Two clerks’ desks set to one side caught the light across them from the wide window looking out on the yard, and around the walls were chests and aumbrys for the keeping of documents and records as an open door in one of the aumbrys showed. By marriages, royal grants, and purchase, Lord Lovell held properties in more counties of England than he could visit in a year, and here was where the records of all of them were kept.

Two clerks sat at the desks, one copying a draft onto a bright new parchment, the other comparing two documents and making notes on a scrap of paper. Lady Lovell stood beyond the table, still dressed in her green gown, her hand resting on an unrolled scroll as she pointed something out to the boy who had been in the great hall at dinner. She glanced up as they came in and smiled greeting but went on explaining to him about the number of sheep a particular manor could be expected to graze. “If more are noted, then either new land has been assarted and there should be record of it or else they’re scanting their fields and the bailiff had best have good reason why. You see?”

The boy’s likeness to her was even more marked when they were together. He was dressed simply, in doublet and hose and leather shoes, and had a boy’s look of being ready to be gone about more interesting business the moment he might be dismissed, but he said sensibly enough, “What if the bailiff doesn’t have good reason?”

“Then your steward there had better have looked into it and settled the matter long before you begin to go over the figures for yourself and ask him about it.”

“But if the steward is going to see to it, why do I have to know?”

“Because your steward works for you and it’s your business to know what and how he does. You’re no better than the bailiff who misuses the land if you don’t know how well or ill your steward does his duty.”

“And if he doesn’t do his duty?”

There was more impudence than honest curiosity in that. His mother, smiling, tapped him lightly on the end of his nose and answered, “Then, like you, he’s put to his lessons again until he understands them and does them right. Or more likely, since he’s old enough to have learned them if he’s ever going to and he seemingly hasn’t, we put him out of our service.”

The boy grinned up at her. She put her hand on his shoulder and nodded toward Frevisse and Dame Claire. “Now here’s another matter of business for us. These ladies are from St. Frideswide’s Priory beside our village Prior Byfield near Banbury. You remember where Banbury is?”

“North of Oxford,” he answered promptly, plainly pleased with himself.

His mother bent a stern look on him. “ ‘North of Oxford’ covers much of England. More precisely, please you.”

He scrunched his face with thinking and said, “It’s two days’ ride toward Coventry. We went that way when we went to the plays!”

“Exactly,” his mother agreed, letting her pleasure with him show. “Now greet Dame Claire and Dame Frevisse, please you.” To them she said in way of formal greeting, “My youngest son, Henry. Harry,” she added with a smile to show that was what he was mostly called.

Dame Claire and Frevisse curtsied to him and he bowed.

“They’re here,” Lady Lovell said, “because of a dispute over the well at Prior Byfield that our stewards could not settle.”

Dame Claire had taken the papers out of her belt pouch and now moved forward to hand them to Lady Lovell. “This is a copy of what’s written in our customal concerning the well. Our prioress thought that if you saw it, it would clarify matters for you.”

“Better than my own steward has?”

It was a simple question, not a demand, and there was hint of a smile behind it. Dame Claire answered with that same hint, “Our prioress thought that perhaps your steward would represent his side more strongly than ours to you.”

Lady Lovell took the paper and while she broke the seal on it and opened it said, “Your prioress is said to be a contentious woman.”

Dame Claire glanced back at Frevisse, wordlessly asking for help. It would be all too easy to say too much about Domina Alys, little of it to Domina Alys’ good, in response to Lady Lovell’s comment; and while it was ill to speak against your prioress inside the priory to other nuns who knew her well, it was far worse to speak ill of her outside it and to strangers. But lying was not an honorable possibility either, and since Dame Claire by choice was straight-spoken, she was caught which way to go, and let Frevisse know she wanted her help in answering discreetly what she should not answer directly. Frevisse, who had stayed near the door, willing to keep out of whatever passed between Dame Claire and Lady Lovell in the business because she had been given no authority to do otherwise, gathered her wits and answered with almost no perceptible pause, “Our prioress is… somewhat strong in her opinions.”

“And I’m to take her opinion over that of my own man?”

“Not her opinion, my lady,” Frevisse said, coming forward, “but the witness of the customal where the priory’s rights and duties have been laid out since St. Frideswide’s was founded.”

“Wasn’t this brought to my steward’s attention?”

“It was,” Dame Claire said. She had been witness to that.

“And he did not see it as you do? As your prioress does?” She did not ask it ungraciously. She was merely questioning on what grounds they challenged her own man.

With equal politeness Frevisse said, “He serves your interests well, my lady, and so possibly he sees the matter with a partiality he cannot help.”

“And won’t I be likely to look at it with the same partiality?”

“He is answerable to you, but you’re answerable to no one except God.”

“And my lord husband.”

“And your lord husband,” Frevisse agreed but added with a respectful inclination of her head, “who is as one with you in all such matters.”

Lady Lovell fought the beginning of a smile. She and Frevisse were both in earnest over the matter, but that smile told Frevisse that Lady Lovell was enjoying their play of words and wits as much as she was. Matching the respectful inclination of Frevisse’s head, Lady Lovell agreed, “We are as one.”

“So if you defraud the priory knowingly,” Frevisse went on, “then you would be defrauding yourself—and your lord husband—of God’s esteem and that you would never willingly do. Therefore you’re more likely to judge the matter with less partiality than your steward who only serves you. And if even then it seems to you that you have the right in the matter, you may decide to take the cost of the new well on yourself anyway, out of charity to a poor and struggling house of nuns who will in gratitude make many prayers for you, your husband, and your children.”

That last was afterthought, but in Frevisse’s opinion there was something to be said on both sides of the argument, despite Domina Alys’ refusal to see it, and an offer to balance the matter a little more the nunnery’s way made sense. But prayers were not something lightly offered on the nunnery’s behalf, nor had Domina Alys said that they could do so, and Dame Claire exclaimed in protest, “Dame Frevisse!”

Lady Lovell laughed openly, with sympathy as much as amusement, at Dame Claire’s protest and, understanding Frevisse had overstepped in making her offer, at her boldness.

Since she was already in further than she had meant to be, Frevisse suggested, “You might talk with John Naylor, too. The young man traveling with us. His uncle is the priory’s steward, and John works with him and very likely knows what’s passed between our man and yours in more detail than we do.”

Lady Lovell nodded. “I’ll do that, too. And then we can talk again. Tomorrow probably, given what I have left to do today.” She moved her hand to indicate the rolls across the table. “With my husband gone, these are all mine to deal with.” It was plainly something she was used to and did not in the slightest mind. “Pray you, enjoy yourselves here the while and welcome.”

That was gracious dismissal and they took it as such, curtsying to her with thanks and withdrawing. The squire had waited by the door and as he stood aside to see them out, Lady Lovell said to him, “I’d like to talk with Master Knyvet next. He’s likely in his chamber or the garden.”

The squire bowed, followed them out, and saw them back to the great hall. After he had left them, they stood uncertain what they should do next, and Dame Claire said tentatively, feeling out the thought, “I think I should like to go lie down and rest awhile.”

Frevisse could see no reason why she should not. Weariness was showing in her face again, the benefit of last night’s rest already worn thin, and since they would probably be on the road again tomorrow’s morrow, Dame Claire should rest as much as might be now while she had the chance.

Frevisse saw her up the stairs but parted from her in the solar, leaving her to go into the bedchamber on her own while she went on to the chapel. Her purpose was not so much for prayer this time as somewhere to be alone. One was rarely alone in St. Frideswide’s, but one was not required to be in continual talk there and Frevisse was tired of talk. A while of silence would do as much for her mind as lying down would hopefully do for Dame Claire’s body.

It was briefly a disappointment to find, here as in the church, Lionel yet again before her, kneeling in front of the altar. This time Martyn was with him, kneeling, too, both in prayer. Neither heeded her approach. Only Fidelitas, curled in the folds of Lionel’s houpelande where it spread on the floor around him, lifted her head in notice of Frevisse. But Frevisse, mindful that the squire was somewhere, looking for Lionel, went forward, careful to scruff her feet a little to let them know she was there, and briefly touched Lionel’s shoulder. He turned his head to look at her and she said, “Lady Lovell has sent someone to seek you, but it will likely be a while before he thinks to come here. She wants to talk with you.”

Lionel nodded. “Thank you.” He pulled at his gown to urge Fidelitas off it and stood up, Martyn with him.

Frevisse wanted to ask, “How is it with you?” because there drawn faces told that their prayers had not eased them the way her own so often did her, but she held her curiosity in check, made a small curtsy to Lionel’s slight bow and Martyn’s deeper one, and as they left, knelt herself before the altar.

The departing quick click of Fidelitas’ nails marked their going. Frevisse prayed briefly, but God knew as surely as she did that the real reason she had come here was to be alone.

But even alone, with time to look at her thoughts, she could not immediately identify the discomfort that had been increasing in her. She had been aware of it but without time to think about it enough to give it a name. Now she had the time to think about it and in a while discovered—disconcertingly—that she had to call it homesickness.

She shied from that, wanting it to be something else. She did not know what else, but not that, not after all her eagerness to be away from Domina Alys and the disharmony growing in St. Frideswide’s. How could she be aching for somewhere she had so wanted to leave, especially when she was here in so lovely and peaceful a place as Minster Lovell?

She hesitated over the question, probing at it from different ways. St. Frideswide’s was changed since Domina Edith’s death, but in all fairness Frevisse had long since had to admit that was not merely Domina Alys’ doing. No matter who had become prioress after Domina Edith, it would have been different, simply because so much of what a priory was depended on its prioress. Frevisse had made herself face that truth early on, when first trying to come to terms with the need for her obedience to Domina Alys. A few times she had thought she had come to those terms and each time found she had not and had gladly taken Dame Claire’s reason to be out of Domina Alys’ eye and the priory’s discomfort because of it. Nor was there any hope the priory would ever change back to the way it had been. Domina Edith was gone.