“If I never have another such, I’ll be content,” Frevisse agreed as they started down the steps. “As infirmarian, can you rule that you and I should sleep before we do anything else today?”
“I can. I do. We break our fast, then we sleep, if only until Tierce.”
The other nuns were already gone to chapter meeting, so the two of them had the morning bread-with butter today, as a Paschal pleasure-and ale alone in the refectory, with Dame Claire telling Alson, who waited on them, to report to Domina Elisabeth that Dame Johane was sitting with the sick man and that she and Dame Frevisse were going to sleep now for a time. Then, because the dorter was forbidden to the nuns during the day without the prioress’ leave, they went to the infirmary. The few beds there were of course bare, but that was the very least of anything Frevisse cared about just then. She lay down on one and was asleep as she pulled the uncovered pillow under her head.
She awoke aware she was not ready yet to be awake. She tried lying very still to see if she might go to sleep again, but her mind had had rest enough that now it was remembering how in the night, with two men ill of quite surely the same thing, the fear of contagion had been as thick as the stench around Symond Hewet’s bed. But from there she remembered how at the night’s end, when she and Dame Claire had been aside from everyone, washing their hands in a basin and about to leave Symond to Dame Johane’s care, Dame Claire had said, too low for anyone but Frevisse to hear, “It’s not sickness. It’s poison. I’ve no doubt of it.”
Poison. Just as Dame Amicia had exclaimed yesterday and Sister Cecely insisted on.
And probably not a chance poisoning from food gone bad. Something chancing to be wrong in the guesthall’s food or drink might strike down Breredon and only Breredon. But for a full day to pass and then one-and only one-other man to fall ill the same way…
It could have been by chance. Chance was an odd thing.
Lying with her eyes still closed, Frevisse slightly smiled in mockery at herself. Chance was, by its very nature, of course odd. But that was not the point of her thought and her smile left her. She wanted it to be likely that Breredon and Symond Hewet had been felled by chance, but she had to look at the possibility they had been sickened by someone’s deliberate hand, because if they had been, whoever had done it had to be found out before more harm was done. Breredon had been ill, Symond Hewet very ill. Dame Claire had said that if he had had a weaker heart, he would be dead by now.
If someone else sickened, would it be to the death? Was that what someone was trying for?
Frevisse opened her eyes and made her unwilling body sit up. Dame Claire was gone and the light through the single, small window was the gray of an overcast day, keeping her from judging the time. As she rose stiffly to her feet, she felt the ill humour that came with too little sleep fraying at the edge of her thoughts. She tried to smooth them as she shook out her habit’s rumpled skirts, telling herself that her discomfort was the least of what was happening. Bracing her hands in the small of her back, she carefully stretched a little and tried to turn her thoughts toward what mattered more than her body’s discomfort. She would leave the question of what had been used to sicken the men to Dame Claire and Dame Johane. It was a lesser question. What mattered more, to her mind, was who had poisoned them. And why.
So far as “why” went, she could-barely-accept Rowcliffe might poison Breredon to have the bother of him out of the way, as Sister Cecely had wildly insisted. What she could not do was make it seem a likely thing for Rowcliffe to do. With him she could see a shouting match, a hard blow from the front, a rough scuffle, maybe a dagger drawn and even used. She could see all of that, but poison, like an ambush or a dagger from behind, did not suit with what she had seen of Rowcliffe.
But then again, how much had she seen of him, to know one way or another what he would do?
And even if he would poison Breredon, why would he poison his cousin?
To keep suspicion away from himself?
Or could it have been Symond himself who saw to poisoning Breredon, then poisoned himself to keep suspicion away? Except there had been no serious suspicion that Breredon was ill by anything other than mischance.
And would Symond have so badly misjudged the dose he gave himself, have made himself so much more terribly ill than Breredon had been?
Still, as Dame Claire had said, poisons worked different ways on different people, just as medicines did. What sufficed for Breredon might have been too strong for Symond without he intended it to be. He-or whoever had given it to him. Unless whoever had given it to Symond had intended him to die.
Still, poison did not seem either Rowcliffe’s or Symond’s way of doing things.
What of Breredon’s servants then? Would one of them have poisoned Symond as revenge for Breredon’s poisoning?
But no one had thought Breredon’s illness was poisoning. And even if Coll or Ida had taken hold on some thought that it was and set out on misplaced revenge, where had they got something to so nearly match Breredon’s illness?
Or could one or the other of them have poisoned Breredon for some hidden purpose of their own, then poisoned Symond to confuse matters?
But again, since no one else had been thinking of poison for Breredon’s illness, no one had needed to confuse anything.
Maybe it had gone the other way. Maybe the poison had been meant for Symond all along, and Breredon’s poisoning had been meant to mislead. Or been done by mistake.
But who had reason for poisoning Symond?
Frevisse could just see why a Rowcliffe might think poisoning Breredon would be to the good: he was an added problem to the trouble they already had with Sister Cecely. But surely he was not that great a problem-not so great a one to warrant murder-not with the Rowcliffes’ presence here having forestalled anything he and Sister Cecely might have purposed. Why make trouble that did not need making?
So back to Symond. She knew even less about him than she did about Breredon. Someone might have reason to want him dead without she had any way of even guessing what it might be. But then that someone would have to be either his uncle or his cousin, wouldn’t it?
She could not help making that a question, but who else was there? Breredon? Poisoning himself first to avert suspicion from himself? Then depending on one of his servants to see to Symond’s poisoning? Because surely Breredon had not been fit to do anything like that for himself yesterday.
Still, if this was about the Rowcliffe properties and Edward, John Rowcliffe would seem the more likely prey. Had it been Symond by mistake? He did not figure at the center of the trouble at all, so why poison him? Had he simply been simpler than Rowcliffe to poison?
All that seemed an even further stretch of likelihood than Symond being poisoned to divert suspicion from himself or from someone else when there had been no suspicion that needed diverting.
If Breredon and Symond had been on the same side in the matter of Sister Cecely, there might have been some sense to be made of it all-that someone wanted to be rid of them both. Or that one of them wanted to be rid of the other. But they weren’t on the same side. Were they? Could there maybe be something someone knew that gave reason to want them both dead?
This was useless. She could think of too many possible “whys,” too many “maybes.” They were making a maze in her mind without giving her any way to tell a true “why” from the rest. She should maybe start with “how” it had been done. “How” might tell her “who,” and “who” could then be brought to confess to “why.”
She found that at some point she had sat down on the bed again, was staring at the far white-washed wall without seeing it, and still had her hands pressed to her back because she had forgotten to move them. With a small grimace at that new stiffness, she let go of her back and stood up again. It was against the Rule to be this idle and alone during the day. Besides, she had gone as far as she could in her own mind. She needed to ask questions of someone besides herself.