“That’s no matter,” Sister Cecely said. “She’s with us. We should go to him.”
“No, you shouldn’t,” Frevisse said, deciding patience was no use. “You’re not needed there. If you truly want to be of use to him, go back to the choir and pray for his soul.”
“Yes, but-” Sister Johane began.
“Or if you’re that eager to see his blood,” Frevisse interrupted, pointing into the passageway where it was spread and darkened on the floor where Sir Reynold had lain, “there’s a great deal of it. Maybe you’d like the task of scrubbing it away.”
“Oh no!” Sister Johane shrank back, not looking. Sister Cecely and Sister Emma had less sense, looked where Frevisse pointed at the spread and mess of Sir Reynold’s blood, gasped, grabbed each other for support, and went on staring. Frevisse, out of patience, took them each by an arm, pulled them apart, and pushed them along the walk, shoving them on their way when they were past the parlor door.
“Go to breakfast,” she ordered disgustedly. “You’re not wanted here.”
Compelled, they went, and belatedly it occurred to Frevisse that she could go to breakfast, too, that maybe she ought to rejoin the others in making what they could of the day, since she was no more needed here than Sister Cecely was.
Instead, she turned the other way, toward the church, wondering about Sister Thomasine and whether she should be there alone with the madman, despite she had an endangered soul to pray for and no matter how harmless he had seemed until now.
Walking quickly, her own head bowed, she was nearly to the church door before she realized Joliffe was there, outside the door, in the cloister walk, where he had no business being, standing at ease and as if he had been waiting for her. Startled, annoyed that he must have used the door out of the tower and come through the church, she asked him without other greeting, “You know?”
“You think I’d come in here otherwise?”
She gestured past him toward the church. “Is it well in there with Sister Thomasine?”
“She’s praying at the altar,” he said, and then answered what she had not asked. “And your madman is tucked into his blankets and not looking likely to stir out of them for any reason.”
“He’s not my madman. Listen, there was talk among Sir Reynold’s men against Master Porter that you’d better warn him of.”
“He’s heard. Word of it came right along with the word Sir Reynold was dead. It took the edge off our mourning for him, you can guess.”
Frevisse ignored that. “Sir Hugh warned them off, but he’s not Sir Reynold and they may decide not to heed him.”
“Master Porter already has Sir Reynold’s man off the tower, and on the chance the masons have to retreat into it, they’re readying the scaffolding to go over at a push if need be. Preferably with a few of Sir Reynold’s men on it, come to that.”
“Wait,” Frevisse said. “Sir Reynold had a man on the tower? Why? Since when?”
“Since yesterday, after they came back from the raid. A watch to warn if anyone was coming. Or trying to leave,” Joliffe said, grimly enough to show he saw the implications as clearly as she did. Sir Reynold had been afraid trouble was so close behind him, or at least that it was closing on him fast, that he had set watch against it. Had Domina Alys known that or was this something else he had kept from her?
Just now what Domina Alys had known or not known did not matter. A trouble closer than any he had thought of had overtaken Sir Reynold, and Frevisse asked, not even trying to make it casual, “Where did you spend last night?”
Joliffe understood exactly what she was asking and answered readily, “With the masons. From when I left you, on through supper and all night. But,” he added thoughtfully, “I slept near the door. I might have gone out after they were all asleep without anyone’s knowing.”
“Did you?”
“Go out? I’m not likely to say I did, am I?”
“Not if you have any wit at all. Did anyone else?”
“The nights are long and many bladders small. Some went out, as usual, but no one in particular or for overly long. Not Master Porter with a particularly heavy hammer-”
“Sir Reynold was stabbed,” Frevisse said.
“Not Master Porter carrying his dagger in his hand and snarling about vengeance. Of course I seem to recall that I slept a great deal of the time, it being night and all, so I probably missed some comings and goings, but no, I didn’t notice anything in particular.”
“And might not tell me if you had?” Frevisse suggested.
Joliffe tended to be unpredictable in what he took seriously and what he did not. He grinned at her question. “You’re not a very trusting woman, are you?”
“No. I’m not. You wouldn’t tell me, would you?”
“Probably not,” he said lightly. Then the lightness dropped away and he said, altogether serious, “There’s something I will tell you. Sir Reynold was being an obvious idiot for a long while before yesterday. You know about the Fenners and the Godfreys’ quarrel?”
“The Fenners,” Frevisse said with new alarm. “What about the Fenners?”
“There’s been word out for half a year and more that Sir Reynold meant to reopen the quarrel, so when things began to happen to various Fenner properties and Fenner followers these past few months-small things, nothing like yesterday’s raid but enough-there were suspicions, and when Sir Walter Fenner heard Sir Reynold was moved in here, he thought it was time to find out more of what Sir Reynold might have in hand. Do you know anything about Sir Walter?”
“A little.” Enough that she did not want to know more or have him in St. Frideswide’s again. The last time he had been there he had been trying to find his mother’s murderer among the nuns and not been greatly concerned with legalities while doing it.
“He’s somewhat more subtle in his ways than Sir Reynold was,” Joliffe said. “Before stirring trouble up, he decided to send someone to find out for certain, secretly, what Sir Reynold was about.”
“You,” Frevisse said.
“Me,” Joliffe agreed. He made her a graceful, mocking bow. “A simple minstrel, seemingly wandered into your fair priory by chance and therefore suspected of nothing.”
“Why you?”
“I was to hand when Sir Walter needed someone and he offered enough money it was worth my while to do it.”
“But you haven’t sent him word yet. There hasn’t been time,” Frevisse said.
“I sent it yesterday morning.”
Yes, he would have known enough by then to tell Sir Walter his suspicions were justified, even without the raid and killing afterward, but: “How?”
She did not expect him to tell her, but he did. “A peddler came into your village the same day I came here. He wasn’t a friendly sort and settled for bedding down alone in someone’s byre instead of someplace better, with no one to notice if he slipped out and spent a while near onto moonrise in the deep shadows of the church’s doorway, doing nothing. No more than anyone noticed me go out over your orchard wall-no great trick, let me tell you-and meet him there, tell him what I knew, and come back the same way. He was away yesterday morning to pass word to someone in Banbury, who’s sent it on fast to Sir Walter by now.”
“And when Sir Walter hears it, he’ll come in force against Sir Reynold here.”
“Yes,” Joliffe agreed.
“How soon?” Frevisse demanded. “If you went now and told him things had changed, that Sir Reynold is dead…”
“Sir Reynold’s men aren’t. Nor Sir Hugh. After yesterday’s work, Sir Walter won’t be satisfied with anything short of being sure no Godfrey can strike at him again.”
With St. Frideswide’s caught in the middle.