Sir Hugh was first in. She had sent him word to bring only a few men but seemingly all Sir Reynold’s men were there behind him, crowding, most only in their shirts and quickly flung-on cloaks, still rumpled from sleep but every one with their weapon-hung sword belts in their hands. Frevisse saw Benet, close behind Sir Hugh, give a swift look around to be sure Joice was not there and trying, too, to Frevisse’s eye, not to see Sir Reynold’s body before he moved well aside from the others, past Father Henry who had shifted himself and his prayers into the cloister walk as the shove of men came in on him.
Sir Hugh, the only one among them unarmed, gave Sir Reynold’s body a single swift look but was more intent on Lady Eleanor, crossing to her to take her by the arms and stare worriedly down into her face, asking, “How is it with you? Should you be here?”
Lady Eleanor laid a hand over one of his hands and said gently, “I’ve seen dead men enough in my days. I’m well enough.”
Sir Hugh studied her a moment longer, then let her go and turned back to his men and the body.
“Send the men away,” Lady Eleanor said. “They don’t all need to be here.”
“They had to see him,” Sir Hugh said grimly. “We all had to see him.”
The men were crowded and jostled around the body, some grimly silent as they looked, most loud with exclaims and swearing. Hands moved in the sign of the cross and among the oaths were mutterings of “Lord have mercy,” but they all cleared out of Sir Hugh’s way as he came back to them, subsiding to silence around him as he stood for a moment, looking down at his cousin’s body before saying bitterly, “It was ill done.”
Someone among the men, down the passage and out of Frevisse’s view, snarled, “It was done from behind and in the dark. It was foully done!”
“It had to be one of those damned masons,” a man said, at Sir Hugh’s shoulder. Another Godfrey, by the look of him, “It had to have been one of them.”
“That’s talk we don’t need,” Sir Hugh said coldly. “We’ll find out who did it in good time, and when we do, we’ll deal with him, but we won’t start trouble until we’re sure.”
“We’re not the ones who started trouble,” the man beside him said. “I say we wring some necks until we have the truth out of someone.”
“I’d wring your neck, Hal, until I’d put some sense in your head,” Sir Hugh snapped back, “but likely all I’d be left with is a wrung-necked goose. I’ll say what’s done here and what isn’t.” He swung his gaze around to include them all in that and added, “Take yourselves back to the hall and stay there until I come.”
Hal pointed at Sir Reynold. “What about him?”
“Lady Eleanor and the nuns will see to him.”
From where she stood apart from them, Lady Eleanor said calmly, grief and authority both in her voice, “We’ll see him cleansed, shrouded, coffined. Everything that’s right. Then you can take him to keep vigil over. Until then there’s no use in your being here.”
“So go,” Sir Hugh said in clear expectation of being obeyed. They were used to obeying him and Frevisse saw with relief that they would now, too, beginning to shift toward the outer door.
“Except you, Benet,” Sir Hugh said. “You stay to help with him. And Lewis, you,” he added to the white-faced boy, younger than Benet, kneeling at Sir Reynold’s head. He was Sir Reynold’s squire and looked up, taut-faced with holding back tears, to nod to Sir Hugh’s orders.
As the last of the men jostled out the door into the yard, Margrete pushed in past them. Again avoiding Sir Reynold’s body with both skirts and gaze, she hastened through to Lady Eleanor, ignoring everyone else, complaining and explaining, “They clotted up the way, so I couldn’t pass. I tried to go through the church, but the west door is barred and I had to come back.” And then anxiously: “How is with you, my lady?”
“Well enough,” Lady Eleanor assured her crisply. “This won’t be the end of me.” She looked to Dame Claire. “Where would be best to take him?”
“The lower parlor here.” A room immediately to hand here along the cloister walk, meant for the nuns to receive such friends and relatives as did not need the prioress’ attention. It might have been better to have taken the body on to the infirmary, but to Frevisse’s mind and apparently Dame Claire’s, too, that was too far into the priory for the coming and going of so many men as there would be in this. Better that everything be kept here, as near the outer door as might be.
“Dame Frevisse, can you bring sheets?” Dame Claire asked. “And Margrete, the other things?”
Shears to cut the ruined clothing off. Basins of water. Soap. Cloths. Margrete would know as well as Frevisse what was needed. They had all of them seen to other dead in their years of life, had readied for their graves people they knew, just as, God willing, they would all be readied for their own graves by those who knew them when their own times came. It did not matter that this time their work was for Sir Reynold. What mattered was that it was for the dead, as someday they would be.
But Frevisse noticed that in all of this there was no word said of sending for the crowner, the King’s officer who was supposed to be called in whenever there was any violent death, to determine where the wrong lay and collect the fines due to the King in the matter. Another thing that would be laid against the priory, to keep company with all the rest, when this was over.
Chapter 20
It took surprisingly little time to sort matters into order. When Frevisse came back from the infirmary with sheets, Benet was standing outside the parlor door, waiting to take them from her, but though she gave them to him, she followed him in anyway, to find the scant furnishings of a bench, small table, a few stools, a chair had all been moved back to the walls now and Sir Reynold’s body laid out in the middle of the floor with Lewis waiting beside it, stiff-faced and pale.
Lady Eleanor was sitting, composed but equally pallid, on the bench, hands folded in her lap, her eyes closed as if she prayed. Dame Claire stood near her and answered Frevisse’s questioning look with a shake of her head that said Lady Eleanor was as well as might be and there was nothing more to do for her just now.
“Father Henry?” Frevisse asked.
“Someone had to see how it was with Domina Alys,” Dame Claire said; and neither she nor Frevisse would have been welcome, nor Lady Eleanor fit to do it just now.
“Sir Hugh?” Frevisse asked.
“Gone to be sure the men are making no trouble,” Benet answered. He had spread the sheet out on the floor and he and Lewis were readying to move Sir Reynold’s body onto it.
Not needed there, Frevisse willingly left. The first numbness was wearing off; her mind was beginning to move more clearly and she did not like where her thoughts were going. Nor was she pleased to find Prime had ended and Sister Cecely and Sister Emma approaching her in a rush of black gowns and veils along the walk, with Sister Johane more slowly in their wake. She moved to intercept them, saying, to forestall their flurry of questions, “Go on to breakfast with the rest,” so firmly that they stopped, momentarily silenced, until Sister Cecely burst out, “He’s our cousin! It’s our right! Where’s he been taken? What’s happening?”
Dame Juliana was leading the rest of the nuns, except for Sister Thomasine, of whom there was no sign, along the far side of the cloister walk toward the refectory, and Frevisse guessed these three were to be left to her, and with the barest of sympathy, since there was more avid curiosity than grief in their eager faces, she said, “He’s been moved into the parlor and is being seen to by Lady Eleanor, Dame Claire, and some of his men. There’s no need of you here.” And added, “Nor is Sister Emma his cousin.”