“Everyone, I suppose,” Benet said. “We were all still up.”
“Did Sir Hugh come back soon or long after he and Sir Reynold had gone?”
“I hadn’t been sitting there long,” Benet said, “but I don’t know how long they’d been gone before I came outside. Everything was confused in the hall after Godard died.”
“Where were you sitting?” Frevisse asked.
“On the guest-hall steps.” More in answer to Lewis’ look of surprise than to Frevisse, Benet said a little defiantly, “After Godard died, I wanted to be away from them awhile, out of the hall. Away from how it was in there. No one needed me. I came out and sat there in the dark until I could face going in again.”
“You saw Sir Hugh come back from the cloister while you were there,” Frevisse said.
“Yes.”
“Did he go to the well in the yard?”
“To the well? To wash off the blood, you mean? Because you think he killed Sir Reynold? No! He didn’t go to the well. There wasn’t any blood on him.”
“It’s dark in the yard by that hour. How could you tell there was no blood?”
“Why do you think he killed Sir Reynold?” Benet threw back at her.
“I don’t think he killed Sir Reynold,” Frevisse answered as curtly. “I don’t think anything, except that I have to learn all there is to learn about how and where everyone was last night or Sir Reynold’s murderer may go uncaught.”
Where Benet might have gone with that was cut short as the door from the yard opened. They waited, instinctively silent, for whomever was coming, until Sir Hugh came out of the passageway. He looked at them incuriously and said to Frevisse as she made a small curtsy and Benet and Lewis small bows to him, “My lady mother?”
“Gone to her chamber,” Frevisse answered.
He nodded thanks, said to Benet and Lewis both, with a nod back toward the passage, “Have someone come clean the blood up. The nuns shouldn’t have to do that,” and went on.
Benet and Lewis immediately started for the outer door, skirting the blood dried on the stones. Frevisse followed them, doing the same and saying low-voiced at their backs, “Sir Hugh isn’t wearing what he wore yesterday.” That had been a brown doublet with close-fitted sleeves. Today he had on one of dark blue, the sleeves cut more fully. “He’s changed his clothing since yesterday.”
Benet and Lewis both stopped and faced her. “He had Godard’s blood all over him yesterday, remember?” Benet said sharply. “He changed after Godard died, before he and Sir Reynold went to see your prioress.”
“What he’s wearing now is the clothing he changed into then?” Frevisse persisted.
“Yes!” Benet said, and Lewis nodded in agreement.
“You’re sure of it?”
“He has the brown doublet. He has the blue. That’s all he has.” Benet was very sure of it.
“And he wore the blue one to see Domina Alys last night.”
“I saw him when he was going out with Sir Reynold,” Lewis said. “That’s what he was wearing.”
“How long did you stay out after Sir Hugh went in?” she asked Benet.
“I don’t know.” He was impatient now. “The moon wasn’t up and I wasn’t heeding the stars. Awhile.”
“Did you see anyone else while you were out there?”
“No. No one. Whoever did it must have gone in through some back way. Or come later.”
“And you didn’t hear anything? No outcry? Nothing?”
“No. We have to go.”
She wanted to ask him if anyone had likely noticed when he returned to the hall but there seemed small point to it. Even if they had, they would likely have no more certainty about when it was than he had about when Sir Reynold and Sir Hugh had gone or Sir Hugh had come back. No one would have been turning an hourglass on it.
She nodded that she was done and they went, leaving her standing there looking at the door that had not been barred last night, thinking on what she had learned so far and wishing she could see she was near to an answer. But she was not, and she should go, while there was chance to question Sir Hugh.
Chapter 22
Uneasy with dislike of everything that she was doing, Frevisse went up the stairs to Lady Eleanor’s room. Its door was shut, but the heavy wood was not enough to keep in Lady Eleanor’s angry voice and Frevisse paused with her hand raised to knock. She had never heard Lady Eleanor close to anger before, over anything, but in what sounded like a cold fury she was demanding, “And you’ll just go, like that, with everything undone? Is that all this has come to?”
Sir Hugh’s answer was less clear, his voice low, hurried, but without obvious anger “… later… see that…”
Frevisse knocked at the door. There was instantly silence but hardly a pause before Margrete opened it. Lady Eleanor and Sir Hugh stood facing each other near the foot of the bed. Across the room Joice and Lady Adela were seated at the window, each holding a dog and both looking toward the door with open relief. If they were there, then whatever Lady Eleanor and her son had been arguing over, it had not been murder, Frevisse thought. And was disconcerted at how easily the thought came.
“Dame Frevisse,” Lady Eleanor said crisply. Her face, so pale when Frevisse last saw her, now had the bright flush of anger. “It’s good you’ve come. He means to take the men and go, now, today.”
“He can’t go! None of them can!” The protest burst out before Frevisse could stop it.
Less patiently than he had spoken to his mother, Sir Hugh said back, “I can. I’d better, unless you want more bloodshed here than there’s been already.”
“Surely you can hold your men back from doing anything against the masons,” Frevisse said.
“Hah!” Lady Eleanor exclaimed. “It’s not the masons I’d fear for if this lot of sword draggers went against them.”
“Mother,” Sir Hugh said, tight-lipped with control. “If we’re here when this abbot comes-and my guess is that someone has talked too much and he’s coming in force, by what it says here-” He jerked up his hand with a paper that looked to have been a sealed letter but was open and unfolded now. “He’ll see too much, and if he does, he’ll likely try to keep us from leaving at all. I can’t afford to have him seeing things or keeping us here!”
“Abbot?” Frevisse said, going toward them. “Which abbot? Lady Eleanor, does he mean our Abbot Gilberd?”
“Yes,” Lady Eleanor answered. “Someone has stirred him up, it seems. The letter says he means to be here this afternoon at latest, and that letter is a nice balancing between giving word he’s coming and not leaving time for much to be done about it!”
Frevisse turned on Sir Hugh. “How did you come by the letter? It surely wasn’t to you. When did it come?”
“It came this morning. No, it’s for Alys. I took it from the messenger,” Sir Hugh said impatiently.
“It wasn’t yours to take!”
“She’ll have it in good time.”
“She should have had it from the messenger’s hand! Unopened!”
“She’ll have to settle at having it from mine,” he said coolly, and turned his attention deliberately away from her. “Mother, I haven’t time for this. I’ll let you know where we settle. It won’t be so good as here, but we’ll make do. This isn’t finished.”
“Then you’re not calling off the Fenner matter. You’re only out of here for safety’s sake?” Lady Eleanor said.
“Yes!” Sir Hugh’s patience was suddenly thin. “You don’t think there can be any calling off of it now, do you? After what Reynold’s done? Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t.”
“But you don’t want to,” Lady Eleanor insisted.
Unexpectedly Sir Hugh half laughed and leaned down to kiss Lady Eleanor on the forehead. “No,” he said, quietly certain. “I don’t want to. Not any more than you do. Set your mind to ease on that.”