Jack, she noted, looked correctly worried, but what might have been the corner of a wry smile pulled at one corner of Symond’s mouth as they copied Rowcliffe in slightly bowing their heads to her in return. What he might be smiling at she did not know and did not think about.
Father Henry must have made short work of the Mass and his opening blessing on the chapter meeting today. As she left the guesthall, he was coming from the cloister, and as they met in the yard’s middle, he asked, “Am I needed?”
Understanding he meant for the last rites for a dying man, Frevisse said, “I don’t know. Dame Claire is with him now. She’ll say better than I can. Certainly he needs your prayers.”
“He has them,” Father Henry said and they went their separate ways, he to the guesthall, she into the cloister to the chapter meeting.
Whatever had been happening there, Domina Elisabeth broke it off to demand as she came into the room, “What does he have? Do we send to turn Abbot Gilberd back?”
“I don’t know what it is,” Frevisse said quietly. “Dame Claire will surely say.”
Domina Elisabeth momentarily looked ready to protest that but then, with an open effort, steadied and returned to the day’s business.
Frevisse, taking her place among the other nuns, found her worry about Breredon matched by worry about Domina Elisabeth. It had never been her way to be so easily, so openly unsettled by anything. She surely could not be worried her brother would blame her for either Sister Cecely’s return or Breredon’s illness. Abbot Gilberd had never been unreasonable or unfair. Even making his sister prioress here had not been unreasonable, and his choice had proved to the priory’s good in the years since then.
No, Frevisse thought: Domina Elisabeth’s worry had to be for her brother, for everyone here, should Breredon’s illness be more than it seemed. St. Frideswide’s had been fortunate in going untouched by plague and rarely troubled by any disease of any consequence in Frevisse’s time.
They could only pray that was not about to change.
Fortunately for everyone’s peace of mind, Dame Claire came just at the end of the chapter meeting with the welcome news that, “I judge something he ate or drank disagreed with him. It’s not a fever or anything like.”
“Poison!” Dame Amicia exclaimed with the delight of someone ready to be horrified.
“Not poison, I think,” Dame Claire said quellingly.
“No reason then to forestall Abbot Gilberd,” said Domina Elisabeth, openly relieved.
“None,” Dame Claire said.
“Very good.” Plainly freed by her relief, Domina Elisabeth made short end to the meeting, freeing them to their morning duties with her closing blessing, then saying to Dame Claire, “You and Dame Frevisse will want to talk over what it could have been that sickened him. We must needs be sure no one else falls ill of it.”
That matched what Frevisse had intended, and she and Dame Claire lingered while everyone else left except for Dame Johane who paused to ask hopefully, “Will you need me to help with tending him?”
“His two servants will see to him between whiles I go to him. No, I think you’ll not be needed,” Dame Claire said.
“Oh,” said Dame Johane, not troubling to hide her disappointment. “I’d hoped to escape sitting watch on Sister Cecely.”
“It would come tomorrow if you escaped it today,” Dame Claire pointed out. “I’ll bring you the herbal to study. You can look for Master Breredon’s symptoms in it.”
Dame Johane went, not looking much brightened by that, and Frevisse asked Dame Claire, “You think, then, it was indeed something he ate?”
“It’s something that badly disagreed with him, that’s all. I’m nearly certain of it. He’s past the worst of it, but the worst was very bad, as you surely saw.”
“Could he have been poisoned?”
Dame Claire looked at her with surprise. “Well, whatever he ate or drank was certainly poisonous to him, yes, but I’d doubt it was done of a purpose. Despite of Dame Amicia. Besides, what would he have had to eat or drink that was different from what anyone else in the guesthall had?”
“That’s what I shall have to learn,” Frevisse said.
As it happened, she learned it easily after she returned to the guesthall. Breredon was able to make weak answer for himself that he had had nothing to eat or drink aside from what was offered him, and everyone else-his own servants and the guesthall’s-who had had anything to do with his food and drink assured her that he had had only what every other guest had had.
“There was nothing different for him,” Tom said, looking scared while she questioned him and Luce in the guesthall kitchen.
“He didn’t even come out of his room,” Luce added. “He had his supper taken in to him. He didn’t come out all the evening.”
“And no one went in?” Frevisse asked.
“Just his own folk,” Luce said. “At least so far as I know. Tom?”
“I wasn’t up there,” Tom said. “It’s old Ela you’d have to ask.”
But Ela was sleeping, making hardly a heap under her blanket on her pallet in a corner of the kitchen, and Frevisse, not minded to wake her, said, “That I’ll do later. Luce, come with me. I need to see the chamber is ready for Abbot Gilberd.”
It was, and Frevisse commended Luce for it, then faced the necessity of questioning the Rowcliffes, no matter how little she wanted to.
This time it was Jack and his father who were playing chess, with Symond leaning on the table, looking on. As Frevisse approached them, Symond was shaking his head and clicking his tongue at the move Rowcliffe was in the midst of making, and Rowcliffe snapped, “Will you stop doing that?” but there was laughter under his protest and Symond was grinning.
Only young Jack, protesting on his side, “Don’t help him! I’m winning,” sounded halfway to serious, and while he stood up with his father and cousin to give Frevisse a slight bow, he did it without taking his eyes from the chessboard and sat down again while Rowcliffe and Symond stayed standing and Rowcliffe said, “We saw your infirmarian leave, and your priest come and go. Breredon was feigning it, then?”
“He was not and is not,” Frevisse said. “He was very ill, apparently with something he ate or drank. Did any of you go into his room last night?”
“We haven’t bothered with him,” said Rowcliffe, sounding surprised. “There’s nothing more to say between us until your abbot comes, so we’ve kept away from him and he’s kept away from us.”
“I don’t think it’s what we might have said to him that she’s wondering about,” said Symond. “It’s what we might have done she’s asking about.”
“What?” said Rowcliffe, not seeming to follow his cousin’s thought.
“She’s wondering,” said Jack without looking up from the chessboard, his hand poised over a bishop, “if one of us poisoned him.”
“What?” Rowcliffe repeated, now more indignantly than questioningly, then added with pure indignation, “Hai!” as his son slid the bishop along the board to take the knight that Rowcliffe had just moved.
“I warned you,” Symond said.
“I had plans for that knight,” Rowcliffe grumbled.
“What you failed to think of was that Jack might have plans of his own,” Symond said. “He’ll have your queen in three more moves.”
This time both Jack and Rowcliffe protested, “Hai!” albeit for different reasons.
Rowcliffe glared at the board for a moment more, gave a shrug as if giving the whole business up, and looked back to Frevisse. “No,” he said. “None of us poisoned Breredon. Right is on our side. We’ve no need to poison him or anyone. Except Cecely maybe. Have you done anything about getting those deeds back from her?”
“We’re leaving everything until Abbot Gilberd arrives.”
“She’s still closely kept though, isn’t she?”