Unless…
Cecely made no secret of her angry bitterness against him, both for knowing her secret and for “betraying” it to the Rowcliffes, and just now she had been openly, resentfully disappointed he was not dead.
What if whatever had been given to Breredon had been meant to sicken him, but what had been given to Symond been meant to kill?
Certainly Cecely’s angry bitterness against him seemed almost sufficient to that.
Or fully sufficient?
Murder was a sadly short-witted answer to anger, Frevisse thought. Or to anything, come to that.
That being given, who was the most short-witted person in this business?
Cecely.
And given the anger she had just shown at her paramour’s betrayal of their secret to Symond and at Symond for leading the hunt to her here, with the added edge that Symond was in reach while her paramour was not-yes, Frevisse was afraid she could see all too readily how Cecely, short-witted, might give way to wanting Symond dead.
Might want it enough to try somehow to kill him.
It was the “somehow” on which it all fell down.
Cecely had had no chance to do anything to anyone in the guesthall, and between the guesthall and the cloister the only link was Frevisse herself, if Dame Claire and Dame Johane were discounted, and Frevisse thought with a grim humour that they could be.
Oh, other folk went back and forth between the cloister and guesthall. Not nuns, of course, except by the prioress’ leave, and none of them would have helped Cecely at anything like this anyway. But servants did, when there was need to take or fetch something from one place to another, as was happened lately with the guesthall’s needs drawing heavily on the cloister’s stores of food. But how would a servant, briefly in the guesthall kitchen, have had chance at only Breredon’s or Symond Hewet’s food or drink? To have poisoned either one, let alone both, someone from the cloister would have had to be in the guesthall kitchen at just the right time, knowing just which food or drink was meant for either man, with just the right chance to poison either the food or drink.
Unless these attacks were not, after all, aimed at anyone in particular.
Frevisse stopped short on that thought and looked at it again.
What if the poisonings were without particular purpose, just happening to happen to Breredon and Symond?
That, in its way, was worse than imagining Cecely was behind them, because if the poisonings were, one way or another, Cecely’s doing, then there should be some way to find the trail between her and them. But if the poisonings were by someone run mad and taken to happenstance killing…
No. Better to hold to the thought that these were, somehow, Cecely’s doing, Frevisse thought. If, after following that trail as far as it went, she found that it went nowhere, then she would look at that other possibility.
She stood up. There might be time left before Sext to ask Dame Claire or Dame Johane about the medicines. If they could give a firm answer about them, she would be that little further ahead.
It was only while she was passing along the cloister walk toward the infirmary, past Dame Perpetua still sitting guard on Sister Cecely, that she suddenly wondered why Abbot Gilbert had not asked why she had taken it on herself to give up the missing deeds and bill. He had surely heard at least that much of what had passed between her and Sister Cecely. He might very reasonably have demanded an explanation of her. Instead, he had said nothing about it at all. Why not?
A twinge that was not quite worry, but might be if she had time to dwell on it, passed through her thoughts that were otherwise mostly on poison. She let it go, pleased, as she came to the infirmary, to find both Dame Claire and Dame Johane there, heads bent together over the infirmary’s book laid open on the worktable. They both looked up, their foreheads tightened with almost identical small frowns, and Dame Claire said, “If you’ve come for an answer about the herbs and all, the best we can tell you is that we don’t know.”
“Don’t know if you’re missing any, or don’t know what was used?” Frevisse returned.
“Either,” Dame Claire said.
“I think there may be some missing from several things,” Dame Johane said. “As if someone took a little from each instead of much from one.”
“What would they do, mixed together?” Frevisse asked.
“We don’t know,” Dame Claire said. “What may-and only may-be missing are herbs and drugs we’ve never mixed together. There was no purpose to doing so.”
“Unless to make someone very ill,” Frevisse said. “Or kill them.”
Dame Claire’s face settled into hard lines. “Or kill them,” she agreed. “Yes.”
“But you can’t be certain anything was taken at all,” Frevisse said.
“We can’t,” Dame Claire said. “Oh, I’m certain enough none of the truly potent things were taken. The dwale. The monkshood. Those are untouched. But among the herbs that could do what was done-” She shook her head. “We can’t tell for a certainty.”
“But I think there’s less than there should be,” Dame Johane put in earnestly.
Dame Johane, who was Cecely’s cousin and might have more loyalty to her than she had outwardly shown.
Frevisse shook off that thought. Surely, if Dame Johane had had her own guilt to cover, she would have been more firm that nothing was missing.
The bell rang to Sext, blessedly ending talk, but as she left the infirmary with Dame Claire and Dame Johane, Frevisse saw clearly how that brief squirm of suspicion was fresh warning of how deeply Cecely’s return was corrupting the nunnery’s peace.
Frevisse had learned early that a nunnery was not a peaceful place by either nature or chance. However much-or little-a nun might desire to give herself to God, she remained herself, and selves tended all too easily to grate, one against another, the more especially when cloistered, with no choice about being together. It was the cloister’s peace that gave best chance for deepest prayer and the growing away from the world and self that were the reasons for coming into a nunnery, but there was constant need for great, kind, firm care by a prioress ever-watchful against the very many things that could undermine and overset her nunnery’s peace. As Cecely was oversetting St. Frideswide’s peace, both by her grating self and by the outward-spreading circles of trouble around her.
And just when a prioress’ firm hand was most needed, Domina Elisabeth was all but vanished from among them.
Still, she came to the Office this time, belatedly again as she had to Tierce, but that was better than not at all, like yesterday. Judging by the flatness of her voice as she started the Office, her mind was not much there, but Frevisse had to admit that neither was her own when she found herself saying, “Quam dilecta habitation tua, Domine exercituum! Desiderat, languens concupiscit anima mea atria Domini…”-How delightful is your dwelling, Lord of the host! Fainting, my soul desires and longs for the halls of the Lord…-while thinking, What if Cecely had simply brought poison with her?
Why she might have done so could be set aside for now. Just let the question be, What if she had?
But everything had been taken away from her after she came here.
But not from Edward.
And there had been her demands to see him. Could she have given him the poison to keep, the way she had given him the deeds?
Possibly. Possibly.
There were too many possibles about all of this. Frevisse felt an impatient need to move past possibles to something certain. She looked for and found Mistress Petham and Edward in the nave, and after the Office she overtook them in the cloister walk and in as plain a voice as she could, free of undertones or over-meanings, she asked Edward whether his mother had given him anything else to keep secret.
Edward looked worriedly from her to Mistress Petham, then at his toes, then finally said, “Yes.”