“Only he decided to play the fool with this last raid and ruined it all,” Margrete said bitterly.
“We expected he’d play the fool sooner or later, being Reynold,” Lady Eleanor said, “but I’d hoped it would be later. I’d hoped Hugh could sway him long enough. But it’s likely that Hugh will be able to manage it from here. Things aren’t ruined, only made more difficult.”
Frevisse forebore to point out that “things” had been made more than merely difficult for Domina Alys, and by no knowing consent of her own; and that unlike Sir Hugh and his men, neither she nor the nuns were going to be able to ride away from the trouble coming.
Lady Eleanor dried the last of her tears, done with them for now, and said, “But even given what a fool he could be, Reynold shouldn’t have died this way. Not like this.”
But then neither should he have been the kind of man he was, Frevisse thought; and without the apology she would have made a few minutes ago, she said, “I need to ask questions about when and where everyone was last night. Even you.”
Lady Eleanor considered that a moment, then nodded. “Yes. I can see why.”
Choosing to take that for permission, Frevisse asked, “Did any of you leave the room last night after Compline? You or Margrete or Joice?”
“Or me,” said Lady Adela. “I slept here, too.”
“You did,” Lady Eleanor agreed, “but this is one of those times you’re not to speak until you’re spoken to, my lady. No, none of us left that I know of, and I would have known, I think. I slept only fitfully and never deeply.”
“Rheumatic pains,” Margrete said. “She won’t take enough of her medicine to let her sleep soundly.”
“It makes my head thick all the next day when I do.”
“And so does not sleeping well when you don’t,” Margrete returned.
Lady Eleanor ignored her, following where Frevisse’s question led instead. “No, none of us went anywhere, but someone was where they shouldn’t have been, weren’t they? That’s what you’re trying to find out. It wouldn’t have been one of Reynold’s own men who killed him, that’s certain. But if it was someone from outside, come on purpose to kill him, how could they have counted on happening on so good a chance?”
“It was maybe someone come from outside who wanted to kill just anyone,” Lady Adela suggested happily. She crossed the room to Lady Eleanor’s side, the dog tucked under her arm. “And it happened to be Sir Reynold and they’ve gone miles away from here by now and we’ll never know who it was.” Her eyes widened with another thought. “Or they’re still here somewhere. In the priory. Hiding.”
“Lady Adela, go and sit and be quiet,” Lady Eleanor ordered, sharply enough that after a startled hesitation Lady Adela went back to the window bench to join Joice, who was sitting with the other dog cuddled to her breast, her face hidden against his furry back, surely listening but not interested enough to join in. Her green cloak had been returned to her last evening, cleaned, and she was wearing it against the room’s morning cold. The night’s airing had probably been enough to rid it of any lingering smell, and so she had everything that she had brought to St. Frideswide’s, and when the time came, she would probably leave without a backward look or thought, even for Benet. It was not going to be so simple for the rest of them, and Frevisse said carefully to Lady Eleanor, “You don’t think it was one of his own men, then, or that it was likely to have been someone from outside.”
“No. It had to have been someone already here. Someone still here, most likely. Or someone who should be here but isn’t.”
She was watching Frevisse as she said it, and Frevisse was watching her, but there was nothing wrong with the logic of what she had said, and Frevisse agreed, “Yes.”
“You’ll ask about all the servants, of course, and there are the masons,” Lady Eleanor went on consideringly. “The master mason in particular, I think, from what I’ve heard. And there’s the minstrel. And the madman, of course. It would be none so bad if it were either of them.”
Not saying she was unready yet to discount Sir Reynold’s men, Frevisse said, “There are others to consider, too. Domina Alys, for one. She’d found out what Sir Reynold was doing and was angry at him. And Benet. He was outside the guest hall and unseen last night. And Sir Hugh. It seems he wasn’t happy with Sir Reynold last night, either.”
Lady Eleanor lifted her head. “Not my son,” she said, meeting that possibility with flat refusal, as if that were enough to settle it.
Joice spilled the dog onto the bench beside her and stood up. “I’m going to the church,” she said. “I need to pray.”
Lady Eleanor started, “Do you think, Joice, that’s…” but Joice, moving quickly and with only a shadow of a curtsy to her and Frevisse, repeated, “I need to pray,” was out the door and gone. Belatedly, Lady Adela slid the dog she held to the floor with an ungracious bump and said, starting for the door, “I’ll go, too!”
“You will not,” said Lady Eleanor. “Sit down.”
Lady Adela hesitated.
“Sit,” Lady Eleanor repeated.
“But-”
“Mistress Joice does not need your help in prayers, and this is not a day for everyone to be wandering anywhere they want to around the nunnery. Sit!”
Lady Adela sat, unhappy with it, and Frevisse took the chance to say, “I must needs go, too.”
Lady Eleanor began to say something to that, thought better of it, and said instead with her familiar gentleness, “Best let things simply go what way they will, Dame. There’s naught that we can do to make them better.”
Not after some of us have done so much to make them worse, Frevisse thought bitterly, but schooled her face to what might be taken for agreement and merely curtsied and went out.
No one was in the cloister walk, and Frevisse stopped at the corner of the garth wall near the foot of Lady Eleanor’s stairs, a hand on the pillar, her forehead resting against the stone as she listened to the quiet, deep even for the cloister. By the emptiness, the stillness, the nunnery might have been deserted; the loudest sound seemed to be the throbbing of her back, and she wondered briefly what Dame Juliana and Dame Perpetua had done with the other nuns for now. In a usual day it would have been time, or nearly time, for Tierce, but the day had lost all the familiar shape of days in St. Frideswide’s. The sky was unabated blue and sunlight filled the cloister; by midday there might even be a passing warmth on the stones; but the gray ash of fear was lying over everything, even her thoughts. What had she learned so far? Nothing that helped, so far as she could tell.
She tried to say a prayer for Sir Reynold’s soul. Death- and fear-should not be more real than prayers, but for now they seemed to be, distracting her from what should come easily.
She went along the walk, toward the church, seeing as she passed the parlor that Sir Reynold’s body was gone. Was it at all possible that it had been someone from outside who killed him, someone come seeking revenge, finding it and gone now?
She wished she could believe that had been the way of it, but she did not. Whoever the murderer was, it was someone here.
She went into the church, expecting to find Sir Reynold’s body coffined and vigil being kept, but the church was empty except for Sister Thomasine kneeling on the altar’s lowest step, far gone in prayer, as usual. Sir Hugh must intend to take the body with them, out of Fenner reach. That would not go down well with the crowner either when the time came he learned of all this.
In the familiar shadows and quiet, Frevisse closed her eyes as she sought to gather her feelings and her thoughts into something coherent, but what came was another question.