“I didn’t. It’s taken him that waybefore, seeming to ease and then coming on again. And thistime it came on strongly enough to kill him.”
“You meant for us to believe it was God whokilled him!” said Suffolk indignantly.
Murmurs and exclaims angry or shocked beganto run among everyone in the room, but Beaufort bore over themwith, “Why did you do it? No matter how much you hated him,you had so little to gain from his death. Certainly notenough to so imperil your soul. Why did you do it?”
In a proud, dead voice, Jevan said, “I had nohope anymore for myself, whether he was dead or living.” Helooked toward Lady Anne. “But I could set her free to gowhere her heart wants to.”
“But Jevan-” Lady Anne, in the circleof Guy’s arm, reached uncertainly for words. “-you know Ilove Guy. That I’ve always loved him. That I don’t loveyou.”
With a brilliance of pain in his eyes searedby cold hopelessness, Jevan answered, “I know,” and lookedaway.
Darkness drew in early under the close sky,and the freezing cold crept with it. There was no fire inChaucer’s library now, and Frevisse and Dame Perpetua sat closetogether, saying Compline by a single candle’s light among theshadows. They had come here because Frevisse needed time awayfrom all the day’s demands. Jevan’s confession had only beenthe beginning. At Suffolk’s orders, he had been taken underguard to be kept for the crowner’s coming, but Frevisse had had tostay and deal with everyone else’s questions and exclaims, untilword came that rumor of what had passed had reached Aunt Matildaand she wished her niece’s presence.
Then everything had had to be repeated andexplained again, but at the end of it, Aunt Matilda had beensitting up in bed, eating broth and bread with more vigor than shehad shown in days while exclaiming over the rudeness of committingmurder at a funeral. “Though if someone was going to bemurdered, Sir Clement was the best choice. I never likedhim.”
The crowner’s arrival had been announcedthen, and Frevisse had been summoned to his presence and BishopBeaufort’s. He had proved to be a quiet, listening man, andshe had detailed everything for him more deeply than she had toanyone else, down to why she had set the trap as she had.
“Among the three best able to poison SirClement, there was no way to prove who did it, no way to disproveany denial they might make. Jevan told me himself thatwalnuts made his uncle ill. That made me think he might beinnocent. But then again, he could simply not have beencareful to conceal it because he didn’t know there was anysuspicion of murder and so a need for silence. On the otherhand, Guy’s and Lady Anne’s silence about the nuts could have beeninnocence – they didn’t know it was important and so said nothing -or guilt – a concealing of a dangerous fact. There was no wayto tell. What I did know was that according to Galen eventouching a food that ill affects a person the way these nuts didSir Clement can bring on a rash and itching. I rememberedthat at Sir Clement’s death, while we stood nervously around,someone was rubbing his hand against his thigh. Rubbing andrubbing as if with nerves. Or with a terrible itching. I could remember that but not who it had been. Guy or Jevan,I thought, but it made me think the murderer might, like SirClement, be made ill by the nuts, that he had handled them at leastbriefly and been affected. So I asked for everyone to bebrought together, and had the cook make tarts with walnuts in them,not plainly but so that someone would have to be holding one beforehe noticed. Then I watched to see who would take one and noteat it.”
“And Jevan Dey did not,” the crownersaid.
“Jevan Dey did not.” And so she hadfound her murderer. And nearly lost him when he realized thathis attempt to keep everyone from suspicion had failed and tried todie the death he had given his uncle.
What she did not know yet was how Sire Philiphad known to stop him in time.
But meanwhile, she had given a murderer overto justice, and in some part of her that was the beginning ofreparation for her choices of last spring. But in her mindshe still saw Jevan as he was led from the parlor by Suffolk’s men- an alone young man who would hang before spring came.
She and Dame Perpetua finished Compline’sprayers. Quiet closed around them, but neither of themmoved. Quiet, even among the cold and shadows, was a blessingjust then.
A soft footfall outside the door told themwhen their respite was past. Frevisse braced herself forwhatever demand was coming now, and at the small knock said,“Benedicite,” in what she hoped was a welcoming voice. From the glance Dame Perpetua gave her, it was not.
Sire Philip entered, carrying anothercandle. Despite his shielding hand as he crossed the room,its light jumped and fluttered, dancing the shadows around eachother until he set it down on the table beside the nuns’ smalllight. He looked around. “No Master Lionel?”
“Gone to his bed, I hope,” Frevissesaid. “Even he has to give way to the necessities ofnight.”
“As you gave way to Bishop Beaufort’snecessity.”
So he had not come by chance, but with a need- like her own – to talk about what had happened. ButFrevisse could not read his tone to understand his feeling in thematter. She looked at him questioningly. “You’d ratherI hadn’t done this?”
“I’d rather Jevan had had longer to workthrough the torments in himself to some sort of better peace. He came to me here yesterday to make confession.”
“That’s how you knew to stop him from eatingthe tart.” And why he had not said he had been in talk withJevan afterward.
Sire Philip nodded. He looked as tiredas she felt, but like her, he could not let the day go yet. “He confessed the murder and his abiding hatred for Sir Clementeven after his death, and his hopeless disbelief in God’smercy. Given more time – time he may not now be given – hemight win free of them and go to his death with a clearersoul.”
“Or there might not be enough time from hereto the world’s end.” Frevisse did not try to conceal her painat that. “His wounds were as long as his life.”
“And as deep.”
“At least you stopped him from killinghimself. For murder there can be repentance and a chance forHeaven. For suicide, he would have been damned withouthope.”
“It was his living without hope that drovehim to do what he did,” Sire Philip said gravely.
Frevisse thrust her hands further up hersleeves, huddling in on herself for warmth against the cold thatwas more than outward. “I could easily find myself in thatsin.”
Sire Philip’s smile was so slight as to bealmost unseen in the candled darkness. “But his grace thebishop will remember you as a good and useful servant for yourservice to him.”
“I’d rather he didn’t,” Frevisse saidcurtly. “I’ll stay the while that Aunt Matilda needsme. Then Dame Perpetua and I will go back to St. Frideswide’sand that, please God, will be the end of it.”
“Nothing is so simple as it ought to be,”Dame Perpetua pointed out firmly.
“Especially justice,” Sire Philip added.
“Especially justice,” Frevisse echoed. But justice did not seem enough. It answered too few things,and most particularly Jevan’s despair that, at the last, hadbetrayed him more than her attempts to reach the truth. Shestood up. “There must be somewhere in this house warmer thanhere. Let’s go there.”
Author's Note
Both Bishop Beaufort and Thomas Chaucer arehistorical, and they were indeed cousins, their mothers beingsisters. But while Thomas was the son of the author GeoffreyChaucer by his wife Philippa, Henry Beaufort was one of theillegitimate children of John, royal duke of Lancaster, and hismistress Katherine. That his parents eventually married was, tosome, a greater scandal than their affair had been, but theirchildren were legitimized, making possible Henry Beaufort's rise inthe Church to be Bishop of Winchester and Cardinal of England. Andwhile Thomas Chaucer followed a relatively quiet life, serving thecrown in various minor ways and becoming wealthy while avoiding theworst complications of the politics of the time, Beaufort ashalf-brother to the usurper King Henry IV – and then uncle of KingHenry V and great-uncle of King Henry VI – embroiled himself deeplyin political conflicts at the highest levels of government, withhis attempt to balance both papal ambitions and English politicsleading to troubles that eventually curtailed both his ambitions.There is a fine biography of him – Cardinal Beaufort: A Studyin Lancastrian Ascendancy and Decline by G. L. Harriss – andhis full-length effigy, resplendent in his cardinal's robes, stilllies on his tomb in Winchester Cathedral.