“It’s leather,” Frevisse said. “He needed to kill Sir Reynold close, to keep him from crying out, and the leather kept his own clothing from being bloodied. No one was going to miss a dead man’s doublet. All he had to do with it afterward was hide it here and go out clean in his own clothing.”
“Hugh?” Domina Alys asked. Tight-lipped with held-in rage, he threw her a harsh look and said nothing.
Joliffe picked up a dark blood-stiffened cloth that had fallen to the pavement from the unfolded doublet. “He’d even thought to bring a rag to clean his dagger with and left it here, too. The weather is too cold for flies to come to the blood and nothing else would give away its hiding place.”
“Hugh?” Domina Alys asked again, wanting him to say something, not that.
Sir Hugh lowered his sword away from Benet’s with a deep, impatient breath and said at her, “Don’t be a greater fool than Reynold thought you were. That’s exactly how it was.”
Domina Alys tried to answer. Her mouth moved, but nothing came, as if there were nothing left in her to make words out of; as if anger and hope and everything else words came from no longer existed in her; until finally, faint in the cold morning air, she whispered, “Why?”
Hugh looked at her disgustedly. “Because I had no more use for him. That’s why.”
Chapter 25
In the warm midst of the afternoon the cloister lay quiet again, as if there had never been other than sunlight and peace inside its walls. Standing beside the church door, gazing at the frost-killed garth and trying to empty her mind of anything but stillness and prayer, Frevisse whispered, “Exaudi, Domine, preces servi tui.” Hear, Lord, the prayers of your servant. Prayers for peace, however momentary; for sanctuary, however brief; for mercy, however undeserved.
Behind her the door opened and closed so gently there was hardly sound from it, and Sister Thomasine came with barely a hush of skirts to stand beside her.
“Is she still there, the same?” Frevisse asked.
Sister Thomasine made a small nod.
“And Katerin?” Frevisse asked.
Again the small nod.
To Sir Hugh’s answer, made as carelessly as if he were unguilty, Domina Alys had stood staring, only staring, not at anything, even him, only at nothing, at a terrible nothing bare of anything that should have been there-rage or grief or disbelief-and then had said to no one, out of that nothingness, empty of any feeling, “I have to go pray,” and gone past them all as if no one was there, along the cloister walk and into the church.
Katerin had followed after her and there they still were, Domina Alys stretched out face down on the floor in front of the altar, silent, motionless, her arms spread out straight from her sides, with the small movement of her breathing the only sign she was alive, while Katerin crouched nearby, drawn up into as small a ball as she could manage, arms wrapped around her updrawn knees, as silent as her lady and rocking slightly, very slightly, back and forth.
No one had chosen to disturb them, not even Abbot Gilberd. He had come into the cloister as Sir Hugh was giving his sword over to Benet, and to Frevisse’s relief Roger Naylor had been with him. That had meant there was less need of explanations than there might have been, though explanations enough were needed. Less welcome was the sight of Sir Walter Fenner crowded among the men behind him, ready to make a fight of something if he could. But Abbot Gilberd had proved to have a quick way with facts. He had sorted through what he needed to know just then and sent Sir Hugh away under guard of some of his men and Benet, refusing Sir Walter’s offer, to take him in charge and to the sheriff with, “No, Sir Walter. My thanks, but it will be best, I think, if I see to my men taking Sir Hugh to the sheriff. For now all the present wrongs in the matter have been done to the Fenners. I’d like to keep it that way.”
That had been blunt enough that Sir Walter had had no quick reply, and Abbot Gilberd had given him no time to think of one but went on briskly with, “This is all secondary to what’s brought me here. I’ll see to it being given over to civil law as soon as may be. Sir Hugh can be conveyed directly to the sheriff by my men for a beginning, as soon as they can be horsed and gone. The rest of the Godfreys I’ll bind over to keep the peace until the justices can deal with them, and then they can take themselves home. Today for preference. Sir Walter, you and your men shall be my guests here tonight and leave tomorrow.” When the Godfreys would be well gone, he did not add but did say, on the chance Sir Walter missed the point, “I trust I will not have to bind you over, too, to keep the peace? You understand the matter is now for the law to see to?”
It required little acquaintance to know Sir Walter’s character; it required a great deal of confidence to handle him with the assurance that Abbot Gilberd did. Sir Walter had darkened an unbecoming shade of red but said, grudgingly, that he understood.
“And so you don’t mind swearing to it, do you?” Abbot Gilberd had said, and Sir Walter had sworn and been dismissed to see his men kept his oath along with him.
Abbot Gilberd’s questions after that to those of them still there in the cloister walk had been short and few and left him in full enough understanding of how things were to say, “Tell-it’s Dame Juliana who’s presently cellarer?-tell her the nunnery is in her charge until I’ve finished with the Godfreys and made sure of the Fenners giving no trouble. I’ll speak to you all after Vespers, before Compline. Matters outside should be well enough in hand by then to leave me free for it. But first your prioress.”
Sister Thomasine, her head bowed, had said gently, “She’s praying.”
“Well, she should be,” Abbot Gilberd had said in a tone meant to curb tongues that had no business wagging.
Sister Thomasine had lifted her head to look at him and said softly, “It might be best, my lord, to leave her there for now.”
And Abbot Gilberd had paused, looking back at her, then said, “It might be, yes. Let her stay then until I’m ready for her.”
He had left then, taking Master Naylor, Joliffe, Edmund, and his men with him. Joice had gone to Lady Eleanor who must know something from watching from her chamber window and now would have to know the rest. Frevisse and Sister Thomasine had gone to the gardens where Dame Juliana had had the nuns at work clearing the last of the beds for winter, having given up all hope of bringing the day back into line; and explanations had gone on until dinner. Even then, before they could eat, Frevisse had had to tell it all again, to everyone-nuns and cloister servants gathered together in the refectory-along with Abbot Gilberd’s warning he would talk to them later. That had given rise to talk that had seen them through the meal and would see them through the afternoon, so that when they had finished eating, Dame Juliana-wide-eyed with the strain of responsibility now officially given-had set the servants to scrubbing the kitchen and taken the nuns into the gardens to walk and talk themselves into exhaustion.
Exhaustion was something of which Frevisse already had enough, and when she had seen Sister Thomasine slip away from the others, toward the church, she had quietly followed, not to the church but simply into the cloister walk to be alone awhile.
Now she had been alone that while and was glad of Sister Thomasine’s coming, of something more than silence and her own thoughts, even though now she had asked her useless questions about Domina Alys there seemed nothing more to say.
It was Sister Thomasine who offered quietly, “The minstrel wants to see you.”
For a moment, bound up in other thoughts, Frevissse did not follow where she had gone, then said, “Joliffe? Where? In the church?”