“She wouldn’t lie,” Dame Claire said.
Frevisse opened her eyes and looked at her in unconcealed disbelief. “She wouldn’t lie? Why not, with everything else she’s done?”
“Lying is a sin. She wouldn’t do it.”
“She wouldn’t sin?” Frevisse said sharply. “Wrath and pride are sins and she indulges in them readily enough, you’ve surely noticed.”
“She doesn’t see wrath as wrath. For her, I think it’s rightful anger against our failings, the way God is angry at our sins.”
Shying away from equating Domina Alys with God, Frevisse asked, “And her pride? What’s that if it isn’t pride?”
“Love,” Dame Claire said simply.
“Love?” Frevisse stood up, her voice rising in protest. “Love?”
Dame Claire made a hushing motion at her. “You never try to see her without loathing anymore, but I do, if only for my soul’s sake. I’ve tried to see her as she sees herself and she loves St. Frideswide’s, she truly does. I think everything she does, she thinks she’s doing for the priory.”
“Sir Reynold is done for the priory?” Frevisse mocked savagely.
“She doesn’t willfully sin,” Dame Claire insisted. “She doesn’t knowingly sin.”
“And therefore she hasn’t lied to us over the tower because lying is a sin and she wouldn’t do that,” Frevisse said bitterly. “So let’s just say instead that she’s managed to leave a great deal of the truth out of what she’s told us!”
Before Dame Claire could answer, silence fell from inside the church, telling Vespers was ended, and with a shake of her head because there was no time for saying more, she took up her box of medicines and went away toward the infirmary, leaving Frevisse to go resignedly the other way and lie down, aching, beside the church door.
Chapter 17
Alys paced her parlor lengthwise, door to far wall to door to far wall. Katerin had lighted the fire because it was time to light the fire and now was standing beside it, shifting uneasily from foot to foot because it was time for Alys to sit and Alys was not and Katerin did not know what to do about it.
In a corner of her thoughts, Alys was sorry for that. Katerin’s expectations were so few, it went hard with her when one of them failed. But she could not sit. She had to move, to force some kind of sense into her mind by making her body go somewhere, if only from door to far wall to door to…
What had Reynold been thinking of? He had to know he couldn’t go thieving through the countryside and not be called to account for it. And killing a man. That was not something that would go by. He had been angry over Godard when he did it and she understood anger, but Reynold’s had been wrong. When she was angry over a thing, then she was sure she was right, and her anger made others sure with her and saved her the need to argue a matter out with folks too slow to see it the way she did. But killing a man…
Reynold was supposed to help her. He had promised. She had believed him. Now she could not even use what he had brought, knowing it was stolen. Why had Godard been fool enough to be killed? Except for that, she would have gone on knowing nothing and everything would still be well.
No. Everything would still be ill, but she would be ignorant of it while it went on to worse before she learned of it too late. If it was not too late already. No. She refused that possibility. It was not too late. She would not let it be too late. There were still ways to make it right.
To begin with, Reynold had to go and take his men with him. Now. Tonight. As soon as Godard was dead. That’s what she had to tell him when he came.
But that was not what she wanted him to do. She wanted him to stay. She wanted him to undo what he had done, explain it to her and make it right.
And she doubted that he could.
She swung aside from her pacing to slam her open hands down on the tabletop. She rarely had trouble with uncertainty. She despised it as a weakness, a thing only weaklings had, but she had it now, like a heavy headache, thickening her thoughts, so they would not go the way she wanted them to go. She slammed her hands down on the table again and shoved away from it to pace to the window back to the table back to the window and finally stand staring out.
Below her the yard was lost in darkness. At this hour folk were expected to be settled for the night, no need for light where no one was supposed to be. The thin trace of light along the guest-hall shutters, and under the guest-hall door, showed nothing except their shapes. Was Godard dead yet?
The guest-hall door jerked open and broom-yellow light spilled out, down the steps and into the darkness of the yard. Alys stiffened as Reynold came out, no more than a dark shape against the light, but she knew him. Knew him by the way he held himself, by the turn of his head as he looked behind him. Knew him as surely as he would know her if he looked up and saw her there, another dark shape, against the low glow of her firelight.
They had always been that near in knowing, in understanding each other. From the time they had been children, they had been that near. He had to make this thing right before it went worse between them.
He did not look up to see her but back over his shoulder. Hugh joined him and they started down the steps together, into the darkness.
So Godard was dead and Reynold was coming but bringing Hugh with him rather than face her alone.
More wearied than she could remember ever being, Alys turned from the window and the dark toward her firelight, crossed heavy-footed to her chair, and sat. Beside the fire, Katerin sighed and was content.
“Sir Reynold and Sir Hugh are coming to the cloister door,” Alys told her, saying the words slowly to be sure she understood. “Go and let them in and bring them here.”
Katerin watched her speak, then gave an eager head bob to show she understood, bobbed a curtsy, and scurried away.
Alys shoved up out of her chair, about to pace again, then dropped back into it. Better to face him with all her dignity. But she could not. Sitting still was beyond her and she stood up again, facing the door as Katerin opened it and stood aside for Reynold and Hugh to enter.
“Godard is dead,” Reynold said without other greeting.
“You’re still armed,” Alys said back to him. All the men always wore their daggers but not their swords and particularly not in the nunnery, most particularly not in the cloister. Hugh was without his; Alys had a vague thought of him unbuckling it, handing it off to a squire to make it easier to kneel with Godard. Why did Reynold have to do yet another thing wrongly?
Reynold looked down at his hand, resting on his sword hilt against his hip as if surprised it was there, but kept on toward her, saying, “Given one thing and another, it’s probably best for now.” He held out his hands to take hers.
She turned away from him and circled her chair, putting it between them. “It’s not best here,” she said. “Katerin, light the lamps. All of them.” She suddenly wanted more light, much more light. There were too many shadows. She wanted to see Reynold’s face.
Katerin scurried to light a taper at the fire. While she carried it, carefully shielded in her hand, from lamp to lamp around the room, Reynold watched Alys a little, then sat down in her other chair and said, “It’s been a hell of a day. Godard was a good man.”
“So maybe was the man you killed,” Alys said back. But that was not to the point in this, and because there was no easy way to come to it, she went on bluntly, “You and your men have to be out of St. Frideswide’s before Tierce tomorrow unless you can find me a good reason why you shouldn’t be.”
Reynold looked at Hugh, who had gone aside to sit on a corner of the table, one leg swinging, his expression as grim as Alys felt. To Reynold’s look he only shrugged, as if he did not have an answer. Reynold shrugged back, looked back at Alys, and leaned forward, hands clasped in front of his knees, to say earnestly, “If I go, Master Porter will have your masons out of here within the hour. I’m all that’s keeping them here.”