The Murderer's Tale (3 page)

“Keep quiet?” Dame Claire asked.

“How can I? How can you?”

“I don’t know. But have you thought that maybe the problem doesn’t completely lie with her?”

“No, I hadn’t thought that.”

“She feels we disturb her rule by doubting her.”

“Her rule is something to be doubted.”

“She’s done the priory some good, you know.”

Frevisse intensely disliked it when Dame Claire insisted on seeing the other side of a matter whose nearer side offended Frevisse so greatly. But Dame Claire was right. Through Domina Alys’ influence with her large family, St. Frideswide’s now had two novices, which was two more novices than the priory had had in five years. Besides, her family, pleased with her new position, had given the priory a goodly gift of money on Lady Day and talk was lively on how it should be used, with feelings running strongly several ways but mainly pleasure in the fact that there was spare money to be talked of at all.

So, yes, Domina Alys had done the priory some good. “But—”

“And she’s right in feeling that we—you and I—disturb her rule.”

“We don’t do anything beyond sometimes question what she does,” Frevisse protested. “You can’t say I was wrong this morning.”

“No. Nor yesterday when you asked why she meant to rent the Northampton messuage to her cousin at a lesser rate than we had been receiving for it.”

“It was a needed question. Someone had to ask it.”

“Undoubtedly. But it was you who did.”

“Because no one else dared.”

“Exactly.”

Dame Claire looked sideways up at Frevisse to see if she had taken the point. After a moment, Frevisse smiled wryly in return. “And it doesn’t help that I don’t always question her in the mildest way possible.”

“Nor does it help that you do it so often.”

Frevisse made a small gesture of helplessness, and Dame Claire said, “I know. You tend to see matters more clearly than most do, and for good measure you think about them, and then, beyond that, you have the courage—more courage than I have—to speak out when you think you should.”

“The courage or the stupidity.”

“That, too, upon occasion,” Dame Claire agreed equitably. “But whether you speak out or not, she assumes that you disapprove of whatever she does, and sometimes the look on your face shows all too clearly that you do. I, on the other hand, annoy her simply by being here at all.”

And that, Frevisse knew, was true enough, too. Dame Claire’s mere presence was reminder of what everyone knew Domina Edith had intended for the priory; and to Domina Alys’ choleric mind, Dame Claire’s presence was an ongoing rebuke.

“And it doesn’t help,” Frevisse said, “that we keep each other company at recreation time.”

“It makes her more suspicious of both of us,” Dame Claire agreed.

“I’ll try to bridle my tongue. That may eventually help.”

Dame Claire did not answer. Their walking had brought them back to the bottom of the garden, a little way from where Sister Thomasine still stood, her face lifted to the thrush still singing in the pear tree. By unspoken accord, they both stopped to listen, too, though Frevisse’s mind stayed more on what they had been saying then on the beauty of the evening. And so did Dame Claire’s, apparently, for shortly she said, quite bravely, “I have an idea that might help.”

Frevisse gave a small sideways movement of her head to show she was listening without looking away from the bird above them. Dame Claire went on, “I’m going to confess in chapter that I’ve been guilty of proud and sinful thoughts and of failure to keep a vow.” She slightly raised her hand to stop Frevisse’s startled, disbelieving response. “Last year I was so afraid Domina Edith would have pain in her dying and that there would be nothing I could do for it that I vowed to St. Frideswide that if she would give her a quiet death, free from pain, I’d make a pilgrimage on foot to her shrine in Oxford.”

“Dame Claire!” Frevisse said in distress. A nun was not supposed to make vows beyond the limits of her obedience to her prioress, vows she could not possibly keep without her prioress’ permission.

“I know. But I thought then, God forgive me”—she crossed herself—“that I would be prioress after her so there was no problem. I simply wanted her to die peacefully. I never imagined I would have to ask Dame Alys’ permission to keep the vow. So I’ve added to my sin by waiting this long to ask it.”

“And you’d tell all that in chapter? In front of everyone?” She did not add, though it was the strongest thought she had: To Domina Alys’ face?

“It’s the only way. It will clear my soul and give her enough satisfaction at my humiliation she may no longer feel I’m such a threat to her.”

“But do you think she’ll actually give you leave? She could simply release you from the vow and give you heavy penance here.”

“I think to have me out of here awhile—and to show how generous-spirited she is—she’ll give me leave. I’m nearly sure of it. But I want you to be the one who goes with me.”

No nun could go abroad beyond the nunnery walls alone. At very least another nun had to keep her company, and Frevisse immediately grasped what Dame Claire was asking of her.

“You want that I should make confession in chapter, too, when you do. Of my prideful thoughts against her. And ask to be sent on foot with you, for my penance.”

“Yes.”

Frevisse stared at the ground in front of her without seeing it. “It won’t work,” she said. “She’ll never allow it.”

“She will,” Sister Thomasine said. Her voice despite its softness startled them; they had forgotten she was there. She turned to face them. “She’ll gladly let you go if you give her the chance.”

“How do you know?” Dame Claire asked gently. Unlike Frevisse for whom patience with Sister Thomasine was too often an effort, Dame Claire was always willing to listen to her.

Sister Thomasine tilted her head a little, as if she found the question puzzling. “She will. That’s all.”

The sunset was far faded toward darkness, and Sister Thomasine’s face was only a pale blur within the circle of her white wimple, its expression unreadable, but her voice in all its gentleness was completely assured, beyond any question of might be or maybe. Frevisse shivered and told herself that it was only from the chill that was creeping in now the last of the light was going. She turned to Dame Claire and said with more firmness of purpose than she felt, “I’ll do it, and God have mercy on us,” and was glad that the cloister bell began to ring then, calling them in to Compline and putting an end to any chance of further talk.

Chapter 3

Stretched out on his back on the sun-wanned grassy bank, his hands under his head and all at ease, Giles watched the oak leaves lightly moving on the branches high between him and the clear sky. Around him the easy talk of folk met by chance on the road went quietly on without need for him to listen to its pointlessness. Since they would easily be at Minster Lovell before nightfall, no one was making any haste over their midday meal here in the oak’s wide shade on the grassy verge of the road. The weather had held mostly dry and warm these past few days of their journeying so they could afford this sort of leisure along the way. Giles supposed that was something to be thankful for, even if there was not much else.

They had already been to Winchcombe Abbey and three of the other Kenelm churches. And Winchcombe at least had been tolerable. Barely. The abbey’s purpose might be holy—though the monks were making a pretty penny off their saint, vows of poverty notwithstanding—but the town grown up outside the abbey gates had more worldly pleasures to offer those who, like Giles, had something other than prayers in mind. But the rest of the Kenelm shrines were proving to be paltry places, scattered long thwart and thitherward around the countryside in one-street villages miles from anywhere worth being, with inns not worth the name or food worth the eating. And now there was the company Lionel was choosing to keep.

They had set out from Knyvet with eleven in their company: he and Edeyn and Lionel, no trouble there, and seven servants to see to them and the horses and the baggage, and Martyn, of course, damn him. A manageable lot, but leave it to Lionel to take up along the way with a handful of chance-met strangers, none of them worth the bother to spit on. The franklin alone with his great gut-laugh was enough to hold against Lionel until doomsday, and they had only been in his company since mid-morning. The man claimed to be bound on business somewhere but was in no apparent haste about it, willing to amble the day away with them and now lingering over his wayside dinner with the rest. By his own boast—and, God, could the man boast—he had been as far as Exeter to the south, Worcester to the west, and Oxford to the east, and seemed to think that meant he had seen the world. So far as Giles was concerned, the very set of his regrettable hat proclaimed him a lout-wit.

And then there were the graceless, ham-handed pair of yeomen they had come on yesterday, likewise pilgrimaging to St. Kenelm at Minster Lovell so Lionel had taken up with them on the instant, the fool. A father and son and plainly more used to following their heavy-hocked bay geldings behind a plow than riding them. Roughly dressed and coarsely mannered and so cross-eyed it sure as damnation must bring ill luck to look them in the face, they had kept suitably silent at first, but Lionel had drawn them out with questions, and the father had spent yester evening at the inn going on at length about the problems there were in plowing when the fields were too wet. As if anyone else here cared so long as it was done when it was supposed to be done and no trouble made about it.

If Lionel did not bother to bestir the lot of them soon, they might not make it to Minster Lovell by supper time after all, and Giles was vastly looking forward to Minster Lovell, if only so he could shut a few doors between himself and these nattering fools. And now, God help him, they were trying to do riddles! Without enough wit among the franklin and clod-pated father and son to tell them to go in when it rained, Lionel was trying to do riddles with them, to see if they had any new ones! As if there weren’t enough old ones to send Giles out of his mind.

He rolled his head slightly to the side to look at Edeyn’s profile where she sat beside him, and past her to Lionel. They were all grouped in a lopsided circle on cushions on the grass, with only himself drawn a little apart with a vague thought after they had finished eating that he might drowse the time away until they moved on. Their talk and laughter had cost him hope of being rid of them even that long, and now he reached out an apparently idle hand to take hold of Edeyn’s where it lay on the grass between them and fondled it. She glanced around at him with a smile. He smiled back, aware that across from her Lionel was watching.

Watch on, old Lionel, and see what you can never have, Giles thought. He raised Edeyn’s hand to his lips and kissed it lingeringly. Edeyn looked around at him again, her smile deepening with pleasure, her face lightly coloring with embarrassment. Giles enjoyed that in her—her stupid modesty that made her shy of showing what she was, her wantonness when he could have her alone in bed for long enough to rouse her.

There was wantonness in every woman. Some needed longer to have it dragged out of them than others did but it was there. Because with Edeyn there had been time, he had made a long and pleasurable process, after his lusting for her had been slaked, of first finding hers and then waking her fully to it. Now occasionally for extra pleasure, he let Lionel see it, too. There was a certain look that Lionel had—a way his gaze slid away when Giles handled Edeyn in front of him—that made the moment, the possession, more pleasurable by far. Lionel might plague him with these fools just now, but he could plague Lionel any time he chose, simply by reminding him whose Edeyn was and what Giles could do with her whenever he wanted to.

It did not change the fact that Giles had to listen to this drivel now but it evened out the suffering a little.

And wonder of wonders, the fat franklin was coming out with another riddle so old it was wrinkled.

“I think it was my aunt told it to me when I was a lad. I’ve always favored it. She was as clever a woman as I’ve ever known. It goes this way. A house full, a hole full, but no one can gather a bowl full. Eh?”

Lionel and Martyn held back admirably. It was the cross-eyed yeoman father who exclaimed, after a moment’s hard remembering because even he had heard that one before, “Smoke!” At Lionel’s praise—Lionel would praise a cloud for raining, he was that soft—the oaf grinned but then realized, appalled, that it was now his turn to find a riddle, and one he remembered the answer to, too, which would make it doubly hard, Giles supposed. The dolt was hesitating mightily before his son leaned over and whispered something to him, making him brighten. “Aye. There’s one,” he said with relief. “How can an apple be without any core?”

Oh, God! Giles dropped his head back down on the cushion under it and said toward the sky with undisguised disgust, “When it’s a blossom, damn it. That one’s older than the smoke one. Even Edeyn knows it.”

“Giles!” Lionel snapped. “You have a way…” He cut himself off from whatever angry thing he had been about to say.

Good old Lionel. Not even allowing himself some temper. Why didn’t he do everyone a favor and die since he wanted so much to be a saint?

With an unwarranted enthusiasm that showed he was glad of the diversion, the franklin exclaimed, “Well, and what’s this coming then?”

Willing to be diverted by almost anything, Giles rolled his head sideways and saw that the lot of them were looking away along the road and Lionel was rising to his feet. Good. Maybe whatever it was would set them all on their way again. Giles sat up.

He nearly lay down again. There had been no other travelers today and what was it now but a pair of nuns. There was a lack of excitement for you.

Still, they were on foot. There was a priest and a servant riding attendance behind them, so they were not out wayward and wandering, but the reasons two nuns would be traveling afoot were few, and penance came to mind immediately. If that was it, they must have made serious offense to have been sent out like this.