“Except you have the deeds to the manors you claim aren’t his. Won’t those deeds give John Rowcliffe the lie as well as anything Symond Hewet might say?”
“What? Yes! That’s why he wants them so badly! That’s what I tried to tell Abbot Gilberd. That if Neddie becomes a monk, the manors will go his abbey!”
Dame Frevisse went on staring at her. Cecely barely kept from stamping her foot with impatience. The woman was so slow! But at last, Dame Frevisse nodded, said, “Yes. That interests him against the Rowcliffes, surely,” turned, and left the room.
Cecely took two angry steps after her, wanting more from her than that. Then common sense caught up to her and she sank down wearily on the bench again. Demanding anything from a woman like Dame Frevisse-a woman who had never been a woman-was useless. She was as narrow as the cloister she lived in.
Still, something of what Cecely had said seemed to have struck through to her. If nothing else, it might get the Rowcliffes sent away, or maybe John arrested. That would make everything easier. Something had to turn her way soon.
Frevisse made effort, while crossing the yard to the guesthall, to subdue her angry impatience at Sister Cecely and somewhat succeeded. If not rid of it by the time she entered the hall, she at least had it controlled as she went to talk to Ela where she sat on a low stool in her usual morning place at the head of the stairs to the guesthall’s kitchen, watching what went on.
With her head crooked sideways to look up past her shoulders’ increasingly rounded stoop, Ela said, “Good morning, lady,” and made a slight attempt to rise, knowing Frevisse would gesture for her to stay seated.
Frevisse did, brought another stool, and sat down close to Ela, to say quietly, just between the two of them, “I have questions for you.”
The hall servants had finished with their morning cleaning of the hall. The Rowcliffes were at their now-usual place in a far corner, a few men who must be of the abbot’s entourage with them. Frevisse and Ela had their end of the hall to themselves, and Ela said, “Ask. I daresay I can make a good guess at answers.”
“The evening Master Breredon fell ill, he was served in his chamber on a tray his servant took to him, yes?”
“That’s so, as best as I recall. Nobody wanted him and the Rowcliffes meeting up if we could help it. Him no more than the rest of us.”
“Did he fear them, do you think?”
“My thought was just he’s a man who’ll step aside from trouble if he can, rather than run at it head on.”
“Who set the tray? In the kitchen, who put the food and drink on it?”
Ela held silent a moment, shrewdly eyeing Frevisse while thinking, before answering with a question of her own, “You’re thinking, aren’t you-you and Dame Claire-that it was poison that took both Master Breredon and Master Hewet?”
There being no point in denial, Frevisse answered, “We are, yes, and I want to know how it came to them.”
Ela made the small bobbing of her head that had to pass for a nod on her age-stiffened neck, then considered a while before saying, “Well, I’m feared I can’t say for certain about Master Breredon’s tray. Likely it was Luce set the tray, but it might have been Tom. I know it wasn’t me. Nor I don’t remember as it was carried up to him directly, or if his man came down for it. It would be Tom or Luce or his man you’d have to ask. As for Master Hewet, he’s been served at table with the others, his kinfolk, every time. That would have been Tom. When it’s this many menfolk all together, I keep Luce to the kitchen when I can. Not that they’ve been anything but well-mannered, except toward Master Breredon. But less tempted, less trouble, as they say.”
“What about Mistress Lawsell and her daughter?”
Ela softly chuckled. “There’s a problem. Mistress Lawsell doesn’t know whether to keep her and her girl to their chamber, so they won’t take ill-” Ela broke off to ask, “You want everyone to go on thinking it’s maybe a contagion, do you?”
“Dame Claire and I think that would be best.”
“Good, then. Less trouble than if they think there’s someone poisoning them,” Ela agreed and returned to answering Frevisse’s last question. “But since the young Rowcliffe started taking heed of her girl, Mistress Lawsell is torn between keeping her closed up and loosing her to him.”
“What does Elianor do?”
“Comes out. Stays in. Whatever her mother says. Butter-not-melt-in-her-mouth-obedient to her mother, she is, but she doesn’t encourage him that I can see.”
Frevisse wondered if Elianor’s mother was deceived into thinking she was winning against Elianor’s desire for nunhood. Or was Elianor slipping away from it herself, despite all she had said and maybe not even knowing that she was? Without talking with Elianor, there was no way to know, and there was no time now to wonder much about it. Frevisse thanked Ela and crossed the hall to Rowcliffe and the abbot’s men. They all stood up to bow to her. Young Jack had briefly disappeared into their chamber but was just coming out. He joined their bows and she bent her head to them all in return, then asked Jack, “How does he?” supposing he had been to see his cousin.
“Asleep,” Jack said. “But it’s a quiet sleep. He’s likely past the worst.”
“How do you feel?”
Jack traded startled looks with his father, before saying, “Well, thank you,” and his father echoed him.
“That’s good to hear.” Then to Rowcliffe, “If I might speak with you aside, please.”
He rose and left the table, going with her to the end of the hall where he said, before she said anything, “We’re not leaving while he’s so ill. Whatever it is, we’ll see it out here, him and-God forbid-whoever else comes down with whatever it is.”
“We do pray God forbids more of whatever it is, and I promise you there’s no thought of asking you to leave. What I hope instead is that you’ll tell me what the line of inheritance is in your family.”
Rowcliffe looked somewhat a-back at that. “For what?” he demanded.
“It’s about the manors Sister Cecely claims are Edward’s.”
“The lecherous-tailed, thieving bitch. They’re no more his than the moon is. I’m going nowhere until I have my deeds back.”
“What I wonder,” Frevisse said coolly, “is why she thinks Edward has claim to these manors.”
“Because she’s a fool!”
Frevisse raised her eyebrows at him. She watched while he throttled his anger into his control until finally he was able to say civilly enough, “It goes this way, no matter what she says. My father, God keep his soul, married twice. By his first wife he had my sister, my brother Robert, and me. Then my mother died, and a while after that he married again, God knows why, and had another son. When my father died, he left her-his second wife-with her dower lands to live on and her son Edward with moiety in a manor and an apprenticeship with a Norwich merchant.”
“That Edward being your half brother and our little Edward’s grandfather.”
“Aye, little Edward’s grandfather and my half brother. He was a good man.” Rowcliffe shuffled his feet as if suddenly uneasy about something and said, almost apologizing, “Heed. What I just said about my stepmother-that God knows why my father married her-that’s my anger talking. She was a good woman, a good wife, and the only harsh words she ever gave us were ones we’d earned.” Something very like a boy’s mischief warmed half a smile of remembrance from him. “Edward was a good brother, too. We’re a family that likes each other.” The remembered mischief faded, replaced by the weight of the present, and he said heavily, “It’s hard to have both my brothers gone. Robert and Edward both. And now there’s Guy and George gone, too, sudden and together, and while we’re still in the midst of grieving, this fool of a woman brings all this other trouble on us, where there didn’t need to be trouble at all.” He glanced toward the chamber where Symond Hewet lay. “Now there’s this,” he said and crossed himself. “God keep us all.”