Not trying to hide her anger, only the fear that was goading it on, Frevisse asked, “How soon is he likely to be here?”
“Tomorrow, I would guess.”
“When you meant to be gone, well out of it before he ever came but here long enough you wouldn’t be suspected of being the one who told him, even if anyone bothered to think of you at all.”
“That was what I had in mind, yes.”
“Leaving us to face it all unwarned!”
“No!” Joliffe denied that forcefully. “Before I left, I would have told you and trusted you not to betray me.”
She would not have, he was right about that, but: “What good would that have done?”
He shrugged, confident. “There are only three doors into the cloister. You would have found way to have them barred when Sir Walter and his men came. With Sir Reynold and his men shut out and the nuns shut in, you’d all have been safe enough.”
“But our priory folk wouldn’t be, or our villagers!”
“I suspect I would have passed a word of something like warning along to your villagers as I went through, and they’d see your priory folk heard in time, and I doubt they would be passing it along to Sir Reynold’s folk.”
“Wouldn’t that risk you being found out if anyone asked questions afterward? Exactly what you’ve tried to avoid?” she said caustically, too angry to believe him willingly.
He answered caustically back, “I doubt Sir Reynold and his ilk-your prioress among them-would bother with questioning their peasants afterward. Aside from despising them too much to think it worth their while, they’d likely be too busy answering questions themselves by then from sheriff and crowner and abbot and all to care what any villagers might have to say.”
Beyond the fact that he was probably right, Frevisse was annoyed to find she believed he would have done exactly as he said.
Improbably, as if there had been no taint of anger between them, he grinned at her. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like I’ll be going anywhere for a time, as things are now.”
“It would be a great pity if you wandered off at this point,” Frevisse agreed. “Because if you did, suspicion of Sir Reynold’s murder would very likely turn on you.”
“But now that you know Sir Walter is coming…?”
Joliffe left the question unfinished but she knew what it was. What was she going to do with what she knew?
“Nothing, yet,” she said. Joliffe would be in danger as soon as she warned anyone because they would want to know how she knew. But neither could she keep it secret for long, for everyone else’s sake.
She sat down on the garth wall with a suddenness that acknowledged how tired she was, in mind and body both. Joliffe joined her, leaning back against a pillar the way her back would not presently let her, with one leg crooked under him, at ease. The morning was still cold, but the sun had cleared the roof of the east range, spilling thick gold light into the cloister; Joliffe held out his hand into the brightness, cupped as if the light were something he could hold.
“The simplest way to handle it,” he said, “is of course to find out who Sir Reynold’s murderer is. Then I can go, warnings can be given, all is well.”
“Well is not the word I would have chosen,” Frevisse said. “Nor simplest.”
“Ah, words,” Joliffe said airily. “Such feckless things.”
“But supposing you aren’t the one who killed him…?”
Joliffe bowed his head to her without looking away from his hand. “Thank you for being willing to suppose that.”
“You’re welcome. So supposing it wasn’t you, who else could it have been?”
“For choice, your Domina Alys.”
“For choice, your Master Porter,” she answered back.
Joliffe regretfully agreed. “Sir Reynold had both of them furious with him before yesterday was over.”
“But he was Domina Alys’ kinsman. She’d be less likely than Master Porter to turn to killing him.”
“I’ve always found myself more inclined to loathe those I know best, rather than strangers,” Joliffe observed.
Ignoring that, Frevisse said, “And she’s likely to lose whatever she hoped to gain by him being here, now he’s dead, besides that she knows better than most, being nun and prioress, how she’s damned her soul if she’s killed him, while for Master Porter killing him might seem no more than a straightforward way to be rid of the threat Sir Reynold was to him.”
“Except now Sir Reynold’s men are a danger to him. He would have likely foreseen that.”
“He’s maybe counting on the clear fact that Sir Hugh is not so short-headed as Sir Reynold, mat he’ll see better than to turn them loose on anyone.”
“Of course there could be reasons Sir Hugh would want Sir Reynold dead,” Joliffe said. “One at least. He’ll likely take over the men for his own and have the profit of what Sir Reynold started, now Sir Reynold is dead.”
“There’s that,” Frevisse granted. “He’s hardly to know how ungood a thing that is at this point. Though, again, this is hardly the time to unbalance things, even not knowing that. Wouldn’t it serve him better to wait until Sir Reynold had fully succeeded?”
“Who knows?” Joliffe said. “What we have is somewhere to start, three possibilities to find out about.” He stood up. “I’ll go learn what I can about Master Porter and anyone else among the masons last night. You’ll do the same for your prioress and Sir Hugh and anyone else inside the cloister who may look likely once you’ve started?”
Frevisse nodded and stood up. She did not see how she would be able to do much, but it was better than waiting for what might happen, with a murderer somewhere among them. Oddly, that had been a thought she had been keeping clear of, concentrating on Sir Reynold being dead. But Sir Reynold was dead because someone had killed him, and she had to gather her thoughts to face that. “Meet me in the church after Tierce,” she said. It was not much time, but they did not have much time, nor maybe many chances either, to exchange what they might learn.
“One thing,” Joliffe said. “About how Sir Reynold was killed. You said he was stabbed. Where?”
“In the passage from the cloister out to the yard.”
“I meant where, on him, was he stabbed. How was it done? With what?”
“In the back with a sword.”
“Not a dagger?”
“It was a wide wound. I’d think it would have taken a sword to make it.”
“Where?” Joliffe turned his back toward her. “Show me.”
Frevisse drew her finger in a line below his left shoulder blade, from midway across that side of his back toward his spine. Joliffe’s shoulders twitched and a shiver ran up him. “There.”
Joliffe turned around. “Did it go all the way through him?”
Frevisse remembered the blood had spread from under the body and answered, “Yes. Why are you asking all this?”
“I don’t know. It’s just I’ve always found it better to know too much than too little. Haven’t you? Ask questions while you can, for what you might need to know later.”
She had found that true, too, though probably on different sorts of occasions than he had. They regarded each other in considering silence a moment before Joliffe said, “I’ll see you after Tierce,” and turned back toward the church.
Chapter 21
Frevisse had thought to go to Domina Alys first. Since it could not be avoided, it would be best to have it done. But Joliffe’s questions about the wound took her back to the parlor. She had seen Sir Reynold’s gashed flesh and dried blood but not looked closely. Had not wanted to look closely. It had seemed sufficient to know the wound had surely caused Sir Reynold’s death. But there was never a sufficiency of knowing, not about anything, only an end to where the mind could reach. Or to where it wanted to reach. And now Frevisse wanted to know more.