The Murderer's Tale (19 page)

The priest nodded agreement but kept going, eating while he went.

Dame Claire said, “Eat. You look as if you need it.”

Frevisse looked at the food she held, remembered why she had it, and began to eat; but while she did, she said, “Lionel has wakened into a nightmare he can’t escape. It’s probably the worse because he has no memory of it.”

“If so, it’s a nightmare of his own making,” Giles said behind them.

They had been standing side by side, watching the folk in the hall, their backs to the door that led to the chapel stairs. They had not heard Giles approach, and Frevisse thought as she looked at him startled over her left shoulder that he had not meant they should. For preference she would have let him go past them with no more acknowledgment than the inclination of her head, but Dame Claire said, “Of his own making?”

“You saw the liberties he let Gravesend take with him. Gravesend acted more man to man than servant to master. He was a bold one, a pushing one.”

“Master Knyvet seemed not to mind,” Dame Claire said.

“What could he do except tolerate him? He wasn’t likely to find many fools willing to see him through his fits. He’d put himself at Gravesend’s mercy and had no way out. Except the one he took.”

Dame Claire made a small, protesting noise. Giles shrugged and smiled a sad but accepting smile. “Not on purpose, I’m sure. But I can’t help wonder if he didn’t give himself a little more willingly than usual to his demon’s purpose this time. Even Lionel’s tolerance with Gravesend must have been worn thin in places by now, provoked once too often by Gravesend’s pushing. Ah well.” He shrugged again, a deprecating gesture, suggesting they need not pay too much heed to his musings. “We’ll never know. It’s a pity from beginning to end and that’s the sum of it. But those of us that live still need to eat. Pray you, pardon me.”

He bowed, they inclined their heads to him, and he went on his way toward the breakfast table. They watched him go and when he was well away, Dame Claire said thoughtfully, “Why don’t I like him?”

“Because, among other things, what passes in a household should stay in a household, not be bandied about to people barely met and barely known,” Frevisse answered. He had no reason except nastiness to be saying so much to them about either Lionel or Martyn. The more especially because up to now he had shown no inclination at all for even their company, let alone their conversation. “Here.” Frevisse put the ale mug and what was left of her bread into Dame Claire’s hand. “Wait for me.”

Dame Claire took them without question. She went through the world differently than Frevisse did, seeing matters in her own way, but they understood each other well enough, and in the nunnery had learned to use their different ways to the same ends more often than not. So she stayed where she was and did not question, and Frevisse, as if she had eaten all her food and wanted more, went back toward the breakfast table.

Making no haste about it, she eased in among the folk still there, not far aside from Giles but without seeming to heed him, all her apparent intention on more food. If anyone noticed she had been there before, she would present an unfortunate picture of gluttony; but she doubted anyone would bother with her at all, not with Giles there, willingly talking about what everyone wanted to hear. As she knifed a small piece of meat onto a slice of bread he was saying, “Hai, Petir, feeling better about old Martyn now? He’s done for you for the last time, hasn’t he?”

The man he spoke to shied back a little with a twitch of a smile and uncertain shrug. He was somewhere in his middle years, sallow and thin-haired and bent about the shoulders. Frevisse remembered the dismissed servant John Naylor had mentioned and guessed this was he even before Giles said for everyone to hear, “Gravesend had him sent off. Turned Lionel against him for no good reason except Martyn didn’t like him. There’s more people than my poor cousin with cause to hate old Gravesend. The only wonder is someone didn’t see to him sooner.” He crossed himself. “But it’s still pity it came to this. Pity and shame to us all.” He crossed himself again. A few hands echoed the gesture and his head’s sad shaking but it was not piety they wanted, it was talk. Giles clapped Petir on the shoulder and leaned closer to whisper something in his ear. Petir responded with what he tried to make a grin but he managed no more than a sickly twitch of his mouth. Giles clapped him again and went on his way down the hall.

The talk did not pick up behind him. He had not given much new fodder to keep it going. Then sight of Master Holt come into the hall’s far end with John Naylor seemed to remind everyone it was past time they were about their morning duties. Suddenly everyone was scattering, looking very intent on work somewhere else, except a few who stayed to clear the table—and Petir, who set instead to refilling his ale mug. Frevisse went to stand beside him. He looked around at her and made a respectful bow.

“Ale, my lady?”

“No. But thanks.” She doubted she would have long to talk with him and said, hoping surprise would serve as well as acquaintance might have, “What did Master Giles say to you just now?”

Startlement made Petir look slightly stupid for a moment. Then he gathered his wits and said, “Naught fit for a lady to hear.”

“Was it about Gravesend’s death?”

“It was that.”

“Then I’d like to hear it. I saw the body. There’s little left to shock me with. And Lady Lovell wants to know what’s being said.” That last was a pulling at the corners of truth, but Frevisse was beginning to think mat if decisions were going to be made concerning what became of Lionel and his properties, Lady Lovell should know more than she apparently did so far about Giles.

Petir hesitated, but he was more used to giving way than going his own, and said down into his ale mug, “He said that Gravesend had two mouths now but neither of them will be talking anymore.”

“You don’t like Master Giles.”

It was not a fair question to ask a servant, but she wanted to see at least his reaction even if he did not answer. He said nothing but his eyes flicked up at her and away down the hall where Giles had gone, then back to the ale mug. Pushing a little farther, Frevisse tried, “It’s said it was Gravesend who had you dismissed from the Knyvet household. Did he?”

That much Petir would admit to. “He did that, aye. Told me I’d do better elsewhere.”

“And you were angry at him.”

“Angry at him? Aye.” Petir’s expression pulled toward a frown. “Aye, I’m still angry. It wasn’t me should have been sent away.” He quickly crossed himself. “But he’s a dead man now and I’ll pray for him like I ought. It wasn’t all his doing, but he shouldn’t have done it anyway.”

Frevisse pressed gently, knowing how easily most people could be led on to talk about themselves. “Not all his doing?” she asked.

“Nay, it was because of Master Giles. He’s the one who didn’t want me around and pushed it until Gravesend sent me off. I knew—”

He was warming under the chance to tell his grievance, but a man called, “Petir!” from the hall’s end and jerked a hand impatiently at him. Petir took a long pull from his mug, gave Frevisse a hasty bow, and begged her pardon, he had to go.

Quickly, before he could, Frevisse said, “But you’re doing well enough now, working here. How did that come about?”

“She saw to it. Mistress Edeyn. Didn’t let them have it all their own way, she didn’t.” He ran the words together in his haste, drawing away while he said them, but the warmth in them was far different from his heat against Martyn and Giles. As he hurried off, Frevisse wondered if Edeyn knew she had an admirer. And how much did that have to do with Giles’ and Martyn’s desire to send him off? What else went on in that household she had no idea of?

At her shoulder Dame Claire said, “We haven’t done morning prayers yet and it must be nearing time for Sext. This is all none of your business, you know.”

“Lady Lovell needs to know what’s being said, how things are running among her people,” Frevisse answered.

With unveiled amusement, Dame Claire promptly pointed out, “She has people enough of her own to tell her that. You need better justification than that for your arrant curiosity.”

“I wanted to know if we were the only ones whom Master Giles is so favoring with confidences about family matters that are none of our business.”

“And we aren’t.”

“Not by any means. In fact I’d guess we were a little slighted of the more amusing bits he has to offer.”

“The burden of being a nun. Who was that you were talking with just now?”

“A slighted servant with grievances against both Master Giles and Martyn and a warm admiration of Mistress Edeyn.”

With suddenly no amusement at all, Dame Claire asked, “Are you finding complications where no one else is?”

“Not about the servant, no. That’s something done with. Unless you want to think he lay in wait and crept in last night and killed Martyn and made it look like Lionel did it.”

“I don’t want to think that, no,” Dame Claire said. “He looked more the sort who would be too worried to lie in wait, let alone actually go through with something that vile. And you don’t think it of him either.”

“No, I don’t. No, what I’m thinking is that the more I see and learn about Master Giles, the less I think it would be a good thing if he were given keeping of Lionel when all this is over.”

Dame Claire did not answer that, said instead, after a pause, “And what are you thinking to do now?”

“What I said I would do. Go tell Edeyn how it is with Lionel.”

Chapter 15

The door to the Knyvets’ chamber was shut. Frevisse tapped at it lightly, not wanting to rouse Edeyn if she had somehow been able to fall asleep or even was only resting; but the maidservant who jerked it open after hardly a pause was clearly not concerned with anyone’s rest. She was flushed and purse-mouthed with anger or aggravation that she should have smoothed over before she opened the door. Now, confronted by two nuns, she dragged her face into a semblance of politeness, succeeding before she said, “My ladies?”

Taller than the maidservant, Frevisse was able to see beyond her to a trunk standing open and a disarray of clothing around it. Her manners losing ground to curiosity, she moved forward, saying brightly, “We’ve come to see Mistress Knyvet,” giving the maid no choice but to move back or be run into.

The woman deftly hopped backward while saying, “Mistress Knyvet has gone out.”

That paused Frevisse. “Gone out?”

The woman nodded and added helpfully. “She isn’t here.”

Frevisse was far enough into the room now to see that for herself. “I have something to tell her. She was expecting me.”

“Oh, she’ll be back directly. She’s only gone to the church. To take the good shroud Lady Lovell gave her for Master Gravesend.” The maid’s face fell. She seemed to go readily from one emotion to another, her face showing each one as it came. “I’d have taken it, but she said she particularly wanted to, that he’d no family and Master Knyvet couldn’t—well, I should hope not, wouldn’t you?—and someone ought to see to him other than just a servant. So she’s gone.”

“And those are Gravesend’s things?” Frevisse asked with a nod toward the disordered chest. Dame Claire, behind her and only a little through the doorway, prodded her in the back in reminder of how far she should not go.

Frevisse ignored her, watching the maid’s face go back to the sour, angry look it had had when she opened the door. “That lot? Not likely. Master Gravesend, he travels— traveled with a bag and a little box and is done with it. That’s Master Giles’ lot and a pretty mess he’s made of it, too.”

“And left you to put it to rights,” Frevisse guessed sympathetically.

“You have the right of that.” The woman went off to pick up a shirt from the floor by one sleeve and shake it. “Now that was pressed and folded and put away tidy as you could please. All of this was, and he’d no cause to go digging away for anything. He’s but to ask to have it fetched to him. He’s done that right enough all these years. Never turn a hand to it when there’s someone else he can order, that’s his way. He’s been known to wait an hour rather than do a thing himself that would take a minute. So what am I to think when I open this chest a little ago and find it’s been turned and tossed inside like this?”

“And you know it was Master Giles did it?” Frevisse asked. Dame Claire prodded her in the back again. “It wasn’t another of the servants?”

“Not likely,” the maid said. “They’re not so careless. And besides he was here when I opened it and when I cried out at it, he says, does Master Giles, laughing like he does when someone’s been given a fret, ”You’ve made a right mess of that, girl. It’d better be put to rights the next time I look in there.“ As if I’d made a mess like this! Oh, I’ve made the mess bigger, spreading it out, but how else am I to fold and sort it all back to place again if I don’t? But that’s how I knew he’d done it himself because if he’d really thought it was me, I’d have felt his stick on me right enough. Well, his hand because he doesn’t have his stick when he travels with Master Knyvet. Master Knyvet doesn’t hold with it.” Tears filled her eyes as a new thought and turn of feeling took her. “Isn’t it pitiful about Master Knyvet? Mad, they say, and all his wits gone, just like that, and Master Gravesend dead because of it. I’d have taken that shroud for Mistress Edeyn. I liked Master Gravesend as well as anybody, he was that good-hearted a man and never a meanness to anyone.”

Her glare through her tears at the rumpled clothing told of another who was nothing like that, but before she said so, Frevisse said, “Our thanks. We’ll seek Mistress Edeyn out in the church then.”

The maid, sniffing on tears and indignation, saw them out and closed the door behind them, the offended shirt still in her hand.

“Well, you’ve taken to listening to tale-telling like I’ve never known you to do,” Dame Claire observed when they were alone.

“I certainly have.” Frevisse frowned over that truth, unable to deny it, unable to explain it, even to herself.

“Are you going to tell me why?” Dame Claire asked gently.

“I don’t know yet. Except…” Her voice trailed off. She could not offer Dame Claire anything at all for explanation. She had none, only an unease.