The Murderer's Tale (6 page)

She dismissed young John with a smiling nod and gathered Frevisse and Dame Claire after her with an out-held arm, heading them the way the priests had gone, into the hall.

It was new-built as so much of Minster Lovell seemed to be, bright-plastered, no wear even to the stone threshold. It opened up around them, high and wide but overly tall for its rather modest length. Frevisse had to resist the urge to crane her head back to stare up at the high rafters, but she saw the sense of the disproportion; instead of a fireplace neatly set into a wall, as was the fashion now, the hall’s hearth lay in the hall’s center with nowhere for the smoke to go except up to the ceiling among the rafters. There were openings in each gable end for a cross-draught to carry it away, but how odd that Lord Lovell had made his manor over new and yet kept an open hearth at its heart.

There was only a scattering of folk about, servants who noticed them but did not stare. The late afternoon flurry of work to set the tables up for supper had not started yet. Luce talked busily of how the Knyvets had come a few hours ago—“And of course Lady Lovell wished to see Edeyn again as soon as might be, and Edeyn said you were coming, that’s how we knew”—as she led them the length of the hall and up on the low dais where the lord and his family would dine, raised slightly above the lesser folk. There were doors at either end of it. Father Henry was just disappearing after Sire Benedict through the rightward one, and Luce said, waving cheerily after them, “They’ll do well together. Sire Benedict is a friendly sort, though he doesn’t look it.” She took Frevisse and Dame Claire to the leftward door. It led into a small room with a door to whatever lay beyond the great hall and a spiral stairway going up. They went up, passed another door, and came out into a long room generously windowed at each end and comfortably, richly furnished. The solar, Frevisse guessed, where the family could withdraw from the more general, crowded life of the great hall when they chose.

“Our room is just through here,” Luce said, heading for another doorway across the solar. “The ladies’ chamber. And my lord and lady’s is beyond. We’ll have other rooms in the north range when it’s done and all this will be my lord and lady’s chambers, but for now, with the building and all, we’re terribly together. I hope you don’t mind being crowded in to sleep with all of us.”

The ladies’ chamber was an airy room, with a line of mullioned windows overlooking the yard and a clutter of women’s things around the beds and chests and benches along its inner wall. Nearest the door a bed and the space around it had been tidied and cleared, with a wide basin and a cloth-covered ewer set on the bench at its foot. Luce held out her hand to show this was for them. “There’s warmed water in the ewer. At least it’s supposed to be warm.” Luce touched the ewer. “Yes, that’s all right then. And someone will have your baggage here soon. Is there anything else you need?”

“No, I think not,” Dame Claire answered. “Our thanks. This is very well indeed.”

And it would be better, Frevisse thought, if they could be left alone to wash their faces and hands and road-dirty feet and sit for a while in peace. As if she had read the thought, Luce said, smiling, “Then I’ll come back when you’ve had a little time to rest. Lady Lovell hopes you’ll be at leisure to come to her before supper.” She gave them one of her bobbing curtsies and left them.

“Finally,” Frevisse said when the girl was well gone and sat down on the bed she and Dame Claire would share.

“She was very courteous,” Dame Claire murmured. “It was kind of Lady Lovell to send her to see to us.”

Frevisse stood back up with sudden concern. She had been too involved in her own verging on ill temper—from tiredness, she knew—to remember that Dame Claire was in worse case than she was. Now she saw that Dame Claire was standing as if she were too tired to remember how to sit and wavering slightly on her feet. Frevisse went to her, took her by the arm to steady her, turned her back to the edge of the bed, and said peremptorily, “Sit.”

Dame Claire sank down with a heavy sigh that was relief mingled with all the weariness she had been trying not to show. “Thank you. I didn’t know I was this tired.”

“Well, you are, and better you admit it than collapse.”

Dame Claire smiled at Frevisse’s tartness. Her hands moved vaguely to remove her veil and confining wimple. Frevisse set down the water ewer she had just picked up and did it for her, careful to put the pins in the veil and fold it neatly before setting it aside. Then she took up the ewer again, poured warm water into the basin, soaked a cloth laid to hand for the purpose, and gave it to Dame Claire, who washed her face and hands with the care she gave to any task but very slowly, as if it needed concentration beyond the ordinary.

Frevisse waited and when she had done, took the cloth and knelt down on the floor, took off Dame Claire’s shoes and her stockings, and washed her feet. Dame Claire sighed with pleasure. “Now I should do as much for you.”

“I’ll welcome it some other time,” Frevisse said. “But just now you are going to lie down and stay down until time for supper.”

“Yes,” Dame Claire agreed. “I think I am.” She was already sinking back toward the pillow, her eyes closing as if nothing could have kept them open. She seemed to be asleep before she was quite fully down.

Frevisse watched and was satisfied. Rest was exactly what Dame Claire needed, and sleep with it was even better. Their other nights on the road had been spent at an inn and a small chantry house, and their comfort and well-being had not been particularly seen to at either one. Minster Lovell promised to be a respite Dame Claire much needed, and because of their business from St. Frideswide’s they could hope to spend at least two nights here, giving her a true rest.

Frevisse doubted she would have borne such unaccustomed effort as Dame Claire had faced these past few days with anything like Dame Claire’s forbearance. Her own anger at Domina Alys, still there despite the while since they had left St. Frideswide’s, would have fueled her aggravation at every discomfort and inconvenience. The only reason it had not was that she had not felt particularly discomfortable or inconvenienced on the road. She had enjoyed the traveling and expected to go on enjoying it, and even now she was not as tired as she had expected to be but wide-awake with awareness of being in a new place of which she wanted to see more.

She had washed her face and hands and feet by the time a liveried servant brought the small leathern traveling chest she and Dame Claire were sharing on the journey. It held their few necessities and a change of clean clothing for each of them, no more, and that was enough. Frevisse changed into her own clean gown. Nuns’ habits were as near to identical as possible, but the difference between her height and Dame Claire’s meant they had gowns far different in length at least.

She was pinning a fresh veil in place when Luce reappeared. Dame Claire had not stirred since settling, her hands folded neatly over her middle, her face eased into the soft lines of utter sleep. Luce took in Frevisse’s readiness and Dame Claire’s sleep, put cautionary finger to her smiling lips, and beckoned for Frevisse to follow her out of the room.

They paused in the solar by the southward window that overlooked the courtyard, the gateway, the unfinished west range with its scaffolding, and the river beyond the wall. The workmen were all gone, but there was still a come-and-go of other people across the yard, most of them in Lord Lovell’s blue livery. Frevisse wondered where young John had been taken.

“My lady has asked if you would care to join her in the Pleasaunce for the while before supper,” Luce said. “You and Dame Claire. But I think she’d rather sleep?”

“Sleep is probably best for her now,” Frevisse said, “but I’ll gladly come.”

Luce led her back down the stairs and through the small room into the great hall, down its length and into the wooden screens passage. There, instead of back toward the outer door, they turned left, going along it through a different doorway and into a short, stone-washed passage that led to another doorway to outside. Luce chatted as they went, mostly about the exigencies of living in a place being newly built. “So much dust sometimes, and such a noise when the stonecutters are at it. And the smell of damp plaster. But it will be so splendid when it’s done, I’m almost sorry I’ll be gone by then. I’m being married at Michaelmas, you know.”

And how would I know that until now that you’ve told me? Frevisse almost said, but again recognized it for unjustified ill temper and merely made a murmured response of no particular meaning. Luce obviously liked to talk, and Frevisse supposed it was more courteous simply to let her run on rather than interfere by attempting an actual conversation.

They came out of the cool shadows of the stone-vaulted passage into westering sunlight. Frevisse stopped with an exclamation of pleasure at the garden that lay before her. Enclosed on three sides by high walls—the ones that made the east side of the churchyard and ran along the road by which they had come, Frevisse realized—this garden was far larger than St. Frideswide’s. Here near the house were formal paths among low-fenced small square beds with plants set jewel-like in each of them, singly or a few together, depending on their rarity and beauty. Beyond them, perhaps halfway down the garden’s length, a low ornamental lattice fence marked the beginning of a well-groomed greensward shaded by young birch trees, bordered by brick-sided turf benches, and beyond it a green-arbored walkway closing off all but a glimpse of whatever lay at the garden’s farther end. Across the greensward, among the delicate birch shadows, on cushions and the turf benches, were scattered a half dozen women and girls and two men in talk among themselves, with one of the women playing lightly on a lute, its notes running like silver water behind their voices, bright as their gowns and occasional laughter.

Lady Lovell’s Pleasaunce was indeed well named, and to Frevisse’s exclamation, Luce said, “It’s my lady’s delight,” her own pleasure in it showing plainly.

She led Frevisse the shortest way along the formal paths to the gateway into the greensward. As they went, Frevisse recognized Lionel Knyvet on one of the turf benches, playing with a medium-size white dog that danced around his feet, put paws up on his knees, and ran to fetch a ball when Lionel tossed it away for her. They both seemed to be enjoying it, and though there were other dogs—all ladies’ dogs of small to medium size—among the women, this game of toss and fetch seemed to be theirs alone.

His cousin Giles was sitting on cushions under the young trees near his wife, who was sitting beside a woman Frevisse guessed was Lady Lovell, because no matter how casually everyone seemed spread around the greensward, she was somehow the center of them all. And it was to her Luce went, to curtsy deeply and say, “My lady, Dame Claire is sleeping, but I’ve brought Dame Frevisse.”

With a graceful lift of her hand, Lady Lovell both thanked and dismissed her to join the other women, then smiled for Frevisse to come forward to her. Frevisse did, with as low a curtsy as Luce had made. Lady Lovell acknowledged it with an inclination of her head and said, “Pray, sit,” indicating a cushion near her. She was richly dressed in a coral-colored gown trimmed with dark brown velvet at neck and wrists and hem, the color and richness setting off the cream-white of her skin, her dark eyes and fine arched brows. Her face’s smooth oval was framed by several flowing layers of veil so light and fine it could only be of silk, and her wimple was barely a thin band under her chin, leaving her throat bare. A tracery of light lines around her eyes said she was not perfectly young, but Frevisse guessed she was hardly thirty.

“Your Dame Claire isn’t ill, is she?” she asked with a warmth that might have been actual concern. But unknown nuns asking hospitality were hardly likely to be of any concern beyond the slightest to her, and Frevisse answered with restraint, “Only weary with walking, my lady.”

“And that’s not surprising. St. Frideswide’s is no little distance from here. How long have you been on the way? Edeyn may have said, but I’ve forgotten.”

What else had Mistress Knyvet said? Frevisse gave her and Giles an acknowledging inclination of her head as she answered, “Three days, but we’ve not made haste about it, my lady.”

“Nor is there need to, I suppose, when the weather has been so fine.” Lady Lovell’s dark eyes were warm with sudden amusement. “But may I ask if your coming Minster Lovell way has anything to do with this trouble between our stewards over Prior Byfield’s well?”

Frevisse’s first impulse was to hide her surprise that Lady Lovell knew of it at all, but the merriment in Lady Lovell’s face told she knew she had surprised her. Frevisse, warmed with her infectious amusement, laughed, and said “Yes, it would. Is it that notorious a matter?”

“I’d a letter from that steward yesterday. One of his regular reports, not about the well in particular. He’d heard word what Domina—Alys it is now, isn’t it?—intended, so when I heard you were from St. Frideswide’s, I assumed you were the nuns she’d sent.”

“We’ve a letter and other things for my Lord Lovell from our prioress. We’re to speak to him about them and then we’ll be on our way.”

“You are welcome to stay as long as necessary, and certainly until you’re rested enough to go on in comfort. But I’m afraid my lord husband isn’t here and it’s with me you’ll have to deal.”

“Lord Lovell isn’t here?” The last word there had been was that he would be at Minster Lovell until at least Midsummer.

“Complications at court.” Lady Lovell gestured with both hands to show how expectations must alter in an instant when there were complications at court. “Normandy again. He’s been summoned to advise my lord of Warwick.”

“Has there been trouble?” Frevisse asked with quick concern. “Out of the ordinary?” she added, and Lady Lovell’s mouth quirked in answering appreciation of the distinction. The war in France was a fitful thing. It was almost ten years since the French witch had nearly overset English power there, and nearly two years since the Burgundians had treacherously deserted to the Dauphin. That had not proved as immediately disastrous as feared, but word could come so slowly to St. Frideswide’s that there could easily have been some great trouble lately of which they had not yet heard.