Frevisse copied the cross before saying, “So Guy had only claim to a portion of a manor, not a whole one, as Sister Cecely says. And Edward has nothing, not being legitimately his son.”
“No, there’s a whole manor that’s young Edward’s, just as the-” He stopped, started again. “Just as his mother says. Guy bought a manor and willed it to Edward. Come to Edward that way, there’s no question it’s his and no quarrel about it.” This time his glance was an angry one at Breredon’s chamber. “Except over what she means to do with it. No, the trouble is she’s got it into her addled head that Guy’s father should have had an equal share with my brother Robert and me in all my father’s manors, and that share should have come to Guy and then to young Edward, and that he’s been cheated out of it.”
“But your father hadn’t divided them that way?” Frevisse asked.
“He couldn’t. He was a merchant rich enough he married into the gentry, but the three manors were my mother’s, her inheritance from her father. They were to go to her sons after she and our father were dead, and that’s what happened. Robert got two. I got one. Our half brother Edward had a moiety-a life-share-in one of Robert’s, and besides that, our father had bought him into a good apprenticeship with a mercer in Norwich. The moiety went back to Robert when Edward died, but Edward had done well enough that he left Guy as well off as the rest of us, just not in lands.”
“Because the lands were all from your father’s first wife and couldn’t go to his second wife’s son,” Frevisse said, to be sure she had followed all of this.
“You have it. Sometime or other your Sister Cecely took hold on it otherwise. She made the last three years or so a hell for Guy, nagging him to do something about ‘the wrong’ done him and his father. It was to shut her up he bought a manor and willed it to Edward. Didn’t shut her up, though, and once he was dead, she pulled this trick on us, despite she knows-she has to know-that Edward, being a bastard, has no rights to inherit anything not straightly willed to him. Not that we were supposed to know there was no marriage,” Rowcliffe added bitterly.
“Nor would you have known it if Symond had not told you.”
“If Guy hadn’t told him and he hadn’t told us, no, we’d not have known. Even then, Symond might not have told us, except she ran and took Edward and the deeds with her.”
That raised a few questions about Symond, but more immediate was Frevisse’s wondering why Guy had told him at all. Was there more to it than what Symond had already told her? She was looking forward to when he would be well enough for her questions, but that would not be now, and she asked, “Yesterday at meals who served your food? A guesthall servant or one of your own?”
Rowcliffe had been braced for more questions about inheritance, it seemed, or else he had to think about it to remember. Either way, he took a moment before answering, “One of yours. I wouldn’t have one of my hamfists do it for fear of more on me than anywhere else.”
“Would Symond have had to drink and eat whatever the rest of you did?”
“Of course.”
“All the same,” she persisted. “Nothing different.”
“Nothing different,” Rowcliffe said.
“From the same pitcher, from the same platter,” Frevisse said, thinking aloud.
But not the same bowl or cup, said the back of her mind.
Rowcliffe had sharpened to her questions now and demanded, “Why? Are you thinking poison instead of disease? You’re thinking he was poisoned?”
“I think that sometimes food spoils without anyone knows it in time,” Frevisse said. “If it’s that rather than disease, I have to find it out.”
That was not a denial of poison, but Rowcliffe took it that way, as she had meant him to. “Better if it’s that,” he agreed. “Couldn’t be poison, anyway. How would she get it here?” His voice hardened. “She’s locked up, isn’t she? You’ve said she is.”
“She’s confined in a room, with guard kept at the door at all times. She goes nowhere, even to the church.”
Rowcliffe gave a curt nod, satisfied by that. His next likely question would be about Abbot Gilberd and his dealing with Sister Cecely. Frevisse avoided it by thanking him for his answers and walking away. Unfortunately she took with her the one question to which she had not even a glimmer of answer yet: who had poisoned Breredon and Symond. She expected that how would answer the who, but in truth she was a little afraid of what that answer might be, because it was more and more shaping toward being not one of the outcomers but someone of the nunnery, and why someone of the nunnery should want to do this much harm-and even murder-was something she did not understand at all, and not understanding it made her afraid that what she might find out would be not only altogether apart from but even darker than the matter of Sister Cecely.
Chapter 22
Whatever Frevisse’s fears, they did not release her from her duty, and she went next to Breredon’s chamber, to be met at the doorway by his man Coll, who bowed and said before she asked, “He’s fit to talk, if that’s what you want.”
It was, but more than that, Frevisse was pleased to find Breredon somewhat sitting up, leaned back on a pillow against the head of the bed. Color and strength were still gone from his face, but there was more life in his eyes than there had been yesterday, and before she could speak, he said, “They tell me Symond Hewet has sickened, too. Has anyone else?”
“Only the two of you thus far.”
“I pray to God there are no more. This has been dire. How does he?”
“Badly. Worse than you, but better than he was.”
“God keep him. Coll says you don’t know what it is we have.”
“We don’t.” Which was true enough: Dame Claire did not yet know what poison had been used.
“Just so it goes no further. That’s what I pray.”
“So do we all. Master Breredon, there’s something I would ask you.”
“Ask.” He made an effort at smiling. “If I fall to sleep in the middle of your question, I’ll answer later.”
“It’s about the Rowcliffes, about this property that Sister Cecely claims should be her son’s. Not his own manor from his father but some of the other Rowcliffe manors. Which side has the truth? Do you know?”
Breredon considered before answering. Or maybe he was gathering his strength before he finally said, “My family knew John Rowcliffe’s mother’s family before ever Rowcliffe’s father married into it. As I’ve always heard, the Rowcliffe manors come by way of her. The manor I want is one that Guy bought and willed to the boy, nothing to do with John, except it sits so well with one of his own.”
“And besides that, you have a daughter to marry to Edward.”
“I do.”
“But you say you want nothing to do with the other Rowcliffe lands.”
“Blessed Mary, no. Whoever Mistress Rowcliffe-your Sister Cecely-might have befooled into taking those deeds would have been pouring gold into lawyers’ laps for years to come, fighting over it with the Rowcliffes.” Breredon sighed. His eyes closed again. “Fool of a woman,” he said on a fading breath and was asleep with the ease of a man still far from well.