The Murderer's Tale (22 page)

Frevisse had managed to hear that much by taking more time than needed to edge around them on her way to the door, but now she had heard enough. With the talk going that way, there would be no satisfying folk until Lionel was as harshly, straitly confined as could be managed, with assurances he would be kept that way. Nothing said about the infrequency of his attacks or that there was warning of them or that he had never harmed anyone before would make any difference. Even what she had presently in his favor was no more than would give the crowner momentary pause before he completed the condemnation.

She knocked at the Knyvets’ chamber door. The maidservant came in answer and turned to say into the room who it was, and Edeyn called out, “Come in. I pray you, come in.”

She was seated at the window and did not rise, saying with an apologizing smile as Frevisse entered, “I’m strictly told to rest, to stay at ease and not tire myself by even so much as pacing the room.”

“Is your childing that”—Frevisse looked for a word and chose—“delicate?”

“So much as I can tell, the child is well and so am I. It’s my husband who frets, I suppose because it’s the most he can do about the baby and me for now.”

She was speaking with what Frevisse thought was a feigned lightness, as if she had some thought of how she wanted to seem but could not quite carry it off. Her attempt was gallant, though, and Frevisse, who had been surprised to see Giles was not there, asked, to keep the conversation going, “But Master Giles isn’t here?”

“It makes him restless to be closed in,” Edeyn said. “We ate and then he went out. To the church, I think. And he hopes to talk with Lady Lovell this afternoon. Have you heard when the crowner can be expected?”

The last question betrayed that she was not as settled as she was trying to seem. There had not been time for any messenger even to reach the crowner, let be bring back word of when he might be there. Carefully Frevisse answered, “There’s no word at all yet.” Then she asked because she could not let the matter go, “May I talk to you of Master Knyvet?”

“Of Lionel?” Edeyn’s voice ached somewhere between hurt and gladness. “Have you seen him again? How is it with him?”

“I saw him just before dinner. He isn’t eating but that will pass. Otherwise he’s well.”

“Except in his mind where the pain must be near to overwhelming him,” Edeyn returned.

Taken off guard again by one of Edeyn’s shifts that showed how much more there was to her than her young, sweet face and pleasant manners, Frevisse returned as directly, “Except in his mind.” Recovering and wanting to counter the bleakness that admission brought to Edeyn’s face, she added, “Fidelitas is still with him.”

“Then he still has a friend,” Edeyn said.

“At least two,” Frevisse agreed, “counting you.”

“Counting me,” Edeyn echoed. But the brightness was gone from her face again as she added bitterly, “For all the good that I can do him.”

“You can maybe do some good. There’s something I’m wondering and you may know enough about him to tell me.”

The maid made a negative sound from across the room, but Edeyn brushed a hand in her direction, dismissing her to silence, and said, intent on Frevisse, “I’m not the one who thinks I’m in need of being treated like Venetian glass. Ask me what you will.”

“What happens to Lionel when an attack comes on him? What does he do?”

“He falls.” Edeyn answered without hesitation but her voice low and her eyes on Frevisse’s face as if to gauge her reaction. “He simply falls. It’s almost as if he’s died, he’s so suddenly not there. Then his body begins to jerk and twitch—his head and arms and legs and body all at once—and it’s horrible because
he
isn’t doing it, he isn’t there at all, it’s all something else making it happen to him. And then he—then it all stops, sometimes with one huge spasm, sometimes not, and he’s just left lying there unconscious and not moving until eventually he rouses and is himself again, only tired and a little dazed for a while.”

She had moved a little while she talked, sketching gestures that were not her own, but Frevisse was not sure how much they were like what Lionel actually did and she asked carefully, “Just how wildly does he fling about in that part of the attack?”

Edeyn made a widened swing of her arm and rolled her head from side to side. The maid made a distressed sound. Edeyn ignored her and said, “Like that. A little more violently and his legs with it, not so controlled, but much like that.”

“Nothing more than that?”

“Not anymore. It used to be they’d try to hold him quiet when he was attacked. As many men as could be called, they’d hold on to him, to try to keep him still. Then Martyn found out that that made it worse, as if the demon fought harder if he was fought against. Since then there’s been only Martyn doing only what needs to be done to keep Lionel from hurting himself, and the attacks are far easier.”

“How long has it been that way?”

“Oh, years now. Since before I married Giles.”

“And how do you know so exactly what happens in them?”

Edeyn hesitated, then confessed, “I was there once when an unwarned one came on him. It was in the solar, of an evening after supper, with only him and Martyn and me there. Giles was gone. As soon as it started, the servants all left.”

Across the room her maid made a denying sound.

“Except for Nan,” Edeyn corrected and managed a smile. “She wouldn’t leave because I wouldn’t. Afterward Martyn told Lionel that I went when everyone else did, as soon as he collapsed, and that I’d seen nothing else, but that wasn’t true. He lied to keep Lionel from feeling worse over it than he did, and since Lionel never asked me directly, I never had to lie to him.”

“About staying there?” Frevisse asked.

“Yes.”

“But you would have lied to him if he had asked?”

“He didn’t want me to be there. He doesn’t want me to know how it is with him. He would have been unhappy with knowing I knew. So I would have lied to him, yes.” She said it simply, not so much defiant as completely certain, beyond any doubt or hesitation.

“So you stayed,” Frevisse said. “Why?” Though she thought she knew.

“Because I wanted to know exactly how it is with him when it happens, not have it left to my imagining. Can you think what sort of things I could imagine, knowing as little as he and Martyn ever say about them?”

Frevisse did not have to think about what Edeyn might imagine. She had heard enough today alone of what people could conjure up to suppose what worse could be imagined. But that was not all of it and she asked, “But why did you want to know more?”

For the second time Edeyn hesitated. Her young face firmed, showing something of the woman she might be growing toward, someone stronger than the child she had seemed when Frevisse first saw her along the road, bright with lighthearted talk and riddles. “Because what if one of the attacks came without warning, the way that one had— they do sometimes—and when Martyn wasn’t there? Or—” She paused, making a visible effort to steady herself enough to go on. “Or what if something happened to Martyn? He was the only one who knew what to do for Lionel. If I knew, then there would at least be me as well. But I never thought… it would be like… this.”

“You care—” Frevisse found she had nearly said “for Lionel.” She changed it to, “—about Lionel.”

“He’s kind and good, far more than he might be, considering how it is with him. And he’s clever. He and Martyn together were so…” She stopped, needing to deal with the pain of knowing there would never be Lionel and Martyn together again, nor probably ever even Lionel as things now were.

Frevisse thought she had kept her own face controlled, but Edeyn read something in it, faintly smiled, and said, “I know. It’s all right. Lady Lovell warned me long since to be careful, that people might misthink my friendship, but that’s all it’s been. Friendship. Lionel has been so much alone except for Martyn.”

And Edeyn was equally alone, Frevisse suddenly thought. Because Giles might be company but hardly a friend to her, or to anyone, in Frevisse’s opinion.

“And your husband doesn’t misthink it?” she asked.

“Giles? No.” Edeyn said it with unalloyed confidence. “He’s sure of me.” As sure as she was of herself.

But the heart could be a treacherous thing, going where it was not intended or expected to go. Frevisse wondered if Edeyn knew that well enough to guard against it happening to her; and wondered if Giles had wondered the same thing. But it was not a matter that should concern her and she asked, returning to her reason for being there, “The attack the other day, in the afternoon, it was as usual?”

“From what Martyn said, yes. It was one of the small ones that come before a great attack. Nothing out of the ordinary, no. Martyn would have said, I think, if it was otherwise. Or Giles would have.”

“Your husband saw it, too?” Frevisse did not try to hide her surprise. She had had the distinct impression Giles found anything to do with Lionel’s affliction repulsive. “That wasn’t usual for him, was it?”

Except when her emotion or memory slowed her, Edeyn had been answering readily. Now a—not wariness but questioning of her own was in her voice as she said slowly, “No.” Not as if she was reluctant to answer but as if following a thought of her own while she did. “Giles stays as far from Lionel as he can when we know an attack is coming.”

“But he didn’t the other afternoon.”

“No.” Edeyn had been staring at the floor, into her own thoughts. Now she looked back to Frevisse and asked, too low for Nan across the room to hear, “Why are you asking all this?”

Frevisse abruptly realized that Edeyn had early judged her questions were from more than prying curiosity and that if she had not, she would not have answered them anything like so readily, so openly. In return for Edeyn’s trust in her, she answered straightly, “Because Lady Lovell has given me permission to ask things, to be sure we understand all there is to understand about Martyn’s death.”

Something that was too wary to be called hope stirred in the girl’s face. Frevisse rose before it could form into something more and said, “By your leave, may I ask your maid something?”

Edeyn, already halfway to a question of her own, caught herself back, too well-mannered to push where she had been put aside. “Surely.”

She would have called the maid to them, but Frevisse rose and went to her across the room. The woman curtsied and Frevisse asked, since there seemed no subtle way to bring a conversation around to it, “Did you find out why Master Giles made such a mess of his chest this morning?”

She would have been hard put to say why she was asking that, except that it was another odd thing among odd things and it was oddness that she was looking for, things that did not fit into the simple explanation of Martyn’s death, since that no longer seemed so simple.

The maid’s indignation instantly kindled. “For his other shoes. Would you believe it? He was looking for his other pair of shoes.”

“His shoes?” Frevisse echoed, carefully hiding how much the answer jarred against her thoughts.

“He couldn’t find the shoes he’d worn yesterday. They should have been right with his clothes where they were put last night but they weren’t, he said, and while we were gone—his man and I—to fetch the hot water—if you don’t do it yourself, it’s brought half warm and he won’t tolerate that for himself and Mistress Edeyn and then—well, it saves trouble to just go for it ourselves and have done with it. But today while we’re gone he’s up and wants to dress and can’t find his shoes and digs through his chest for his other pair, and we still don’t know where his others went to and there’ll go on being trouble over that until it’s settled, let me say.”

“The shoes he wore yesterday. Those are what are missing?”

The maid agreed emphatically they were.

His shoes. Could it be that simple?

Giles had long since made a habit of approaching doors with as little sound as possible. There was frequently much to be heard that way, and even when there was not, it was worth the look on people’s faces when he was suddenly, unexpectedly there.

This time it was his own turn to be surprised, coming in to find not only Edeyn and that idiot Nan but the tall nun, too. Judging by their expressions as they turned toward the door, he had missed something he might well have liked to hear; but whatever it had been, they had finished saying it before he was in hearing. They had even been, unbelievably enough, considering there were three females there, silent.

Now the problem was how to be rid of the nun. Except for a little dealing over final details, he had won. The thing had gone as he had wanted it to and he was not in the mood for holiness. He wanted celebration, and though he would have to wait for it, he did not mean to wait in any such dull company as this nun’s with her long, unamusing face.

So he gave her no more than a curt nod, crossed to Edeyn and deliberately took her hand to kiss it lingeringly, looking in her eyes while he did, before asking, “Have you been in talk long, love? You shouldn’t tire yourself.”

“It’s been good to have Dame Frevisse’s company. She’s been to see Lionel and came to tell me how he does.”

“Has she?” Giles looked across at the nun with an inward grin of understanding. She was here seeking news, straight and simple. Fodder for all the busy tongues. So let her feed if that was what she was craving. Why should he have all the pleasure of Martyn’s death? Another week or so and she would be back in her man-forsaken nunnery but with better tales to tell than she had hoped for when she left, that was sure. With a regretful shake of his head, he said, “The mood against Lionel is ugly around the manor. No one likes that he was left loose among them so long, now that he’s known to be so dangerous.”

“He isn’t—” Edeyn began.

Giles turned a half-pitying, half-admonishing look on her and refrained from saying the obvious. Her face flushed a dark red and she ducked her head away from his eyes, telling she understood him. He smiled back at the nun. “How is it with my cousin?”

“Not well. He’s taking the death hard.”

“Well he ought. It will take him time to come to terms with what he’s done and how things will have to be now. But it could be guessed it might come to this. Gravesend took advantage of his place and no matter how my cousin tolerated it because he had to, somewhere inside him the anger must have been growing until this time when his frenzy took him, he struck back. He gave the demon its way and it gave him his. That’s all. A pity in its way. I would have been satisfied to see Gravesend sent packing down the road rather than down to hell.”