“I believe she intends no such thing,” Frevisse said, just barely keeping sharpness from her voice. “That was simply another of her lies, and now that she’s been thwarted in everything she intended here, she will surely never consent to such a thing.”
“Her consent has no part in this. By all her vows, she is the Church’s. That makes whatever she has gained likewise the Church’s.”
Did that include her shame and the burden of her sin? Frevisse wondered sharply, and with her gaze unlowered, she said back at him, “I think it likely that, insofar as Edward is concerned, there are lawyers enough to contest that as would drag the matter through the courts for years. His little manor is not worth that much.”
She was guessing. She did not know that much about either Edward’s manor or the church’s law in such a matter, but she was offended by thought of Edward being wrenched even more hither and thither for no better reason than whatever use people could make of him. So she looked at Abbot Gilberd as if she knew whereof she spoke and waited to see if he knew better.
If he did, he did not say so, only looked back at her through a long moment’s silence and finally said, “Something must be done with him. He cannot be left with her, the more especially where she is going.”
Frevisse flashed a look at Domina Elisabeth who had been standing with statue-stillness through all this exchange, but it was Abbot Gilberd who answered her unspoken question with, “My sister has persuaded me, yes, that to leave Sister Cecely here would be too great a burden on St. Frideswide’s. She will be removed elsewhere. But neither do I think you wish to have the boy left on your hands.”
“Let him go back to his family. That is where he belongs. Enough of ‘the sins of the father’ have been visited on him,” Frevisse said. “Let him be done with the sins of the mother, too.”
Abbot Gilberd regarded her in silence through another long moment, then nodded slowly. “Yes. Sometimes the simplest way is the best way.”
Frevisse held back from saying that usually the simplest way was the best way. And in this matter, anyway, the simplest way was also the kindest. It was unkindness and the tangles that people made in their lives that led to misery, and with thought of misery, she asked, “What of Alson and Tom Pye?”
Abbot Gilberd looked to Domina Elisabeth. “We have been considering them,” he said, in a way that suggested they had been disagreeing, too.
Speaking for the first time since Frevisse had come in, Domina Elisabeth said, her voice tautly controlled but threatening to break, “I don’t want the trouble of law brought on them and all that will come from that. I just want this all to be over and done with.”
Beyond the words Frevisse heard the weary strain that must have been behind much of what Domina Elisabeth had said and done these past months. When she had sent her plea for help with Cecely to her brother, she must have likewise sent word of her own plight. That had been why Abbot Gilberd had come himself-in answer to his sister’s plea for herself, rather than for the small, sad matter of an apostate nun.
But the small, sad matter had grown into something large and ugly with the poisonings of two men, and for all that she must have been holding herself together by plain force of her will for who knew how long, her will was beginning to break apart under the threat of yet more trouble when all she wanted was an end to it all, and Abbot Gilberd did not help by saying, “I doubt that Symond Hewet or Master Breredon will be willing to simply let the matter end. Not with what they’ve suffered.”
Domina Elisabeth looked as if she were about to burst out that she did not care what they had suffered, but before she could, Frevisse said, “You might ask it of them, my lord. It could be pointed out to them that Master Breredon came here falsely, ready to do grave wrong in helping Sister Cecely away. And Symond Hewet, too, did no little wrong in keeping his cousin’s secret.”
“That they were poisoned could very likely be counted to outweigh both those matters,” Abbot Gilberd said.
“Then you could point out to them,” Frevisse returned, “that any prosecution of the Pyes would require both Master Breredon and Symond Hewet, as well as the Rowcliffes as their witnesses, to return here or to wherever else the trials were held for who knows how many times or when. Upon thought, they may well find that the inconvenience of that and the open telling of their own guilts that would come with any trial outweigh their need for justice against the Pyes. Since, if there is no trial, the Church is willing to forego its rights against them in the matters.”
“Is the Church willing to forego its rights?” Abbot Gilberd challenged.
“That would be the simplest way to have this done and over with, my lord.”
Abbot Gilberd regarded her with narrowed eyes and the fingers of one hand drumming on the wooden arm of the chair for a discomfortable length of time before he finally said, “Yes. Again, the simplest way may very well be the best.”
Determined to return to humility, Frevisse bowed her head and murmured, “Yes, my lord.”
Her hope was that he would now dismiss her. Her fear was that he would not. Nor did he but after another pause asked, “Why, dame?”
Keeping her eyes down and truly not understanding his question, she said, “‘Why,’ my lord?”
“Why do you care what happens to this Tom Pye and his sister?”
She paused over her answer before saying carefully, “Because what they did was done more from foolishness than evil.”
“What they did was evil. If either man had died, it would have been more evil,” Abbot Gilberd said.
“But it was evil from foolishness, not evil from the heart. Alson is small-witted. For all she says now that she was forced to it by threats, she may have truly thought she was doing Sister Cecely good service in making Master Breredon ill, to have the threatening Rowcliffes sent away so Sister Cecely might have chance at flight again. Having done that, she probably thought herself trapped into doing more. Nor does her brother being persuaded to it, too, surprise me. He doesn’t see things further than what he’s told.”
“He did the poisonings skillfully enough,” Abbot Gilberd said sharply.
“I never said he was a fool.” Just barely Frevisse kept sharpness from her own voice. “The poisonings-those were done with what he has-low cunning.”
That was the trouble with all this tangle, she thought bitterly. There had been low cunning in plenty but a grievous lack of good sense.
She remembered to add, “My lord,” and lowered her head again.
That meant she did not know where Abbot Gilberd was looking through the long silence that followed, but it ended with him saying, apparently to Domina Elisabeth, “This will suffice? That I see to everything, save you deal with the Pyes as you see fit, if I persuade the Rowcliffes to forego the law?”
“Yes,” Domina Elisabeth said wearily. “I’ll deal with them if you see to all the rest. And to Mistress Lawsell.”
“Ah. Mistress Lawsell.” Abbot Gilberd sounded no happier at thought of her than Frevisse felt, but it seemed he accepted her along with the rest of the burden Domina Elisabeth was setting down, because he next said, “Yes. Her, too.” He rose from the chair. “Now I shall leave you to your rest, dear sister. Dear sisters,” he added, including Frevisse.
He murmured a benediction over them both while making the sign of the cross in the air, then left, and Domina Elisabeth moved toward the chair where he had been, the prioress’ chair, where every prioress of St. Frideswide’s through the years had sat in her turn; but her step was so unsteady-as if merely moving was almost too much to ask of her body-that Frevisse put a hand under her arm and helped her the few steps until she could sink gratefully onto the chair’s cushion.
She gestured toward the room’s only other chair for Frevisse to sit, too, and Frevisse did, wishing Domina Elisabeth had dismissed her instead, but Domina Elisabeth, with her head leaned against the tall back of the chair and eyes closed, said, “What am I to do with the Pyes? Even if the Rowcliffes don’t demand the law on them, I’ll have to send them away. Alson stole from us and suborned her brother. He poisoned two men. How could they be such fools? They can’t stay here, and I can’t give them a good word to take with them. What could I say?”