While the others mostly glanced around ateach other with rousing alarm, Suffolk took a step toward her andsaid with authority suitably edged with indignation, “You’re sayingthat you accuse one of us of killing him?”
“Yes.”
Suffolk opened his mouth to respond, butBeaufort quietly raised the fingers of his right hand from thecurve of the chair arm, and Suffolk subsided. Dame Frevissecontinued, “It had to be someone well aware of Sir Clement’spenchant for asking God to strike him down. That could beanyone who had ever been around him any length of time. Butit also had to have been someone able to poison him at thefeast.”
The word “poison” whispered around the roomfrom one to another. Dame Frevisse’s gaze traveledimpartially over everyone there, taking in their variedexpressions. Beaufort could not tell if she lingered on onelonger than the others. “I considered that he might have beenactually ill or even touched by God at the feast, and only poisonedlater in the room where he was taken to recover. But fromwhat I’ve learned, he was surely poisoned at the feast, in front ofall of us, by someone able to take advantage of the moment when hewould almost certainly demand God’s judgment. Someone whoknew about a poison so specific to Sir Clement that no one elsewould be harmed by it, whoever ate with him.”
Suffolk exclaimed, “That’s nonsense! There’s no poison that specific!”
“There is,” interposed Beaufort. “Wehave authority for it. And she has my authority tocontinue.”
They exchanged glances, and Dame Frevissesaid, “For a great many people, Sir Clement was only an annoyance,to be tolerated when he couldn’t be avoided. For others, hewas a very real danger. Sire Philip-” Startled gazesturned on the priest where he stood to one side of the room. He met them with a slight bow of his head and a calmexpression. “-was threatened by Sir Clement’s assertion thathe was born unfree. And so was his brother, Master Gallard,and while Sire Philip seems to have had no way to come at SirClement’s food during the feast, Master Gallard very definitelydid.”
Master Gallard gaped at her from the doorway,switched his shocked look to his brother, and returned his stare toDame Frevisse, his mouth working at unvoiced protests.
“And there is Jevan Dey, who served SirClement all through the feast, handled every dish that went to him,and hated him perhaps more fully than anyone.”
Jevan met the looks turned his way with thesame dispassion he had shown before.
“Lady Anne who sat next to Sir Clement at thefeast had every dish within her reach once it was served. Andthe goblet they both drank from. She loathed SirClement-”
“And still do,” Lady Anne saidfiercely. Guy took hold of her hand, warning her to silence,but she went on, “I hope he’s burning deep in Hell!”
Beaufort said, “That’s as may be, but not thequestion here.”
Dame Frevisse continued relentlessly. “If she went against Sir Clement’s will in her choice of marriagewhile still in his wardship, he could have ruined her with all thefines the law allows in such a matter. Worse, if he forcedher to marry him, she could never marry Guy, her own choice. She had compelling reason to want Sir Clement dead as soon as mightbe.”
“Then so did I!” Guy put his armpossessively, protectively, around Lady Anne’s waist.
“Yes,” Dame Frevisse agreed. “Andseated as you both were, on either side of him, you could haveworked together, one of you distracting him while the other put thewalnuts in – what? The meat pie? Finely ground, theywould have gone unnoticed-”
Sire Philip’s sharp movement broke across herwords. He closed the distance between himself and Jevan in asingle stride, seized Jevan’s wrist and jerked it down, away fromhis mouth. In rigid, silent struggle, Jevan pulled againsthis hold. But Dame Frevisse must have seen him move nearly assoon as Sire Philip had; she was there, taking the unbitten tartout of Jevan’s hand.
“No,” she said gently. “No moreJevan. Not sin added to sin.”
With a deep, shuddering breath, Jevan wentslack in Sire Philip’s hold. His eyes were no longerexpressionless but bitter and exhausted and hopeless all togetheras he looked at her and said, “Don’t you suppose it might be amercy? To die as he did could be expiation of a kind.”
“To die by your own hand is damnation,” SirePhilip returned, still holding on to him.
Jevan threw back his head, like a runner atrace’s end trying to draw breath enough to steady himself. His chest heaved with his effort, and then he said in a voicecruelly edged with pain, “I was born in the wane of the moon, wheneverything goes assward!”
He looked across the little distance to LadyAnne, and the cruelty was gone into great gentleness. “I’vebought your happiness for you. May you live gladly init.”
“Oh, Jevan!” Lady Anne cried out. “Youkilled him!” as if only then did she truly understand. Buther words broke the blank incomprehension on Guy’s face. Hestarted for Jevan with clenched fists rising. “You killed himand meant to make it seem I did it! You bellycrawling cur, I…”
Master Gallard came in front of him, stoppinghim with a hold on his arm that Guy, with his first angry tugagainst it, discovered he could not break.
“No.” Dame Frevisse cut her voiceacross Guy’s. “That’s exactly what he never meant tohappen.” She was still looking only at Jevan, with a sadnessBeaufort did not understand. And Jevan was looking back ather, the two of them alone with what she had to say, despite thepeople all around them. “You took great trouble and waited along while, I’d guess, for the chance to kill Sir Clement in a waythat would keep suspicion away from everyone. A great feastwith many people present, where Sir Clement would inevitably findoccasion to stand up and demand God’s judgment on himself, and noone suspected of his death when it came because how likely was itany of us had seen a man die the way Sir Clement did? Isn’tthat how you meant it to be? And when you realized here thatyou’d failed, that we knew it was murder after all, you meant toeat that tart full of walnuts, and die the way he did.”
To her and no one else, Jevan said, “When Iwas small, he ate some once by accident. I saw what they didto him. It made him angry, both that it happened and that Isaw him that way. So he made me eat some, forced them downme, and laughed when I broke out in the rash and itching. Hiswas worse, but he said it was like that, that it had happened tohim before and each time it was worse. It happened one othertime, later. He nearly died of it then, so I hoped that if ithappened again, it would kill him.”
“And when you decided you couldn’t bear himalive anymore, for your own sake and for Lady Anne, youremembered,” Dame Frevisse said.
“I remembered. And waited, as you said,a long while, with the packet of ground nuts in my belt pouch,until I saw what I thought was my chance.” He spoke almost asif by rote; as if the thing had grown dull with repeating tohimself too many times. “I saw the meat pies being made whenI talked to the cook that morning. Their crusts wereblind-baked, the top crust separate from the bottom, the fillingput in later. The top crust was only set on, notsealed. In the crowding and hurry of serving, it was easy tobump the top of Sir Clement’s pie awry and step aside as if to setit right. What I did instead-” His control wavered; hepaused to draw a steadying breath. “What I did instead, withmy back to everyone, was scatter the walnuts – I had them ready inmy hand – over the meat filling and put the crust back on. Noone was likely to notice me enough to remember I’d even done it, orthink it mattered, if they did.”
“But in the room, when he began to be better,how did you poison him again?” Dame Frevisse asked.