Edward, who had retreated to her side, took hold on her near elbow, helping her to her feet while mumbling something toward his own.
“Yes,” Mistress Petham agreed. “I am getting better. If we go at this for six more months, I might actually win.” She wiggled the fingers of her free hand at Frevisse. “Stiff with age and use, I fear me.” Edward, now that she was standing safely up, was clinging to her other hand with both of his own, his head still bowed. She looked down at him, reached across herself with her free hand to stroke his hair, and said gently, “Edward, she’s here now. We need to tell her why.” Still stroking his hair, she said, to Frevisse now, “I asked to see Domina Elisabeth but she’s in talk with Abbot Gilbert and not to be disturbed, Dame Margrett said. She said I should speak to you instead. Thank you for coming.”
Frevisse bent her head, acknowledging the thanks, still ready to make her apology for not having come more often, but Mistress Petham was going on, freeing her hand from Edward so she could put both her hands on his shoulders and steer him from her toward her bed. “It’s time, Edward,” she said, still gently. “We have to show Dame Frevisse what you have.”
Edward stayed where he was for a long moment, then suddenly broke away from her, ran forward to the bed, reached under a pillow, grabbed something, and turned around, clutching a folded paper or parchment to his chest. He looked confused and frightened as he raised his head to look at Frevisse again, and she went down on one knee, to stop towering over him, and said, matching Mistress Petham’s gentleness, “What do you have, Edward?”
He went on staring at her. It was Mistress Petham who said quietly, “The stitching on the inside of his tunic’s collar was coming loose. I made to mend it this morning. These were in it for stiffening, along with the buckram. Edward.”
Biting his lower lip, his eyes still frightened with what might have been fear or confusion or guilt or all of them together, Edward came to Frevisse and held out the folded something to her. Still kneeling, she thanked him and took it from him, a little smiling to reassure him that it was all right, whatever it was. Apparently not reassured, he broke away from her and ran to hide his face against Mistress Petham’s skirts as Frevisse stood up.
“I didn’t look at them when I first found them,” Mistress Petham said, patting his shoulder. “I gave them to him, saying they were his. He says that, no, they’re not, and that he wants Symond Hewet to have them.”
Frevisse was unfolding what were proving to be several pieces of parchment folded together into a narrow strip to fit inside a small boy’s collar, but at Symond Hewet’s name she raised her gaze sharply to Mistress Petham. “He’s…” she started and broke off, not certain how much to say.
“Not dying, we hope,” Mistress Petham said quickly. “We’d heard he was sick but…”
“No, not dying,” Frevisse answered as quickly. “He was very sick, but he’s bettering now.” Then, gently, “Edward, what is this? Why do you have it?”
“He isn’t sure what it is,” Mistress Petham answered for him again. “His mother sewed it into his collar and told him to keep it secret. Edward, you have to tell Dame Frevisse what you told me. What did your mother tell you?”
Edward reluctantly drew back from her and slowly turned around, one hand still clutching to her skirts, the other fisted at his side. Frevisse had half expected him to be crying, but he was not, and now that he was brought to it, he said with surprising steadiness, no matter that his eyes were still large and frightened, “She said I was not to tell anyone I had them in my collar. That they’re ours and nobody else’s. But that’s not true, and I don’t want to go with Master Breredon, and my father told me that if ever I was in trouble or needed help I should go to Symond, but I can’t, and now he’s sick, and I wanted to ask Jack but I didn’t, and…” He paused for his breath to catch up to him, then burst out, “And my father said people should be good, but I don’t think it’s good for me to have-” He pointed at the parchments in Frevisse’s hands. “I shouldn’t have them, should I?”
“No, I don’t think you should,” Frevisse agreed gently. “You’ve done right to give them to me. It was a good thing to do and it will maybe make things well for everyone. You are very brave and very good, Edward. Just as your father would want you to be.”
Edward kept his eyes fixed on her, as if looking to see how much truth she was telling him, until beside him, Mistress Petham said quietly, “Why don’t you set up another game of boules for us, Edward, while I see Dame Frevisse to the door?”
Probably glad to be released, Edward immediately turned away and went to his knees beside the scatter of bright-glazed boules, beginning to gather them together as Frevisse stood up and moved with Mistress Petham toward the door. There, with one hand on the handle to let Frevisse out, Mistress Petham said, too low for Edward to hear, “He kept pulling at his collar. I think he meant for the threads to give way, so someone would find what was there.” She hesitated, then added, “I looked at them. I think you-or Domina Elisabeth or my lord abbot-should read them before they’re given to anyone else.”
Frevisse nodded silent agreement to that and left, slipping the folded parchments into her undergown’s close-fitted sleeve, having them against her wrist and out of sight by the time she reached the stairfoot. There she paused to decide what she would do next.
Surely best would be to go to Domina Elisabeth with what she had.
But that did not seem best when Frevisse thought on it. Domina Elisabeth was presently so removed from everything, so deep in dealing about Sister Cecely and only with Abbot Gilberd, that to take anything else to her felt nigh to impossible.
And then there was the blunt fact that Frevisse wanted to know for herself what was on these carefully secreted parchments, and she turned not toward the stairs to Domina Elisabeth’s rooms but the other way, to the infirmary that was close at hand and almost a private place.
Thinking that, she was discomfited to find Dame Johane in the outer room, frowning in either thought or displeasure while putting small linen bags back into the chest of medicines sitting on the table. Not to waste the chance, Frevisse paused to ask, “Have you found anything missing?”
Dame Johane, still frowning as she took up one of the small bottles, made no other answer than a shake of her head. Frevisse took advantage of her silence to say nothing else, left her to her plainly heavy thoughts and went past her into the next room. Standing where the best light fell through the window, she unfolded the parchments.
There were three of them, each wider than it was long. Because there was no point in wasting parchment, a document was often cut off below the names signed at its end if there were any, as there were here, so that the unused portion could be used for something else. Of the three parchment pieces she held, one was far shorter than the others, hardly an inch and a half of parchment used. The other two were longer but short enough that they had been easily twice-folded, the shorter one inside them, to the width of a child’s collar, making it simple to lay them along the stiffening already there, to be then stitched out of sight. There were signs that wax seals had been hung from the two longer ones, but the seals were gone, cut away probably because thick as such seals were, they could not have been hidden.
The longer writings were, as Frevisse expected, two deeds to carefully described properties. She judged that with a little forging of other documents and names, they could very well be used to make as much trouble for the Rowcliffes as both Rowcliffe and Breredon had claimed. She took up the third parchment piece and read it.