Frevisse had not seen Margrete leave, but she was coming back now, following Lady Eleanor down her stairs, Lady Adela and Joice behind them, all of them wrapped in cloaks, the girls with their hair loose over their shoulders, but Lady Eleanor’s and Margrete’s fastened back and veils pinned quickly on for decency’s sake. The crocus flame of the lamp Lady Eleanor carried was bright in the soft-edged dawn light as with a quick word to the girls, she left them on the stairs and advanced with Margrete on the coil of nuns and servants, adding her orders to Dame Perpetua’s and Dame Juliana’s with the calm expectation of being obeyed, telling the servants, “That’s enough. You don’t need to see more. Go back to the kitchen. We’ll all be wanting breakfast. Go on. You’ve seen enough for now. Move out of my way.”
Under her assurance and orders the servants sorted themselves out from among the nuns and drew back, almost convinced they wanted to go, while Dame Juliana and Dame Perpetua drove the nuns the other way, toward the church, Dame Juliana saying, “There now, we’re late for Prime as it is. That isn’t right. Come, we’ll pray for him. He needs that more than your staring at him and wailing. Go on now.”
Only Sister Thomasine went readily. The others followed less willingly, still weeping and exclaiming, so that when the church door finally shut behind them, with the servants already herded to the kitchen by Margrete, there was a sudden silence, even from Lady Adela and Joice still on the stairs, holding on to each other. Only Lady Eleanor was left, now facing Frevisse who still stood with Sir Reynold’s body mostly hidden behind her skirts; and very quietly she asked, “It’s indeed Reynold?”
Frevisse nodded.
Lady Eleanor briefly closed her eyes, drew in and let out a shaken breath, and ordered, much as Domina Alys had, “Let me see him.”
Chapter 19
Sir Reynold was sprawled forward, his head canted carelessly, gape-mouthed, staring, his body slightly twisted to one side, arms and legs loosely out as if he had made no attempt to stop what must have been an utterly graceless fall. If there had been spasming once he was down, it had been slight. Lady Eleanor’s small lamplight cast the shadows back to the passage’s far end but made no change to the darkness of the wide wound, the black, dried blood across his back.
“From behind,” Lady Eleanor said and drew back the lamp, letting the shadows take him again, for which Frevisse was grateful. The blood and the mingled smells of death, even subdued by hours and the night’s cold, were as much and more of mortality as she wanted just now.
“Margrete.” Lady Eleanor spoke without looking around, knowing she would be there. “Bring Father Henry and Sir Hugh.”
Come silently back, the servants dealt with, Margrete asked, speaking as evenly as her lady, “Tell them what’s happened or just tell them to come?”
“Tell them what’s happened, and tell Hugh to bring some men. We’ll need to move him.”
Lady Eleanor drew back as she spoke, away from Sir Reynold and the passage. Frevisse and Dame Claire moved with her, making room, and Margrete edged past them and past the body with her skirt and cloak carefully gathered in to keep from touching it. Once clear, she hurried on to the outer door, opened it, and went out-not needing to unlock or unbar it, Frevisse noticed. That meant that all night there had been nothing to keep anyone from entering that way.
“Lady Eleanor, you had best come sit,” Dame Claire said, and Frevisse turned from the passageway to realize that the day had gone on growing, that sunrise was swelling up the sky above the eastern roofline and the cloister shadows had thinned to blue, the lamp flame faded to pale primrose. Their breath showed in the cold dawn air now, and so did Lady Eleanor’s face, sagged into lines of grief, betraying how much her level voice and outward calm were an act of will and how much the effort was costing her in strength. She made no protest to Dame Claire taking her by the arm, a little supporting her, or Frevisse taking her by her other and the lamp out of her hand. Together, they helped her the little way across the cloister walk, to sit on the low wall between it and the garth, enough aside from the passageway so she would not see Sir Reynold’s body unless she chose to turn that way.
She kept turned away from it, and as Lady Adela and Joice came down the stairs and toward her in worried haste, she looked at Frevisse and said, “Don’t let them see,” then while Frevisse moved so that her skirts again hid Sir Reynold’s body, raised her voice to say firmly to the girls, “I’m not ill. It’s only that this is overmuch to face so early in the day and unexpected. No,” she added to Lady Adela who was sidling aside to see past Frevisse. “Stay there. You don’t need to see.”
Lady Adela stopped but could not hold back from asking, “Is it Sir Reynold? And he’s dead?”
“He’s dead,” Lady Eleanor said quellingly.
“And I can’t see?”
“No!” Dame Claire and Frevisse said together.
But Lady Adela had already known; and it passed through Frevisse’s mind that Lady Adela’s life was overly full of things she could not do.
Joice, with no wish to see Sir Reynold, dead or otherwise, had gone directly to Lady Eleanor and said now, anxiously, “Should you come back to bed awhile? It’s been too sudden for you.”
Lady Eleanor straightened, willing herself past her weakness. “I can’t. Not yet. There’s too much to be seen to.”
“We can see to it,” Dame Claire said.
Lady Eleanor refused the possibility. “Hugh will take orders best from me.”
“He can take them from someone else if this is going to be too much for you,” Dame Claire insisted.
“I’m well enough.” She looked to Joice. “Take Lady Adela back to my room and have wine ready, warm and well spiced, for Margrete and me. I won’t be long at this.” And when Joice hesitated, said to her, “I’ve seen to worse than this in my time. I’ll be well enough.”
“And we’ll keep with her,” Dame Claire put in. “Dame Frevisse and I both.”
“Nor should you be here when the men come for him,” Lady Eleanor added, and Joice’s hesitation gave way. She held out her hand to Lady Adela, who took it reluctantly and dragged a full step behind her all the way to the stairs; but they were well up them when Father Henry, his robe unbelted, his curls uncombed, his brass-bound box clutched in his arms, hastened to the passageway from the yard, hurrying in the obvious hope that despite what Margrete must have told him, there was still a chance to protect Sir Reynold’s soul before it was gone.
His first clear look at Sir Reynold told him the hope was useless. There had been no life in Sir Reynold longer than a single breath after the blow was struck. For a silent moment Father Henry stood staring down at him, slack-shouldered with misery, then straightened, knelt down, and began to do what could be done now in the way of prayers.
Across the cloister the nuns’ chanting of one of the morning’s psalms, distant through stone wall and heavy door, seemed to have nothing to do with the morning Frevisse was in. There was where she wanted to be-in the church, in her choir stall, deep in prayer. Not here and facing this.
Loud, hurrying, angry, Sir Hugh and his men burst in at the outer door. Lady Eleanor stood up from the wall and took a few steps back toward Sir Reynold’s body, and Frevisse and Dame Claire, without need of word between them, moved to either side of and behind her, hands tucked into sleeves and heads bowed, leaving it to her because it was what she wanted, but there if they were needed.