Ida, as if she would warn Frevisse away from disturbing him, rose from the stool where she had been sitting beyond the foot of the bed. Frevisse drew back a step to show she meant to leave him sleeping, gave the woman a slight nod to which Ida was returning a curtsy as Frevisse left.
So now she had not only the two sides of the quarrel over the deeds but a very certain thought on who was in the right, and it was not Sister Cecely.
There was no surprise for her in that.
She likewise believed Breredon’s insistence that he had wanted nothing to do with any stolen deeds. John Rowcliffe, being no fool and probably knowing Breredon for no fool either, surely did not think Breredon was after them, which meant Rowcliffe had no reason to poison Breredon, let alone his own cousin.
So surely there was something else to be learned about Symond Hewet and Breredon. There might be reason to poison one man or the other, but why both of them, as much on different sides as they were?
Different sides of what?
Of Sister Cecely’s lies and ambitions.
There was surely, somewhere, a straight answer through the tangle, but all that Frevisse could yet see was the tangle, and she suspected that her sight of even that was blurred by her having had too little sleep since yesterday.
She found that she had come to a stop outside the chamber, was standing there with her thoughts, and realized that Breredon’s man Coll beside the doorway had stood up from where he had been sitting on his heels, back against the wall, and was waiting to see if she wanted anything. She turned to him. “Coll, two evenings ago, before Master Breredon fell ill, was it you or Ida or someone else who fetched his supper from the kitchen?”
Coll gave her a startled stare while he put his mind around the question, then said, “I did, my lady. No. I didn’t. The nunnery’s man did. He brought it up from the kitchen, and I took it from him and took it in to Master Breredon.”
“Where did you take it from him?”
“Where? Um, here.” He made a small gesture at where they were standing, just outside Breredon’s door. “Or…I came out the door and saw him coming, and I went a few steps and took it from him. But here, near enough.”
Her questions had openly confused him. “Thank you,” she said. “Tell no one I asked.”
That confused him more, but he said obediently, “Yes, my lady.”
She walked away, going toward the stairs down to the kitchen, trying to guess how long she had before the cloister bell would call to Nones. Still somewhat muddled by lack of sleep, she found she had no good guess and hurried a little, not having much in the way of questions to ask and wanting to have them done before she had to turn away from them.
In the kitchen Tom and Luce were as confused as Coll at being questioned, but their replies were straight enough. Luce had readied Master Breredon’s tray. Tom had taken it up the stairs and given it to Master Breredon’s man.
“Just like that?” Frevisse asked, not wanting to ask outright if there had been chance of anyone else coming close to it. She did not need more thoughts of poison starting around.
“Just like that, aye,” said Tom, and Luce nodded agreement. With the unease of a servant afraid he was going to be accused of something, Tom added earnestly, “We didn’t do anything wrong with it.”
“I don’t think you did,” Frevisse assured him firmly. Ela would take it much amiss if she upset either Tom or Luce too much to work well.
But somehow, some place, something had happened to whatever Breredon had eaten or drunk two days ago. Maybe she needed to ask more questions about whatever food or drink of his own he had, that supposedly only his servants would have handled but might have been reached by someone else.
But that would not explain how Symond came to be poisoned.
Or, come to it, why either man had been.
She left the guesthall, hardly noticing the rain still softly falling as she crossed the yard, not going directly back to the cloister but to the church, entering by its west door and going up the nave, reaching the choir just as the cloister bell began to ring, so that she was first in her place for Nones, already kneeling, forehead resting on her folded hands when the others came in. She slid backward onto her seat only as Dame Juliana began the Office and saw then that everyone was present except Domina Elisabeth yet again. Frevisse supposed that meant either Abbot Gilberd had left the cloister, and Domina Elisabeth for reasons of her own had chosen not to come to the Office, or else that one of the servants was with them. Whichever it was, it was Domina Elisabeth’s concern, not hers, she thought and from there set herself to go as deeply into the Office as she was able, into the greater realms of soul and mind and heart there were beyond the shallow troubles mankind made for itself. Her voice joined with the others in these prayers and psalms and was joined with the voices of all the women who had ever prayed them, women she would never see and never know, uncounted other women not only now but all the ones who had prayed them through centuries before and all the ones who would pray them through centuries to come. “Etsi moveatur terra cum omnibus incolis suis: ego firmavi columnas eius… Hunc deprimit, et illum extollit… Ego autem exsultabo in aeternum…”-Even if the earth with all dwelling there shift, I have made firm its pillars… This one hehumbles, and that one he lifts up… But I will exult intoeternity.
At Nones’ end, she only regretfully came back to the day and its questions and the nuns’ midday meal. Time had been when Nones had come well after midday, halfway to Vespers, but for the sake of giving the day just one longer while of uninterrupted work, the Office had slipped backward to vaguely the day’s middle, with what had been the late-morning’s meal now coming after it, leaving all the after-Nones of the day for work. It was in Frevisse’s mind that today she might well spend some of that time at the copying work she had set aside through Holy Week, her hope being that if the work did not help to clear her mind, it would at least give her brief relief from her thoughts. But at dinner’s end, when the final blessing had been said and the nuns were readying to go their separate ways until Vespers, Dame Claire slipped to her side and said, “Mistress Petham has asked to see you.”
Despite herself, Frevisse took and let go a deep, impatient breath, but there was no help for it. She was hosteler. More than that, Mistress Petham was a better guest than most and did not deserve her impatience, let alone the neglect Frevisse had had toward her these past few days. So she made herself say mildly, “I’ll go now,” before asking, “Have you any better thought on what was used against Breredon and Symond Hewet?”
“I mean to have Dame Johane go through our stores this afternoon, to see if there’s less of something than she thinks there should be.”
That would have to do, being the best that could be done about it, and Frevisse nodded and went her way up to Mistress Petham’s room. She knew that Dame Margrett would have been seeing to her mother’s good care by the servants and that Dame Claire had not neglected her health, but Frevisse had her duty, too, had not been doing it as well as she might have, and had her apology ready as she knocked quietly at Mistress Petham’s closed door.
There was a quick patter of soft footfalls, and Edward opened the door enough to look out the gap and see her. His eyes grew large and frightened and he backed away. That surprised her. She could think of nothing she had done to make him afraid of her.
From across the room, Mistress Petham called, “Come in,” and Frevisse did, to find her sitting on the floor near the hearth beside a scatter of small, bright-glazed clay boules. She was just flicking one with her thumb, setting it rolling along the hearth stone. It clicked against another one, and Mistress Petham laughed and said, “There, Edward! I’ve not forgotten the trick of it after all!” She looked up and laughed again, this time at Frevisse’s open surprise, and said, making to stand up, “They’re Edward’s. We’re finding out just how badly he can beat me at every game.”