“Do you still have it?” Frevisse asked gently. “Where is it?”
For answer, Edward freed his hand from Mistress Petham’s, unclasped the small leather pouch hanging from his belt, took from it a little leather bag closed by a drawstring, and said, “It’s in here.”
Frevisse held out her hand. Slowly he set the bag into it. By the feel of it, it held the little glazed clay boules with which he and Mistress Petham had been playing the other day. She loosened the drawstring and felt inside but found only boules.
Watching her, Edward said softly, “It’s in the bottom.”
She had been looking for a vial or box or something else that could hold poison. Instead what she felt, now she was feeling for it, was a folded paper, or maybe it was parchment. She tried to draw it out but it seemed stuck.
“It’s stitched,” Edward said. “So it won’t come out.”
He answered her questioning look by pointing at the bag’s bottom. Frevisse lifted the bag high enough for her to see the bottom, and indeed in the middle of the bag’s bottom curve was a single stitch, where no one was likely to note it or think about it if they did, enough to hold in place something folded and put inside the bag. Frevisse lowered the bag and looked at Edward. “What is it?” Because whatever it was, it was not a packet of poison, attached so firmly it could not be taken out of hiding.
“My manor,” Edward said, still softly.
“The deed to your manor?” she asked, carefully gentle. “The one your father left you?”
Edward nodded.
“Your mother took out your boules, turned the bag inside out, folded the deed very small, stitched it in place, turned the bag right side out, and put your boules back in. Was that the way of it?”
Edward nodded.
And who would trouble a small boy about his bag of boules?
Still, without much trying, Frevisse could think of several ways things could go wrong with that as a hiding place; but by now she knew all too well that Cecely was not long on either thought or imagination. Cecely saw what she wanted to see, and when the world failed her vision of what it should be, she was angry and resentful of everyone and everything except herself.
Mistress Petham stroked the back of Edward’s head, telling him, “You are a very brave boy. You didn’t give the secret away, you know. Dame Frevisse found it out.”
He nodded without seeming much comforted. Whether it was his fault or not, he had lost yet another secret he had been supposed to keep.
Frevisse could only hope that when he was older, he would accept that there were secrets with which he should never have been burdened, that the guilt of them was not his.
That he had carried the weight of worry and might carry the guilt for who knew how long was yet another thing to be set in the scale against Sister Cecely.
But the deed was not what Frevisse had been seeking or had even thought about-making her wonder what else had she failed to think about in all of this-and she asked, very gently, as she gave him back his bag, “Edward, did your mother give you anything else to keep?”
Softly, cradling the bag, his eyes downcast, he said, “No.”
Frevisse did not insult him by asking if he was sure. From wherever it had come-not from his parents, surely-there was a strong strain of truth in the child, and she quietly thanked him for his help. Eyes downcast, he nodded silently. Then he looked up with silent pleading at Mistress Petham. She gave him a small nod, seeming to know his question, and asked Frevisse, “Is all well with what Edward gave you yesterday?”
Frevisse looked down at Edward and answered, “They’re back with the men to whom they belong. Your cousins are all very grateful. All’s well about it.”
Edward bit his lip, looked at his feet, looked up at her, and whispered, “Does my mother know?”
Frevisse answered his worry quietly. “She does. It’s made her unhappy, but she’s unhappy about a great many things just now. What she meant to do was wrong, and what you did was right. Your father would be glad of it and proud of you.” Or if not, he should have been, she added silently and somewhat savagely.
Edward nodded and let Mistress Petham take his hand again and lead him away. He was not fully reassured, Frevisse feared, watching them go, and she had to wonder whether his mother would turn against him now his truth had lost her everything she had meant to use in her stolen life. Very possibly Edward wondered the same. How much did he understand about what his mother had been doing? Children might be innocent and they might be ignorant; neither was the same as being stupid. Edward maybe understood full well his mother had meant to sell him to Breredon as his last piece of usefulness to her, and that understanding might ease his guilt at what his truthfulness had cost. He might even understand that, even if he had lost his mother by his truthfulness, she had been intent on losing him for her own selfish ends.
Frevisse could only hope that in time to come he would take what comfort he could in knowing that by doing right he had kept greater wrongs from being done.
But that was much to ask presently of a small boy.
Frevisse went back along the walk to her desk in its stall and sat down. Beyond the thin boards between her desk and the next, the sound of a pen scratching said Dame Johane was as honestly at work as Frevisse should have been, but she left pen and ink and paper where they were and simply sat, brooding on poison, the poisoned, and the poisoner.
If nothing had been taken from the infirmary and if Cecely herself had brought nothing, then…
What if Breredon poisoned himself with something he had brought with him, as cover for then poisoning Symond? Or maybe John Rowcliffe himself had been meant, and Symond been struck by accident.
But that would mean Breredon had known he would encounter the Rowcliffes here and had had reason to plan to kill one of them.
Or maybe it was not a Rowcliffe he had had in mind to kill when he brought the poison with him. Maybe it had been meant for Cecely, for some reason other than anything of which Frevisse yet knew or had even clue.
Or then again, perhaps one of the Rowcliffes was the poisoner.
Or then again…
No.
Frevisse firmly stopped that wide ranging of her thoughts. If she disproved the most straightforward likelihood-that Cecely was guilty-then she could go roaming to other possibilities.
But was she looking at Cecely as guilty for any better reason than how much she disliked her? Did she have more reason than that to suspect her before anyone else?
Frevisse rested her elbows on the desk, clasped her hands together, and bowed her head onto them, closing her eyes not in prayer but in thought, trying to look at it all from the beginning.
Cecely had come here in flight from the Rowcliffes, needing a “safe” place to wait for Breredon, to deal with him behind the Rowcliffes’ backs. She…
Frevisse stood up, eyes wide.
Among all her twisting around of possibilities, all her trying to suppose everything that might have happened or could have happened or maybe had happened, there was one thing she had failed to wonder.
Chapter 26
Symond Hewet was sleeping when Frevisse came to his chamber. His cousin Jack was sitting on a stool beside the bed and stood up at sight of her, bowed his head courteously, and whispered in answer to her inquiring look, “He’s been sleeping more easily. I think he’s better.”
Symond’s breathing did seem more even and there was perhaps somewhat more color in his face. It was surely a pity to wake him, and Frevisse hesitated; but she needed two answers, one of them as soon as might be, and she reached down and touched his shoulder. Jack made a small sound but no other protest and she ignored him. Symond awoke slowly. Still too weak to be surprised, he peered up at her and asked vaguely, “What?”
Frevisse stooped to put herself closer to him, so he need make less effort in answering her, and said, “Sister Cecely claims that you meant to have Edward’s wardship. That you threatened to take Edward from her. Did you?”