The Squire’s Tale (27 page)

‘Nothing, my lady,“ Gil said firmly. ”There’s just his neck and it’s snapped as neat as doing a dry twig.“

He tried to say it straightly but his mouth wried out of shape and he swallowed thickly, as if keeping down bile.

Frevisse shared his feeling and made no move to look at Benedict’s body herself, only said to the men now starting to wash it, “Nor you? You’ve seen nothing?”

‘Nothing, my lady,“ one of them answered and the others bobbed heads in agreement.

‘Come outside for a moment, please, Gil. Master Verney.“

She led the way back outside and enough away from the chapel’s door that no one could overhear as she said to Gil, “Will you ask questions for me? For Master Fenner?”

Gil glanced toward Master Verney, who very slightly nodded, before answering, “Aye.”

‘And tell me what you learn before you tell anyone else.“

Gil paused again but without the look to Master Verney before he agreed, “If that’s what Master Fenner wants. What are you wanting me to ask?”

‘First, did anyone see Master Benedict anywhere after he left the solar with Master Verney last night? Anyone. Anywhere. And if they did, when? Did any servants go to Benedict’s room after the night-food was left there? If they did, was he there and was anyone with him? Understand?“

‘You want to know where he was and who he was with last night,“ Gil said.

‘Yes,“ Frevisse answered, relieved that he had wit enough for what she was asking of him. ”I also want to know who Was seen moving in the yard last night.“

Gil made a short noise. “Nobody who didn’t have to be, that’s sure. Oh.” He gave her a sharper look than he had before. “And if there’s someone who was who can’t give a good reason why he was there, he’s maybe who did for Master Benedict.”

‘Yes.“

Now that he saw the purpose and that there was sense to it, he said with more intent, “What else, then?”

‘Find out if anyone saw to keeping the lanterns lighted in the yard after it started to storm.“ Robert had said not but he would not have known for certain after he was to the children’s chamber. ”Whoever might have tried to do that might have noticed something. And ask if anyone heard any kind of outcry, whether it seemed to do with this or not.“

‘You don’t get much outcry with a broken neck,“ Gil said glumly, ”and even if there was, there was thunder and rain enough at times to cover a cry if it came then.“

‘I know, but asking won’t do harm.“

‘You care if folk catch on to why I’m asking?“

‘I don’t see how they can be kept from it.“

‘Nor me,“ Gil agreed. ”What else?“

There was nothing else she had thought of, but before she could say so, Master Verney said, “Here’s Robert,” and Frevisse turned to see him coming along the yard from the nursery stairway and Master Verney asked as he came near enough, before she could, “The children?”

‘Weeping,“ Robert said.

Frevisse thought it would be better for him if he wept, too, but all he looked was gray and somewhere else in his thoughts. “I’ve come to be with Benedict a time. Until I’m needed elsewhere.”

‘That’s good, then,“ Gil said in the over-hearty way of someone trying to show sympathy without being soft about it. ”Dame Frevisse says I’m to set to asking questions and it’s not right he be left to no one of his own.“

‘I’ll be here,“ Robert said dully, and then, come to sudden remembrance of it, ”Poppy syrup. Dame Claire asked for it. Will you see to telling Master Skipton to send someone to Coventry for it at all speed?“

‘Right off,“ Gil said.

‘Mistress Katherine,“ Master Verney put in, and they all looked again along the yard to where she was coming, likewise from the direction of the nursery stairs, head down as she picked her way around the puddles, her skirts lifted awkwardly because she carried a folded cloth over one arm. She had taken time to comb her hair and braid it severely back from her face but had not changed from her plain gown nor, probably, to judge how she matched Robert for grayness, had anything to eat, and despite that her face was calm enough as she reached them, her red-rimmed eyes betrayed she had been crying not long before, and Robert asked, not keeping fear from his voice, ”Is anything the worse?“

‘She’s quieter,“ Katherine answered. ”Exhaustion, Dame Claire says. She—Lady Blaunche—sent me with this.“ She laid a hand on the folded cloth. ”To shroud him.“ She swallowed on tears. ”She said I’m to stay and pray by him because he shouldn’t be alone, she says.“

‘That’s to the good, then,“ said Gil, still over-hearty. ”It’s what Master Fenner has come for, too.“

‘Better you’re both here for him,“ Master Verney added more quietly, ”and neither of you alone.“

Frevisse silently agreed that for plain kindness’ sake, they should neither of them have to be alone just now, but as Robert with no word of his own took the cloth from Katherine and stood aside with a small gesture for her to go ahead of him into the chapel, Frevisse heard in her mind, unbidden, all there had been in his cry of Katherine’s name on the stairs a little while ago and had a treacherous thought that on the other hand maybe it was better they not be alone together. There had been something in the way he had said Katherine’s name…

She cut the thought off. It was something Robert did not deserve, nor Katherine, and she said to Gil as he started to bow before going off on his given business, “Before anything else, bring food and wine for Master Fenner and Mistress Katherine, please.”

‘First thing of all,“ he said, his look showing he was beginning to approve of her.

‘And when you meet up with the steward, tell him I want to talk with him as soon as may be.“

‘Yes, my lady.“

He bowed and left and she realized that the village bell had sometime ceased its tolling of Benedict’s years without her noticing and said to Master Verney with a tiredness of heart she hoped she hid, “Would you show me to Benedict’s chamber, please?”

Chapter 17

Frevisse let go by that she would be alone in Benedict’s room with a man, against the rules that should govern her. There were times for heeding rules and times for not, she had found, and while following Master Verney to a near doorway, a match for the one to the nursery stairs and her own chamber, she deemed this was a time for not, whatever confession and penance she might have to do for it afterwards.

‘These are storerooms here,“ he said, nodding toward the doors on either side and starting up the stairs. ”Benedict’s room is above.“

‘And Master Geoffrey’s,“ Frevisse said, remembering. ”Even so.“

Both doors were closed and Master Verney had his hand raised to knock at Benedict’s before, with the sharpness of bitter remembering, he jerked back, swore under his breath, and opened the door with more violence than needed for anything except to relieve his feelings. Saying nothing because what was there to say, Frevisse followed him in. Master Verney had liked Benedict enough to ask him into his household for two years, been near enough to him to be able to talk him out of the solar last night when possibly no one else could have. Now all that was left was Benedict’s body lying in the chapel and the emptiness of a room to which he would never come back.

Frevisse took hard hold on the practical thought that it was not truly an empty room. It was furnished with bed and table, chair, stools, chests, a fireplace on the outer wall, all much the way her own was but more lavishly, as befitted the household’s heir, and with the clutter of a young man with only himself to satisfy. A sheathed sword hung by its belt from one bedpost. A boot lay on the floor at the bed’s foot, its mate nowhere in sight. Clothing was heaped disorderly on the chest it should probably have been in and other clothing was in a smaller heap on the floor beside the table where a tray with pitcher and cloth-covered plate shared the tabletop with a wooden horse on wheels with one wheel broken off and in two but ready to be mended with gluepot and tools waiting to hand.

Seeing where she was looking, Master Verney said, “John’s. He’s ever too hard on his toys and Benedict was ever mending them.”

Frevisse nodded and went on looking. In a corner a cluster of fishing poles leaned against the wall, most of them far too short for Benedict’s likely use—had he taken his little half brothers and sister fishing with them or were they something kept from his own childhood, not so long past?— and on a stool beside the bedhead there were two books and a candle stub in a holder. Because books were something she never resisted, she went and picked them up, found one was a leather-bound book of devotions that looked little used and the other a well-worn copy of chivalrous tales.

‘Robert gave him that when he and Blaunche married,“ Master Verney said. ”A wedding present, he told Benedict. It was the first book anyone had ever given him, I think.“

‘And the devotions?“

‘From his mother a few Christmases ago.“

It was easy to see which had mattered the most to Benedict but at least he had kept both to hand and with a feeling of fellowship toward Benedict that she had never expected to have, Frevisse put them down exactly where they had been and said, “The food and drink on the table. Were they there when you came in with Benedict from the solar last night?”

‘Yes.“

No servant had come in with them later, then, and that meant that so far as was known, Master Verney had been the last person here with Benedict. She went to lift the cloth, uncovering a thick, folded slice of bread with honey soaked through it and a square-cut piece of ginger cake, and looked in the pitcher and the goblet standing next to it. “Nothing eaten and only a little of the ale gone. Did he drink it while you were here?”

Master Verney shook his head. “We talked is all and finally he asked me to leave him alone. He was tired and I think ashamed and disappointed in himself. He wanted to be alone, he said, and I left him sitting on the edge of the bed.”

If everything he had told her was the truth, it meant that, so far as was known, Master Verney had been the last person here with Benedict until his murderer came or Benedict went out and was killed elsewhere.

Equally, until she had some thought as to why someone would have killed him, she had to assume, firstly, until she was certain they could not have, that anyone might have done it and, secondly, until she was certain they were not, that anyone could be lying to her. Including Master Verney.

But she kept that to herself as she touched her foot against the little heap of clothing beside the table, then bent to feel of it and said, “Everything is wet.”

‘It was downpouring when we crossed the yard. He changed out of his soaked clothes while we were talking.“

‘What did you do?“

‘I stood by the door and dripped.“

As would anyone who came into the room last night. There were still puddled places on the floorboards that would tell her nothing, she supposed, for the same reason that there was no use looking for wet clothing to tell who else had been here or met Benedict elsewhere and either killed him at the stairfoot or carried his body there, supposing it had been raining at the time and not between storms. Whatever the way of it had been, with all of last night’s rain the murderer would not be the only man in Brinskep manor with wet clothes today.

Unless the wet clothing belonged to someone who had had no reason to be out in the rain, no reason to be wet.

She should have had Gil ask questions toward learning that, too, would bid him do so when next she saw him. And there was also need, now she thought of it, to find if anyone had taken a message from Benedict to someone. Supposing they arranged to meet in the screens passage, there was chance no one else might have known Benedict was there. When it was late enough, people would be more likely sleeping than wandering and the screens passage was a somewhat possible place for privacy. In which case Benedict lying at the stairfoot dead might have come about by accident after all.

But whomever he had met with would have said something about meeting with him by now. Unless they had immediately seen the danger of being unfairly accused of his murder and held silent. Or they might actually have killed him and were holding silent for even better reason.

But even so, whoever had been messenger between them would have spoken out by now. Or should have. And she would have to go on doubting Benedict had been back to the hall last night and believing that, whatever had happened, it had very possibly happened here. Where there was nothing that told her anything.

‘Dame Frevisse?“ Master Verney asked.

She came back from her thinking with a start. “Yes. I’m nearly done.” But she went to look under the bed where there was surprisingly little dust but the missing boot and a small, lidded box shoved against the wall at the head of the bed. Leaving the boot and dust where they were, Frevisse drew out the box, set it on the bed and opened it. Inside, at first look, was nothing much, a mere jumble of things, but Master Verney had crossed the room to join her and now drew a painful breath, reached out and laid his fingertips on a small coil of red-dyed leather. “Dasher’s leash,” he said thickly. “A greyhound his mother had when Benedict was small. We use to joke they teethed on each other. Benedict grew up and Dasher grew old and here…” There were tears on his cheek but there was no shame in crying and he did not bother with wiping them away, instead found and took up something else that looked like nothing much but had mattered enough to Benedict to keep, a two-inch length of chipped flint, neatly crafted into an arrowhead. “We found this one day along the stream when he was maybe ten years old. I told him how such a thing is supposed to be the tip of a thunderbolt, left behind when lightning strikes down to the ground. I didn’t know… he’d… kept it.”