Ela gave her a narrow look but did not ask any of the questions probably crossing her mind, just answered after a moment’s thought, “You. Dame Claire. Dame Johane.” Ela paused in more thought. “That’s all.” Then she added, “Tom’s sister. Not in the hall. Here. Didn’t come in, though. Was just there at the door.” Ela nodded toward the kitchen’s door to the yard.
“Tom’s sister?” Frevisse echoed blankly.
“From the cloister. Rabbity. Might find herself cooked into a pie one of these days, she’s so rabbity.”
“Alson,” said Frevisse.
“That’s her name. Tom’s sister.”
“But she didn’t come in.”
“Nay. Some evenings, when work’s done, they go out for a time together. Then there’s been those that came with Master Breredon and the Rowcliffes and the abbot, too. They’ve, one and another, been in and out of here to fetch this and that.”
“Thank you,” Frevisse said. She could see Ela readying to ask her own questions now but gave her no time for them, simply stood up and left, taking unhappy thoughts with her.
Returning to the cloister, she went again to the church for somewhere to think. Dame Thomasine was kneeling in front of the altar, undisturbed by Frevisse’s coming, nor did her presence trouble Frevisse as she settled into her choir stall and to her thoughts.
It was nine years since Cecely had fled from St. Frideswide’s. There had been the alarm of her disappearance and the search for her, then the report to the abbot and the following descent on the nunnery of officers from Abbot Gilberd and the bishop asking questions of the nuns and everyone else, and prying into every part of the nunnery’s life for sign of other trouble either present or possibly to come. Even after all of that was over, the nuns were left with penances and an enforced heart-searching among themselves for what had or had not been done to keep Sister Cecely safe. The problems brought on by her flight had seemed as if they would go on forever, but they had finally ended, were long past and gone.
The memories of them were not.
Neglected until brought back by Cecely’s return, but not gone.
Alson.
Alson then. Alson now.
Poor, foolish Alson.
Nine years ago she had admitted, with frightened weeping, her part in Cecely’s flight, had admitted she took Cecely’s place in the kitchen so Cecely could meet a man but sworn, still weeping, that she had not known Cecely meant to run away. She had wept and denied and sworn, and been believed. She had been told she was a fool but been forgiven and, out of pity, not been dismissed when well she might have been.
Surely, with that behind her, she was not fool enough to have been drawn into some new trouble at Cecely’s asking.
Surely she was not.
But-Alson then and Alson now.
Alson a link between the guesthall kitchen and the cloister, with a brother who could come at food and drink with no one thinking twice about it.
Frevisse was thankful when the bell rang for Nones.
Domina Elisabeth came again, which was surely a good sign; but Mistress Lawsell did, too, and stood close beyond the rood screen, glaring, impossible to ignore. The sooner the problem of her and her daughter was settled, the better, Frevisse thought, then tried to turn her mind away to the Office, only to find, as she had feared, no respite in it, and at its end she finally, fully faced that time for thinking was ended.
Given what she suspected, time was come for something to be done.
After all, if she suspected correctly, she might herself be the next one poisoned.
Chapter 27
The day that in the morning had been half clouds, half fair, was now, in the late afternoon, gone all to clouds. A glooming gray twilight filled the church, deepening to thick shadows in the far corners of nave and choir. Only the altar existed in light, haloed by a dozen bright-burning candles on tall stands behind and beside it, with four candles in their gleaming brass-gold holders standing on the altar itself, sheening the gold and scarlet of the letter filling half the page of the missal standing open there and flickering gold from Abbot Gilberd’s long-cuffed, gold-embroidered glove as he moved his free hand in benediction over the nuns gathered before him in this hour before Vespers. In his other hand he held his abbatial crozier, the foot of the staff set firm against the stone step of the altar, the carved, curved top rising above his head.
All of the nuns but not their prioress were there, a cluster to either side of him, hands folded into their opposite sleeves, heads bowed, seeming in their black gowns a deepening of the church’s shadows save for the white of their faces and wimples.
Abbot Gilberd ended his deep intoning of the Latin words and lowered his hand. The nuns did not stir, but now Domina Elisabeth and Father Henry, equally dressed in black, came forward from the far end of the choir stalls into the light, a frightened-eyed Alson between them.
She had been given chance to take off her kitchen-apron and wash her hands and face, but that was all. Nor, if Domina Elisabeth and Father Henry had done as Frevisse suggested, had she been told why she had been taken from the kitchen and brought here. She had to know she was in some manner of trouble. How much she guessed was impossible to tell, but by the way she sank to her knees when Domina Elisabeth and Father Henry stopped in front of Abbot Gilberd at the foot of the altar steps and let her go, her legs must have only barely been holding her up until then; and when Abbot Gilberd said grimly, “Alson Pye,” she made a soft moan and crouched lower on the stone step.
“Alson Pye, look at me.”
Alson whimpered and lifted her head, her shoulders still huddled, her fear naked on her face.
Standing with the other nuns, Frevisse felt pity for her and, unreasonably, regret for having brought her to this. Or maybe it was simply regret that the whole miserable matter was come to this-to terrifying a poor woman who had not had sense enough to keep out of it.
But this had seemed the most direct way to an end of it all.
Cecely had not known Symond Hewet knew her secret when she came back here. If she had, she would never have come, no matter what she lied about it now. So she had learned it after she came here. How? Not from Abbot Gilberd. To be certain of that, Frevisse had asked Domina Elisabeth, who had said the matter had not come up in his questioning of her.
Then it had to have come from someone else, and the only time that Frevisse knew for a certainty Symond’s part in it all had been said aloud for anyone to hear had been in the guesthall after the Rowcliffes came. And when she set to remembering who had been there to hear it besides the Rowcliffes and herself, there had been Tom Pye. Tom who talked sometimes with his sister Alson. Alson who sometimes sat for guard outside Cecely’s door with no one to know what was said between them then. Alson who had had part in Cecely’s flight nine years ago.
Frevisse had been stopped by the gap between those pieces and how Cecely could have persuaded Alson to set Tom on to poisoning two men. She had already settled in her own mind why Cecely would want them poisoned. Master Breredon was so the Rowcliffes would be accused and, at the least, be sent away. Symond Hewet was for plain revenge. What had slowed her in untangling it all was that she had kept looking for the sense behind it all, when there was no sense. Or not sufficient sense. And that was Cecely, who seemed to have so little common sense behind almost everything she did. How else could she have come to the thought that poisoning two men was a reasonable thing to do?
Yet poisoning them had made sense enough to Alson and her brother, too, because it had to have been Alson who took something from the infirmary, and Tom who put whatever it was into the two men’s food or drink. Frevisse could see no other way of it.
Why Alson and Tom should be such fools still escaped her. That could only be found out by bringing them to confess.