Dame Claire sighed with a weariness that had nothing to do with waking before dawn. “It was something torn inside of him, maybe. Or something broken that I didn’t find. The foam at the corner of his mouth says it was likely a hurt to his lungs.” She drew one of the blankets over Barnaby’s face.
Meg moaned and turned her face into Eda’s shoulder.
Taking another of the blankets, Dame Claire rose, went to put it around Meg’s shoulders, and asked, “What happened at the last? When did you realize he was dying?”
“I didn’t,” Meg whispered without raising her head. “He was sleeping. I went to sleep, and woke to see he was so still…”
“He never struggled or stirred or…?” Dame Claire pressed.
“No.” Meg shook her head.
“But there must have been something. What woke you? Did he make a noise?”
Frevisse put out a hand to stop her. She knew how boldly Dame Claire fought against anyone’s dying, and how sternly she sought for reasons when she lost; but this was neither time nor place to make Barnaby’s widow more wretched than she was. “Eda,” Frevisse said, “take her with you. Let her sleep next to you. It isn’t good for her to be alone for the rest of the night.”
“Surely, my lady. That’s no trouble at all. Come now, we’ll find you a place.” Eda moved to lead Meg away.
But Meg held back, gesturing at Barnaby’s body. “I can’t leave him. He has to be watched over. He can’t be left alone. Can’t we take him to the church?”
“In the morning,” Frevisse said. “We’ll find someone to take him back to the village church in the morning. And someone will watch by him tonight, but it doesn’t have to be you. Go with Eda.”
Meg let Eda lead her away then, shuffling her feet as if she lacked the strength to lift them.
When they were gone, Dame Claire asked, “Where are her sons? Why was she watching alone?”
“She sent them home, to see to things. She probably thought there was no danger of this; he seemed better.”
“I thought he was,” Dame Claire said regretfully. “I truly thought he was. If I hadn’t, I would have set someone to watch with her. She was probably sleeping, so exhausted she never heard his dying. Poor woman.”
“Poor indeed. The funeral will probably take what few pence she’s managed to gather working here, and then there’ll be heriot and gersum to Lord Lovel for the older boy to take up the holding.”
“The gersum can’t be high, their holding is so small,” said Claire.
“Still, she’ll not have a penny to bless herself with after they do all that, plus pay damages for the cart and maybe the horse and whatever else. The family will be in debt at best and perhaps beggared. The older boy is an ill-tempered, disobedient fool, not likely to do his work even if he gets the holding. He’ll be no comfort to Meg, or much use. And the other one is not made for hard work.”
“That may change,” said Claire. “He’s young.”
Behind them came the sound of footsteps, and they turned toward the dark shape looming toward them, featureless with the low glow of the players’ fire behind him until he was near enough to their own light for his face to show.
But Frevisse had already recognized Ellis by his height and broad shoulders. “Is he dead?” asked the man.
“Yes.”
“A pity. Rose is asking if you’ll come look at Piers.” His request was halfhearted; a woman’s fussing over a child’s minor illness was deeply discounted in the fact of a man’s dying.
But Claire said, “Assuredly.” From what she knew of fevers, it was likely to have worsened in the night. Or seemed to; every ache seemed worse in the night, and worse again when it was a child. Small wonder the man dared to ask despite Barnaby’s death. She bent to gather up her box and the lamp.
“I’ll stay here,” Frevisse said. “We said someone would keep watch by him.”
Dame Claire paused to look at her. “Are you sure? We can find a servant to do it.”
Frevisse shook her head. “I won’t sleep again tonight. Go on.”
Ellis nodded at the blanket-covered shape that had been Barnaby. “We never heard a sound, not till Meg woke us with her crying.”
Frevisse said, “He must have gone quietly, in his sleep.”
“A mercy he’d been shriven.”
“A mercy indeed,” Dame Claire agreed. “Come. Let’s see to your little boy.”
They went away toward the other fire. Frevisse knelt down beside Barnaby’s body and composed herself for prayer and meditation. At least something so distinct as death gave her a focus for her thoughts. There was a soul to be prayed for, and that she knew how to do.
But despite her efforts, her mind would not hold to the practiced words. A recitation of familiar prayers could sometimes take her through the cold and dark emotions of the moment into the harmonies of the seven crystal spheres that were around the world and led by steps of grace into the light and joy surrounding the throne of God in Heaven.
She had learned when she was fairly young that she could do that on occasion-leave the world in mind at least, for a greater, deeper, higher plane. Among her reasons for choosing to become a nun had been her desire to join more freely, more frequently with that high place.
Sister Thomasine could do it with a thought, Frevisse suspected. For Sister Thomasine it was part of her nature; for Frevisse it was a studied effort, which seemed hardly fair. Frevisse shook off that mean thought; petty jealousy would only weigh her spirit down, keep it from the freedom she wanted for it. Deliberately, she turned her thought away from the mundane and began again to reach out of herself toward God.
“Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine. Et lux perpetua luceat ei.” Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord. And light eternal shine upon him. “Kyrie, eleison. Christe, eleison. Kyrie, eleison.” Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.
The release did not come. Her thoughts, meant to go upward, outward, insistently flitted sideways, back to worldly things. To the indignation of Dame Alys in chapter. To the rude questioning of her performance of her duties by Roger Naylor. To Sym’s defiance, and Joliffe’s laughter. To the hall’s cold, now that the fire was dying.
Her undiscipline annoyed her more than her earthbound prayers for the repose of the soul of the dead man under the blanket right in front of her.
She found herself straining to overhear the hushed talking from the players’ end of the hall, and listening to the passage of Dame Claire behind her. She shivered in the icy draft of the opening and closing outer door, discovered she had lost where she had been in her recitation of Psalm 129, and started over with more impatience than reverence.
Which was worse than not praying at all.
Frevisse stopped, and for a while simply knelt there, allowing herself to be aware of the darkness and the cold and the quiet voices at the other fire. Then, less firmly, she set herself to praying again, not trying to use it as a way to anywhere but making her mind see each word as she said it, in simple progression toward her goal.
An unknown while later she felt an icy draft up her back. Someone was coming in, with a rush of night air that fluttered the ends of her veil and pushed her gown against her back.
Her concentration broken, she turned to see who it was. Ellis, she thought, and then was sure as he was briefly silhouetted against the players’ fire, handing a small goblet to Rose. Medicine for the boy. With a sound of annoyance at him, and at herself, Frevisse tried to turn her mind back to praying yet again.
But now she was aware again that under the folded blanket was a hard stone floor, and that her nose wanted blowing, and that her fingers ached with cold.