The Murderer's Tale (17 page)

As he had hoped, Lady Lovell came to take Edeyn from him, to lead her away to the cushioned bench and sit beside her while she explained, “Edeyn, we know it wasn’t Lionel who killed Martyn. Not in the strictest sense. No one believes Lionel had any will to Martyn’s death. His demon had him when it happened, surely. But he did strike the blow. It came from his hand.” Her hold on Edeyn’s hand tightened. “No, listen to me. He won’t be executed for it, but he can’t ever be free while the likelihood of it happening again is still with him.”

“And it’s going to be with him always,” Edeyn said. “So he’ll be locked away for always, for something he never did. That isn’t fair.”

“No more than Martyn’s death is fair,” Lady Lovell returned. “There’s no fairness in this anywhere. All we can do is keep the bad from being worse.”

Edeyn opened her mouth to make some other calf-brained protest, and Giles, needing nothing from her now except to listen to Lady Lovell, cut in with, “There’s more fairness than it maybe seems. Martyn Gravesend was a bad-mouthed oaf who didn’t know his place. Lionel has been too weak to be rid of him, so his demon did it for him. It’s something Martyn has had coming to him for a long while, one way or another, and I’m not the only one who knows it.”

Edeyn turned toward him with a disbelief that might almost be rousing to actual anger—stupid woman—but he met her gaze and she had wit enough to read his expression rightly because she subsided. Lady Lovell, unnoticing, went on, “We’ll make it as right as we can. In all likelihood Giles will be given ward of the Knyvet lands. That would be the straightest way, since Giles is heir in fact. My lord will have say when it comes to it and will surely go that way. So your child’s inheritance is safe. There’s that to hold to.”

Edeyn, her head now bowed, moved a hand uncertainly, then laid it over her belly tentatively, protectively. Giles, taking advantage of the moment, went to her, knelt down, and laid his hand over hers as he said, “Our son will make everything right. You see? In the long run of things it will all be well.”

Not lifting her head, Edeyn whispered, “But not now. And never for Lionel.”

“For Lionel, too,” Giles said, tenderly because this was going exactly as he wanted it to. “As well as we can make it. He’ll have to be kept somewhere, guarded, because he can’t be left loose anymore.”

Edeyn trembled, making a better fight against tears than he had thought was in her, but insisted, “It isn’t right. He isn’t dangerous.”

God, but she could be ignorant! Forcing himself to go on with the tenderness, Giles said, “But he is dangerous. Go see Martyn’s body if you can’t believe it otherwise.” She sobbed outright at that, her resistance finally breaking down, and he pressed on, “Dear heart, we protected him for as long as we could. Now the only thing left is to ask for me to be given keeping of him as well as of his lands. That will be best all around. He’ll still be confined, he has to be confined, but we’ll see to him better than anyone else would, more kindly than anyone else would.”

Edeyn raised her head, looking to Lady Lovell with the beginning of hope. “Would that be possible? Would that be allowed?”

“Very likely,” Lady Lovell said. “I’ll urge my lord to it, surely.”

Giles bowed his head to her in token of gratitude for the favor and kept a smile from his face while he did. They were making it all so beautifully easy for him, the fools. Even the few lies he had had to tell were so safe he hardly had to think twice about them. Martyn’s death was so obviously Lionel’s doing that even if Lord Lovell had been here, there would have been little trouble to it; and since as it stood he had only women to deal with, there was virtually no trouble at all except the necessity to bring the last pieces fully around his way. Let Edeyn finish with her stupid misery and weeping and there could be no more trouble in the matter except for what the law would make in the next few days, and then they could go home, with everything finally his, all his to manage as he wanted. Including Lionel.

Satisfied with Edeyn’s help, unwitting though it had been, he gave her hand and belly a brisk pat and rose to his feet, taking her hands to draw her up to him. His arm around her waist, he said, “You should come rest awhile, dear heart. Lie down a little. For your sake and the child’s.” He could leave her there to her maidservant and she could weep herself dry and be done with it.

But even as she gave way to him, leaned against him in that soft way he found best about her, she was protesting, “Someone should go see how Lionel does. He’s surely hurting. I could—”

“You could not!” Giles said, more harshly than he meant to but, God damn her, when was she going to grasp that Lionel was a murderer, unsafe, best left to rot wherever he had been put?

The tight circle of his arm kept Edeyn where she was as she stiffened in an attempt to pull away, and before he had to make his hold more tight than that, the taller of the two nuns said, “If you like, I can go to him, see how he does, and tell you of him.”

Edeyn gave way in Giles’ hold, saying gratefully, “Would you? That would be so good of you. You’ll do it now?”

The nun bowed her head in an agreeing nod. Over Edeyn’s head Giles thanked her, too. Gore-driven curiosity and the chance to talk about it afterward were probably her real reasons for the offer, but she was welcome to indulge herself as far as he was concerned, so long as she served to keep Edeyn quiet. Gently again, because he had his way, he urged Edeyn toward the door, saying for everyone else’s benefit, “Now, come, love. It’s going to be well. I promise you. Come.”

Edeyn finally, even quietly, let him lead her out.

Chapter 13

Frevisse could not recall the last time she had strongly had urge to slap someone’s arrogant face, but Giles’ barely concealed, contemptuous belief that he had to make things simple and plain for the poor women to understand him made her arm ache to do it. Was Edeyn really so great a fool that she could tolerate him? Or did the unalterable fact of marriage force her to a self-preserving blindness?

Or was the fault in Frevisse herself, that she found Giles’ insolence so intolerable?

She had, she knew, a low tolerance of fools. “Judge not, that you be not judged” was a behest she had too often failed to follow. Through penance she had lessened the problem over the years but had lost much of her gain since Domina Alys had become prioress. And now she was falling into it yet again, judging Giles for his shallow sympathy at his cousin’s plight and his unfeeling for Martyn’s death which were simply a part of him, like the color of his hair or the set of his eyes, something he could not help and something on which she should not judge him.

But he nonetheless scraped on her like a nail across stone and it was relief to have him gone.

She curtsied to Lady Lovell and said, “By your leave, I’ll do as I promised Mistress Knyvet now.”

Lady Lovell nodded agreement with only partial attention. Worry was drawn in around her eyes, her face tightened with unhappy thought. “He’s right about Lionel,” she said. “He can never be free again. And yet most of the time he’ll be utterly sane and aware of what’s happened to him, of what he’s done.”

“And of what he may do again,” Dame Claire said. “A constant fear worse than the one he already carried.”

Frevisse’s gaze slid aside to the nearest window. Beyond it the garden lay bright in the early sunlight, the glint of dew still on the grass. Lady Lovell’s women in their gay-colored gowns stood or walked in talking little groups. Their mistress must have sent them there to be out of the way, and though there was no doubt at all that they were talking about Martyn’s death, from here they were simply a loveliness in the lovely garden, far apart from the darkness of heart that she foresaw would be Lionel’s life from now on.

“What is the broadest water and yet the safest to cross?” she heard herself saying.

Lady Lovell and Dame Claire both looked at her, puzzled. Frevisse shook her head, annoyed at herself; she had not meant to say it aloud. “It’s a riddle. Looking at the garden made me think of it. That’s all.”

Dame Claire, willing to try to follow the way her mind was moving, said, “It’s not the water of death, is it? That’s broad as eternity but hardly safe.”

“No. It’s only dew on the grass. I’m sorry. I was remembering the riddle game Lionel, Edeyn, and Martyn shared, the delight they had in it, and I realized…”

She let the words trail off, not willing to finish the thought aloud. Lady Lovell did it for her, saying softly, sadly, “… that there won’t be any more riddles now.

Except the riddle of how to live with the knowledge of what he did.“

Frevisse nodded, crossed herself, curtsied, and left them.

As she reached the door into the great hall, she realized that she had neglected to ask where Lionel was imprisoned, but by the crowding of people and rabble of voices in the hall she doubted she would have trouble learning it from anyone she happened to ask. Probably no one in the entire manor was by now unaware of what had happened and most of them seemed to be here in the hall talking excitedly about it.

She backed away. In the nunnery she lived always in company, rarely alone, but it was a contained companionship, limited in numbers and noise, not this excess of both. She found she had no desire to walk into all of that. Besides, there was something else she should do before she went to Lionel, and she could learn where he was at the same time. With a small smile that admitted her own mixed motive, she turned back to the stairs.

The chapel’s antechamber was empty and quiet except for the low sound of men’s voices in the chapel itself. When she went that way, a servant stepped out to turn her back, but before he said anything she said, “I’ve need to see Master Holt. Or Sire Benedict.”

The man accepted that, went back into the chapel, and a moment later reappeared to bid her enter. He looked as if he doubted the wisdom of it and also as if he were covertly interested in how she would react to what she saw. He obviously did not know she had been there already that morning, so that so far as she was concerned, there was nothing in particular to see. Martyn’s body was gone and there were only the bloody places darkening the floor.

Master Holt stood over them with four other men including, Frevisse saw with surprise, young John Naylor.

They looked up at her as she came to join them. Master Holt looked far more tired than any man should so early in a day, and grim, not particularly comforted by the fact that, “At least the blood didn’t go through into the parlor.” His look at her sharpened. “Or did it? Is that what you’ve come about?”

“No. There’s no blood below.” She was studying the stains. A large one, with part of an outline of one side of Lionel’s body, marking where she remembered he had lain and where Martyn must have fallen across him. A lesser stain where the last blood had drained after Martyn had been thrown—or rolled or been pushed or however it had been—aside. And a third stain, much less than the other two…

Frevisse leaned toward it. The others were puddled thick, their edges definite. This one was more of a smear, well aside from the others and between where the bodies had been when she first saw them. She could not think, remembering the way Martyn and Lionel had lain then, how that one had been made.

She would have looked more but Master Holt was saying, “That’s good then. Though I’m not sure we’ll ever have the stains fully out of the wood here. But we’ve seen enough.” He glanced at the other men for confirmation and they nodded agreement. “So it can be cleaned now.”

Remembering why she had come, Frevisse said, “Lady Lovell has asked me to see how Master Knyvet does, so his people can be told. Before I went to him I thought I’d learn what’s been done with his man’s body so I could tell him. He might have some comfort out of knowing.”

“God help him to any comfort he can find,” Master Holt said, meaning it, and Frevisse warmed toward him. “The priests have taken the body to St. Kenelm’s, to see it cleansed and ready. Then it can be kept there for the crowner.”

So Martyn had been taken from the now-unhallowed chapel to the nearest sanctified place there was. That was kindness to a soul and body so abruptly parted, and more especially because, as Lionel had said yesterday, St. Kenelm’s life had likewise ended violently and too soon, had not been fully lived. He would make a good protector for a murdered man’s soul.

It was an edged comfort to take to Lionel but better than none at all. “And Master Knyvet?” she asked. “Where’s he being kept?”

“In the muniment room. It’s the most secure place, with a lock and easily guarded,” Master Holt said. “It’s through the solar, off the other stairs. Deryk is on watch there. Tell him I said you could go in.”

Frevisse remembered the door from when she had come up the other way from the hall. She supposed this Deryk would take her word and thanked Master Holt, left the chapel, and crossed the antechamber to the solar.

Not everyone was in the great hall, it seemed. A clot of the ladies’ chamber servants were gathered in the center of the solar, eagerly talking. As Frevisse entered they looked toward her, hopeful she would tell them more. Her hands tucked into her sleeves, she lowered her eyes and would have passed them by in contained silence but one of them dared to ask, “You were in there, weren’t you? In the chapel? Is it as terrible as they say?”

“I don’t know what they say,” Frevisse answered without looking up or pausing.

“That there’s blood everywhere, even on the altar, all over everything. That the bishop will have to come to send the demons away. That—”

Frevisse did not slow but answered, “There’s blood on the floor where the men fell. That’s all the blood there is. The altar is untouched.”

The woman stepped directly into her way, insisting, “But is it true that—”

Frevisse stopped to stare directly into the woman’s face, cutting her to silence, then saying, eyes cold and voice sharp-edged, “Master Knyvet, when his demon seized on him last night, killed his steward there in the chapel. It’s a grief to anyone who knew them. That’s all you need to know about it and all anyone needs to say.”